One Hand Clapping

The coming American Holy War
"As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." The Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Julia Ward Howe, 1861.

About a week after the 9/11 terror attacks, I wrote an essay called, "Why We Were Attacked: Religious Motivations for Anti-Western Violence," which I published on my church's web site. I wrote one of the sections on American Holy War:

The religious motivations of the American way of war are covered with mantles springing from American secular institutions and values, such a constitutional rights and individual worth. Nonetheless, there are some deep layers of religion in American war making that give it a holy war dimension. [These layers are regional in origin, but now pervade the whole character of the American way of war; they are no longer exclusive to only one region.]

Holy War from the legacy of the American South is waged from an offense to the nation that is seen as a stain upon the national honor, or as vengeance for wrongs done to the nation. (Southern concern with honor was a major contributor toward both Southern secession and the attack on Fort Sumter, precipitating the worst war in our history.) Honor can be restored only by confronting the foe with great force. The foe's surrender or destruction restores the national honor.

Honor codes have not played a large role in shaping the Northern model of of Holy War. Instead, the Northern codes spring from ideas of the dignity of humankind, and deep notions of sin and judgment. From the Northern model, Americans readily answer the call to colors to liberate the oppressed and punish the oppressors, a combination that probably springs from the North's Puritan and Calvinistic founding.

"Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored"

I am using here a template that describes modern American war-making as drawing on both the Northern and Southern models. When I say, as I do, that the campaign against Afghanistan was a Southerners war, I do not mean that only Southerners waged it. I mean that in military terms, we removed the Taliban from power because that was the only way to eliminate Afghanistan from being used as a terrorist base against us. It also fed our hunger for vengeance against those who killed our people and destroyed our sovereign territory. That the Afghans were liberated was a happy collateral effect of the destruction of the enemy, but not the intention of the campaign.

If the Iraqi people were no more repressed than say, Egyptians, Americans would probably not accept the existence of weapons programs, no matter how potentially destructive, as casus belli to invade. Our attitude would be very simple: if they attack us, we destroy them in retaliation, pure and simple. This is the Southerners legacy of peace and war: Americans mainly want to be left alone and leave everyone else alone, but God help those who attack us.

In the fall of 2001, I was at a dinner where another guest commented that it "wasn't fair" for US pilots to fly with impunity above Taliban positions, dropping bombs. I bit my tongue. Later, a guest said that the bombing "wouldn't intimidate" the Taliban.

I dived in. "We're not trying to intimidate them," I said.

"Then why are we bombing them?" came the question.

"To kill them," I answered. There was a long silence at the table. The concept seemed not to have occurred to them. With only a couple of exceptions, the others were university graduate-school students.

This kind of war was perfectly captured in Stephen Lang's portrayal of Stonewall Jackson in Gods and Generals. After the slaughter of Union soldiers at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Jackson visits a hospital tent where a Southern general is dying of wounds. Upon leaving, Jackson comments to the surgeon that the suffering in war is terrible. The surgeon asks, "Against such oppression what can we do?" Whirling with fire in his eyes, Jackson exclaims, "Kill them, sir! Kill them all! They are the invaders!"

But the Southerners war is over now, at least for the foreseeable future. The Northerners war is about to begin.

"The fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword"

In the many months since American military objectives were mostly achieved in Afghanistan, we have turned increasing attention to Iraq. Iraq will be a Northerners war.

Last May 13, I wrote,

President Bush has not made the case for war against Iraq. Before the US takes any action, Bush should explain fully to the American people what the reasons for war are, and seek an actual declaration of war against Iraq by the Congress, not just an "authorization."

Bush made good on the first and not on the second; he did get the authorization, though. But the case the Bush has made falls into the category of "necessary but not sufficient." The sufficient cause is now being synthesized by the American media and people.

The more obvious Iraq's defiance of UN resolutions becomes, the less it seems to matter to the American people. American papers and commentators have paid decreasing attention to Saddam's arsenal of weapons of destruction and, with increasing fervor and frequency, more attention to brutality against his own people. Liberating the Iraqi people is not a solely sufficient reason to invade Iraq, but its combination with the provable military threat Iraq poses forms an irresistible motivation for Americans to take action. Consider, for example, this yard sign. An Iraqi-American wrote in the Christian Science Monitor,

Since Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, started warning that a US invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of hell," the retort that has been flying around Iraqi exiles' websites is, "Good! We'd like to get out!"

Here is a small sample of other evidence that the Northern legacy of the American way of war is manifesting itself by defining the coming Iraq campaign in liberation terms:

There will be no war on Iraq. There will be a liberation of Iraq.

There will be an end to the war that the Ba'ath Party has been waging on the people of Iraq through its policies of racism, persecution and genocide. Liberation will bring hope to enslaved Iraqis and justice for the dead, for the hundreds of thousands of Kurds murdered during such campaigns as the Anfal, for the Assyrians who were "disappeared," for the Shi'a Arabs slaughtered for rising up against the regime, for the deported Turkomans and the Sunni Arab officers shot for plotting to overthrow the regime. (cite)
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We are not engaged in a "clash of civilizations," but rather in the same fundamental struggle between freedom and tyranny that created the United States in the first place. (cite)
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While there are hundreds of thousands of terrorists and state fascists in almost every Arab government, hundreds of millions of more ordinary citizens are watching this war to see who will win and what the ultimate settlement will consist of. Many, perhaps the majority, may for the moment have their hearts with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but their minds ultimately will convince them to join the victors and a promising future, rather than the losers and a bleak past. (cite)
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No one disputes that the Iraqi people would be better off under almost any other regime than the current one—or that vast numbers of them, including almost every Iraqi exile, endorse a war to remove the tyrant. If we can do so with a minimum of civilian casualties, if we do all we can to encourage democracy in the aftermath, then this war is not only vital for our national security. It is a moral imperative. And those who oppose it without offering any credible moral alternative are not merely wrong and misguided. They are helping to perpetuate a deep and intolerable injustice. (cite)
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Have [protestors] seriously addressed the human suffering that could flow from the world's failure to deal once and for all with Iraq's 12-year-long defiance of the community of nations? Are they morally comfortable with the suffering Saddam Hussein continues to inflict on Iraqi children through his corruption of the U.N.'s "oil for food" program? What do they say of the torture and arbitrary executions that are a part of everyday life in Iraq? (cite)
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Saddam has murdered more than a million Iraqis over the past 30 years. Are you willing to allow him to kill another million Iraqis? Out of a population of 20 million, 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their country during Saddam’s reign. Are you willing to ignore the real and present danger that caused so many people to leave their homes and families? (cite)

"The trumpet that shall never call retreat"

Of course, President Bush has promised liberation to the Iraqi people more than once, Similarly, I would argue that Lincoln did not become an abolitionist until he understood that the the North would never suffer the abattoir of the Civil War merely to preserve the Union, but it would bleed profusely "to make men free," as Julia Ward Howe's hymn urged. In Gods and Generals there is a scene where Union Col. Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) tells his brother, also a Union officer, that if they both have to die to free the slaves, then so be it, even though abolition was not an original aim of the war.

It is the Northerners kind of war that Americans have waged more utterly than any other. As military historian T. R. Fehrenbach wrote in This Kind of War, "Wars fought for a higher purpose must always be the most hideous of all." War is such an awful thing that it must be entered into for only the most transcendental purposes. Hence, any war - as opposed to a punitive expedition, such as Panama, 1989 - that Americans engage in must be a crusade, because only crusades can justify the costs and the suffering. War is to be waged only reluctantly, even sadly, but when waged, done so ferociously.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, "In war there can be no substitute for victory," because when war is entered into for supreme purposes, to stop short of victory is to betray that purpose. In American Holy War, the political end is secondary to the military victory. Political structures are imposed by Holy War's victorious conclusion, they do not determine the conclusion. The role of politics is to pick up the pieces when total victory has been won.

This is also the Wilsonian way of war, although Woodrow Wilson neither originated it nor saw its apotheosis. It was left to Franklin Roosevelt to do that. Wilson gave it its most eloquent sound bite: "Make the world safe for democracy." Wilsonianism's adherents see national security as dependent upon international frameworks: treaties, concordances, assemblies and the like. This is a fine ideal, but all international frameworks break down eventually. When they do, the Jacksonians of America have their day (named after Andrew Jackson, not Stonewall Jackson).

Steven Den Beste contrasted Wilsonian and Jacksonian foreign policy,

Jacksonians do not think that international frameworks and international cooperation are impossible or unnecessary. But Jacksonians believe that such frameworks should be limited, concentrated, and closely monitored. Cooperation is possible without trust if it is backed with vigilance and the will to retaliate for cheating. (Retaliation can take many forms, of course; it's not exclusively military.)

The Bush administration has worked within the UN and other international bodies but is also more than willing to part ways from them if need be. The amazing facility with which Americans are equally willing to do so is unique to them. Wilsonianism is not inbred is us and neither is Jacksonianism. Both are like coats that we shed or put on as best serves our interests.

"Sifting out the hearts of men"

What I think is happening now is that the US is taking elements of both Wilsonianism and Jacksonianism toward the campaign against Iraq. Its Wilsonian character is that the convincing reasons we are using to topple Saddam by force have all the earmarks of the traditions of American Holy War. It is Wilsonianism that unleashes American Holy War. Jacksonianism is pragmatic; its apotheosis was the Korean War, fought for secondary purposes as a pragmatic, even realpolitik, exercise.

However, Jacksonians are not uneasy at all about unilateral action if necessary to protect our interests. Hence comes our willingness to shed the mantle of the UN, NATO or other alliances in order to confront Iraq. The Jacksonian strain of America also gives the military much freer rein to wage war on its own terms than European governments do. Crushing the enemy's military capability mercilessly is the Jacksonian way; reinforced by Wilsonian Holy War the onslaught of American military power is indeed a terrible swift sword. American generals tend to be (at least, they should be) Jacksonian: their purpose is to place America in a militarily dominant position over the enemy. What happens after that is not their problem. Wilsonians at war understand that imposing the structures for future preservation of the peace relies on military dominance, which explains why the administration seems not yet worrying deeply about the nature of postwar Iraq. That's politics, and if politics had worked, the war would not be fought to begin with. So politics is somewhat suspended until the war is won.

An advantage of the slow amble to war with Iraq has been that the nation has on it own (well, with some nudging from the administration) made the transition from one kind of American Holy War to the other - Southern to Northern. Also, we have begun synthesizing Wilsonianism and Jacksonianism together for the Iraq campaign. When the process is shortly complete, America will be non-defeatable. "In war," said Dwight D. Eisenhower, "public opinion is everything." Public opinion is congealing now to liberate Iraq, with the collateral effect being the destruction of Iraq's military threat - the exact opposite of the Afghanistan campaign.

In Afghanistan, the national honor was avenged and our enemies were destroyed, though not all of them, of course. The Southerners way of war has had its day. The Northeners war is imminent. American Holy War is coming to Iraq, and its people will be freed. Afghanistan was Stonewall Jackson's war, Iraq will be Joshua Chamberlain's.

But the peace to follow will probably be a mess.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 08:02:00 PM. Permalink |

Transcript of President Bush's speech tonight to the American Enterprise Institute
I didn't catch the introductory remarks, but here is the close-captioned transcript of the president's speech that just ended.

On a september morning threats that had gathered for years in secret and far away led to murder in our country on a massive scale. As a result, we must look at security in a new way, because our country is a battlefield in the first war of the 21st century. We learned a lesson, the dangers of our time must be confronted actively and forcefully, before we see them again in our skies and in our cities. And we set a goal. We will not allow the triumph of hatred and violence in the affairs of men.

[Applause] Our coalition of more than 90 countries is pursuing the networks of terror with every tool of law enforcement and with military power. We have arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda.

[Applause] Across the world we're hunting down the killers one by onE. We are winning, and we're showing them the definition of american justice.

[Applause] And we are opposing the greatest danger in the war on terror, outlaw regimes arming with weapons of mass destruction. In iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the middle east and intimidate the civilized world, and we will not allow it.

[Applause] This same tyrant has close ties to terrorist organizations and could supply them with the terrible means to strike this country and america will not permit it. The danger posed by saddam hussein and his weapons cannot be ignored or wished away. The danger must be confronted. We hope that the iraqi regime will meet the demands of the united nations and disarm fully and peacefully. If it does not, we are prepared to disarm iraq by force. Either way, this danger will be removed.

[Applause] The safety of the american people depends on ending this direct and growing threat. Acting against the danger will also contribute greatly to the long-term safety and stability of our world. The current iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the middle east. A liberated iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interest in security and america's belief in liberty both lead in the same direction. To a free and peaceful iraq.

[Applause] The first to benefit from a free iraq would be the iraqi people themselves. Today they live in scarcity and fear, under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war and misery and torture. Their lives and their freedom matter little to saddam hussein. But iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us.

[Applause] Bringing stability and unity to a free iraq will not be easy. Yet that is no excuse to leave the iraqi regime's torture chambers and poison labs in operation. Any future the iraqi people choose for themselves will be better than the nightmare world that saddam hussein has chosen for them.

[Applause] If we must use force, the united states and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated iraQ. We will deliver medicine to the sick, and we are now moving into place nearly three million emergency rations to feed the hungry. We will make sure that iraq's 55,000 food distribution sites operating under the oil for food program are stocked and open as soon as possible. The united states and great britain are providing tens of millions of dollars to the u.N. High commission on refugees. And to such groups as the world food program and unicef to provide emergency aid to the iraqi people. We will also lead in carrying out the urgent and dangerous work of destroying chemical and biological weapons. We will provide security against those who try to spread chaos or settle scores or threaten the territorial integrity of iraq. We will seek to protect iraq's natural resources from sabotage by a dying regimE. And ensure those resources are used for the benefit of the owners, the iraqi people.

[Applause] The united states has no intention of determining the precise form of iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the iraqi people. Yet we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected.

[Applause] Rebuilding iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own. We will remain in iraq as long as necessary. And not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before. Eace that followed a world war. After good evening -- after defeating enemies we did not leave behind occupying armies, g parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militaryism, liberty found a permanent home. There was a time when many said that the cultures of japan and germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of iraq today. They are mistaken.

[Applause] The nation of iraq with its proud heritage, abundant resources is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom. The world -- [Applause] The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life, and there are hopeful signs of the desire for freedom in the middle east. Arab intellectuals have called on arab governments to address the freedom gap, so the people can fully share in the progress of our times. Leaders in the region speak of a new arab charter that champions internal reform, greater political participation , economic openness, and free trade. And from morocco to bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward political reform. And new regime -- a new regime in iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.

[Applause] It is preshump anxious and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world or the 1/5 of humanity that is muslim is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things everywhere on earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life. We're the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slowingians of hatred and the tactics of terror.

[Applause] Success in iraq could also begin a new stage for middle eastern peace and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic palestinian state.

[Applause] The passing of saddam hussein's regime will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers. And other regimes will be given a clear warning that support for terror will not be tolerated.

[Applause] Without this outside support for terrorism, palestinians who are working for reform and long for democracy will be in a better position to choose new leaders.

[Applause] True leaders who strive for peace, true leaders who faithfully serve the people. A palestinian state must be a reformed and peaceful state that abandons forever the use of terror.

[Applause] For its part, the new government of israel, as the terror threat is removed and security improves, will be expected to support the creation of a viable palestinian state.

[Applause] And to work as quickly as possible toward a final status agreement. As progress is made toward peace, settlement activity in the occupied territories must end.

[Applause] And the arab states will be expected to meet their responsibilities to oppose terrorism, to support the emergence of a peaceful and democratic palestine and state clearly they will live in peace with israel.

[Applause] The united states and other nations are working on a road map for peace. We're setting out the necessary conditions for progress toward the goal of two states, israel and palestine, living side by side in peace and security. It is the commitment of our government and my personal commitment to implement the road map and to reach that goal. Old patterns of conflict in the middle east can be broken if all concerned will let go of bitterness and hatred and violence and get on with the serious work of economic development and political reform and reconciliation. America will seize every opportunity in pursuit of peace. And the end of the present regime in iraq would create such an opportunity.

[Applause] In confronting iraq, the united states is also showing our commitment to effective international institutions. We're a permanent member of the united nations security council . We helped to create the security council. We believe in the security council so much that we want its words to have meaning.

