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Why the Iran Earthquake Death Toll is a Failure of Governance

I'm attending a First Responder (FR) advanced emergency care course these days. One of the instructors was involved in an incident this month where he came across a man laying in the middle of the road. He stopped, called 911, and within one minute he had an ambulance, a fire truck, and three patrol cars. One minute.

He told us about this incident because it was somewhat remarkable for its speed and scope of response, but it also illustrated an important point about the level of coverage in the metropolitan area. Anywhere in urban Portland, within five minutes of calling 911, the standard level of response is three EMT-Paramedics on site and treating the patient.

While we complain about our government, often with good cause; as an entity to serve the populace, it does really quite well. The communications system needed to transfer the emergency messages, the road system to carry the emergency vehicles, the building codes to prevent emergencies, the response coordination, the emergency services training, and the emergency responders are all there either because the government led the way, did the work, or in many instances had the decency to get out of the way of others who lead. Of paramount importance to our national emergency care apparatus is that lives are not wasted because of insufficient response.

Dictators care about power, not people. Regardless of the inane revolutionary mouthing of the chattering class, the fundamental indication of a government for, of, and by the people is their treatment of the people. This summer, more than fifteen thousand people died in France because the labor leadership is stronger than the people they pretend to protect. Mandated short work weeks, onerous overtime rules, and a month of vacation caused systemic failure of their emergency management system and more civilians died needlessly in France than in Iraq since the invasion.

This week in Iran, more than forty thousand people died needlessly because militant Islam does not care how many people it kills in its drive to religious purity. Twenty-five years ago, a quake more than ten times as powerful killed fewer people. Thirteen years ago, fifty thousand people died in an earthquake five to ten times as powerful. Location of the epicenter plays some part, but an institutional indifference for the people of Iran is the real culprit here. The nation is going to be hit by earthquakes, and no fatwah is going to change that. By any reasonable standard, the government of Iran failed its people this week. Again. When will the Mullah's yield power to a government that cares enough about its people to prepare for earthquakes and other emergencies that will come? How many more hundreds of thousands must die so the Mullah's can indulge their addiction to intolerance?

 
Perpetuation versus Success: Why Sanguinocracy Lingers

One of the very greatest advantages about America, one of the reasons people give for doing whatever they have to for a chance to live here, is that there are few structural obstacles to success. Arguably the best result to come out of the Civil War was the demolition of the largest artificial obstacle to success; our nation's holding people in bondage. Denying people the chance to succeed is not what this country is about. When explaining the economic, artistic, cultural, technical, military, and scientific dominance of this country, it is hard not to point to this aspect of our national character. While this is not an absolutely open country without barriers to success, it is head and shoulders above anywhere else.

Many of the other nations of the world operate their governance with a different agenda. The most important function of government for most of the world is perpetuation of power. Regardless of whether the form of power is trade unionism or secret police, the continuation of that authority has a price and one of the first penalties imposed is freedom to innovate and succeed. In many instances, self-perpetuation operates through informers and commissars. All that is needed to get imprisoned or killed is to become the subject of an informer's envy, hostility, or fear. This is the reason why commissars brutalize regardless of consequence; to admit fault would cause your superiors to fear you.

At its worst, in places like North Korea and Iran, and formerly in Iraq, the Soviet Union, and the First French Republic; the government devolves into sanguinocracy. Blame for the myriad failures of a system structured against success is assigned to anyone other than those in charge. The best way to prevent awkward testimony is to eliminate any possibility of a trial where opposing evidence is heard, and then permanently silence the suspicious person.

While the radical intellectual left has not gotten control of a government lately, they have extensively shown their willingness to use the methods of the sanguinocrats in public discourse. Socialists in the UK who dispute the party line are "tried" for their lack of unity to the Communist Party. Michael Moore claims that all the facts in his book are true, despite the well documented lapses in accuracy. Green Party scare tactics regarding genetically modified foods are centered on irrefutable public spectacle, not open debate. The anti-war demonstrations of the last year was run by an openly Stalinist wing of the Communist Party. These people are not interested in the environment, national success, or development; they are interested in perpetuation and expansion of their power.

We do not see the organized left condemning Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, or Khamenei and the Mullahs because they are using exactly the same methods. The bloody handed dictators empower the commissars of the radical left and validate their choices. By dressing their rhetoric in revolutionary drag, they ease the suffering of would-be commissars through their frequent failures. This sick co-dependency has shown tremendous resiliency in the face of all peaceful efforts to hold it morally accountable. Arguably the best argument for the War in Iraq was how shockingly weak it showed the commissars to be. When confronted with reality at the barrel of a gun, sanguinocracy folded.

NOTE: Posted in response to Cara's post here.

 
Reviewing the Math

Earlier this year, I was struck by the remarkable event of the CIA openly announcing the names of two who passed in their service. Rather than let the opportunity pass unnoticed, I posted a commentary on the event and a momentary eulogy for those who died in the service of what I believe is right. Today I received this:

interesting blog Patrick. I am the brother of Chris Mueller whom you wrote about. not sure I understand the whole "fuzzy math" issue you spoke of.
care to expound? I do appreciate your respect for his service and
sacrifice.

Brandon Mueller

I greatly respect the people who fight for the US in the Special Forces and covert communities. I joke about some of the things I had to endure in my term of service; exploding toilets and decaying goat carcasses on Haitian smugglers to name two. My service had some rough spots, but nothing like what the Special Forces operators go through. The saying in the Navy is: you choose your rate, you choose your fate. I choose to spend the bulk of my time in air-conditioned spaces staring at squiggly images. Chris Mueller chose to go a much harder route, and he did so repeatedly. You do not end up in Central Asia getting shot at by unpleasant religious enthusiasts either accidentally or just because you needed the money. You end up on the far side of the world, fighting on the CIA's dime because you are very good and very trustworthy. In order to be fighting in operations beyond the traditional scope of military control, a lot of professionals had to have trained you and believed in you. You have to be somebody special.

As much as we might like to, we can't just push a button and produce people like Chris Mueller. Not to disregard the decade of hard training it takes to get somebody in the zone he was in, the character it takes to stick with it through all the training isn't easy to come by. I never was in Special Forces, but I was around them enough to pick up on the subtle differences between those who want to be SF and those who could make it. There were a lot of insecure jocks who tried out for the SEALs, and a small number of serious hard cases who had the supreme disregard for their own comfort that was needed to accomplish the mission. We can't afford to throw away people like Chris; we need every one we can get.

So here's the math on this. We cannot afford to lose these special people. We cannot afford to not use their special skills and character to accomplish the missions. People like Chris Mueller keep thousands of soldiers and millions of civilians from getting slaughtered by being tougher, smarter, faster, and better than anybody the enemy has. They deserve all the support we can give them without that support becoming an easy target or a distraction to their mission. We certainly owe them our thanks and remembrance.

I have no idea how many critical missions Chris Mueller and his partner William Carlson accomplished before they died in an ambush. I know they died while receiving air support and their team inflicted serious harm to those who attacked them. I strongly suspect that they were just unlucky that day. I also suspect that the casualties their team inflicted on the enemy will reduce the likelihood of that bad luck repeating. It's a shame they went down, but they didn't go down easy. In the final accounting, Chris Mueller and William Carlson made ambushing our forces a net loss for the ambushers, and that's the only math that really matters.

I wish that Chris Mueller was still alive and out there operating; Brandon must feel the same thing a thousand times more. This year, I've lost my grandmother, an aunt, and my father; grief is no stranger to me these days. All of my family went well, though. They lived their lives in worthwhile ways and I am better for it. I am also better for the life of Chris Mueller and I thank his family.

 
The League of Sanguinocracy

I was just reading an old Raphael Sabatini novel, "The Master of Arms" and got reminded why I do so. In it he describes the government of revolutionary France as "sanguinocrats", or those who rule in blood. Gems like this are why you read old Raphael Sabatini novels. Anyway, it occurred to me that the bloody rule of Marat, Robespierre, and the mob was not the only sanguinocracy in modern history. Germany gave itself over to governance by phlebotomy for a time as well. States under the rule of blood have are defined by their tendency to kill people on accusation alone. It does not matter if the people dragging you to the block are the Committee for Public Safety, Gestapo, Saddam Fedayeen, Taliban, or the Revolutionary Council. This behavior leaves lasting scars on the psyche of a people, and their ability to perceive justice. Perhaps this explains the reluctance of France and Germany to chasten its current practitioners.

It is harder to spell the League of Sanguinocracy than it is the Axis of Evil. God forbid that George W. Bush might be forced to stake our nation's dignity on his pronunciation of that phrase. It does seem to fit, though. So, I suppose that if you do not like to use the word "evil", you can just call them "sanguinocrats". How you distinguish somebody who supports sanguinocracy from somebody who is evil is your own lookout.

