R.I.P. Mr. Rogers

Our neighbourhood just became a poorer place. Patio Pundit has some words.

Winds of Change.NET has covered Fred Rogers before - we stood up and laid a serious smackdown on some Dartmouth morons who objected to him as a commencement speaker. See also his quote in our Sept. 12, 2002 WTC memorial post.

I'll have more on Saturday, our usual day to honour heroes and talk about the goodness in our world. Fred Rogers more than qualifies.

Winds of War, 48 Ways

Folks,

I'm very much under the weather at the memoment, and covering the issue of teachers harassing soldiers' children takes all my energy and more. Afraid I'm going to have to put both of these features on hiatus today.

Steven Den Beste has some interesting stuff, though...

A Correspondence About The War

I had a brief correspondence with Kim Oserwalder today, based on a comment I left on his site. After writing it, I realized that it set out my core views on the war, and the central argument I felt brought me to support it. I'm putting our messages up here, and understand that he's putting them up on his site, we'll collect our comments and see what happens.
________________________

From: armed@armedliberal.com
To: halfabee01@cox.net
Subject: Re: War
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 16:47:42 -0500

First, let me make it clear that I am a recent and reluctant convert to the 'war' camp. I'm deeply suspicious of the honesty and competence of the current Administration (although the last was no picnic in the park either, and Gore would not, I believe have been better - I'm no fan of the DNC).

The position (you have to make a case for acting) is not unreasonable in the abstract; but in the less-abstract world, you have to weigh the consequences of _not_ acting against the consequences of acting.

And the consequences are material, and real.

I'm not a Den Beste 'war with Islam' believer; but I do believe that there are elements in the Islamic world that want a war with us.

And I do believe that we need to defeat them...both with arms and with alms.

And while I wish that we had not done the things we have done - created and supported tyrannical oligarchies in the Middle East - we did them, and you and I bear our share of the responsibility for those actions (LES MAINS SALES). And having done them, and looking at the consequences of what we've done - to create a reservoir of rage that threatens us, people in the Middle East, innocent people in many parts of the world where enraged Islam is at war - doesn't mean that we should commit suicide to try and atone for the wrongs we have done.

So we are left with two bad choices...Fortress America, and war. I choose war, because first, I believe that if we don't have it now, it will come to us soon enough, and that the war and our response to it will be even more horrible...I have used the word genocide, and I don't think I'm far off...and second, because I believe that the overall weight of human suffering - death and horror, not 'lower standards of living' - that will fall over the rest of the world if we don't act are more than I could bear.

That's how I've wound up where I am.

What I expect from those opposed to war is another path through the problem; some facts and ideas that don't leave us pinned in this bad fork.

When I criticized you, _that_ was what I was looking for.

Thanks for writing, and thinking, and caring about all this. I have three sons and I lose sleep every night over this.

A.L.

Original Message:
-----------------
From: kim halfabee01@cox.net
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:03:17 -0800
To: armed@armedliberal.com
Subject: Re: War

Hi,

First, let me say that I feel that since it is your side that is proposing to kill many thousands of people, the onus is on you to offer convincing arguments. It is up to my side to respond only by saying "yes, that is sufficient to convince me that you may be right," or to say "no, your argument is insufficient to justify killing the innocent." That's all there is to it. Any discussion can only concern WHY we think that your arguments are insufficient, which is objective. You hunt, while I have difficulty killing ants in my kitchen. (No judgment is intended.) It is easier to convince some to kill then others. So to say that my argument is weak is incorrect. My argument (killing is bad) may seem simplistic, but it is the only real argument, and the only one that there can be. All other anti-war arguments are incidental.

I get very impatient listening to Bush administration's reasons for war. The idea that any country be asked to "disarm" -- especially one with such highly sought after natural resources -- is laughable. A "disarmed" country is left completely vulnerable, and I can understand any reluctance to rely only on the goodwill of others. Only when they give us the real reasons for invasion can any real debate begin. In the future (unless we change our course) there will be plenty of leaders that we dislike, and many will have nuclear weapons. We will need to formulate some plan for dealing with them that doesn't involve killing. We may as well start now. Maybe we should try to have a foreign policy that doesn't make people around the world want to kill us. I don't know if this is even remotely possible, but we should feel obligated to give it a try.

At this point I think that all discussion on this topic has been superficial. I would like to hear someone try to make a really good case for invasion. I would like to hear some pro-war person explain that yes, we can't stop at Iraq, we will go from there to Iran, Syria, etc. We won't have a choice but to dominate the whole region. Explain that yes, there will be more terror incidents on our own soil if we invade, but that is the price we pay for our high standard of living. Some Americans have to die so that others can be well off. Acknowledge all these things and then explain why this is preferable.

And on the anti-war side we need to acknowledge that not invading means that we may have to except a somewhat lower standard of living at some point in the future (as the currency for oil is converted to euros rather than dollars,) but that is the price we pay for our reluctance to kill children. (50% of the population of Iraq are under the age of 15.) The anti-war side has to acknowledge that we may be trading our nice cars, computers, college educations for our offspring, etc. (although I don't think the effect will be so drastic, if we are clever about things) for the privilege of not killing and dying in the Persian Gulf.

LES MAINS SALES

I can't really find anything here that I disagree with.

TERRORISM VS. WARFARE

You seem to be saying that attacks such as Hiroshima and Dresden are justified, because they had the effect of shortening the war and thus possibly limiting casualties.

This is correct, once a conflict has started. Don't you think that this is a good argument for not letting armed conflicts start in the first place?

Thanks for contacting me. I enjoyed reading these. They are good and thoughtful pieces, but I don't think that they argue in favor of the pending invasion. If you do write something, I hope you will let me know. I remain open on this question, despite what it may seem -- especially considering this: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html.

kim osterwalder http://www.freepie.org/

(edited slightly for spelling and grammar)

A Different Kind of Heroism

I know a number of police officers. I've come to know them professionally and become friends with them ly. I see the ways in which the nature of the job hardens them emotionally, and some of the price that they pay - and that we pay - for their isolation.

I'm jumping the gun on Joe's policy of good news on Saturdays, but out of my own respect for the men and women who put on uniforms and defend us here at home, I want to nominate my own hero. In Wednesday's L.A. Times is this story of a police officer whose heroism was of the heart and of the spirit. Read about LAPD Officer Derwin Henderson, and what he's done by putting his life on the line...not in an instant of adrenaline-filled bravery...but in the kind of patient courage that doesn't translate to TV or the big screen, but makes all the difference here in reality. I can't pick a "bullet quote" and give you a sense of this story, in which a LAPD officer accepts, guides, and ultimately adopts a child no one else could or would raise. So here are a few:

Patrolling the streets for the Los Angeles Police Department, he had arrested more than 500 kids: burglars, rapists, drug dealers, robbers. "Hook and book" had become his motto. "I thought juvenile hall was where they belonged."

But he had begun a new assignment the year before: visiting schools for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, talking to children about gangs and drugs. And in every class, he met boys like Terrance: aimless kids destined to drift into trouble, all energy and audacity.
...
But behind the bold talk, Henderson was questioning himself. How had a cop who never gave a second thought to hundreds of delinquent boys become a man who couldn't stop worrying about one?

He realized that his work with DARE, designed to change young lives, had actually changed him.

"I saw kids I would have put in juvenile hall and realized they were crying out for help," he said. "I saw their lives, their families, their neighborhoods. It changed my views about young people. Some never had the opportunities ... like you had, like I had. Didn't every kid deserve that chance?"
...
And Terrance has discovered that there are other things in life that offer success.

He watched alongside Henderson from the sidelines as his team played its final game and lost in the playoffs in December.

The next weekend, at the championship game, Henderson watched alone from the stands. All night long acquaintances asked, "Where's your son? How's he doing?"

Terrance had decided not to come, Henderson told them. Finals were coming up the next week. His son was at home, studying.

While Officer Henderson's story is incredibly uplifting, we ought to remember that it's not unique. There are doubtless hundreds or thousands of Derwin Hendersons out there, each doing something remarkable out of the spotlight. Here's my acknowledgement to them all through my recognition of one. Thank you, sir.

Maine Teachers Update: Help Us Make a Difference!

"Emperor Misha I" has more about the teachers harassing the children of National Guard Soldiers. This update from Worldnet Daily gives even more background. So far, at least 12 schools are involved:

"WABI reporter Alan Grover told WND that reports of the harassment had come in from 12 different schools across the state. Personnel from the Family Assistance Program collected the 12 reports after interviewing 80 Guard families. Since there are 600 such families affected, the number of actual incidents likely is higher."

As we noted previously, the state Education Commissioner's response has been equal parts denial, whitewashing, and cowardice. See SFTT for the full text of Albanese's limp advisory; and the Commissioner continues to downplay the issue rather than addressing it seriously:

"TV5 asked the general for his thoughts about the Albanese comments. Tinkham says [Education] Commissioner [Duke] Albanese skipped over a few facts. The General says the reports about insensitive educators have been steady and consistent, no matter where the family assistance officers have traveled in the state. Far from being anecdotal evidence, Tinkham says The Guard has names, dates and locations related to the incidents, but up until now has chosen not to release that information because the guard did not want to point fingers."

Here's the URL, courtesy of reader Allen Glosson.

Well, the Education Commissioner has certainly made his smarmy attitude clear. Looks like it may be time to roll out the artillery after all, General. And Emperor Misha - how about making some of those contact URLs live? (Done now)

The story is also starting to "grow legs" at the national level. The Washington Times ran an article today, for instance, and I'm getting email reports that talk-show star Rush Limbaugh has also picked it up. More will come... but it depends on finding people who are willing to come forward and speak to the media.

Trent Telenko explains the dynamics involved, and what we're doing about it, in this comment to his own post on this subject...(read on)

read the rest! »

Winds of War: 2003-02-27

In an effort to bring you some of the more interesting pieces out there without drowning out the rest of our posts, We've started putting each day's collection into one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

A flurry of articles and reports recently covering Iraqi refugees, absolutely outraged at the anti-liberation protests. Michele has this report, which should sicken any decent person reading it. Blogs of War has an even better one, a rare unsigned editorial in the prestigious CSM.

President Bush gave another speech last night about the future of Iraq. Meanwhile, Ted Belman links to STRATFOR's in-depth analysis of the strategic situation and options before the USA. Their conclusion: we're past the point of no return.

Equally engrossing: a Marine's report from Camp Commando, Kuwait.

Message to Britain: we love you folks, but can you hurry it up a little with the deployments? Admittedly, it's tough to keep up with a US Army logistics operation that learns from and with FedEx.

Human shields? Well, they're half right.

Newsrack Blog has some "things that make you go whoa!" - specifically, a post that asks what Germany knows about Saddam's smallpox program, and when they knew it - and how.

Rantburg gives us a quick scan of what's in the Turkish Daily News as deployment gets going over there.

In yesterday's "Winds of War," we mentioned a group of liberals Bush needs to listen to. Andrew Sullivan drives that point home: "Bush can't reverse the tide of hatred on the far left. But he can try and reach out to the many liberals in the center who would support a proactive foreign policy, if they believed it was about more than mere national interest."

On which topic, Instaman reports on Afghanistan and says "things aren't so bad," and progress is being made.

It's all about the ooiiiilllll, isn't it? Just ask Dean Esmay.

Once upon a time, Jews were the preferred victims, the canary in the coal mine of civilization. That's still true, but it looks like we're getting company: Third World Christians are becoming preferred victims. My prediction: that's about to get expensive for their tormentors, esp. in Africa.

News from the home front: Ted Belman has a link to an insightful piece in the by Stephen Emerson, one of the first people to investigate indicted "Terror Prof." Sami al-Arian's activities. Read the full Al-Arian idictment here, it's fascinating. There's also a very good summary by the local paper.

You'd think that George Clooney might have learned something from the 2 military movies he made. Both offer important lessons that obviously went right through his head without even slowing down.

Meanwhile, Yale disgraces itself. Sullivan notes a report by James Kirchik over at Yale: "Radical poet, Amiri Baraka, visited Yale yesterday to elaborate on his view that the Israeli government was complicit in the attacks of 9/11. He was greeted with cheers and applause." Read the whole report. I swear, the Left looks more like the Klan every day.

Why go to bigot poets, when you can be sneaking into the weapons research center in Los Alamos instead. How was that possible? Here's one clue, and here's a second. And here's their pathetic excuses. To really make your day: nuclear waste storage is an issue as well.

We always try to end on a more humourous note. You've heard of the Tupperware lady... how about the TupperWAR lady? She ain't listed as one of The Furies for nothin'

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Donald Sensing on American Holy War

I've been a fan of Donald Sensing's for a long time, and this is one of his better essays.

Steven Den Beste has talked at length about the Jacksonian tradition in American foreign policy, a tradition he certainly upholds. There's a second major American international tradition, however - Wilsonian idealism. Often, these traditions are opposed to one another. Occasionally, however, they find common ground when focused on different aspects of the same cause.

If and when they do, all hell breaks loose and America's enemies are toast. Sensing sees that happening now, and explains the historical roots:

"The religious motivations of the American way of war are covered with mantles springing from American secular institutions and values, such a constitutional rights and individual worth. Nonetheless, there are some deep layers of religion in American war making that give it a holy war dimension. These layers are regional in nature.

For the American South, Holy War is most likely to be waged if the offense to the nation is seen as a stain that sullies the national honor. Southern concern with honor was a major contributor toward both Southern secession and the attack on Fort Sumter, precipitating the worst war in our history. Honor can be restored only by confronting the foe with great force. The foe's surrender or destruction restores the national honor.

Honor codes have not played a large role in shaping the North's waging of Holy War. Instead, the Northern codes spring from ideas of the dignity of humankind, and deep notions of sin and judgment. Northerners have always more readily answered the call to colors when the call meant liberation of the oppressed and punishment of the oppressors, a combination that probably springs from the North's Puritan and Calvinistic founding. "

You may like the Americans and their current direction, or you may not. Regardless, this article offers an important understanding of why the USA acts as it does, and the key frame(s) of reference its people are using.

It's time to begin replacing simplisme stereotypes and assumptions with a more informed, nuanced view of the USA's motivations and aims. Donald, thanks for giving that important process a boost with this article.

The Bard's Breath: Emily Dickinson

"The Bard's Breath" is a new Winds of Change.NET feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

Today's verse comes from Emily Dickinson, and seems especially appropriate from several perspectives in light of the story we've been covering recently:

"A Man may make a Remark --
In itself -- a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature -- lain --

Let us deport -- with skill --
Let us discourse -- with care --
Powder exists in Charcoal --
Before it exists in Fire"

N.B. I'll be running this feature Tuesdays and Thursdays from now on, to make room for other things. The Fire cometh.

A Challenge, and a Response

Glenn Reynolds and other 'anti-idiotarians' have been direct in confronting antiwar groups for allying themselves with the Stalinist troglodytes of ANSWER. I've joined them, both on my blog and in real life, as I've made it clear to my antiwar friends who sponsors the demonstrations they are supporting, and the moral devaluation of their case that this alliance causes.

Nathan Newman has risen to this challenge.

In a post tonight, he lays out the thuggish background of a group at the helm of a proposed April 1st pro-affirmative action demonstration in Washington D.C., and challenges his compatriots who support affirmative action to distance themselves from this group, 'By Any Means Necessary'

Good job, Nathan. Thanks.

Winds of War: 2003-02-26

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without drowning out the rest of our posts, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

On Monday, Colombia and Spain publicly denounced Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Early on Tuesday, large explosions occurred at both the Columbian and Spanish embassies in Venezuela. Recall that Chavez is closely allied with the narco-terrorists of FARC... as usual, Instapundit has more.

A site named "CrazySaddam.com" pointed me at an excellent piece by José Ramos-Horta, East Timor's minister of foreign affairs. His island suffered terrible repression, and for most of the 90s it was one of the Left's pet causes. Isn't "War for Peace" a contradiction? His response: No. NYT requires registration, but LGF has a good excerpt.

Since people seem to think celebrities' opinions matter, I should note that Kid Rock has a similar opinion.

So does Blogcritics founder Eric Olsen, who expresses it well: "SAY YES TO PAUSE THE WORLD – AND SAY NO TO WAR on 03/03/03? Just say yes to being blown up or poisoned or infected along with your friends, neighbors and family for who you are, not what you do. Just say yes to savage dictators brutalizing their own people and their neighbors. Just say yes to a reign of terror like the world has never seen until all the world succumbs to totalitarian sharia, all women are veiled, all Jews are dead, and the Western way of life a memory."

The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent piece on the Iraqi economic interests at stake for France, Germany, Russia and China. Damian Penny has the details.

Speaking of Chinese motivations, Calpundit points to some interesting pieces the cover China's game around the Korean crisis.

The Agonist is concerned about urban warfare in Iraq... but it's not in Baghdad.

In answer to these and other questions, Donald Sensing offers a guest blog from Ranger officer Patrick Walsh (ret.) to discuss urban warfare and related issues.

Meanwhile, in answer to David's question: deploying human shields is, itself, a war crime. Attacking targets to which they have been deployed is not. Look up the articles of the Geneva Conventions.

A Real Axis? Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports that senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards official Hamid Reza Zakiri recently defected. In an interview, Zakiri discussed IRG and Iranian intelligence cooperation with Saddam Hussein's regime, as well as terror organizations such as the Palestinian and Egyptian Jihad organizations, Al-Qa'ida, and Hizbullah. Zakiri also discussed the 1998 political murders in Iran, and stated that Iran has nuclear installations. (Hat Tip: WSJ Best of the Web)

TNR writes about some liberals the Bush Administration had better pay attention to. [JK] I'm no liberal, but I absolutely agree.

Bush Administration's back and forth driving you bannans? Relax, says liberal blogger Michael Totten. It's all just psychological warfare.

Gweilo diaries thinks US policy should be more Machiavellian... and he means that in a good way.

Martin Kirn writes about his experiences studying at Oxford. One more clear piece describing how Anti-Americanism is indistinguishable from simple racism in many cases. I've written about that before myself.

Likewise, I think this is wrong. It was wrong when other people in Denmark took a similar approach with Israelis, and it's wrong now.

This 4 Horsemen meme is getting out of hand.

Sandstorm has a good update on the Middle Eastern Studies scholars associated with Sami Al-Arian, indicted recently as the commander of Islamic Jihad in North America. LGF notes that Al-Arian has now been denied bail.

Finally, we always try to end on a humourous note. Today's selection? Osama's 72. Just read it.

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The Bard's Breath: No Man Left Behind

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

Sometimes, the best and most stirring words are the ones that are true - and it's the bard's duty to bring them to life, too. Yesterday was quite the day, as the story of Maine teachers harassing the 8 year old children of deployed soldiers hit critical mass. Today's post reminds us all what those parents could be up to. The moral issue of attacking a vulnerable child is beyond question, but I also have a big issue with what those teachers were disparaging.

Many of you have read Blackhawk Down, or seen the movie. The scene in which 2 Delta Force snipers volunteer to go down to a crash site without backup to protect the pilots from a mob of hundreds was true. 2 Delta specialists, Sgt. 1st class Randy Shugart and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, would leave no man behind. Both earned The Medal of Honor that day in Mogadishu, Somalia. Both medals were posthumous.

In addition to telling our story yesterday, the Wall Street Journal also told theirs. The juxtaposition was a fitting one as we pray for the welfare of all our soldiers in the coming months, and demand civility and understanding toward the children of people whose stories could in the end be similar to Shugart and Brown's.

On High Horses

Trent and Joe have pulled up the story of teachers abusing the children of military families by accusing their serving parents of being war criminals.

Abuse is abuse, and I'll let others talk about specifics and actions.

But the underlying attitude is the schoolmarmish (yes, I use that advisedly) tone of moral superiority so often adopted by the Left.

I've talked about it pretty frequently over at Armed Liberal; here, here, and here for example.

It isn't only a matter of not liking being lectured. There are some real issues with this attitude which have to be confronted...even by those who may agree with the lecturers on issues.

People are divided into two camps, the old joke goes. Those who divide everything into two camps and those who don't.

Looking at it, I'll make a division here and talk about some American political and cultural history as a part of it.

On one hand, we have the 'pragmatists'. Pragmatists are concerned with things that work. On the other, we have 'moralists'. Moralists are deeply concerned with making the world as they think it ought to be.

In making this statement, I'm vastly simplifying both positions. Moralists devoid of practical skills are at best ascetic hermits. Pragmatists without a moral compass become very good at getting nowhere at all...or go into managing campaigns. The reality is that people's motivations are complex. But looking at American political history in the last fifty years, it's useful to look at these two impulses, and the conflicts between them and see what we can learn from it.

America in the fifties was a highly moralistic country, or superficially so. The easy moral superiority of the white, Protestant mainstream, and their exclusion or diminishment of everyone from Harry Bridges to Medgar Evers as tools of "the Communist conspiracy" opened the door to an underground which acknowledged the injustice of racial exclusion, attempted to tip the balance of power toward the 'progressive' underground,

Today, the progressives occupy the seats of superficial morality. The 1950's vision was a perfect, hardworking, churchgoing America was a strong but shallow myth. It was made brittle by its reluctance to recognize its own hypocrisy in matters of sex, race, and economic power. The current liberal myth of a morally perfectible America is equally shallow and made equally brittle by the left's reluctance to recognize the hypocrisy of SUV's with 'No war for oil" bumperstickers, and of the cruel intolerance of PETA.

And intolerance...intolerance not as opposed to "anything goes" tolerance, but as opposed to tolerance that acknowledges that people can differ but still have moral standing; that people can be wrong but remain fellow humans...is the ultimate Achilles heel of both the moralistic Left and the moralistic Right. Not only does each one lead to an increasing isolation of its adherents, but it ultimately weakens the position of each camp.

Why weakened, you ask?

Because as I noted below, the ability to be wrong - to acknowledge that reality is more complex than our understanding of it, and to adapt our understandings to reality - is the root of Western power. And, more than that, the similar ability to love the sinner and hate the sin - to forgive and absorb - is the root of Western morality.

Bill Whittle's Latest: Confidence

Bill Whittle of Eject!Eject!Eject! has a new essay up. This one is called "Confidence."

I'm confident that you know what to do next.

A Parent's Anguish: Can You Help?

Yesterday, we discussed Teachers harassing the children of soldiers serving in the Gulf, plus Trent Telenko's update of the situation.

This really hit home with one reader. He needs your help and advice:

"Joe, Last year my family and I returned to Australia after living in NYC for 15 years. My son currently goes to a Melbourne private school where teachers seem to be allowed to vent their leftist views without any misgivings. One teacher said that he could see some benefits from Hitler's leadership compared to what we have in the US (Bush) now. He also compared our prime minister (John Howard) to Adolf Hitler. This is truly disgusting and dangerous stuff because these pricks are in fact sanitizing Hitler in young peoples minds.

I don't really know what to do about it. My kid is a tough boy and he does fight it out with these guys. I really don't know how to handle this because I don't want my kid to be marked out if I complain. It's a terrible situation."

Readers, care to offer this gentleman some help with his dilemma? Just use the Comments section.

The Netherlands has gone Nazi

I was reading a column titled “Communication Gap: Eurotalk vs. Ameritalk,” By Wesley J. Smith, in the National Review On-Line. He was talking about how Europeans think versus Americans and I fell out of my chair when he skipped right past what should have been his story. Involuntary euthanasia of the infirm, helpless, elderly, poor Dutch is their national policy. These people are being overtly murdered rather than dying of neglect. And not only does no one care. It is approved by the public.

From the article:

In Lisbon, I began to comprehend the dramatic differences between the American and Old European approaches during a panel discussion I participated in on euthanasia. I was invited to the conference to argue against legalization. During my presentation, I made the point that the regulatory guidelines don't protect against abuses but merely provide an appearance of control, to calm public unease.

As proof, I referred to several studies on Dutch euthanasia revealing that about 1,000 patients who have not asked to be euthanized are killed by doctors each year. Though such killings are considered murder under Dutch law, I explained that those doctors who engage in "termination without request or consent" in the Netherlands are almost never prosecuted. Moreover, the very few who are prosecuted are usually found not guilty. And the exceedingly rare conviction, when it happens, never leads to criminal sanction, or even professional discipline against the offending doctor.

When I make this point in debates with American euthanasia advocates, their response is usually to angrily accuse me of exaggerating, or else to excuse the conduct owing to the poor condition of the patients involved. But the Dutch advocate was not offended or upset. Rather, he calmly admitted that my point as unremarkable, stating, "Well, it is important that we have laws to tell us what constitutes good medical practice in this area. But, of course, these laws should not be enforced."

My jaw dropped. What's the point of passing laws if they're not going to be enforced?

To the Old European way of thinking, though, it apparently makes perfect sense. The guidelines don't exist to punish those who break them; rather, they're a vehicle for maintaining consensus and comity between those who support euthanasia and those who oppose it. Supporters have the satisfaction of knowing that euthanasia is available in many circumstances. Opponents have the satisfaction of knowing that legal restrictions limit the actual practice of euthanasia, at least to some degree. Hence, a controversial public policy that is an emotional flashpoint of the culture war in the United States is generally accepted with quiet equanimity by the people of the Netherlands — even though it has led to many thousands of Dutch patients being murdered without legal consequence.

Dutch doctors murder at least 1,000 undesirable people a year.

This is official Dutch policy

It is both known and approved by the Dutch people.

The Dutch people have gone Nazi in fact and in deed. All the worse nightmares of Euthanasia opponents have been realized in the Netherlands. This has been true for a decade at least. And no one is paying attention, even when it is looked at directly.

Lets be absolutely clear what I am talking about here. This isn't the American medical community’s refusal of treatment for reasons ranging from lack of payment from the indigent to lack of profit for insurance companies for long term terminal illness. This is the active taking of life by sticking needles into people's arms attached to vials of poison and pushing the plunger. The first is criminal negligence. The second is capital murder. It is a moral difference in kind and not degree.

It is time that the American people to act.

The Dutch medical profession should be shut out of all international medical organizations. American participation of any sort in such organizations should be based on the exclusion of the Dutch. Dutch cultural groups should be excluded from the US and Dutch physicians should be denied visas to attend conferences here based on the fact they could be serial medical murderers.

The Democratic Left should ask the UN to pass a resolution condemning Holland over its euthanasia policies and give them at least 250 years to reconsider the situation.

American Church organizations should act. Dutch Christian religious leadership is a contradictions in terms. They all speak with Satan’s voice, if they bother to speak at all. Shunning of them is the least that should be done. Serious American missionary efforts independent of local Dutch churches and the Dutch government must be both considered and executed.

As it stands, mass conversion of the Dutch to Muslims would mark a significant improvement in the Dutch moral climate. The old, helpless, infirm and elderly would still die unnecessarily, but from medical neglect and not from medical murder.

This is the evil that sits at the heart of the E.U. It is all about providing unaccountable power to people without souls, so they can victimize the poor and weak as they see fit.

Winds of War: 2003-02-25

Sorry this went on hiatus yesterday, but the issue was worth it. Be sure to check Trent Telenko's update re: Teachers harassing the children of soldiers serving in the Gulf. Help us spread the word! This. Must. Stop.

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without drowning out the rest of our posts, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

Mommabear has a bunch of good stuff these days. We'll start with details of how a Belgian had his opinion on Iraq changed through discussion. Note how this was done; not the usual blogosphere style, but it works.

Here's the UN resolution on Iraq that was tabled yesterday. George Bush has flat-out stated that this is the test: future relevance, or the next failed League of Nations?

My bet's on the latter, which is why Miguel's trascript of Ethiopian King Haile Selassie's speech to the League of Nations when Mussolini's Italy invaded his country in the 1930s is so instructive. Sound familiar?

MILBlogger Lt. Smash explains why he's... well, we can't say where he is.

Meanwhile, Rantburg notes that the cloaking devices must be running full-bore in Jordan.

Jeezus! This article about Egyptian nuclear scientists, Baghdad, and the IAEA ought to keep you awake nights.

Greatest Jeneration has the goods on "Terror Prof." Sami Al-Arian, his cohorts, and his history. Solid background research, Jen.

Charles Johnson follows up with some equally sharp stuff. Like the fact that 3 of the 8 indicted terrorist co-conspirators were "Middle Eastern Studies" academics (which pretty much sums up the state of the field these days). Another was the Imam of Cleveland, who was - get this - considered to be a "moderate."

And what's all this hooey about Islam being a male dominated religion, hmm?

Credit Where It's Due I: The Feminist Majority Foundation would like to change that situation. In Afghanistan, they're actually working toward that end and advocating expansion of the ISAF force there.

Credit Where It's Due II: Churches will soon be built in Saudi-Arabian neighbour Qatar, home to a spiffy new American air base and command centre. In that part of the world, any sign of religious tolerance is a big deal.

Credit Where It's Due III: French writer Pierre-Andre Taguieff, on "The New Judeophobia." Strong and welcome words. Do not forget that there are also people like this in France. They deserve our respect, even if their government does not.

