Category: War – Peace – Foreign Affairs

Whose Side Are They On, Anyway?

The American Thinker highlights more moral confusion on the left. First, Thomas Lifson:

…John F. Kerry pledged that he would end America’s program to develop miniature nuclear “bunker-buster” weapons, the type of weapon which would be suitable to remove the threat from underground nuclear weapons facilities belonging to rogue states. Yet in the very same debate, Kerry decried the progress made by North Korea and Iran toward nuclear weapons, weapons which are produced using underground facilities of the type which could only be destroyed by ultra-powerful bunker-busters.

How do we explain Kerry’s position that the United States should not possess weapons capable of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states, a threat he identified as the most important one facing the United States? The answer to that question can be found in the writings of leftist theoreticians, critical of what they call American “dominance.”

They have openly expressed their fears that a world in which the United States is the most powerful actor will be unjust, and is undesirable. Of course, no candidate for president will go so far as to baldly state the thesis that the United States is not to be trusted with power, and that we need to be checked and balanced by the power of foreign states, comparably armed and able to project their power against us. But these intellectual doctrines seem to have been incorporated into the national security thinking of John F. Kerry, the would-be next Commander-in-Chief, because they explain his peculiar views on disabling America’s ability to address the threat of North korean and Iranian nukes….

Then, Justin Hart:

Al Gore’s now infamous MoveOn.org speech in May 2004 highlights a theme that has “dominated” left-leaning scholarship for last three years. Said Gore: “An American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.”…

This “dominance motif” is the bedrock of modern leftist thought, seeding a host of conspiracy theories and birthing a thriving industry of Bush-bashing tomes. Understanding the history, rhetoric and proponents behind these claims illustrates the flawed worldview of the left….

[There is] a vein of leftist scholarship and publications warning of the “imperial grand strategy” that the Bush administration has “embraced.” All of these writers allude to the 2002 policy document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America….

In [leftists’] minds, there is…something inherently sinister about it. To summarize their fears: The birth of “neocons” during the first Gulf War gave rise to the “Bush Doctrine” of “forward deterrence.” Before the 2001 attacks, “preemption” was a rhetorical device employed by U.S. administrations since WWII, that has now become a declarative policy under Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell and associates. Employing an “Arab façade”, the Bush Administration has struck a “Faustian bargain,” vying for U.S. hegemony while simultaneously “socializing” a military economy, driving huge deficits and creating “powerful pressures” to cut federal spending.

Bush is seen as a “born-again global crusader,” fixated on enriching his oil-rich peers. He advocates a Pax Americana, with a swagger of “open contempt” for international law, and displays an insatiable desire for global dominance. The common premise across these worldview conspiracies is that the Bush Administration has insidious designs to dominate and “run the planet by force to protect their privilege.”

Empire, where’s the empire? Where’s the global dominance? Where’s the international law? (Hint: It’s not to be found in the United Nations.)

Have these people died and gone to some magical kingdom where lions and lambs commingle in peace? Tell me how to find it. I’ll check my weapons at the gate.

Doing What You Have to Do, Israeli Style

Arab terrorists and their sympathizers — from Manhattan to Paris and Bonn — will call it a crime against humanity. I call it doing what you have to do to protect your people from their enemies. What is it? This:

Armored Vehicles Mass at Gaza Border

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer

JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip – Armored vehicles massed on Gaza’s border Friday after Israel’s security Cabinet approved a large-scale military operation — dubbed “Days of Penitence” — to stop Palestinian rocket fire….

The Cabinet approved the offensive late Thursday, at the end of a day of heavy fighting between troops and Palestinian gunmen in the Jebaliya refugee camp, the Palestinians’ largest and most densely populated.

In bloodshed Friday, five Palestinians were killed and at least 22 were wounded in fighting in the camp. The army said troops fired at one group of militants planting explosives and another setting up a rocket launcher….

On Friday, fighting erupted in Jebaliya and nearby towns. In separate incidents, Israeli troops fired two tanks shells and a missile from an aircraft at a group of militants attempting to launch a rocket….

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the security Cabinet he was determined to stop the rocket fire. Israeli officials said the operation would be open-ended.

“What can we do,” a participant quoted Sharon as saying. “The Jews, too, have a right to live.”…

On Friday morning, some 200 tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers assembled along Israel’s border north and east of Gaza. Troops were setting up makeshift camps, apparently in preparation for an extended operation. Some officers were going over maps….

Militants have been stepping up attacks on Israelis in recent months in hopes of portraying Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 as a retreat under fire. The army has been pounding the militants in intensifying strikes to deny them such claims.

Mofaz, the defense minister, said that when Israel withdraws, it will not be under fire….

Palestinian militants have fired hundreds of rockets and mortar shells at Gaza settlements and Israeli border towns since 2000. Most attacks caused damage and minor injuries.

There have been two deadly strikes, including Wednesday’s hit on the border town of Sderot that killed two children playing on the sidewalk in a quiet neighborhood at the onset of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot….

“No government can tolerate the continuation of … missiles falling on the heads of the civilian population,” [Israeli government spokesman Gideon Meir] said.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat denounced the Israeli raid as “a war crime and state terror,” and said he feared all of Gaza would soon be reoccupied.

Aha! We finally got to “war crime and state terror.” As for the reoccupation of Gaza: “Whatever it takes” is my bit of unnecessary advice to the Israelis.

Palestinians want their land to be recognized as a sovereign nation? Not as long as they persist in terror attacks on Israel.

Why not have a summit? That would be John Kerry’s solution, despite the fact that a summit would simply be a ploy on the part of Arab terrorists (1) to make themselves look legitimate in the gullible eyes of world opinion and (2) to buy time in which to rearm and regroup.

What’s This about a Summit?

I didn’t watch the debate, for reasons explained here. But I did sample some of the live-blogging and post-debate posts. The best of the bunch — by 20 lengths — is James Lileks’s super-rant about Kerry’s summit idea. I have no idea exactly what Kerry said, nor do I think it matters exactly what he said, because Lileks has undoubtedly captured what I would have said had I heard exactly what Kerry said (got that?). Anyway, here’s a bit of Lileks:

…And another thing: the idea of a summit with the Muslim world doesn’t particularly billow my sails, either….

[D]o you think a summit in which the various satrapies of the Middle East and elsewhere convene for a marathon bitchfest about Gaza is going to make America beloved in Sadr City? They want us to extend a hand, yes, so they can lop it off. Ah, but what of the moderates. Those who have been turned against us because we threw out the Taliban and deposed Saddam – the relentlessly secular Saddam, as we’re often reminded. If it hasn’t occurred to these folks before, let me spell it out plainly: if you think there’s a war against Muslims now, you lack a certain sense of perspective. If tiptoeing around sacred sites and taking special care to pick off the snipers hiding in mosques so as not to disturb the plaster is a war against Islam, you will be looking for new terms when Putin drops a big bag of hammers somewhere someday….