[Applause] The global threat of primbings of weapons of mass destruction cannot be confronted by one nation alone. The world needs today and will need tomorrow international bodies with the authority and the will to stop the spread of terror and chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. A threat to all must be answered by all. High-minded pronouncements against proliferation mean little unless the strongest nations are willing to stand behind them. And use force if necessary. After all, the united nations was created as winston churchill said, to make sure that the force of right will in the ultimate issue be protected by the right of force. Another resolution is now before the security council. If the council responds to iraq's defiance with more excuses and delays, if all its authority proves to be empty, the united nations will be severely weakened as a source of stability and order. If the members rise to this moment, then the council will fulfill its founding purpose. I've listened carefully as people and leaders around the world have made known their desire for peace. All of us want peace. The threat to peace does not come from those who seek to enforce the just demands of the civilized world. The threat to peace comes from those who fly-out those demands. -- Who flout those demands. If we have to act, we will act to restrain the violent and defend the cause of peace and by acting we will signal to outlaw regimes that in this new century the boundaries of civilized behavior will be respected.

[Applause] Protecting those boundaries carries a cost. If war is forced upon us by iraq's refusal to disarm, we will meet an enemy who hides his military forces behind civilians, who has terrible weapons, who is capable of any crime. The dangers are real, as our soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines fully understanD. Yet no military has ever been better prepared to meet these challenges. Members of our armed forces also understand why they may be called to fight. They know that retreat before a dictator guarantees even greater sacrifices in the future. They know that america's cause is right and just. Liberty for an oppressed people and security for the american people. And I know something about these men and women who wear the uniform. They will complete every mission they are given with skill and honor and courage.

[Applause] Much is asked of america in this year 2003. The work ahead is demanding. It will be difficult to help freedom take hold in a country that has known three decades of dictatorship, secret police, internal divisions, and war. It will be difficult to cultivate liberty and peace in the middle east after so many generations of strife. Yet the security of our nation and the hope of millions depend on us and americans do not turn away from duties because they are hard. We have met great tests in other times, and we will meet the tests of our timE.

[Applause] We go forward with confidence because we trust in the power of human freedom to change lives and nations, by the resolve and purpose of america and of our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history, and free people will keep the peace of the world. Thank you all very much.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 07:03:00 PM. Permalink |

First the Jews, now the Christians
Bill Hobbs has an extremely read-worthy posting about Michael Horowitz, a Jewish writer and member of the Reagan administration. Says Mr. Horowitz,

Too many Jews, my people, have by now been killed to be useful targets of evil, repressive regimes. But there are millions of vulnerable Third World Christians who are just right for that purpose, and they have become the scapegoats of choice for today's thugs. The manner in which Christians are treated in many parts of the world is a litmus indicator of whether freedom exists not only for them—but for all others in their societies. Christian villages and churches have become the medium on which battles for freedom in much of the Third World are waged. And, as was true with the fight against Hitler's reign of terror against Jews, appeasing the persecutors of Christians condemns millions of others to dark-age lives.

What is interesting is that Iraq does not oppress Christians, at least no more than anyone else - Saddam is an equal-opportunity killer. But Christians are severely oppressed in most other Arab nations, Egypt being a shining exception, where Christmas Day is a national holiday. Saudi Arabia is the chief persecutor among Muslim countries (no surprise) and China still harshly oppresses Christians. They persecute other faiths, too, but Chinese persecution of Christians is persistent and uniformly oppressive. Despite this, Christianity in China is a fast-growth religion.

While you're visiting Bill's site, check out this new fact on the al Qaeda - Saddam connection and what this Iraqi taxi-driver (still there) says about who will fight the Americans.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 03:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Rumsfeld and McNamara - separated at birth?
David Ignatuius observes,

Rumsfeld increasingly reminds me of a previous secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara. Both men came into office mistrusting the generals and admirals of the uniformed military as overly timid and cautious, a mistrust that was reciprocated by the military brass. Both men believed in rationalizing and modernizing a hidebound Pentagon bureaucracy. Both surrounded themselves with cadres of bright intellectuals who appeared to have contempt for less clever people who didn't understand their strategic vision.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 03:12:00 PM. Permalink |

Church of England bishops urged to resign
Church's decline is severe
Reports the UK's Telegraph,

Partly as the result of liberal reforms, [a study] said the Church had lost half its members and attendance among children had almost disappeared, and it promised faster falls in the future. . . .

"The only part of the Church of England that has increased has been the number of its bishops and their bureaucracy," said the study's editors, the Rev Peter Mullen and Digby Anderson, the unit's director.

"The bishops and other leaders have scarcely acknowledged this astonishing decline. They have failed to recognise just how many criteria now point to disaster. They have also failed to take responsibility for many of the policies associated with failure."

It will come as no surprise to my long-term readers that I would also say that many of these observations can be accurately made about the oldline churches in America. (Thanks to Darryl Boyd for the link via email.)

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 02:40:00 PM. Permalink |

Letter from Commando Camp, Kuwait
This US Marine officer in Commando Camp, Kuwait, definitely knows what he is talking about. His email on The Ornery American is long but engorssing. Some nuggets:

Everyone carries a weapon and full combat load of ammunition at all times. Everyone carries their gas mask at all times. The gas masks come with a standard issue of three sets of Atropine and Pralidoxime Chloride injector kits. They are two large needles capable of penetrating your chemical protection suit and uniform. If you are exposed to nerve agents you jam the injectors into your thigh.
. . .
You want to be the hardest target out there so the bad guys will pass you up for an easier target. Fortunately, we have a lot of Air Force people running around the country. Their command won’t let their airmen carry weapons inside their compounds because they are afraid they might shoot themselves. Soft mentality, soft targets.
. . .
Through out the camp there are concrete bunkers wrapped in sand bags. Everyone has an assigned bunker but as past drills have demonstrated, it is every man for himself. You just grab the closest one, mask up and wait it out. Last week I was in a briefing with 15-20 people from different commands and agencies. There were two OGAs (Other Government Agencies – read CIA). They are on their own agenda and don’t follow any force protection rules. We were all around a large table in an open-sided tent when the siren went off declaring some sort of chem-bio attack. We all assumed it was another drill until there was a declaration that it was not a drill and to don your gas masks. Everyone remained fairly calm and thought, “Well, here we go…” Once we masked up we noticed that the OGAs were just sitting there with worried looks on their faces. One of them asked if it was in fact a real alarm. A Lt. Colonel next to me, yelled through his mask in all seriousness “Well, we will know for sure when you two fall over dead!”.
. . .
A fully mechanized Army Division is simply mind-boggling. On our left (western) flank is the 3rd Infantry Division that recently deployed from their base in Germany. Marines are tough but we don’t win the big wars. The Army wins the big wars. They do it because they are massive and can bring an incomprehensible amount of firepower to a fight.

The most important fact to remember is that one Army Mechanized Division has more firepower than most countries.
. . .
We can put up an interconnected dome style tent that can shelter 100 fully function terminals hooked up to satellite feeds with in 4 hours. Large, projection screens can display real-time satellite imagery and video feeds from unmanned aircraft.
. . .
Our path north will take us into the Mesopotamia Valley that is the cradle of modern civilization. The ruins of the Tower of Babel, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Assyrian ruins are all there. Interestingly enough, Hammurabi’s Code was written in the area. King Hammurabi ruled the region from 1792-1750 BC. This was the first sophisticated code of law put into writing. It gave commercial structure so merchants could prosper. The position of women, marriage, divorce, rent, administration of justice and labor conditions were written down in Hammurabi’s code. Separation of religion and secular authority was also a main theme. Sadam claims to be the modern embodiment of ancient rulers like Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin. Their claim was conquering ancient Judah, destroying Jerusalem and throwing out the Christian, Medieval Crusaders. Sadam is selective in his history of his region.
. . .
Tyranny left unchecked by apathetic people is why Hitler was able to see the Cliffs of Dover from the shores of Western France.

Grant Williams
Major U.S. Marines
Commando Camp, Kuwait

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 02:31:00 PM. Permalink |

Coming attractions
Here's a short look at some stuff I am working on:

Why President Bush won't meet with these clergy (hint, their moral sense has gone AWOL).

Evidence that Americans are transitioning to Holy War mode, and what that means for friend and foe alike.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 12:25:00 PM. Permalink |

Haloscan commenting is down, not deleted
Haloscan.com informs its users that it commenting feature is "temporarily" offline. No word when it will be back up. In the meantime, please use the "Shout Out" link to post comments.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 12:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Bush to outline Iraq plan tonight
The Washington Post reports,

Bush is scheduled to give a speech tonight outlining the administration's vision of how an overthrow of Hussein and the creation of an Iraqi democracy would be the first step in a wave of democratic changes across the Middle East, fundamentally reshaping the region and enhancing U.S. interests.

This is a pretty good summary article of today's political picture regarding the Iraq crisis.

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 08:53:00 AM. Permalink |

Blogger is screwy today
Sometimes it loads, and sometimes it doesn't. So posting may be spotty. . . .

by Donald Sensing, 2/26/2003 07:30:00 AM. Permalink |

The Nigerian scam has moved north
I still find it amazing that anyone would believe that total strangers on other continents would want to give them huge sums of money. Americans have been falling for the "Nigerian scam" for years. The southern Europeans have apparently taken note:

My name is Glorja Kovac,a daughter of late Miodrag Kovac former Yugoslavia Minister of Health, who died due to mysterious circumstances that is still being investigated.Immediately after his death,the government seized all our properties and froze all our accounts.And it brought to my mind that there is soimething fishing as in the govenment knowing about his death.

I was arrested by the government immediately after the press conference about the death of my father and I was under house arrest for almost a year.I was released after so much pressure from the British and US government.

All the people that claimed to be my father's friends none of them came to my rescue.,they thought it was finished with us financially and I also believed there was no hope again.After some time,I recieved a phone call from my neigbouring country inviting me to come and and I went there and they disclosed to me about the properties of my late father deposited with them.That I should go and bring all the necessary documents to claim it.After going through my father's memo,I saw the documents that proves there is a property he deposited outside the country and is registered as 100% raw gold and diamond.When I went back to claim the properties ,I was asked to open it and confirm before I carry it.

After opening it,I discovered it was money and $100 bills and I counted the bills it was 430 bills of $100 notes denomination.Then I closed it back and I told the company that it was gold as stated in the document and I will come back and claim it later because I cannot take that kind of money back to my country.So since then I have been soliciting for a reliable person who does not have any relationship with my country to help me recieve this money and advice me on how to make use of this money properly.

Please,get back to me if you know you are capable of assisting me through email,I will give you more details as soon as I recieve your positive response.

Best regards,
Glorja Kovac

Yeah, "dear," count on it.

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 05:44:00 PM. Permalink |

Phil Donohue's show is canceled
Says Drudge. But the question is, "How can you tell?"

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 02:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq slideshow online
Brothers Judd say they got this excellent online Powerpoint slideshow over the transom. Take a look!

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 11:02:00 AM. Permalink |

Inside the Battle of Baghdad - guest blog by Ranger officer Patrick Walsh (ret.)
A lot of people are worried about U.S. troops getting bogged down in urban combat in Baghdad or other large cities in Iraq. Their knowledge of urban combat, also known as Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT), comes from repeated references to Stalingrad or other WWII battles by the talking heads on TV or memories of the U.S. operations in Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down) or the terrifying final scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan.

Actually, the Battle of Baghdad is likely to be more like the Battle of Panama, where only a few poorly defended buildings had to be captured by force, than like Stalingrad where two million men fought for six months.

In the case of Stalingrad, Mogadishu or the fictional battle in Saving Private Ryan, technological or political conditions combined with the characteristics of urban terrain to force combatants to rely almost entirely on infantry weapons. If the opposing forces were equally determined to win, the result was often an endless series of small battles for the next room or hallway. There might be a hundred small, deadly fights for every single city block. Yet there were other battles, such as the American attack in Aachen or Manila in WWII or in Panama in 1989 that demonstrated how proper tactics and equipment can overcome the challenges of urban warfare to produce victories at relatively low casualty rates, even when the attackers are outnumbered.

Remember that the final scenes in Saving Private Ryan, as intense as they are, cover about 20 minutes and involve less than a dozen Americans. There are no guarantees in warfare and there can always be some terrible accident or the enemy can get a lucky hit. But, there is very little chance of some sort reenactment of Stalingrad.

Here are some of the reasons why urban warfare has been so costly in the past and an explanation of how those conditions are different today.

1. Both combatants were very determined to win. If one or both sides give up quickly there are usually much fewer casualties. In Stalingrad, for example, Russian troops were very motivated to defend their homeland. This feeling was reinforced by summary execution of commanders and soldiers who lost ground. On the other side of the battle, German soldiers kept on fighting until they literally dropped dead from exhaustion and starvation. This level of motivation is relatively rare. In the pending war, the Iraqi Army is very likely to surrender or desert en masse as soon as the first bombs and missiles hit. There were massive surrenders and desertions 1991. This time they know how the movie ends and are even less likely to stay and fight. I think that includes the Republican Guard. One troop of U.S. Cavalry destroyed a brigade of the Republican Guard in something like 20 minutes in 1991. As I said, they know how the movie ends.

2. Huge forces were involved on both sides. In WWII hundreds of thousands of soldiers were involved on either side of major battles. With such large forces, the defenders could establish an unbroken defensive front, miles in length, and the attackers were left with no choice but to attack through it, head on. Not only were the defensive positions tens or even hundreds of miles wide they were often ten or more miles in depth. To give you some idea of the scale of fighting, the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad had about 300,000 men when a Russian force of nearly 1,000,000 encircled it. The combined total of both the Iraqi and American forces in any war is likely to be between 400,00 - 600,000 and these forces will be spread out over a country the size of California. In the Mogadishu fight the numbers were much smaller but the enemy outnumbered the Americans as much as 20 to 1 and surrounded them. In order for the Rangers to go anywhere they had to fight through the enemy. But even in this case the smaller numbers meant the fight was short lived (around 48 hours) unlike the months involved in a major battle.

3. The third difference is the technology available to the combatants. In WWII the technology of the Russians, Germans, Japanese and Americans was roughly equivalent. The nature of urban terrain tended to negate any technological advantages that did exist and force all combatants to rely primarily on hand held weapons. That is not the case with the Iraqi’s and Americans.

Until very recently, aircraft had a lot of trouble hitting specific targets. Even when they managed to hit them, the bombs did not have the effect that modern ones do. Modern aircraft can effectively strike pinpoint ground targets today under conditions in which WWII airplanes could not even fly. As a result, WWII aircraft were not as effective at destroying the defensive positions in a city. And for a large part of the time they could not participate in the battles at all because of darkness or weather. In contrast, modern U.S. aircraft are deadly accurate at night and consider nighttime the best time for air attacks because the can see so well while the enemy is comparatively blind. And Americans will have air superiority to a greater degree than enjoyed by any side during WWII. In the coming fight airpower will be closely coordinated with the ground fight. In at least some cases the front line commander will be able to call in aircraft to hit specific buildings to his immediate front. This occurred even as far back as Panama when ground commanders were able to direct Apache helicopters to fire Hellfire Missiles at enemy snipers in positions that could not be attacked with infantry weapons.

Armored fighting vehicles did not make up as high a proportion of the forces involved in previous wars and they were not as effective as today's, either. To give one example, the Germans had about 675 Tanks assigned to the Battle of Stalingrad as part of a force of more than a million men. Today, a single U.S. Army Mechanized Division, depending on task-organization, will have around 432 armored fighting vehicles (tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles) as part of a 17,000-man force. Even when they were available, WWII tanks were hard to keep running. They broke down. They threw tracks. They had trouble going over or through rubble. They were relatively vulnerable to artillery fire, Molotov Cocktails, mines and shouldered fired anti-armor weapons. They could be stopped much more easily than modern vehicles. There are very few weapons on earth that can “kill” an M1 Abrams tank. While a Bradley is more vulnerable it is still very survivable. Both are reliable and mobile.

Another aspect of this is the degree is the degree of motorization (or lack of motorization) of the supporting arms and services in past battles. In the battle for Stalingrad, much of the German Army’s artillery and supplies were moved by horses and the lack of roads in Russia meant the German’s had great difficulty supplying their attacking force. That will not be a problem for the attacking Americans.

Finally, no one had satellite photography and aerial photography had to be developed using chemicals back at the airfield and copies of photos had to be made one or two at a time. Photos seldom got to the front lines in time to be useful. Today, satellite photos or video from UAV’s can be transmitted to front line commanders in near real time.

How do all these factors affect attacking a large city in Iraq?