The Wild Monk has a thoughtful article along these lines, explaining what he thinks is going on in Europe based on his experiences there. I think he lays out the issues very well.

New Idiotarian Low: Australian Parliamentarian excuses Saddam gassing Kurds at Halabja - it was an act of war, and these things happen. (Hat Tip: John Jay Ray)

Are Randall "Parapundit" Parker and Trent Telenko coming to a convergence of views on North Korea? You decide. [Randall | Trent]. UPDATE: Randall has a more recent follow-up, too.

The Israeli Army is developing credit-card sized UAVs to fly in and scout ahead of its troops. We've talked about this sort of thing recently [Joe | Trent].

Scott has had it with leftie guilt trips. "Sometimes we screw it up so badly nothing can make it right, and for that I do feel guilty, and will try to do whatever I can to at least make sure it doesn't happen again. But I find it obscene that someone should suggest I must feel guilty simply because I exist." Read the whole thing. (Hat Tip: Kathy K.)

A nude male war protest. Dear Lord, please don't let them recruit those 50 year old hairy fat guys who wear Speedos on the beach. Surely there is enough suffering in the world!

Weapons inspections error message, if you haven't yet seen it. (Hat Tip: Annunciations)

Posted at 05:02 AM | Direct Link | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1) | E-mail This!

The Bard's Breath: Book of Kings

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it. Today we honour Glenn Frazier, the blogosphere's unofficial ambassador to Iran. He's back, and so is the Iranian Liberty Index. Glenn, this one's for you.

The Shahnameh, or "Book of Kings," is one of the great works of Persian literature. The fickle and foolish Shah Kai-Kawoos, the invincible knight ("pehlavi") Rotsam, the betrayed hero Siawash; all part of a parade of vivid characters to rival any European epic. Iranian writer Laleh Khlalili wrote this poem in 1999, an ironic, mocking anti-tribute to the recent Iranian Revolution that evokes an older history, and older legends.

"we have shambled eternally
through the seven feats and defeats of Rotsam
throughout this interminable redundancy of virile destruction
and murderous patriotism

we - in idolatry of our innumerable heroes -
have slaughtered our sons on city streets
and in dark chambers of infamy,
we have gone unpunished but by memories of murder
damning our eternal existence,
and we will
will
will
be judged and decapitated through
the inevitability of fratricide..."

Go to Iranian.com and read the whole thing.

Winds of War: Delayed

Folks,

As you can see below, other matters took me away from "Winds of War" today. It was a tough choice, but worth it. The issue was, and is, that important.

I'll do my best to get something up at lunch time, but if work gets in the way we may be on hiatus until tomorrow. Meanwhile, I recommend checking out Amygdala's site, which is full of great stuff lately.

The Anti-War Movement Money Trail

Byron York of the National Review has an investigative article in in the New York Post this morning templating the money trail for the anti-war group "Not In Our Name."

The trail features all the usual suspects, including Mumia Abu-Jamal ex-fund raisers, and the suspected Palestinian terrorist fund raiser and recently arrested Professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida.

Key passages from the article:

"The organization was created in March 2002 by a gathering of left-wing activists that included representatives from the Revolutionary Communist Party, the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party, Refuse and Resist!, the International League of Peoples' Struggle and the National Lawyers Guild, among others. The organizers intended for Not In Our Name to stage protests across the country and also draft, according to the group's organizing document, a "Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience to be issued by well-known artists, intellectuals, activists and people in public life, lending their moral authority and their unified voice to the resistance movement."

At least in the latter goal, Not In Our Name has been extraordinarily effective. But it had to split in two to succeed. There had been concern among organizers that some of those who might be inclined to sign the statement might not want to be associated with Not In Our Name's activist wing. So the group created two separate entities, one called the Not In Our Name Statement (which handles the manifesto and the collecting of celebrity signatures) and the other called the Not In Our Name Project (which handles street demonstrations and other protests)."

And...

"For its fund raising, the Not In Our Name Project is allied with another foundation, this one called the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. Founded by several New Left leaders in 1967 to "advance the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination," IFCO was originally created to serve as the fundraising arm of a variety of activist organizations that lacked the resources to raise money for themselves.

In recent years, IFCO served as fiscal sponsor for an organization called the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (their partnership ended when the coalition formed its own tax-exempt foundation). Founded in 1997 as a reaction to the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, the coalition says its function is to oppose the use of secret evidence in terrorism prosecutions.

Until recently, the group's president was Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer-science professor who has been suspended for alleged ties to terrorism. (He is still a member of the coalition's board.) According to a New York Times report last year, Al-Arian is accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised by another charity he runs, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times also reported that FBI investigators "suspected Mr. Al-Arian operated 'a fund-raising front' for the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine from the late 1980s to 1995." Al-Arian also brought a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah to the University of South Florida to raise money for one of Al-Arian's foundations - a job Shallah held until he later became the head of Islamic Jihad."

And...

The groups have been quite successful. The most recent IRS records available for IFCO, from the year 2000, show that the foundation took in $1,119,564 in contributions. For their part, organizers of the Not In Our Name Statement report that they have taken in more than $400,000 in recent months for the purpose of publishing their statement. It is not possible to say who is giving the money, or whether it comes from many people or just a few; federal laws do not require tax-exempt foundations to reveal their donors - or even whether donations are received from inside or outside the United States."

The 'fun' part about Federal law is that an "on-going criminal conspiracy" takes past actions that were legal and later became illegal into today's legal environment, and makes everyone in the conspiracy liable for the actions of every conspiritor. The upshot is that Sami Al-Arian connection to all of this leaves this funding network very vulnerable to Federal RICO laws.

Little Green Footballs has detailed how the Clinton Administration and pre-9/11 Dubya Administration sat on the Islamic foundation fund raising investigations for political and campaign fundraising reasons. Now that we are at war, the political pull of these groups on the Bush43 Administration has vaporized with the WTC.

It is only a matter of time before Sami Al-Arian's alledgedly illegal fund raising cash flow is traced into this anti-war movement money-nexus. The Feds will start issuing subpoenas for financial records, as well as conducting terrorist investigation related IRS audits for all and sundry. This will reveal to the Federal government exactly who is on these groups' donor lists, for later evaluation and cross checking with foreign intelligence sources to shake out money laundering transactions.

This is the Department Of Defense's "Total Information Awareness" initiative written sideways.

And there is one more thing, thanks to the Congressional Democrats protection of the Clinton Administration's "Nixon Abuses" using IRS power. These donor lists will be used by Republican campaign operatives for IRS audit threat-driven shake downs of these donors, both to get more campaign money and to deny that same money to Democratic candidates and causes.

This is very much a case of "no good deed goes unpunished" for Democrats.

See also Little Green Football's take on the same article here.

Teachers Harassing Soldiers' Children

Welcome to Winds of Change.NET! If you are [1] a reporter and considering coverage of this story; or if you are prepared to talk to the media and [2] you or someone you know has experienced this; or [3] you are a teacher with thoughts on this issue, please email: joe -at- windsofchange dot net. Include your name, position and phone & email contact info. We'll verify the reporters' bona fides, then hand over the compiled contacts list.

Thanks to Trent Telenko for pointing this one my way. Apparently, the Maine National Guard Family Assistance Center has received about 30 complaints from children of deployed soldiers concerning harassment by school officials. Most of these kids are between 7 and 9 years old.

WABI- TV Bangor Maine | February 21, 2003 | 6 PM News

Alan Grover, WABI-TV: "What the kids are facing is hearing that [from Principals, Teachers and/or Guidance Counsellors] their mother or father is a bad person for taking part in the confrontation with Iraq; comments that are coming from teachers. That's according to officers with the Guard’s Family Assistance Program who've been traveling throughout the state this week. The officers report that such incidents are relatively few in number but that they've occurred in practically every region of the state."

Major Andrew Gibson: "Some kids have even reported that... ah... teachers have said things to them, specifically, about the ah unethical nature of their parent going off to fight."

It gets worse...

"LTC John Mosher: "Soldiers follow our instructions to coordinate with schools to let them know they will be leaving, that their child should be monitored and to keep an eye on 'em."

Consider that for a moment. Most of the children involved are 7 to 9 years of age. These teachers were told what was happening. Their response? Not help, but exploitation of the opportunity to single out and hurt a small child in a vulnerable state.

What kind of person does such a thing?

Imagine what it's like to have your parent away at that age, doing this. "Yes, love, I'm going away for a while... Yes, to fly... No, it isn't safe - I won't lie to you. But I'll be fine, just fine. It's something we have to do. For you. Take care of your brother, and be good, hear? And don't let your Daddy order pizza all the time... OK, then.... I love you... Bye." You're 7 years old; next month, you'll be 8. And there you sit, waiting anxiously for the moment when it's all over and you can see your Mommy again.

Now, imagine this kind of treatment from your Teacher. Or your Principal.

read the rest! »

Follow-Up: Protecting Soldier's Kids

This is a follow up and backfill to Joe's post. First, I originally saw this article as an item over on the FreeRepublic.com web site. Then I called around and e-mailed and found that there are similar cases happening to military kids in Texas and Kansas as well.

This is what the Maine National Guard sent to the parents of one of the victimized children:

""Thank you for your interest on this most troubling matter. Our Family Assistance Centers have reported cases from Aroostook County to Southern Maine. We are reluctant to give out specific schools and the individuals involved in the interest of giving the education community a chance to address the problem itself. Also, parents wanted the opportunity to pursue the issue through their local school boards first.

In all, we have over thirty complaints that name schools and individual principals, teachers and guidance counselors. If one considers that these complaints come from just the parents who attended our briefings and only from children who told their parents, we are concerned that the problem may be more widespread than we know.

We are recording the complaints, and I will ly visit these educators to express our concern as a professional organization and ask for their cooperation.

Ultimately, our main concern and first responsibility is the safety of our children during these uncertain times. Maine has a core of dedicated and professional educators, but we will challenge any individual who places our children at risk due to their own political ideologies.""

The folks over on the Free Republic are already doing media outreach on this story with the various conservative talk radio outlets and with the Fox News Channel. Myself, I have contracted my various e-mail lists and alerted some fellow bloggers. So this issue is being addressed.

Backing up and taking a wider view, what we are seeing here are the wages of the utopians being counted out.

Thoreau once said something to the effect that "Far better that you be robbed by the basest villain than be helped by someone coming to "do good" for you. For there is no evil the self-righteous will not descend to in order to "do good" by their lights."

The true evil of the Anti-American Left is that they see America as evil and _anything_ they do to oppose it as virtuous. Soldier's kids are not real to them, save as symbols in their utopian fantasy ideology.

I have an acquaintance in the Marin Country California ACLU from one of my e-mail "list of usual suspects" worked up enough about it that he forwarded the Free Republic text to local school boards with a broad outline of the liability implications for the school districts if their teachers are caught doing it.

He also sent me the following:

""...[o]f all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

—Montana Supreme Court in Gryczan v. Montana, 1996, striking down that state’s sodomy law.

...with the observation that while the above was aimed at the 'blue noses' on the Right. It applied just as much to those on the left.

He has a point.

The difference between the righteous and the self-righteous is the former are humble with their own judgements, will listen to reason, and know that evil means taken to achieve a noble end may corrupt the result.

The self-righteous are as vain as Satan about their righteousness, and just as evil in their pursuit of it.

The Anti-American radical Left has become the caricature of the self-righteous Right they claim to hate.

The Blogcritics' Critiquees

As some of you know, I'm also an occasional member of 2 other team blogs: Israpundit, and Blogcritics. Well, the 150+ contributors at Blogcritics have voted, and "The Critiquee Awards" are out for books, music, and film in 2002.

Drop by and have a look - you might discover something!

Columbia: In Trouble Early?

Rand Simberg reports that the Shuttle Columbia may have been in trouble and losing pieces as early as California. He's linked to an informative article, and a photo that backs this claim up.

Anti-Semitism Has Returned: What To Do About It

David Brooks, a senior editor for the Weekly Standard, has a very depressing article/op-ed on the return of socially acceptable anti-Semitism into national society from the American Left.

From the article:

Not long ago I was chatting with a prominent Washington figure in a green room. "You people have infested everywhere," he said in what I thought was a clumsy but good-hearted manner. He listed a few of "us": "Wolfowitz, Feith, Frum, Perle." I've never met Doug Feith in my life and Wolfowitz and Perle I've barely met. Yet he assumed we were tight as thieves. After a few minutes of jibing I finally pointed out that there were many non-Jews who support the president's policy against Iraq. I mentioned Bob Kerry. "He's a shabbas goy. He's got a lot of Jewish money supporting that school" he shot back. Shabbas goys are Christians who perform tasks for observant Jews on Saturdays.

I am the last person who used to suspect people of anti-Semitism. I was never really conscious of it affecting my life until the last few weeks. But now I wonder. I watched a town meeting in northern Virginia a few weeks ago. A Vietnam vet got up to rail against U.S. policy on Iraq, which he said was engineered by "Paul Wolfowitz and Daniel Pearl." He got the wrong Pearl. He accidentally mentioned somebody who was beheaded for being American and Jewish. But the crowd didn't seem to notice. They roared with approval and slapped him on the back as he made his way from microphone. Why didn't he say Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell were organizing the Bush administration policy? They're higher ranking officials than Wolfowitz and actually members of the administration, unlike Perle. Would the crowd have roared as wildly if he'd mentioned Rice and Powell, I wondered, or did the words Wolfowitz and Perle somehow get their juices flowing?

As I look at this op-ed, I cannot help but thinking that the American Left is committing suicide by adopting anti-Semitism as its organizing principle. The American multi-cultural left on campuses, the media, and in most secular non-government organizations view Israel as another South Africa because of its treatment of Palestinians. This left them highly vulnerable to being infected by the anti-Semitic hate campaigns of Arab regimes. And infected they most certainly are.

Any time I see left/liberal Democratic operative/supporter ranting in print against the "neo-conservative influence" on the Bush Administration, I now mark the author as a closet anti-Semite.

The Right and the Republican Party has had its own problems with anti-Semitism, but its public "excommunication" of Patrick Buchanan over the issue is making this polarization/popularization of anti-Semitism a future partisan political issue.

One thing I am certain of is that the "Jacksonians" in the American public are starting to view anti-Semitism as a trait of the enemies of America. And anyone who is pro-Palestinian is an ally of the Islamic death cult. Americans have taken mortal offense to children suicide/homicide bombers and I have seen a number of polls that show a higher percentage of Americans against an independent Palestinian state than in Israel!

The only question I have is whether this "leftist flame out" will stain the Democratic Party as a whole with it as it goes down. I think the Sharpton-Lieberman exchanges in the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries will do much to shape this outcome.

The Democrats are going to have to visibly cast out anti-Semites in their party caucus at the 2004 national convention to be creditable on the subject. And they won't. I just don't see them ejecting the majority of the Black Caucus and the Campus Left.

This rising tide of "Respectable from the Left" anti-Semitism is making the Republican choice of New York City look for their 2004 convention more and more inspired. Republicans could easily pick up the NY City Jewish vote over a Democratic flinch on anti-Semitism. This will give them NY state and doom Democratic Presidential hopefuls for a generation as there is no Presidential electoral combination possible for them without N.Y. state.

I hate to say this, but this next paragraph really pisses me off.

It's not just the things people say. It's the things that are now socially acceptable. The leftist group ANSWER has a long and well-documented record of anti-Zionist statements so extreme and inflammatory that they are truly offensive. (Not to mention a record of supporting murderers and tyrants that is appalling and inhumane.) When the thousands gathered for the peace rally ANSWER co-organized on the mall in Washington, I figured most of the marchers didn't really know the true nature of the group. But now principled liberals and many others have exposed its vicious and Stalinoid nature. And the peace marchers don't mind! They still flocked to the ANSWER-organized marches last weekend. The fact that the Jewish liberal Michael Lerner wasn't permitted to speak didn't bother them either! Would they march at peace rallies organized by the KKK or the American Nazi Party, groups that are about as despicable as ANSWER? Is all hatred now socially acceptable if it is organized in the cause of "peace?"

Both David Brooks and Michael Lerner demonstrate here that they have a really anemic and bloodless view of free speech. Holding hands and singing "Kum-buy-ya" showing how great you are isn't "free speech." It is simply a form of speech.

Free speech isn't speech, it is an _absence of rules_ on speech. The only rule is that there are no rules. And using your free speech rights to silence someone else is allowed.

When the Klan tried to march in Skokie, Ill., they were faced with a mob of counter demonstrators who were out to threaten, intimidate, humiliate, shame, harass, spit on and otherwise use their full right of free speech to silence bigots in bed sheets.

Leftist anti-Semites are just another kind of bigot in Palestinian bed sheets and deserve the same treatment. The Skokie treatment should be the fate of ANSWER where ever it appears.

Who are the leaders in ANSWER? Where do they live? Where do they get their money?

That information should be published on the internet so people can picket their homes and the homes of their American money men.

Getting in their faces yelling, during picketing, that they are anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist and that you are going to watch and report their actions to the FBI is free speech.

Setting up video web cams to watch your picketing and put organized anti-Semite's faces, homes, business, and vehicles on the internet is free speech.

Taking video or setting up web cams to watch their demonstrations, particularly ones where these people dress themselves and their own children as suicide/homicide bombers, is also an effective intimidation tactic.

The only rules here are be prepared to defend yourself if the anti-Semites attack you physically and just win baby.

"All it takes for evil to win is for men of good heart to do nothing."

Americans have freedom of speech.

So why aren't you doing something?

Update 1:

Donald Sensing sends this link.

Update 2

Dean Esmay sends links one and two.

I updated the text above to more closely reflect what I intended to say versus what I actually wrote in the first draft about taking video of anti-Semite's kids.

The point I intended to make was to advertise the anti-Semites _dehumanizing their own kids_ and not doing that yourself as a part of counter protesting.

The use of kids to blockade abortion clinics was one of the things that drove me out of the pro-life movement and it is very much of a hot button with me. It was I had in mind with the first go around.

read the rest! »

Plan to remake the Middle East

Nicholas Lemann, a national correspondent with the Atlantic Monthly, did a two part series with the above title on the Middle East, with links here and here.

It has the best summation of "Why Iraq?" and "What happens in Iraq after the invasion" from an Administration official that I have seen in print:

People in the Administration are quick to explain that, where the Middle East is concerned, they don’t mean immediate, American-style electoral democracy but, rather, a deliberate building of “civil society” or “democratic institutions,” like a free press, political parties, open markets, and a system of written laws and courts that administer them, with national parliamentary elections as the final, and somewhat distant, step. That seems a worthwhile project, but if it takes place in the aftermath of a war it should be understood as involving the making of choices and the use of power by the United States, rather than merely polite encouragement. In search of a plausible scenario for the post-war future of the Middle East, I recently spoke with two Pentagon officials who have a reputation as leading hawks in the Administration: Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, which is the job that Wolfowitz held in the first Bush Administration; and Stephen Cambone, who entered this Administration as Feith’s deputy, and is now in charge of evaluating weapons systems and other Pentagon programmes.

Feith, a crisp, bespectacled man in his late forties, works in a large suite of offices in the E Ring of the Pentagon, with a sweeping view across the Potomac River to Washington. The door to his reception room is kept locked, which underscores the impression that business unknown to the public is conducted within. Feith bustled in from another appointment, and we sat down. I asked him what he thought the after-effects of the war would be. He smiled amiably and said, “Walking you through exactly what is going to happen is difficult. I think it was Samuel Goldwyn who once said never make forecasts, especially about the future. So I don’t think I want to attempt to walk you through exactly how it’s going to play out. But I can tell you what I know about some of the thinking on the subject.”

And the killer 'graph:

I asked Feith whether an American military victory in Iraq could help curb terrorism by organisations like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, which operate with the support of other countries in the region. He nodded. “One of the principal strategic thoughts underlying our strategy in the war on terrorism is the importance of the connection between terrorist organisations and their state sponsors,” he said. “Terrorist organisations cannot be effective in sustaining themselves over long periods of time to do large-scale operations if they don’t have support from states. They need a base of operations. They need other types of assets that they get from their connection with their state sponsors — whether it’s funding, or headquarters, or, in some cases, the use of diplomatic pouches and other types of facilities. And one of the principal reasons that we are focussed on Iraq as a threat to us and to our interests is because we are focussed on this connection between three things: terrorist organisations, state sponsors, and weapons of mass destruction. If we were to take military action and vindicate our principles, in the war on terrorism, against Iraq, I think it would” — he paused, looking for the right word — “register with other countries around the world that are sponsoring terrorism, and would perhaps change their own cost-benefit calculations about their role in connection with terrorist networks. I think this process got under way with Afghanistan. There you had a regime that was ousted because of its support for terrorist operations against the United States. If the Iraqi regime gets ousted because it ultimately proves unwilling to disarm itself in a co-operative fashion with the UN, and if the United States leads a coalition and overthrows that government, I think that the combination of those two actions will influence the thinking of other states about how advisable it is for them to continue to provide safe harbour or other types of support to terrorist organisations.”

Never let it be said that the Administration did not make the case for Iraq.

The people who are against we war with Iraq don't want to listen and scream down or ignore intelligent arguements like the one above.

NASA Engineer E-Mails Warned of Columbia Damage

The Washington Post has an article today that may be classified as a "Smoking Gun" as far as the Columbia break up is concerned.

From the article:

In a Feb. 5 e-mail, NASA engineer Dennis Bushnell said ice damage from the 150-foot-tall external fuel tanks has long afflicted the left side of space-bound shuttles, but nothing was done about it.

"We (the agency) should have done more analysis of this whole situation/taken it more seriously as well as repositioned that tank dump line to minimize ice impingement," he wrote.

Another NASA engineer, Daniel Mazanek, wrote that a study of video taken during launch indicated that Columbia was struck three times by debris that was most likely ice.

The impact, he said, "would be the equivalent of a 500 pound safe hitting the wing at 365 miles per hour."

Get thee there and read the full article!

Feb. 22, 2003: Shabbat Shalom!

As many of you know, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, my weekend posts to this blog will always be "good news". I will share Sufi wisdom, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity.

Other blogging days may include these things as well, but today I seek to fill my entire day with that. This provides a necessary and important break from current events, which by nature are often dark. If we don't stop to acknowledge the other side of the coin and see the light shining in our world, our perspective and analysis will be flawed.

Sufi Wisdom: Rumi's Night

As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully").

The Wahhabi hate them, of course, which constitutes an endorsement in my books. The great poet Rumi was a Sufi, and today we turn to his verse once again for contemplation and inspiration. I've come to appreciate the Sufis for their poetry, their humour, and their body of wisdom. Every Shabbat, therefore, I will be sharing some of that here.

Ghazal 947

don't go to sleep
this night
one night is worth
a hundred thousand souls

the night is generous
it can give you
a gift of the full moon
it can bless your soul
with endless treasure

every night when you feel
the world is unjust
never ending grace
descends from the sky
to soothe your souls

the night is not crowded like the day
the night is filled with eternal love
take this night
tight in your arms
as you hold a sweetheart

remember the water of life
is in the dark caverns
don't be like a big fish
stopping the life's flow
by standing in the mouth of a creek

even Mecca is adorned
with black clothes
showing that the heavens
are ready to grace
the human soul

even one prayer
in the Mecca of a night
is like a hundred
no one can claim
sleep can build
a temple like this

during a night
the blessed prophet
broke all the idols and
God remained alone
to give equally to all
an endless love

Translated by Nader Khalili
Rumi, Fountain of Fire, Cal-Earth, September 1994

Good night, everyone...

Supermen of Chesed

In Hebrew, the word chesed (kindness) is closely related to the word chasid (a religious or righteous person). Likewise, tzedakah (charity) is linked to a verse where G-d said "you shall behold my presence b'tzedek, (in righteousness). We've talked about Medal of Honor winners recently here at Winds of Change.NET, and they're one kind of hero. Today, I'm going to talk about another kind.

When Fred Rogers was a boy and would see scary things on the news, his mother would say to him, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping" (original link here). On that note...

"Chaim Goldberg moved to Israel from Chicago in 1967 and within months he began raising and giving tzedakah money. He says it was ingrained in him from a young age.... Goldberg's great grandfather was the first person to give out Shabbat food packages in Chicago. Chesed is in his blood.

Goldberg learns Torah all day long and does his chesed in the evening. Very shrewd and sophisticated, he runs this million-dollar operation from a Palm Pilot, taking absolutely nothing for administrative costs.

He targets those who suffer in silence. He looks for the people who are too ashamed to ask for help and who say, "Please, please, we have enough," even when they have precious little or nothing at all. They find their cases mainly through word of mouth: social workers, the corner grocer, the woman who works in the area doctor's office or a Torah-study partner....I walk down the stairs in shock; I am not sure if I have ever seen a chesed as great as Goldberg and Cohen's. Like Superman, Cohen and Goldberg come and save those in need, but quickly change back to Clark Kent in order not to receive any, as Cohen put it, "underserved respect." ....I can't shake the feeling that I am witnessing a miracle.

As the sun begins to set and Cohen drops Goldberg back at his home, I ask him a final question. "What keeps you going?"

Cohen takes a deep breath and says, "The Talmud says that two things will save us from the pains of the coming of the Messiah: Torah learning and acts of loving kindness. I just want to help things go in the right direction."

I have never said this before, but you will actually be a poorer person if you do not read the complete article. It almost defies belief. Almost.

The great heroes of this world aren't always found in newspapers, or at the centre of major events. Indeed, Jewish legend states that the 36 pure and righteous people upon whom the world depends are anonymous, often not even recognized as such by their own families. To quote a Canadian band I like:

"Superman never made any money
Saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will ever see another man
Like him."

And yet... we do. Before Sept. 11, 2001, would you have remembered Abe Zelmanowitz if you had been introduced? Probably not. Before today, did you know about Cohen and Goldberg?

Courage. Risk. Love. Superman lives, folks. Maybe even in a place near you.

Star Trek Tech: Food Replicators?

Politics isn't the only thing changing our world. Not by a long shot. As some loyal readers are aware, I've noticed more than one piece of Star Trek Technology that is being seriously worked on by real-world inventors and serious scientists. A few weeks ago, I also ran a piece on "stereolithography," including experiments involving its ability to literally print human cell matrices.

What happens when you put that kind of technology together with a nanotech application being researched by Linguagen, Inc? Jeffrey Harrow thinks he's seen one possible result - in Star Trek's food replicator!

He makes a pretty good case, too. Have a look for yourself.

TTD's Blog List for the Ages

The Talking Dog is a moderate lefty blog, with interesting commentary on the issues of the day. That doesn't get you in here on Shabbat, though.

What does get TTD listed here with honours is his "TD Extra" series, which reviews a long, long list of blogs of all types and from all corners of the political spectrum. He's been doing this day after day for a while now, and the result is a unique resource. Each blog gets a short summation, followed by assignment of an representative dog breed just for fun. If you want to widen your horizons and see what's out there in blogosphere, there's probably no finer place to start than Seth's site. Take a bow, sir!

As part of his final set of reviews, he even evaluated Winds of Change.NET. Just start here and scroll down, in reverse alphabetical orer.

Incidentally, Winds of Change.NET is... a Saluki (see esp. the "Did You Know" blurb in the red side bar).

Kicking the Can: What Den Beste Missed

Steven Den Beste has a wonderful piece today about the E.U. that touches on a point I have been arguing about with Armed Liberal with regard to France. That is, the E.U. as currently conceived is an attempt to subvert national democracy and have an unaccountable transnational progressive elite ruling over all Europe.

Yet there is one thing Den Beste failed to touch on. Namely, why are successful European politicians letting what Steven termed "Elite Gradualism" to take place at their expense? There is a one word answer: Pensions.

Hamish McRae has an op-ed in the UK Independent that addresses this. The following is longish and is about half the op-ed, but I just could not see cutting it up:

My greater concern is that Europe will lose the economic game too – its model is simply not sustainable. There are two broad reasons for believing that. One is the ageing point made by Adair Turner; the other, the implications of labour mobility – particularly of the highly-skilled – for high-tax, high-benefit societies.

The implications of ageing on the European social welfare model, where the current generation of working people pay the benefits of the current generation of retirees, have been so widely recognised that there is a danger of "pension fatigue" overtaking electorates. The core problem is that welfare systems that were developed at a time when there were more than four workers for every pensioner cannot function when there are fewer than two. (In the case of Spain and Italy, there will actually be fewer workers than pensioners when the present 20-somethings retire.)

But that is a known problem. Europe has not done much about it, but at least people are aware of the problem. Europe is much less aware of the problem created by the increased mobility of the highly-skilled – and the increased demand for such skills.

We are aware of this phenomenon in Britain, particularly in the South-east, which has become a magnet for ambitious young Europeans. London is also an attractive market for young Americans, Australians and Canadians. By contrast the professional job pool in most continental cities is filled by nationals. If you talk to continental business executives, they will often acknowledge that they can rarely recruit senior staff from the UK or the US. (Note from Trent: See these related Den Beste posts here, here, and most especially HERE.)

