Did Bush Inherit a Recession From Clinton?

Many Bill Clinton supporters blame George Bush for destroying the economy immediately upon taking office. Below is a graph showing GDP growth and unemployment rates. Click the graph to enlarge.



Remember that Bush took office on January 20, 2001 and so can't reasonably be held responsible for any economic activity occurring before the 2nd quarter of 2001.

Why Are We Still in Iraq?

As it stands, there are currently 26,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and 161,000 troops in Iraq. Our mandate in Afghanistan was to capture or kill Bin Laden – not to vanquish the Taliban, or to create a democracy. Bin Laden, according to intelligence sources, is alive and still in full control of his Al Queda terrorist network.

The rationale for invading Iraq was expressly communicated in the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq of October 2002. Here is the actual text of this resolution:

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;

Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in "material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations" and urged the President "to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235);

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949;

Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the President "to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677";

Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1)," that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and "constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region," and that Congress, "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688";

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to "work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge" posed by Iraq and to "work for the necessary resolutions," while also making clear that "the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable";

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region;

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SEC. 1. SHORT TITLE.

This joint resolution may be cited as the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq".

SEC. 2. SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the President to--

(a) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq and encourages him in those efforts; and

(b) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions.

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.

(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.

In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and

(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

(c) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS. --

(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION. -- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS. -- Nothing in this resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

SEC. 4. REPORTS TO CONGRESS

(a) The President shall, at least once every 60 days, submit to the Congress a report on matters relevant to this joint resolution, including actions taken pursuant to the exercise of authority granted in section 2 and the status of planning for efforts that are expected to be required after such actions are completed, including those actions described in section 7 of Public Law 105-338 (the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998).

(b) To the extent that the submission of any report described in subsection (a) coincides with the submission of any other report on matters relevant to this joint resolution otherwise required to be submitted to Congress pursuant to the reporting requirements of Public Law 93-148 (the War Powers Resolution), all such reports may be submitted as a single consolidated report to the Congress.

(c) To the extent that the information required by section 3 of Public Law 102-1 is included in the report required by this section, such report shall be considered as meeting the requirements of section 3 of Public Law 102-1.

In evaluating the two wars and their respective justifications, I think we can all agree that the goals in Iraq, as misleading as they turned out to be, have been fully realized while the goal in Afghanistan has not. Is it not odd that we would have 16% of the total forces dedicated to both wars stationed in the place where our main objective has yet to be accomplished while the other 84% (161,000) are in Iraq where all stated objectives have been long satisfied?

Broken Supply Channel Sent Arms for Iraq Astray

The utter lack of competence in prosecuting this war is the most compelling reason for ending it quickly.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year.

Ahmadinejad Rattles His Saber...Again.

Ahmadinejad made the following statement on the tail of the latest discussions in the U.N. Security council concerning his drive for nuclear weapons. Notice how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is once again being employed by Ahmadinejad as justification for his outlandish public statements. The only difference between Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il is their barber.

"We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay
limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt. It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals (Israel). . . . This is an ultimatum."

Bush Motorcade

I took this shot of the President's motorcade passing ground zero on West Street. There were secret service snipers stationed within full view in numerous vantage points in the area. Two were within 15ft of me when I snapped this picture.

Ground Zero as it Appears Today

Here's a picture I took with a cellphone camera a few days ago. There haven't been any substantial changes to this site in some time, construction on the Liberty Tower is slated to begin sometime within the next year.