We think a large part of the Iraqi Army will surrender or desert, but we can’t plan on that. Some significant number of Iraqis may defend a significant portion of Baghdad. We will be able to see them using satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s), aircraft and in-person reports from Special Forces and friendly Iraqis. They will not be able to see us until we are firing on them. Even then, they may not see us because we can fire at them at night using night vision capabilities that they cannot match. . The Iraqis have few weapons that can destroy our tanks and not many more that can destroy Bradley. Our tanks can destroy anything they have. Our tank and Bradley crews can fire faster, more accurately and from a longer distance (not as key in a city, but still important) than their guys. Our infantry is also better trained, better equipped and better motivated.

The basic scenario will be for helicopters and airplanes to drop precision bombs and missiles on the defenders before our ground forces ever get there. Anything that emits a radio or radar signal, or looks like a heavy weapon or armored vehicle will be bombed. When we attack, our forces will descend on the area from several directions using armored vehicles and helicopters. They will surround the enemy, cutting off supplies and reinforcements. We will seize key intersections, bridges, tunnels and buildings very quickly. In most cases there will be very little fighting due to the initial bombardment and the speed of the attack. Another reason is that the Iraqis simply cannot defend very much of a large city like Baghdad. To defend only a couple of city blocks in strength takes hundreds of soldiers. Most of the city will not be defended at all. Obviously, soldier fighting for a particular building will find it a significant event, but it will not be Stalingrad.

In most cases, we will not fight room to room. We will attempt to enter a building. If we enter successfully, we will clear it; using the techniques you have seen the soldiers practicing on TV. If we cannot enter the building initially or encounter significant resistance once inside, we will pull back and blow the building apart. If necessary, we will repeat the process on the next building. [Note: this is the tactic that US troops learned to use in World War II. When the Germans defended a building, the US troops called tanks forward and just blew it down -- DS.]

At the end of the first phase of the attack the situation will most likely be that small numbers of Iraqis will be holed up in scattered locations. We will quickly overcome some of these positions. Others may put up more resistance. Depending on the situation, including the proximity of civilians, we will surround some of these locations and try to talk them out. In other cases, the ground commander will give the defenders an opportunity to surrender. If they refuse, airplanes and helicopters will drop laser-guided bombs into the building. Tanks and Bradleys will pour cannon and machine gun fire into it. The survivors will be invited to surrender again. If they refuse, there will be more fire and an infantry assault.

The infantry will most likely attack at night. Every one of our soldiers has some sort of night vision device. A large proportion of our weapons have “red dot” lasers on them. The red dot is a low power laser light that shows where the bullets will strike when the weapon is fired - a big advantage. The assault will begin with artillery, mortar, tank, machinegun and grenade launcher fire. This will shut down any attempt by the enemy to return fire. As the infantry advances, supporting fires will continue over their heads or be shifted to nearby enemy positions to prevent them from supporting the one under attack. The buildings will probably not be left standing. The infantry will move over the rubble throwing hand grenades and firing into anything that resembles a defensive position. They will enter and seize the next defensible position. The tanks and Bradley’s will move up to the new line.

This same scenario will play out on a larger scale if the Iraqis attempt to hold a large area or even if they fortify it. In this case they might control 10 or 20 city blocks. If that happens, the attack described above will be repeated several times on a larger scale, until the remainder of the defenders either quit or try to retreat.

The biggest problem will be civilians. We will do everything in our power to get civilians out of the combat area before we attack. The initial air attacks will be very accurately directed against identified targets and while there will be some civilian casualties, they will be largely the result of the Iraqis choosing to locate weapons and headquarter in the middle of non-combatants. If they do this, it is they who are violating the Laws of Land Warfare. But, even in past wars we have successfully used imaginative methods to get civilians out of danger. In WWII for instance, the U. S. Army had German politicians from conquered towns call their counterparts in the next town to persuade them to negotiate a surrender, bypassing the German Army Commander in the town, rather than allow a fight. We can expect similar tactics in the pending war.

We probably will have some sort of effort to communicate to civilians as we enter Baghdad and give them instructions on what to do to avoid the fighting. In those areas where we are able to gain control, we will most likely move civilians out of the area. Once we have identified any centers of resistance, we will also be trying to identify if there are any non-combatants in the area. If we can, we will get them out of there before any further fighting. In some instances, the presence of civilians may cause us to adopt different tactics than outlined above.

Even as the fighting continues, the U.S. will be attempting to restore essential services, make sure the population has food and water and restore the rule of law. We will establish temporary housing facilities and assist in the medical treatment of the injured. At some point, control of captured areas will pass from military units to military or provisional civilian governments organized by the U.S.

For more reading, go to the U.S. Army’s Combat Studies Institute. There are also very good discussions of urban warfare by Joe Katzman and Steven Den Beste.

Guest writer Patrick Walsh is a retired US Army infantry officer. His an assistant vice president in the Technology Project Office of a large financial services company located in Pittsburgh, PA. During his career, he served as deputy chief of operations in Joint Task Force 6; was the S-3 and then executive officer of the desert phase of the US Army Ranger school for 36 months; commanded a rifle company in the 7th Infantry Division; and commanded an Initial Entry Training Company for one year. Mr. Walsh wrote two field manuals on small unit operations and taught tactics for two years. He also served as rifle platoon leader, anti-tank platoon leader and rifle company executive officer.

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 10:41:00 AM. Permalink |

More on "blood for oil"
Ken Adelman offers another rebuttal to the protests that the coming Iraq campaign is really just an oil-grab by Bush et.al.:

One last point on "blood for oil." Iraq's having substantial reserves - and the whole Middle East holding much of the world's oil supply - is a legitimate factor in our concerns in the region. Even the recent Noble Peace Prize winner, President Jimmy Carter, understood the importance of oil to the development world when president. In 1979, after the Soviets brutally invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asserted the Carter Doctrine, which offered U.S. protection of Gulf states precisely because of their abundant oil.

The "Carter Doctrine" was enunciated by Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address. It was a clear declaration that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to secure its access to Middle East oil:

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

This declaration was directed specifically at the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan the year before. But the broader implication was clear: the United States would oppose by force any attempt at hegemony over Middle East oil by any country.

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 10:07:00 AM. Permalink |

More on the Left's anti-Semitism
I last wrote about this topic here. Now David Brooks of The Weekly Standard observes, It's Back, The socialism of fools has returned to vogue not just in the Middle East and France, but in the American left and Washington.

Not long ago I was chatting with a prominent Washington figure in a green room. "You people have infested everywhere," he said in what I thought was a clumsy but good-hearted manner. He listed a few of "us": "Wolfowitz, Feith, Frum, Perle." I've never met Doug Feith in my life and Wolfowitz and Perle I've barely met. Yet he assumed we were tight as thieves.

(via Hoplites)

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 10:02:00 AM. Permalink |

More on journalism and blogging
My post on the relationship between journalism and blogging (if any), and what is a journalist anyway, elicited some responses in addition to Bill Hobbs' long analysis. Memphis blogger MRH at Half bakered adds some thoughts, and links to Chris Lawrence's thoughts on the issue of what constitutes journalism. Have a look!

Update: Bill Hobbs adds today some authoritative voices that bloggers are indeed journalists, beginning with Dave Winer, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, and publisher of Scripting News, who wrote,

Web logs are journalism. Have they had a big impact? Absolutely. When a big story hits, I don 't necessarily trust the professional journalists to tell me what's going on. If I can get the Web logs from the people who were actually involved, I'll take that. A really remarkable thing came out from the BBC, where they asked amateur photographers to send them pictures. So they're jumping onto the trend that's going to grow and grow and grow. With the Columbia disaster, where did the pictures come from? Not from professional journalists. The typical news article consists of quotes from interviews and a little bit of connective stuff and some facts, or whatever. Mostly it's quotes from people. If I can get the quotes with no middleman in between - what exactly did CNN add to all the pictures? Maybe they earned their salaries a little bit, but web logs have become journalism, and it's much richer. Journalism is a high calling, but it's really no more than points of view on what's taking place. I think the pros are going to use this tech, and they are doing it more and more.

Adds Bill, "Freelance journalist Glenn Fleishman has some thoughts on the question. So does journalist and blogger Jeff Walsh. Also, the topic comes up from time to time at Corante.com's blog on blogging."

by Donald Sensing, 2/25/2003 09:55:00 AM. Permalink |

Gods and Generals: some impressions on Holy War
Ted Turner seems determined to make a trilogy of Civil War movies that lasts as long as the war did - the first war movies to be told in real time. At least, that what it seemed like sitting through the second movie of the trilogy, Gods and Generals. A la Star Wars, this series made the middle movie, Gettysburg, first, in 1993. G&G is a prequel, beginning before the Battle of Bull Run in 1861 and ending at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.

A better name for G&G might have been: Gods and Generals - the Stonewall Story. The figure of Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson, who earned the moniker Stonewall at the first Battle of Bull Run, dominates the movie. Stephen Lang plays the part with an intensity that would have done the man proud, even though not altogether accurate in some niggling details. (For example, Jackson sucked on lemons incessantly, but the movie makes do with an occasional swig of lemonade.)

My personal connection to Stonewall is that he nearly killed my great-great grandfather at Chancellorsville. Capt. Thomas McCreary, my paternal grandfather's grandfather, was a member of the 145th Pennsylvania during the battle. It was McCreary's eighth and last major engagement. His leg was shot off and he was discharged. He went to medical school and opened a practice after the war.

The battle sequence at Chancellorsville is the highlight of the whole movie. It is exceptionally well filmed and well paced. It tells the story of one of the most astounding feats of American arms ever. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was badly outnumbered by the Union Army of the Potomac under the command of Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, who did not live up to his nickname that day. Lee knew Hooker from before the war, and guessed correctly that he, Lee, could do what every tactics manual said never to do when defending against a superior foe: split his forces and fight in essence two battles.

Jackson marched his corps for several miles all the way to the far end of Hooker's right flank, where the Union 11th Corps was encamped in leisure. Jackson's men stormed out of the woods and overran 11th Corps with no warning. 11th Corps ran like rabbits. Union resistance did not halt the advance; only darkness and the confusion of the CSA formations becoming broken up did so.

The movie is 216 minutes of running time. It has been criticized for being a Southern apologia because it attempts to show that the Southern troops were defending more than slavery. The Southern generals, especially Jackson and Lee, are presented with a human face. Jackson even assures his slave cook, Jim, "Your people will be freed, in God's time." But Jackson is in no hurry to help God make that time come.

Jackson, though, was a real-life Calvinist predestinarian. And such does the movie present him to be. Fearless under fire, he assures his aide that he is in no greater danger in battle than in his bed. God, he says, has numbered his days; when they run out, they run out, but he will not die before then no matter what. Hence, he accepts the carnage of war as a mystery of the way God's will is being worked out.

As my son said, there sure is a lot of praying in the movie, mostly by Jackson and some other Southerners. Jackson prays for victory. He thanks God for making him an instrument of God's will, and for God's will to be accomplished. But there is never a scintilla that Jackson considers that his own actions might not be accomplishing God's will. The faith of the Union figures is not so verbose, but it is just as certain. Col. Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels in a reprise role) is a devout man, but in northeast Yankee fashion, it is a private thing, mostly, that impels him to wage holy war against the South, just as the South is waging holy war against him. Chamberlain tells his brother that if they both have to die to free the slaves, then so be it.

Modern Americans probably don't realize that while the Civil War was a Holy War on both sides, it didn't start out that way. Quite correctly, Chamberlain points out to his brother that freeing the slaves was not an original war aim, but because the war was joined, there could be no acceptable outcome that didn't end slavery. The reason the war went on so long and became so ruthless was that Holy War can never accept any outcome but total victory.

Later historians would wrap the mantle of Wilsonian idealism about American Holy War as the concept became secularized in the 20th century. American holy warriors, like Wilson, resist taking up the sword for any reason except the most severe, and even then only reluctantly. But once the sword is raised, the evil must be crushed utterly. The transcendent cause demands it.

But I digress. Overall, G&G is worth seeing. Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee is impressive, most of all because of the stunning visual similarity he bears to the real Lee. Compare:

Duvall as Lee . . . . Lee as Lee

Do I recommend God's and Generals? Of course, if only for the reason that no other movies of its kind and intent are being made today. As the film's web site says, the Civil War is the Iliad of the American people. There will never be a time when it won't be told.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 10:56:00 PM. Permalink |

Solution to the illegal Iraqi missiles?
South Knox Bubba has this interesting report:

Iraq has withheld a decision on destroying the missiles that exceed the U.N. imposed 93 mile limit. Iraq's liaison to the U.N. inspectors, Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohamed Amin, said that the government is "serious about solving this."

"We have been in contact with NASCAR officials to discuss this 'restrictor plate' technology we hear so much about. We believe this would be an adequate solution to our problem and would also make our arms races more sporting and more entertaining for the fans" he said.

I say that this is unacceptable and is further evidence of Iraqi duplicity. As any diehard race fan knows, restrictor plates do not restrict the car's range, only its speed. If Iraq adopts restrictor-plate technology, the missiles will have the same range, they will just get there slower.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 10:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Many thanks to donors!
Amazon.com's donation service does not tell me who has donated to me by using it, but whomever you are, I am very grateful! Thank you!

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 06:12:00 PM. Permalink |

War? Let's go bowling instead.
That's what Fred Reed, US Marine combat veteran (wounded in action) says.

Long hours later we landed in the sweltering sauna of Danang with its gun emplacements and fwop-fwopping helo traffic and sun-baked Marines with slung rifles; 105s boomed in the distance. It was, in the vulgar but irreplaceable expression of the times, a mind-fuck. We weren't back on the block combing our hair for Sally Sue and facing a career at the NAPA outlet. We were real soldiers, who couldn't find Vietnam on a map, fighting VC who couldn't find Vietnam on a map. We didn't reflect on this. Marines fought. Somebody else decided who they fought.

Perspectives change. Later, for veterans who no longer had legs or eyes, who had lost their guts or become paras and quads, the splendor dimmed. I came home in a packed Medevac 141 with a guy slung above me sprouting tubes that led into bags. He died en route. Those who survived soon realized that in six months no one would care what they had gone through, yet they would spend the rest of their lives in the wheel chair. A colostomy bag, they found, was not a great conversation piece in a singles bar. For them, the war never went away. . . .

For a couple of decades I worked as a military reporter. I liked the travel, the troops, the airplanes and ships. Eventually it wore thin. Over and over, in some place like remote Olancho province in Honduras, or Cuando Cubango in Angola, or this dusty clearing or that dusty clearing, the press would chopper out to be shown The Great Victory.

In the jungle would be three or four bedraggled bodies of teenagers fighting a shabby war for some dismal Marxist cause they couldn't spell, and a trove of captured weapons-couple of AKs, the stray M-16, maybe a FN/FAL or Galil. We were told it was progress. Some great cause was being served. Maybe it was. I got tired of seeing it.

Plus ca change, the more it doesn't.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 05:54:00 PM. Permalink |

UAV attacks against US cities were planned decades ago
News stories today have been postulating that GPS-guided Iraqi drones may target U.S. cities. According to former Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) officer and spy Victor Suvorov, Soviet special operations forces planned for UAV attacks against the White House and other key offices decades ago.

Suvorov defected to the British in the late 1970s. In his book Spetsnaz, he outlined how such an attack would have taken place. All the preparation work had been done, all that was left to do was execute.

There was no GPS network then. The drones to be used were radio guided. Soviet operatives carefully located a number of parking spaces in downtown D.C. Very early in the morning of the attack, they would park a van in each two of the spaces. Each of the spaces used would be on opposite sides of the White House, but not near it. Aboard each van would be a sophisticated directional radio signal with sidelobe beaming. The UAV would ride the intersection of the beams to a preselected point, where it would cut power and plunge to the ground. Think of a guided Buzz bomb.

To conduct the attack, Soviet aeronautical engineers designed large UAVs that could be assembled from parts sold on the open market in the United States, except for the critical radio guidance unit. That part was smuggled into the US through diplomatic shipment. Suvorov said that the UAVs had actually been assembled, but neither armed nor equipped with the guidance unit. The UAVs were stored in private garages of Soviet agents living covertly in the country.

On the appointed day to open war between the US and the USSR, the Soviet embassy would receive coded messages from Moscow. The Spetsnaz teams working out of the embassy would retrieve two UAVs and take them to a preselected launching site. They would install the guidance unit and the special explosive charges. At a coordinated time, they would launch the UAVs, which would guide along the radio beams. First one, then the other would drop onto the White House.

Suvorov does not say how much explosive the UAVs could carry, but I would think no more than 100 pounds each. Two hundred pounds of high explosive is not to be laughed at, but the fortified bunker rooms of the White House could withstand that quite well, especially because the UAVs could not penetrate hardened targets.