At the moment there is no crisis. Germany finds itself short of skilled people, particularly in IT, which is pretty astounding given the high level of unemployment generally. And there are complaints from top managers that their best people want to go to London or New York. Italy, too, is losing a lot of young professionals who cannot find jobs locally. But the exodus of talent is manageable for now.

The danger is that the exodus will become so serious that the tax base will be eroded. So movement of labour will compound the adverse effect of an ageing society. The best young will leave – even if it means putting up with only two weeks holiday in the US or London public transport – and there will be even fewer workers to pay the swelling pension bill.

Europeans can reasonably choose to cede the active role in world policing to the US. They can reasonably chose to have greater leisure and lower take-home pay. Equally, they can chose to pay high taxes and get in return high benefits.

The danger is that the consequences of these choices are not being made fully clear. At a political level, it is not being made clear to Europeans (except brutally by Donald Rumsfeld) that the sole superpower will not pay much attention to what they think. At an economic level it is not made clear that the present levels of pensions cannot be sustained. Most important of all, it is not being made clear to young people that their living standards – if they stay in Europe – will almost inevitably be lower than that of their parents.

The danger is that much of continental Europe will suddenly reach a tipping point, when taxes rise, deficits rise, unemployment rises, public services deteriorate, deflation takes hold – and the best of the young depart, leaving the old and the poor to cope as best they can.

The unfunded pension liabilities of Western Europe are coming due. In 20 years every Continental state in Western Europe will be functionally, if not outright, bankrupt from pension pay outs. The economy killing effects of the run up to that are starting to be felt.

You see the biggest unstated reason the various national politicians in Europe went along with the gradualist and expanding E.U. since the end of the Cold War is demographic. They want to stick the relatively younger East European nations with the bill for West European pensions via passing them through the E.U.

The current generation of national level European democratic politicians are trying to kick the can of their unsustainable pension and social system down the road, rather than deal with the political pain transitioning to the American economic model would bring. It is one of the reasons why Chirac and Schröder were totally blind to the implications what E.U. expansion east would mean for their plans to create an anti-American European super power.

There are other reasons for the Franco-German E.U. meltdown. Armed Liberal and I have been batting about the theme of "the French are just plain evil" for a while. I think we are seeing here a piece of poetic justice, because being an arrogant anti-democratic elite means you overlook the *obvious* things like vote counts _inside the E.U._

JMM: Ultimate Iraq Interview

Liberal blogger and journalist Joshua Micah Marshall recently conducted an interview with Ken Pollack, the Clinton-era National Security Council member tasked with a portfolio that included Iraq.

Pollack's book, The Threatening Storm, has "absolute must-read" status in light of the current situation. No-one else, left or right, has tackled the issue of Saddam's Iraq with Ken's level of clarity, detail, and thoughtfulness. No-one. Part 2 has been a long time coming, but here's the whole interview at last.

"KP: "I've always felt that we had to go to war against Iraq sooner rather than later. But I didn't necessarily think it had to be this year. And there were always a whole bunch of things that I wanted to do to make sure that we were ready to go when we did go. But the problem that I face now is that I think we are so deep into this - we are so far down this road - that it is now or never. I think that if we don't go to war this time around I don't think we will ever go to war with Saddam Hussein until he's acquired nuclear weapons. And then he picks the time and place of going to war ... if given my preference I would prefer not to be in the position we're in. But I can't turn back time. And we're in the position we're in. And at this point in time, as messy as it may be, I think that it is now or never. And now is a much better option than never."

JMM: Those are the lines from my interview with Ken Pollack that most captured and confirmed the mix of resolution, ambivalence and anger I feel about the situation we're currently in with Iraq."

As arch-blogger Vodkapundit would say if he wasn't so busy moving, it's today's must-read.

Winds of War: 2003-02-21

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without drowning out the rest of our posts, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

Steven Den Beste on the guiding philosophy and objectives behind the EU. One of his better postings. Ever.

James Lileks had one of his best ever on Wednesday. From Siantra and America as the "Axis of Elvis," to the "peace" demonstrators, to the current UN-related articles of faith among many on the left. As smooth and hip as Sinatra himself.

Students for Democracy maven Josh Chafetz say the Iranian Students are looking at recent American foreign policy... and it's making them happy.

America's clerics seem as oblivious to this as Iran's are. Fortunately there's Rev. Sensing, bringing the themes Lileks and Chafetz talk about to bear on the religious response to Iraq: "just war," or not? Alas, his clerical debating opponents absolutely prove Lileks' points. My thoughts can be found in Donald's Comments section.

I mentioned this in yesterday's Winds of War, but it deserves a second shout-out. On the anniversary of his son's death, Daniel Pearl's father has an outstanding article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "The Tide of Madness."

That "Peace In Our Time" sign at the recent protests? It was for real!

The Turks may be giving in. Rantburg has the details, and the background briefing re: what's at stake.

Liberal blogger The Agonist has a shocker: did Chancellor Schroder suppress information about Saddam's smallpox stores before the German election, the better to enable him to play the Anti-American card? When a European manages to piss off American liberals, you know it ain't good. LGF has more.

"But the history of Germany and Europe in the 20th century in particular certainly teaches us this: that while military force cannot be the normal continuation of politics by other means, it must never be ruled out, or even merely questioned... as the ultimate means of dealing with dictators" Speaker? Ms. Angela Merkel, Germany's opposition (CDU) leader. Some folks say she's almost... Thatcherite. Bet that scares the hell out of Chiraq.

Fiction writers, give up! The truth is always stranger.

Liberal blogger Calpundit looks at what comes after Saddam, and has an excellent question for both the pro-invasion and "not in my name" crowds: what are the criteria for success?

Military Blogger "Lt. Smash" to Saddam, during a break from the action on the scene: "You think you got game? Come out and play."

Pejman has a new hero. Poet and ex-communist, lover of Dante and Persian poetry. Icon to Hitchens, Amis and Paul Johnson alike. Advocate for the Anglosphere. Folks, meet Robert Conquest!

Sami Al-Arian first had the spotlight turned on him by the incomparable Steve Emerson. Yesterday, the University of South Florida professor was arrested and charged with being the head of Islamic Jihad in North America. (UPDATE: Parapundit has more)

Looks like US military forces are about to take a swipe at the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines.

MCCAIN: "I think that the Chinese have to understand that unless they become very engaged with North Korea and bring about a very quick resolution to this crisis -- and it is a crisis -- that the Japanese will have no choice but to nuclear arm themselves. That's the obligation that they have to protect the security of their people...." Great interview. Pay special attention to his comments re: Germany.

We always try to end on a lighter note. Short Strange Trip takes some ready.gov Homeland Security pamphlets, and captions them properly: Your Tax Dollars at Work [ part 1 | part 2 ]

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The Bard's Breath: Saddam Haiku

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

The Wall Street Journal's poetry contest gave us a series of haikus imagining Saddam's death. The first is from John Gooderham even follows the rule of mentioning a season:

Underground Saddam
Thermobaric bombs away
Springtime love and peace

Groovy! Brian Donnelly, meanwhile, submits this haiku inspired by Simon & Garfunkel:

Saddam sings, "I am
Iraq, I am an island."
Soon: Sounds of Silence.

Guess they've all come, to look for America. Finally, Yoav Griver envisions the aftermath:

All Saddam's portraits
Consigned to dustbins at last
God Bless the U.S.

Yoav, this is the Internet age. They'll go as cut-rate souveneirs on eBay.

48 Ways to Wisdom: Way #18 - Physical Pleasure

This is a regular feature on Winds of Change. Every Friday (for Friday evening begins the Jewish Sabbath), we cover one more way to wisdom from Rabbi Noah Weinberg. These materials are written by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, but are written in such a way that they retain their value no matter what creed you follow.

Think of it as a gentle and modern way of sharing 5,000+ years of accumulated wisdom. Today's feature talks about physical pleasure. As a way to wisdom? Yes.

Human beings are pleasure-seekers. The more pleasure, the more power. Figure out how to transform raw physical sensation into the deeper pleasures of love, meaning, creativity. Don't worry -- you won't lose the physical pleasure. You'll actually enhance and appreciate it more.... Be a gourmet of life. Focus and make sure you're getting the full pleasure. Swish it around in your mind and prolong its taste. The deeper appreciation will motivate and energize you."

There's more, much more. From avoiding over-indulgence and kicking habits to taking full advantage of the joys life sends your way. Read the rest.

Risky Business (Part 2/6)

[Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 ]

You knew I was going to open with that.

Everyone thinks that the success of the American economic model is built on success; on our ability to produce winning enterprises. We focus on looking back at the history of the winning enterprises…profiled in Forbes or Business Week…and try and see what lessons we can learn.

We're doing it wrong.

The success of the American economic model is built largely on failure.

It is built on our willingness as a people to try things and to risk failing; built on the fact that we accept failure as part of the price of ultimate success; and ultimately on our willingness to accept displacement and change as a natural part of our social and economic lives. From the Wall Street Journal:

The early years of the U.S. railroad industry were crowded with hundreds of start-ups. "In the 1840s and 1850s, it seemed like everybody and his brother was chartering a railroad," says Anne Calhoun, reference librarian at the B&O; Railroad Museum in Baltimore. "It was the new thing to do, like the Internet is now."

In February 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first common-carrier railroad in the U.S., meaning the first rail transportation system to carry freight and passengers for revenue. (The "common-carrier" concept was later applied to telecommunications.) By 1935, B&O; had absorbed more than 100 other lines, "some of which existed only on paper," Ms. Calhoun notes. Similar consolidations happened all over the U.S., as other railroad companies acquired weaker rivals.

The history of the auto industry repeats this pattern. Records indicate that as many as 2,600 vehicle-making companies have been started in the U.S. since 1896, when brothers J. Frank Duryea and Charles Duryea launched Duryea Motor Wagon Co. in Springfield, Mass. "Some never really got off the ground, or made only one car," says Mark Patrick, curator of the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library.

Most of these companies were formed before 1929; the Great Depression wiped out scores of them. Others were bought out by larger competitors or couldn't compete with mass producers such as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. -- the last remaining major U.S. car companies. Many just couldn't muster the resources to survive. "They were undercapitalized," Mr. Patrick says, "just like a lot of small companies today."

What does this mean for the economy?

read the rest! »

Great Cross-Blog Iraq Debate Concludes

5 Questions per side, answers open to anyone, and the bell has rung. As they say on Iron Chef: "the battle is ovah!"

The (employed again, congrats) N.Z. Bear has the pro-invasion answer roundup. Stand Down has the anti-intervention answer roundup.

...and Mark Shea has a 3rd party perspective worth listening to.

Winds of War: 2003-02-20

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without drowning out the rest of our posts, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

One year ago today... R.I.P., Daniel Pearl. (UPDATE: Instapundit has some words from Daniel's Dad.)

Rick Heller (of Smart Genes) thinks most of the war plans are wrong: Saddam will strike first.

Good thing the U.S. has finally deployed sophisticated detection equipment that will alert its troops if chemical weapons are used against them. What is it? You have to read this to believe it.

Two major plane crashes in the Islamic world have left over 300 Iranian Revolutionary Guards (near Iraq's border... hmmm) and several Pakistani military bigwigs dead. Greatest Jeneration has the scoop.

I'm always a bit leery of DEBKA reports, but it looks like the story about the Palestinians building explosives-filled model planes bought with EU aid money is true. The Palestinian intifada, folks: al-Qaeda's little copycats. Or is it the other way around?

"They are feeling: The world opinion is with us. We can resist further pressure. We have time. We can play with the U.S. and U.K.," a U.N. official said. "This is very dangerous." A U.N. Inspector gives the "peace" movement a big thank-you. (Hat Tip: Donald Sensing)

Robert Mugabe, currently carrying out a policy of genocide by starvation, has arrived in France. There are no protesters bothering him. Which tells you all you need to know.

Cato the Youngest covers the growing problems with Turkish cooperation, part of which seems to be predicated on swallowing the Kurds (and oilfields) in northern Iraq. Note to Cato: to punish the Turks, badly, all we'd have to do is push matters to a head within the IMF. They're playing a weak hand, which is why the USA is standing firm.

For full coverage of the problem with Turkey, this page is very good.

Rantburg also has some information, straight from the Turks' mouth.

From a Kurd: "Now, this UN business is really depressing me. Why can't they do the right thing? Many nations contributed to building this monstrous regime. Why not help to undo the damage inflicted on us? ...Please send help." It gets better from there.

It's not about Iraq, says Fareed Zakaria. It never has been. Steven Den Beste comments, and adds an analysis of the current dynamics within the EU.

Remember the item in yesterday's "Winds of War" about the 3rd Armored Cavalry at Fort Carson receiving its deployment orders? As fate would have it, there's a blogger on the scene. Read Andrew Olmstead's report.

Mader Blog links to the report on Saddam's "WMD ships" (Donald Sensing has another link). I say leave them alone. Even if you captured them, the Left would just claim that we'd seized all of Saddam's weapons and the threat was over. Let 'em sail, and keep track of them... when Saddam is gone, they'll surrender without creating major risks.

Have the Saudis stopped beating their wives yet? Guess not. (Hat Tip: Right Wing News)

Quietly, and with little fanfare, the Pentagon and the CIA have been building up a sizeable presence in Djibouti, near Ethopia and Somalia. About 2,000 troops are busy, busy, busy.

Newsrack is having an interesting discussion with German blogger Jens Scholz over the occupation of the Rhineland and its relationship to present situations.

How crazy are the North Koreans? Moscow-based newspaper The Exile knows.

Generally, we always end on a humourous note. Not content with starting "Axis of Weasels," Scott Ott goes one better on France's President, uh... just read it.

That was funny. But so is this. Seliot has a plan to ... uh ... undermine the march to war. Uma Thurman is involved.

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The Bard's Breath: Saving Jesse Brown

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory. My insight from yesterday: sometimes, the best and most stirring words are the ones that are true - and it's the bard's duty to bring them to life, too.

My colleague Armed Liberal has started a great series about risk. His friend Bill Whittle writes about courage, and love. So pull up a chair. Let's talk about risk. And courage. and love.

This is the story of the Navy's first Black aviator, Jesse Brown (Air Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross), and his wingman Thomas Hudner (Medal of Honor). Jesse was a sharecropper's son. Thomas had attended the best Massachusetts prep schools. December 4, 1950 was another bitterly cold day in a hot Korean war, and both of their lives were about to change.

"I knew what I had to do," said Hudner in an interview by Frank Geary, for Jax Air News, the Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla., base newspaper. "I was not going to leave him down there for the Chinese. Besides, it was 30 degrees below zero on that slope, and he was a fellow aviator. My association with the Marines had rubbed off on me. They don't leave wounded Marines behind." Hudner tightened his harness and, with his wheels up, set his Corsair down onto the snow and rocks some 100 yards from Brown's smoking aircraft."

They were 6,000 feet above sea level on a Korean mountain slope close to the Choisin Reservoir. Chinese army troops would be along soon, in numbers...

For the rest of the story, and its aftermath, you'll just have to follow this link.

Self-making arguments

A while ago, I did a post on Armed Liberal called BOYCOTT FRANCE?? MAIS OUAIS!!; this was in response to the anti-Semitic comments from members of the French government, and the casual attitude of the French (at the time) toward anti-Semitic acts of violence and vandalism.

It's been getting Googled a lot lately, for some reason, and I managed to annoy a couple of French commentators.

One in particular managed to make my point for me:

just checked your comments on WoC...
You're obviously a dangerous extreme right fascist jew... I don't talk to assassins like you.
Adieu, pauvre tache.

Posted by: La Djoolasse on February 19, 2003 04:26 PM

I replied:

ROTFL...

Hey D'joulesse...thanks for making my point!

Just some facts to clarify things. I'm not Jewish. I lived in Paris for over a year, probably spent another year there over the next ten years, and spent a significant amount of time taking the RER into 'les bains'; I was studing l'urbanisme at the time.

I'll let my comment about connerie stand.

A.L.

Posted by: Armed Liberal on February 19, 2003 04:52 PM

ly, I don't blame all the French; I've met foolish people from the U.S.A as well. But I'll note that one of the telling blows he struck was to call me a Jew...

...so no Michelin tires tonight, we're buying Pirellis for the minivan instead.

[Update: a new comment from France:

What is nice with us, French people, is that we cannot think and write at the same time.

Bravo La Djoulasse !
You dare utter racist insults "dangerous extreme right fascist jew" and at the same time write "That doesn't mean the all country is anti-Semite" ?

Explain the contradiction or should we understand that you think that a good jew is a dead jew? It is a very popular feeling among your friends in the "banlieues" today.

By the way I live in "St Denis" and the synagogue next door has been fire bombed twice in the last 4 months. Stop smoking "Le Monde" and open your eyes ! if you want to ...

"There is no blinder person that the one who does not open his eyes to look!"

Posted by Jean Claude at February 20, 2003 12:31 AM

Thanks, Jean-Claude; I don't doubt the fundamental decency and sense of the individual French citoyen, and I'm grateful to France for more than my two half-French sons.]

Guest Blog: Beating the "2 Ring Defense"

Winds of Change.NET has run a number of Guest Bloggers, most recently M. Simon's explanation of how greener auto technologies go from prototype to production. Today, frequent blog commenter G. Haubold steps up with some thoughts about the coming Iraq campaign.

Baghdad in One: The Haubold Plan
by G. Haubold

Reading the stuff around and about regarding the precisely-choreographed "two-ring" defense of Baghdad got me thinking... so with a hat-tip to Herr Schlieffen, here is the Haubold plan.

But first, a preface.

Alexander's battle strategies aren't well understood... partly because he died young and partly because he had a genuinely noxious habit of killing all his good generals (I've long been a "Cletus the Black" fan, myself). Anyway, lest I digress, Alexander had good success in his ancient day-and-age attacking the part of the enemy line which contained the commander in chief. Kill or chase away the commander in chief, and his army stopped fighting.

Clausewitzian dictums about destroying the enemy force in the field are all well and good, but it's more important to win the war. What is the present regime in Iraq about, other than Saddam? Kill him and the war's over. Even better, make an instantaneous, legitimate claim to have killed him and knock out all Iraqi Command, Control & Communication. You don't even have to kill him to kill him. If you can claim he's dead and eliminate his ability to deny it, then he. is. dead. Or just kill one of his "body doubles," and exhibit the corpse.

How might we accomplish that?

This is the first war at Internet speed. I'm ly very hopeful General Franks learned many things from the Afghani experience. He started out at a molasses pace with no success, and the faster he went the more success he found.

Who knows what the U.S. strategy WILL BE in Iraq this time, but what it should be is, EVERTHING ALL AT ONCE - bigger, louder and scarier than ever.

One piece of conventional wisdom that's going straight down the reputational path of the Maginot Line (or even the Bar Lev line, for a more recent example) is that a house-to-house Stalingrad style battle for Baghdad would be deadly for U.S. invaders. It might be if we slugged it out that way, but we don't have to. According to the NYT, the Iraqi's have a neat "set-piece" double ring static defense around Baghdad. Fine. Just Fine. The nice thing about static defenses, however skilled, is that they don't move. That's what static is. Static is as static does. And if it doesn't and can't move, it's dead dead dead.

We know static defense is dead. Saint Patton said so, way back in WWII, for God's sake. In part because we have absolute control of the air, we can move fast and fearless, and the Iraqis can barely move at all. Remember the highway of death, last time? Please, God or Allah or whomever, let them move and let us kill them, wholesale. Last go round in Khafji they even got stuck in one of their own minefields!

So, why not figure out the locations of the command and control, and center of gravity inside Baghdad AND TAKE THOSE OUT FIRST? Airmobile, Air-assault, Air-everything. AND FAST FAST FAST, and knock out the Iraqi communications simultaneously and broadcast to all the Iraqi troops that the war is OVER and Saddam is DEAD?

Look at it this way: a lightning air-mobile strike into the center of Baghdad accompanied by the dropping of ten or twenty of the "Big BLU" 20,000 pounders under development. It doesn't matter as much where they hit (just give the hospitals very wide berth) as long as they hit the ground and make a very big BANG. Cut off absolutely all Iraqi communications and then announce to the world that Saddam is almost certainly dead and the war is over. Time for all patriotic Iraqis to drop their weapons and celebrate and dance to the music.

The two "sacred rings" are way out there to defend the center of Baghdad, presumably. So kill the center of Baghdad and don't even fight the two "sacred rings". Or if you want to, just send in two lightning armored strikes from separate sides like daggers into the heart of the city while airmobiling into the heart of the city as well.

The whole Iraqi strategy is bankrupt, not to mention that anybody expecting Iraqi soldiers to fight an incredibly difficult tactical retreat from the outer ring to the inner ring is entirely delusional. The best soldiers have trouble doing THAT, and IRAQI soldiers are not the best. Fighting for Saddam, they might well be the very worst, though the Italians and French can always give anybody a run for the money.

If you were an Iraqi soldier anywhere - inside Baghdad, on the outer ring or inner ring, or anywhere, what would you do? The US has just rained the biggest bombs you've ever seen, heard or felt on your head uncontested, US special ops seem to occupy all the major CCC centers in Baghdad, SADDAM is NOT calling on line 1 (or 2, 3 or 4 for that matter) and CNN says that the US has announced that Saddam is "almost certainly" dead and the war is over in the first 24 hours? You make the call.

The first Internet-speed war. Over in 24 hours, maybe.

That's my thought for the night. This one, anyway.

The Bard's Breath: "The Price of Peace"

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

If you haven't seen Dissident Frogman's brilliant and artistic creation yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. (Hat Tip: Greatest Jeneration)

Risk (Part 1/6)

[Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 ]

Sometimes I think my life is ruled by synchronicity (think Koestler, not Sting).

First, Bill Whittle does his lyrical piece on "Courage".

Then it turns out that Tenacious G and the boys haven't seen the Branagh 'Henry V', so we jump it to the head of the Netflix queue, and it shows up in the mail. We watched it the other night, and it was still wonderful (Yes, Bacchus, I'm still supporting Branagh's erotic reward). My boys loved it as well; Littlest Guy, who is six, wanted to watch it again the next day, and spent the time after bath and before bed wandering the house in his blue PJ's-with-rocket-ships-and-feet and a stern look, declaiming "No King of England if not King of France." I love my sons and they are wonderful, but they are a bit…odd, sometimes. Somehow that line over all the others had caught him, and he and I had a long discussion in which I explained that Henry wanted to be King of France, and that he was willing to risk losing England to get it.

Then, as a part of a possible venture I may do with an old friend, we had a long 'strategy' talk, in which one issue that we tried to address is our differing appetite for risk; he's been incredibly (deservedly) successful, and as a consequence has capital he wants to preserve, while I'm trying to get to the point of having some capital to worry about losing.

And I had one of my frequent "aha!" moments, and I realized that the issue of courage is really inseparable from the issue of risk, and that we have, I believe some issues with risk in this society, and I think that those issues are of vital importance today.

- They are important to our self-understanding as people;
- They are important to understanding what is happing to our economy;
- They are important to our politics;
- Many of the social issues we face in America today center around different understandings of risk;
- And finally, our struggles over decisions about Iraq have much to do with our differing perceptions and reactions to risk.

read the rest! »

Winds of War: 2003-02-19

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

Sen. John McCain has some advice for Fiskie Award winner Jimmy Carter. Unlike Chirac's recent outburst, this one is appropriate and backed by a long and wise tradition.

Damn, but I wish I could have heard James Earl Jones say this instead of just reading it. What? You mean I can! (warning: sound quality is not great)

South Korean legislators are creating a bloc to push for continued US military involvement there. My emotions on hearing this are best described as "mixed". (Hat Tip: Instapundit)

John Ringo reports via email that journalists are being integrated with US military units in significant numbers. They were all supposed to go through a form of quickie boot camp, but they're just being sent right out now. Low on time, are we?

Tom Holsinger reports via email that the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Carson got its deployment orders. Go "Brave Rifles"!

Rev. Donald Sensing seems to have found something that unites the religious left and the religious far right: anti-Judaism. The best comparison he can think of was Dr. King's: "Southerners, he said, hated the black race but often loved black individuals. Northerners were affectionate for the race but often despised black persons."

For a demonstration of the above, it's hard to find a better example than Edward Said's latest article. NY Daily News has the scoop.

Dean Esmay, who spearheaded the "Democracy in Iraq online" campaign last weekend, has a fascinating excerpt from the New York Times (of all places). Seems they asked some Iraqis in Jordan, who don't like the USA, what should happen next. The answer may surprise you.

Speaking of campaigns for democracy, congrats to the Oxbloggers on their article in the Wall Street Journal. Student activism as a force for good again? You betcha.

Mark Steyn has recovered his form. He says that the curtain will come down on the peaceniks. (Hat Tip: /watch)

Dixie Flatline is less temperate. "That is what you support. A real tyrant, not the Hitler-Bush of your late-night dorm-room bull-session fantasies. A real tyrant, real victims. Should you prevail, their blood is on your hands."

"Dear marcher, please answer a few questions...." And excellent questions thet are, too. From the Guardian, no less. (Hat Tip: /watch)

Tom Friedman: "...it's time for the Bush team to shape up — dial down the attitude, start selling this war on the truth, give us a budget that prepares the nation for a war abroad, not a party at home, and start doing everything possible to create a global context where we can confront Saddam without the world applauding for him."

Sgt. Stryker thinks Turkey's latest actions may be holding things up, but they're not unreasonable. I agree. Still, time is running out... and if a southern-only war results in any kind of serious trouble, the Turks will find that a very precarious economy + US anger is a bad combination.

Remember that North Korean ship with the SCUDs on it near Yemen? It stopped off at Germany, then picked up some nerve gas chemicals on its return trip. This isn't an isolated case, either. Tell us again what moral people you are, Chancellor Schroder... (for the full story, click on the "Washington Times" link when you get there)

Admiral Stansfield Turner, fmr. Director of Central Intelligence, has some ideas for reforming the intelligence system. Unfortunately, they're structural rather than cultural.

Reuters announces loss, plans to cut 3,000 jobs. Obviously, their "management" is finally enjoying the "success" they deserve. Maybe they can find some Saudi "investors" - the ideology already matches.

LGF, meanwhile, offers a picture of Saddam Hussein and Jacques Chirac, posing inside the nifty new French nuclear reactor at Osirak. Some things never change. Of course, this was before Col. Ilan Ramon and his Israeli Air Force buddies showed up and took care of business.

Speaking of Chirac, his latest bluster isn't going over well. New Europe is even talking back. As for Chirac's outbursts, GlennReynolds.com asks: is that a threat, or a promise?

Al-Bawaba has an interesting review of Israel's new Merkava-4 tank. The verdict: it's built for war with Syria.

We'll end this one on a bittersweet note today. Sgt. Mom discusses the aftermath of war: the story of her parents' Vietnamese son.

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Heroes: Father Vincent Capodanno

As in "Medal of Honor recipient Marine Chaplain" Father Vincent Capodanno. Reverened Sensing has noted that pacifism isn't what it used to be, and this story is surely further proof of that.

First a Maryknoll missionary serving in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Father Capodanno became a Navy Chaplain and served with the 7th and 5th Marines in Vietnam. He called them "my Marines," and was always there for them when they needed him. They called him "The Grunt Padre," the highest compliment they could bestow.

At 4:30 am, September 4th, 1967 , in the Thang Binh District of the Que-Son Valley, elements of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines found the large North Vietnamese Unit, approx. 2500 men, near the village of Dong Son. By 9:14 am, twenty-six Marines were confirmed dead. The situation was in doubt and another Company of Marines was committed to the battle. At 9:25 am, the 1st Battalion 5th Marine Commander requested assistance of two company's of the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, "M"and "K" Company.

During those early hours, Chaplain Capodanno received word of the battle taking place. He sat in on the morning briefing at the 3rd Battalion's Combat Operations Center. He took notes and listened to the radio reports coming in. As the elements of Company "M" and "K" prepared to load the helicopters. "Fr.Vince" requested to go with them. His Marines needed him. "It's not going to be easy" he stated.

Wounded once in the face and suffering another wound that almost severed his hand, Father Capodanno was killed while trying to save the life of a fellow servicemen. He received the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1971.

Father Capodanno never fired a weapon in anger, yet "his Marines" still consider him one of their great heroes. His example is a stark reminder to us all that pacifism can be a brave and honourable stand. It also stands as a stark reminder of the moral chasm that has opened beneath the feet of Western pacifism in the last 40 years.

A Soldier's E-Mail Changes Their Equipment

Yesterday, Trent answered a reader and talked about the darker side of military procurement - as seen from the inside. Today, we have a happier story.