So no, I’m not enthused about a summit, unless we get to set the agenda….Item three: we’re going to play a video of the events of 9/11. And then we’ll have a discussion. We’re willing to entertain all sorts of commentary, with one proviso: the moment you use the word “but,” you’re escorted from the building and put back on a plane home. You can never come to the US again. Your nice condo in the new Trump building will be sold for five dollars to a nice Jewish lesbian couple we met the other day at parent’s night at our school in Park Slope. One’s an artist, the other’s a lawyer….

Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most? A) The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd century

B) The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer

What would you want in this situation? The answer starts with “S” and ends, five letters later, in “T.”

So, I get it. We are wrong and bad and stupid and stupidly wrong-bad. We failed to make France act as though it wasn’t, you know, France, a militarily insignificant nation that is understandably motivated by self-interest, and we haven’t convened a summit so we could be castigated for ignoring the extralegal use of Israeli helicopters to turn Hamas kingpins into indistinct red smears. You’d think we nuked Paris and converted everyone to Lutheranism.

Here’s the thing. I’d really like to live in John Kerry’s world. It seems like such a rational, sensible place, where handshakes and signatures have the power to change the face of the planet. If only the terrorists lived there as well….

That’s it — in a nutshell, wrapped in a glorious rant. One of these days someone’s really gonna p*** off James.

"Sick" Isn’t the Right Word…

…for the sub-species of the lowest form of life responsible for this:

Pair of Car Bombs in Iraq Kill Dozens, Including Many Children

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: September 30, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 30 — In one of the most horrific attacks here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a pair of car bombs tore through a street celebration today at the opening of a new government-built sewer plant, killing 41 Iraqi civilians, at least 34 of them children, and wounding 139 people.

The bombs exploded seconds apart, creating a chaotic scene of dying children and grieving parents, some of them holding up the blood-soaked clothes of their young, and howling in lament. Arms and legs lay amid pools of blood, with some survivors pointing to the walls of the sewer plant, now spattered with flesh….

Does anyone think there would be less of this if the U.S. were to cut and run from Iraq? Well, there might eventually be less of it if the Ba’athists who are behind it were to retake power. Then the atrocities would go on as before — behind the scenes, where the squeamish of the world could pretend that nothing is amiss.

To paraphrase President Bush: You’re either for decency or you’re against it. And if you’re for it you sometimes have to fight for it. And the fight often is unpleasant. But the alternative is surrender to the forces of evil. And I do mean evil — of the sort that was unleashed against the children of Baghdad today.

How to Write a Headline about Iraq

The New York Times loves to editorialize in its headlines. Here’s one from this morning: “Iraq Study Sees Rebels’ Attacks as Widespread.” I think the message we’re supposed to take from that selective bit of information is this:

Nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah.

Or this:

Cut and run.

Actually, the article goes on to attain a degree of balance:

…The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months….[T]he highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day….

But it is a measure of both the fog of war and the fact that different analysts can look at the same numbers and come to opposite conclusions, that others see a nation in which most people are perfectly safe and elections can be held with clear legitimacy….

Indeed, no raw compilation of statistics on numbers of attacks can measure what is perhaps the most important political equation facing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the American military: how much of Iraq is under the firm control of the interim government. That will determine the likelihood – and quality – of elections in January.

For example, the number of attacks is not an accurate measure of control in Falluja; attacks have recently dropped there, but the town is controlled by insurgents and is a “no go” zone for the American military and Iraqi security forces. It is a place where elections could not be held without dramatic political or military intervention.

The statistics show that there have been just under 1,000 attacks in Baghdad during the past month; in fact, an American military spokesman said this week that since April, insurgents have fired nearly 3,000 mortar rounds in Baghdad alone. But those figures do not necessarily preclude having elections in the Iraqi capital.

Pentagon officials and military officers like to point to a separate list of statistics to counter the tally of attacks, including the number of schools and clinics opened. They cite statistics indicating that a growing number of Iraqi security forces are trained and fully equipped, and they note that applicants continue to line up at recruiting stations despite bombings of them.

But most of all, military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody attacks during the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single battle.

“We have had zero tactical losses; we have lost no battles,” said one senior American military officer. “The insurgency has had zero tactical victories. But that is not what this is about.

“We are at a very critical time,” the officer added. “The only way we can lose this battle is if the American people decide we don’t want to fight anymore.”…

It will be a Vietnam if we decide to make it a Vietnam. But not otherwise.

Think of the headline the Times might have run: “Iraq Progressing Despite Insurgency; Fate Hinges on Americans’ Resolve.” Now that is editorializing in a headline.

Perfect Understanding

Melana Zyla Vickers writes “About That National Intelligence Estimate…” at Tech Central Station:

The important thing about the now infamous National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is not so much what it says, but rather what it reveals about how different politicians might use it.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell told TV watchers that the estimate that appeared in the press almost two weeks ago “wasn’t a terribly shocking assessment. It was something that I could have written myself.” …

Here’s a reminder of how the New York Times first described it:

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

The ‘one hand, other hand’ analysis is what one would expect from an institution that has been pilloried lately for drawing firm but incorrect conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And from an institution that was pilloried in the past for other errors in judgment: The CIA got the size of the Soviet economy wrong. It got the fall of the Shah of Iran wrong. It failed to predict India’s detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Indeed, intelligence analysis more often than not has a heavy quotient of C-Y-A. The ambivalence isn’t motivated only by analysts’ self-preservation instincts. It’s also motivated by the fact that predicting world events with certainty is impossibly hard.

As I said, here, “The CIA is…trying to lower expectations about the future of Iraq. Thus its new — “pessimistic” — intelligence estimate.” Vickers continues:

Which is why it’s not enough for a president to make foreign policy based on “hard evidence,” to quote John Kerry’s Democratic convention speech. Rather, a president has to make foreign policy based on his convictions, his judgment, and his will.

Kerry doesn’t agree with that: “As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system — so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.”

To complete Kerry’s thought, the U.S. would “have to” go to war if and only if the president had “hard evidence” of such a need.

Kind of like the hard evidence Kerry’s foreign-policy brains trust — Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, Bill Cohen — wanted to have before going after Osama bin Laden. In their 9/11 Commission testimony, those officials regularly cited the lack of actionable intelligence as their reason for doing nothing.