These attacks were intended to be part of a much larger campaign of violence and psychological operations to take place in key cities across the country.

The news reports say,

The information about Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program has caused a "real concern" among defense personnel, senior U.S. officials tell Fox News. They're worried that these vehicles have already been, or could be, transported inside the United States to be used in an attack, although there is no proof that this has happened.

Note well that there is no military utility in such a weapon. There is no purpose for them but terrorism.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 05:39:00 PM. Permalink |

A well-deserved smackdown
Peggy Noonan smacks down two former presidents for acting like spoiled brats. Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2003 10:27:00 AM. Permalink |

Hans Blix interviewed by Time
Worth reading.

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2003 11:04:00 PM. Permalink |

Oregon puts the Big in Big Brother
"Oregon is considering the feasibility of installing GPS technology in the cars of its residents to record how many in-state miles they drive as the state considers imposing car-related taxes based on road-mileage-driven versus fuel purchased." (story)

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2003 10:59:00 PM. Permalink |

Quote of the day
"War is the pits. I just pray that everything is okay soon." Faith Evans (cite)

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2003 10:55:00 PM. Permalink |

Ambush journalism . . . .
Is not a pleasant thing to endure when you are the ambushee. But that's what happened to me last Friday when I was a guest on a Nashville morning radio show, Teddy Bart's Round Table. I was invited to discuss the issues of the day, but in the last 15 minutes, I discovered that I, personally, was the issue. You can listen to the online archive, but it streams, not loads, so it will take an hour and 45 minutes to get to that segment.

Teddy was taken aback that I discuss things on this blog that I didn't discuss on his broadcast. Well, I have been on the Round Table a total of six hours and have been blogging for 11 months. Do the math. So I asked him what he meant, and he read from a post in which I talked about my Feb. 7 guest spot in the show. Teddy took umbrage at the opening sentence:

I spent two hours being interviewed for radio and TV Friday on the topic of Iraq, except for a few minutes at the front of the show when the host wanted to talk about Michael Jackson's documentary that had aired the night before (and which I didn't see).

That sole sentence is the only mention I made about the broadcast; the rest of post talks about a topic I had addressed on the show. Click the link and see for yourself. Teddy didn't like that sentence, but it is only a statement of fact. Listen to the first few minutes of the online archive and hear for yourself.

It seems Teddy Bart and Karlen Evins, the hosts, think that I bash the media on this site. Teddy told me so, but when I asked him to provide a citation, he couldn't. Karlen was very bothered that (heaven forfend!) non-journalists are able to go onto the internet and write whatever they want to with no accountability! Please pass the smelling salts, I might faint.

Personally, I remember this thing called the First Amendment, which I don't think applies only to journalists. When other people exercise it, it doesn't offend me.

There are at least two pertinent facts here:

Journalism is a job, not a profession. In fact, I have extensive formal journalism training, and I can tell you that there is no particular skill to it that is particularly difficult or unobtainable by average people.

There is no "accountability" of journalists in any meaningful sense. There is no equivalent of a bar exam for journalists. There is no licensing procedure for journalists. There is no minimum education level required, nor any particular special kind of training at all. Fill out an employment application, get hired at minimum wage or better, and presto, you're a journalist. Or just take a pad and pencil, call some folks on the phone and do some interviews, and you're a journalist, too. Think not? Read on.

The myth of journalistic accountability
But back to "accountability" for the nonce. There is a Code of Ethics promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists that offers some admirable ideals. Here is 100 percent of what it says the accountability of journalists is (check for your self):

Be Accountable

Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

Journalists should:
Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

That's all. What the code means is that accountability is nothing but an agreement by journalists, whatever they actually are, to follow these rules. There is no sanction for not doing so. I presume that the SPJ could revoke your membership in it for failing to follow the code, but you can still be a journalist if you want. Lawyers can be debarred, physicians can be de-licensed, and then neither can practice, but no such sanctions of any kind exist for journalists.

Nor should it. The only good answer to free speech with which you don't agree is more free speech. The First Amendment does not privilege "reporters." The First Amendment protects equally everyone's right to publish. News media outlets have no First Amendment rights that you and I or Joe Doaks does not have, nor do they have those rights more urgently.

I told Teddy and Karlen that there is only one real standard of journalistic accountability: the marketplace of ideas. People read or view or listen to sources that they deem reliable and credible (or entertaining, but we were talking about news and commentary). Glenn Reynolds gets 200,000 page views per day because people trust his record. My blog's readership has grown from a few dozen to a few thousand for the same reason, I presume. Lord knows, I don't try to be entertaining

Karlen's hypothesis, that journalists are "accountable" and bloggers are not, is just not true. In fact, bloggers are blessedly free from the very real constraint that tends to inhibit traditional media from pursuing stories: commercial pressures. Matt Welch (via Glenn Reynolds) writes that America's newspapers are catering almost exclusively to the well-to-do in search of advertising dollars, skewing their news coverage in order to achieve reader demographics that attract high-dollar advertisers. As the result,

"Daily newspapers have effectively dropped [coverage of] the bottom quintile or perhaps a third of the population," wrote communications professor Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a chapter of the 2002 book Into the Buzzsaw.

Where is the accountability here? In the United States, media operations are commercial business ventures and that fact overwhelms almost everything else about them. I remember well a Time magazine reporter covering Operation Golden Pheasant in 1988. The reporter asked an 82d Airborne Division Spec. 4 some questions, but the trooper declined to answer. The reporter said he should give the interview. "I represent the American people," the reporter said. The Spec. 4 snorted, "No you represent Time-Life, Inc, a publicly held megabusiness." When even a 20-year-old trooper knows where a reporter's highest loyalty lies, it's time for some honesty from the reportage trade.

The only real legal accountability for journalists are libel laws, but those laws apply to bloggers just as much as traditional media.

The myth that journalism is a distinctive profession
Mediachannel.org asked the question, "What is a journalist?" and answered thus:

Most mainstream journalists don't acknowledge how their own ideologies (or the pressures of their employers) guide their work. Yet they are considered "real journalists" because of their insider status and where they stand in the pecking order of some media combine. However, note that in a world of so many diverse publications, multimedia outlets and Web sites, more and more people are defining themselves as journalists and in some instances even reinventing aspects of journalism, as with the Indy Media Centers. Outsiders have always fought to be recognized and validated. The late I. F. Stone, for one, virtually alone, went after the U.S. government's Vietnam polices with a small newsletter. History now considers him a media hero. A new Indian website is battling corruption by exposing it. "Private Eye," a satirical magazine in London, has long been an outlet for unsourced, anonymous insider dish 'n' dirt on the media business. It's not traditional "balanced" reporting but most journalists read it and love it. There are many more such examples.

Is Glenn Reynolds a journalist? I think so, but others may not, and there is no one out there who has the right to say either of us are wrong. Some states have attempted to define what a journalist is by law, but such efforts have very serious problems, not least of which is that the Supreme Court has always held that no citizen enjoys greater First Amendment protections than another. First Amendment protections and rights belong to individuals, not corporations. (See this story, also cited below, which points out, "The First Amendment, said the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, 'does not relieve a newspaper reporter of the obligation that all citizens have to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation.'").

The Vanessa Leggett case is so confounding precisely because there is no accepted social or legal definition of what a journalist is. Philip Meyer, who holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wrote of the Leggett case,

How, for example, could we define membership in the special group without starting down a slippery slope leading first to the licensing of journalists and ultimately to censorship? . . . One of Leggett's contributions could be a definition of a journalist as anyone who declares his or her intent to be one.

So there you have it, Teddy and Karlen. I am a journalist just as much as you. Breathe easy.

And start a blog!

Update: Bill Hobbs, who is a bona fide journalist by any definition, has a lot more to say about this topic. Excerpt:

No media tool allows for more accountability and more-rapid correcting of error than weblogs. None. And blog articles - which, incidentally, tend to be commentary rather than straight news - are often better referenced than anything you'll read in your local daily. Bloggers won't just tell you what they think about something - they'll provide you links to the relevant source materials, and even links to other blogs that take a different point of view. Rev. Sensing quotes the SPJ "Code of Ethics" in its entirety - and links to it. What are the chances he would deliberately misquote it? Zero. He linked to it - you can read it for yourself. The Internet makes it easy to fact-check bloggers - which creates more pressure on bloggers to get their facts right.

Example: awhile back I made a comment in a posting about Truman's mistakes at the Yalta conference. Within a few hours some left a comment that Roosevelt was the president at Yalta, Truman was at Potsdam. That's one reason I put the commenting feature on my site.

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2003 10:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraqi military order of battle
The Agonist has compiled a listing of Iraqi military units, arranged by command and geographical location, from various sources. Good piece of work!

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 08:23:00 PM. Permalink |

Illustration, and not a pleasant one
John at Blogs of War has added an illustration to my commentary released by the United Methodist News Service.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 05:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Deployment update
Steven Den Beste posts the news, including that the US 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment has received deployment orders.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 05:20:00 PM. Permalink |

More on the Left's anti-Semitism
Earlier, I postulated with evidence that the religious right and the religious left had found common cause or common ground in anti-Judaism, expressed by the Left in hatred of Israel, and by the right in opposition of and intolerance for the Jewish faith itself.

Now Trent Telenko adds other good insights as he explores David Brooks' piece of that theme in the Weekly Standard. Says Trent,

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

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

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

Yes, anti-Judaism stil has some sway over some segments of the right, but on the whole, the right is ashamed of it. The Left is far more anti-Semitic, and getting boastfully worse.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 05:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Is everyone slow today?
Very frustrating internet connection lately. Seems slow as molasses. Is it just comcast.net or are other folks affected. Aargh!

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 04:53:00 PM. Permalink |

I'll be gone most of the day
My second son is competing in the state swimming championships in Nashville this morning. I have a wedding to do this afternoon. So it will be late afternoon at best before I'll be back online. Have a great day!

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2003 06:51:00 AM. Permalink |

"It's all these things put together."
E. Nough makes exactly the same argument for taking down Iraq that I started writing for posting Monday. Now I don't have to - heck, I can't, because he says it as well as it needs to be said (except, as you know, I eschew profanity). Main point: there is no single reason to take Saddam down, and any one reason by itself is insufficient. But all of them put together is overwhelmingly compelling.

So go read it, the whole thing. (via Daily Pundit)

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 09:59:00 PM. Permalink |

This sounds awry
Ron Dreher reviews the new film, Gods and Generals, in NRO. Recounting some reviews that claim the film is a Confederate apologia, Dreher writes,

Perhaps this explains why some critics find it phony that the film's two black characters, a house slave named Martha (Donzaleigh Abernathy) and a cook named Jim (Frankie Faison) relate so affectionately to whites. It's easy to see these portrayals as Confederate clichés of happy black folks watched over paternally by their masters. This would be wrong, and unfair. However paradoxical, it's simply true that whites and blacks in the south loved each other despite the structural sin in which they were mired.

I am uneasy with that closing sentence. As written, it just is not true. Southern whites did not love blacks, they despised them. There were many slave-owning whites who did become affectionate toward some enslaved blacks, but the blacks concerned were almost always personal servants with whom the whites had frequent contact throughout each day. Think of Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy in Gone With The Wind; Mammy had an outright maternal relationship with Scarlett, and this was a very realistic portrayal of the kind of relationship between domestic-servant black and whites in the South that continued through the 1950s. I know a number of white folk in their 70s who have told me that they were raised by a black woman more than by their own mothers.

But in the antebellum days, this kind of affection did not extend past that very narrow circle to black in general. Slavery was an exceptionally cruel state for blacks, both mentally and physically. They were worked literally to death. At most, they got Sunday morning off, but not Sunday afternoon. Leisure time was a dangerous thing for whites to let the slaves have, as the Nat Turner rebellion showed.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 09:33:00 PM. Permalink |

Paying for the Big One
Would this be a good idea again? Leave a comment!

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 08:57:00 PM. Permalink |

Reinventing Saddam
Wants to be known as a Muslim faithful now
OpinionJournal reports,

In a recent speech to the Iraqi people on the occasion of the Day of the Army, Saddam Hussein invoked the name of Allah 41 times and used the word "faith" 19. Does this mean that a man long notorious for his militantly secular views has suddenly found religion? It's not very likely. The pious tones suggest that Saddam desperately hopes to reinvent himself, in the public eye, as a devout Muslim.

The prospect of war seems to have hurried along this transformation. Of late Saddam has proclaimed his deep devotion to Islam, appearing in mosques and having posters displayed in Baghdad that show him dressed in traditional robes, absorbed in religious devotion and prayer. The Iraqi media regularly remind the public of the blood ties between Saddam and the prophet Muhammad, which were conveniently "discovered" only a few years ago.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 08:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Ethics and Morality in Foreign Affairs - Guest Blog
I gladly welcome Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist as a guest blogger. The rest of this posting is his, so read on!

"Power is too difficult to assess, and the willingness to vindicate it too various, to permit treating it as a reliable guide to international order. Equilibrium works best if it is buttressed by an agreement on common values. . . . Agreement on shared values inhibits the desire to overthrow the international order." Henry Kissinger

I am a liberal. I voted for Bill Clinton twice. I also voted for Al Gore - I would've voted for McCain in the general election, however. I am an international relations student and a free-lance writer with my own blog called The Agonist. But I am not your typical liberal. I like to think that I come from that strand of liberalism that began the Cold War, that group of liberal's who tried to harness America's great strengths to create a better world, (not a perfect world--just a better one). I believe that the use of force is often justified in international affairs. I even believe that sometimes it shouldn't be the last resort, but maybe the first. I am also a liberal who is very concerned that the Democratic Party is being hijacked by the hard-pacifist left, a group of liberals who've not investigated their moral assumptions at all.

Yesterday evening I was having dinner with one of my professors. At dinner we found ourselves discussing morality and ethics (or the lack thereof) in international politics. I threw out the above quote by the don of the Establishment, Henry Kissinger, and my professor shot me down.

"Kissinger might have said something like that--but he never meant it," he said.

I thought about what that statement really meant. Our politics have become so divisive recently precisely because we're not discussing morality. Instead we're shouting it at each other.

The Left thinks it has the better claim to morality, after all, who could not be for peace? But so does the Right, because after all, who could be for evil?

This bifurcation is a result of the hyper-media age in which we live, sound bites are easy to transmit over the airwaves, easier to communicate and even easier to misunderstand or misinterpret.

That is why I took Donald up on his offer as a guest writer. From time to time I will comment on One Hand Clapping about the faulty moral reasoning of this group and others.

Think about Kissinger's quote; we'll be discussing it next time. By Sean-Paul Kelley

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 05:40:00 PM. Permalink |

That which unites our enemies
Michael Ledeen and Victor Davis Hanson concur on what the unifying theme is of the wars we waging. Says Ledeen,

We are not engaged in a "clash of civilizations," but rather in the same fundamental struggle between freedom and tyranny that created the United States in the first place.

Michael also has some sober comments about the whole Gulf region after Saddam is ousted by US forces. His unease is well founded, I think.

Says Hanson of our armed enemies,

their common ideological enemy is liberal democracy — specifically its global promotion of freedom, individualism, capitalism, gender equity, religious diversity, and secularism that undermines both Islamic fundamentalism in the cultural sense, and politically makes it more difficult for tyrants to rule over complacent and ignorant populations. . . .

Are we, then, confronted with a clash of civilizations? Not really, but rather the tottering of the last impediments to the reform of the Arab world before it joins the world of nations, and embraces freedom and tolerance, which alone can provide it with security and prosperity.

As they say, great minds think alike.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 04:44:00 PM. Permalink |

A new thing of the nuclear age
Writes Kenneth Pollack,

America has never encountered a country that saw nuclear weapons as a tool for aggression. During the cold war we feared that the Russians thought this way, but we eventually learned that they were far more conservative. Our experts may be split on how to handle North Korea, but they agree that the Pyongyang regime wants nuclear weapons for defensive purposes — to stave off the perceived threat of an American attack. The worst that anyone can suggest is that North Korea might blackmail us for economic aid or sell such weapons to someone else (with Iraq being near the top of that list). Only Saddam Hussein sees these weapons as offensive — as enabling aggression.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 04:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Light blogging today
Very busy with work through this evening. Friday is my main writing day (but not for the blog) and I have a wedding rehearsal tonight. In the meantime, read Geitner Simmons, Austin Bay, Joe Katzman and Steven Den Beste, and don't miss this post by Sean-Paul Kelley on the future of gasoline prices.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 02:24:00 PM. Permalink |

A reader responds
From email:

I very much appreciate your contribution to United Methodist discourse on the issue of war in Iraq. You lucidly relate the theological and political issues at hand, a task rarely accomplished by the clergy.