What follows is the text of Master Sgt. Rudy Romero's e-mail to one of his old commanding officers after he returned from Afghanistan last July. A month after he hit the "send" button, Romero got a call telling him to go to its U.S. Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., where engineers were busily at work developing the gear that soldiers take into battle. He spent 2 weeks over there with a couple of his buddies, and apparently changed some minds. This is the letter that started it all...

HOWS EVERYTHING GOING SIR. HOPE YOUR DOING FINE. WE SHOULD GET TO GETHER FOR LUNCH SOMETIME, I KNOW A PRETTY GOOD PLACE IF YOU LIKE MEXICAN.

I WOULD LIKE TO PASS ON A FEW THINGS LEARNED DURING OUR RECENT DEPLOYMENT. IT WONT BE IN A SPECIFIC ORDER SO BARE WITH ME.

I GUESS THE BIGGEST LESSON I LEARNED IS NOTHING CHANGES FROM HOW YOU TRAIN AT JRTC. WE ALL TRY TO INVENT NEW DILEMAS AND TTP'S BECAUSE IT'S A REAL DEPLOYMENT BUT WE END UP OUT SMARTING OURSELVES. GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW, STICK WITH HOW YOU TRAIN.

SOME OF THE THINGS IN PARTICULAR WERE SOLDIERS LOAD, BECAUSE YOU'RE IN THE MNTS OF AFGHANISTAN YOU TRY TO INVENT NEW PACKING LISTS, OR NEW UNIFORMS. SOME UNITS WENT IN WITH GORTEX AND POLY PRO ONLY, WHEN THE WX GOT BAD THEY WERE THE ONLY ONES TO HAVE COLD WX INJ THAT NEEDED TO BE EVACED. WEVE ALL FIGURED OUT HOW TO STAY WARM DURING THE WINTER SO DONT CHANGE YOUR UNIFORMS. IT WAS NEVER AS COLD AS I VE SEEN IT HERE OR FT BRAGG DURING THE WINTER.

BECAUSE OF THE HIGH ALTITUDE'S AND ROUGH TERRAIN WE ALL SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMBAT LIGHT. THATS THE FIRST THING YOU LEARN AT JRTC, YOU CANT FIGHT WITH A RUCK ON YOUR BACK. WE PACKED TO STAY WARM AT NIGHT, WHICH WAS A MISTAKE; YOU TAKE ONLY ENOUGH TO SURVIVE UNTIL THE SUN COMES UP. WE HAD EXTREME DIFFICULTY MOVING WITH ALL OUR WEIGHT. IF OUR MOVEMENT WOULD HAVE BEEN TO RELIEVE A UNIT IN CONTACT OR A TIME SENSITIVE MISSION WE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO MOVE IN A TIMELY MANNER. IT TOOK US 8 HOURS TO MOVE 5 CLICKS.

The Rest of the letter can be found by clicking the link below... I've also worked up a Glossary of military terms (previous post) that will make some of Romero's stuff clearer.

read the rest! »

Romero's Email: A Glossary of Military Terms

Some of the terms in Master Sargeant Romero's letter about Afghanistan are likely to be confusing unless you're very familiar with military terms and abbreviations. This alphabetical guide will help you translate:

1SG = 1st Sargeant
5 CLICKS = 5 kilometers (3 miles)
60's / 81's = types of mortars (60mm, 81mm Shells)
AH-64 = Apache attack helicopter
ALO = air liason officer
ATK = attack
BATTS = batteries
BOLLE GOOGLES = a brand of sunglasses
BINOS = binoculars
BIRD = helicopter
BN = batallion
CAP = Combat Air Patrol
CAS = close air support
CLU = command launch unit for portable missiles, can also be used stand-alone as a day/night sighting device
COBRA = AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter
EIB = Expert Infantryman Badge
GATORS = small four-wheel-drive vehicles
INJ = injuries
HE = High Explosive
HELO = helicopter
JRTC = Joint Readiness Training Center
KENTUCKY WINDAGE = 'guesstimating' when aiming a weapon because the zero is incorrect (q.v. "zero")
LBV = lightweight ballistic vest
LZ = landing zone
MSR STOVE = Mountain Safety Research brand portable stove
M203 = grenade launcher that fits under the M-16/M-4, or a round fromn one
M240 = 7.62mm medium machine gun
M4 = compact version of the M-16 5.56mm rifle
M68 = small non-telescopic gunsight with a red "aiming dot"
MTR = mortar
NVG = Night Vision Goggles
PL = Platoon Leader
RDS = rounds
RUCK = rucksack, backpack
S-3 = staff officer responsible for plans, operations and training
S-4 = officer responsible for logistics planning and supply
SAW = Squad Automatic Weapon, 5.56mm light machine gun
SMAW = modern version of the bazooka rocket launcher
SNIVEL GEAR = comfort items
TTP's = Tactics Techniques and Procedures
THERMITE = burns and gives off lots of heat and light
TM = team
WP = White Phosphorous rounds that can create smoke, set fires and burn people, mark targets for engagement, or even signal the beginning of an assault
WX = weather
WPNS = weapons
ZERO = adjust the sights on a weapon so that the point of impact at a specified range is at the point of aim

Winds of War: 2003-02-18

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

Today's must-read is up over at ChicagoBoyz. Is the USA about to betray the democrats in Iraq? ly, I find this plausible. And appalling. Christopher Hitchens, please call your office - then call these guys out.

More on Al-Qaeda in Iran.

And more on that guy arrested in Gatwick airport with a grenade. Venezuelan? Maybe. Care to guess his name?

Looks like Trent blogged Random Thoughts' North Korea bit before I did. RT also has some good advice for South Korea. They won't take it.

A quick reminder of what the North Korean refugees face: hostility from all sides, including the South.

Calpundit, a liberal who supports the invasion of Iraq, points to some international polls to make a point. American Realpolitik chimes in with another poll, from France. Do these 2 polls complement or contradict one another? What's the message? Think it through.

Megan: don't back down under pressure. Yes, they're jerks. You're surprised? Suck it up, keep your cool, and keep firing. This isn't the French army, ya know.

Memo to El Sur: please come back.

Those Kurdish airstrips: Rantburg's commentary is parody. The airstrips are real, and important.

Silflay Hraka offers his thoughts about the Gulf War II game plan. Agree with his take that the template is probably closer to Panama than Gulf War I. So does Rev. Donald Sensing, who as Major Sensing was involved in Panama.

Meanwhile, on the scene, Lt. Smash has a proposal of his own for Saddam. And Salam Pax has a report from inside Iraq.

Hmm, this is less comforting. England's Sword notes a pattern of recent Iraqi enquiries about decontaminating anthrax.

More payback headed toward the Axis of Weasels. Steven Den Beste explains why changing the perceived cost:benefit ratio for opposing America is a good idea. Now, here's the connection he missed: Turkey is in Argentina-class financial trouble with the IMF, and is currently on the fence re: allowing US troops in.

Finally, Rantburg covers French leader Chirac's youthful stay in America: "So what went wrong? We tried our best. The guy had honest work, good beer, cheeseburgers and was getting laid regularly. What else could we have done?"

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Report from Ivory Coast

Remember that little African country where the French recently went in with troops, no UN resolution or nothin', and imposed a settlement so unpopular it triggered demonstrations asking for US intervention? Two updates.

The first comes from Gary Farber at Amygdala, with reports of massacres in the east. I'd like to see some follow-up on this. Gary's barb concerning bloggers who seek "winning a battle, by any means necessary, any accusation that can be hurled" certainly applies equally in a civil war. Then again, it could also be true.

I've been looking for some follow-up reports on the situation generally ever since, and Rantburg just gave me one. It definitely looks like a wider war will soon make the French failure complete, and force a choice: pick a side and come out shooting, or get out.

I know where my bet's going.

This is a bad situation, at a bad time for the people there because we're so distracted. Commenter joeh even notes that there may be a Muslim vs. Christian/Animist split fuelling this, and if so it's a precursor to something you'll see more of all across Africa. Don't be surprised if parts of Christianity start rediscovering the religion's militant side soon, in a continent with one of the world's fastest-growing Christian populations. The long-term implications are frankly explosive.

In the short term, the implications are equally explosive - and equally tragic. Worse, our options are very slim. With the French in place, intervention by any other power is not likely. UN involvement at any time, meanwhile, has a clear track record - massacres and increased violence. The Ivorians are basically on their own here, unless international pressure and ridicule force French action.

ly, I don't like the prognosis. A people saved by ridicule and comedy? Doesn't seem like much to hang our hat on, but right now it seems to be all we've got.

N.B. If anyone has further updates or insights rearding this developing situation, please let me know.

A North Korea Data Dump

The Random Thoughts blog has a data dump on North Korea by Professor Ashton Carter, formerly Clinton's point man on nonproliferation and North Korea.

I could exerpt it and point out all the places it confirms my thesis about North Korea being a kleptocratic state, but it is easier to simply give you the link.

About the only thing I object to in the data dump is the professor's ritual denunciation of the Bush Administration's handling of the North Korean situation.

Danegeld does not keep out the Dane.

Chemical Suits: What 60 Minutes Missed

Warren Ball e-mailed Joe about a story on 60 Minutes about a minor scandal involving defective chemical warfare protective suits. While I did not see the story, I am familiar with the scandal.

My day job is as a quality specialist for the Defense Department. The textile side of military procurement has been a nightmare for years because of the small business/minority set asides typically involved. Companies that get Defense Department textile contracts tend to be highly skilled political operators with poor business skills when it comes to actually executing the contract to DOD specs.

This particular problem with CBW suits surfaced in the defense trade press nine months to a year ago. I saw it exerpted on the Defense Department's Early Bird clipping service. The cause of the scandle was an under performing small business contractor with political connections. Almost every CBW suit this particular contractor made was defective. It is my understanding that the Army kept these suits in stock for use in training and not for actual combat deployment.

The usual method for conducting such fraud is "salting the samples" for textile acceptance with good product and substituting faulty product in what is actually shipped, after the government quality specialist has left the textile plant. It often times takes years for this to be found out as uniforms sit in warehouse depots before being issued.

One of the classic defense fraud cases we are taught about via our semi-annual ethics training classes (referred to semi-seriously by folks like me as "Ethical Cleansing") involves the US Army's BDU uniform. That uniform is supposed to be treated with a special chemical that reduces a soldier's heat signature on the battle field. Fellow quality specialists caught a textile contractor fraudulantly excluding this expensive treatment from his uniforms and pocketing the difference as profit. Our agency lawyers thought we had him dead to rights.

Then the defendent's lawyer called an Army general from a local base to the witness stand and asked him if he ordered his soldiers to starch and dry clean their battle dress uniforms. He said yes. Where upon the government's case fell apart.

You see, the chemical treatment requires the uniform to be washed only with no starch or dry cleaning, or the chemical treatment was destroyed. For the local jury, this made the DOD requirement irrelevant and the businessman got off.

This proved two things:

1) While the government had proved its case, the defendent's trial lawyer showed all and sundry that there was more than one way to win in court.

2) Government procurement is not an economic process. It is a political process whose economic results matter far more for the factions involved than for the general welfare of the public or military who receives the faulty goods and services.

In the particular example my ethics trainers used the local jury wasn't going to hang an otherwise reputable businessman and employer of local folks, because the US Army brass was brain dead in demanding well pressed uniforms in garrison over the capability to hide from enemy heat sensors in combat.

Emperor Misha's Transformation

Many of you know blogger "Emperor Misha I," a.k.a. the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. He was a die-hard European Marxist once, but I think we can safely say he's cured now. On both counts.

The story of exactly how he was cured is one that he's been promising us for a while. Today, he finally delivers. A very interesting story.

Winds of War: 2003-02-17

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, We've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let us know and we'll come take a look.

The push is still on to support Democracy in Iraq online! See the link for complete details, and instructions on how to get involved.

Trent Telenko has covered Bill Tierney's work before. Well, Tierney just went public with a bomb. Specifically, he believes that Saddam has the bomb -and he has a pretty good idea where the bombs and enrichment site are located. Follow the link from LGF.

Justin Sodano links to a good and credible post on how to survive WMD (chemical, biological, nuclear) attacks launched by terrorists. Especially appropriate in light of this post.

That, plus Armed Liberal's "Bug Out Kit," plus his "Be Prepared" Super First Aid Kit, should have you as ready as any prudent person could be to protect your loved ones and even help others. All part of the service here at Winds of Change.NET.

Donald Sensing reports that NATO shut France out of the discussions, then voted to support Turkey with defensive preparations.

At the same time, Turkey is holding back on allowing troop deployments by the Americans and British (indeed, the delay just got longer). This is a problem, as it delays efforts to get airmobile and 101 Airborne forces in position for attacks from the airfields they've built in the Kurdish areas (Anar and Tikrit, f'rinstance, would make great Day 1 objectives)

Vodkapundit has a heartening letter from Europe (Scotland, actually).

And another Euro with some spine and sense: Rome's mayor.

But for real heart, there's no-one to top Bill Whittle of EjectEjectEject!, and his "Courage" post re: the shuttle Columbia and so much more. The Romans said courage was the virtue that made all others possible. Read Bill, and grok why.

The 10 Downing Street (residence of the British Prime Minister) web site has a searing letter from an Iraqi, excoriating the so-called "anti-war" movement. This seems to be something of a trend whose moral message is clear. Instapundit has excerpts and the link.

Gary "Amygdala" Farber has another sobering letter from an Iraqi exile, who can't reconcile his conscience with marching against the war. This may be why.

Crises of conscience aren't always a problem. Take this neo-nazi who recently found his spiritual home at the Islamist Finsbury Mosque in London. The leader of the mosque is sure they both have a lot in common. So am I.

Instapundit has buckled. The correct answer, he says, really is that it's all about oil.

Friday's "Winds of War" included a piece by The Agonist on America's role in the world. Donald Sensing found that here, then addressed Sean-Paul's arguments (Part 1 | Part 2). I'm looking forward to the reply, whereupon we'll cover this discussion with a full post.

And finally, the award for "Best Humourous Coverage of Idiotarian Demonstrators": Diablogger, hands down!

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The Bard's Breath: Cold Fury, Hot Poster

"The Bard's Breath" is a daily weekday feature that brings you art, quotes and verse related to our times. We all need a bit more than just news to make it through what's coming next: Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

Words aren't the only tools of the true bard. Some of the sharpest pens have always belonged to illustrators, and today's entry is no exception. Cold Fury's Mike Hendrix is better known for his words, but he recently sat down at his Macintosh and turned a recent quote from the Osama tape into a poster that many of us will want for our walls.

France^3

Trent has extended his argument; I'm interspersing some comments below, and will reply with a longer post in the next day or so; I have an appointment with a William Hill Cabernet...

Please compare this from Collin May:

Now to France.
...
My point is that Jacques Chirac cast himself as the defender of Republican values, but Republican values have never found an exact fit with the French nation. Indeed, these values are now often diverging from the French nation itself and seeking something of a new home, a home that could be the new Europe. In other words, the French nation is splitting from the universal values it was supposed to incarnate, a split that began more or less with the end of its empire and the colonial wars following World War II. This is the great difference between events of September 11 and those of April 21. The attack on Republican values came from inside France, from people claiming to defend the French nation, whereas the US was attacked by a foreign intruder.

The implication is that the United States retains its national integrity in the face of foreign attack, while France is losing, even actively terminating, its national existence in favor of the European Union. French patriotism is committing suicide, while American patriotism is flowering.

AL: Yes, France is trying hard to leverage it's national power by tying Europe together into a bureaucratic suprastate - which France believes it will effectively control. Part of where our views diverge on this is that you seem to be saying that Republican (in the classical, rather than GOP sense) nationalism is key to the 'moral foundation' of French national politics. I don't see that as the case, because unlike us in the U.S., the French see themselves as a true 'people'. Their national standing is relatively independent of the political structure they live under...they would be a nation regardless, bound by language, tradition, and culture.

[Check out Vinod Valopillil's take on this (via Instapundit)]
----
N.B for the complete, updated history of this discussion arranged by date, see "Fight Night: The Dance In France")
----

read the rest! »

Google Buys Blogger: Analysis

Dan Gillmor's eJournal reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs, the company that built Blogger and runs blogspot.com.

In a sense, this move follows in the footsteps of their acquisition of DejaNews.com and recent creation of Google News. If news and commentary are indeed becoming more distributed, then these acquisitions provide both insurance of continuing relevance as a search company and a potential back door option into news and content distribution. Buying the most popular blogging tools vendor makes sense from this point of view, even if its tools are not the strongest in technical terms.

Other implications fall into several categories. One is somewhat - it ups the odds on Dave Winer winning his $2,000 bet: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site." Some of us would consider the buyout good news on this basis alone.

Yet it also heralds a period of uncertainty for the field as a whole. Several large service and content providers are working on or looking at blog-related features of their own, and blogging tool vendors are not financially strong. Which means one can bet on some acquisitions by the likes of Yahoo, AOL et. al. I for one don't expect Movable Type (which runs Winds of Change.NET), to retain its independence into 2004.

Which brings in the spectre of proprietary changes to blogging software that begins to do things like interfere with XML feeds et. al., or ties it to other platforms (most likely bet: instant messaging). If the fragmentation of techincal and authentication standards that have plagued the browser and instant messaging worlds comes to blogging, we'll all be the poorer for it. This is an issue that will deserve bloggers' future attention and vocal support.

In the short term, however, outcomes are clearer - and happier. Blog*Spot will move onto Google's infrastructure setup. For the sake of all our colleagues on Blog*Spot, we certainly hope this makes the service more reliable and robust. It will also be a boon to many bloggers in countries like Iran, and that's more good news for all of us. Let's just hope that at some point, Google also takes on the issue of Blogger's security (or lack thereof).

Final thought: Ev has put in a tremendous amount of hard work, and Blogger is changing the face of news and politics. Many of us live our lives hoping that along the way, something we do might make a real and positive difference to the world around us. Ev achieved it. For him to get paid in real terms as well is a final act of justice worthy of celebration.

Congratulations, Ev!

The Noo-clear Risk

A while ago, I played out a scenario in which:

One nice afternoon, I'm sitting here in my home office near the Palos Verdes peninsula when I notice a brilliant flash of light and some of my windows break.

The power goes out, the telephones, cell phones, and computers don't work. My backup AM/SW/SSB radio in the garage doesn't work, and I step onto my driveway and look toward San Pedro and see a dark mushroom cloud.

We'll skip over the fact that all the electronics in the area are kaput because of EMP, and hypothesize a working TV or radio, which informs me that it appears that a small - 5KT - nuke has just exploded on a container ship in San Pedro harbor, along with another one in Red Hook, just across from Manhattan, and another one at the container yard in Seattle.

We'll skip over the hundred thousand or so who have just died or will die at each site in the coming week, from burns and radiation poisoning, or from one of the diseases or a lack of medical attention caused by the collapse of the public health system.

My family and I are not in immediate danger, because I'm maybe 10 miles from the blast center, and shielded by the mass of Palos Verdes hill, and the prevailing winds are onshore, meaning they blow the radioactive dust inland and away from me, but the next few days are pretty chaotic.

Well, the local paper just picked this up.

WHAT IF?

SCENARIO: Experts say the Port of Los Angeles is vulnerable to nuclear terrorism that would bring mass casualties to the area and send shock waves through the national economy. Here’s how it could unfold.

By Josh Grossberg
DAILY BREEZE

It’s a bright, clear morning in San Pedro.

A slight sea breeze blows inland and the sun glints off the Pacific. Cargo ships idle in the water, while cranes swing back and forth unloading packages. Workers driving across the Vincent Thomas Bridge pay no attention to the ship just passing beneath them.

Without warning, something hidden deep in the hull of the ship explodes. In less than a second, everything nearby is vaporized by temperatures hotter than the sun. The expanding fireball causes a shock wave of compressed air and winds strong enough to knock down or kill anything in its path. Miles away, the flash is bright enough to burn retinas. Windows shatter. Houses rock off their foundations.

The Breeze goes on to talk about some things you ought to do.

Best plan in a disaster is to have one
GUIDELINES: Considerations include food and water supplies, contacts, meeting places and sources of information.

By Josh Grossberg
DAILY BREEZE

Don't panic.

During any catastrophe - man-made or natural - keep a clear head and plan ahead.

"People should not make any rash decisions," said Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Humphrey urges everyone to keep a supply of food and water available, maintain an out-of-state contact for all family members to call in case local lines are not working, devise a second route home and develop alternate meeting places for loved ones.

And keep a working battery-powered radio nearby and know where the city’s two news radio stations are located on the AM dial - KFWB at 980 and KNX at 1070. That’s where officials will instruct people what to do.

Yeah, I forgot about radios...gotta pick some up. Probably inexpensive AM/ FM/ SW/SSB's.

Take this in two ways. First, it's mainstream acknowledgement of some of the things that I've been worrying about, which boosts both my ego and my anxiety level a bit. Second, it plus into the second part of my original post:

Got the picture??

So here are some questions for all parties.

For the hawks: How strong is the temptation to nuke somebody - anybody - who might have had anything to do with this, regardless of whether it gets the people who really planned it?

For the doves: How long after this happens does the first column come out in the New York Times that suggests that nuking Iraq won't bring back our dead or rebuild our economy, and that we should pull in, buckle down, and take care of our own?

See, I see two likely outcomes from an event like this, (which I ly don't believe would be all that hard to pull off).

One is that we go berserk, and turn the Middle East into a plain of glass.

The other is that we surrender our role as leader of the world, the economic and security benefits that come with that, and attempt to retreat into a Fortress America.

As you can imagine, I see problems with both.

What do you see as the outcome of a scenario like that? And how does it influence your thoughts on what to do today?

Well, how does it?

The Evil that was France, Again

Now that I am back from my lobbying trip to D.C. and have the time. I am going to revisit the thread Joe, Armed Liberal, and I have had going on France. What makes this revisit interesting for me is what has been said on other blogs in the interim, specifically things posted over on Innocents Abroad and the Chicagoboyz blogs.

Please compare this from Collin May:

Now to France. I’ve spoken of this event before, but it is one that deserves a great deal of attention. On April 21, 2002, the far-right presidential candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, received the second largest number of votes in the first round of France’s presidential elections and advanced to the subsequent round a few weeks later. This was an incredible shock for the French, and in this regard it paralleled 9/11 in the US. On the surface, my comparison may seem suspect since no one died as a result of the election and, in the end, Jacques Chirac won a resounding victory over Le Pen in the second turn. However, there are some important similarities. Like 9/11, Le Pen’s first round success was interpreted as an attack on the very Republic of France and all it stood for. Jacques Chirac took advantage of this rhetoric, assigning himself the role of defender of the Republic. The French rallied to the cause and the Republic was saved. But was France saved?

My point is that Jacques Chirac cast himself as the defender of Republican values, but Republican values have never found an exact fit with the French nation. Indeed, these values are now often diverging from the French nation itself and seeking something of a new home, a home that could be the new Europe. In other words, the French nation is splitting from the universal values it was supposed to incarnate, a split that began more or less with the end of its empire and the colonial wars following World War II. This is the great difference between events of September 11 and those of April 21. The attack on Republican values came from inside France, from people claiming to defend the French nation, whereas the US was attacked by a foreign intruder.

The implication is that the United States retains its national integrity in the face of foreign attack, while France is losing, even actively terminating, its national existence in favor of the European Union. French patriotism is committing suicide, while American patriotism is flowering.

and this

To this end, I can mention one further experience I had here in Paris shortly after arriving in the autumn of 2002. It was November 11, and I decided to go take in the events in order to see how France honors its military dead. I made my way to the Champs Elysees, just down from the Arc de Triomphe. As I watched, members of the French armed forces paraded by accompanied by marching bands. Ahead of the procession was Jacques Chirac waving from the window of his limousine as he sped by. The interesting point was that, mixed in with the French men and women in the parade, were members of the armed forces from Portugal and from the United States. They were there to remind the onlookers of the close friendship between these countries and the role Americans played in two World Wars, and perhaps even the role played by France in winning America’s independence. The most striking thing, however, was not the parading soldiers and marines, but the crowd around me. To my left were Americans, to my right were Poles. The French public was not out in numbers. The only French person I spoke with that day was an elderly man selling small tricolor ribbons. Upon seeing me, he asked me where I was from. I told him Canada. He said “Merci,” shook my hand and gave me a ribbon free of charge.

With this line from an earlier post of mine:

Yet the Chirac government still behaves as though the only thing that matters is preventing Saddam from being overthrown by the Americans.

If it isn't money that is motivating the French government and it isn't power in the EU, then what is it driving them to oppose the USA on Iraq?

The answer isn't physical, it is existential.

French elites abandoned religion for nationalism after the French revolution. Then they abandoned nationalism for multi-cultural, EU style, transnational progressivism. Now that has failed as well and they are as lost as the Wahhabbis in the modern world. The elites that govern France are using their power to hurt and cause pain.

As I said before and restate now:

"People who have chosen the path of damnation are easily known. They seek power above all things. They choose what will immediately benefit them over choices that take longer but reward more. And they use what power they have to hurt others, because inflicting pain is the only pleasure they have that will reach past the aching wound where their soul used to be.

I find of tremendous interest that an Ex-Pat Canadian and a Texas Republican poles apart see the same gaping maw in the French national soul. Related to that thought, "Lexington Green" a contributor over on Chicagoboyz, said:

After mulling this business on and off today, I am left with the following train of thought. The Germans and the French are not just making gestures of opposition. They are seriously trying to prevent the United States and Britain from going into Iraq. They are persisting in this in the teeth of the manifest intention of the U.S. to go in. In other words, they are putting themselves into explicit opposition to the United States on a matter which the United States has made clear is necessary for its security. This is a very serious thing to do. They are openly and explicitly and consciously making themselves allies of a country the United States has made clear is its enemy. Moreover, the French and Germans know they have a weak hand, and they are imposing great political costs on themselves in continuing to push this. But they are persevering.

Compare that with this line I said earlier:

What is going on now is "off the reservation" for classic French behavior.

Chirac's German ally, Schroeder, is a dead man walking after the recent local elections in Germany, and that was known immediately after the German national election when concealed German economic data came out.

Bush has made clear Saddam is going down regardless.

Chirac is in a perfect position to betray both for the greater glory and economic advantage of France. Yet Chirac's foreign policy is still sincere and consistent in support for both. The French foreign minister was recently in Syria to organizing joint opposition to the American invasion of Iraq. Stealing the German’s pants is one thing. Negotiating with the Syrians is evidence of French sincerity here.

Sincere? Consistent?? In a French foreign policy?!!? From Chirac!!!! What is wrong with that picture? It isn't French.

----
(N.B. for the complete, updated history of this discussion arranged by date, see "Fight Night: The Dance In France")
----

read the rest! »

February 15: Shabbat Shalom!

As many of you know, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, my weekend posts to this blog will always be "good news". I will share Sufi wisdom, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity.

Other blogging days may include these things as well, but today I seek to fill my entire day with that. This provides a necessary and important break from current events, which by nature are often dark. If we do not stop to acknowledge the other side of the coin and see the light also, our perspective and analysis will be flawed.

Sufi Wisdom: From Sleep to Love

As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully").

The Wahhabi hate them, of course, which constitutes an endorsement in my books. The great poet Rumi was a Sufi, and once again we turn to him for this week's meditation on love as the Sufis see it. I can understand this mindset intellectually as the fulfilment of their path, but viscerally - no I'm not in this category or even close to it.

"Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain,
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful words
around you,

and sleep."

And their object of Love is...? You tell me.

Join Your Voice With the Iraqis!

Over at Dean Esmay's site, he's spearheading a drive to include the following logo and link on as many blogs as possible:

Why is that important? An Iraqi gives one good reason why. Dr. Khalaf's article points to another reason, however, and it goes beyond support or non-support for the war. Seriousness about this question does not divide exactly along partisan lines - though I would argue that the division isn't even.

Simply put, it's this: What future do we want for the Iraqi people? What kind of place to we want Iraq to be?

Some in the "invade Iraq" camp would be happy with replacement of Saddam by a more compliant dictator. Dean's initiative isn't for them; they offer no real help to Dr. Khalaf or to thousands of others like him. Then, too, there are those in the "non-intervention" camp whose stance also comes from a position that could care less about Iraqis. They are animated primarily by either hard-core ideology/religion, material benefit, or by internal hatreds and resentments. Dean's initiative isn't for them, either.

For the rest of us, for whom the Iraqi people and their fate matters deeply, Dean's initiative is welcome and appropriate. How we get there may be a matter of disagreement. But what we seek, together, matters.