Now as for the death penalty issue. There is a difference between the death penalty administered by a Democracy under the rule of law and the violation of reason allowed in a Sanguinocracy. If you cannot make that distinction, perhaps you can step over here to the guillotine and the Committee for Public Safety can explain it to you. By the way, anyone who cannot tell the difference is an enemy of the state and must be executed. Good luck in your role as Champion of the League of Sanguinocracy, shorty!

 
Anywhere But Blogs

The primary "are you with us or against us" line has been drawn on the morality of war in the current era, and a lot of blogs have fallen to the right side of that line. Many of those who chose to defend the "only moral choice is peace" have been pushed further and further into indefensible positions as evidence of genocidal fascism mounts. Since one of the key elements of the blogsphere is feedback, the viability of maintaining a forum on an indefensible position is limited.

"Anybody But Bush" may look great on a bumper sticker in traffic, but having to argue that you would prefer the leadership of the free world in the hands of the Gambino crime family in the comments section of your blog is somewhat less rewarding an activity. Now when I saw that bumper sticker in traffic last week, I was only able to prevent the person from cutting in front of me. On a blog, I could have destroyed that person's worldview in a few terse paragraphs.

One of the critical problems for the leadership of the left is that they have chosen to a political identity that can be defended in the tight space of a bumper sticker slogan or the clamor of a protest rally chant and not elsewhere. The ability of your accusers to hyperlink to reams of contradictory evidence and commentary is not faced in rush hour traffic or the packed confines of an angry mob. The quantity and quality of the methamphetamines you are taking diminishes precipitously over time, and if you post something particularly stupid it sticks around on the Internet much worse than bumper sticker glue.

 
The Left is Gripping

One of the great things about the living for years in the same room with more than thirty people where the toilets occasionally explode is that you gain tremendous stress management skills. Behaviors and events that would cause many to run screaming from the space barely cause you to lift your eyebrow. After I got out of the Navy I ran science fiction conventions and wore business suits. At first, strange people would try to "freak the mundane"; until it was rather conclusively proven that almost nobody could by being weird. They couldn't make me grip.

The term we used on my first ship often used to describe people who were not composed was "gripping". If your way of handling a situation was to take a death grip on anything solid and hold for dear life, you were gripping. People who had been afloat successfully for a number of years knew that the way you dealt with a fluid world was to stay mobile. The term was used to describe any kind of situation where excessive attachment to one particular was wasted effort and an imposition on those around you.

After 9/11, much of the Left is gripping. One of the things they are gripping to is the failed Presidency of Geo. Bush & Co., and all the rest of their world view circa September 10, 2001. Another thing they are gripping to: the notion that it is still acceptable to say out loud, "…by any means necessary." With their world crumbling around them, they grip tight to anything they can hold, even if what or who they have attached themselves to is falling into the abyss.

I suppose this is a predictable form of behavior, not limited to Western intellectuals. It still doesn't make it pleasant to watch or be around. It's not the kind of thing you want to happen to your friends or family. It certainly is not the behavior you want in a leader, as I can tell you from too much experience. You can say what you want about Geo. Bush & Co., but you can't say that they are gripping.

 
In the Spirit of the Holidays: EVIL!

Every morning I get up, pick the paper off the porch, and look at a summary of the important events happening around the world. Bad things happen all the time, but I am only exposed to a heavily edited and brief summary of them. I really don't see a lot of things that I can do about them, and I rarely see anything hideous that I might possibly be capable of.

Every morning, George W. Bush gets up and hell comes off the porch to visit him. The kinds of photos that no responsible editor would allow published are on his desk every morning. As much detail as he can stand is put into the reports he sees. Thousands of important things are presented for him to do and he can maybe glance at a tenth of them. Every day he sees horrors that he could reproduce, for a while, with the easy stroke of a pen.

It doesn't really bother me that George W. Bush uses the word "evil" to describe that which is abhorrent. A situation my detached perspective might see as shades of gray, his unfiltered view probably has to measure by the surrounding light it absorbs because it is so black. My friends and I who support the overthrow of fascists like Saddam talk about the existence of wood chippers and rape rooms. George W. Bush has access to videos of the real things in use and other horrors beyond our comprehension. What is more, George W. Bush has the capability to make those things happen here. If using the word "evil" helps him distance himself from the behavior that causes those atrocities, let him say it a thousand times a day. If using the word "evil" helps him eliminate the actual horrors, let him say it a million times.

 
The Difference It Makes

For the first time since World War II, the free world has caught the monster itself. Instead of delirious fantasies of glorious Saddam holding out against the oppressive forces of the west in a moodily lit cave, we have been shown the reality of a cranky old fugitive from justice hiding in a hole. That reality adjustment will certainly not slow the passionately delusional from calling foul at every imagined slight, but it does have some benefits for those who live in the real world.

First and foremost, the real Saddam loyalists have just gained a new focus. Instead of trying to hurt Americans and Iraqis who would be free, they have an obligation to discover Saddam's location and free him. As of right now, the criminals using terrorism to obtain control in Iraq have a substantial split in their ranks. The people just in it for racist violence will continue to attack our troops, but many of their local experts will be looking to other activities. How well the foreign fascists will do without the full support of indigenous fascists remains to be seen. The fissure this causes is only an opportunity, but Coalition forces have shown great enterprise when presented opportunities.

Next, this provides the fledgling government of Iraq a method of legitimizing the coming democracy in Iraq. The trial of Saddam Hussein will provide a solid foundation for a government by systematically analyzing the crimes of its predecessor. In exactly the same way that the Declaration of Independence denounced the failures of George III and the Constitution denounced the Articles of Confederation, this trail can put to rest the failures of the past and point a nation to a desired future.

The proof of the systemic atrocities committed with the complicity of those opposed to the United States and the Coalition will change how things are done going forward. Those opposed to the war will be forced to contend with the reality of the monster they supported or forever wander in denial and irrelevance. Chirac will have to explain away his pandering to Hussein. Schroeder will have to explain his pandering to Chirac. The Hollywood image factory will be working full time to sustain their tenuous political relevance once imagination is held accountable. It will be difficult to maintain that Halliburton overpricing is high drama during the trial of real genocidal fascist.

Finally, the accounting of the genocidal purges inflicted to keep Saddam in power could be the end of the legitimacy of the anti-war movement. Since the end of the horrors of trench warfare stalemate in WWI, the anti-war position has held the moral dominance of being more humane. The brilliant success of the Coalition forces has shown that wars fought decisively with the best troops and most precise weapons can be safer for an invaded people than their own leadership. It is extremely difficult to have moral reservations about attacking a country when you know that application of military force is much better for the people in question than leaving them in the hands of genocidal fascists. In many ways the abandonment of moral legitimacy has already happened with the rise of Stalinist A.N.S.W.E.R. to anti-war organization dominance. Now decent people will have to re-examine their prejudices or accept being stooges for a failed political position.

This is the difference it makes that Saddam Hussein is in custody. Bringing the monster to justice is something we were denied by Hitler's suicide. Stalin was never brought to trial and Fidel still holds on to power. Kim Jong Il has to know that hiding in a hole only lasts so long. Today the world knows that we can chain the beast. This is a great day.

 
Letter to Congress Regarding the Coming Revolution in Iran

I believe that Iran deserves to be free and that it will be free soon. The amount of suffering that takes place in accomplishing that freedom is largely dependant upon the amount and kind of support rendered by the United States in the coming months. I think that the people of Iran have already suffered too much at the hand of their totalitarian leadership and that we have an obligation to reduce that suffering.

I ask you as my representative to make it known to the President that coherent planning and action are needed. I realize that we have a substantial obligation to support the development of the freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I support those efforts also. I realize that the demands of freeing fifty million people from decades of oppression are tremendous and that setting free another seventy million more is a substantial task. It is work worth doing and worth doing well.

I ask you to support the administration in accomplishing lasting freedom in Iran by the most humane means available. I understand that military invasion might well be one of those means. I do not believe that a prolonged insurgency against the standing government in Iran to be a humane or successful means. History shows that decisive actions are much less cruel than the blind slaughter of a protracted stalemate. With that in mind, I ask you to seriously consider supporting overt military action in Iran to reduce suffering. We do have the advantage of multiple entry routes in any such action.

Finally, the totalitarian government of Iran is a shelter and supporter of terror. They have actively worked for decades to destroy democracy in the region and the world. They label us "Satan" and they are developing nuclear weaponry. They already have motive and opportunity to create an atrocity against us, and we can no longer allow them time to develop the methods. Perhaps you remember the day two years ago when you were hustled out of the Capital due to the threat of a conventional attack. Do you really think you would have made it out if the attackers had possessed an atomic bomb? Have you seen any indication that the theocracy in Iran is sufficiently interested in progress that they would not risk a nuclear cataclysm? I am not so safe in Portland that I would risk you in Washington, D.C. to find this out.