As a student of military and diplomatic history as well as an active United Methodist, I have grown quite disgruntled with the church over the last few months. Bishop Christopher's letter seemed only to attach theological authority to 60's pacifism without discussion of the just war tradition or essential Wesleyan doctrines such as original sin.

As the gap between clergy and laity widens, the church loses not only its ability to relate to its members but also its legitimacy as an American institution. Here in Connecticut, one hardly enters a church without reciting some litany of repentance for our actions (yet undone) in Iraq.

The key to all of this is, as you stated, that something needs to be done. The "sit-here-do-nothing" attitude isn't realistic. The seemingly irreconcilable chasm between such views and reality is the assumption that peace is the normal state of human affairs rather than war. Peace must be accomplished; it doesn't keep itself. I think humanist ideas have blinded us to the point that we are guilty of the cardinal sin of pride: we don't even realize our own sinfulness.

I hope that you and others continue to offer differing voices towards our discussion. If the church is to remain influential in public life it must retain a balanced approach to such matters.
Jeff

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 02:18:00 PM. Permalink |

What "peace" marchers are really all about
In light of the ~~pro-tyranny and oppression~~ peace demonstrations held last weekend, I thought I'd refer you back to a piece I wrote on Jan.16, "Does the peace movement really have good intentions? No."

The Down With America camp - This is the smaller camp active in America. It denounces any and all things American for no other reason than that's what they do. To them America is bad, every place else is good, especially non-European places. (Europe is suspect, but is tolerated because it is no longer religious. One of America's chief faults is that Americans are still religious.) The oppressions and slaughters that people of color regularly wage upon one another is of no interest to this camp except as another thing to blame upon America. This is the sort that Mersereau describes, although, as I said, he erroneously credits them with actually wanting peace.

The Political Identity camp - The larger camp is equally uninterested in peace. Its motivation is pure, partisan politics. It is universally liberal to outright leftist, but not pacifist. Its members do not object to war per se, they mainly object to war being waged by the wrong people.

This holds true not only for the street demonstrators, of course, but for many political figures as well. More explanation at the original posting.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2003 02:17:00 PM. Permalink |

I am back on radio Friday morning
You can listen to streaming audio from 7 - 9 a.m., Central time.

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 09:18:00 PM. Permalink |

My Iraq commentary for the United Methodist News Service is online
As I reported, it is one of three commentaries the service is presenting as a kind of "package." In the order they are listed, they are (with author bios as given):

For Christians, every war is a civil war, by the Rev. Peter Storey. Storey is the Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, N.C. He is a former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa and a former bishop of Johannesburg. He was an anti-apartheid activist and served as Nelson Mandela’s prison chaplain.
Just cause exists for action against Iraq, (mine). Sensing is pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn. He also is a retired Army artillery officer.
War now would not be justifiable, by Joseph Allen. Allen is professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. He interprets and responds to war from the perspective of the just-war tradition, and is the author of War: A Primer for Christians.

Please read them and leave a comment here on which case you think is strongest and why.

PS - the professional UMNS staff photographer took this photo of me today.

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 04:42:00 PM. Permalink |

It finally happened!
Hope the devil bought an overcoat in time!

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 04:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Why war objectors lack strategic vision
I explained here and here the process by which a nation's decision to wage war is reached. For quick review, the process runs this way:

What is the problem?
What is the resolution?
How shall the resolution be achieved?

Understanding this process and the order in which it occurs it critical to working it for either war or peace. "Peace" activists would be much more persuasive if they understood this process and used it as a template for their position.

The first question is always this: "What is the situation?" For Iraq, "What the facts and circumstances that constitute the crisis?" Answers to that question have not been offered "peace advocates" (say, UMC Bishop Melvin Talbert and his ideological allies). They have given no analysis of the crisis that takes into account its history, its technical details and the political elements at play. We still await from them a well-grounded conclusion of whether Iraq's regime and its weapons programs constitute a threat to American lives and security and the general peace of the region.

If they claim there is no threat, they are obligated to provide a comprehensive alternative explanation for these questions:

Why is Iraq developing mass-destructive weapons?

Why does Iraq refuse to comply with the UN's requirement to disclose fully its programs?

Why is Iraq taking extraordinary efforts to conceal both existing weapons and developmental programs?

There is no doubt that Iraq is doing these things. The documentation is concrete and multiple. As Prime Minister Blair told the EU assembly this week, there is no government in Europe that is unaware of Iraq's weapons programs.

The facts of the crisis are not in dispute. If the facts do not indicate what the administration says they do, then what do they indicate? On this question, the objection wing of Americans, including its religious branch, has nothing to say.

But suppose at least some of them do agree that the threat is real, existing substantially as the administration says. (Actually, a few have said so. Sojourners Online has been the sanest voice of reason of the religious opposition; I wrote about its alternate plan to war months ago and used it as a springboard to my own three-part series, "Ending Saddam's regime without war - there are no perfect solutions, selection of risks must be made.")

If they agree that the threat is real, then the next step is to answer the next question in the process: "What is the resolution?" To answer that question requires describing the political conditons that would pertain in which the threat would not exist. Here is where strategic vision is urgently needed, but it is exactly where the opposition displays practically no evidence thereof.

I have not seen such a vision explained by the objection wing, religious or not. There are two reasons, I think:

They are too busy protesting potential war to ponder of anything else. But whether to wage war is a means question. Means questions come last in the process. To consider war either positively or negatively before either of the first two steps have been worked thoroughly is to shortcut the process, which always yields poor decisions and bad results. (The thought also occurs to me that protesting and objecting are easy, while being truly constructive and knowledgeable is difficult. Some of these folks are just pretentious.)

They ideologically refuse to admit that Saddam's regime and Iraq's weapons programs are the real problem. The real problem for them is America, not Iraq. Update: Hardly had I posted this when I read Best of the Web Today, which told of this moment in a "peace" rally last weekend:

A 78-year-old Iraqi grandmother managed to reach featured speaker Jesse Jackson and asked if she could "have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life." Jackson's response: "Today is not about Saddam Hussein. Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq."

Further deponent sayeth not. I rest my case. But this series is to be continued.

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 03:42:00 PM. Permalink |

Politics, national interest and just war - Part 2
In the first part of this series, I wrote about the process of the decision to wage war, and pointed out that in Western countries, this process is theoretically and practically wedded to Just War Theory. This post continues the discussion. I shall presume, of course, that you have read part one before reading this part. (Why, naturally!) I ended by saying,

Some disputes between nations become intractable and strike to the heart of one of the nation's self interest. These are the disputes that may lead to war.

When faced with a merely intractable dispute, nations almost always continue to work the problem through diplomacy. But when the problem is both intractable and strikes to the heart of a nation's self interest - say, its survival or protecting the lives of its citizens - then there is only one other recourse: if intensified diplomacy cannot resolve the issue, military force may be necessary.

But the process does not, or at least should not, leap immediately from problem to war. The process actually works from problem to desired resolution. In other words, once the problem is understood as well as possible, the next step is to envision and describe the minimal conditions that would exist when the problem is satisfactorily resolved. Only afterward should the question of means arise.

That means that the decision to resort to military force follows, not precedes, the other questions. The resort to force is the last resort, because even for the victor, the price in lives and treasure is always high.

That is the decision we are fast approaching with Iraq. The intractable problem Iraq’s regime and weapons present to innocent lives and world peace is well understood. Every nation in the world, except Iraq, agrees that Iraq must provably disarm. The desired outcome of the crisis is not in question. The only question now is that of means: how shall Iraq be disarmed? If Iraq does comply, fully and quickly, open war will be avoided, but if not, the last peaceful means to resolve the crisis will have been exhausted.

The status quo is unacceptable. It must be resolved, even at the expense of force. The nature of force is a topic for another posting.

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 11:26:00 AM. Permalink |

Lies, darned lies - and Bill Clinton
"Revisionism" is the polite word used in this piece, but baldfaced lies is more accurate.

by Donald Sensing, 2/20/2003 07:17:00 AM. Permalink |

Men who shack up with women are bums, literally

A new study reveals that a man is more likely to live with a woman outside marriage if he is financially unstable. (Story)

Gee, what a surprise. But that's not the only reason. Other studies show that "Men won't commit to marriage because they enjoy a sexually active single life in a social climate that doesn't push them to marry."

I wrote a long post on the sad state of marriage in America today, and the psychobiological origins of marriage.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 11:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Inspectors: "No positive moves" from Iraq

President Saddam Hussein's government, apparently emboldened by antiwar sentiment at the U.N. Security Council and in worldwide street protests, has not followed through on its promises of increased cooperation with U.N. arms inspectors, according to inspectors in Iraq. . . . The United Nations also has not received additional documents about past weapons programs, despite the government's pledge to set up a commission to scour the country for evidence sought by the inspectors, U.N. officials said.

One U.N. official here said that since Friday's Security Council meeting, "we have not seen any positive moves on the part of Iraq." Another charged, "They are not fulfilling their promises."

Shocking, yes? (Story)

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Ambling now to war
The White House has announced that it will seek yet another last chance UN resolution on Iraq. Various explanations have been offered; a popular one is that Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair needs the resolution attempt for domestic cover. It's true that Blair is in deep domestic do-do, but some English commentators say that would be true without the Iraq issue.

Other folks say that it is the UN, not Saddam, whom President Bush is determined to give one more chance. Bush, it is claimed, believes that if the UN does not press to truly definitive decision on Iraq, authorizing military action, then its utility as a force for international order will be damaged badly, if not actually destroyed.

Others have said that the US military buildup in the Gulf is incomplete, or that a deal with Turkey has to be sealed yet regarding basing rights for US troops.

In any case, what the protesters have been calling "the rush to war" appears more and more like an amble to war. Why?

I have a suspicion - and that's all it is, suspicion - that the pullback from the brink has a covert reason. There is something happening, or about to happen, that needs cover to work. I wonder . . .

Is there a deal being made with Saddam by the Saudis?

Are key regime officials being bought off, one by one?

Are US CIA agents and special operations troops inside Iraq putting together an Iraqi insurgency?

Are Israel's civil defense preparations against certain-to-come Iraqi attacks as yet incomplete?

Are chem and bio units and facilities being located one by one so they can be destroyed first thing?

Are liaisons being established with "turned" Iraqi army commanders who will command their units to drive against loyalist forces in coordination with allied formations?

Are secret field landing strips being marked out, or secret supply caches being established to enhance mobility on D-Day?

Something else?

I don't know. But I wonder.

Update: This story says that "U.S. military planners are now looking at mid-March as a starting date for a war against Iraq, a delay caused by diplomatic snags and difficulties in moving heavy Army divisions."

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Go here and see this right now.
Click here.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 05:34:00 PM. Permalink |

Blogger was half dead today
So posting has been a sometimes thing.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 04:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraqi "Terror ships?"
Sean-Paul Kelley wonders,

This is certainly interesting.

I'm not sure what to make of it, except to note that it is strange that Iraq would outfit three big cargo boats, before the inspections started, send them to sea and have them maintain radio silence (contra maritime law) and basically wander around and do nothing.

Maybe I'm just paranoid.

Or maybe realistic. This is what his link reveals:

Three huge cargo ships feared to be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are being tracked around the world by British and American intelligence.

The vessels, which have been at sea for three months, are believed to be carrying weapons smuggled out through Syria or Jordan.

They are all refusing frequent requests to provide details of their cargo or destination and officials are worried that the vessels are maintaining radio silence in clear contravention of maritime law, which states all ships should be in constant communication.

Yeah, we're paranoid to think Saddam is up to no good, all right. . . .

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 04:47:00 PM. Permalink |

New spelling for French Prime Minister's name
Says Dennis Rogers:

M. CH'IRAQ

Maybe it isn't spelled this way in France, but the spelling may be catching on here in the U.S.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 04:47:00 PM. Permalink |

Colin Powell fails to "see the meaning of the moment"
Lexington Green, one of The Chicago Boyz, has an outstanding synoptic essay on the legacy and the motivations of Colin Powell, drawn from the public record, including Powell's own writings. Long but highly read-worthy!

Also see Sylvain Galineau's posting at the Boyz analyzing the unreported poll numbers in Britain and what they really mean. The mainline media sure aren't reporting them!

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 04:46:00 PM. Permalink |

"This cannot be the moral position."
Writes Michael Kelly,

To march against the war is not to give peace a chance. It is to give tyranny a chance. It is to give the Iraqi nuke a chance. It is to give the next terrorist mass murder a chance. It is to march for the furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishing of evil.

This cannot be the moral position.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:42:00 AM. Permalink |

"The French phrase for defending the world."
Jay Leno to Kevin Eubanks last night: "Do you know the French phrase for defending the world?"

Kevin: "No."

Jay: "That's because there isn't one." (Loud applause)

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:24:00 AM. Permalink |

A reader responds

This is a brief note to thank you for your letter to the Tennessean. I first found your web site through Instapundit, and I now check it regularly. I continue to enjoy your essays and your realistic views about the world as it really is. . . .

Charles R.
Kingsport, Tennessee

Charles, I am grateful for your kind words!

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:24:00 AM. Permalink |

The Left and the Right: united by anti-Judaism
Since reading Monday's shallow op-ed by Baptist Robert Parham, I have been pondering why the religious leaders he cites on the far left and the far right seem so united in opposing President Bush's intentions to topple Saddam, by force if necessary. Ordinarily, the religious left and right couldn't agree on which direction the sun sets, but they have found common cause in angrily supporting Saddam Hussein. Why?

The thought occurred to me that both sides do have one thing is common: they are anti-Jewish in some way. The religious left is anti-Jewish because, well, because the Left simply is. The most vociferous verbal hostility I have ever personally heard against Israel came from some of my liberal-to-Leftist colleagues in ministry. I can hardly describe the venom I have seen and heard poured out about Israel from pastors who spend other time claiming how tolerant and peace-loving they are. Yet many of the Left have excellent personal relationships with individual Jews and in domestic politics often are allied with them. It's Israel they despise.

OTOH, the religious right generally supports the state of Israel, but is deeply suspicious of Jewish people. They tend to see Jews as misguided religious rivals who must be converted to Christianity. (Just so you know where I stand, I would like everyone to respond to the Gospel, but see no particular reason to single out Jews for special conversion efforts. However, the Southern Baptist Convention does, and made conversion of the Jews one of its denominational platforms a couple of years ago. NB: Mr. Parham's office, the Baptists Center for Ethics, is not an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is another denomination of Baptist.)

The closest comparison to this anomaly I can think of is what Martin Luther King, Jr., said was the difference between how southerners and northerners thought of blacks. Southerners, he said, hated the black race but often loved black individuals. Northerners were affectionate for the race but often despised black persons.

What I was unable to do was connect this animus toward Jews with opposing the Bush administration's intentions to tople Saddam and liberate Iraq. Then today New Republic writer Lawrence Kaplan provided the answer.

From the musty precincts of the Old Right, the contention that Israel and a powerful "cabal" of its American supporters have manufactured the present crisis with Iraq has become canonical. Buchanan, who writes that President Bush has become a client of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the "neoconservative war party," has transformed his new magazine, the American Conservative, into a regular forum for those who share this conviction. One of its contributors, University of Illinois history professor Paul W. Schroeder, deems it self-evident that the plan for an invasion "is being promoted in the interests of Israel." . . .

Meanwhile on the left -- where many cannot fathom why, absent the urging of Israelis and their American co-religionists, the Bush administration would be so eager to topple Saddam Hussein -- the socialism of fools has been enjoying something of a vogue. Writing in the Nation, Jason Vest reports that the Bush team's "attack-Iraq chorus," working in tandem with "far-right American Zionists," subscribes to "articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between U.S. and Israeli national security interests." The respected liberal intellectual Ian Buruma has managed to locate the reasons for a U.S. war against Iraq in, among other places, "Jewish-American hysteria" and the fact that "macho images of suntanned Jewish soldiers gathered round laughing tough guys such as Ariel Sharon wiped out, as it were, 2,000 years of being Woody Allen."

Nor is this sort of fare the exclusive property of the political fringe. The ubiquitous talk-show host Chris Matthews pins blame for the impending war on "conservative people out there, some of them Jewish, who are very tough on foreign policy. They believe we should fight the Arabs and take them down. They believe that if we don't fight Iraq, Israel will be in danger." Matthews even thinks that Sharon is "writing [Bush's] speeches sometimes" and that Sharon's cabinet ministers are "in bed with the vice president's office and the Defense Department." . . .