How to Get Involved

There's a static JPEG logo as well as an animated GIF. These have been fully tested, no uploading of files needed and no worries about the bandwidth. If you want to include this on your web site, just paste in one of the following sets of code:

Animated GIF Graphic

This option is attention grabbing, but uses a bit more bandwidth and may be distracting to some people. I chose this option for the graphic above. Here's the code to paste into your site:

<center><a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/templ/display.cfm?id=247⋐=336" target="_blank" alt="Democracy in Iraq!"><img src="http://www.windsofchange.net/files/iraqidemocracy.gif" height="73" width="100" border="1" alt="Animated GIF: Free Iraq"></a><center>

Static JPEG Graphic

This option is less attention grabbing, showing just the Lady Liberty graphic on the front. It uses less bandwidth and won't bother people who dislike motion on a page they're reading. Here's the code to paste into your site:

<center><a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/templ/display.cfm?id=247⋐=336" target="_blank" alt="Democracy in Iraq!"><img src="http://www.windsofchange.net/files/iraqidemocracy.jpg" height="73" width="100" border="1" alt="Static JPEG: Free Iraq!"></a><center>

If you do participate, please say so in the comments on Dean Esmay's site.

Spooks and Feds Living Together! A good start for analysis

President Bush said Friday that FBI and CIA counterterrorism analysts will work under a single roof to strengthen efforts to detect and prevent terrorist attacks.

I'm of the opinion that this will be an excellent initiative, if they do it right. I'm reassured that they might, from quotes in the article:

The center, according to the White House, "will have unfettered access to all terrorist threat intelligence information, from raw reports to finished analytic assessments, available to the U.S. government."

This is smart. "Need to know," is all well and good for a guideline, but if you have people in the community who are tasked soley with intelligence analysis, then in order for them to do their jobs effectively, they "need to know" everything....

read the rest! »

MILTECH: Cans of Whupass

DefenseTech says USA has cans of whupass "Pandora's Box" bombs ready to go. All they need is to some obliging Iraqi armored vehicles to test them on.

Read the description, and you'll agree: "Cans of whupass" would be a perfect name for these little death-dealers. Open a few over some Republican Guard units today, and show them the love!

Winds of War: 2003-02-14

Preparations continue to build. In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, I've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. Today will be somewhat lighter, given that it's Valentine's Day.

If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let me know and I'll come take a look.

• Emperor Misha I points us at an excellent piece entitled, simply, "The Quiet Man." It's today's must read.
  
  
• Thomas Nephew is a close second. "With Regrets: War on Saddam" is an outstanding, well documented x-ray of the arguments (incl. arguments he abandoned) that turned him from anti-war to ""we've gotta do this." I nominate him as the winner in the Great Cross-Blog Iraq Debate N.Z. Bear et. al. are running.
  
  
• Rachel Lucas says the recent "Orange Alert" was based on bogus information. Sgt Stryker has a great analysis, noting that the recent "dirty bomb threat" represents classic POW tactics, and lets al-Qaeda achive its goals while doing little.
  
  
• An Iraqi living in London is outraged by the "anti-war" movement. He explains why he - and a half million other Iraqis living in Britain - won't be taking part in the their rallies this weekend. (Hat Tip: HobbsOnline)
  
  
• UPDATE: Geitner Simmons looks at Japan's capacity to go nuclear. Donald Sensing has that plutonium link. Sensing also has some quotes from the President and his cabinet about the doctrine of pre-emption. In his words: "an eye-opener"
  
  
• Sharon Ferguson reports that the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit has landed in Kuwait. They were the folks who set up camp near Kandahar a while back.
  
  
• Want to know why those German industrialists are building 18-ft. train tickets (see below)? Admiral Quixote has the answer, with a comprehensive look at the economic impacts headed for the Axis of Weasels. He also has a lot of wise stuff to say about Germany.
  
  
• Wild Monk reports on the latest bit of howling lunacy coming out of the Democratic party, which now wants to reveal sensitive intelligence data to Saddam. And if anyone out there doesn't think that would be the inevitable result, I have some office space in the World Trade Center to sell ya.
  
  
• "Make Love, Not War" Dept: Axis of Weasels member Belgium is defended by unionized military hairdressers. I am not making this up!
  
  
• "Don't Go Away Mad - Just Go Away" Dept: A bunch of German industrialists have a message for Chancellor Schroder. It's a one way train ticket home... 18 feet long.
  
  
• "And After All This is Over - The United States and France." Another winner from Innocents Abroad. (Hat Tip: Instapundit)
  
  
• North Korea's missiles could become 3-stage and hit the USA. Yeah, yeah. We've known that for years. Resisting temptation to make "No Dong" joke in conjunction with Valentine's Day....
  
  
• Hoooo boy. This ain't no joke (link fixed). I think Winds of Change.NET warned about this a while ago. And I also recall some recent stories that Japan's plutonium reprocessing over the years for its reactors is "inefficient" and has lost quite a bit of plutonium in the process. This oughta get China's attention.
  
  
• From the Left, meanwhile, The Agonist writes: "I spend a lot of time carping about the Bush Administration's foreign policy.... I feel not only justified in my opinions as a voter, but qualified in my criticisms as well, due to my capacity as a serious student of international relations theory and diplomatic history. I have spent considerable effort and thought trying to formulate a philosophy of what America's role in the world should be". I don't agree with him, but it's the beginning of a serious worldview worthy of respect - and that's all too rare on the Left.
  
  
• On a lighter note, Iraqi blogger "Salam Pax" (with a little help from his friend) offers this tidbit: "unrelated funfact: you know the band BUSH? DJs on the English language radio station in Baghdad (voice of youth) are not allowed to say the name of the band, they have to spell it. "Bee yu ess etch have yet another single out". I bet all the DJs there thank god there isn't a band called schwartzkopf, imagine having to spell that everytime you play a song"
  
  
• Speaking of Iraq, Eugene Volokh thinks he has a good name for the Iraq military campaign. No more "Desert..." names, this is way better.
  
  
• Charles Johnson has posted his pro-war answers to the Great Cross-Blog Iraq Debate on Little Green Footballs.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Pejman shares Fouad Ajami's view that liberating Iraq will make regime change more likely in Iran, too.
  
  
• The daily smile? A great cartoon that comes from Cobb (Hat Tip: The Agonist)

Back on Monday...

48 Ways to Wisdom: Way #17 - Marriage Power

This is a regular feature on Winds of Change. Every Friday (for Friday evening begins the Jewish Sabbath), we cover one more way to wisdom from Rabbi Noah Weinberg. These materials are written by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, but are written in such a way that they retain their value no matter what creed you follow.

Think of it as a gentle and modern way of sharing 5,000+ years of accumulated wisdom.

I swear, I did not plan this. The next entry in tthe sequence, #17, really is "Marriage Power." Happy Valentine's Day!

"How should you choose a spouse? Are you going to choose the best-looking one? The one with the most vitality? The most money?

Choose for long wear...."

Otherwise, it will just seem long.

The Bard's Breath: "Celebration"

It's coming, really coming, and we all need a bit more than just news to make it through. Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it.

Today's series entry comes from retired Blososhphere poet Will Warren, who penned and posted these on July 4, 2002. This series of short stanzas are poems of love to the free country that is his home. Happy Valentine's Day, America, and thanks!

Freedom of Conscience
All are born to own their sinning,
     Born to raise their highest prayers,
Errors large or progress winning,
     Most importantly, it’s theirs.

Human Dignity
Let the happy and the careworn
     Peacefully their ends pursue;
At the cry of every newborn,
     Universe is born anew.

For the remaining poems, you'll have to visit Will's site...

St. Hefner's Day?

Rob Lyman proposes a new holiday in the spirit of equality. It would have to be June 14, though... BBQ weather would be mandatory for this one.

A Capitol Hill Trip Report

I was on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday lobbying for the Suborbital Institute, a new space organization dedicated to the advancement of private manned suborbital space flight.

Compared to the last time I was there lobbying for Pro-Space, another space activist organization, security was both heavy and extremely visible. The exterior police were either or both in SWAT type tactical uniforms and with automatic weapons.

There were numerous sensor set ups I had not seen in 2000. One Capitol Hill police car had what looked to be a sensor radome scanning the crowds around the Congressional office buildings.

The streets between the Rayburn, Longworth and Canon House office buildings were blocked off and had quick activating vehicular obstacles to let official traffic through the single lane gaps left by the barriers.

No heavy tractor trailer rigs are allowed near the Capitol complex. Smaller "Ryder sized" cargo trucks can come up to the back of the Congressional office complexes after screening.

The whole Capitol building is now surrounded by green metal poles set up as "decorations" but functioning as vehicular obstacles. Uncleared people are no longer allowed to use the underground passage from the House and Senate office buildings to Capitol Hill.

The "visitor center" work site immediately between the Capitol and the Supreme Court takes up the majority of the formerly open space on the Capitol Hill side of the street. This forces vehicle traffic and pedestrians into very narrow approaches over looked by police stationed on either end of the capitol building.

Every major Federal building I visited, including the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, had guarded entryways with airport style metal detectors. In each they had me take off my long coat -- a "duster" -- to run it through an X-Ray machine with the contents of my pockets.

A one point in my lobbying trip, I was within 20-25 feet of Secretary of State Colin Powell. I had crossed the street past a Limousine in front of the Dirkson Senate Office building. As I passed it to wait for the light and cross the street to the Russell Senate Office building, I heard someone behind me say something like "Way to go General!" I turned around and saw Powell moving briskly towards his limo and get in after waving back and giving a big smile. The security detail of "Men in Black" with their ballistic/laser proof eye wear surrounded the limo and withdrew with it.

Now I have been near State Department security before. When I previously been to the Hill, I had been standing on a corner next to the Rayburn House Office Building when a State Department convoy moving Egypt's "President for life" went by. You *know* when these people look at you. There is a real sense of controlled menace as they are visually evaluating you as a possible threat.

I did not get that from Powell's security detail and I was a great deal closer. That is when I realized that I had been "electronically frisked" in multiple sensor wave lengths before Powell actually left Dirkson, and that this had been passed to Powell's inner ring security detail before Powell exited the building. The whole of Capitol Hill is now a "Free Fire Zone" for the most advanced surveillance technologies the US government can afford.

One more thing struck me. While the security was heavy. It was *not* a real obstacle to my going about my business. The Capitol was at war, but it had not given up on doing the business of representative government. The terrorists have not touched or changed the real essence of American government.

That, for me, is a real and unnoticed victory in this war.

Winds of War: 2003-02-13

Well, we have a contest winner! The proprietor of Blaster's Blog suggested "Winds of War," and the competition ended immediately. Blaster, you're a genius... and your post about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay utterly eviscerating that French twit in India was priceless!

Folks, there's little question now that war is imminent. In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, I've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. We'll add to it (at the top of the list) as we come across good new material during the day. C'mon back and check in now and again, and spread the word!

If you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let me know and I'll come take a look.

• Steven Den Beste discusses likely attack strategies re: Iraq. Got one of my own in the pipe, which will discuss the concept of a "measels strategy" on D-Day. You'll see it on Monday.
  
  
• This is outrageously stupid. What's the point of issuing protective suits against chemical agents, then letting the troops drink poisoned water? Hellooooo!!!
  
  
• Speaking of which, have you got a "Bug Out Kit" put together yet? Armed Liberal has your list today, in another awesome public service posting. So proud to have this guy aboard...
  
  
• Sofia Sideshow explains why the modern Left is G-d's gift to the Right. This is excellent, a major league piece. (Hat Tip: Merde in France)
  
  
• Exhibit A in proof of this thesis: Radical Leftist Rabbi Michael Lerner is shut out an anti-war demonstration by the Kim Jong-Il, Slobodan Milosevic, and Tienanmen Square fans at ANSWER. Anti-Semitism? Absolutely. Other major organizers of the demonstration go along with this.
  
  
• New Europe: Romania will deploy 278 troops, including those specializing in nuclear, biological and chemical decontamination, de-mining, as well as military police and medical assistance. They also gave the USA permission to use their airspace and bases. The vote? 351-0, with 74 abstentions.
  
  
• Old Europe: One more piece of evidence that France's pain has just begun.
  
  
• But German Chancellor Schroder's pain might be ending. Soon. Ooh, this is gonna hurt too.
  
  
• Foreign Minister Fischer doesn't get off easy, either.
  
  
• Faithful allies? How did the USA do in the Falklands War? Junius is asking. (Hat Tip: Calpundit)
  
  
• The Philippines expels an Iraqi diplomat for his contacts with a Muslim terrorist group. There's a fairly serious dust-up happening there right now, and the jihadis are in for some thrashing.
  
  
• Team-mate Armed Liberal had a bit of an epiphany last night. Not the middle-aged dating advice (though it's good), but his Israeli-Palestinian thoughts. See the comments, too, where I extend his points in pure liberalspeak. The Berlitz courses are going well, thanks for asking.
  
  
• Cold Fury's Mike Hendrix is humbled by Suman Palit: " I did not spend a greater part of my life working my fingers to the bone to come to America, and then to build a new life for myself and my family, to enjoy and cherish the special freedoms that are the hallmark of this country, only to watch an intellectually effete elite barter it all away..." It gets better.
  
  
• Parapundit looks at the breakup of NATO, happening before our eyes like a slow-motion train wreck. Thorough and well researched, as usual.
  
  
• Truth Laid Bear is still taking links and submissions in the Great Iraq Cross-Blog Debate. Be ye pro or anti, there's a set of questions for you. More pros than antis so far, including Cold Fury (post I | post 2).
  
  
• Another passionate article comes from Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, who asks the West to "help us get our country back." (Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan)
  
  
• On which topic, Bargarz has an excellent set of links about Iraq Post-Saddam. Dean Esmay takes it one step further, and points us to an important speech by Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith.
  
  
• But only Jay Manifold of "A Voyage to Arcturus" would actually go do the math, and cost out a 20-year occupation. (Hat Tip: Vodkapundit, who's on a Fisking roll today)
  
  
• You know we always end with a smile. Scrappleface knows what Osama really fears.

B.O.K. (Bug Out Kit)

Many of the folks I know have an abiding belief in survival; some of them become survivalists and center their lives around it, which has always struck me as kinda weird. But I find that I can often learn useful things from them, even if we may disagree about how central those useful things ought to be in one's life. Put those useful things into a bag and have it at hand in case you need to 'head for the hills', and you have a "Bug Out Kit".

There’s an interesting discussion to have about apocalyptic fantasies, and our bizarre attachment to them. I mentioned some of the issues over in a post on Armed Liberal. It’s time for a longer discussion on it.

But today, let’s be practical and discuss what such a kit might consist of.

First, you’ve got to discuss purpose.

The hardier among us assume that they will be taking to the field as a guerilla army defending against the invading Red forces, or the newly oppressive U.S. government under President H. Clinton. They envision living on venison jerky and fresh-caught fish and carrying enough weapons to put together a light infantry platoon.

On the other extreme, some folks would just like to be able to get home in the event their car breaks down on the other side of town.

I’m somewhere in between. I live in Southern California, where we live on borrowed time … the earthquakes, riots, floods, or fires compete for the ‘Disaster of the Decade’ pageant, which we hold in Pasadena every Leap Year Day.

For me, it's not a "Bug Out Kit", it's a "Get Home Kit". It’s not unreasonable to assume that my SO or I may have to cover fifty miles to get home, and that having gotten home, we may be without water, power, or gas for several days to a week until the grown-ups can get their act together and take care of us.

And to this I’ll add the new layer of risk posed by a meaningful terrorist attack.

So the kits break into two parts: What we try and have with us, and what we have at home.

What we have with us is primarily designed to get us home. Because I have children, unless I can be convinced that my entire neighborhood is a giant smoking crater, or communicate with someone who has my children and is getting them somewhere safe, I’m heading home. End of subject.

This is a small, cheap day pack that we can leave in the car or at the office.

It contains:

Light hiking boots (hell, we own them, and why leave them in the closet where they just take up space?)
Socks (I’m likely to be wearing dress socks, and TG is likely to be wearing hose)
Pants and a sweatshirt
A poncho
Five or six Power Bars
Five or six GU Gel packs (food you squeeze)
Two bottles of water, and some water purification tablets
Two bandanas
A Leatherman multi-tool
A decent knife (Spyderco Delicia)
50’ of 4mm perlon cord
A locking carabiner
More first-aid stuff (pretty much what I carry in my motorcycle suit):
- 2 battle dressings
- 2 - 4 x 4 gauze pads
- 1 CPR shield
- 2 pairs nitrile gloves
- vial with core prescriptions
- bottle of aspirin
- Imodium
A spare pair of prescription glasses for each of us (what else do you do with old glasses?)
Two black heavy-duty trash bags
4 - 6” zip ties
Scorpion Streamlight
2 spare lithium batteries

…and a partridge in a pear tree.

Basically, with this kit, I could ‘comfortably’ cover 20 - 30 miles in a day on foot in pretty much any weather condition I’m likely to face here in SoCal, bivvy for the night, and have enough stuff to do it again another day.

We already owned everything in the kits, except the backpacks, leatherman, knife, carabiner, flashlight, and perlon cord. Total investment, maybe $150 each if you buy a good multi-tool.

At home, we have:

Water (5 extra 5 ga Sparkletts distilled water bottles; we use and rotate them when we change the water in the fish tank)
Food (a 20 ga ‘tupperware’ container full of canned and dried food, plus camping cooking gear, the car camping propane stove and a couple of propane cylinders)
First Aid (the big kit described here)
Tools (a Sears roller cabinet full)
A wonderbar (pry bar) in the bedroom closet, in case we have to pry open jammed doors
A shutoff wrench that fits the city water valve
A crescent wrench swedged onto a wire loop at the gas meter

If I were to add antiterrorism to the kit, I’d consider adding:

Potassium iodide (antiradiation)
Some high-end respirators (not gas masks, but the ones with fine carbon filters)
Four or five sheets of Visqueen (disposable painter’s tarp)
Five or ten rolls of duct tape
Some starter packs of a broad-spectrum antibiotic
A couple of Tyvek (disposable) overalls

I’m thinking about it…

JK Note: Don't miss his Super First Aid Kit, either.

Goodbye, Vaclav Havel

A great and good man is leaving politics. Good news for him, less good for the rest of us. The dissident writer and poet turned President brought so much class, humanity and taste to his work. To even say these words in conjunction with politics is remarkable. And his last major act was a ringing declaration of freedom and its defense: the now-famous "New Europe 8" letter.

I can't outdo Amygdala's tribute links, and won't try.

Unconventional Weapons: Israel Prepares

Feeling concerned about what's to come? Wondering what the next terrorist strike might be? You're not alone.

"I was among a dozen and a half residents of Jerusalem's Old City attending a lecture/demonstration on "Non-conventional Warfare." The speaker, Luba, was a young, pretty soldier wearing a khaki green uniform. She spoke with a thick Russian accent in an official, pleasant tone that sounded more like she was giving a lecture on nutrition than on how to respond to deadly chemical and biological agents.

"The two chemical agents which threaten our country are nerve gas and mustard gas. The one biological agent which threatens our country is anthrax"...."

They, too, are part of this war. The canaries in the coal mine of civilization. So what else is new?

For those who want a good central source for Israel's all-too-real War on Terror, note that oslo-war.com has moved. Their excellent collection of links and material can now be found at www.israel-wat.com. If you're engaged in blogging or comments-based arguments, this is a really good source to tap for support.

UPDATE: If you're an Israeli (and these days, even if you're not) you owe it to yourself to read Armed Liberal's "BOK" post on things you really should have handy. He refers to it as a "get home" kit in case something really serious happens. Don't miss his Super First Aid Kit list, either.

The Bards' Breath: "Iraq Today"

It's coming, really coming, and we all need a bit more than just news to make it through. Spirit. Perspective. Faith. Reminders of humanity, and horror, and the shape of true victory.

We're on it. Today's the start of a semi-regular feature: the first, and not the last.

Yesterday, in response to Poets Against the War, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed Feb. 12th "A Day of Poetry for the War" and asked readers to submit pro-American, pro-freedom, anti-Saddam, anti-idiotarian poems. My daily contribution can be found right here.

I looked their winners over yesterday; you'd think more rappers would read the Wall Street Journal, if only to visit their money. People who could bring some serious attitude and kickin' rhymes to a party jonesing for it. No dice.

Still, this is America in the 21st century. The top rapper is white. The top golfer is black. Deal with it. Will Warren wasn't there, and neither was Dr. Dre - but some of these poets got game. We'll start with Dennis Pitz' "Iraq Today":

Righteous war is chewed on by so many.
You look at the despot and know he has to go,
but his face still gloats at you as if to say, come on over.
And you wonder
if taking him out is exactly what he's after.
And you waver . . .

What must it be like?
He thought he could resist, even after the current stuttered through him.
He was sure he had the strength to eat the pain,
as his nails were pulled from his fingers like splinters.
He eyed the bucket and wondered about drowning in no more than a sink full of water;
he was certain he could do it.
It was then they drug in his daughter, and his resolve fled from him.
In racking sobs he told them everything he thought they wanted -- and more.
They drowned him anyway, right there in the cell while the girl watched.
Then, as they laughed, they did her too.

The war talk on the TV drones on.
Your child is saying
hey daddy! this
and hey daddy! that,
You listen, and love, and ask her to turn up the thermostat.
It's getting cold.

   © Dennis Pitz, 2002

After-Dinner Thoughts

I just had the Valentines Dinner From Hell (not really, actually a wonderful dinner with my SO), and was confronted by bad dating habits (check out Armed Liberal for my comments and recommendations on middle-aged dating) as well as some points in opposition to the ‘Impending War on Iraq’ (we ought to just make that name official) that actually got me to think a bit, and I wanted to throw a few things out for consideration. The points are:

1) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with Al Qaeda; and
2) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.

Those are two of the more typical antiwar arguments that I hear from people who think more deeply about the subject than “war is bad”.

And last night I just realized that they are both flat wrong.

We can’t deal with Al Qaeda as long as there are states that control territory, the issuance of identification, and the import and export of weapons which actively support Al Qaeda or tacitly support them through inaction.

We can’t deal with the Palestinian’s unwillingness to make a final, binding, real, two-state deal with Israel as long as there are states that actively encourage Palestinian rage and violence with funds and weapons.

I’m thinking that both of these problems are essentially unsolvable as long as they are really ‘proxy’ conflicts with state actors.

What do you folks think?

(fixed spelling of 'Al-Qaeda' per Inkgrrl's comment)

War Writings: 2003-02-12

I really need a new name for this feature. Suggestions, anyone?

There's little question now that war is imminent. In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there without cramping the team's style, I've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings. We'll add to it (at the top of the list) as we come across good new material during the day.

Oh, and if you think your blog has a worthy post in this area, feel free to let me know and I'll come take a look.

• When you add all this up, it says "Dirty Bomb Attack" to me. (Hat Tip: Donald Sensing) Winds of Change.NET has covered dirty bombs before (and here). We've also covered the kits you should have: Armed Liberal's uber first aid kit, and the "bug-out kit" from Blaster's Blog. And maybe a bit of Prussian Blue, too.
  
  
• That's not good enough for Vodkapundit, who asks: "Can you keep up that American spirit of grilling-in-the-face-of-disaster, even if the worst should happen?"
  
  
• Viking Pundit notes that the Slate Saddameter is at 97% odds on war. Place yer bets, folks - me, I'm taking USA with the spread.
  
  
• Truth Laid Bear is still taking links and submissions in the Great Iraq Cross-Blog Debate. Be ye pro or anti, there's a set of questions for you.
  
  
• Saddam's Successor? The Brothers Judd say the decision has been made. I like their choice - but I also think the "get out fast and leave an unstable government behind" approach is half-assed.
  
  
• Programs, get yer Iraqi programs here! Can't tell the Iraqi factions without a program, step right up! A useful post, honest most of the time but tends to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt in a few places. Just ignore the barking moonbats in the comments section.
  
  
• Targets! Get yer targets here! Aerial photos of Iraqi target zones, step right up!
  
  
• Patio Pundit, meanwhile, has a warning for allied forces. Be very careful about Iraqi "surrender" tactics. He doesn't mean that as a joke.
  
  
• blogoSFERICS adds a post on 'loitering' or 'sleeping' weapons under development by the USA. Very good against targets like mobile SCUD missiles... and terrorist leaders, for that matter.
  
  
• Turkey invokes Article 4 of NATO. Silent running has the details, and links to what the heck Article 4 is.
  
  
• Want to know what the Turks are thinking? Clubbeaux the Seal has the source for you.
  
  
• Give credit to Steven Den Beste - the man is intellectually honest enough to think through ideas that would puncture a theory he's become famous for. What if the whole "Axis of Weasels" rift isn't the result of something to hide? What if the whole NATO rift is just a giant cultural misunderstanding?
  
  
• I never in my life thought I'd read this from Charles Johnson (LGF).
  
  
• The Times of India reports that Pakistan is once again working closely with the Taliban, while trying to keep the USA off its case by going after "foreign" (read: Arab) jihadis on its soil. According to Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, Jihad, and The rise of militant Islam in Central Asia, there's a mobilization afoot to spur a Taliban offensive in time to coincide with the US strikes on Iraq. I think the 82nd can handle it. Bring it on, boys!
  
  
• On the Israeli front, Meryl Yourish researches and deconstructs casualty reports from the Israeli and Palestinian sides. The Washington Post emerges soundly fisked.
  
  
• Always end with a smile. Today's winner is Clubbeaux the Seal's Complete Military History of France

Theology, Pacifism, and Iraq

Rev. Sensing's blog has become an extension of his Ministry. As a United Methodist minister, he disagrees with his church hierarchy's stand on the coming war with Iraq. But it's a deeply thoughtful disagreement that is cognizant of both religious principle and socio-political reality. It's a divisive issue, but Sensing handles it with clarity, reason... and even grace.

There are some posts that are worth reading no matter what side of the debate you're on. This is one of them.

Raising 'Em Right

Via the inimitable Emperor Misha I, I found the web site of Clubbeaux, one pissed-off Harp Seal. After I finished laughing at the banner (a bit of in Canadian humour), I read his article on raising kids. I'm not 100% sure about the liberal analogy, though there's probably something to it... but the advice for raising kids is absolutely dead-on.

If You're Unhappy And You Know It...

Is everyone else as sick and tired of that stupid "Bomb Iraq" rhyme to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it..."?

Me too. Fortunately, Meryl Yourish has what may be her finest post ever: an answer to that idiotarian anthem that's just as catchy - but has the advantage of being 100% true.

"If Osama is your hero, blame the Jews
If your GDP's near zero, blame the Jews
If your nation has no future and your wife won't let you smooch her
If your women have no rights then blame the Jews..."

I won't spoil it for you by revealing any more... truly, read the whole thing and do yourself a favour!

Morality, Religion, and America (for Randall)

What I said:

I'll suggest that morality and spirituality in politics is central and absolutely necessary, on one hand, and incredibly dangerous on the other. I'll follow with the assertion that the genius of the American Foundation was that it both provided a sphere for a politics centered on moral and spiritual values, and that it explicitly denied morality and spiritual values a seat at the political table.

This was a brilliant bank shot which has led to the American genius of assimilation and to the cultural openness which has made us the dominant force in the world for over a hundred years.

Let's go to some sources. Washington's "Farewell Address" is best known for the 'no foreign entanglements' meme; there were other significant ones strung through it, including a vital point on religion:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Washington was not the only deeply religious Founder:

The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.

The Continental Congress asked for a "day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer" throughout the colonies. The Congress urged its fellow citizens to "confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God's] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness."

Congress proclaimed days of fasting and of thanksgiving annually throughout the Revolutionary War. This proclamation by Congress set May 17, 1776, as a "day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer" throughout the colonies. Congress urges its fellow citizens to "confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God's] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness." Massachusetts ordered a "suitable Number" of these proclamations to be printed so "that each of the religious Assemblies in this Colony, may be furnished with a Copy of the same" and added the motto "God Save This People" as a substitute for "God Save the King."

But somehow, this piety did not translate into a political role for any Church.

read the rest! »

Trent Telenko, Call Your Office

Trent, emails are bouncing, say you've exceeded your storage limit. There's some folks who want to talk to you, and none of them are French or have a middle name of "the". Drop me a line...

War Writings: 2003-02-11

With war on the horizon, the blogosphere is definitely gearing up. Lately, I've found myself unable to link every deserving post: not enough space, and don't want to cramp the rest of the team's excellent stuff.

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there, I've started putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings, and adding to it (at the top of the list) as we come across stuff. Eventually, I hope the team as a whole will get the hang of the formatting and make it a group resource.

• Sorry I missed this Feb. 7th Glenn Reynolds bit on "Truth, Lies and War." Don't make the same mistake.
  
  
• Amygdala isn't ready to go to war - yet. But he's awfully close. If you've ever wanted a window into the mind of a sharp left-wing thinker making up his mind about Iraq, this is your chance.
  
  
• Geez, now the French are undermining peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan! This is interesting, because the country most shafted here is Germany. Merde in France will connect you to the details.
  
  
• Ingrates Watch, Take 1: The news gets worse for Germany. Occam's Toothbrush has links that suggest American bases there may be going away, with a strong push from our man Rumsfeld, Sens. McCain and Lieberman, and the new NATO supreme commander. See also his excerpt and link to the full text of McCain's recent "beware the American street" speech. Classic.
  