Consider that the Clinton administration never launched a military attack against the terrorist group after it bombed the U.S.S. Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors. CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks presented the administration with 14 military options, according to the commission staff report. But Clinton’s SecDef Cohen said that “we did not have specific information that this was bin Laden” (attacking the Cole) and that military retaliation against Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan “would not have been effective.” The administration also resisted sending special forces to Afghanistan.

In another instance, Clinton administration NSC Adviser Samuel Berger and counterterrorism group chair Richard Clarke decided in 1996 not to bring Bin Laden to the U.S. from his hideout in Sudan. There was no legal basis for bringing him to the U.S. nor holding him here, Berger told the commission. Berger, a lawyer, said he was not aware of any intelligence that bin Laden was responsible for any act against a U.S. citizen, and consequently bin Laden could not be indicted.

There’s no reason to believe that John Kerry — ambivalent about his own personal likes and dislikes, let alone questions of war — would be any less paralyzed than these pols were.

The Iraq National Intelligence Estimate gives Americans a pretty good illustration of the limits of intelligence. And Kerry’s foreign-policy philosophy gives Americans a pretty good illustration of how, armed with such intelligence, he and his advisors would do absolutely nothing.

I discussed Kerry’s analysis paralysis recently. It’s pathological.

Determination

That’s the title of a piece by Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker. Some key points:

…America’s strategic vision and will to use force are also hugely important to the tyrants who oppose us. Ask Colonel Gadhafi of Libya, who has voluntarily surrendered his nuclear arms program. Strangely enough, Senator Kerry has nothing to say about this when denouncing Iraq as the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Contrary to what Americans are being told relentlessly, our forces in Iraq are not posted there to serve as targets for Islamist terrorists. Nor are they present in Iraq solely to ensure the transition of that country into a democratic state – a project which will take years, even decades to accomplish fully. That mission is extremely important, to be sure.

The American forces in Iraq are also a forward deployment in the War on Terror – a signal of the utter seriousness placed on removing the bases from which terrorists operate. As President Bush’s re-election is looking more probable, people like Assad are realizing that they are not to be granted relied from this pressure by a verdict of the American electorate….

Students of the history of warfare realize that as the enemy is facing defeat, casualties often mount, as desperation attacks are carried out, in the consciousness that the only alternative is capitulation. In World War II, consider the awful toll in American blood paid in the Battle of the Bulge, the invasion of Okinawa, and in the Kamikaze suicide attacks on American aircraft carriers. The escalation in casualties was not an indicator of defeat or a “quagmire.”…

Determination is what it’s all about. We can stay the course and tighten the noose around the necks of terrorists and their sponsors, or we can retire to the illusory safety of our homeland and allow the enemy to capture the Middle East, make nuclear weapons, and train terrorists with impugnity.

Determination is what wins wars and keeps the peace.

Determination is a character trait. Some have it; many don’t.

I speak from experience. I know the determination it takes to achieve a strategic objective. I succeeded in moving my company out of the second-rate quarters we were forced to take, in a political deal, and into first-rate quarters. It took 12 years, and it happened only because I was determined to make it happen, in spite of considerable internal opposition and diffidence on the part of my CEO.

Determination on the part of Democrats is what changed the dominant economic system in the United States from something like laissez-faire capitalism to something much more like socialism. If only Democrats had the same determination to win the war on terror.

Defense, Anarcho-Capitalist Style

The Traditional View: Defense Must Be Produced by Government

Defense usually is considered a public good, which Wikipedia defines thus:

In economics, a public good is one that cannot or will not be produced for individual profit, since it is difficult to get people to pay for its large beneficial externalities. A public good is defined as an economic good which possesses two properties:

• …once it has been produced, each person can benefit from it without diminishing anyone else’s enjoyment.

• …once it has been created, it is impossible to prevent people from gaining access to the good….

The public goods problem is that a free market is unlikely to produce the theoretically optimum amount of any public good: such important goods as national defense will be underproduced due to the free-rider problem….

A free-rider is an individual who is extremely individualistic, considering benefits and costs that affect only him or her. Suppose this individual thinks about exerting some extra effort to defend the nation. The benefits to the individual of this effort would be very low, since the benefits would be distributed among all of the millions of other people in the country. Further, the free rider knows that he or she cannot be excluded from the benefits of national defense. There is also no way that these benefits can be split up and distributed as individual parcels to people. But just because one person refuses to defend the country does not mean that the nation is not going to be defended. So this person would not voluntarily exert any extra effort, unless there is some inherent pleasure in doing so….

If voluntary provision of public goods will not work, then the obvious solution is making their provision involuntary. (Each of us is saved from our own individualistic short-sightedness.) One general solution to the problem is for governments or states to impose taxation to fund the production of public goods….

Defense as a Marketable Good: The Anarcho-Capitalist View

Anarcho-capitalists take an entirely different view. They see the state as illegitimate. Defense, therefore, is something that individuals should provide for themselves. How would that work? To find out, we turn to the Mises Institute, which in 2003 published a book of essays with the title The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. The Mises Review (Vol. 10, No. 1; Spring 2004) carries an incestuous and, therefore, sycophantic and faithful review of that tome. Here are excerpts of the review, with my comments interspersed:

…History shows that no civilized community of substantial size can exist without a state; and arguments from political theory and economics show that the state is a necessity for adequate defense. The state may be evil, but it is a necessary evil.

The contributors to the Myth of National Defense dissent entirely from the line of thought just sketched. They raise a host of objections to the conventional view….

Jeffrey Hummel succinctly presents the argument that history shows the necessity of the state: “If private defense is better than government defense, why has government kept winning over the centuries? Indeed, the State’s military prowess has more than seemingly precluded the modern emergence of any anarcho-capitalist society….How can [radical libertarians such as Rothbard] attribute the origins of government to successful conquest and simultaneously maintain that a completely free society, without government, could prevent such conquest”…?

Both Hummel and the team of Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri endeavor in differing ways to respond to the argument just posed. According to Hummel,…”The free-rider problem, long presented by economists as a normative justification of the State, is in reality a positive explanation for why the State first arose and persisted”….

[D]oes not his very explanation render impossible successful resistance to the contemporary state? Will not the free-rider problem once more explain the persistence of the state?

Hummel has an ingenious response. Since the Industrial Revolution, wealth has become much more important than before in military conflict. This gives stateless groups a better chance of success than before, given the undoubted fact that the free market promotes economic growth more efficiently than a state-controlled society.