Understanding the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism

Here's a portion of an essay I happened to find, which offers some interesting analysis of Islam's latest shift toward orthodoxy. Source

Part II.
Islamic Responses to the West
Westernization, Modernism, Fundamentalism

As European power expanded in the 19th Century, there were attempts by Islamic societies to modernize. The introduction of newspapers and the telegraph by Europeans in the 19th Century made widely evident the “backwardness” of the “Oriental” Other. Two major strategies were developed to proactively respond to Western power and its expanding hegemony (Davidson 1998). First, leaders and intellectuals advocated westernization and secularization as the surest way to compete with Europe. This vein won out in terms of political power. As the west carved up the Islamic world into various states, indigenous leaders led the secularization of some Islamic societies, notably Turkey, promoting western education, law, science, etc. Much like the Japanese Restorationists, modernity was backed by the military. Second, a relatively small circle of intellectuals advocated an Islamic Modernism, arguing that Western methods and key institutions, legislatures, modern administrations, banks, could be revised along the lines of Islamic law. This movement was neither able to influence either the Westward leaning, secular political elites of the day nor the conservative Islamic religious authorities. These ideas did not reach the uneducated masses. Hence, Islamic development generally became polarized between Westernizing and conservative extremes.

Theorizing in the early 20th Century, Weber was personally troubled and theoretically concerned with the negative side of modernity, its rationalization of the world that dehumanized the person and reduced everything to what could be quantified. Economic striving, detached from a religious ethic, had become an empty striving for shallow materialism. A new industrial elite was emerging. A century after Weber wrote about the moral nullity of Western civilization, mass mediated consumerism, privatized hedonism devoid of meaning, has proliferated everywhere. The globalization of capital, secularization, and rapid social and cultural changes, together with population movements, has fostered both anomie and the attenuation of social ties. In face of changes, crises and challenges, one of the typical responses has been the embrace of dogmatic, orthodox positions. In a similar way, countries with economic challenges often embrace authoritarian governments, if not fascism. Fundamentalism and terrorism are both reactions to and moments of resistance to the dominating aspects of modernity and the shallowness of secularism. And, as discussed in Part III below, ressentiment mediated through radical fundamentalism can become part of the impetus for religious terrorism.

The Nature of Fundamentalism

One of the most important religious social transformations of the last century has been the gradual rise of fundamentalism, the embrace of anti-modern religious orthodoxies. Why has there been a rise of fundamentalisms? Jurgensmeyer (2001) notes that religious fundamentalism across various religious cultures is on the rise globally for three common reasons: first, radical conservative religious movements reject the liberal values of secular institutions and blame society’s decline on the loss of religious inspiration; second, these radical religious movements refuse to accept boundaries of secular society which keeps religion a private observance and not the public sphere; and third, these conservative movements are seeking to restore religion as central to social life. As noted above, in the face of challenges, groups may become more dogmatic and intolerant. We have suggested that in response to challenges, ranging from the sacking of Baghdad to the expulsion from Spain to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, that Islamic leaders have repeatedly embraced more conservative positions. This created conservative traditions as the basis for a conservative response to Western secular encroachments. This, however, is a general global cultural phenomenon in response to rapid social change, uncertainty, attenuation of social ties, challenges to ingrained value precepts, etc.

Fundamentalisms generally require unquestioning acceptance of transcendent religious precepts, a strict adherence to compulsory rituals and a subjugation of the self to higher powers. Fundamentalism may be defined as a conservative religious reaction to secular society that typically includes the following characteristics: Exclusive truth claims are typically based on a sacred text. It often has Manichean truth claims in which non-believers are constructed as immoral and an apocalyptic view of the world. Fundamentalism seeks to restore a glorious past from which people had strayed. Fundamentalism makes exclusive truth claims grounded in canonical religious, spiritual texts and seeks to recreate an idealized religious community while paradoxically embracing modern means: mass media, bureaucratic institutions, and destructive technologies in militancy. Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic fundamentalisms more or less follow this pattern. Thus, fundamentalisms resist the usually hedonistic, secular, materialistic values of modernity. At the same time, fundamentalists are modernists in that they use elements of tradition in combination with modern methods-advanced technology, institutional forms, and instrumental rationality-to transform the political order (Tibi 1998).