I ask you to seriously consider the benefits of a Free Iran and to work with the administration to help accomplish this worthy goal.

Patrick S Lasswell
Portland, OR

Please consider writing to your Senators and Represenatives about this. If you want to steal my text, I ask that you give me some attribution because I am deeply vain.

http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov

 


Test for Blog button

A fish eye for you!

The source of the image: My dad and I last summer with the largest salmon anyone in our family had ever caught from a boat.



For reference, I don't have a gap in my front teeth like it shows on the picture. I realize that dad doesn't look so good, but he's just spent all day on a boat, well after he should have been resting. It was vitally important that he make this trip though. He knew he could die at any time. Less than a year later, he did.

By the way, this is a 42 pound salmon I'm barely keeping held up in my arms. This is a BIG fish! I caught it.

 
IRAQ NOW

This is a really good blog that covers some interesting things from a military-literary (!) viewpoint. http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/ Some of the entries are truly of historical value in that they depict the mindset of military leadership in the most effective military in the history of the world.

If you favored the war in Iraq and are willing to consider further humane military options, you might like to see them in action. If you opposed the war, you might want to leave off obsessing about the minute size and deserved inactivity of your own genitalia and look at what is really happening in the world.

 
Opposed To and Living With: Fascism

From September 1969 to January 1970, my family lived near Malaga, Spain. It was beautiful, on clear days we could see the Atlas Mountains and the Rock of Gibraltar. One morning fishermen pulled up a huge net of anchovies on the beach behind our house, it was the best catch they had in quite some time. Our maid cooked some of the fish immediately and they were as delicious as anything you can imagine. I was old enough to buy alcohol, because I could reach the counter with money standing on my tip-toes, and champagne was cheap and wonderful. Spain at the time was also a fascist dictatorship that my radical minister father was actively working with the brutally suppressed opposition to overthrow.

There are varying levels of fascism and varying levels of opposition. Just because a government has elements and practices that do not fully respect the freedoms of the people does not mean that blood has to run in the streets tomorrow. There certainly is a very grave risk that active opposition will cause greater harm and oppression to the people concerned than passive strategies. Arguably the hardest correct thing to do is nothing. If you doubt this, look closely at any number of tragic farces played out in South America over the last forty years. Look at the outright tragedies currently in play in Africa. Sometimes the only humane behavior is to try to do no harm.

There are limits to this inaction for humane reasons. At some points, you have to admit that you have done all that you can with restraint and move forward for humane reasons. At other points you must admit that a fascist regime is more than a danger to itself and is in fact a danger to all around it. It can be argued endlessly before and after when the moment to act came, and no answer will ever be satisfactory to more than a handful. It is always too late to overthrow a standing fascist government and always too early to go to war.

I have the privilege of living in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth. The United States is a beacon of freedom and accomplishment in a dark and hostile world. There are limits to what we can accomplish. We can put a man on the moon, but we cannot put all men on the moon. Even if we could, snotty teenagers would still complain about the lines. Within those limits we have a capacity to act, and a responsibility to make those actions count. Priorities must be made, although it is reasonable to argue passionately for placement.

No small part of freeing the world is getting people here to have some awareness of the function of their opinions. Explaining to the "Meat is Murder" crowd that genocide is also murder needs to happen. People committed to giving cattle voting rights may not be reached, but certainly the time has come to take the forum from them. It is also time to tell people that stating "By any means necessary…" is exactly the same as giving a fascist salute. Wearing tie-die does not mean you support freedom, wearing a tie does not mean you are a fascist.

In light of the current flood tide of fascist governments, it is incumbent upon us as free people to increase our capacity to act. Ethanol subsidies and wildly out of control civil lawsuits diminish our capacity to free others around the world without providing us with any meaningful benefit. I do not think we absolutely must increase the size of our military, but I do think that we need to improve its quality. We do not need another fifty battalions ready to resist the Soviet hordes. We do need at least another fifty fully trained special operations teams active in the field. We also need a very strong training and operations budget for the people we do have. Being able to act capably and repeatedly is what the money goes to. Having a limited force for threatening people does not do the job of setting people free.

It has always been about freedom, and if we have forgotten that, we must remember it again. Although it is inflammatory to describe the political spectrum as pro-fascist and anti-fascist, the clarification is needed. There are some fascisms we can be opposed to and living with. We do not need to declare war on everyone immediately. We must shift the debate from the trivial to the crucial, and we must become better able to strike when the moment comes.

 
Slightly to the Right of Attila the Hun

Growing up in a liberal household, I honestly could not tell you how many times I heard the phrase used to describe somebody to be dismissed. Discounting a person's ideas, making them a non-person was as simple as reciting a magic charm. Since the subject of these dismissals was usually not Vlad the Impaler, a case could probably be made that the character of the person in question was more nuanced than the dismissal allowed. That never happened, though. The charm was cast, the demon vanquished, and the world was restored to a glorious black and white certainty of us versus the fascists.

Roger L. Simon, an interesting person who has made a long intellectual journey against a tidal change in beliefs has come to the conclusion that the primary distinction in international politics today is in fact that simple: pro-fascist versus anti-fascist. What distinguishes his current insight is where he draws those lines. He claims that people in support, for whatever reason, of fascist regimes in Syria, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, or elsewhere are pro-fascist. People opposed to the continuing of totalitarian dictatorships are anti-fascist.

There is some concern amongst his readers that he should not be using the word fascist so often. They claim that it cheapens the word and reduces its impact. I understand that concern, the need to keep the word up on a high shelf and use it only sparingly to preserve its power. Regrettably, that semantic strategy functions only to preserve the power of the word, and does nothing to dissuade the hateful crime the word represents.

One of the things preserving the power of the word fascist on the internet has been an acceptance of Godwin's Law, which states: "if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in". Although this law functioned to hold down a veneer of civility in the early days of the internet, it also functioned to suppress discussion of very real threats to human freedom. It is time to repeal Godwin's Law in our own minds and have a discourse on the very real existence of totalitarian oppression in the world today. We also need to have a very clear idea of what our belief, statements, and actions do to empower or dissuade oppressive regimes, and that cannot take place if certain words are given magical powers.

Saddam Hussein made Vlad the Impaler look like a piker. The death toll in his war against Iran made the top-five list of wars in the industrialized killing twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen were brutally murdered to maintain a constant terror of his regime. It can never be known how many women were raped by the official "defilers of women's honor" employed by his security apparatus. He was more than slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Sean Penn and many others supported Hussein's regime, openly and without coercion. Sean Penn and many others need to be confronted for this, not on the basis of left versus right or conservative versus liberal. Sean Penn and many others need to be confronted with their decision to be pro-fascist, just like Lindbergh was.

 
Thanksgiving in Baghdad

My Uncle Roy wants to know what I think about Bush's famous visit to Iraq last week. I mentioned the visit at both Thanksgiving dinners I attended this year, my aunt's and my brother-in-laws. My Cousin Michelle was dismissive in the extreme and was more than eager to go off on an anti-Bush tirade; amazing everybody familiar with my willingness and aptitude to destroy family gatherings, I chose to discretely close the subject. My Mother-In-Law's immediate reaction was positive; she is a dear woman who served in the diplomatic corps and is quicker than a whip at salvaging social occasions. In both cases I brought it up because I thought the event very important.

Some in the press have complained about not getting the chance to cover the story. More than a few would have liked to cover it well enough to have caught footage of every SAM in the Middle East heading towards Air Force One. It was frankly humorous to hear CNN and the New York Times complain about how they had been excluded from covering it. I am sure that the President's staff thought long and hard about excluding these people from the trip; it probably gave them the kind of soft warm glow normally found only in a bottle of really good scotch. Perhaps the CNN and NYT folks should watch more episodes of "West Wing" to understand the kind of smarmy self-righteousness the White House staff felt about this. Oh wait, only the politically correct get to feel good about harmless petty triumph over their opponents!

I have a notion how good it feels to have somebody care about me while I served in the military. My Uncle Roy and Aunt Maxine visited me for graduation from Navy boot camp. I will forever be grateful to them for doing this. My immediate family never showed even the slightest interest in coming to see me during my service except in those occasions when they were in the area for their own reasons. I have the feeling that they didn't care for what I was doing. I got that feeling after my sister told me that I was a worthless brainwashed idiot for defending the US and its interests. This was after I had spent three years on a half-crewed frigate breaking my heart to keep her a fighting part of the fleet only to have her decommissioned on me. It was not the best time of my life.