Aha! Things are different now. We’re in a “new economy” — just as we were before the stock market bubble burst in 2000. Well, when are the stateless groups going to get off their duffs and provide their own defense? We have stateless groups providing “offense” against which we must defend. Why haven’t the wealthy investment bankers who were victimized on 9/11 (and who might well be victimized again) raised mercenary armies to track down terrorists?

But what about the free-rider problem? Hummel maintains that this does not totally rule out collective action. It can be overcome if people have a strong enough commitment to the rightness of their cause….

If, if, if! The magic word. The world would be perfect only if it weren’t imperfect

Bassani and Lottieri respond in a different way. They reject the conquest theory of the state, as well as other accounts that postulate for the state a vast antiquity. Quite the contrary, they contend that the state began only when the Middle Ages came to an end. Not until then did people suffer from that baleful development, a centralized authority holding a monopoly of force over a national territory….

Once we grasp the modern origins of the state, is not our task of resistance to it made easier? No longer need we view the state as a fixed and irremovable presence. If the state did not always exist, may we not hope to remove it?…

Bad logic. It won’t work unless you can remove the conditions that arose at the end of the Middle Ages. That is, it won’t work unless you have a time-reversal machine.

Hobbes argued that without a state, individuals would find themselves in constant conflict. In order to avoid the “war of all against all,” must not everyone surrender his arms to the sovereign, who will then protect us? Hans Hoppe finds this argument less than convincing. Hobbes maintains that “in order to institute peaceful cooperation among themselves, two individuals, A and B, require a third independent party, S, as ultimate judge and peacemaker….To be sure, S will make peace between A and B, but only so that he himself can rob both of them more profitably. Surely S is better protected, but the more he is protected, the less A and B are protected against attacks by S”….Hobbes fails to show that the sovereign improves on the state of nature….

Well, by that example the sovereign doesn’t do worse than the state of nature. But there’s more:

[T]he question raised earlier recurs. Even if the state acts as a predator, is it not needed for defense against other states? But why should we accept this contention?

Here we must turn to arguments from economic theory. It is often alleged that national defense is a “public good” that the market cannot supply in adequate quantity. Both Larry Sechrest and Walter Block dissent from this all-too-prevalent orthodoxy. Why should we think that defense is a single good that must be supplied on an equal basis to everyone resident in a nation? “It is neither impossible to exclude nonpayers nor is it true that bringing in an additional person under the safety umbrella costs no additional resources”….With his customary imaginative flair, Block offers numerous ingenious examples to support his challenge to the standard view….

Well, here’s a counter-example for you: How would you have excluded non-payers who happened to be working in the World Trade Center on 9/11? And, if the Air Force had arrived on the scene in time to shoot down the hijacked airliners before they struck the World Trade Center, how would it have cost more to shoot them down if, say, one more non-payer had been present in the World Trade Center?

Joseph Stromberg strengthens the case with a vital point. It by no means follows that a free society must match the bloated expenditures of the Leviathan state in order to defend itself effectively. “I assume that minimal states and anarchies can do without nuclear bombs, cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and expensive ‘systems’ suited to world conquest or universal meddling.

This is merely an assertion that a people who “mind their own business” don’t’ need to be ready to defend themselves of their overseas interests against potential aggressors. It’s head-in-the-sand isolationism of the most naïve sort. It assumes that aggressors act only when provoked and not for their own reasons.

As for the ‘force structure’ of mere defense, I believe we would see some rough combination of militias and ‘insurance companies’—perhaps not as mutually exclusive as we think—with resort to mass-based guerrilla war, however and by whomever organized, in extremis”….

Right! Our overseas economic interests won’t be attacked if we lack offensive weapons and we can protect our domestic interests solely with militias and “insurance companies”. How would that work? The militias would rise up on the spot to protect…whom? subscribers?. What happens when those who underwrite the militias get tired of paying for protection when nothing’s happening? Do they just drop out of the syndicate? And what happens when enough of them do it and the militias are practically disarmed? Aha! That’s when terrorists strike. And what do “insurance companies” do, sell protection? How do the bad guys discriminate between policy-holders and free-riders? They can’t, unless you believe that terrorists will go door-to-do and attack only those who don’t have a policy. And there’s the problem of what happens when people tire of paying premiums when things have been calm for a long while.

The state, like it or not, is less likely to lose interest in what’s going on. The state isn’t perfect, certainly, but it has an incentive to make things look bad so that it can maintain large, standing armed forces and intelligence systems. Now, that may seem like a damaging admission on my part, but it isn’t. There are things it’s better to have too much of than too little of. Too much defense is expensive — but it’s likely to save your neck. Too little defense is cheap — but fatal. And anyone who thinks he can prescribe just the right amount and kind of defense must also think he knows, now, when the next stock market bubble will form and burst.

And so we approach the finale:

The argument for libertarian defense rests on two points. First, a libertarian society would have a much less ambitious agenda than states in the contemporary world.

Oh really? No overseas economic interests? And what about predators who don’t care about our agenda?

Murray Rothbard, with characteristic incisiveness, makes clear the drastically limited circumstances in which war is justified. Specifically, there is no universal mandate to impose a good society all over the world: nations must mind their own business….

That is, the United States must mind its own business. And if other nations — or independent operators — decide not to mind their own business, they’ll simply leave us alone because of the purity of our motives. There’s more of that, but it’s just nonsense:

…Democracies, swollen with self-righteousness, tend to wage unlimited wars that ignore humane restraints….

As opposed to fanatical totalitarian regimes?

[T]here is good reason to think that if a libertarian society found itself the victim of invasion, guerrilla warfare would prove a successful response…”We start from the truism that defense has the advantage….And once people are driven to guerrilla tactics defeating them raises the ratio of attackers to defenders to somewhere between 4-to-1 and 6-to-1 or higher. Successful ‘pacification’ and occupation may require a 10-to-1 superiority”….

These guys have been watching too many movies. (Red Dawn comes immediately to mind.)

Conclusion

The merry band of anarcho-capitalists at the Mises Institute must believe that Laden and his ilk wouldn’t bother us if we were retreat to within our borders, though that would mean abandoning vital economic interests overseas. (I guess those are of no interest to anarcho-capitalists, who are free to assume oil wells in every yard.) The critical assumption, of course, is that we would be left alone. Is that a reasonable assumption to make? I don’t think so. Bin Laden and his ilk are religious fanatics, bent on avenging the past failures of Islam, which they attribute wrongly to infidels.

Anarcho-capitalists also must believe that by effectively disarming we wouldn’t be inviting other nation-states to arm and fill the power void. That belief flies in the face of human nature. Greed and power-lust are self-generating; they aren’t brought into existence by provocation. If these anarcho-capitalists believe that Hitler only wanted “lebensraum” and Stalin only wanted a buffer zone around his “utopia”, then these anarcho-capitalists are bigger fools than Neville Chamberlain, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter.