Radical religious movements often position themselves to act in the public sphere as moral agents. From the viewpoint of religious radicals, it is not so much that religion has become political as much as politics has become religious. The reasons for this deep antagonism are not merely political. Secular modernity and its valorization of Reason has made an assault on religious values and worldviews that erode the impact and power of religious institutions leading to a general crisis in religious belief. As secular society is suffering a crisis of morality and meaning, there is a space for religious critiques of secular modernity and transcendental alternatives. The West, celebrating the secular materialism of modernity, spread through a political economic imperialism and mass mediated consumerism has created spaces for radical religious movements, both in the developed and developing countries.

Islamisms

Islamic fundamentalisms arose in various Islamic states. For example, Wahabbism was embraced in Saudi Arabia, as the Ottoman Empire declined in the later 18th, early 19th Century. As Western power grew and the division of the Islamic world proceeded, Western interests encouraged the suppression of progressive movements in the Middle East such as socialism or even nationalism. (Note that there have been intrinsic reasons why these Western ideologies were not embraced.) For example, the US has strongly supported the (oil rich) House of Saud, where Islam has turned increasingly conservative and militant in resistance. Islamic fundamentalism is a response many factors, central among which are the domination by the West, the relative poverty and underdevelopment of the Muslim world, and the lack of political outlets to express discontents.

In the 20th Century, Westernization did not yield its promised results. Modernity failed Islamic states, for a variety of reasons mentioned above, especially the conservatism of its religion, the underdevelopment inherent in colonialism and foreign sponsoring of local elites, the lack of education of the populace, and, the conservatism of religious leaders. Islamic states generally secured the wealth and power of the elites and sustained oppressive secular governments rather than seek expansions of democracy and human rights. With the failure of modernity to bring its promised benefits, conservative Islamic brotherhoods and movements, originally organized to address social justice issues attempted to reinvigorate, reform and reestablish Islam as the basis for revitalized Islamic states. As westernizing strategies in Islamic states failed and/or were suppressed in the 20th Century, conservative religious responses grew more pronounced, generating various Islamisms, Islamic fundamentalist movements. Note that in many developing nations, secular thought and autonomous institutions, especially democratically elected legislative bodies and executive are not very well formed or advanced. Religious ways of life and social-political institutions hold more public power, especially in Islamic countries. Hence, there is a strong link between religious belief and resistance to Western hegemony among radical religious movements in the Islamic world. We also note that the rigid claims and orthodoxy of fundamentalism generally prevents a group from self-examination and critical reflection. This is not likely to change as long as the educational processes in the developing world remain tied to traditional religious institutions. Studying the Quran and/or Islamic studies does not much prepare the student for science, industry, commerce or critical thought.

Conservative Islamic movements have pursued three main ends in Islamic society: reformism, revivalism, and radical defense. The main interest of these movements is to reestablish the moral and political virtues of traditional Islamic society (Choueiri 1990). Islamism is modeled on the attempt to recapture Muhammad's early role of rebel in Mecca in criticizing moral corruption and need for lifestyle and political economic reforms grounded in religious mores. For revivalists, just as Muhammad challenged false gods and immoral ways instead of a righteous life, Islamism is seen as a path to justice and equality against the Western ways of corruption and worship of its false gods. Islamist ideological analysis offers these reasons for the decline of Islam: 1) Islamic society declined due to the departure from the practice of religious values and dictates; 2) This decay made possible the Western intrusion; and, 3) The solution is to revitalize and return to Islam by a) reintroducing the Shariah, Islamic law, while purging most Western cultural influences, but not science and technology and b) re-politicizing Islam, along lines of Muhammad's role as administrator and law giver in Medina.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism was the result of many factors beginning with general factors that have also fostered the growth of Christian fundamentalism, Orthodox Judaism and even Hindu fundamentalism. But further, in Islamic societies, the barriers to modernity mentioned in Part I above, have joined together with economic underdevelopment, traditional education, and the suppression of political dissent to dispose fundamentalism. Further, various Islamic institutions have provided cheap alternatives to public education, in which young boys learn strict conservative forms of Islam, as for example the madrassas of Pakistan funded by Saudi Arabia. Islamism has often been directly reproduced through strictly enforced civic codes in which “moral police” vigorously patrol the borders of virtue as in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and the former Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