  
• Ingrates Watch, Take 2: The USA is also, uh, reconsidering its troop deployment in South Korea.
  
  
• The fighting force of the future won't be a tightly-structured, disciplined, hierarchical army. It'll be a swirling, speeding, polymorphous swarm, gathering into teams at a moment's notice, and breaking apart even quicker. Defense Tech has the details... and Gulf War II is likely to have the first demonstrations.
  
  
• Edge of England's Sword has a link that gives you the details on British forces headed for Iraq, plus an interactive map that's just wizard!
  
  
• Speaking of Britain, David and Josh at Oxblog have started the Oxford Democracy Forum, and are acting as advisors to the original Yale Forum. In fact, they're promoting the idea of an international student movement around promoting democracy worldwide.
  
  
• David also cannot seem to say enough about this William shawcross piece on Iraq. Odd. Wasn't Shawcross once some kind of major anti-Vietnam War writer? (Hat Tip: Oxblog)
  
  
• Sometimes I find Peggy Noonan a bit treacly. This time she nails it with a column on Powell's journey (and hers) re: Iraq. ly, I prefer this column to the Shawcross piece. (Hat Tip: One Hand Clapping)
  
  
• NZ Bear and Stand Down are co-sponsoring a blog debate with two sets of five questions, one set for the anti-war side and the other for the prowar side. Both sets are posted on both sites. Donald Sensing has the links to both sites.
  
  
• Don't let the beautiful name of "Aurora Leigh" fool you... you'd be better off stuffing a crazed wolverine down your pants than getting on this lady's bad side. First, she lashes the libertarian anti-war stance. "Idiot liberals" are incinerated next. A good sense of perspective and a sharp set of arguments take her a long way. And conservatives... she promises us that our turn is coming.
  
  
• The reference to Rory comes from The Wild Monk, whose Political ity Test had over 8300 takers. He explains those results, then drops his bomb: 41% of self-identified Democrats listed "the USA" as the biggest threat to world peace. His discussion of that result is unsparing, and true...
  
  
• Remember this? The family of the Iraqi man who appealed for help from UN inspectors (and was hauled away by Iraqi enforcers) is asking Amnesty International to find out what’s happened to him. I doubt Amnesty cares. Of course, the UN didn't even try to find out who he was.
  
  
• On the lighter side, how confident are you in your predictions? Want to sell Saddam's futures short? Bet on a 2nd U.N. resolution? Reader Gary Haubold tipped me to this, and the folks at ChicagoBoyz have the betting links.
  
  
• Charles Johnson has a cartoon for y'all. A parody, or a description that rings true? Make up your own minds.

Back tomorrow...

France^2

It's been a long weekend (joint birthday dinner with my brother and family, lots of kid stuff ranging from t-ball meeting for Littlest Guy to teaching Middle Guy how to do the brakes on his car (he's not mechanical, but I figure he ought to know how they work).

And now a little time to write.

Rereading Trent's comment and the entire message stream, it seems like there are three levels on which I want to respond. I'm not going to get to finish here and now, but what I want to do is set out the three levels on which we're arguing, make my high-level case, and then as I have time to do it in more detail, dig deeper into at least one of the levels over the next few days.

So without further ado, here are the three levels:

1) . Trent writes:

You visibly itch when the subjects of morality and spirituality are brought up, just like most Democrats and Europeans.

That, BTW, is why most liberals, democrats and Europeans get on so well.

I'm gonna grit my teeth a bit on this one, Trent; actually you don't know squat about my attitudes toward morality or spirituality, and the tone of brittle superiority sits kind of badly with me.

The dual-edged role of morality in politics is a complex one; and I'll discuss my view of it more below in 3); but many liberals and Europeans don't 'itch' when it's brought up, they just differ from your standards, as I may.

2) Actual actions in France. Recent news (the new Franco/German proposal, for example) supports my suggestion that the true French goal is not only to block a U.S. invasion, but establish itself contra the U.S. as a player in the Middle East. Friedman's much quoted column on replacing France with India as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council includes the quote:

Throughout the cold war, France sought to differentiate itself by playing between the Soviet and American blocs. France could get away with this entertaining little game for two reasons: first, it knew that Uncle Sam, in the end, would always protect it from the Soviet bear. So France could tweak America's beak, do business with Iraq and enjoy America's military protection. And second, the cold war world was, we now realize, a much more stable place. Although it was divided between two nuclear superpowers, both were status quo powers in their own way. They represented different orders, but they both represented order.

...

And the whole French game on Iraq, spearheaded by its diplomacy-lite foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, lacks seriousness. Most of France's energy is devoted to holding America back from acting alone, not holding Saddam Hussein's feet to the fire to comply with the U.N.

The French position is utterly incoherent. The inspections have not worked yet, says Mr. de Villepin, because Saddam has not fully cooperated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know. The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.

Mr. de Villepin also suggested that Saddam's government pass "legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction." (I am not making this up.) That proposal alone is a reminder of why, if America didn't exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian.

I also want to avoid a war - but not by letting Saddam off the hook, which would undermine the U.N., set back the winds of change in the Arab world and strengthen the World of Disorder. The only possible way to coerce Saddam into compliance - without a war - is for the whole world to line up shoulder-to-shoulder against his misbehavior, without any gaps. But France, as they say in kindergarten, does not play well with others. If you line up against Saddam you're just one of the gang. If you hold out against America, you're unique. "France, it seems, would rather be more important in a world of chaos than less important in a world of order," says the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World."

...emphasis mine

The French are motivated by a different set of interests serving a different set of constituencies than we are and have. Their interests are often not only in opposition to ours - acutely and subtly - but defined by being in opposition to ours, and we need to take that into account as we try and manage our relationship with them.

All of Europe is showing the cracks of a shotgun wedding between liberal democracy and bureaucratic despotism. It doesn't work well, as we should be thoughtful about their experience as we consider (hey, Hillary!!) walking down the same path.

Trent suggests:

You have a distinct point about French crime and the GSIGN, but it isn't the point that you think you are making....

read the rest! »

Posted at 05:34 AM | Direct Link | Comments (14) | TrackBack (2) | E-mail This!

4GW: John Boyd's Legacy

Here at Winds of Change.NET, we've spent a fair bit of time covering 4th Generation Warfare ("4GW", try it as a search term). In D-N-I.NET's words:

"Roughly speaking, "fourth generation warfare" includes all forms of conflict where the other side refuses to stand up and fight fair. What distinguishes 4GW from earlier generations is that typically at least one side is something other than a military force organized and operating under the control of a national government, and one that often transcends national boundaries."

Sound familiar?

We've also thrown in more than a few hyperlinks to information about an American warrior named John Boyd. Col. Boyd was the original Top Gun, and he may also have been the greatest military thinker America has yet produced. His infamous "OODA Loop" (Observe - Orient - Decide - Act) is part of fighter pilot parlance, and has exercised a growing influence on military thinking. Many note that the concept of 4th Generation Warfare owed a great deal to Boyd, and so does current Marine Corps Doctrine.

Not to mention much of the thinking behind Gulf War I - and his ideas will be even more influential this time.

Fortunately, Parapundit has a superb collection of Boyd-related links and discussions with his disciples for those who wish to immerse themselves in these ideas before the war starts.

War Writings: 2003-02-10

With war on the horizon, the blogosphere is definitely gearing up. Lately, I've found myself unable to link every deserving post: not enough space, and don't want to cramp the rest of the team's excellent stuff.

In an effort to bring y'all some of the more interesting pieces out there, I'm going to try putting each day's interesting links in one post of short listings, and adding to it as we come across stuff. Eventually, I hope the team as a whole will get the hang of the formatting and make it a group resource.

• Just before Sept. 11, al-Qaeda murdered Northern Alliance commander Masood. Saturday, members of the Al Qaeda-linked Kurdish Islamic extremist group Ansar al Islam, masquerading as defectors, murdered several top military leaders of the pro-American Kurdish PUK. Al-Qaeda's first shot in Gulf War II? LGF has the details.
  
  
• Random Thoughts has picked up a report that Turkey is gearing up to occupy northern Iraq with 80,000 troops. But the source was Agence France Presse... so I want real confirmation before I believe it.
  
  
• One of the main arguments made by folks on the Left is that Saddam is a rational actor. Liberal blogger & journalist Joshua Micah Marshall isn't so sure any more.
  
  
• Calpundit, meanwhile, has a long sit-down talk with his compatriots on the Left about Iraq. The very epitome of the reluctant liberal warrior, but he makes a strong case to his audience.
  
  
• Britain's PM Tony Blair makes his own case in the Guardian today, explaining how acting in Iraq fits with his famous "third way" approach. (Hat Tip: Rantburg)
  
  
• Matt Welch looks at the record, and says the Bush team's diplomacy is one long round of Good Cop/ Bad Cop. Seems to work, too. (Hat Tip: Instapundit)
  
  
• Speaking of Instaman, don't miss his post on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live show. Anyone who thinks this is frivolous doesn't understand how real a barometer of popular culture U.S. comedy & variety shows are. You're more advised to pay attention to them than to political shows like Crossfire. (Instaman update: see this recent poll)
  
  
• In a similar vein, Andrew Sullivan's Thought for the Day has Sen. John McCain warning the Europeans, publicly, about the wrath of the American street. Senator, you're the best. About damn time.
  
  
• Gweilo Diaries has some odds on when the latest Franco-German proposal will be accepted. Got a picture, too.
  
  
• Photodude asks: "please, define unilateralism."
  
  
• Rev. Donald Sensing (formerly Major Donald Sensing) notes: "One of the things I tried to explain was that there is a political process of the decision to wage war and that in Western countries, this process is theoretically and practically wedded to Just War Theory. So I'd like to say a word about that process."
  
  
• Emperor Misha I doesn't see what all the fuss is about re: all those poet activists. In fact, he finds one of their poetic works rather moving.
  
  
• Pejman notes that the Iranian's have just acknowledged mining uranium for their nuclear program. Uh oh. Rantburg has more.
  
  
• Blaster's Blog has some concrete suggestions re: what you should do under a "threat condition:" orange" warning. Remember Armed Liberal's emergency kit? This takes it one step further.
  
  
• Always end on a lighter note. Happy Fun Pundit sure has that, with a drop dead hilarious set of Donald Rumsfeld sketches (folks, this has become a whole genre lately).

"The Dance in France": Readings

Welcome to The Dance in France" here at Winds of Change.NET. As debate continues, I thought I'd set this post up as a container for current articles that seemed relevant.

Hitchens: Jacques Chirac - "The Rat That Roared"

Christopher Hitchens reminds us all why it's such a bad idea to be in his crosshairs. His argument is that France does stand for something, but Chirac is a corrupt pygmy who wouldn't recognize that if it bit him. It combines a solid perspective with searing lines like this:

"Here is a man who had to run for re-election last year in order to preserve his immunity from prosecution, on charges of corruption that were grave. Here is a man who helped Saddam Hussein build a nuclear reactor and who knew very well what he wanted it for. Here is a man at the head of France who is, in effect, openly for sale. He puts me in mind of the banker in Flaubert's "L'Education Sentimentale": a man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself."

See Charles Johnson's LGF for the full link.

The Daily Telegraph: All For One

Hitchens profile burned through Chirac like a laser. But this one in Britain's Daily Telegraph may provide more clarity:

Typically French, we might say - but there is nothing typical and only so much that is French about Chirac. "All his life," says Eric Zemmour, a Figaro journalist and author of a new presidential biography, "he has dreamed of being someone else."

Want to read the whole thing? (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Friedman: "Vote France Off The Island"

Tom Friedman may be the world's most inconsistent columnist when it comes to quality, but he's got a good one here.

" How the World of Order deals with the World of Disorder is the key question of the day. There is room for disagreement. There is no room for a lack of seriousness. And the whole French game on Iraq, spearheaded by its diplomacy-lite foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, lacks seriousness."

When even Tom Friedman is writing stuff like this, it's well on its way to becoming a widespread consensus. The part about replacing France with India on the Security Council was nice, and come to think of it, it also made sense. If you want to read the whole thing, here it is.

Fight Night: "The Dance In France"

We don't always agree at Winds of Change. Lately, one of the flashpoints has been France - what's really going on, and what to do about it.

It's a Battle Royale in the comments section of Armed Liberal's "France" post, so come on down and get in the ring! The debate is intense, a bet has been thrown down... and the heat is on. Who will take the prize at "The Dance in France", and who will be left "Embarassed in Paris?" Click here and see for yourselves!

Meanwhile, if you're interested in following the whole discussion, here's the chronology by Round (I'll keep this updated):

1. JAN. 24: "The Evil That Was France." (Trent Telenko). Details the French power grab at the E.U., NATO maneuverings, and U.N. activities, with some good links to the updates at "Innocents Abroad." An integrated strategy for France? Quite possibly.
   

2. JAN. 24: "LePennistan? More Like Le Suicide Diplomatique" (Joe Katzman). You say "evil," I say "screw up the size of Waterworld". This prompts a debate with Trent that spills into the post's "Updates" section at the bottom.
   

3. JAN. 30 "La France et Le Suicide Diplomatique II" (Joe Katzman). And so it begins... the origins and implicit threats within the famous "New Europe 8" letter.
   

4. JAN. 31: "The Blogosphere and The War In Europe" (Joe Katzman). Displeased at the blogosphere's current zeitgeist, Joe comes out swinging. Europe deserves criticism and firm action - but it needs to be responsible criticism, not hysteria or slurs. Here's what we must do, and what role the blogosphere can play.
   

5. FEB. 6: "The Thing That Was France Revisited" (Trent Telenko). France's problem is deep, and existential. Here's what's driving them, and why he stands by his statements in Round 1.
   

6. FEB. 7: "France" (Armed Liberal). A.L. has some background in this subject. He explains where he thinks France is coming from, and why he believes Trent's approach and analysis (and to some extent, Vodkapundit and Instapundit's too) are in error.
   

7. FEB. 10: In response to the war in the comments section of "France," Armed Liberal returns with a sequel: "France^2". From France's recent actions, to life in the 80s, to the proper role of morality in politics, this one covers a lot of ground. Trent?
   

8. Feb. 10: We have some interesting Readings for you on the subject. Further suggestions accepted.
   

9. FEB 16: Trent returns from his trip, and responds with "The Evil That Was France, Again" He discusses the dangers of "valueless national interest" politics, and brings other blogs into the discussion to both adduce evidence and draw on commonalities supporting his point of view.
   

10. FEB. 17: Armed Liberal comes right back with "France^3". He says they have a very different vision of what the world ought to be, and believes Trent is reading more into the situation than is there. The question is, will our vision win out?

Each of these posts has its own set of comments, of course, as the battle overflows to the Winds of Change.NET readership. The final bell hasn't rung yet - so put on your trunks, get in the ring and Let's get r-r-r-ready to r-r-r-r-umb-l-l-l-l-l-e!!!.

All the News That Fits

I have detested the LA Weekly for a long time; before its corporate parent engaged in transparent Clear-Channel type muscle to force and bribe the smaller edgier New Times out of town.

To me the combination of unchallenged, thoughtless, doctrinaire, sanctimonious leftism with ads for vaginal 'rejuvenation', penis enlargement, jewelry, fashion, and the reviews latest, hippest trends typifies much of what pushes me away from the mainstream left that dominates Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

But I have jones for newsprint, and since Layne and company haven't sent me my sample copy of the L.A. Examiner yet, I picked one up at dinner last night (confession: We went to a trendy Venice sushi bar and had a wonderful time, then walked around my old neighborhood and enjoyed urban life for a bit).

And damn if they didn't have two excellent articles I want to push out to folks.

The first one is about a group of students and teachers who stood up to the LAUSD and actually tried to get Locke High to become a place of learning...

By March, the LSU had condensed their concerns to 10 demands. First on the list was "an immediate end to brutality toward students, including illegal searches and seizures, unlawful arrests, constant surveillance, and excessive use of force." They demanded qualified teachers in every class, and that teachers stay awake and not talk on cell phones. They demanded books and materials, the hiring of additional counselors, more extracurricular activities and sports, a well-rounded curriculum. They demanded an end to standardized tests like the Stanford 9, which they considered racist, and to be informed of their right to opt out of taking such exams. They demanded more "positive social events" like dances, field trips and, tragically, vigils. They demanded access to the school's budget to see how funds were being spent. In short, they demanded the right to have a voice in their education, and, more basically, they demanded an education. Before the semester ended, they would have to add an 11th demand: "The freedom to express injustice without retaliation toward teachers, students or parents."

Go read the whole thing; there's no clear victory, but the story is a thrilling one of adults and children standing up to a collapsing, despotic bureaucracy. There's no clear victory, but there was a good fight, and it gives hope that there will be more.

The second is a review of a TV show called The Office; since we have no TV, I can't testify to the quality of the review, but I had to pull a quote and show it to you:

Brent and Gareth find their jobs rewarding, but then they're both severely deluded individuals. Tim (Martin Freeman), a moody sales rep so crushed with boredom it almost paralyzes him, and Dawn (Lucy Davis), the melancholy receptionist he's in love with, are the "normal" characters, all too aware that they're leading dead-end lives. One feels for them — who wants to work in a rinky-dink paper-supply company, after all, especially when you're apt to get downsized for your pains? — but The Office is perhaps a little too eager to dismiss such work as meaningless, almost beneath contempt. (I, for one, use paper quite a lot, and am happy someone's out there supplying it.) Ricky Gervais, who not only plays Brent but also co-writes and directs the show, told The New York Times recently that, minus the comedy, the show is about "missed opportunity" and "wasting your life."

Well, yes, no doubt it is — at least when viewed from the giddy heights of television stardom. There are very few jobs that don't amount to a waste of time, if you want to look at it that way, as the movie About Schmidt recently reminded us. (Who can forget Jack Nicholson watching the minute hand crawl toward 5 o'clock on his last day?) But would working for a paper supplier be a mistake if it paid $1 million a year and landed you two fast cars and a house in the country? Or are "creative," "cultural" occupations, like working at the BBC, for instance, the only dignified ones left to us? There's an unexamined snobbery in The Office that leaves a bad aftertaste. In fact, it can't even be bothered to really show us what the jobs of the various characters amount to. We see them play pranks on each other, answer the phones and fiddle vaguely at their keyboards, but that's about it.

Damn!! A writer at the LA Weekly extolling the value of bourgeois work...what will happen next? I can hardly wait.

If this keeps up, I guess I'll have to adjust my own prejudices. I hate it when that happens, don't you?

Observation & Understanding: Zack Ajmal

Pakistani-born blogger Zack Ajmal has a fine site, filled with a combination of well-crafted posts and some exceptional photographs. I've linked some of his posts about the Deobandi sect and Maududi political movements before.

Adil's recent post about honour killings, "When Vengeance is Written in Blood," seems to have sparked some serious thought from his fellow Muslim blogger. They're serious, and honest, and well researched. Which makes them worth a read. Worth a hand, too. Bravo!

  1. "Honour Killings" (incl. stats. and reports)
  2. "Honour Killings: Misc. Notes" (incl. Koranic Quotes)
  3. Link to Al-Muhajabah site & Islamic injunctions against this practice.

As the fundamentalists lose ground and these teachings spread, let us hope that the practices Adil describes will see dramatic correction in the coming decades.

Sufi Wisdom: Observation and Understanding

Last week's entry got a couple of comments on its timing, given that it was posted just before the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. This week, we close the circle.

As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully").

The Wahhabi hate them, of course, which constitutes an endorsement in my books. The great poet Rumi was a Sufi, and this week we turn to him once again:

"The purpose of humanity
Is observation and understanding.
Oh, G-d's compassion is raining
Observations and understanding."

STS-107: Remembering Ilan Ramon

Col. Ilan Ramon's remains have been positively identified, and the Jerusalem Post reports that a Jewish funeral will be held for him on Tuesday with full military honours. Also recovered from the Columbia wreckage was the charred remains of an Israeli Air Force flag.

Meanwhile, international Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem is preparing a special exhibition in Ramon's honour. It will include the original "Moon Landscape" picture, drawn by Czech Jew Peter Ginz before the boy perished in Auschwitz. A copy was carried into space with Col. Ramon.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is likewise involved in memorial planning, attempting to honour one of Ilan's last requests from space through a campaign to plant 13 million more trees in Israel. In addition, a memorial to the Columbia crew will be placed in Jerusalem's Independence Park.

To my mind, however, none of the tributes paid to Ilan Ramon are more meaningful than this one, penned by an American who had the opportunity to meet him once under circumstances we'd all recognize.

Others have likewise taken pen to paper. In an outpouring of support for the Ramon family thousands of poems, prayers and tributes have flooded in from individuals around the globe including e-mails from India, Argentina, Denmark, Australia, Iran, Germany, Ireland, and even from France and people living under the Palestinian Authority.

Go ahead and read some, and also this excellent piece by Naomi Ragen. You can even send condolences yourself.

UPDATE: Beliefnet has a piece called "Seven Heroes, Seven Faiths," which covers each of the astronauts and publishes some of the remembrances and memories from their houses of worship.

STS-107: Remembering Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla was born in India before moving to the USA at a young age and eventually becoming an astronaut. The best thing about the U.S.A. is how little reaction it gets. "Of course you can show up here and become an astronaut. This is America, isn't it?" Wonderful.

India mourned deeply at her passing, and they are backing up that feeling now with deeds. February 1 is now a national day of remembrance. Yesterday they renamed one of their weather satellites Kalpana-1 in her honour, and a medical college (she was a doctor) will also be named after her. Among other measures.

Amidst the sadness, some good news. It comes in the person of U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackhill, whose career includes a stint teaching poetry in university. I've read some of his speeches et. al., and he's a gem. But his finest moment so far came in the wake of this tragedy, when he sat down and wrote "Ode to Kalpana". It was picked up all over the Indian media, and attracted a great deal of favourable commentary.

I'm glad the days of ambassador poets aren't dead. A fne touch of class, sir, and a great act of service to both countries.

UPDATE: Beliefnet has a piece called "Seven Heroes, Seven Faiths," which covers each of the astronauts and publishes some of the remembrances and memories from their houses of worship.

Father Dear

"Abie Kesserman knew his father for only two years. He knew him in the first year of his life and he knew him in the last year of his father's life. In the former, Abie cooed to his dad's touch and cuddled in his lap. In the latter, he held his father's hand and prayed for his soul. The two relationships were 26 years apart. His dad passed away in 1999 at the age of 54."

A story about abandonment, forgiveness, and the deep bonds of love.

February 7: Shabbat Shalom!

As many of you know, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, my Saturday posts to this blog will always be "good news". I will share Sufi wisdom, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity.

Other blogging days may include these things as well, but today I seek to fill my entire day with that. This provides a necessary and important break from current events, which by nature are often dark. If we do not stop to acknowledge the other side of the coin and see the light also, our perspective and analysis become flawed.

Now, more than ever, we all need that.

The Iraqi Cake Walk?

I picked up the following article "Iraq moving troops, artillery closer to Kuwaiti border" from my e-mail "list of usual suspects." It confirms, with eye witness reports from the UNIKOM officers (UNIKOM is the UN sanctioned multinational peace keeper patrol between Kuwait and Iraq), things that Victor David Hanson and James Dunnigan are saying about the pending Iraq war. America is going to win. It is only a matter of the price America and the Iraqi people will pay.

Some selected exerpts from the first link:

"UNIKOM officers who patrol the 9-mile-wide demilitarized zone, created after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and who travel in southern Iraq provided a first hand independent look at war preparations and troop morale in the region.

"They are terrified," said one army captain, clad in a blue beret. "They won't surrender at the first shot. They will surrender when they hear the first American tank turn on its engine.""

And this

"Some Iraqi soldiers were armed with British pre-World War II machine guns, prompting speculation that they may be militiamen.

Iraqi troops mostly go unshaven and wear tattered uniforms, sometimes with sandals instead of boots. Some complain that they have been paid only a half-month's salary in the past three months, the officers said.

Soldiers have told visitors that they receive one pizza-like piece of bread at each meal and sometimes beg food from passing civilians and UNIKOM personnel."

And this

"UNIKOM officers said they had quietly advised their troops to be ready to evacuate the DMZ quickly in case of war and to watch UNIKOM's American members, because they might get advance warning.

"But I don't think there will be much fighting here," one UNIKOM captain said during an interview in a coffee shop. "That waiter there looks more together than any soldier I have seen in southern Iraq.""

It is obvious that these Iraqi soldiers won't even be speed bumps. Their biggest contribution to the Iraqi cause will be slowing down the American military in terms of the time it takes to process enemy prisoners of war (EPW).

Unfortunately for Saddam, the US Army has already thought of that. The Washington Post is reporting that the Army has contracted for 305 buses and heavy trucks from a South Carolina firm to be delivered to Kuwait by March 27th. That is just the thing for transporting EPWs and rebuilding Iraq afterwards.

The clock is ticking and the players are moving into place.

The signs and portents are for it to be over in a week to ten days after the major formations of American ground troops cross the border. That is darned good for a place the size of Texas, and will probably beat the Soviet's 1945 Manchurian campaign against the Japanese in the military history books.

It will take even less time if Saddam is assassinated in a coup.

The only real wild card is Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Will they be used? By whom? And against which targets?

The AMC and The Shuttle Columbia

Winds of Change.NET has covered the American Muslim Council (AMC) before. My position at that time was that they were open supporters of terrorism, and not just apologists.

Their recent response to the shuttle disaster is entirely in character. Eugene Volokh has the details.

The Shuttle's "Warren Commission"

Steven Milloy has a column up over on the Fox News site titled "Did PC Science Cause Shuttle Disaster?" talking about the more environmentally correct foam put on the Shuttle external fuel tanks and his suspicions that NASA will play games with the investigation. From his column:

"Instead, NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe has activated the Space Shuttle Mishap Interagency Investigation Board. The board is a standing panel created by NASA in the mid-1990s. Its members are generals and other senior bureaucrats from the Department of Transportation -- except that no one from the National Transportation Safety Board is on the panel.

The appearance of independence is lacking. The board is a NASA creation. Its senior government bureaucrats may be reluctant to blame fellow senior bureaucrats. I also wonder whether the panel members ly possess the requisite technical expertise to investigate the accident.

The combination of NASA’s “lone meteor theory” and self-anointed commission strikes me as eerily similar to the Warren Commission and its controversial, if not dubious “lone gunman theory” for the assassination of President Kennedy.

Further, NASA previously dismantled its supposedly “independent” Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel after it questioned the agency’s long-term plans for safety.

NASA is not above pulling the wool over the public’s eyes for its own benefit."

The need for a real independent investigation with NTSB experts has grown in light of this report from Aviation Week:

"High-resolution images taken from a ground-based Air Force tracking camera in the southwestern U.S. show serious structural damage to the inboard leading edge of Columbia's left wing, as the crippled orbiter flew overhead about 60 sec. before the vehicle broke up over Texas killing the seven astronauts on board Feb. 1.

According to sources close to the investigation, the images, under analysis at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, show a jagged edge on the left inboard wing structure near where the wing begins to intersect the fuselage. They also show the orbiter's right aft yaw thrusters firing, trying to correct the vehicle's attitude that was being adversely affected by the left wing damage. Columbia's fuselage and right wing appear normal. Unlike the damaged and jagged left wing section, the right wing appears smooth along its entire length. The imagery is consistent with telemetry.

The ragged edge on the left leading edge, indicates that either a small structural breach--such as a crack--occurred, allowing the 2,500F reentry heating to erode additional structure there, or that a small portion of the leading edge fell off at that location.

Either way, the damage affected the vehicle's flying qualities as well as allowed hot gases to flow into critical wing structure--a fatal combination.

It is possible, but yet not confirmed, that the impact of foam debris from the shuttle's external tank during launch could have played a role in damage to the wing leading edge, where the deformity appears in USAF imagery.

If that is confirmed by the independent investigation team, it would mean that, contrary to initial shuttle program analysis, the tank debris event at launch played a key role in the root cause of the accident.

Another key factor is that the leading edge of the shuttle wing, where the jagged shape was photographed, transitions from black thermal protection tiles to a much different mechanical system made of reinforced carbon-carbon material that is bolted on, rather than glued on as the tiles are.

This means that in addition to the possible failure of black tile at the point where the wing joins the fuselage, a failure involving the attachment mechanisms for the leading edge sections could also be a factor, either related or not to the debris impact. The actual front structure of a shuttle wing is flat. To provide aerodynamic shape and heat protection, each wing is fitted with 22 U-shaped reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) leading-edge structures. The carbon material in the leading edge, as well as the orbiter nose cap, is designed to protect the shuttle from temperatures above 2,300F during reentry. Any breach of this leading-edge material would have catastrophic consequences."

If this Aviation Week report pans out, the Columbia broke up in flight when its flight control system was over powered by the drag from its left wing as its thermal protection pealed off. This makes the foam strike damage theory the leading candidate as the reason Columbia was lost, despite recent NASA announcements to the contrary.