Building Iraq is hard work and the people who are out there risking their lives to make it happen deserve all the support we can give them. Regardless of anything else, President George W Bush has given and continues to give our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan all the support he can. I disagree with some of the deals he is making to get the votes he needs to continue that support. I do not think that he is accomplishing everything that might be done, but I see strong evidence that his administration is doing as close to everything they reasonably can as to not matter. Flying to Iraq, sneaking past vicious criminals, not further endangering the troops, and providing a clear appreciation for the efforts of dedicated people is in the highest traditions of service to the United States.

 
Turnabout Is Fair Play

Almost thirty years ago I started reading Doonesbury. We didn't get the comics in the local paper; we got them in book form and read them over and over again. In the early 1970's they were a revelation, funny, topical, and above all liberal. About twenty-five years ago, Trudeau turned his eye on the situation in Iran and the "Stop the Shah" crowd. He was in favor of overthrowing the ancient dynasty and letting a new government take charge. I clearly remember the comics of Kissinger being confronted by his students wearing cardboard masks, one of whom had to cut an additional hole for his nose. The thing about the "Stop the Shah" masks was that they were worn to prevent the Iranian secret police from hurting your family. The joke was that the big-nose student was readily identifiable.

There are today some very dedicated and brave people working to free Iran from the control of the intolerant mullah's who are abusing the Persian people, but they aren't being covered in Doonesbury. This makes sense in a lot of ways because they aren't a joke. They don't wear masks for a lot of reasons, probably because the terror squads have already imprisoned or brutally killed their families. The other statement of not wearing masks is that they are prepared to be accountable for a democratic Iran. In the spirit of fair play, though, I think that Trudeau owes these people some coverage. Arnold in
California is undoubtedly an easier target and carries less anguish than admitting naïve stupidity. Can Doonesbury stay relevant another? Can Trudeau respect turnabout?

 
Microwave Victory

In his blog, Sean LaFreniere is claiming that we have lost. His reasoning is laid out here:

"Why do I think say we are losing? Because I hear too many accounts of Iraqis who used to support us speaking against us. And too many of those who once supported the war now calling for the troops to come home. We have lost the hearts and mind campaign, both in Iraq and at home."

Sean has a point about the importance of will in war, but he misses something else that is even more important: the importance of logistics in battle. The enemy's logistics runs throughout the Arab world. We are not in a fight for Iraq against the Baathists, we are in a fight for civilization against the Islamists. Unlike Vietnam, we are pursuing the logistical train to the various sources and interdicting it there. Iraq is not the goal; it is the ground our leadership has chosen to fight on.

It remains to be seen how much material and personnel support the enemies of western civilization will be able to draw from the dedicated Islamists. As I write this, a quiet war of interdiction is going on in the Horn of Africa; names are being gathered, familiarity with the region is being gained, and enemies are being captured. (Hat tip to Instapundit) All of this is being done with the full support of the local governments who have a clear idea of what happens to the former rulers of states controlled by Islamists. While the world's attention is focused on Iraq, other battles are being fought in the back of beyond.

The ability of a force to supply itself is the most crucial determinant in war. South Vietnam fell largely because the North Vietnamese Army had more trucks supporting their attack that the Wehrmacht had during the Blitz and because the US Congress prevented Ford from supplying our allies with ammunition for their artillery. There is no longer any likelihood that the US is going to let that kind of farce replay itself. Our people are working to interdict the supply for not just this insurgency, but the next one, and the ones after that.

This is not going to be a microwave victory, Sean. This one is going to go the distance, and it is in no small part up to us to keep the faith. Remember that the map is not the terrain, the report is not the battle, and that supply is everything. Iraq is a battle, not the war.

 
Obdurate - ob•du•rate stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing

Multilateralism routinely fails to accomplish even simple tasks in the face of obdurate opposition. It is arguably true that multilateralism itself is a "fog of war" that makes even the simplest tasks very difficult.

In any case, this is not a new phenomenon. It has been clear for quite some time now that multilateral efforts can readily be thwarted by persons willing to abandon their humanity. This is not quite the same as encouraging vile behavior, but multilateral peacekeeping often functions to do so.

Arguably the most ready defense against a multilateral attack is the ability to generate a sense of futility.

 
It's too early to talk about…

One of my hobbies used to be programming science fiction conventions. Not Trekker cons, I've met the folks who run those and they are quite nice, but they deal with a different crowd. I dealt with the people who read and write speculative fiction on a wild variety of topics. I arranged time, space, interesting people when possible, and interesting (at least to them) topics. Personally, I think it is too early to talk intelligently about man's ascendance into a higher plane, but I don't begrudge others for their interest in doing so.

Recently KINK FM-102, a local radio station with an amazingly diverse range of musical offerings for a commercial station, held a poll. They do this in order to keep in touch with their audience and in general, this is a good idea. Here were the three possible options:
1. Pull out immediately & let the Iraqi people take over
2. Start the process of pulling out
3. It’s too early to talk about leaving the country

I am in favor of the war, but also believe that we should not be garrisoning that country forever. I do believe that the US should leave defensive bases in Germany but keep some essential transportation and medical facilities there. After all, we've been on the ground there for almost sixty years and have invested a substantial fraction of our nation's GDP defending them. I don't think it was too soon to talk about leaving Germany in 1943, but I don't think that anybody could have come up with an intelligent exit strategy then. There was too much data missing to make the necessary choices and no clear understanding of how the post-war world was going to sort itself out.

It is not too early to talk about pulling out of Iraq. In the absence of a reasonable choice advocating national will in the face of grave danger to our survival, I chose the unpalatable third. I like KINK FM-102, but I wish they would stop asking me when I stopped kicking my dog and otherwise insulting my intelligence. Would it have been so hard to have asked five questions, one of which might have allowed reasonable people the option of supporting a long term strategy of projecting force in a region where attacks against our nation? What about this:

Support freedom forever, in Iraq and the rest of the world.

UPDATE:
In the brief time it took me to make my lunch, Leann Warren Inessa got back to me. Leann did call me Patricia, but I stopped getting silly about that some time ago.

 
Fire Ted Rall

To the editors,

Ted Rall's Veteran's Day column was offensive to me. I am a veteran who served from 1987-1995 in the US Navy. While I do not require all people to bow and scrape to me for my sacrifices on this day, I do appreciate at least a modicum of respect for my efforts.

I understand the need for balance in the opinion columns, and if there was the slightest indication that Ted Rall had any interest in balance I would not be writing this. There is no reason to believe that Ted Rall respects me, the other members of my family who have served, my friends who have served, or anybody who has ever made this nation possible. There is every reason to believe that he welcomes our death at the hands of vicious genocidal criminals for presuming to free slaves. This is not a view that I can see benefits, educates, or enlightens me. This is a view that functions to glorify the sworn enemies of my nation.

I do not begrudge Ted Rall's right to say these things. As far as I'm concerned, he can go to any street corner in America and shout them at the top of his lungs. He can go to blogspot.com and publish them to his heart's content for free. He can print stacks of his articles at Kinko's and distribute them everywhere. I will not call for his arrest or harm upon his head.

However, Ted Rall should not be paid for this hateful rhetoric. Not by a major news agency that intends to present factual reporting with integrity. I ask for his dismissal for cause. He has violated any contract by presenting odious views as reasonable commentary. He does not deserve to be paid for hating me.

Patrick S Lasswell
Portland, OR

 
Informed Planning

What are the power requirements for Mosul? How much food needs to be transported in every week during the drought season? What are the essential goods that need to be brought into the city on a monthly basis? Which are the bad neighborhoods and which ones have a strong and cooperative community spirit? What contractors can do the reconstruction work that we need done? Which local tribal leaders can be trusted to stick with a deal?

Some people thought there were WMD in Iraq before the war, some didn't, but it appears certain that almost nobody knew. There is some moderately compelling information that indicates Saddam Hussein did not have a clear understanding of the WMD stockpiles before the war. In the face of an information shortage that fundamental, how exactly did you expect to develop projections for power requirements in Mosul? Which data was more critical to obtain? Where would you have put your information gathering assets?

We surely did not know the power requirements for Mosul or a million other important answers useful for the reconstruction plans in Iraq. This "failure" is due to making a priority of WMD attacks against our country, our allies, and our troops in the region. This is a choice, and although the WMD attacks never materialized, it still is an infinitely defensible one. We may not have had the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, or the Perfect Plan for Reconstructing Iraq, but our troops and the CPA are doing fine work with the job they have.

 
We Had A Plan Once…

There has been a lot of criticism of the Iraq invasion because the coalition forces did not have a plan. There is not much one can say in response to this, which is why it is such a damaging, and therefore repeatable, meme. If you are in charge and anything goes wrong, you had a bad plan. Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no answer only?