There have been wide variations in the extent to which Muslim societies have embraced Islamisms, and within particular societies, there have been wide disparities in the appeal of Islamisms. For example, Afghanistan, under the Taliban, was an extreme, even by fundamentalist standards. But so too was (is) Afghanistan one of the poorest, least educated societies in the world. In contrast, Pakistan was (is) not a fundamentalist country. After General Zia took power, he tried to impose fundamentalism from the top down. It had few adherents, not more than about five percent of the people, primarily among tribal groups-looked down upon in Pakistani society. The Saudis financed madrassas that were accepted by subsequent governments in order to divert scarce funds to nuclear weapons programs, in response to India. Islamic fundamentalism was accepted by elements within Pakistani Security (the ISI) who used these schools to provide “volunteers” to fight against India in Kashmir as well as train US-financed mujahadeen that would fight a proxy war against Russia. In Algeria, a prolonged conflict between urban, Western modernists and rural fundamentalists has cost perhaps 200,000 lives. Although fundamentalism has been widely embraced in the Muslim world, and it often promotes hatred of infidels, the vast majority of fundamentalists do not become terrorists, and not all terrorists in Islamic societies are “holy warriors”. Nevertheless, the world wide rise of fundamentalism, with its Manichean division of the world into those who are good and those who are evil, with it assertions of patriarchy and promises of redemption, creates an atmosphere in which terrorism can thrive.

WAR IS PEACE

The strident calls for a cease-fire in Lebanon, if accommodated, will all but guarantee further suffering and bloodshed. This battle must be fought to its conclusion if peace will ever be had in the region. Thomas Sowell makes a case for just this in a recent article:

An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

Read Sowell's full article here.

Israel: Created to be Destroyed?

The map below shows how the U.N. first partitioned the British mandate of Palestine in 1947. Looking at this map leaves one to wonder how Israel was expected to protect itself from hostile Arabs who had rejected the partition plan out of hand. The partition plan seems almost to have been created in order to assure the destruction of the then nascent state of Israel (As almost happened during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war). It should be noted that Israel has occupied almost all of the yellow, Arab-state areas, with most of the occupation coming as a result of Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day war.

Is the Summer of 1914 an Apt Analogy for the Current Situation in Lebanon?

Here's an interesting take on the current Israeli situation by William S. Lind:

With Hezbollah’s entry into the war between Israel and Hamas, Fourth Generation war has taken another developmental step forward. For the first time, a non-state entity has gone to war with a state not by waging an insurgency against a state invader, but across an international boundary. Again we see how those who define 4GW simply as insurgency are looking at only a small part of the picture…

Read the rest here.

It's All or Nothing for Olmert

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel will press on with its weeklong Lebanon offensive until its captured soldiers are released and its citizens are safe from attacks. "Israel will continue to combat Hezbollah and will continue to strike targets of the group," Olmert said in a statement.

Source

First, I don’t believe, short of a full scale invasion of southern Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s fighting capacity will be effectively diminished. Such an invasion would have two important effects on the IDF, one would be that they’d suffer huge losses due to Hezbollah’s mining of their defensive positions, and the second would be an extremely high chance of triggering Syria’s forces into re-entering Lebanon. I don’t believe Olmert desires either of these effects, and so he will stay out of Lebanon and continue inflicting minor losses on Hezbollah until the UN finally steps in and supplies him with a face-saving exit.

The best Olmert can gain from the hostilities of the past week is for things to return to the status quo ante. Short of all out war with Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran -- a war that would see the use of nuclear weapons seriously considered by Israel-- Olmert will achieve nothing, and Hezbollah will have its hero status reaffirmed by the Muslim world for once again outlasting Israel in Lebanon.