But the real problem with claims such as these is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic.

Harvard University President Larry Summers decried last September,

But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.

So there you have it: we are all in the grip of the Vast Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy, and no one more so than George W. Bush. On this the religious right and the religious left seem to have found common cause.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2003 10:19:00 AM. Permalink |

The crowd at Moseley-Braun's campaign rally!
"Hey, Carol, how many people are in a crowd? "

Uh, one.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 05:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Jimmy Carter endorses the British Left
The sad story is here.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 05:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Two good reads
Courtesy of Bill Hobbs, links to two good pieces. First, the story of an Iraqi exilee living in Knoxville. Muwafa Salman seized arms with many others and attempted to fight Saddam's regime after thwe Gulf War, but had to flee when the US shamefully failed to support the uprising it had helped foment.

Then read the editorial in the Denver Post.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 05:32:00 PM. Permalink |

My response to The Tennessean
Yesterday I linked to an op-ed published in The Tennessean, written by Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville. Today I wrote a letter to the paper's editor in response:

Robert Parham's claim Monday that President Bush is ignoring "the leadership of the American religious community in his rush to war with Iraq" falls well short of persuasiveness.

The editor of "Sojourners" - practically the trade journal for Christian nonviolence - wrote this month, "For nonviolence to be credible, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way. . . . Those who oppose bombing must have an alternative."

An achievable alternative is not offered by the religious leaders cited. If their voices are to be heeded, they must first be worth listening to. We all wish for a world where force would never be needed. But serious reasoning, not wishful thinking, is our duty now.

The UMC's Council of Bishops has twice commended President Bush for his diplomacy. He has worked with the Congress, the United Nations, NATO, and the European Union to resolve this crisis. There has been no "rush to war." Iraq has defied 17 UN resolutions over 12 years. President Bush insisted UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq to confirm it has disarmed as the UN requires. The Security Council placed the burden of proof and the onus of compliance on Iraq, not on the inspectors or the United States.

Iraqi exile Rania Kashi wrote this month, "Saddam has murdered more than a million Iraqis over the past 30 years, are you willing to allow him to kill another million Iraqis? Out of a population of 20 million, 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their country during Saddam's reign. Are you willing to ignore the real and present danger that caused so many people to leave their homes and families?" America's religious leaders are answering, "Yes."

Reasoning about war, wrote Catholic theologian George Weigel, is not to "set a series of hurdles that statesmen must overcome before the resort to armed force is given moral sanction." The prior question is "the moral obligation of government to pursue national security and world order."

"Of course it would be ideal if an invasion could be undertaken . . . by the Nelson Mandela International Peace Force," wrote Ms. Kashi. "That such a force does not exist - cannot exist - in today's world is a failing of the very people who do not want America to invade Iraq, yet are willing to let thousands of Iraqis to die in order to gain the higher moral ground."

American liberation theologian James Cone wrote that in opposing oppression, the choice for Christians is not between violence and non-violence because violence is already present. Christians must decide whether violence to overcome the oppression is a greater evil than the violence of the oppression itself.

That is the issue that America's religious leaders fail to address comprehensively. Until they do, they will have little effect on events.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 05:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq and Panama - hit everywhere at one time?
Observers are starting to wise up and realize that the coming campaign against Iraq will not be a repeat of the Gulf War. Joe Katzman links this morning to the post at Silflay Hraka which says,

If there's a template for the second Iraqi war, it's probably Panama rather than the first Iraqi war. There are major similarities, in that we'll have control of the skies from essentially the outset of hostilities, and we face a force that is on the whole weak, but possesses some more potent elements. Smart bombs and and cruise missiles will be part of the attack, but so will paratroops, tanks, marines, mechanized infantry and special forces. Everything is going to happen at once, as our combined forces attack simultaneously, from Turkey, Kuwait, the Kurdish enclave, and possibly even Israel or Jordan. We'll have troops attacking from very surprising places, in very surprising places, once the balloon goes up.

Last year, StrategyPage.com's Thomas Holsinger and I exchanged some email on the shape of the coming campaign. I said then that the invasion of Panama would be a better model for the campaign than the Gulf War. In response to Tom's article, I wrote,

I agree with Tom that there will not be a period of intensive aerial bombing prior to decisive ground action - everything will happen at once, as Tom says. (That's how we took down Panama in 1989, with 27 major objectives being hit simultaneously. Most major objectives were really collections of objective sets.)

I also made this point on my Feb. 7 radio appearance (caution - the audio is two hours long!).

Here are Tom's and my links where we discuss the nature of the coming campaign:

The Invasion of Iraq Has Probably Begun, by Tom.

My analysis of potential strategies

My more detailed outline of my best guess of the course of the campaign, with some emphasis on psyops tactics.

Update: I just saw in the Feb. 17 Newsweek print edition, p. 40, "The assault will more closely resemble the invasion of Panama in 1989. . . ."

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 08:26:00 AM. Permalink |

"What has Iraq ever done to us?"
That's the question Susan Sarandon asks in anti-Bush ads. And Orson Scott Card gives a detailed answer.

Neither Sarandon or Garafolo really thinks that we have to wait for an evil tyrant to attack America directly before we have a responsibility to take action -- including military action -- to stop them.

Why do I know this? Because neither of them said a single, solitary word against Bill Clinton when he bombed Serbia.

Milosevic, the ruler of Serbia at the time, was an evil dictator -- but he had never taken the slightest action against the United States or any vital interest of our country. . . .

Sarandon and Garafolo and Mandela are now on record as being in favor of America allowing evil tyrants to continue to torture and murder their own people, while developing terrible weapons, sponsoring terrorists, and firing on American soldiers doing their duty under international law.

As I said here, "To them America is bad, every place else is good, especially non-European places. (Europe is suspect, but is tolerated because it is no longer religious. One of America's chief faults is that Americans are still religious.) The oppressions and slaughters that people of color regularly wage upon one another is of no interest to this camp except as another thing to blame upon America. "

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2003 07:47:00 AM. Permalink |

Saddam is planning for the last war
Linking to where Glenn Reynolds already has seems like a futilely redundant exercise, but this essay on how Saddam and his generals don't understand the new realities of the American military is worth the read. I posted before (too tired to look it up) that US military doctrine and capability has progressed much farther in the 12 years since the Gulf War than it did in the 20 years from the end of the Vietnam War to the Gulf War, probably longer than that. Saddam really has no idea of the thunderbolt preparing to strike.

Plus it seems some of his closest minions may be seeking solutions to the Saddam problem on their own.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 10:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Blair: We will hold firm
OpinionJournal offers a very long excerpt of the PM's speech on Feb. 15. Read it all. He quotes a letter he received from an exiled Iraqi woman. No. 10 Downing St. has released the entire letter. It'll make your eyes burn.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 10:20:00 PM. Permalink |

Speaking of writing op-eds
I got this email today from the office of the United Methodist News Service:

I am looking for a commentary that would offer a just-war, pro-President Bush-policy perspective on the current situation with Iraq. This commentary would be posted with two others, one offering a pacifist's view of the situation and the other offering a "just-war but anti-war with Iraq" view. The length of the piece should be 800 to 1,000 words.

Your commentary will be distributed to readers throughout the denomination as well as the secular media, and it will be posted on the UMNS Web site. Conference newspapers around the church will also probably publish it.

I'll announce its publication when it occurs.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 04:11:00 PM. Permalink |

My Nebraska op-ed
The editor of The Ledger, a newspaper in Nebraska, contacted me awhile back soliciting an op-ed piece, which I submitted and has now been published. (Link may not work after Feb. 21 when the republish.)

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 04:05:00 PM. Permalink |

A Baptist denounces the "rush to war"
Honestly, there are times I just want to join a monastery and let the whole world go to hang. This is one of those days. The executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville has an op-ed in the Tennessean this morning that is so miserably shallow it makes me want to eat nails and belch rust. Note, please, that Mr. Parham's center is not an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is another denomination of Baptist.

President Bush is out of step with the leadership of the American religious community in his rush to war with Iraq.
Despite having made faith-based initiatives a key component to his domestic policy and being the most overtly religious president in over 20 years, Bush appears deaf to the multiplying voices of wisdom within the Christian community.

What Mr. Parham never addresses is is why the religious leaders he cites in the article are worth listening to. In other words, what makes "voices of wisdom" wise? It is enough, apparently, that they are religious, and that for Mr. Parham is supposed to be a show stopper.

But as my long-time readers know, the lack of strategic vision among American clergy is deep and wide. Couple that with the fact that so many of them are driven by an ideology dressed up in religious language, and it's no weonder at all that President Bush seems "deaf" to their pleas. They have not demonstrated that they know what they are talking about. And just saying "God" and "Jesus" and "peace" doesn't make a case.

I have covered this matter pretty well in my essays section, so take a look.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 12:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Yes, I got your email!
If you correctly addressed email to me and sent it, I assure you I got it! Please be patient - I am getting a lot of email, and I do look at every message. I wish I could respond individually, but it's not possible. If I think other people might be interested in your observations, I'll post it, maybe. (Please remember that I started this blog to post my writings, though. . . .) Please use the commenting function freely; yes, I know Haloscan sometimes doesn't work, that's why I left the Shout Out link up as a backup.

If you are interested in writing a guest posting, please send me an email with the words "REQUEST STYLE GUIDE" as the message subject. I will send you my editorial guidance.

Please do not send me a message more than once, I beg you. As I said, if you addressed it correctly, I did get it. I did (or will) read it.

Please do not send me commercial traffic. I get my share of spam like everyone else. If you are a reader and want to recommend your own or another commerical site or service, let me advise you that I am grateful you are reading, but I do not post promotions for commercial ventures.

Please do not bury me in email proving I am wrong about something. Please use the commenting feature and provide links. I am pretty sure that I read all the comments. If you make a case, I will see it.

Finally, please understand that in the 11 months I have been blogging, I have made a grand total of $127 from doing so, for which I am truly grateful to the readers who hit my tip jar. But my point is that this is not a living for me, it is spare time only, so if it takes a few days for your email to get mentioned (if it does at all) that's the reason.

Update: Glenn Reynolds says he is getting more and more hate email. That's sad and really pathetic. I want to point out that I have never gotten even one hate email. Everyone who has emailed me has been quite nice about it. So thank you!

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 11:57:00 AM. Permalink |

A Muslim looks at Just War Theory
Amir Taheri confesses he doesn't understand it. Well, neither do most Christians. Taheri also insists that the way westerners understand what Islam has to say about warfare comes from slanted sources:

What about Islam? Unfortunately, the current media debate is based on what one could describe as a "Christian reading" of Islam.

Most of the articles published on the subject in the Western press these days draw on three recent "Islamic" sources: The Pakistani journalist Abul Ala Maudoodi, the Egyptian militant Sayyed Qutb and the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati - who are supposed to have redefined the concept of "jihad" as the Islamic version of "holy war."

The three individuals mentioned, of course, had a strictly "Christian" reading of Islam. This does not mean that they sympathized with Christianity as a faith or even as a culture. What it means is that they tried to understand Islam through the prism of Christian terminology. Maudoodi was deeply influenced by Locke and Hume. Qutb was overwhelmed by his sporadic reading of Rebatet and Bernanos. Shariati was a pupil of Gurvoitch and a critical-admirer of Fanon. All three regarded Islam primarily as a political ideology rather than a belief system. They would, thus, not hesitate to refashion that ideology to suit their political agenda.

It's a point of view worth considering.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 11:35:00 AM. Permalink |

Help save the Tree Octopus!
This is urgent!

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 11:31:00 AM. Permalink |

Wesley Clark mulling White House bid
And I knew him when . . .
Former NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, now retired, says he may run against Bush as a Democrat in 2004.

"Sure I've thought about it and a lot of people have come to me and asked me to think about it," Clark told NBC's "Meet the Press" program, during which he criticized Bush's handling of the weapons inspections process in Iraq. . . .

"I haven't declared a party, but it would be hard to conceive of running as a Republican only because the administration's policies are what is causing me to have these concerns," he said, adding he had no deadline for making a decision.

I met Clark when he was a two-star general commanding the National Training Center and Fort Irwin, Calif., during the Gulf War. The occasion was the media briefing on the results of investigations into friendly-fire casualties during the war, and what the Army would do about preventing them in the future. Col. Roger Brown, assigned to an operations office at the Pentagon would brief the media about the investigations themselves. Maj. Gen. Clark would brief about changes to training and doctrine would result. A brigadier general whose name escapes me, the director of the Army lab system, would brief the technology aspects.

My job was to write the briefing explaining the investigations and rehearse all three officers the day before. Coincidentally, Col. Brown had been the commander of the 42d Field Artillery Brigade in US V Corps in Germany. I served under his command as the S3 operations officer of 2d Battalion, 92 FA (8-inch self-propelled howitzer). So I knew Col. Brown well.

(There was a task force handling the investigations' results at the Pentagon, headed by the Director of the Army Staff, a three-star. I did not attend its meetings because when the TF convened, only "principals" attended, meaning the generals heading various staff activities. So the major general I worked for, MG McLain, went to the meetings and gave me guidance therefrom. The security injunctions were among the strictest I ever saw. Yet none of the friendly-fire information was classified. Even so, my general directed I report only to him on my work, skipping a DA Civilian GS-14, a colonel, the XO and the deputy chief. MG McLain told them bluntly they were out of the loop and if I wanted to see him they couldn't hinder me or ask why. It worked well, actually.)

Col. Brown and I wrestled the briefing into shape. It helped enormously that I had a good feel for how he thought because of the year I had already known him, and he likewise trusted me right off the bat. This project had truly major "elephant" interest: the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Army were directly involved. There was very heavy political pressure from the administration (especially then SecDef Dick Cheney) and some power hitters on Capitol Hill that we had to get this done right. I killed several Redwood trees' worth of paper writing it up. My final paper was 54 typed pages long, but this included the public affairs guidance and the responses-to-queries for use by official spokepersons after the briefing was done; it was not all the media briefing.

The day before the briefing, Maj. Gen. Clark came to the Pentagon. MG McLain, MG Clark and a couple of DCSOPS guys and I went to a conference room to rehearse. It fell to my good fortune (sarcasm dripping like infected honey) to play the role of an obnoxious reporter, for which I had many role models among the American media! My general told MG Clark that we would not pull any punches, so I grilled him as hard as I dared. More than once he scowled at me, but MG McLain just grinned when that happened, so I soldiered on.

The next day I waited by the entrance to the DOD briefing room. By this time my job was over, really, but I wanted to see how things went. Col. Brown came along, .looking confident and in good spirits. He went in. A minute later MG Clark came along, looking as if he was about to mount a scaffold. He stopped by the door and asked me, "How are we going to do today?" "You're going to win big," I answered, and he went inside the room.

The briefings did go well. The investigations of the friendly-fire deaths had been extremely thorough and well documented. Col. Brown had been involved in the investigations themselves, he wasn't just a senior-grade stuckee to be thrown to the media wolves. So he set a good tone. Then MG Clark briefed; I really don't remember much of what he said.

Then the one-star briefed. He really won the day for us big because he brought toys for the media from the lab. He brought some Budd Lights, a palm-sized infrared beacon named after its developer, and handed them out to the reporters. Once he turned out the lights and demonstrated the light with some night-vision gear, the reporters started acting like kids on Christmas morning.

So that was my brush with Wesley Clark.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2003 11:23:00 AM. Permalink |

NATO shuts France out, decides to support Turkey
France left NATO in 1966 and only rejoined the alliances political structure. It is not part of NATO's military command structure. Hence it has no seat on NATO's Defense Planning Committee, DPC, which sets NATO policy. Earlier today, the DPC met to resolve the impasse over providing defensive aid to Turkey. Turkey requested the aid a month ago under the terms of the NATO charter, citing a potential threat from Iraq if the US and UK launch decisive action against Iraq.

But France, Germany and Belgium objected to providing the aid, creating the first serious rift ever in the alliance. The three countries said that providing the aid would undermine efforts at the UN to solve the Iraq crisis, and that there was no evidence that Iraq was actually threatening Turkey. So today the issue was thrown to the DPC, at whose table France does not sit. The DPC's meeting today resulted in Belgium and Germany dropping their objections to the aid, for which planning will begin immediately. (Story)

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 05:37:00 PM. Permalink |

"Strength for Service. . ."
Is the name of this project by the General Commission on United Methodist Men to issue a revised, republished edition of the devotional book issued to members of the US armed forces from 1942-1945.