Given the past difficulties NASA has had with the truth in other areas that Steven Milloy mentioned, it is clear the Agency cannot be trusted to investigate or police itself.

America needs a real independent investigation of the Columbia break up, and it needs it to be headed by the professional investigators of the National Transportation Safety Board.

48 Ways to Wisdom: Way #16 - The Business of Living

This is a regular feature on Winds of Change. Every Friday (for Friday evening begins the Jewish Sabbath), we cover one more way to wisdom from Rabbi Noah Weinberg. These materials are written by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, but are written in such a way that they retain their value no matter what creed you follow.

Think of it as a gentle and modern way of sharing 5,000+ years of accumulated wisdom.

This week's entry talks about the way we live our lives:

"Would you rather be rich or wise? Wise, of course. So why do we pursue money with more zeal? Because money is more real to us. The key is to take that motivation for money, and apply it to the more meaningful aspects of life: relationships, spirituality.

If your business is worth it, then certainly "You, Inc." is worth it, too. Deal with yourself as if you're a big business. Examine how you strive to make a dollar, and seek wisdom in this same way. Apply business principles to living."

Provocative, no? Rabbi Weinberg goes on to discuss the following business and spiritual principles:

1. Operate Efficiently
2. Commit to the Goal
3. Strategic Planning
4. Keep an Accounting
5. Maintain Quality Control
6. Invest Long Term
7. Test Market
8. Inventory Control

The close is a story, "Elijah and the Fisherman." I won't spoil it for you with a preview, go read it for yourself.

A Nobel Too Far

Kosovo and Bosnia are the two things that Bill Clinton did as President that he should have gotten the Nobel Peace prize for...and never will.

Sometimes good deeds really are rewarded:

""When I see scenes on television of people elsewhere burning American flags, I'm deeply hurt," said Dr. Besnik Bardhi, who runs a clinic in the southwestern city of Djakovica, where 1,000 people remain missing after the 1998-99 war.

Bardhi's wife was pregnant with their first child during Slobodan Milosevic's savage crackdown on Muslim ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province. The couple promised each other that if they had a girl they'd name her Madeleine, and Bill if it was a boy.

Their daughter, now 3, danced impishly across their apartment and pointed to a framed photograph of Albright, who was U.S. secretary of state during the conflict. "This is the woman who saved us," she told a visitor brightly.

"If there is a God, his missionaries on Earth are Americans," her father responded.

Such adoration is heady stuff for Americans who live and work in Kosovo.

Reno Harnish, the top U.S. official in Kosovo and a veteran diplomat who has served in Egypt, Nigeria and other countries, said he's astounded.

"I've never been received so well. It's kind of daunting," he said. "The Americans have an unusually strong moral authority in Kosovo. The leadership is quite eager to hear the U.S. opinion on things. I think they want the United States to continue to play a role in their lives." "

(Hat tip to the Corner)

France

Trent and Joe have launched a discussion here about France and our relationship. Instapundit and Vodkapundit have weighed in as well.

In reading these, I kept getting a vague discomfort, kind of like the feeling you get when the moules you eat aren’t bad but aren’t really right either. First let me lay out some foundations.

I’m not an expert on France, French politics, or modern European international politics (I don’t think Trent, Joe, or the others are, either…that’s not a disqualification, just a comment on the limits of my and our knowledge and experience). I do have some direct experience; my first wife is French, and she and I traveled and stayed there frequently for ten years and lived there for a year a long time ago while I finished work on my Masters. Her late father was a general in the French Air Force (the real deal; he flew bombers from England during WWII, and served in Indochina and Algeria, as well as a tour as an attaché in Washington D.C.), and was on the board of one of the three largest French companies when I knew him.

My advisor in Berkeley also was a student of French history and economics, and even published a book, Modern Capitalist Planning: the French model on the subject.

I say this just to give some perspective to my opinions…I have no special knowledge; these opinions come from my memory of wide-ranging discussions with a number of interesting people, and the fact that I still read Le Monde occasionally.

First, I think that Trent and Steve are just flat wrong when they criticize France for not acting like an ally. They are right that France isn’t acting like an ally, but wrong to assume that it is or ever was.

In my impression, the driving force behind French international politics is the simple desire to carve out a space where France…even as a second- or even third-class world power…can lead. And those areas are twofold: defining the bureaucracy that they hope will subsume national governments, and in dealing with Africa and the Middle East, where they feel that their ‘benign’ colonial history…to them their willingness to withdraw from Algeria and bring the pieds-noirs home counts as that…gives them special status as the ‘portal’ between these regions and the West.

We in the U.S. are cming to perceive a great conflict between Islamist forces and the West, while the French see the Islamists as people who can be dealt with, leader to leader, and see an great opportunity for France (and Europe) as becoming the gateway between the oil-rich Middle East and the West.

This is totally in line with French diplomatic history in which the major defining principle has been to define themselves against whoever is in power at the moment; first their peer power, Prussia, then England, then the United States. They have always been comfortable that with their ‘realism’ and diplomatic skills, they could reach some rapproachment with the other side, whether that was the Soviet Union, Libya, or now Iraq.

Our frustration with France comes from our (not unreasonable) assumption that a) since we keep bailing them out of military difficulties; b) we rebuilt their economy twice; and c) they lived under our military protection for twenty years, they would act as allies and assume that our interests were parallel, with small differences involving metric v. English measurement and whether we would sell Michelin or UniRoyal tires to various third-word accounts.

They don’t feel that way.

They loved DeGaulle for navigating between the force fields of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and for developing the ’force de frappe’ which they felt ensured France’s military independence.

Trent argues that they are in the midst of a ‘moral collapse’ as state and corporate corruption combines with the increasingly ungovernable banlieues (50’s and 60’s suburbs largely occupied by African and Arab immigrants) and an elite that has lost its philosophical compass.

Let me suggest an alternative theory, which I believe better accounts for the facts.

France is a bureaucratic state, with both the government and private sector fully enmeshed in a dirigiste bureaucracy, with all of the problems which that may entail (see my own writing on the subject). The French have what would be, to many of us, a flexible morality that goes beyond the public acknowledgement of the Prime Minister’s mistresses and illegitimate children, and to the notion of ‘favors’ of various types, both political and corporate.

The political compass of the bureaucracy is not only their own individual advancement, but the institutional advancement of France, and the empowerment of France in a world dominated by larger and more powerful players. The EU would set this triumph in cement, as France joins hands with Germany and takes over Europe.

France has never cared about the U.N. or international process except as a forum in which it could maneuver to maintain its independence.

The French are vaguely amused at our ‘moralistic’ view of international affairs. They pride themselves on cold-eyed realism, and in fact can be astoundingly bloody-minded when it suits them (see the Rainbow Warrior, pretty much anything about the Algerian war). If the 9/11 attacks had happened in Paris and say, Toulouse, large parts of the Middle East would be smoking holes right now, U.N. mandate or no U.N. mandate.

France, like most of the cities in Europe, has for years had a crime rate that would stagger a politician in the U.S. Criminals recently robbed an armored car with a RPG; in the 70’s and 80’s, well-off families (like my in-laws) kept ‘beater’ cars in town, and luxury cars at their homes in the country. The locks on the doors of their Ave de la Gde Armee apartment … in the late 1970’s … put to shame the security systems I see on my friends’ in New York or Chicago.

It is increasing, and there are strong reactions to it ... Le Pen as one example. First, the signals of social breakdown Trent discusses are not unique to France (see the recent decision by police in the U.K. not to investigate property crimes), and second, the 'breakdown' is highly unlikely to happen, because before it gets to that state, I predict that we will see an authoritarian crackdown that would make moderate Republican fans of ‘law and order’ blush. I believe that one reason that the French are more sanguine about this is that they are convinced that the GSIGN can and will deal with any domestic disorder before it becomes a true threat to the social order.

France is, to the best of their belief, pursuing a path that is in the best interests of France.

Now, I think they are wrong; I think they are wrong as they place their reliance in a bureaucratic legitimacy; wrong in their vision for Europe; and wrong in their approach to the issues posed by Islamist Arabs.

And I’m amused to taunt them as members of the “Axis of Weasels”.

But it’s a crucial mistake to pound the table and attribute their actions to impending moral and social collapse; it’s a mistake because it prevents us from dealing with them in a clear-eyed, rational, forceful yet respectful manner. They aren’t going anywhere. Our relationship with them is going to change; but in the next decades we will need all the temporary allies we can get, and we can hope that it will doubtless change again.

The Biggest Intelligence Flaw: Intelligence Gathering and Analysis is conducted by People

One of the other problems with intelligence analysis, is that decision makers frequently do not want to hear what is actually going on - they want to hear that things are going the way they think they should be. This major flaw in intelligence gathering - where agents disregard, or even deliberately misconstrue information that they know their leadership does not want to hear, was one of the major fail points of the KGB. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB is an excellent read, which gives a good picture of how soviet paranoia affected their intelligence analysis efforts.

Of further interest, is of how Mitrokhin came to defect to Britain, instead of the United States, the blame for which can be laid primarily at the feet of the CIA and their extremely timid policies regarding the acceptance of defectors at the time. Especially in light of their disastrous handling of Yuri Nosenko - a KGB defector who established his bonafides with the CIA, and was tortured and kept in solitary confinement in an unheated cell for three years, as thanks for cluing them into the KGB's complete penetration of the American embassy in Moscow. Nosenko would most likely be dead today, or still in his cage, were it not for the efforts of the FBI. The article I link to really soft-pedals the abuse he suffered. The CIA's embarrassment over this fiasco understandably (but unfortunately) made them rather more risk averse when it came to accepting defectors. So when Mitrokhin approached us, we said 'No.' Thankfully, our allies across the Atlantic were generous enough to share some of the valuable information Mitrokhin gave them; information that helped to convict Robert "Rip Van Spy" Lipka of espionage.

Intelligence gathering and analysis is far more than just finding the right information, and verifying its credibility. It is also vulnerable to human foibles, both from analysts unwilling to draw obvious conclusions from the facts at hand, and from decision makers unwilling to hear unexpected or unwanted news. In the Nosenko case, the FBI saved the CIA from their own terrible judgement. Further cooperation and communication between agencies might help prevent or fix more of these cases.

Iraq: Intelligence Flaws & The "Containment" Myth

Innocents Abroad is an excellent and under-rated blog, penned by some expatriates living in Europe. They're doing an interesting series on American Empire, which I'll cover once it's complete.

In the wake of Colin Powell's speech, however, Jacob's Feb. 2 piece arguing that Saddam is uncontainable adds something to the general debate. Even if you're already convinced, his work will point out some important subtleties that will sharpen your viewpoint. If you're not convinced and you're serious about exploring this issue, you might profit from reading Jacob's post in light of these thoughts...

The problem with containment of a state armed with terrorist links and weapons of mass destruction is that it needs to be perfect - and perfection is a tough bet to make. The problem is one of assumptions, and it doesn't just trip up media commentators. Intelligence agencies also fall victim to these pitfalls, with a frequency that should be frightening in a "mega-terror" age that depends on them for early warning.

The process and pitfalls of intelligence gathering lay many traps for the unwary. One key difficulty is how analysis acknowledges and deals with the unknown, which is always a factor in policy making. That's why asking for 100% proof is a dishonest argument - it never exists. Instead, key questions should revolve around the nature of the key uncertainties. In this case: what are Saddam's intentions, as revealed by his actions? What do we know? On his side, how good is the information coming to him? If that system is flawed, can he be trusted to act "rationally" as we define it? And so on.

If you're still on the fence, I submit to you that serious attempts to research and answer those questions are the minimum requirements for a well informed opinion.

Another key intelligence issue is the danger of "mirror imaging", the multiculturalist sin of analyzing the Other through one's own cultural prism. This is a major mistake; the results can quite literally be disastrous. How far astray can it lead us?

"One egregious example is the NIE (CIA's National Intelligence Estimate) of September 1962... that refuted reports from agents in, and refugees from, Cuba about the presence of Soviet ballistic missiles on the island.... they were watching something happen and saying "This can't be happening, because I wouldn't do it."
(from: Angelo Codevilla, "Informing Statecraft" c. 1992)

Fortunately, the analysts were overruled. But even after the Cuban Missile crisis, the CIA official who signed that fiasco of a report was quoted as saying that his judgment on what Khruschev should have done was better than Khruschev's, and that events had proved it. One small problem: his job was to predict Soviet behaviour, not critique it.

It's hard to find a better example of how deep self-justifications for "mirror imaging" can go. Now think of that kind of mistake, applied post 9/11.

With idiotarianism like that afoot, maybe the CIA does need its own internal blogosphere. Surely its previous record re: Saddam and his nuclear capabilities or the 1994 near-war over Kuwait isn't exactly reassuring. Underneath both of those failures lay the twin flaws discussed here: inability to come to grips with the unknown, and "mirror imaging" as a baseline for the gauging of intentions.

These past failures of intelligence tell us important things about our judgment of Saddam's thought processes, and seem to indicate a serious weakness in our analysis. A weakness perpetuated at great risk. As Jacob notes:

"...no one thinks Saddam or Kim Jong-Il will destroy the United States -- just possibly take out a city or two. Mearsheimer and Walt seem willing to bet those cities against the ability of men like themselves to anticipate the way men like Saddam and Kim think."

For all of the reasons noted above, that isn't a bet we can afford to take. Let's roll.

UPDATE: Ray at Random Thoughts also has a related post on intelligence gathering, based on some of his own experiences. Aside from my complete disagreement with the belief that behavioural profiling is either adequate or empirical, I think he makes some very good points. Parapundit is even more on target.

#2: Good timing today, it seems. Vodkapundit directs us to a post analyzing Powell's speech by Ralph Peters, a former intelligence officer.

#3: Saved the best for last - see the full post with comments, where an exchange is going on that vivdly illustrates what happens when these flawed dynamics I've discussed are applied to the question of Iraq...

In Praise of Group Blogging

In 2003, Winds of Change.NET ceased to be my private domain and became a team blog. I'm more than satisfied with the results. What was I thinking when I made the switch? Eugene Volokh must have ESP, because he nails it perfectly.

The Thing That Was France Revisited

Joe and I have a disagreement on the nature of what is happening with the French. Joe says here and here that we are just seeing another variation of the French as usual. That perhaps I am missing that the French did to themselves in 1934-40 with the 3rd Republic and what happened to the 4th Republic in the Algerian War.

While it is true that the French do have a self destructive history -- one that was in the main arrested by a Soviet-American Cold War that removed from the French the opportunity to really self-destruct. What is going on now is "off the reservation" for classic French behavior.

Chirac's German ally, Schroeder, is a dead man walking after the recent local elections in Germany, and that was known immediately after the German national election when concealed German economic data came out.

Bush has made clear Saddam is going down regardless.

Chirac is in a perfect position to betray both for the greater glory and economic advantage of France. Yet Chirac's foreign policy is still sincere and consistent in support for both. The French foreign minister was recently in Syria to organizing joint opposition to the American invasion of Iraq. Stealing the German’s pants is one thing. Negotiating with the Syrians is evidence of French sincerity here.

Sincere? Consistent?? In a French foreign policy?!!? From Chirac!!!! What is wrong with that picture? It isn't French.

Both the NRO and Steven Den Beste have been commenting on French options extensively. It has gotten to the point that Richard Pearle has all but called France the enemy.

In my last go at this I pointed out there is more at stake here for the French than just Iraqi oil. That it was power in the E.U. that was up for grabs, and that thankfully has since blown up in the faces of the Franco-German "Axis of Weasels."

I missed mentioning one more thing, though, the French home front and their "Cities of Darkness. I have seen the article I linked before and it was brought up again in a thread over on Little Green Footballs. Three comments, this one and this one, and this one in particular, gave me the flavor of what is going on with the people there. France is in the midst of a social break down from a collapse of elite will that is straight out of H. Beam Piper's SPACE VIKING.

The thing about corrupt elites trying to remain in power is that they must be closely held and strict with their corruption or their subordinates will imitate them. As the corruption moves down the food chain the amount of damage done to society as a whole increases geometrically, if not logarithmically as the information from the lowest levels to the highest are manipulated at each hand off, for each level's best advantage. Most of the 3rd world nations, and Haiti in particular, demonstrate what happens when the power and money corruption of elites turns whole nations into a kleptocracies.

What is happening with France is less a corruption about physical goods than it is a moral and spiritual corruption.

Steven Den Beste has a real point when he says:

”When last I considered this I proposed the possibility that they were concealing evidence of French companies violating the sanctions and selling war matériel to Iraq and were afraid that they would be severely damaged if it came out. But at this point, given the basic apathy of French voters about that kind of thing, it would require France to be deliberately encouraging Iraq to develop nuclear weapons for that to be sufficient grave to justify this. I don't think that's what's going on any longer. I do think that there will be embarrassment after the war, but I don't think that's the motivation.”

Iraqi bribes to Chirac, and French multinationals on the make, do not excite the French people. Their exposure would not be a regime ending event for the Chirac government. Yet the Chirac government still behaves as though the only thing that matters is preventing Saddam from being overthrown by the Americans.

If it isn't money that is motivating the French government and it isn't power in the E.U., then what is it driving them to oppose the USA on Iraq?

The answer isn't physical, it is existential.

French elites abandoned religion for nationalism after the French revolution. Then they abandoned nationalism for multi-cultural, E.U. style, transnational progressivism. Now that has failed as well and they are as lost as the Wahhabbis in the modern world. The elites that govern France are using their power to hurt and cause pain.

As I said before and restate now:

"People who have chosen the path of damnation are easily known. They seek power above all things. They choose what will immediately benefit them over choices that take longer but reward more. And they use what power they have to hurt others, because inflicting pain is the only pleasure they have that will reach past the aching wound where their soul used to be.

When I look at that pattern, I cannot help but see the face of the evil nation that was once France."

I WANT TO DO THIS...

We've been talking about alternatives to the command-and-control style of massive institutions like NASA.

Here's an alternative:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) intends to conduct a race of autonomous ground vehicles (see “Technical Details” for a definition) from the vicinity of Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV in 2004. A cash prize will be awarded to the winner. The course will feature both on-road and off-road portions and will include extremely rugged, challenging terrain and obstacles. The purpose of the race is to stimulate interest in and encourage the accelerated development of autonomous ground vehicle technologies that could be used by the US military.
...
A $1,000,000 cash prize will be awarded to the eligible team fielding the vehicle that successfully completes the course with an elapsed time that is shorter than the elapsed time of all other race vehicles and is within a pre-set maximum time limit. The winning team will be officially recognized at the next DARPATech, a technical conference hosted by DARPA. The winning team will be invited to display the winning vehicle and present a paper detailing their design.

There will be no prizes for anything other than first place. If no vehicle completes the course within the time limit, no prize will be awarded.
...

Just a thought...

Powell's Address to the U.N.

Full trasncript plus links to video etc. can be found right here. Or, the Washington Post has a summary if you prefer (Hat Tip: Red Alert)

Over at Little Green Footballs, there's also a moving speech today from the co-prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (geography note: northern Iraq under the no-fly zone): "Give Us A Chance to Build a Democratic Iraq".

Columbia: Grief, and Guesses

Aziz Poonwalla is better known in the blogosphere for his political postings, as well as his comments on matters Islamic in "Shi'a Pundit".

His theory about the cause of Columbia's accident, however, reveals a keen mind for technical matters as well. The way he marshalls the evidence is impressive, and though it's still early days it wouldn't surprise me if Aziz turned out to be right. Go read it for yourself.

Then read "Israeli Grief", where Mr. Poonwalla shows a sense of class to match.

President Bush delivered a strong performance himself at the memorial service yesterday. If you didn't watch the streaming video, do. It was a good speech, and President Bush was on the verge of crying the entire time. In some ways, I think it revealed more about the man than anything else we've seen so far.

UPDATE: Reader Eric points us to persuasive information that makes Aziz' theory seem unlikely. NASA has apparently concluded the same thing - see the comments for full details and a link.

In other news, Israeli Col. Ilan Ramon's body (or at least parts of it) reported found.

Energy Efficient Vehicles: Getting There

Winds of Change.NET has a solid roster, but we'll still find room for people who send us great stuff. Self-described "free market green" M. Simon has been featured here twice before, with "Hope" and "Energy Storage." As something of a "granola conservative" myself, I'm always happy to hear from him.

Today, he's back again. Bush's State of the Union speech talked about research for fuel-efficient vehicles. Will that make a difference? When? To understand the answers, we need to understand how a technical innovation becomes part of production model cars and trucks. Fortunately, we have M. Simon to help enlighten us.

LOGISTICS
by M. Simon

Why can't we have the fuel efficient cars we see and hear about in magazines and on television filling the auto company's show rooms in the next model year? Why don't we already have them this year? There's a reason, a one word reason. That word is logistics.

I'd like to discuss here the difference between a prototype built by a school or an auto company and a production auto that you can buy off the show room floor.

I'm going to start out with the very simplest of the new technologies, the Integrated Starter Alternator (ISA). This is a starter motor that's also the alternator (electrical generator) of the car. If this device was made part of the engine we would get a number of valuable improvements:

First, it would be a more efficient electrical generator than the current separate alternator for two reasons. One is that losses from the rubber belts needed to transmit force from the engine to the alternator would be eliminated. Second is that because the ISA would have a larger diameter, it's magnetic structure could be much more efficient than the structure of current belt-driven alternators.

There's a second advantage to a more efficient magnetic structure. In the starter mode the starter motor becomes more powerful and more efficient. Coupled with a higher battery voltage (36 volts nominal, about 42 volts while the engine is running) an engine on demand system becomes viable. That means that when the car is stopped at a stop light the engine can be turned off to save fuel.

A third advantage of an ISA system with a larger battery is that instead of engine braking where the engine absorbs some of the energy needed to slow an auto, the generator/battery system can absorb some of that energy. Better yet, it can return it to the motor on the next start up cycle. In effect, the energy needed to start the engine in stop and go driving is energy that would be otherwise wasted in heating the brakes.

This is a lot of payback from what seems like a simple design change. It has already seen prototypes on the road. So what prevents the car companies from going from a proven design to a million vehicles? Well, we are back to that word: Logistics.

read the rest! »

The European Letter: How It Happened

Back in "La France et Le Suicide Diplomatique II," I said that the letter from 8 (now 11) European heads of state was a Tony Blair move, not a stroke of American diplomacy. Tony's role was important in expanding the signatories, but he wasn't the one who got the ball rolling - Greatest Jeneration has the links to the whole story.

UPDATE: In Vodkapundit's words, "whoa." Looks like Le Suicide Diplomatique is, if anything, picking up speed.

Intelligence Gathering & The Unknown

Jeffrey Goldberg's recent New Yorker article "The Unknown" is pitched as a piece about the C.I.A's re-evaluation of the links between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

It is that, but it's mostly an excellent primer on the processes of intelligence-gathering generally. In fact, it's one of the best pieces I've seen on that subject in a long time. Interviewees include several CIA directors, plus Donald Rumsfeld.

Where Vengeance is Written in Blood

In a remarkable book, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, the Morroccan scholar Fatna Sabbah writes these daring words:

"I would like to say to the young men formed in our Muslim civilisation that it is highly improbable that they can value liberty - by which I mean, relating to another person as an act of free will, whether it be in bed, in erotic play, or in political debates in party cells or parliament - if they are not conscious of the political import of the hatred and degradation of women in this culture."

I recalled these fine words when reading a recent article highlighting the continuing atrocities taking place in the name of patriarchal and tribal honour. It describes the intense anguish of a Ms. Khouri, whose newly-released book recalls how her childhood friend, Dalia, was brutally killed at the hands of her own father.

"At the age of 26, Dalia became a victim, both of the power of unbidden love and the determination of her culture to crush it. She could not help herself. Through elaborate deceptions with the complicity of Ms. Khouri she held secret, though chaste, meetings with a young Catholic man named Michael.

In retrospect, the outcome was inevitable. As with other unmarried women, it was the job of her brothers to monitor her movements like detectives.

The final chapters of Ms. Khouri's book accelerate with grief and passion.

Dalia was stabbed 12 times in the chest, Ms. Khouri writes, and her father stood over her to be sure she was dead before calling an ambulance.

"I've cleansed my house," he shouted when Ms. Khouri ran in through the door, just a block away from her own home. "I've cut the rotten part and brought honor back to my family name."

"Tears flooded my eyes and I began wailing, as so many centuries of grieving Arab women had done before me," Ms. Khouri writes.

Then, in language that went well beyond traditional grief, she shouted at him: "Dalia never shamed you, you shamed yourself. You've turned your home into a house of murder. The spilling of her innocent blood has stained your name, your hands and your soul forever.""

I never cease to be astonished and repulsed at the virulent and pervasive nature of such evil deeds in the Arab and Muslim world. That Dalia's case was not in any way untypical only serves to show how premeditated killings are encouraged and abetted by the twin problems of severe cultural authoritarianism and the embarrassingly weak state of government tenacity in countering such vicious practices.

The article continues:

"Now, with the publication of her friend's story, "Honor Lost" (Simon & Schuster), this dark-haired woman with even darker eyes is stepping forward as a public face for all the women who risk death for violating a brutal desert code of behavior.

"I want the world to know Dalia the way I knew her," Ms. Khouri said in an interview here. "And I want them to know that she represents thousands of women who are still dying, and who had brothers and sisters and friends in their lives who are missing them the way I am missing Dalia.""

Ms. Khouri is truly courageous. That one would need to be in the first place is a sad and telling indication of just how rampant is the totalitarianism that she fights against. Ideally, an individual should not have to delve deep to find her inner courage to criticise those aspects of Muslim culture she disagrees with, but only a supreme confidence that the institutions of her nation will unapologetically defend her rights as an individual human being to the end. But this is not the state of affairs in Jordan at the present time, let alone in the wider Arab and Muslim world. Those under the aegis of a modern, liberal nation must not therefore feel guilty in actively condemning such practices, identifying their roots, and calling for them to be purged forever. Our human rights and freedoms are far too important for us to ignore their stark absence elsewhere.

UPDATE: Zack Ajmal also chimes in with some interesting observations. See Joe's post for a full set of links.

Commitment

All kidding aside, now... over at DonaldSensing.com, Guest Blogger Patrick Walsh has a few choice thoughts:

"...Almost every piece had a line similar to this: "X number of ordinary Americans braved the deathless cold last night/yesterday/this morning to demonstrate their opposition to the forthcoming war against Iraq. What impelled these ordinary folks to withstand these conditions?"

"...Last year about 160,000 ordinary Americans felt so strongly about a cause that they volunteered to spend the next four years demonstrating their support for it. They have marched several hundred miles already. They have spent many, many nights outdoors. They will suffer intense cold and searing heat. They will be drenched by rain and parched by the wind. They will go without sleep and food. They will literally risk their lives on a routine basis. They will be separated from their families much of the time. They will often work 16 hours or more a day.

"...I am waiting for the articles and interviews asking them what motivates this extraordinary demonstration of commitment."

A fair point, and an excellent reminder. I have seen a few articles like this, especially with respect to the National Guard. We'll see more of them soon.

UPDATE: CPO Sparkey has a couple of real-life cases for y'all. "Remember them in your thoughts and prayers," he says. "For no matter who you are, or what politics you hold, they do this for you." Indeed.

How We'll Pay For the War

G. Haubold has a suggestion...

And speaking of logos etc., don't forget the Winds of Change.NET tagline contest, which is still ongoing.

The Roots of Wahhabism

Occam's Toothbrush recently linked to a review in one of my hometown papers. It covers Steven Schwartz' new book, The Two Faces of Islam.

Fortunately, the Globe found an extremely competent reviewer. Paul William Roberts offers an excellent take on the book, as well as a very good short summary of the history of Wahhabism (that radical branch of Islam that has spread from Arabia throughout the Muslim world). Come see for yourself.

UPDATE: Zack Ajmal at Procrastination has his own short history of the related Deobandi sect and Maududi factions in Pakistan. And N.Z. Bear has streaming video of an interview with Schwartz.

Be Prepared (...by Tom Lehrer)

OK, here are the contents of the first-aid kits we keep in the cars and house. Note that these are way too much for a simple accident; they are intended to support several people over several days and deal with a wide range of injuries and conditions. I have a reduced 'accident kit' that I carry on my motorcycle, and a much smaller one I carry in a pocket in my riding suit.