A Compelling Argument for the War in Iraq

This lengthy, though powerful essay, by Spengler of the Asian Times, is vital reading for those against the war in Iraq and uncomfortable with aggressively denying nuclear weapons to North Korea and Iran.

In praise of premature war
By Spengler

The West should be thankful that it has in US President George W Bush a warrior who shoots first and tells the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ask questions later. Rarely in its long history has the West suffered by going to war too soon. On the contrary: among the wars of Western history, the bloodiest were those that started too late. Why should that be the case? The answer, I believe, is that keeping the peace requires prospective combatants to maintain the balance of power, for example between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC, between Catholic and Protestant states in the 17th century AD, and between the Central Powers and the Allies at the turn of the 20th century. Once powers truly are balanced, however, neither side can win, except by a devastating war of attrition. Postponing war therefore creates equally matched opposing blocs who eventually will annihilate each other.

More than ever does this principle apply to the present race for nuclear weapons. It brings to mind the old joke about the housewife in Hertfordshire who telephones her husband and says, "Dear, be careful driving home. The news report says that there is a maniac driving in the wrong direction on the motorway." He replies, "What do you mean, one maniac? Everyone is driving in the wrong direction!"

Whether or not Saddam Hussein actually intended or had the capacity to build nuclear weapons is of trifling weight in the strategic balance. Everyone is planning to build nuclear weapons. They involve 60-year-old technology no longer difficult to replicate. It hardly matters where one begins. "Kill the chicken, and let the monkey watch," as the Chinese say. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, the theocrats of Iran, the North Koreans and soon many other incalculable reprobates have or will have such plans. It hardly matters which one you attack first, so long as you attack one of them.

But isn't it cruel to cast the die for war before it is proven beyond doubt that war cannot be avoided? Given the frightful cost of war, should peace not be given every chance? Some wars of course should not be fought, such as the threatened hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In many cases, however, risk and reward are highly asymmetric; the cost of a short and nasty small war vanishes toward insignificance compared with the price of a grand war of attrition, particularly when nuclear weapons are concerned.

Many writers, to be sure, have offered apologies for war. Under the title "Give war a chance", Edward Luttwak wrote in the Summer 1999 edition of Foreign Affairs, "Since the establishment of the United Nations, great powers have rarely let small wars burn themselves out. Bosnia and Kosovo are the latest examples of this meddling. Conflicts are interrupted by a steady stream of ceasefires and armistices that only postpone war-induced exhaustion and let belligerents rearm and regroup. Even worse are UN refugee-relief operations and NGOs [non-governmental organizations], which keep resentful populations festering in camps and sometimes supply both sides in armed conflicts. This well-intentioned interference only intensifies and prolongs struggles in the long run. The unpleasant truth is that war does have one useful function: it brings peace. Let it."

I have no quibble with Luttwak, but propose to go further. He proposed to let small wars burn out; I propose to let major wars break out, the sooner the better.

Historians allow that the Allies should have attacked Germany in 1936 rather than 1939, but dismiss World War I as "a tragic and unnecessary conflict", in the words of Sir John Keegan. Tragedy stems from necessity. From the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when Germany and Austria set limits to Russian expansion in the Balkans, Pan-Slavism set Europe on a course toward inevitable war. France allied with Russia, seeking help against Germany after its humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Already in demographic decline, France knew that it could not wait to attack Germany one more generation. Germany knew that if Russia completed its railroad network its bulk might make it undefeatable a generation hence.

If Kaiser Wilhelm II had had the nerve to declare war on France during the 1905 Morocco Crisis, Count Alfred von Schlieffen's invasion plan would have crushed the French within weeks. Russia's Romanov dynasty, humiliated by its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and beset by popular revolt, likely would have fallen under more benign circumstances than prevailed in 1917. England had not decided upon an alliance with the Franco-Russian coalition in 1905. The naval arms race between Germany and England, a major source of tension, was yet to emerge. War in 1905 would have left Wilhelmine Germany the sole hegemon in Europe, with no prospective challenger for some time to come. Germany's indecision left the initiative in the hands of Russia, elements of whose secret service backed the Serbian terrorists who murdered the Austrian crown prince in 1914, forcing Germany into war under far less favorable circumstances.