The vision for the publication of a new edition of the World War II-era devotional book Strength for Service to God and Country began with an Eagle Scout project by a young Boy Scout in Southern California. Evan Hunsberger began with a battered copy of the original book published in 1942 by the then Abingdon-Cokesbury Press an imprint of the Methodist Publishing House. The book contained daily devotional writings prepared by many of the leading protestant pastors and theologians of the time. . . . .

Following September 11, the vision now is to rapidly pursue financial support to enable the completion of editorial work and enable publication of sufficient copies to be distributed to all men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces worldwide. This is an ambitious goal but one that seems quite reasonable if a sufficient coalition of funding partners are willing to support the initiative. Subsequent editions for domestic public servants and other civilians are also planned.

Send your tax deductible donations to this project to-

Strength for Service Publication Fund
General Commission on United Methodist Men
PO Box 440515
Nashville TN 37244-0515
615/340-7145

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 05:08:00 PM. Permalink |

"The lies must be challenged. . . ."
"I think yesterday's massive marches represent something deeply, deeply corrupt in the soul of the left: a form of Western self-loathing that, unless it is resisted, will lead not just to tyranny for more people in the Middle East, but for the slow erosion of Western freedom itself in the face of terror. The only response is resistance. . . . The lies must be challenged day by day, hour by hour. . . . No peace. As the left used to say." So wrote Andrew Sullivan. No justice, no peace? Where might you have read that before, hint, hint.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 04:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Quote of the day:
'If all you see is hardship, pain, struggle, poverty, starvation, Aids, racism - those things exist - but if that is all you ever see you will never see the promised land." Henry Olonga, Zimbabwean Sports star and singer, via Rantburg.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 04:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Conjunction of images says it all
Just click here.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 04:43:00 PM. Permalink |

A liberal voice takes churches to task
I have in the past tried clearly to distinguish between American liberals and Leftists. As I said here, the classic strain of American liberalism "values America and wishes to see it prosper." Comes now Joel Connelly, whose column was emailed to me by Jim Miller (whose link I have added to my blogroll at left). Says Joel:

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold, seemed to cane his country in a recent interview with the Religion News Service.

"We are loathed, and I think the world has every right to loathe us, because they see us as greedy, self-interested and almost totally unconcerned about poverty, disease and suffering," Griswold exclaimed, and added, "I'd like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States."

It was too much for the elder Bush, who shot back at the bishop: "How can this man of God think so little of a nation that provides 60 percent of the world food aid -- does far more for AIDS than any other country?"

It's a pointed question.

In fact, methinks those who treat vestments as billboards need a little back talk from the pews.

Jim Miller adds,

I find it interesting because Connelly is a contentious former McGovern backer, not conservative by any means. He has written similar columns in the past, and is the only journalist on the left, other than Nat Hentoff, I have seen make this kind of argument.

Indeed. BTW, there was a message on my church's answering machine this morning by a reporter of the United Methodist News Service, asking to interview me "about Iraq." I'll give him a call tomorrow. UMNS' Iraq page is here.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 04:07:00 PM. Permalink |

The OODA loop in action
The OODA loop has gone digital now:

Today, every ship in the Truman's battle group, commanded by Stufflebeem, is linked to the other -- and to the world beyond -- by satellite-uplinked data networks. The carrier's strike aircraft and reconnaissance planes beam pictures back to the ship, where they are immediately interpreted by eight "point droppers" -- eight sailors whose jobs didn't exist 12 years ago.

Sitting in the semidarkness of the ship's analysis center, they consult constantly with intelligence analysts back in the United States, sometimes using a secure chat room set up for that purpose. Then they determine coordinates for targets.

Stufflebeem walked to the "precision targeting" workstation to tap a computer screen displaying the image of a tank. "We can send this information into the cockpit [of a fighter jet in flight] and say, 'Here's the coordinates; go strike this target.' " The process, from sensor to shooter, has been compressed to hours -- and, in some cases, minutes.

If you don't know what the OODA loop is, read this.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 02:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Scorched Earth in Iraq?
That's what this report says.

To impede American and allied forces, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s administration has developed plans to blow up dams, destroy bridges and ignite its oil fields, American defense officials say. They say Iraq may also deny food to Iraqi civilians in the southern parts of the country to try to create a crisis that would saddle advancing allied forces with the responsibility of caring for millions of desperate Iraqi civilians.

Once American and allied forces approach Baghdad, they will encounter two defensive rings of elite Republican Guard forces, the United States defense officials say. Many of the Republican Guard forces are now dispersed, a move that is intended to help them survive the airstrikes that would open the allied campaign. But once the war is under way, they are expected to rush to fighting positions that have already been stocked with ammunition and supplies.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2003 02:19:00 PM. Permalink |

Blogger is spotty today
So I probably won't post any more, even though I host the site off blogger. But Blogger's FTP function is not doing well.

In the meantime, please go here to answer the question: "Why is this man laughing?"

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 05:20:00 PM. Permalink |

High traffic for a Saturday
Usually hit counts on Saturday and Sunday are significantly lower than on weekdays. I assume this is because a lot of people read blogs at work and because they have better things to do during weekends. But today the count is lot higher than normal for a weekend day, so thank you!

And many thanks to those who hit my tip jar recently! Much appreciated!

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 05:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Will wonders never cease?
Reader Richard A. Aubrey, Jr. responds to this posting thus:

Good heavens! If there was one change I didn't think 9-11 could possibly make, it was to wake up Wallis. Never have I seen him acknowledge that dangers to Americans--which never actually exist except at the hands of America--might not be managed by nonviolence.I have seen him expanding on the troubles of the poor as a hammer against defense spending--is there no other pork?--to an extent that I thought he must certainly pray every night that the poor are always with us. Otherwise, what is his rationale?

Years ago, John Fife (PCUSA), he of the Sanctuary hoax, went to the Balkans and discovered that there might be something on this earth worse than an American soldier. He learned, said my PCUSA, and when John Fife learns something, it is worth noting, if only for the surprise. From which came the PCUSA doctrine of humanitarian intervention, including the possibility that one might have to impose peace. They didn't use the F word (fight) or the K word (kill), so as to be able to say, if something went sour, well, we didn't mean that. But their meaning is clear.Which puts, or did, the PCUSA (which may as well have been captured by a bunch of SDSers with quickie DDs) well to the right of Wallis.Now, look at what OBL did.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 04:59:00 PM. Permalink |

Is this for real?
Ben Cunningham emailed this to me without comment. Some lawyer tell me whether this is for real.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 04:32:00 PM. Permalink |

France's motivations

Poll on France

Oil? What oil? Here's what oil:

Richard Perle, a former US Assistant Defence Secretary, said the French anti-war stance was driven by economic interests. French oil giant TotalFinaElf has exclusive exploration contracts worth $US40-50 billion to develop the massive Majnoon and Bin Umar oilfields in southern Iraq, he said.

"What's distinctive about the Total contract is that it's not favourable to Iraq, it's favourable to Total," Mr Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, said during an address in New York.

"One can suspect that there's some arbitrage there, that in between the real value of that contract and the cash value of that contract there's a certain amount of political support.

"It's entirely possible that Saddam negotiated that deal because that along with the revenues ... he could get something else."

He said oil experts who had analysed the deal described it as "extraordinarily lopsided" in favour of the French company.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 03:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Now the New York Times is saying war.
Says today's editorial:

The only way short of war to get Saddam Hussein to reverse course at this late hour is to make clear that the Security Council is united in its determination to disarm him and is now ready to call in the cavalry to get the job done. America and Britain are prepared to take that step. The time has come for the others to quit pretending that inspections alone are the solution.

The Security Council, as we said the other day, needs to pass a new resolution that sets a deadline for unconditional Iraqi compliance and authorizes military action if Baghdad falls short.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 03:49:00 PM. Permalink |

"The War on Terror, Part Two."
I took issue with part one of Sean-Paul Kelley's essay on the war or terrorism, but don't find too much to fault about part two. Probably the only thing I would say is that while all of his comments are good, we can't do everything at once. President Bush went on record a long time ago that this struggle would outlast his administration and that of his successor. So yes, there is a lot we should be doing, but all in good time. For example, Sean-Paul says,

. . . the Bush Administration's unwillingness to confront the Saudis seriously undercuts the entire "War on Terror" effort. Until Wahhabism is faced down in Saudi Arabia, this war will not end.

Iraq is a much more immediate threat than Saudi Arabia. So we must needs take care of Iraq first.

Also, Sean-Paul writes,

States are important but this war is not a state to state contest. It is a state versus non-state movement (Radical Islam) contest and must be fought that way.

Yes and no. There is no al Qaeda danger without state sponsorship. And as S-P points out, the religious basis for al Qaeda is Saudi Wahhabism, which is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Many Saudi ruling families have donated large sums of money to al Qaeda. So I am unsure whether such a clear demarcation can be drawn between al Qaeda and state governments. The cynical side of me sometimes wonders whether al Qaeda is really the military arm of the Saudi government. Also, this insight at Samizdata into statism amok seems appropriate.

But such nits to pick are mostly minor ones, so give his posting a look.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 03:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Free Iraq!
At the upper left of my web site is the new graphic to support democracy in Iraq. This campaign is being promoted by Dean Esmay. It is a link to a site that promotes freedom and democracy in Iraq. Code is given here. Please add this link to your blog, go to Esmay's page and let him know.

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 03:39:00 PM. Permalink |

Laying the truth on the line
Canadian David Warren writes bluntly. As Glenn would say, "read the whole thing," including why he calls this week's Chicago speech by Canada's prime minister "among the most shameful speeches ever delivered by a Canadian politician." (via Rand Simberg)

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 03:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Why is this man laughing?
Enter the OHC photo caption contest!
Glenn Reynolds isn't the only guy with a brilliant idea! I can hold a caption contest, too! So leave a comment about this photo. Comments using profanity will be deleted! My try is below the shot. Have fun! Note: Haloscan commenting comes and goes, so if "comment" is missing next to my byline below, just use the "Shout Out."

Why is this man laughing?

Iraqi Minister of Entrapment Al-Makyu Sahri laughs as he sees the
first photos of Jacques Chirac and Scott Ritter, uh, "together."

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2003 07:39:00 AM. Permalink |

Here is Chirac's email address
So email the cheese-eating surrender monkey! Mary Johnson emailed me from the Toldeo Community Center:

You can e-mail the presidential palace in Paris at www.elysee.fr/ecrire/mail_.htm You will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire (in French) to access the mail system. Thanks for the info on the white feather. I made up my own page and sent it to Jacques. I enjoy your site--don't always agree--but enjoy it nonetheless. . . . Mary Johnson

Mary, I just ask you to read it, not agree with it! Thank you for the link!

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 10:00:00 PM. Permalink |

French say they do remember the crosses
The French newspaper Le Monde responds to the now-famous cover of the New York Post, showing the weatherworn crosses of the Normandy Cemetery, with a piece entitled, "Les croix blanches" - the white crosses (found via S. Den Beste).

Update: In place of my own edited version of an Altaviosta-powered translation, I am posting the translation that Tino posted in the comments. It is magnitudes better. Thanks, Tino!

Ah, the white crosses of Normandy, now. Of course. It was certain that you would bring them back, to wave them in the faces of these rats, these frogs, these devils that we look like to you, now. You've tried everything else. The guilt-trips follow the insults and the threats. Our TV news showed it to us, this photo of the white crosses on the front page of one of your newspapers, because your pictures cross the Atlantic much more quickly than once did the ships of Operation Overlord. They showed us the front page of this newspaper, with the white crosses, and the words: "They died for France, but France forgot".

We have not forgotten the white crosses. They haunt us. You know, we're haunted by history, us of Old Europe. That date, 6 June 1944, still makes us shiver. And all the names that go with it, Utah, Omaha, Sainte-Mère-Eglise. As do all the other nice things: the surrender of 1940, Vichy, anti-semitism, all those shameful episodes that you take pleasure to page through these days, we haven't forgotten any of that, either. Everyone has skeletons in his closet. We have ours, you have yours. Let's check our guns at the door and talk, then.

The truth, the stupid truth, is that we don't understand anything about your war. The mass of the French people normally doesn't understand anything. But, at the top, ministers, diplomats, journalists, all the best and the brightest don't get it either, which is unusual. Nobody understands why your government wants to make war on Saddam, a tired old dictator. Oh, a lot of explanations are being thrown around. George W. wants to avenge his father. He wants to grab the oil. Or the water. It's a crusade of Washington religious fanatics. Every French anti-American belief offers its own explanation. Personally, I prefer to return to the simplest explanation: September 11. How would we react, here, if an airplane crashed into the Eiffel Tower, another into the Arc de Triomphe, and another into the Ministry of Defense? We would be blinded with panic. We've come to understand that your power and your fear has driven you insane. It's possible. We respect your pain, like any pain. But the tyrant in Baghdad hasn't been there until now for nothing. You do not have any proof. You gesticulate, you throw out names, dates. Leaks are all over the place: names of mullahs or imams, suggested as "missing links", emerge and then disappear. It's no longer a case file, it's a fireworks accident. We understand your fear. We respect it. But don't demand that we follow you in your madness.

Many, many Old Europeans love you, now as much as before. They love you despite Bush (and we'll leave it at that so as not to make things worse). They love your generosity. Your tenacity. You enthusiasm. Your love of a job well done. Your belief that evil exists. Your simple ideas. Your E.T., your Saving Private Ryan. However, we stand behind Chirac, even those of us who did not vote for him last year with fire in their bellies. Cowardice? Be serious! Don't you think it takes courage to stand up to the United States these days? We look admiringly at this agglomeration of Schroeder, Poutine and the others, walking the tightrope above the abyss, with his big arms and big feet, because we know that freak.

Admiringly, why? Because he defends today the same cause that brought your fathers to sleep under those white crosses: the refusal of rule by the strongest. The refusal of "si ce n'est toi, c'est donc ton frère" [see ** below]. You, who love simple ideas, can't you understand that? If it manages to change the unavoidable end of this story, it will certainly have deserved our admiration. And, one of these days, your recognition.

** Someone else posted that this expression is "taken from a poem of LaFontaine learned by French children. It's about a Wolf who accused a Lamb to have made a lot of harm to his property. The Lamb denies it so the Wolf says: 'If it's not you, it's your brother who did it.' Le Monde is saying here, I think, that since we are not able to punish al Qaeda, Iraq will do.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 05:30:00 PM. Permalink |

A boycott idea little late
It being Valentines Day I have given my wife a big box of chocolates. Ordinarily I give her Godivas for Valentines, but this year I gave her American-made Russell Stover candy. Godiva is a Belgian company, and right now I just can't swallow the stuff coming out of Belgium.

Wish I had thought to post earlier a plea to boycott Godiva for today. But maybe better late than never.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 04:21:00 PM. Permalink |

"Hard Questions for Peacemakers"
Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, thoughtfully writes about what and how devotees of Christian nonviolence can respond to the threat against America. Unlike many of the other religious voices today that I have excoriated before, Wallis takes the threat against American lives very seriously, and specifically says, "the self-defense of Americans and other people is clearly at stake here."

So how do we stop them? How do we prevent them from killing more innocents? And most poignantly, how do advocates of nonviolence try to stop them? For nonviolence to be credible, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way. I oppose a widening war that bombs more people and countries, recruiting even more terrorists, and fueling an unending cycle of violence. But those who oppose bombing must have an alternative.

Also, even though Wallis urges intense diplomatic and legal action against terror networks, he still understands there is a moral dilemma for those truly committed to nonviolence:

The terrorists must be found, captured, and stopped. This involves using some kind of force.

And that force will have lethal potential. Wallis admits he cannot resolve that dilemma. Refreshingly, though, he dismisses those who say simply that the "root causes" of terrorism must be addressed first because it does not solve the problem (to which I also say that the so-called root causes such folks identify have nothing whatever to do with the reason al Qaeda makes war upon us):

But many practitioners of Christian peacemaking, including me, can’t accept such a nonresponse to horrific terrorism, despite the history of U. S. foreign policy. Gandhi said that if a lunatic is loose in the village and threatening the people, you first deal with the lunatic, and then the lunacy. I believe we must find a way to deal with the threat of terrorism—a threat that must not be avoided or minimized by those committed to nonviolence. We cannot turn away from this. But how do we confront this crisis?

Although Wallis does offer some suggestions in answer, they are extremely vague and poorly developed. Even so, this article is a sensitive and serious reflection on the subject, and so I recommend it.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 02:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Peace in our time . . . again?
Austin Bay challenges "the angry, crank offspring of Neville Chamberlain."