That meme does have a problem, though. Every once in a while somebody repeating the meme gets the notion that the US has not learned from history. Then we get to tell a funny story. After WWII, we put a lot of folks in charge in Germany and Japan who had never had civilian authority before and a few who had. But Washington never sent in a plan for them to follow. Part of this is because after Roosevelt's death, a lot of things were left unfinished. Most of this was because Harry S Truman had been a combat commander and knew how to trust competent subordinates. One of the results of this is that we now talk about the Marshall Plan, the vision of a trusted subordinate who handled a problem excellently, after he had seen the problem on the ground.

The communist invasion of South Korea caught the US flat footed, and there was a lot of scrambling. Towards the drawdown of that war, the US started looking at where we were likely to become engaged next. Plans were drawn up. Extensive, elaborate plans were made. New methods of planning were put into place. People fell in love with the plans. Eventually the plans were put into place, in a nation called South Vietnam…

It is important to remember that the map is not the terrain and that the plan is not the situation. That is a great lesson that we have learned from history, make plans according to reality, not projections. Iraq is not Vietnam.

UPDATE: Thanks to Michael Totten for his link. If you are arriving here from there, welcome. Please enjoy the blog and don't be afraid to explore. I am not doing comments yet, but feel free to send me an email.

 
New Yahoo Game: Biased Headlines

Yahoo has a new game: how many times can you put headlines on the main page for the same anti-administration story? Here's the thing, when called on this sort of behavior, the Yahoo news staff claims that they don't write the stories. But when they link the same story by the same writer twice, they are displaying bias. Perhaps they feel they can excuse themselves on the basis of actually stalking Jennifer Kerr, but I'm not buying it.

Come on, admit that you are biased, that's much better than just being incompetent, right? If you actually wanted to get a message across, don't look stupid doing so. Linking the same story with different headline twice makes you look dumb. I would rather have at least single helpings of biased headline selections and compositions, double helpings gives me a tummy ache.


Gore Accuses Bush of 'Big Brother' Policy
Sun Nov 9, 5:34 PM ET Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!
By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) accused President Bush (news - web sites) on Sunday of failing to make the country safer after the Sept. 11 attacks and using the war against terrorism as a pretext to consolidate power.

Gore: Bush Has Failed to Make U.S. Safer
1 hour, 11 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) accused President Bush (news - web sites) on Sunday of failing to make the country safer after the Sept. 11 attacks and using the war against terrorism as a pretext to consolidate power.

 
And Your Point Is?

I have seen in the comment arguments of several blogs a train of logic that is starting to bug me. Stick with this carefully, the train of the discussion goes something like this.

Blogger: Invading Iraq was certainly a good thing; we freed oppressed people.
Rude Commenter: George Bush is an idiot forever, he never does anything right!
Supportive Commenter: Well, he has liberated fifty-odd million people in the last couple of years, and that was good, correct?
Rude Commenter: But W doesn't understand complexity! Why didn't he invade Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Burma, Liberia, Malaysia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands Antilles? If invasion is good once it should always be good everywhere or it is a bad policy and Bush is an idiot!
Supportive Commenter: All those places are different situations and the President is dealing with them differently. There are a lot of complex issues and the administration is using a variety of methods to deal with them.
Rude Commenter: There, you said complex, so I'm right and Bush is an idiot!

Have other people seen this? The accusation becomes: Bush is an idiot and a liar because he is not giving all people freedom immediately and is attempting to avert thermonuclear exchanges on our allies' territory. According to this logic, Lincoln lacked moral fiber because the Japanese were planning to subjugate Korea during his Presidency and he did nothing to stop it while fighting the Civil War. Is it just me or is this insane?

There seems to be an impression that attitude and repetition replaces convincing logic in a discussion. Their only real complaint about current trends in foreign policy is the leadership accomplishing it, but for some, that's all that seems to matter. I would be bothered less if I didn't suspect that a lot of people are going to make a Kool Aid dissent after the election in 2004 keeps Bush in power.

P.S. I'll be getting back to arguing with Sean soon, life got in the way.

 
Arguing With Sean: Tort Reform

I make no secret of my regular disagreement with Sean LaFreniere. I agree with him on many, probably almost all, important things. I also find him misinformed and with bad priorities a lot of the time. What is more entertaining is that we are both comfortable with confrontation. Sean credits this to our mutual Irish ancestry, and is very wrong because I have never punched him in the nose, a key racial identifier for dispute resolution.

Most recently, Sean and I are arguing about Tort Reform. I would have this argument in the comments section of his blog, but I hate the tiny type of the java app that he is using and I don't like to get caught misspelling. (I'm not complaining too bitterly, my blog doesn't even have a crappy comments function, I have to envy his.) I think this argument is worth having and should be done on the Big Screen, so here goes:

The personal injury and class action lawsuit aspect of our legal system is broken. The tort bar is not held responsible for the economic and social impact of their actions. The reward of money for unprofitable activity is best used as a spice, not a staple. In many States of the Union, the tort bar controls the judicial process to the extent that they have made the reward of money for unprofitable activity a staple for a considerable portion of the populace. The most dramatic result of this process is that in several states it is difficult if not impossible to get medical care. Obstetricians, emergency physicians and neurosurgeons in particular are moving from states where they can no longer afford malpractice insurance because of out of control tort bars. Indulging lawyers at the price of prenatal care is indefensible.

Beyond this, the drive to jackpot justice at the State Attorney General level is rapidly approaching frenzy. This is a particularly destructive trend because Attorney Generals are not subject to the same political opposition and accountability for their actions that other statewide politicians are due to the technical nature of their jobs. State Attorney Generals do not get unseated for indulging in frivolous lawsuits against out of state companies, especially when there is settlement money in the offing. This is egregiously pernicious because the AG's sub-contract the work and part of the settlement to powerful and wealthy class action specializing law firms who are in no way accountable to the citizens of the state. These large class action firms have, since the asbestos and tobacco settlements, achieved what can be described as critical mass; they are capable of self-sustaining operations. When a firm can spend a decade grinding down a profitable business with the expectation of a reward regardless of the merits of the case, the system is broken and needs to be fixed. That is the situation we have today.

Finally, the effects of the out of control tort bar outweigh the benefit they might give. In much the same way that criminals do much more damage than they ever profit from, tort lawyers are now imposing a much higher economic and social burden than they are delivering an economic or social benefit. Effort spent hiding and defending profit from rapacious lawyers is effort not spent generating beneficial and profitable new products and industries. Judicial hellholes that support jackpot settlements destroy the communities they occupy. Settlements made on the basis of anguished testimony instead of scientific proof destroy the standards of evidence that make the legal system functional. When it becomes more profitable to be litigious than civil, the fundamental social compact is broken, and that is what we are confronted with today.

So tell me again, Sean: Why should we increase the personal injury caps?

 
On Resolve

Lt. Smash checks in with some telling words on national resolve. I still resent the years I spent on a Reserve frigate, but as time passes I realize that the problem was Congress, not the USNR. He does the JAFR's proud. TrackBack

 
First Rule of Military Leadership and the First Amendment

The first rule of military leadership is to never give an order you know your subordinate will not follow. It is a disservice to your subordinate and yourself because it breaks the bonds of military cohesion and will destroy your command. There numerous other rules, but arguably the next is: Do not give a subordinate an assignment that you are unwilling or unable to follow yourself. One of the critical reasons that the Iraqi military fell apart is that these two rules were flouted regularly.

Not long ago, in military history terms, a general gave an order to a subordinate that he was sure the subordinate would follow. In the event, the subordinate hesitated, so to follow the second rule, the general carried out the assignment himself. The order was to execute a spy caught in civilian clothes in the act of murder during an armed insurrection. The order was legal and the order was a good command decision in the field in every regard save one. There was a film crew from NBC and an Associated Press cameraman on the scene. Although the execution made no difference to outcome of the war, the image of that execution, a military professional coldly performing his duties in the eye of the world, probably lost the war.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are coving the events in Iraq very closely. That they have been in the vicinity of bombings very soon after the event has caused some grave suspicion and concern. That they have not covered incidents of oppression in Iran is a strong indicator to their priorities. If a similar image was to become available to those agencies, there is no reason to doubt that they would broadcast it widely. There is also no reason to believe that the western media would not pick up the image and run with it. For the media, the impact of the image is much more important than the consequences of revealing it. There is no reason to believe that any of the major media outlets, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, are significantly concerned about the outcome of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan save that they are a source of ongoing copy.