Finally — resorting to the logic that “my client isn’t guilty, but if he is guilty he only acted in self-defense” — anarcho-capitalists admit that we might be attacked by terrorists or nation-states even if we were to withdraw within our borders and effectively disarm, as a nation. Then, they assert, some of us could resort to guerrilla warfare, for which militias and “insurance companies” would be well prepared. Now there’s a strategy for you: Wait until the enemy attacks us, then hope that he only attacks those who haven’t paid for protection. Or hope that enough of us have voluntarily paid someone to have stockpiled the right kinds of weapons and trained properly — for a guerrilla war against weapons of mass destruction. I’d laugh if it weren’t suicidally stupid.

Anarcho-capitalists, meet Alice. I’m sure you’ll all be very happy together in Wonderland.

P.S. Notice how I got through all that without invoking images of competing ganglords, gunbattles in the streets, innocent bystanders being shot, and other innocents being forced to pay protection money at gunpoint? Well, I couldn’t resist adding this P.S. about those, the penultimate consequences of anarcho-capitalism — before an outside enemy would swoop in and bring “peace” to our troubled shores.

Repeat This Until You Understand It

I’ve said it before. Dale Franks at QandO says it again:

[T]he enemy is not an inanimate object upon which we impose our will. Instead, the enemy is composed of thinking, reasoning human beings who are doing their best to divine our intentions, and to prevent us from accomplishing them.

It seems that it can’t be said too often.

What Are These People Thinking?

Have these people no sense at all, whatsoever? It’s okay to do this in private, but why do it in public? It just encourages the enemy and demoralizes the troops. What am I talking about? This, from Reuters via Yahoo! News:

Republicans Criticize Bush ‘Mistakes’ on Iraq

Sun Sep 19, 1:11 PM ET

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Leading members of President Bush’s Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and “incompetence” in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries….

“The fact is, we’re in deep trouble in Iraq … and I think we’re going to have to look at some recalibration of policy,” Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We made serious mistakes,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned at Bush’s side this year after patching up a bitter rivalry….

McCain said Bush had been “perhaps not as straight as maybe we’d like to see.”…

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also criticized the administration’s handling of Iraq’s reconstruction….

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, speaking on ABC, accused the administration of delaying an offensive out of concern it would hurt Bush’s bid to win reelection on Nov. 2.

“The only thing I can figure as to why they’re not doing it with a sense of urgency is that they don’t want to do it before the election and they want to make it seem like everything is status quo,” Biden said….

Biden said disappointment with Bush’s policies was bipartisan. “Dick Lugar, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John McCain — we are all on the same page….This has been incompetence so far,” he said.

There’s useful dissent and there’s stupidity. That kind of talk is stupidity, pure and simple. But what do you expect from the preening denizens of the U.S. Senate? After all, John Kerry and John Edwards are members of the club.

Speaking of Offensive War…This Is Wrong

In the previous post I explained (not for the first time) why I favor an offensive (pre-emptive) war on terror. But this, from John Derbyshire at The Corner is wrong. No, it’s sick. What is it? I hate to post it, but to save you the trouble of going there, here it is:

THE PUNITIVE APPROACH [John Derbyshire]

P.J. O’Rourke seems to be with me on Iraq — i.e. teach ’em a lesson, then clear out: “A mess was left behind. But it’s a mess without a military to fight aggressive wars; a mess without the facilities to develop dangerous weapons; a mess that cannot systematically kill, torture, and oppress millions of its citizens. It’s a mess with a message – don’t mess with us. As frightening as terrorism is, it’s the weapon of losers. When someone detonates a suicide bomb, that person does not have career prospects. And no matter how horrific the terrorist attack, it’s conducted by losers. Winners don’t need to hijack airplanes. Winners have an air force.”

Gentlemen, get a grip on yourselves. The “mess” affects a lot of people. Most of them aren’t terrorists. Your attitude smacks of racism.

Understanding Libertarian Hawks

Lee at verbum ipsum takes issue with my recent post about Libertarian hawks. In that post I took a shot at a point he had made:

Libertarian hawks want an all-powerful State that can preemptively crush its enemies abroad but will leave us in peace and freedom at home. The idea that foreign policy and domestic liberty can exist in hermetically sealed compartments seems willfully naïve given historical precedent.

About which I said:

I’m not sure about the historical precedent, but there’s plenty of peace and freedom abroad in the U.S. today, in spite of the present emergency. Just look at what went on in New York City during the Republican convention and what goes on daily in the media and across the internet. The crushing of dissent is confined almost exclusively to liberal-run academia. Moreover, Lee…chooses to overlook completely the strategic advantage of foreign intervention, which is to take the fight to the enemy and, in combination with other (clandestine) means, to distract him, to disrupt his plans, and to deny his access to resources. Perhaps Lee would rather fight it out in his living room.

Lee has responded thoughtfully, and so I will quote him at length:

First off, unlike some, I have never claimed that dissent is being “crushed” in present-day America. Of course, there’s still freedom in America. The relevant question is whether war is a threat to freedom. I merely pointed out that, as a matter of historical fact, war tends to increase the power, prestige and role of the State in people’s everyday lives. As James Madison put it:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

Whether it’s been justified on balance, it’s pretty hard to deny that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in at least two items on Madison’s list, the increase of debt and the increase in the discretionary power of the Executive.

Now, I’m not saying that this shows war is always unjustified, but for libertarians I would think that, other things being equal, measures that tend to increase the power of the State are to be avoided whenever possible. At the very least, libertarians should not be eager to go to war. War will always require a shift from a relatively free liberal order to a more highly centralized one; resources must be allocated, troops must be marshaled, and lives and freedom will be lost.

Secondly,…who is “the enemy” here? As I stated before, I have no problem with “taking the fight” to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere if necessary. But I don’t see how this offers any justification for the invasion of Iraq, which it now seems safe to say, posed little or no threat to the U.S. Are libertarians of all people going to give the government a blank check to invade anyplace they think “the enemy” might be?

Look, I’m not a libertarian…but I am mystified at self-proclaimed libertarians who are so eager to embrace military interventionism. After all, what is this but another big-government program? Barring a clear and present threat, I would think they would want the government to show restraint. Isn’t that the whole point of their creed?

I’m not going to argue with Lee. I’m simply going to say how I, as a libertarian, can take positions that he, as a non-libertarian, seems to find inimical to libertarianism.