Both World Wars of the 20th century, in my view, started too late, with catastrophic consequences for Western Europe. America's Civil War, by contrast, was a war that began just in time, and I attribute the future flowering of the United States to Abraham Lincoln's ruthlessness in pushing the country into war.

General Ulysses S Grant, the Northern commander-in-chief and later president, wrote in his memoirs that the Civil War began with America's 1846 invasion of Mexico, which seized territory to permit the expansion of slavery. Because cotton destroyed land within a decade, the slave-owning caste required perpetual expansion of the slave system into new territories. The Southern Confederacy planned to march southward and create a slave empire in Mexico and the Caribbean (Happy birthday, Abe - pass the blood, February 10).

Was it coincidence that France, England and Spain determined to invade Mexico after Benito Juarez suspended debt-service payment to Mexico's European creditors in 1861, just as the American Civil War began? French, English and Spanish forces landed in Mexico in December 1861, after the South's early victories in the Civil War convinced European governments that the slaveholders would prevail. By 1862, after Stonewall Jackson's success in the Shenandoah Valley, England came close to recognizing the Confederacy. In October of that year, William Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, stated, "We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North." The Union half-victory at the Battle of Antietam in September came just in time to abort British recognition of the South.

Had the war broken out two years later, the European powers already would have been entrenched in Mexico, providing the South with a natural ally against the Lincoln government, and a base with which to expand the slave system southward. America would have split in two (at least), and the history of the world would have been radically different, and radically worse.

Before America's invasion of Iraq, I wrote, "Iraq's nuclear program is the 21st-century equivalent of Russia's railroads in 1914. The United States must prevent Saddam Hussein from building nuclear weapons now, or the cost of stopping him (and others in the future) will be incalculable. The trouble is that today's Arabs (and to a great extent other Islamic populations) are in the position of the Slavs of 1914. They are an endangered culture, and like many endangered cultures, the extremists among them will take desperate measures" (, October 29, 2002).

That is why George W Bush has my moral support in the upcoming US presidential election. He may not fathom what he is doing, and he may have made a dog's breakfast of Iraq, but at least he is willing to go straight to war, no questions asked. That is precisely what the world needs.

Source

Supreme Court Blocks Bush, Gitmo War Trials

The Supreme Court has decided 5-3 (Roberts recused himself) that the administration cannot try detainees being held in Guantanamo in the military tribunal format they had hoped to use.

The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of about 450 men still being held at Guantanamo and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.

The confinement of enemy combatants captured on the field of battle has never resulted in habeas corpus issues in the past, and the ability to wage this new type of war, in my opinion, has been greatly diminished by this ruling.

Justice Thomas dissents:

For the reasons set forth in Justice Scalia's dissent, it is clear that this Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain petitioner's claims, see ante, at 1-11. The Court having concluded otherwise, it is appropriate to respond to the Court's resolution of the merits of petitioner's claims because its opinion openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs. The Court's evident belief that it is qualified to pass on the "[m]ilitary necessity," ante, at 48, of the Commander in Chief's decision to employ a particular form of force against our enemies is so antithetical to our constitutional structure that it simply cannot go unanswered. I respectfully dissent.

Justice Thomas puts his finger on the central issue when he asks how much power we are willing to give President Bush with which to carry out his constitutional duty to provide security for our nation. People not happy with the administration’s tactics so far will find no relief in precedent; all the rules changed on 9/11, and all three branches of government are making this up as they go along.

Just yesterday, I heard an interview with an assistant to the SecDef, where he explained that 15 freed detainees have subsequently been recaptured after again taking up arms against U.S. forces. I think, based on their dissents, that Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, are the only ones that seem to realize the ramifications of today’s decision.

Go here for the full story.