The public has a right to the story, but telling that story dishonestly, out of context, and with substantial bias is a de facto infringement of that right. In order to defend our rights, we must commit to an ongoing awareness of media bias. Incomplete, misleading, and unverifiable stories must be challenged early, often, and anywhere they are published. If we cannot follow this basic integrity, we allow sloppy and abusive media to control our perceptions and our future. The image is not necessarily the story, and the news is not always the truth. Anybody who says differently is lying, and no honest journalist will do so. Eddie Adams, the photographer who took the picture of General Loan regretted it for the rest of his life and apologized to the General until his death. If we do not wish to be fooled again, we must do more than just pray for integrity. The first rule of civilian leadership must become transparency.

 
What Decision Sounds Like

When I was younger, and in reach of such things, I had the opportunity to join the SEALS. Well, I would have had to work out for a solid year first, but I could have done so. I even had orders in hand to Boat Unit One that would have given me the time and location to do so. What was lacking for me was the need to do so. My father needed to be a Marine, the toughest combat troops in the world at the time, in order to accomplish his inner needs, and he did so. I never needed to, I didn't have the drive, and I didn't kid myself that I did. I remember thinking about this and what it would have taken to get me to commit so strongly to a goal that I would make it through Hell Week and all the agony leading up to it.

On September 13, 2001, George W Bush was interviewed and said the following:

BUSH: Well, I don't think about myself right now. I think about the families, the children. I'm a loving guy. And I am also someone, however, who's got a job to do, and I intend to do it. And this is a terrible moment.

This is what it sounds like when somebody decides to spend the rest of their life accomplishing something. I'm not saying that W has been spending his copious 4.2 minutes a day of free time getting ready to spend six months in Coronado becoming a SEAL. By September 13th he had decided to spend the rest of his life eliminating the things that made 9/11 possible.

It is said that most people make two mistakes about George W Bush; they think he is stupid and they think he is nice. While I am not saying that W is the smartest man to have ever been President, that was probably John Quincy Adams, he is not dumb. If W was stupid, the occasional sniping we get from the senior advisors would have been a continuous war with that many brilliant, determined, and ambitious people having to work together. If he was nice, the Taliban and Hussein would still be in power.

People need to keep in mind that George W Bush is going to destroy the Democratic candidate next year. He is raising enough money to make that inevitable. This is not about wanting to be President; this is about needing more time to save the world. The campaign money makes sure that he doesn't have to engage in stupid desperation and useless distraction. The money is there to reduce the amount of time he has to spend on things other than saving the world next year. Bush is running around the country now because he has the time to do so, next year he might not. The other candidate may have decided to spend the next year to become the President, George W. Bush has decided to spend the rest of his life saving the world.

 
Balance and Dignity

For a long while now, the specter of total war as seen in WWI and WWII has defined the intellectual and emotional understanding of warfare in western culture. The total war horror of WWI and atrocity of WWII were certainly more documented and made a more graphic impression on our culture than any prior war did. Coming of age and living as an intellectual has for quite some time meant embracing the belief that acceptance of war meant inviting a repetition of those past horrors and atrocities.

What Roger, Michael, and many others have been forced to confront since the end of the Cold War is the difference between total war and limited war. We are now engaged in a very broad limited war, but not a total war, despite the efforts of various Islamists to make it so.

Roger and Michael are certainly not advocating or in any way calling for a return to the imprecise and contagious total war with its attendant demonization and hypocrisy. They are well aware of the dangers involved with such a course and are now finding their way through what for them is unfamiliar ground, the advocacy of limited violence to accomplish a specified goal. The difficulty of their task is also compounded by the complexity of what they are attempting to accomplish. Any idiot can ask with fervor for unrestrained violence, and many do. It is much harder to strongly support a limited goal that combines humanity, ruthlessness, and diplomacy all at once.

Roger and Michael are doing pretty well, considering the degree of difficulty and the paucity of supporting material from their prior reading. I think they would do well to read a biography of Chesty Puller, a great human who understood these things.

 
Just Like Old Times

My friend Michael Totten got accused in the comments section of his blog of being a front. The evidence given is that his name was "too normal" and that his views contrasted too strongly with the Left. The accuser tried to pawn off his libel as "honest inquiry" and what was more chilling was that somebody else supported this "inquiry". When I posted that I had known him for years, worked with him, knew his family, talked with him through any number of very long lunches, and so on, my testimonial was attacked. This smells like the old tricks.

This kind of behavior has happened in every major reformist movement since Robespierre made the streets of Paris run with blood indulging it. These are the methods of the communist purge and the national socialist night of long knives; denounce, divide, and destroy. Although it seems unlikely that anybody will send intellectuals from South-East Portland to the Gulag for their counter-revolutionary statements, it looks like denial of service attack is not the only method being used to silence the blogs.

For those of you not familiar with the methods, here's how they work: first, denounce the target as not being true to an undefined ideal. Second, attack the targets defenders. Third, loudly denounce anyone behaving rationally, with integrity, or without fear of the denouncers. Fourth, find old grudges and use them to split apart any community that is not serving you. Add flourishes like secret meetings and tribunals to taste and serve. The targets feel compelled to defend themselves and eventually they will make a mistake you can exploit.

It is perfectly reasonable to believe that after spending a couple of years discrediting the kinds of people who use intimidation tactics that they would turn them on us. We don't have to do this in the blogsphere. We are educated, intelligent, and can move quickly. We can communicate these attacks and support each other. We can agree to not fall for the old tricks. We can decide to not be ruled by fear.

 
Drug War: Slow and Stupid Is Better Than Nothing

Bureaucrash wants me to surrender in the War on Drugs. I disagree with them on this. I still support many of the aims of bureaucrash and wish to participate, but this is a matter I disagree with. I hope that the others in bureaucrash are comfortable with a respectful disagreement.

I have spent a lot of my life pursuing drug smugglers. While they are not necessarily the worst of humanity, they are better capitalized than most dictatorships. In several instances, the drug producers and smugglers are attempting to become dictators and this does need to be opposed.

I do agree that different methods should be used and a more coherent and effective long term policy should be created. It is a shame that all the best people for this effort are now fully engaged in preserving our civilization from fundamentalist terror, but that is a reasonable priority choice. I have high hopes for some of the new addiction research, and can dream of a day when demand diminishes to the point where the suppliers are bankrupted. That day has not come yet. Until then, I reluctantly must support the continued drug war, unfair and badly directed though it may be.

 
Partisan Headlines Hit New Milestone

A Cambridge, Massachusetts think tank came up with an estimate of the number of Iraqi war dead during major conflict; Yahoo News reported it as hitting a new milestone on the home page. Moments later they changed the headline on the main page to something approaching a description of the linked story. I regret that I did not get a screen capture of their unthinking bias, but I was operating on the assumption that they had actually thought about the stories before posting them. This was a failure of editorial oversight on a number of levels. I realize that Glenn Reynolds is right to insist on people seeking their news from more outlets than Instapundit; it is nice to have that as an alternative to unthinking bias.

 
Doing the Math for Real

Two contractors for the CIA, William Carlson and Christopher Glenn Mueller, were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan today. This is a shame and something of a surprise because the CIA was able to release the names so quickly. Perhaps this is one of the benefits of outsourcing the Director of Operations (DO) covert personnel, if so I am all for it. A lot of good people have died in the interests of the United States doing good things and their families never knew why. It also indicates that the DO is operating with a level of transparency that is of value to the free people of the world.

The math on this is kind of fuzzy. It appears that the ambushers lost at least 18 people to our two. Actually a nine to one ratio is not quite good enough for the long haul. We would prefer to have at least ten enemy killed to one of our troops, that is the minimum that civilized people can readily trade for barbarians. A better number would be an order of magnitude greater; one hundred barbarian warriors for every civilized soldier. With the 100:1 ratio, barbarians tend to depopulate themselves and learn toleration through attrition. It is difficult to sustain vendettas when you cannot repopulate your tribe. Polygamy can recover some of this, but unless the wives of the intolerant are continuously pregnant with triplets, the sense of powerlessness batters its way through the prejudice. The whole 72 virgins for killing an infidel promise only works while fewer than 72 martyrs are required to hit the lottery.

The other end of this math is also fuzzy, there were 18 that were claimed dead and probably at least sight verified. There is no accurate count of enemy wounded or missing. The missing number is important because after a 500 pound bomb is dropped, a lot of dirt gets thrown up. Ambushers hiding behind a rock who get buried don't get counted in the casualties list. My father was buried for an hour after a mortar barrage in Korea; it is only because he was a Marine and they do not leave their people that he lived to tell the tale and become claustrophobic. (More importantly from a personal standpoint he also survived to sire your humble author, an act for which I am eternally grateful.) Mujahadeen bugging out under air attack are not known for their concern for those who died for Allah. They are also not known for great medical treatment.