I’ll begin with my libertarian view of the state: The existence of the state is justified solely by its role as the protector of its citizens from predators, within and without, so that those citizens may be secure in their persons and in their enjoyment of the fruits of liberty. Defense isn’t just “another big-government program” — it’s one of the few government programs that’s consistent with libertarian principles. (Beware of “libertarians” who think that defense can be privatized. They’re actually anarcho-capitalists who reflexively reject the legitimacy of the state’s existence for any purpose.)

Thus the question for a libertarian is not whether the state should defend liberty and safety, but when and how it becomes necessary to defend liberty and safety. How much it costs depends on the when and how; there’s no arbitrary upper limit on defense spending.

Before I go any further, I must emphasize that I’m talking about the liberty and safety of Americans. We’re not a nation for nothing. In fact we’re a nation because the Founders fought for our liberty and safety. I am not a moral relativist when it comes to American’s liberty and safety. They take precedence over the liberty and safety of other nations. American’s liberty and safety may be served by the liberty and safety of other nations, but the liberty and safety of other nations are secondary to the liberty and safety of Americans.

The defense of liberty and safety sometimes requires us to relinquish some of the fruits of liberty, as in World War II, when soldiers were drafted, goods were rationed, and there was a wall of secrecy around much of what the government was doing. The present war is, by comparison, almost benign in its effects on Americans. But the real question isn’t whether we now have more or less liberty and (apparent) safety than we had on September 10, 2001, but how to maximize our liberty and safety in light of the threat that became blindingly visible to us on September 11, 2001.

For that’s when the war on terror began in earnest — when we were struck. The question then facing us was not whether to go to war but how to fight the war.

War can be fought defensively or offensively. Defensive war-fighting is like defensive football — it cedes the initiative to the opponent. You’re always trying to figure out what he’s going to do next instead of turning the tables on him and forcing him to figure out what you’re going to do next. A state that chooses to fight a defensive war is, in my view, a state that inadequately defends its citizens’ liberty and safety. Thus the preference of libertarian hawks for an offensive war on terror doesn’t arise from an eagerness for war but from an understanding of war and from a fundamental tenet of libertarianism: The state’s legitimate role is to protect its citizens from predators.

Fighting an offensive war on terror is a lot harder than fighting an offensive war against a nation-state with well-defined armed forces. There’s much less certainty about where the enemy is, where he’s going to strike next, and where to strike him — financially, and diplomatically, and through the courts, as well as militarily. But the state must proceed in the face of uncertainty, sometimes making mistakes and sometimes making progress toward defeating the enemy — or at least diminishing his ability to strike at us.

The uncertainty involved in fighting terrorism requires giving the government some degree of latitude, but that latitude hardly amounts to a blank check. The invasion of Iraq, for example, was specifically authorized by Congress and is constantly questioned in Congress and the media. There’s no blank check there, simply a reasonable degree of deference to the commander-in-chief whose responsibility it is to prosecute the war. That deference will end if and when Congress decides to end it.

Was the invasion of Iraq a mistake or a strategic move that — although costly — will in the end repay its cost? I believe that it was a good strategic move, but I’m willing to concede that it’s too soon to tell. And we’ll never know if we cut and run, as libertarian doves (among others) would have us do.

If we were to cut and run, what signal would that send to terrorists? And what signal would it send to other regimes — notably Syria and Iran — that support terrorists and have aggressive ambitions of their own? If history teaches us anything, it is that an aggressor moves quickly to fill a perceived vacuum.

Another thing that history teaches us is the resiliency of American’s civil liberties. They have advanced markedly during the past 228 years, in spite of wars. Our economic liberties haven’t fared as well, but the regulatory-welfare state that shackles those liberties arose and has grown independently of the guardian state that strives to defend all of our liberties. In fact, the proponents of the regulatory-welfare state have generally viewed the guardian state as a rival for resources.

Libertarians — even libertarian doves — would rather have some sort of guardian state than any sort of regulatory-welfare state. The argument within libertarian circles, insofar as I can tell, is an argument about just what the guardian state should do to protect our safety and liberty.

Wisdom for America-Haters — Foreign and Domestic

Fareed Zakaria — Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International — writes about “Hating America” in Foreign Policy:

On September 12, 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, famously wrote, “Today we are all Americans.” Three years on, it seems that we are all anti-Americans. Hostility to the United States is deeper and broader than at any point in the last 50 years….

[A]nti-Americanism fills the void left by defunct belief systems. It has become a powerful trend in international politics today -— and perhaps the most dangerous. U.S. hegemony has its problems, but a world that reacts instinctively against the United States will be less peaceful, less cooperative, less prosperous, less open, and less stable.

The wave of anti-Americanism is, of course, partly a product of the current Bush administration’s policies and, as important, its style….

By crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances, the Bush administration has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy and revealed that the United States’ constraints are self-imposed: America can, in fact, go it alone. Not surprisingly, the rest of the world resents this imbalance and searches for ways to place obstacles in America’s way….

There is always a market for an ideology of discontent -— it allows those outside the mainstream to relate to the world. These beliefs usually form in reaction to the world’s dominant reality. So the rise of capitalism and democracy over the last 200 years produced ideologies of opposition from the left (communism, socialism) and from the right (hypernationalism, fascism). Today, the dominant reality in the world is the power of the United States, currently being wielded in a particularly aggressive manner. Anti-Americanism is becoming the way people think about the world and position themselves within it….

Much has been written about what the United States can do to help arrest and reverse these trends. But it is worth putting the shoe on the other foot for a moment. Imagine a world without the United States as the global leader. Even short of the imaginative and intelligent scenario of chaos that British historian Niall Ferguson outlined in this magazine (see “A World Without Power,” July/August 2004), it would certainly look grim. There are many issues on which the United States is the crucial organizer of collective goods. Someone has to be concerned about terrorism and nuclear and biological proliferation. Other countries might bristle at certain U.S. policies, but would someone else really be willing to bully, threaten, cajole, and bribe countries such as Libya to renounce terror and dismantle their WMD programs? On terror, trade, AIDs, nuclear proliferation, U.N. reform, and foreign aid, U.S. leadership is indispensable.

The temptation to go its own way will be greatest for Europe, the only other player with the resources and tradition to play a global role. But if Europe defines its role as being different from the United States -— kinder, gentler, whatever —- will that really produce a more stable world? U.S. and European goals on most issues are quite similar. Both want a peaceful world free from terror, with open trade, growing freedom, and civilized codes of conduct. A Europe that charts its own course just to mark its differences from the United States threatens to fracture global efforts—whether on trade, proliferation, or the Middle East. Europe is too disunited to achieve its goals without the United States; it can only ensure that America’s plans don’t succeed. The result will be a world that muddles along, with the constant danger that unattended problems will flare up disastrously. Instead of win-win, it will be lose-lose -— for Europe, for the United States, and for the world.