Go here to read the SALIM AHMED HAMDAN, PETITIONER v. DONALD
H. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al. decision in its entirety.

Italian Blogger Convicted of Defamation

Bloggers, particularly those residing in Italy, should take note of this recent decision:

Reporters Without Borders condemned a 13,500-euro sentence against blogger Roberto Mancini in fines, damages and costs imposed by a court in Val d’Aosta, in northern Italy on 26 May 2006, after local journalists brought a defamation suit.

Mancini, 59, is suspected of creating a US-hosted blog in 2005 - Il Bolscevicostanco, which reports on local news in sarcastic and crude terms. Using the pseudonym, General Sukhov, he apparently wrote several articles directly attacking local figures.

Traditionally, in order for a written communication to be considered libelous, it must be shown to be untrue. This particular case does not seem to meet such a test:

"The columns by-lined General Sukhov are certainly written in an extreme style, but the complainants were not able to show they were untrue,” the press freedom organisation said.

The most perplexing aspect of this case is that journalists themselves initiated the suit; the last people one would expect to be party to the diminution of freedom of the written word.

The case was brought by two journalists on regional newspaper Gazzetta Matin, Luca Mercanti and Christina Porta, the press officer for the Val d’Aosta regional chamber of trade and of a local firm, Pier Maria Minuzzo, and a webmaster, Marco Camilli.

Full story here.

Understand the issue better by going here.

Liberty Part I

The concept of liberty has been the centerpiece of philosophical thought ever since man first realized the advantages of forming social groups. Indeed, mankind’s ability to resist the arbitrarily hostile environment that surrounds him rests solely on his ability to adapt to and exploit what little nature has provided him. Spreading the skills necessary to survive among the many instead of the few has the effect of giving each group participant access to protection, food, medical care, and shelter that he could not have had, had he been left to his own device. Entering into such a pact of mutual assistance is not, however, without its drawbacks: the more we rely on one another to survive, the less freedom we will have to make our own unrestricted choices.

The freedom to make unrestricted choices is the essence of liberty. In order for the members of a given society to survive, they must surrender a certain amount of their own liberty or self-determination. This self-determination is the currency of survival.

Let us take a man who specializes in producing food, and one who has dedicated his time to the study of medical science as an example of the transactions of liberty that may occur in a functioning society. The farmer spends his time growing food, as time goes on his ability to grow food becomes a specialized skill not shared on the same scale with an individual who has used his time becoming expert at the medical sciences. Both men in this example have something the other covets: the farmer can offer the doctor sustenance and conversely, the doctor, through his specialized training, is now in the position to offer the farmer medical care as needed. It must be stressed that either man will have at least a modest ability to accomplish the other man’s task but not to the extent where either will be performing optimally for the society in which they have contracted to take part. A society that does a poor job of matching its needs with the best suited to satisfy these needs, is not giving itself the best chance to survive.

So how does liberty fit into the above example? To be continued soon.

The Truth in Iraq

One Democrat after another, during the Iraq war resolution debate on the house floor today, informed C-Span viewers that America is losing the war in Iraq. Some of them insisting emphatically that things had gotten so bad that U.S. forces should be withdrawn immediately.

“'Stay the course' is not a strategy, it's a slogan,” answered House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi as she called for a new direction in a war she labeled “a grotesque mistake.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who voted against the measure, said the resolution was an ``affirmation of the president's failed policy in Iraq.''

John Murtha, D-Pa.: “It's not a matter of stay the course. It's a matter of change direction.”

The question is, who are we to believe? Democrats angling for a majority control of Congress in November, or al-Zarqawi’s documents clearly stating that the insurgency had become ineffective due to the actions of American forces in Iraq. If the authenticity of these documents holds up to scrutiny, I’ll choose al-Zarqawi's account of the state of the war in Iraq as the more likely one. After all, what possible motivation could he have had to understate the effectiveness of insurgent operations in memos to his own al-Quaeda underlings?