What is important about this is that the civilized people of the world are continuing the fight and engaging the enemies of civilization. We are sending good men into the mountains to risk their lives and we are supporting them with modern equipment. This is not like the shadow wars of the past against communism. We are not being coy or playing games. It is getting on to winter in Afghanistan, and supplies for the Mujahadeen have to be interdicted. It is a tragedy that Carson and Mueller died, but I thank them for going in harm's way and am glad that they did not die unremembered.

 
Doing the Math

My greatest disappointment with the Left is that thirty years after the advent of inexpensive calculators, twenty years after the availability of powerful computer spreadsheets, and two years after 9/11, they refuse to do the math. There are extreme complexities in the world that are not readily approachable with inexpensive computing devices and simple accounting methods. The variables of global economies and climate, for instance, are so profoundly complex that they challenge the human capacity for understanding with any tool, method, or philosophy. The motivations of the brutal, the ignorant, and the rapacious are not a complexity of this order, however.

It is a shame that so few people on the Left will do more than roll their eyes up at the next paragraph. Literally, peoples who wish to make a coherent point that is worth talking about should be ashamed for unwillingness or inability to pay serious attention to verifiable facts. Those who wish to compel the world and the leadership of the nation to follow their policy should be able to coherently understand simple math. Criticizing numbers without a willingness to discuss the import of those numbers is despicable.

The Gross Domestic Policy (GDP) of the United States in 2002 was ten point four trillion dollars ($10,400,000,000,000). The per capita (per person share) of that was $36,700) Last year was a bad one and the US GDP only grew at a rate of two point four five percent (2.45%), increasing our GDP roughly $254,000,000,000. The GDP for Syria was fifty-nine point four billion (59,400,000,000), with a per capita GDP of $3,500. Iraq's GDP last year was fifty-eight billion (58,000,000,000), with a per capita of $2,400.

While economics is a complex study with many exceptions and often outright lies, there are certain basic assertions that can be made. An order of magnitude is a significant indicator, when something is ten times larger than another thing there is a substantial difference. The average person in the US is more than ten times more productive than a person in Syria or Iraq. On the basis of the above figures, it appears that being a fascist and exporting terror is not very good business. Furthermore, asking a nation burdened with the poison legacy of fascism and a terrorist campaign to accept ruinous loans is churlish and indefensible.

If you would like to dispute my conclusions and assert your own, it will give me great joy to check your sums.

 
Work Worth Doing Is Worth Finishing

The press is not being provided with images of coffins being unloaded at Dover Air Force Base. I am alright with this because it images of coffins unloaded from a plane are horrifying but anonymous, a statistic not a story. If the press wants to take pictures of government issued coffins, they have to go to the funerals, not the cargo handling. If they go to the funerals, it will be hard for them to dodge reporting the story instead of the statistic.

The major media's decision to not risk confronting their own prejudice by presenting the life decisions that led to the death of our troops is contemptible cowardice. If they were to report the stories of the people who went in harms way, they would find a lot of decent people convinced they were doing the right thing by risking their lives so that others could be free.

Some people are concerned that George W. Bush is not attending individual services or even a mass memorial for those who died in Iraq. It is far too soon for a memorial service for Iraq, we are going to be there a lot longer and we will continue to lose people. For those who were raised by wolves or television, this is what is called national resolve. Properly applied, resolve can accomplish great things. As for individual services, were the President of the United States, the most powerful individual in the world to attend a service, it would do little to help those grieving their loss. I lost a Grandmother, an Aunt, and my father this year; I surely did not need every major media camped on my front lawn to help me through my grief.

I would rather have our people make a lasting accomplishment than receive empty accolades. Gordon and Shugart earned their Medals of Honor, but a more lasting tribute would have been a civilized Somalia. The greatest affront to me would be to require all the sacrifices our people have made in Iraq and Afghanistan and then walk away with the job in sight of completion but undone. Until Iraq is economically stable enough to make itself politically stable, the job is unfinished.

We are building something more important than roads and bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are building the tools for widespread prosperity. The only way to prevent tyranny is to provide the people with the economic power to defeat those who would enslave them. This is what we are doing in Iraq and why the fascist Baathists and the militant Islamists are trying to kill us. We are providing the tools for choice; this is the death of totalitarianism.

I understand that many do not like Bush, but he is freeing slaves. If you are not an Afghani woman, this freedom may not mean much to you; it should. By any reasonable standard of Western liberalism, we are engaged in work worth doing. According to history, this work is worth doing well and, above all, finishing.

 
Kool-Aid Dissent

It is a lot of fun to be angry. The adrenaline flowing, the feeling of unity with a pack, the delicious clarity of an extreme position are all heady experiences. The tonic of youth for many young and old is the adherence to a compelling ideal. This feeling is real and addictive; the source and cost of the feeling for many is irrelevant. Kayaking down rapids, skiing down a glacier, and screaming at Bush can all be accomplished in one day in Portland. Dissent has become another extreme sport in the Northwest.

Just like kayaking and skiing, there are points beyond which you can no longer recover. Just like other extreme sports, many of those points are not attended to by amateur enthusiasts. Just like other extreme sports, screwing up can get you imprisoned, hurt, or killed. Unlike other extreme sports, there is no regulatory body of peers to keep things safe and sane. Extreme dissent lacks the civility and sanity of a mosh pit.

There are issues with dissent that are not faced by extreme sports. Sportsmen routinely confront the bounds of natural laws, but they operate within them because they have no other choice. Extreme dissenters often ignore the bounds of human laws, civil communication, and fact verification regardless of the consequences, and they often get away with it. Eventually this behavior is wildly destructive.

Jim Jones is a mostly forgotten specter of a bygone era, but the legacy of his dissent is still worth reviewing. In another time, Jim Jones led a congregation to believe that they were persecuted and possessors of a special truth. He took those people away from rational community into a jungle and established his own criteria for truth. When confronted with a reality they could not dismiss or suborn, he chose to kill his community rather than relinquish the ecstasy of his message.

Today much of what advertises itself as dissent is increasingly isolated and lunatic, like the ideology of Jonestown. The acrimonious opposition to the current administration is pushing itself further into the jungle and away from honest communication. The eventual result of this political extremism is not yet written, but there is a point of no return. The final act of dissent is to drink the Kool-Aid and deny reality forever. Last week, Garrett Hardin and his wife took that position without admitting the failure of their Malthusian stance. This is not necessarily the ultimate fate of all who pronounce the true religion is named, "Bush=Hitler", but it is not an unlikely result, either.

Admitting that you are wrong is hard; admitting that you were deliberately vile in support of a lie is impossible for many. There are some mountains you should not ski, some rivers you should not run, and some political stances that will destroy you. Abandoning civil communication is like ignoring safety warnings and the weather; it may be a rush at first, but eventually it will bring you grief. In the end, it is better to accept a buzz kill than a kool-aid dissent.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds, Howare Kurtz, and Gregg Easterbrook for the inspiration)

 
The Last Straw

S.Amdt. 1871 to S. 1689 (Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Act, 2004 )

Looks innocuous, doesn't it? I suppose that they couldn't actually call it the Iraqi Indentured Servitude Amendment and expect passage. That is what it is, though. Another "loan" with no expectation of repayment, only the expectation of decades of odious moral advantage over people struggling to be free in the harshest environment in the world. Keeping track of this "loan" will cost the US millions of dollars, and it will never get repaid. This amendment is penny wise, pound foolish, and diplomatically inane.

For me this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Tomorrow I will change my registration from Independent to Republican. I do not think all that much of many of the Republicans in control of the local constituency, but on the whole, that is more of a challenge than a matter for despair. The Republicans, for whatever reasons, were doing the right thing when it mattered. The Democrats were seeking personal advantage at any cost when it mattered. The Democrats have embraced isolationism instead of opposing the next holocaust and they are as damned for that position as the Republicans were in 1941. How Senator Wyden can reconcile this position with his own faith is a mystery to me. I can no longer do so.
Liberate Iraq. Free Iran. End Oppression in North Korea. Make your vote count.

(Thanks to Instapundit and Priorities and Frivolities for the heads up.)

 
Legislating Morality...That Trick Never Works

As any bright can tell you, religion is a tool to keep the credulous in squalor, oppressing them endlessly and filling their lives with superstitious nonsense. In case you hadn't heard the people formerly known as atheists now want to be known as brights. Okay, most of the atheists I know probably think this is as big a steaming pile of hubris as has ever littered the green…but go with me on this one. The ones who want to be known as brights like the term because it is less laden with negative connotations than the terms previously used to identify them like atheists, arrogant bastards, and pretentious weasels. I'm more than okay with this rebranding effort because it will more clearly differentiate between the people who want to identify themselves as not believing in God and/or deities and those who want to identify themselves as clearly superior to anybody who does believe in God and/or deities.