Things to wipe, clean, and disinfect with:

Qty Item

6 Povidone-Iodine Prep
4 Benzalkonium Chloride Wipe
10 Povidone-Iodine Ointment (in zip lock)
5 Neosporin
1 Eyewash/cleaner (Benzalkonium Chloride)
1 Tincture of Benzoin or Mastisol
15 Instant tears
1 Sheet Moleskin
1 Sheet NuSkin

Bandages, splints, wraps

Qty Item

10 Band-Aids
10 Telfa Non-Stick Sterile Pad
5 Shur-Strip Skin Closures
2 rolls Tape, Adhesive, Surgical, Camo. (cloth)
1 roll Tape, Transpore
4 x 4 Gauze Pads
2 Eye Pad
4 Bandage, Muslin, Compressed, Camo. (Gauze Bandage)
1 Splint, (SAM)
6 Dressing, First-Aid, Field, Individual. (Battle Dressing)
1 Bandage, Elastic (ACE Wrap) 2"
1 Bandage, Elastic (ACE Wrap) 4"
3 Bandage, Cohesive, Flexible (Co-ban, Co-flex, Vet. Wrap)
1 ACS Chest Seal
1 12" x 24" 3/8 wet suit material
5' Gaffer Tape (not duct tape)

Tools

Qty Item

1 Penlight, Exam
1 CPR Shield
1 CPR Mask
10 pair Gloves, Nitrile, Examination (in zip lock)
6 Zip lock bags
1 EMT Shears/scissors/tweezers/penlight in pouch
1 Pocket Medic Book
1 Recovery Blanket
3 Instant Cold Pack
5 paper thermometers
1 Metal mirror
1 box Waterproof matches
1 stick Wax firestarter
4 Batteries for penlight
1 Bulb for penlight

Medicines

Qty Item

2 packs Tums
2 tubes Tylenol
20 Motrin
10 Imodium
10 Benadryl
1 vial Ipecac Syrup
6 Burn Gel

plus misc family prescriptions (things we take chronically or that might be useful)

The base kits were designed by John Holschen of Insights Training, Inc., and have proved to be extremely useful over the last several years.

People do look at you a bit askance when you pull it out of the back of the car...it fits into a standard military-surplus field medical pouch...but I wouldn't be without it.

Obviously, the tools are relatively useless without a fair amount of training, and I thank John and my various First Responder instructors for all of that.

I've gotten useful additions and comments from folks more experienced than I in the past, and welcome comments and suggestions from readers.

Most of the products here are available from Gall's or Emergency Medical Products.

JK Note: Insn'taPundit thinks this little kit could have real Homeland Security implications, as part of a "swarm, not herd" defense strategy.

A High-Caliber Argument on Guns

Check out this letter from Ronnie Barrett (manufacturer of the Barrett .50 cal rifles) to Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton.

The City of Los Angeles is moving to ban the sale (and possibly possession) of .50 caliber rifles and ammunition; my view of actions like this is expressed here:

The gun show loophole crisis is like the .50 caliber rifle crisis. It doesn't exist.

I don't doubt that some guns are sold at gunshows to people who couldn't get them at a traditional dealer. Some being a very small number, near the limit of statistical measurement. I don't doubt that someone has, or likely will, commit a crime using a .50 caliber rifle.

But in terms of impacting the overall level of crimes using guns in this county, we're looking at something less than rounding error.

And, simply, it’s time to stop passing laws because a) they give legislators something to say they did come re-election time; and b) because they sound good on TV. You want to propose gun laws?? Make a convincing argument, not based on anecdote, but on statistically valid research, that it will have an impact. And, best of all, convince me that the laws you are passing aren't simply turning up the heat under the frog.

When someone proposes a package of gun legislation that a) has some reasonable likelihood of measurably reducing crimes where firearms are used; and b) has some built in, irrevocable, defendable baseline guarantee of my right as a noncriminal citizen to arms, I'll look really hard at it and probably support it.

It’s all just re-election posturing until then.

Barrett's letter describes just such posturing in painful detail.

At that council meeting, I was very surprised to see an LAPD officer seated front and center with a Barrett 82A1 .50 cal rifle. It was the centerpiece of the discussion. As you know, there have been no crimes committed with these rifles, and most importantly, current California law does not allow the sale of the M82AI in the state because of its detachable magazine and features that make it an "assault weapon." This rifle was being deceptively used by your department. The officer portrayed it as a sample of a currently available .50 cal rifle, available for sale to the civilians of Los Angeles. One councilman even questioned how this rifle was available under current laws, but as I stated, facts were ineffective that day.

His response?

Your department had sent one of your 82A1 rifles in to us for service. All of my knowledge in the use of my rifle in the field of law enforcement had been turned upside down by witnessing how your department used yours. Not to protect and serve, but for deception, photo opportunities, and to further an ill-conceived effort that may result in the use of LA taxpayer monies to wage losing political battles in Washington against civil liberties regarding gun ownership.

Please excuse my slow response on the repair service of the rifle. I am battling to what service I am repairing the rifle for. I will not sell, nor service, my rifles to those seeking to infringe upon the Constitution and the crystal clear rights it affords individuals to own firearms.

He's certainly putting his money where his mouth is.

This is a legislative photo-op; it doesn't solve a problem, because today no meaningful problem exists. We have a real problem with violent crime in this country in no small part because those who govern confuse legislation with action, and waste their time on actions like this instead of identifying and tackling the tough issues that would produce results.

North Korean Collapse: Real Option or Wishful Thinking?

In the wake of some past articles and superb on-line discussions with Tom Holsinger and our own Trent Telenko, Randall Parker is still thinking about North Korea. Hard. In his words:

"I happen to think this is the biggest foreign policy problem that we face for which we have no good solution. We all probably agree in broad outlines about what ought to be done with Iraq... Iran and Saudi Arabia are both more tractable.... But what to do about North Korea? NK is also going to stand for Nuclear Kmart if we don't figure out something to do about it."

"...At the same time, a direct preemptive military attack against North Korea would cost hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of casualties. Therefore one of the most important foreign policy questions currently faced by the United States and its allies is whether and how the North Korean regime can be brought down by means short of a military attack."

His February 1 post is deeply thought provoking, extremely well documented, and sobering. If you're interested in this issue at all, you need to read and consider it.

Printing Human Tissues?

In the wake of the Columbia disaster this weekend, I thought I'd provide an example of some truly mind-bending technology to brighten everyone up a bit. It's stuff like this that reminds us why pushing the limits of discovery is a good idea.

Most of you have inkjet printers. They deposit carefully controlled, ultra-fine sprays of material on paper. You read them as words, or even photo prints. Not bad, eh?

But what if you could print other stuff that way. Like, say, human tissues?

You read that right. Jeff Harrow's excellent Harrow Technology Report notes that:

"...'Tissue Engineer' Vladimir Mironov has washed the ink out of inkjet printer cartridges and replaced it with a suspension of cells, such as hamster ovary cells, or of other biological material. The second cartridge is loaded with a "thermo-reversible gel" which remains liquid below 68 degrees but solidifies above 90 degrees.

They then "print" alternate layers of the cells and the gel to get the cells in just the right shape. Once the cells begin to grow together the gel is easily dissolved away, leaving a purpose-built piece of tissue!"

The Jan. 22 New Scientist article can be read online here, complete with an explanatory graphic.

Will "Kidneys To Go" eventually find its way into the Yellow Pages? Not any time soon. The whole field of stereolithography is still in its infancy, as are nanotechnology and biotechnology generally. Still, the possibilities are intriguing. Note, too, that the GOBBSS experiment on Columbia devised by Israeli Yuval Landau and Palestinian Tariq Adwan sought to test whether bacteria could produce biofilm in space. Could these ideas all be combined one day to produce and grow specialized tissue matrices in a weightless environment?

May we ever continue our voyages of discovery....

Winds of Change.NET Survey and Contest!

Hi, all! As you can see, we've done some sprucing-up over here at Casa del Winds of Change.NET. You'll find few new features on the right, plus a few font tweaks all around to heighten contrast and make reading easier. All that, and a search engine that works really, really well. We're still moving in, so there's more to come.

If there's a particular feature you'd really like to see us install for this blog, please click the Comments link below and tell us.

One of the new additions is something this blog has never had before: a tagline.

"Liberty, Discovery. Humanity. Victory."

Now, here's your challenge: try and come up with a better one, and post your thoughts in the comments section. Or, if you think the one we have is the right one, tell us that with a simple "yours - ditto" comment.

We've covered many topics here at Winds of Change.NET over the last 9 months. Remembering 9/11, and the heroes of Flight 93. Military matters, from future US Air Force priorities to how special forces really operate and concepts like 4th Generation Warfare. Global politics, be it our policy toward Europe, Armed Liberal's Alternative State of the Union speech, Trent's work on North Korea, Commander Lawrence T. Peter's first-hand reports from Sudan, or the probable results of a limited Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange. Recommendations and action, from a 10-point platform for bioterror readiness to the invention of the "Blogburst" in response to the SFSU incident. Technology that could change our world, from Bionic eyes that work to force fields, globally ubiquitous computing, and the choke points of a networked society. We also cover the things that make us human: World Series memories, 9/11 hero Abe Zelmanowitz, some Sufi wisdom, Islam's other voices and more.

[cue "Iron Chef" theme...]

Can you capture that breadth, and the spirit of those who post here, in one meaningful and memorable tag-line? The winner will receive fame and acknowledgement here on the blog, as well as one free guest blogger post about anything they like.

Who will take it? Whose tag line will reign supreme? This much I do know: there are more smart people reading this blog than there are writing it. We look forward to your ideas.

Columbia -- The Aftermath

Photos of Columbia debris are now hitting the net. The Free Republic has a thread where people are posting the photos they find.

The news conferences with the various local 1st responders I have seen on Houston TV stations mentioned over 800 reported sites of Columbia debris with over 100 actually guarded for EPA HazMat teams to pick up. Human remains have been turned over to FBI pathologists.

There are now more reports of astronaut remains. This report is from the BBC. And this report is from ABC News.

Gregg Easterbrook of TIME takes the predictable stand against flying the Shuttle. From the article:

"Unfortunately, the core problem that lay at the heart of the Challenger tragedy applies to the Columbia tragedy as well. That core problem is the space shuttle itself. For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer. The space shuttle is impressive in technical terms, but in financial terms and safety terms no project has done more harm to space exploration. With hundreds of launches to date, the American and Russian manned space programs have suffered just three fatal losses in flight—and two were space-shuttle calamities. This simply must be the end of the program.

Will the much more expensive effort to build a manned International Space Station end too? In cost and justification, it's as dubious as the shuttle. The two programs are each other's mirror images. The space station was conceived mainly to give the shuttle a destination, and the shuttle has been kept flying mainly to keep the space station serviced. Three crew members—Expedition Six, in NASA argot—remain aloft on the space station. Probably a Russian rocket will need to go up to bring them home. The wisdom of replacing them seems dubious at best. This second shuttle loss means NASA must be completely restructured—if not abolished and replaced with a new agency with a new mission."

James Dunnigan over on Strategypage.com gets to the practical brass tacks and makes the following point:

Despite the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1st, the Space Shuttle is still the most reliable space launcher available. It's also capable of carrying some of the heaviest loads, bringing a large crew along and, of course, landing and being reused. The Space Shuttle crew provides enormous flexibility, especially for tricky repairs or refurbishment of expensive satellites (the Hubble observatory and spy satellites.) But launching the Space Shuttle, or any other model of "booster", is inherently dangerous. These launches stretch existing technology to the limit. And when you do that, you cannot expect zero failures. The exceptionally low failure rate of the Space Shuttle is achieved with a combination of determined engineering, and lots of money. Each Shuttle mission costs over half a billion dollars.

The thing that hurts is I agree with most of what Easterbrook says in the paragraphs clipped above. Anyone who has been in the space activism movement as long, and through as many activist organizations, as I have gets into a real love/hate relationship with NASA.

The bottom line is that the NASA bureaucracy is a bigger obstacle to opening the space frontier than technology or funding. Where space activists splinter is on what to do with that insight. Almost all the roads to space for Americans lead through NASA. Where space activists stand on that road usually determines whether they are NASA haters, NASA Reformers or NASA enablers.

I am one of the NASA haters. My solution is competition. Historically it has worked. When the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) did their Clementine deep space probe (that discovered water on the Moon) and DC-X reusable rocket projects. NASA changed. "Cheaper, Quicker, Faster" space probes were a direct result of that competition. Then when the Clinton Administration killed SDIO, NASA reverted to form like a Stretch Armstrong doll.

Breaking NASA's manned space monopoly in the American government via a new American military space service is what I consider to be part of the answer. Enabling commercial manned sub-orbital markets is another piece. Creating a separate Federal regulatory regime for space that is free from the infamous Federal ITAR weapons technology transfer regulations is a third piece of what is needed.

Columbia -- Struck by Lightning?

It has been known for some years now that the upper atmosphere has a whole series of electrical discharges. There was a very good article on the phenomina in the Scientific American.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that an amateur photographer may have caught such a discharge striking the Columbia:

"The photographer invited The Chronicle to view the photos on his computer screen Saturday night, and they are indeed puzzling.

They show a bright scraggly flash of orange light, tinged with pale purple, and shaped somewhat like a deformed L. The flash appears to cross the Columbia's dim contrail, and at that precise point, the contrail abruptly brightens and appears thicker and somewhat twisted as if it were wobbling.

"I couldn't see the discharge with own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it," the photographer said. "But I'm not going to speculate about what it might be." "

If this is in fact the case. Then is may not have been the insulation strike on launch that damaged the tiles on the left wing. It may have been an act of nature.

The implication for future Shuttle flights would be grim unless we developed a lightning strike proof heat shield technology, a means of forcasting such weather in the upper atmosphere to avoid it, or the ability to manipulated the plasma sheath around a reentering space craft to divert such a strike.

KISSing SPACE

Scanning the blogosphere and traditional media, I hear the sound of the blade being sharpened as we lead the usual suspects to the block; careerist bureaucrats, penny-pinchers in Congress, a public unwilling to bear the true cost of the space spectacle it seems to want.

Let me stake out a contrarian position.

First, I'm not a "Shit happens" kind of person. No one who has survived twenty years riding high-performance motorcycles without scars can be. My response to that is typically "Shit is what happens to people who say 'Shit happens'".

But we're blaming participants - we'll find some hapless administrator who OK'ed a new cost-saving procedure, or who ignored an engineer's risk assessment, and hang the poor bastard - when we ought to blaming the system.

The reality is that a system like NASA's is inevitably brittle. To expect that you can build an organization that employs tens of thousands of men and women and spends billions of dollars every year and expect it to be peopled and run by selfless, cooly rational altruists is to admit that you still believe in the Tooth Fairy.

While I'm sure the rose-colored rear view mirror suggests that NASA in the 60's was such a place, I'm willing to bet that a view taken at that time would have disagreed. And, in truth, it was a smaller and simpler place, where people worked on larger, cruder systems.

The kind of bureaucratic boggling is inevitable in monolithic projects at the scale of the Shuttle program, and we should stop wasting our time making believe that the fault is with the individual flawed judgments we will doubtless find at the root of this tragedy, and recognize that we are dealing with "the warped wood of humanity", and act accordingly.

I'm dealing with an infinitely simpler problem at a client's where they have grown a bureaucratic, ineffective software development culture. My Sancho Panza - the young guy I've been given to work with - wants to burn it down and start over...to sweep it away in a revolution that will bring purity and clarity of purpose to the institution. I see myself twenty years ago in him, and I've seen enough failure...both of selling revolution, and of the revolutions themselves when I've won...that I'm looking for a different path.

We can sacrifice a few goats and keep going as we are, or we can sweep the buildings clean and repopulate the corridors of power with people who will, in short order, start acting like the people there today. Or we can do something truly revolutionary, and accept our limitations and find ways to meet our dreams while working within them.

Sounds like an interesting topic to work with for a while.

And So It Begins...The Columbia Blame Game

Good Morning. It is February 2nd and the day after the Columbia break up. Exploration has its price. Sometimes that price is in terms of human lives. In other's, it is in the budgets and careers of various government buearucracies. The Columbia break up is shaping up to be both.

It did not take long for the pattern of NASA mismanagement to show its ugly head. This is from the UK Observer:

Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed. In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.

During his last 11 years at Nasa, Nelson served as a mission operations evaluator for proposed advanced space transportation projects. He was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement.

Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems:

· 1999 - Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line;

· January 2000 - Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures;

· August 2000 - inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring;

· October 2000 - the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank;

· April 2002 - a hydrogen leak forced the cancellation of the Atlantis flight;

· July 2002 - the inspector general reported that the shuttle safety programme was not properly managed;

· August 2002 - the shuttle launch system was grounded after fuel line cracks were discovered.

Given that pattern, this story from the Chicago Tribune (registration required), which makes the case that the problem was the launch-damaged left wing of the Columbia, is very credible. You see, this is something that happened on two previous Shuttle flights. In those flights ice coated external tank insulation peeled off and struck other parts of the Shuttle stack and that was deemed "not a flight risk" as the NASA pre-flight safety review.

Exerpts from the article below:

On Saturday, that same wing started exhibiting sensor failures and other problems 23 minutes before Columbia was scheduled to touch down. With just 16 minutes remaining before landing, the shuttle disintegrated over Texas.

...there was nothing that the astronauts could have done in orbit to fix damaged thermal tiles and nothing that flight controllers could have done to safely bring home a severely scarred shuttle, given the extreme temperatures of re-entry.

A California Institute of Technology astronomer Anthony Beasley, reported seeing a trail of fiery debris behind the shuttle over California, with one piece clearly backing away and giving off its own light before slowly fading and falling. Dittemore was unaware of the sighting and did not want to speculate on it.

If thermal tiles were being ripped off the wing, that would have created drag and the shuttle would have started tilting from the ideal angle of attack. That could have caused the ship to overheat and disintegrate

These on-going stories make it extremely unlikely there will be a replacement Shuttle, even if there were the money available to replace Columbia.

While it is likely that people will question the whole manned space flight concept, and the remaining Shuttle fleet especially, in the short term. The need to keep commitments to the partners in the International Space Station program will restart the Shuttle fleet flying.

The real question that is coming is not, What will replace the Shuttle?

It is: Will NASA be replaced before they lose another Shuttle?

STS-107

HIGH FLIGHT by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bounds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a thousand things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along , and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Trite, but today of all days, true.

Columbia Down

The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up at mach 18 and 200,000 feet over north central Texas at ~ 8:00 AM CST this morning.

There is virtually no hope that any of the seven person crew, including Israeli's first astronaut, have survived.

Early reports from local Texas news stations report debris impact near Palestine, Texas.

NASA is advising locals to stay away from the debris due to the extremely toxic, poisonous and flamable nature of the Hydrazine thruster fuel.

Update:

NASA has reported "shuttle debris sighted in north and central Texas" and they have lowered the flag to half staff at their facilities.

There will be a NASA news conference at 10:30 AM CST.

President Bush is returning from Camp David to the White House by motorcade due to weather keeping Marine One grounded.

Update 2:

Local houston weather radar (channel 11 KHOU) replays are showing the Columbia's debris trail extending over south east Texas. Since the radar picks up only small particles, the only conclusion is that the Columbia has mostly vaporized. We may not have any bodies to bury.

Update 3:

There are three crew remaining on the international space station. They have a Soyuz attached and there is a Progress resupply tanker that has just been launched. They are in no danger.

Update 4 -- 10:28AM CST:

There are now multiple reports of debris from small Texas communities north of Houston. They are talking about small pieces of aluminium, ceramic tiles etc. Nothing that is large or heavy. This follows as the larger heavier pieces will follow a ballistic trajectory down range. Louisianna will be the likely landing place for those larger pieces.

Tyler, Lufkin, Jasper, Corsicana, and Nacogdoches, Texas are all reporting debris.

There is also a report of an apartment complex in Plano, Texas is burning from apparent shuttle debris impact. Local fire fighters are on the job and are laying foam on it.

Update 5 -- 11:01 AM CST

NBC reports FEMA has been designated as the lead Federal agency for the clean up of Shuttle debris. The US Military's Northern Command has been tapped to provide support for the effort.

Update 6 -- 11:25 AM CST

The local Houston TV stations are now playing call ins from eye witnesses and people who have found debris.

There are reports (from NBC at the Pentagon) that a US Military defense support program satellite spotted a "heat spike" from the shuttle.

Dallas TV stations (KTTV via my local Houston stations) are showing helicopter views of burning fields that have shuttle debris.

The Houston Channel 13 station just had a call in from someone who has Shuttle debris hit his house!

Rural Texas emergency management and law enforcement numbers are jammed with calls. People are calling houston TV stations via cell phones to get information on debris out to the public.

Update 7 -- 11:35am CST

Local Texans are waking up, turning on their news and calling anyone and everyone. Local emergency services lines and now some of the media lines are jammed.

Anyone on the blogosphere who reads this, please post on your sites the usual disaster warnings to stay off the phone lines unless you are involved in a emergency so vital communications can get through.

Update 8 -- 11:45 AM CST

Here is the NASA statement on the disaster:

A Space Shuttle contingency has been declared in Mission Control, Houston, as a result of the loss of communication with the Space Shuttle Columbia at approximately 9 a.m. EST Saturday as it descended toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. It was scheduled to touchdown at 9:16 a.m. EST.

Communication and tracking of the shuttle was lost at 9 a.m. EST at an altitude of about 203,000 feet in the area above north central Texas. At the time communications were lost. The shuttle was traveling approximately 12,500 miles per hour (Mach 18). No communication and tracking information were received in Mission Control after that time.

Search and rescue teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth and in portions of East Texas have been alerted. Any debris that is located in the area that may be related to the Space Shuttle contingency should be avoided and may be hazardous as a result of toxic propellants used aboard the shuttle. The location of any possible debris should immediately be reported to local authorities.

Flight controllers in Mission Control have secured all information, notes and data pertinent to today's entry and landing by Space Shuttle Columbia and continue to methodically proceed through contingency plans.

More information will be released as it becomes available.

The Houston media is reporting that NASA is in "Media lockdown" with reporters being put in waiting rooms with no contact with anyone but NASA P.R. officials.
The NASA news conference by Administrator Sean O'Keefe is planned for 1 p.m. EST. But local reporters say there may be a statement from President Bush first.

Hat tip to spaceflightnow.com

Update 9 -- 12:03 PM CST

Raw home video from all over south east Texas is now showing up on the local Houston TV stations. One video from Nacogdoches, Texas shows the nozzle from a Shuttle OMS thruster sitting on a road.

Local Texas National Guardsmen have reported in and are providing security in many areas for Shuttle debris. No one in the environmental HazMat suits have been shown on any of the video I have seen yet.

We will find out in a couple of days, when people start dying, whether any of these pieces have the toxic rocket fuel residue on them.

There is also an unconfirmed report of human remains with shuttle debris in Jasper Texas.

Update 10 -- 11:20 AM CST

The latest unconfirmed reports are that the "possible human remains" are in San Augustine, Texas. These could be astronaut remains, some poor unfortunate murder victim or just called in pranks.

Update 11 -- 12:53 PM CST

The O'Keefe news conference is over. They restated the obvious. The crew is almost certainly dead. There will be a technical briefing at 3:00 pm. FEMA is the point agency for the clean up. The Department of Homeland Security is getting its first work out with this disaster trying to work with emergency 1st responders in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

We have confirmation from Texas DPS of Shuttle related human remains in San Augustine. "Two body parts were found." There was no further elaboration.

Update 12 -- 1:14 PM CST

Bush made it official in his address to the nation. The Columbia crew is dead.

There are reports over on the Free Republic that MSNBC is playing the last communications from the Columbia. Apparently there was a 57% bank to the left. The tire pressure sensor went off and then you hear the sounds of the break up.

Update 13 -- 1:37 PM CST

The recovery efforts by the Federal government now involved helicopters from Ft. Hood and various Texas National Guard aviation units seconded to FEMA. Many are now staging through Ellington Field in the Houston area to conduct grid searches of the Columbia debris field.

Local Houston TV stations are showing many Texas locals rubber necking the Columbia debris. There are also now showing human interest interviews of people in the Clear Lake area surrounding the Johnson Space Center. Flowers and notes of condolence are being laid at the gate of JSC. Businesses are putting out messages of condolence on their signs.

I am reminded of the memorial that sprang up in the field in Pennsylvania around the Flight 94 impact site.

Update 14 -- 2:25 PM CST

There is conformation of Shuttle associated human body parts in Jasper, Texas as well. There are going to be closed casket funerals.

Local Houston TV stations are reporting a California astronomer saying that the Shuttle Columbia was trailing debris, and there were flashes of light, as it passed over head. This would be consistent with the Shuttle shedding TPS tiles during reentry.

Update 15 -- 3:02 PM CST

I'm listening to the NASA news conference right now. Numerous heat sensors in the wing started dying at 7:53 AM with no heat temperture associated with the failure. (In so many words, it was as if the wires to the sensors were cut.) Then the langing gear tire pressure sensor went off at 7:58 AM. The crew was asked about it from ground control. The crew reponded and was cut off in mid word. Telemetry then indicated a 57 degree bank and sounds of static similar to the break up of Challenger were heard. Then nothing.

To my ear, it sounds like the techical description given is consistent with a TPS failure on the left wing.

The bank was caused when the wing landing gear tire overheated in the wing and exploded. This destroyed the structural integrity of the left wing. The Columbia then went into a fatal roll and broke up in flight.

The Q&A; is going on, but I think we are not going to get much more form this. TV and Newspaper reporters are too technically ignorant to ask relevant questions.

Update 16 -- 3:18 PM CST

One of the reporters surprised me. NASA was asked about the CalTech astronomer report I mentioned earlier. This ellicited a response that the Columbia was going through "maximum thermal load" at the point telemetry was lost.

I won't call this a "smoking gun" for the TPS failure theory, but it is very suggestive.

Update 17 -- 3:37 PM CST

Here is an AP report on the Shuttle investigation and Federal recovery efforts.

Here is an AP report on the CalTech astronomer mentioned earlier.

Here is a report on possible failure modes.

Update 18 -- 3:54 PM CST

The local Houston TV reporters are now saying that the 57 degree bank was one of a series done to slow down the Shuttle during reentry. So this was normal and was not caused by the TPS failure. However, by putting the left wing into maximum thermal load, it may have caused it.

Peggy Noonan has better words than I do about this disaster.

Update 19 -- 4:30 PM CST

This is the wrap up.

We had a Mach 20.9 break up of a Shuttle over a moderately populated area of South Central Texas. The total death count on the ground as of this time is zero.

While there is property damage, it is less than that caused by a single line of heavy thunderstorms or a single tornado. The Commerce Department and FAA regulations on the safety and insurance requirements of commerical space operations are going to have to be revised in light of this "flaming datum."

While much is going to be said about the need for more Shuttles or a replacement for the Shuttle fleet. We already have a manned space transportation back up. It is called the Soyuz. The Cold War is over and the Russians will sell America as any as we are willing to buy.

If we want "assured human access to space" that is for American national security. Then that calls for a small, reusable, high flight rate military space plane and a seperate military space service to use it. The USAF has made clear that it would rob money from a military space plane to fund the F/A-22 and you can't launch a space plane from a Nimitz class carrier.

If you want assured civilian human access to space, then putting out launch service bid to private launch service providers is the way to go. Lock-Mart or Boeing are fully capable of putting crewed capsules or space planes on their Atlas and Delta rockets respectively. Orbital Sciences has made similar proposals for NASA's orbital rescue vehicle.

Whatever we do, we need to retire the huge standing army associated with the NASA shuttle. We can no longer afford to allow NASA to have a monopoly on manned space flight. NASA is a Cold War Space Agency. The Cold War is over and the centralized government bureaucracy paradigm has been shown to be a under performing failure.

It is time to demobilize NASA and move on to opening the space frontier.

There are other government entities that can do the job of exploration, the military for one, National Science Foundation for another, and universities for yet another. And the private sector awaits if the regulatory and tax environment can be made attractive enough. It is time that we used them all in the traditions of late 19th and early 20th century America.

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Sufi Wisdom: Assumptions

As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully").

The Wahhabi hate them, of course, which constitutes an endorsement in my books. The great poet Rumi was a Sufi, as is the popular folk character Nasruddin (also known in some places as Hodja or Nasreddin Hodja). I've come to appreciate the Sufis for their poetry, their humour, and their body of wisdom. Every Shabbat, therefore, I will be sharing some of that here.

"A certain man asked Nasreddin Hodja, "What is the meaning of fate, Hodja?"
"Assumptions," Hodja replied.
"In what way?" the man asked again.
Hodja looked at him and said:
"You assume things are going to go well, and they don't - that you call bad luck.
You assume things are going to go badly and they don't - that you call good luck.
You assume that certain things are going to happen or not happen - and you so lack intuition that you don't know what is going to happen.
You assume that the future is unknown. When you are caught out - you call that Fate."

From Erol Beyman's excellent site.

February 1: Shabbat Shalom!

As many of you know, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, my weekend posts to this blog will always be "good news". I will share Sufi wisdom, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity.

Other blogging days may include these things as well, but today I seek to fill my entire day with that. This provides a necessary and important break from current events, which by nature are often dark. If we do not stop to acknowledge the other side of the coin and see the light also, our perspective and analysis will be flawed.