Iran Bans Economist Magazine

Apologists for the current Islamist regime in Iran were handed yet another challenge today:

TEHRAN, June 15 (UPI) -- The government of Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely "the Gulf" in a map in the latest edition.
State television made the announcement Wednesday night, noting it is the second time the government has made such a move to protect the country's Persian roots.
In November 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition was published with the term "Arabian Gulf" in parenthesis beside the more commonly used Persian Gulf.
Criticism on the Persian Journal's Web site was more scathing, calling the London-published Economist "nothing but another worthless tabloid" that alters the news to appease various readers.
There was no immediate response to the ban Thursday on The Economist's Web site.

Source.

Let’s face it; Ahmadinejad and company hate the concept of democracy and anyone who promotes it. Can a government, capable of both hiding a uranium enrichment program for 15 years and banning reputable publications for simply adhering to modern journalistic shorthand, be trusted when it says it has no intention of producing nuclear weapons?

Scientists Question Gore's "Inconvenient Truths"

It seems that a number of climatologists are not particularly impressed with former American VP Al Gore’s theory of global warming:

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science, and its many fine practitioners, a lot of who know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

Full story here.

Is Gore giving the movie-going public an impartial account of global warming, or is he, as is concluded in this particular article, merely using a controversial topic to gain political points? Admittedly, I’m far from being qualified to answer any such question definitively, but I’d also dispute Gore’s expertise in global climatology considering that his academic background was not in the sciences but in government studies. The bottom line is that it makes good sense to be skeptical of any scientific claims made by a politician, or, for that matter, anyone else without extensive scientific training.

A Dire Warning from North Korea

Here's the latest gem out of the DPRK:

Pyongyang, June 12 (KCNA) -- The U.S. imperialist warmongers committed one more grave military provocation by illegally infiltrating a strategic reconnaissance plane into the sky above the DPRK's economic waters on June 12. In this regard the Air Force Command of the Korean People's Army issued the following report on Monday: At around 12:05 on June 12, an overseas-based strategic reconnaissance plane of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces infiltrated into the sky above the waters of the DPRK east of Chongjin and Hwadae and made a shuttle flight there for hours to spy on its strategic targets.
Such ceaseless illegal infiltration and aerial espionage are arousing a bitter indignation from the officers and men of the KPA Air Force.
It is an indigenous disposition of our revolutionary armed forces to mercilessly punish the aggressors.
The KPA Air Force warns again that the U.S. imperialist warmongers will be buried in the East Sea of Korea if they continue running amuck without discretion despite our warnings.

It took me a moment, but I finally figured out why the tone of this kooky admonition seemed so familiar. There can be but one answer: Stanley Kubrick isn't really dead. North Korean intelligence officers faked his death after recruiting him as Kim Jong Il's personal propagandist. (This would explain how Kim Jong Il learned to stop worrying and love the bomb).

The Christian Coalition

The Christian Coalition of America’s website points to a very specific brand of faith as the primary reason for America’s success as a nation:

To that end, we continuously work to identify, educate and mobilize Christians for effective political action! Such action will preserve, protect and defend the Judeo-Christian values that made this the greatest country in history.

I wonder if these people realize how many of America’s founding fathers were not practicing Christians. Here are some quotes from the men themselves:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

- Thomas Paine

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

- James Madison

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines, which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself, are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.

- Thomas Jefferson

Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!

- John Adams

The American value system, as heralded by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, arose directly from the Age of Reason, which was presided over by those seeking to distance themselves from organized religion. To their minds, these great and emancipated thinkers saw formalized religion as nothing more than a superstition-based attack on their freedom to question and objectify the world around them.

The Enlightenment, for the most part, took place before America had adopted its constitution. This means that scripture-based legislation is not conservatism, but instead, fear-inspired regressionism. It used to be that one need only follow Jesus’ teachings in order to be called a Christian; now, unless a Christian is in lockstep with a certain political agenda, their Christianity has apparently lost all validity.