After firing the obligatory anti-Bush missiles, Zakaria settles down to the task at hand. First, he notes that anti-Americanism has a natural market among the discontented. That’s certainly true in the U.S. as well as overseas. Discontented left-wingers in this country are about as anti-American as they come.

Then he observes two central truths that foreign and domestic anti-Americans ignore at their peril: The world would be a much worse place if America weren’t the hyperpower. And if Europeans, acting out of envious anti-Americanism, succeed in blocking America’s efforts to make the world a better place, the world will become a worse place — and Europe will suffer for it.

Amen to all that.

Understanding the Latest Intelligence Estimate for Iraq

UPDATED

If you can believe The New York Times, the outlook for Iraq is bleak. The Times‘s latest salvo of negativism can be found in “U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq’s Future.” It’s hard to pick out the “facts” on which the article is based. If (a big if) the Times‘s sources are to be believed, here’s what I make of the the story:

A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a[n] assessment of prospects for Iraq….

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war….The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council….

The new estimate is the first on Iraq since the one completed in October 2002 on Iraq’s illicit weapons program….

The criticism over the [October 2002] document has left the C.I.A. and other agencies wary of being wrong again in judgments about Iraq….

So, Saddam may not have had his weapons ready to use, but he had programs in progress for producing weapons that would be ready to use. (UPDATE: For more about Saddam’s weapons programs, read this piece* in today’s NYT.) The CIA was wrong in detail but right on substance.

But, given the “gotcha” mentality of Washington, one can’t be wrong about anything more significant than the name of Saddam’s dog. The CIA is therefore trying to lower expectations about the future of Iraq. Thus its new — “pessimistic” — intelligence estimate.
__________
* The lead sentence: “A new report on Iraq’s illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein’s government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted….”

Why Sovereignty?

The Chronicle carries an article by Carlin Romano with this provocative title: “Violating ‘Sovereignty’: Questioning a Concept’s Long Reign.” It begins badly:

Everywhere the S-word wreaks havoc. Iraqi terrorists kill hundreds of Americans and Iraqis to protest infringement of sovereignty by the Great Satan.

Those terrorists (at least he got that part right) aren’t protesting the infringement of Iraqi sovereignty by the U.S., they’re trying to make life miserable for non-Saddamites and also to fuel antiwar feelings in the U.S. It gets worse:

As an explosive real-world political idea, sovereignty propels international armies and costs untold lives.

Sovereignty doesn’t propel armies; avarice and power-madness and self-defense do those things. Romano sort of gets on the right track with this reference to some writings by the late Alan Cranston:

[S]overeignty as a defense against outside intervention to stop extraordinarily unacceptable behavior by a government against its people is always, in Cranston’s view, heinous and unjustified. International covenants on genocide and human rights similarly demonstrate the world community’s declining appetite for claims of such absolute state sovereignty.

But notice how he subtly changes the subject from sovereignty to “claims of absolute state sovereignty.” Hell, we’ve know the value of such claims at least since American troops invaded Sicily and France, then rolled into Germany to end the war in Europe.

Romano alludes to the value of sovereignty when he says:

Not every political scientist, it should be noted, opposes sovereignty’s influence in public policy. In The Case for Sovereignty (AEI Press), a recent study, Cornell government professor Jeremy Rabkin contends that a “post-sovereign” world would encourage terrorism, erode national loyalties, and spur even greater international conflict.

But Romano doesn’t pursue the thought. So I will.

The sovereignty of the United States is inseparable from the benefits afforded Americans by the U.S. Constitution, most notably the enjoyment of civil liberties, the blessings of more-or-less free markets and free trade, and the protections of a common defense. To cede sovereignty is to risk the loss of those benefits. That is why we must always be cautious in our commitments to international organizations and laws.

American sovereignty is a golden shield. Mindless internationalism is a corrosive acid that eats away at the shield.

Conservative Criticism of the War on Terror

A piece at The American Thinker by Rachel Neuwirth asserts that “The U.S. is not really fighting terrorism.” Actually, it’s not as stark as the title suggests. Here’s the lead sentence: “Claims that America is engaged in a total war against terrorism are greatly exaggerated.”

I’m not sure who’s claiming a total war. We are undoubtedly doing a lot on a lot of fronts, not all of them visible even to the media (thank goodness). The question is whether we should be doing more if we could, absent political and resource constraints.

From that perspective, Neuwirth’s essay is a good checklist of the things we should do (or abet) when it’s politically and economically feasible to do them; for example: take out Arafat and dismantle the PLO, come down hard on the Saudis and Egypt, and seek a U.N. declaration against Islamic terrorism. The value of seeking a U.N. declaration on anything escapes me, but it’s related to Neuwirth’s recitation of two key failures that we could remedy easily, at relatively little cost:

…First, we have not properly defined what we stand for. The Islamic enemy cites examples of Western decadence as justification for their ‘holy war.’ Simply saying that we stand for “freedom” and “free enterprise” has limited value because for many religious Muslims those terms may seem foreign. It suggests that we are simply imposing our system upon them by force….

Surely the U.S. information agencies can do a better job of communicating the alternative that America’s principles of freedom, openness, the rule of law, respect for human rights, equality, and tolerance present to the peoples of the Islamic world, and their manifest superiority to the hate, intolerance, lawlessness and cruelty of the Islamist fanatics.

And second, we have failed to cultivate the truly moderate and responsible Islamic clerics and intellectuals. Those Muslims understand very well the sickness that prevails in so many Islamic societies and how the extremists have twisted the Quran to breed terrorists. It is their voices that need to be heard, boldly challenging the extremists on a religious basis, point for point, to demonstrate to the Islamic masses just how they have been hoodwinked and led down the path to destruction. They must show the way out of this dead end and back towards an enlightened form of Islam. Such actually existed for a time centuries ago, before this current extremism, when there was true creativity and a lively interchange of ideas across different cultures. Once Muslims hear from devout and learned men and women of their own faith that human rights, the rule of law, and respect for other religions and cultures are not incompatible with their Islamic heritage, most will eventually reject the teaching of the extremist hatemongers among them. Why not use our information forums and financial resources to help the courageous and lonely Muslim moderates to get their enlightened message to their own people?