Let me be above board with my own biases: I believe in God. My particular choice of expression of my faith is a fairly liberal Christianity that is really very open to new ideas and different beliefs. I actually have a fair amount of education in this theology stuff; my father had his Masters of Divinity from the University of Chicago Theological Seminary and I attended a very liberal Catholic University. I have seriously considered the teachings of a number of religions as well as atheism. I have also toured the world, sailed on every ocean, loved a woman, fought a man, eaten well, gone without, set foot in the tombs of the Pharaohs, and buried my father. I have been stranded in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles from the nearest land in an open boat with a dead engine while my ship sailed over the horizon. I assure you that I have given religion some serious consideration.

It is a toss up as to who is more obnoxious; proselytizing Christians or litigious Brights. Proselytizing Christians often do not feel complete until they have ruined your day by humbly making you feel like crap. Litigious Brights appear not to feel complete until they have officiously used the judicial system to enact social change that their ideas are insufficiently attractive to accomplish. Fifty years ago, confronting some very despicable totalitarians, who happened to be atheists, the US chose to differentiate the country by altering the wording of the pledge of allegiance and the design of the dollar bill. (See, everybody rebrands; no big deal.) Now the brights want to remove that differentiation and are more than happy to take the matter to the Supreme Court.

Now, if the people who are interested in retaining the differentiation were smart, they would engage in a class action lawsuit against the brights and take them for every penny they had. Who cares what the countersuit would be about; this is about predatory enforcement of personal beliefs on others using the courts, not about integrity or principles. If it was about personal beliefs, the brights could go someplace where their beliefs would be less infringed upon, nobody is keeping them here. If this was about superior ways of living and thinking, the brights could come up with a coherent dialogue that would make their case for them. More importantly, if this was about being a superior person, the brights could muster up a tithe of the tolerance that has been shown them. This is about using the courts to legislate morality. These days, maybe this wasn't such a toss up after all.

 
They Are Demanding Freedom and Justice in Tehran

The return of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has caused a spontaneous protest of the government. Compared to the orchastrated support rallies of the theocracy, this is exciting, fresh, and fraught with possibility. Free Iran!

Holy Cow, the Nobel Committee decided to do something to wash the stain that is Yasser Arafat from their hands! Welcome to the beginning of the world.

 
Equity and Sabine Herold

Michael Totten has declared that he can never hate the unions because of the benefits he has enjoyed as the stepson of a union worker. I wonder how long his credulous tolerance of unions would last stuck on the freeway in Los Angeles during the transit strike. Knowing you, I am sure that you could endure a day for solidarity's sake. You probably would last at least a week. But on the seventh week of the seventh year...oops, just drifted into an augury...after several years of this kind of crap and the insidious effects of routine striking your love of unions would likely turn ugly. American unions survive better because of the treat of strike. In France, and much of the EU, strikes are the endless tollbooths of their existence; extorting a toll on the economy and the people as if it was their due.

The greatest gift the Unions ever received from Washington was the Taft-Hartley Act which prevents them from shutting down the United States and being loathed in return. We just invaded two nations because 3,000 of our citizens and guests were killed, and we would not stand for that kind of effrontery happening again. How well would the unions in the US stand up if they were conspicuously culpable for the deaths of fifteen thousand Americans? French union mandated maximum hours meant that during the holiday month, understaffed hospitals could not require staff to stay extra hours to provide life-saving care. French unions would have thought us vile and intemperate for not ignoring the piles of corpses with their fortitude and indifference if al Queda had declared itself the defenders of organized labor.

The key to American stability is the balance of power and the notion that all power derives from the people, not the government, the corporations, the military, nor the unions. In France they have never established that balance as a central idea of their identity and they suffer for it now. Hooray for Sabine Herold for providing the beleaguered French with the prospect of equitable liberty.

UPDATE:
Clarified a passage that Michael Totten pointed out as unclear.
TrackBack

 
Oh Yes, This Is Also Free Speech…

It is a good and great thing to have free speech and to use it to express your views. However, when you choose to do so it serves all well if you are able to support your contentions and articulate your views with the support of facts. While telling stories of bogeymen and wicked monsters is also protected speech, it is usually best when not put forward as defensible policy. If someone puts themselves forward to speak as an expert, they should be prepared to have their comments reviewed. Colleen Rowley did not express herself defensibly; in fact she showed her ass. James Lileks then proceeded to thrash it for her.

Funniest stuff I have read in quite some time.

 
T-Shirt Politics

I have a politically provocative t-shirt that I had made ten years ago. On the back is a drawing of my ship (USS Stump DD-978) launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Iraqi nuclear weapons facility at Tuwaitha on the evening of 16/17 January 1993. On the front is the logo "No Nukes". I have waited for years to explain to a Greenpeace activist what I meant by the term.

I was never in the level of danger our people in Iraq were in during the war. I was never in the level of danger that Shirin Ebadi was in for most of her life. But I was in harms way, doing what I could against people who would do real nuclear damage if they had the chance. Greenpeace never hung it out there in a coherent, consistent, disciplined, and effective manner to oppose real nuclear risks.

I still feel quite strongly that the left fell into a pattern of behavior best described by Monty Python's movie "Life of Brian". I just wish they weren't wasting so many good people's lives and demeaning so many things that need to be done. I wish they weren't so committed to the posture of outrageous exclusion that drives independant thought and integrity away from them.

Thanks to the lovely folks at who knew for reminding me of my t-shirt. I wonder what this does: TrackBack

 
Productive National Security
(or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Powerball)

Hidden amongst all the drifts of hyperbole and spin is a very important fact: the current administration is one of the most productive national security organizations ever. With a minimal force, the United States has invaded and pacified two nations. This was done with minimal casualties amongst civilians and our military. This was done in nations where other invaders have broken their teeth and their hearts in recent history. Two years after the balloon went up; two of the most destabilizing governments in the world are reduced to the status of annoyance.

The endless reports of every mishap in the area could easily lead you to a different conclusion. This is an illusion. Soldiers and civilians are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan that is not illusory. The level of casualties relative to the level of reporting is much more important to consider. That bastion of marketing self-importance CNN is reporting every civilian death in those two countries caused by the actions of their former regimes, now. Two years ago that same CNN refused to air any reports of those same regimes slaughtering their people. The difference is that now the deaths are news, matters of isolated distinction instead of the daily grind of the totalitarian meat processor. Does CNN ever mention how much less deadly it is to be a civilian in these nations? Well, that would imply integrity. Orders of magnitude fewer people are being killed by the vicious bastards of the Taliban and Baath Party; that benefit is the direct result of productivity of our national security organization.

Although the victories of the last two years have been presented as effortless despite our own leadership failures, nothing could be further from the reality. Our troops fight diligently, intelligently, and with remarkable restraint. They face dangerous opponents who have no concern for the customs of war or the cost to their own people who have crushed and humiliated opponents in living memory. However, it must be noted that our enemies are disorganized and that is a result of decisions made by our leadership. Every one of our enemies' leadership we could reach that could be bought has been bought. (Powerball technology applied to military ends. Oh the humanity…)

This is a brilliant strategy with far reaching consequences. Once a leader has been bought and abandoned his troops, it becomes intensely difficult for him to raise troops against us again. We can discredit him at any time; although it is much more likely that he will spend the rest of his days in comfortable obscurity. If you put the value of a permanently wounded US troop at one million dollars, it quickly becomes much cheaper to purchase victories with dollars instead of casualties. (As a reference, my father was retired for injuries sustained in the Korean War. He died in June after drawing disability pension and benefits for more than fifty years.) The Powerball bomb is arguably the most cost effective weapon ever used by American troops.

This is certainly not the only arrow in our quiver and not the only one to hit the mark. There are interesting rumors coming out of Africa of US personnel out and about doing things and stuff. It is hard to find much about this in most media because, like CNN, they are engaged full time presenting a fantasia of humiliation and defeat where we are formally engaged. What is most important is that there was no major terrorist attack on US soil in the last two years. That could change before I post this, but it seems unlikely.

For all the sturm and drang about supposed lapses, failures, and leaks in the current administration, there seems little real substance to these charges when weighed against the results. No administration has ever done so much with so few in so little time. The accusations that they aren't doing more are as substantive as complaints that they are not doing all this while wearing ballet slippers. Accusations that they are somehow responsible for the attacks that caused this activity are simply despicable calls for attention from pathetic fools who've discovered that their life's work has been blindly backing the wrong horse. The George W. Bush administration has lapses, failures, and leaks, but their problems have interfered less with the task of protecting this nation and its interests less than any in living memory. There is still much to be desired from them, but there is little to actually complain about regarding security.