Why not, indeed? Neuwirth keeps going:

However, our own leaders act as if they are unaware of this battle of ideas, and instead allow the extremists to have access to the highest levels of our government. Grover Norquist is a conservative activist who used to be involved in economic issues, but recently has been using his influence to help Muslims with radical and even pro-terrorist ties to gain access to high Administration officials. This in turn has allowed the Council on American Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R.) to help place Islamists among those selecting clerics for Muslim inmates in our prisons, selecting clerics for Muslim soldiers in our military and to demand all manner of rights and concessions for Muslims in America while playing the role of victims of discrimination.

I’ve read about this elsewhere. It makes no sense to me. Perhaps a second-term Bush can get himself out of such entanglements. Similarly, perhaps a second-term Bush can more overtly ally with Israel. As Neuwirth says:

…We have betrayed and weakened our loyal ally, Israel, while pandering to Israel’s Arab enemies. And what benefit has it bought us? Except for Israel, how many countries in the world can we count as true and staunch allies? When Tony Blair leaves power, Britain may become like Germany. The same is true for allies such as Italy and Australia, where the current political leadership faces strong public opposition to support of the war in Iraq. We betrayed our principles to pander to the nations and yet we are still hatred and distrusted in much of the world. Playing a double game on terrorism has not bought us friends. Perhaps it is time for us to try some moral consistency….

Neuwirth deserves the last word:

America should at least declare moral clarity even if we cannot actually undertake the impossible task of being the world’s policeman. We, as a superpower, are even more free than other nations to at least speak the truth without having to fear reprisals from powers stronger than ourselves. Unfortunately we have consistently failed to even speak the moral truth, and so we are seriously compromised in our self-declared war on terror.

A Lefty Offers Advice about Dealing with Terrorism

Jessica Wilson, guest-blogging at The Leiter Reports, instructs us on how to respond to terrorist acts:

I am not a wise person, though I aspire to be. But I know how a wise person responds to aggression. When a wise person faces aggression, they do not immediately and blindly strike back, thus potentially initiating a cycle of endless violence and retribution. Rather, they consider why they have been struck. Have they, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps they might avoid future aggression by removing the source of the offense.

She isn’t a wise person — that’s for sure. But, at the risk of being offensive, I will recast the rest of her paragraph in terms that she might understand:

I know how a wise woman responds to attempted rape. When a wise woman faces attempted rape, she does not immediately and blindly pull out her pistol and shoot the would-be rapist. Rather, she considers why she is the target of a would-be rapist. Has she, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps she might avoid future rape attempts by locking herself in her house and leaving the streets to rapists.

That’s the wisdom of the left. The rest of Wilson’s post is just as fatuous, but I’m not going to waste any more time on her musings.

If It Were 1944

The headlines blazoned: “Allies Invade Normandy.”

The critics carped: “France isn’t our enemy.”

Sen. Kerry’s Vague Strategy of Denial

From a interview in the latest issue of Time:

KERRY

We can do a better job at homeland security. I can fight a more effective war on terror….

TIME

Is the President being as aggressive as he should be in dealing with insurgent strongholds in Iraq?

KERRY

At this moment in time, I’m not sitting with the generals in front of me for the full briefing. I’m not going to comment on that right now. That is up to the President. It’s his decision to make. But I will tell you this, that we’ve gone backward in Iraq, and we’ve gone backward on the war on terror. I’m not President until Jan. 20, if America elects me. I don’t know what I’ll find in Iraq….

TIME

As President, who would be the first person you would phone?

KERRY

I’m not going to say one, two, three. I will tell you that I have 20 years of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee….

TIME

You can’t be more specific?

KERRY

I know exactly what I’m going to do, but I’m not the President today….

TIME

Will you be more specific about timetables for getting troops out?

KERRY

I have said that I have a goal to be able to bring our troops out of there within my first term, and I hope to be able to bring out some troops within the first year. But what’s important here is that I can fight a more effective war on terror….

TIME

How would you go about winning the war of ideas in the Middle East?

KERRY

What I intend to do is to put in play the economic power, the values and principles, the public diplomacy, so we’re isolating the radical Islamic extremists and not having the radical extremists isolate the United States. It means bringing religious leaders together, including moderate mullahs, clerics, imams -— pulling the world together in a dialogue about who these extremists really are and how they are hijacking the legitimacy of Islam itself….

TIME

Our latest poll indicates that terrorism has become the No. 1 issue for voters.

KERRY

I will fight a more effective war on terror, and over the next weeks the American people will see the phoniness of the Bush efforts….

TIME

Are you surprised at the bounce Bush got out of his convention?

KERRY

I don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of the Bush bounce….

The part about “dialoguing” is preciousness itself:

It means bringing religious leaders together, including moderate mullahs, clerics, imams -— pulling the world together in a dialogue about who these extremists really are and how they are hijacking the legitimacy of Islam itself.

That’ll really impress the Islamofascists. No wonder liberals scare me. Then there’s this:

[O]ver the next weeks the American people will see the phoniness of the Bush efforts.

Is he predicting a major terrorist attack, or positioning himself to say “I told you so” if there is one? Unfair on my part? I don’t think so. The man is desperate. As I said here, “Absent a terrorist attack, the election is now Bush’s to lose.”

This Says a Lot about France

According to MSNBC.com,

Bonjour paresse (Hello Laziness), a call to middle managers of the world to rise up and throw out their laptops, organigrams and mission statements, is the unexpected publishing sensation of the summer in France.

Sub-titled The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible in the Workplace, the 113-page “ephlet” (part-essay, part-pamphlet) is to France’s managerial class – the cadres – what the Communist Manifesto once was to the lumpen proletariat….

An anarchic antidote to management tomes promising the secrets of ever greater productivity, Bonjour paresse is a slacker’s bible, a manual for those who devote their professional lives to the sole pursuit of idleness…

Herewith, the manual’s “10 commandments for the idle”:

No. 1 You are a modern day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfilment. You work for your pay-check at the end of the month, full stop.

No. 2 It’s pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger.

No. 3 What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you’re untouchable when the next restructuring comes around.

No. 4 You’re not judged on merit, but on whether you look and sound the part. Speak lots of leaden jargon: people will suspect you have an inside track.

No. 5 Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You’ll only have to work harder for what amounts to peanuts.

No. 6 Make a beeline for the most useless positions, (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your ‘contribution to the wealth of the firm’. Avoid ‘on the ground’ operational roles like the plague.

No. 7 Once you’ve found one of these plum jobs, never move. It is only the most exposed who get fired.

No. 8 Learn to identify kindred spirits who, like you, believe the system is absurd through discreet signs (quirks in clothing, peculiar jokes, warm smiles).

No. 9 Be nice to people on short-term contracts. They are the only people who do any real work.

No. 10 Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last for ever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system. The problem is knowning when…

No wonder France is a socialist dystopia.