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 02:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Basic mistakes by the other side
Claim that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and Saddam-ruled Iraq are "nation states" is wrong
Sean-Paul at The Agonist writes proposes a liberal (not leftist) theory of international relations for the US. Worth reading, but he makes some fundamental mistakes. The first one that caught my eye was this statement: "I believe in the idea of the perfectability of mankind." Technically, that's not a mistake per se, it's an opinion, a faith claim, really. I rebutted that claim in more detail here, so take a look. And I am certain that history buttresses my case, not Sean-Paul's.

Mistake 2:

But the one glaring problem with this blind, unreflective adherence to neocon theory is that we were not attacked by a STATE on September 11, 2001. We were attacked by a cruel, vicious, super-empowered NON-STATE actor.

Bad assumption number one: we wage war against state actors, while we were attacked by non-state actors. Not only is this a bad assumption, it is bad strategy.

This really is a mistake. We have not yet waged war against even one state actor. In Afghanistan the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 1996 by military conquest that was never ratified internationally. The UN never agreed to seat an ambassador from the Taliban "government." The pre-existing government of Afghanistan kept the seat in the UN. Only three other nations recognized the Taliban government, and all three de-recognized it after the attacks of 9/11 (two pretty quickly, the other took longer).

Afghanistan's legitimate government retreated to the north and became known as the Northern Alliance. The Alliance retained physical control over about one-third of the country throughout the tenure of illegal, illegitimate reign of the Taliban. The war that American waged in Afghanistan was to restore the country to the full control of the legitimate government and expel the non-state actors who had seized most of the country from the legal government.

When about three dozen countries join to wage war in Iraq, that war will be waged against an entity that is considered a nation state only by common agreement to accept a fiction as truth. The fact is this: Iraq is really a swath of territory geographically defined by the British, over which a tyrant rules by force of terror against his own people, having seized power literally by murdering his rivals.

Why on earth should the United States pretend that that Iraq is a legitimate nation state at all? I accept the present legitimacy of the Brit-drawn boundaries, if for no other reason than they have become concretized over the decades and can't be changed (nor do I suggest they should). But lines of the map aside, there is nothing that makes Iraq a legitimate nation state deserving recognition as such in the UN or anywhere else.

More to the point, why does Sean-Paul confer legitimate nation-state status on Saddam's reign? Saddam is a terrorist who has seized control of a politically-defined territory with fantastic oil wealth. That's all Iraq is today: a potential nation state in the grip of practicing terrorists.

Sean-Paul makes some other points that should be addressed also, and I'll try to later. Try, that is. (So much to blog, so little time!) But let me end here on a positive note: Sean-Paul is no anti-American diatribist. Liberal, yes, but he seems one of the fine tradition of American liberalism that values America and wishes to see it prosper. I'm adding him to my links list.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 01:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Real advice about surviving WMD attack
It's all right here from someone who knows. What this expert says about chemical attack especially is right on. Be concerned? Sure. Be prepared? Of course. Panic? No. (via Justin Sodano.)

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 09:51:00 AM. Permalink |

"An absurdly exaggerated legitimisation of the United Nations"
Says Conrad Black:

The United Nations is principally composed of corrupt, failed despotisms, and the suggestion that its opinions can be aggregated into an unappealable world supreme court is bunk. No serious person could imagine that the threats of veto of the French, Chinese and Russians, or the antics of the French, Germans and Belgians at Nato, are based on a moment’s adjudication of the sorts of issues we are talking about today. Those countries have a variety of motives, but some of them are pandering to the radical Islamist terrorists and the flabby soft-left opinion that accommodates them in the West.

As I have already explained, nations always conduct their foreign policy on the basis of what they think is best for them. All national foreign policy, whether of the US or Lichtenstein, is focused toward enhacing the nation's self interest. Yet for some reason the Left seems to think that inside the UN building in New York, every diplomat magically becomes a dispassionate wise head with a purely globalist view. This is simply a stupid thing to think. The UN, like war, is simply an extension of national politics by unusual means. And national politics are always directed toward self satisfaction.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2003 09:48:00 AM. Permalink |

How al Qaeda will get out of having to keep faking Osama tapes
Now a new purported bin Laden audiotape has surfaced in which the really-dead-and-buried-under-tons-of-Afghan-mountain-rock al Qaeda leader says he will die a martyr.

"In this final year I hurl myself and my steed with my soul at the enemy. Indeed on my demise I will become a martyr," the Al Qaeda leader purportedly says.

"I pray my demise isn't on a coffin bearing green mantles. I wish my demise to be in the eagle's belly," he continues.

The "eagle's belly" means America, of course. I wondered earlier whether there was an Arabic version of mimic Rich Little making the tapes. If so, then maybe the cabal faking them is trying to find a way to close out their fraud. After all, the tapes released so far have not exactly been awe inspiring. Simply put, the tapes are not doing what their producers wanted, perhaps even have been counterproductive for their purposes - probably because they are audio, not video tapes. They are too easily suspected of fraud.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 04:57:00 PM. Permalink |

The crossblog debate on the Iraq War
Here is the second question (the only one I have addressed) of the crossblog debate of the looming Iraq War:

What do you feel are the prospects that an invasion of Iraq will succeed in a) maintaining it as a stable entity and b) in turning it into a democracy? Are there any precedents in the past 50 years that influence your answer?

And I just remembered that I already answered that question. My conclusion -

So will there be Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq? I don't think so. Maybe the best we can hope for is a confederation of tribal regions, united only in their desire to share in oil profits. I don't see a successful federal system being emplaced there. The boundary lines of "Iraq" on the map will be merely the limits outside of which tribal frictions and conflicts may not spill. But inside the external boundary of Iraq there is real danger of violence as competing claims are settled.

My bottom line analysis: Something close enough to democracy as we understand it is a reality now in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. I think that the various factions among Iraqi exile groups and populations will try to set up a federal-type Iraqi government under the aegis of the American occupiers, but the attempt will ultimately fail.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 04:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Japan announces doctrine of pre-emption
Japan has stated that if it had "firm evidence" that North Korea was planning to attack, it would strike pre-emptively. Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba said said it would be too late if a North Korean missile was already on its way. (via Instapundit)

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 04:14:00 PM. Permalink |

The president's explanation for pre-emption . . .
Is presented in full as a direct quote; it's quite an eye opener. Read some other verbatim quotes by the president and the secretary of state that might make you set back a bit, too.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 02:26:00 PM. Permalink |

Japan: months away from nuclear weapons?
Maybe, says Geitner Simmons. Well, there's no doubt they have the plutonium.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 02:17:00 PM. Permalink |

France vs. Turkey - racism at work?
Another thought experiment: Imagine that tomorrow morning Saddam Hussein announces that not only does Iraq have one missile with a range forbidden by the UN resolutions, it has several missiles able to hit Greece. Saddam says that if America attacks Iraq, Athens will suffer accordingly.

Greece, a NATO member, notifies the North Atlantic Council, NATO's decision-making body, that it wants NATO to provide Greece anti-missile capability under the terms of the NATO alliance.

Would France refuse? Would Germany or Beligium? What if the threat was made against Italy?

Maybe they would refuse, but I think not. Turkey in non-white, non-Christian, non-Western. Lurking below the French's refusal to aid Turkey is simple racism. I can't prove it, but I sure do suspect it.

Update: Great insights in the comments, read 'em!

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 02:13:00 PM. Permalink |

"No more Mr. Nice Guy, apparently."
That's what Glenn Reynolds says about Colin Powell. Which is pretty much what I said about Powell six months ago. I reiterate that Powell has in turn cut off at the diplomatic knees: Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat, the UNSC and now the three NATO opt-outs. As I wrote last August, "I know former General Powell's type . . . Most successful military officers are like that. They will give you one chance after another. They will explain, train, etc., but eventually you have to perform to standard or you're out: Just. Like. That. Such people are never co-dependents and they are not enablers of others dysfunctions."

Like President Bush, Powell means what he says, although Powell has a smoother manner and more naturally diplomatic style about him than Bush does. In fact, Powell is every bit the cowboy Bush is, as the Euros think of it. By the time people realize it they discover they are sidelined on the outside looking in while Powell moves on without them.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 01:15:00 PM. Permalink |

Air Force snivels and whines about its Iraq War role
Some senior Air Force officers are publicly complaining that their service is not being given a prominent enough role in the coming Iraq War. But of course they're doing it anonymously, the cowards. Naturally, they are wrapping their objections in a warm, altuistic blanket of concern for the poor dogface soldier and grunt Marine.

"Air Force senior officers believe air power is being used in such a timid way it is unnecessarily exposing ground troops," said one officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He named several generals who do not like the plan but asked that their names not be disclosed.

The news reports says,

The Bush administration's desire to spare dual military-civilian targets in Iraq has produced an air war plan that is too timid and does not properly prepare the battle space for ground troops, according to interviews with military officers. . . .

The officers said the plan, as of a few weeks ago, would largely spare infrastructure targets, such as bridges, and most, if not all, telephone communications. The officers said the plan deviates in significant ways from the 1991 38-day air campaign during Operation Desert Storm, in which telephone communications, power systems and bridges were targeted from the first day to isolate Saddam Hussein and his military forces.

The reason for the change: The Bush administration wants to spare hardships to Iraqi civilians and to show that the real target of the bombing campaign is Saddam. . . .

"There are so many political restrictions placed on the air-plan part of this they should just march the troops and let air power help ground troops wherever they can," the officer said.

This is not a bad idea. What the Air Force may not institutionally comprehend is that strategic bombing, as the Air Force has understood it for more than 60 years, is not a one-size-fits-all tactic. There was an extended air campaign against Afghanistan in 2001-2002, but even that was not a strategic air campaign as the Gulf war had featured. Austin Bay wrote that the Air Force is nothing but artillery now, anyway. He even suggests, "Make the Army and Air Force one again. That'll make it easier for air and mud to stick together."

Obviously, I haven't seen the Iraq plan and so can't comment on specifics. But it sounds like the plan's basic premise is not to kill 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out. It has political objective in mind that has shaped it from the beginning, and that's a good thing. Someone may object that holding the Air Force's destructive power in check risks higher Army and Marine casualties, which may be true, but may not be. But that kind of choice is made in every war. After all, we could just carpet bomb our way to Baghdad and be done with it. As influential British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart said,

If you concentrate exclusively on victory, with no thought for the after effect, you may be too exhausted to profit by the peace, while it is almost certain that the peace will be a bad one, containing the germs of another war.

And once again, I cite American military historian T. R. Fehrenbach:

"You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, to protect it, to keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud. The object of warfare . . . is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad."

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 08:57:00 AM. Permalink |

US troops already inside Iraq
This WaPo report is not news to blog readers:

U.S. Special Operations troops are already operating in various parts of Iraq, hunting for weapons sites, establishing a communications network and seeking potential defectors from Iraqi military units in what amounts to the initial ground phase of a war, U.S. defense officials and experts familiar with Pentagon planning said.

The troops, comprising two Special Operations Task Forces with an undetermined number of personnel, have been in and out of Iraq for well over a month, o said two military officials with direct knowledge of their activities. They are laying the groundwork for conventional U.S. forces that could quickly seize large portions of Iraq if President Bush gives a formal order to go to war, the officials said.

The ground operation points to a Pentagon war plan that is shaping up to be dramatically different than the one carried out by the United States and its allies in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Instead of beginning with a massive aerial bombardment, the plan envisions a series of preliminary ground actions to seize Iraqi territory and effectively encircle Baghdad before a large-scale air campaign hits the capital, defense officials and analysts said. . . .

Military officials familiar with the war plan say it is possible that a fairly substantial ground operation could take place not after the air campaign, as in the Gulf War, but either before or simultaneously with it.

As I said, the coming campapign will be heavily improvised, but in the American way of war, improvisation is a good thing.

Steven Den Beste offers a longer and complementary analysis, especially of the chemical-weapon angle, then concludes,

There are ways in which it might turn extremely bloody, but none of them are likely, and the most likely outcome here is that this will be fast and bloodless, with minimum civilian casualties and minimum casualties among the enlisted ranks of the Iraqi army. For the first time in history, a major attacking force has the ability to target and kill enemy leaders without having to slaughter the defending army, and that will change everything.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 06:45:00 AM. Permalink |

Two quick links
Top 10 space images of 2002: They're here, courtesy of Bob Ballard.

Managing Iraq's oil postwar: Jane Galt has a thoughtful piece on why oil has not been a clear blessing for the Arab states, and what that might forebode for Iraq after Saddam.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 06:44:00 AM. Permalink |

American Christian pacifism, by Thomas Holsinger
Thomas has a first-hand perspective in his guest posting:

I can only speak for my own church's experience of Quakers living in a frontier society. I'm one of the Brethren - effectively German Quakers closely related to Amish, Mennonites and German Baptists. See http://www.cob-net.org/folder.htm. Theologically we're close enough to straight Baptist to exchange emergency pastors with them but are quite different socially.

The true roots of pacifist theology lie in individual salvation - the objection to war is not so much that war is evil but that it is evil to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it. People should refrain from killing other people to save their own souls, not to save others or to make society better. True religious pacifists deem any killing or use of force by themselves as a mortal threat to their own souls because they might be mistaken about the moral consequences of such acts. Use of force is wrong in its own right as well as being the start of a slippery slope which might lead to killing.

So religious pacifists won't use any force at all, let alone kill, to save their own souls. The early history of the Brethren in America included one ghastly Indian massacre in which most of a German village in Pennsylvannia was hacked down while lined up and praying, en mass, "Gott mit uns" (God is with us) over and over. The survivors high-tailed it east to the protection of the "English" militia.

It was a tough world. Holsingers and other Brethren came here because the penalty for refusing conscription in many German states was the murder of one's children. My grandmother told me folk stories about 17th-18th century soldiers crying while turning baby carriages over so they wouldn't have to look at the babies' faces while running them through with bayonets.

But there are ranges of opinion. The more morally confident are today called "conscientious objectors" who object to killing in war. They will use force and even kill to improve a situation when they feel it is morally justified. They just won't kill under orders from somebody else. Each individual must make his own calls and answer on Judgment Day for mistakes.

Indian encounters such as the one detailed above produced changes necessary for community survival, i.e., of course there were "enforcers". Some Brethren would fight to defend their communities, or even property. There is a wonderful passage in my great-uncle Paul's family history about young Jacob Holsinger (born in 1732 on a ship anchored off Philadelphia) doing the latter about 1750. Few Holsingers have been pacifists since. One who was ended up as the chief printer for General Clinton in New York City during the Revolution - it was the most a loyal pacifist could do for his King (I think he got 2000 or 6000 pounds compensation upon resettling in England after the war for his health). The King was the one who protected us from the Indians - few German settlers were Rebels.

Civil War draft officials in Lancaster County, Pennsylvannia, learned the hard way about the distinction between pacifists and the 19th Century equivalent of "conscientious objectors". Consider the term "dry gulch" used as a verb. The only way to learn which Brethren were pacifists and which weren't was to go to church with them for twenty years.

We're pretty well assimilated now. It started in the Civil War when the quite abolitionist Brethren had some hard calls to make. Frank Holsinger lost the use of an arm in the Crater commanding a company of the 13th Colored Infantry. He is pretty tough-looking in the family history photo. My father's name is Galen and his brother's was Virgil (both were Army officers in WWII - Pop was an infantry lieutenant in the 96th Division on Okinawa), but all their children & grandchildren have English names. My older cousin Dave was 1A-O during the Vietnam War and volunteered as a Navy hospital corpsman when he got his draft notice - he decided he'd rather serve with people who knew what they were doing than be drafted, and somehow ended up in a VA hospital instead of assigned to the Marines.

I am most definitely neither a pacifist nor a conscientious objector (CO), but my church experience made me familiar with the theology. I have not seen any justification for pacifism or CO status other than individual salvation. All the other justifications seem quite fuzzy-minded. My church has given this much thought for centuries and, IMO, gotten it right.

As for your example, Jacob Holsinger would not have hesitated. But we were always trouble-makers.

IMO a distinction should be drawn between religious and philosophical objections to war and killing. The latter's objective is always improving this world. Old-style religious pacifism/objections to war focus on getting to the next world; their concern is their personal salvation. Since about 1965 a lot of people with so-called religious objections to war have equated religion with philosophy - they don't see a difference, but there is one. They think spirituality is the same as salvation. Attitudes towards personal responsibility have a lot to do with this.

It is easy to refute the opinions of those whose pacifism and/or objections to war are based on this world. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to refute such when it is based on personal salvation as that is a matter of personal faith, but those people are really rare even in my church.

I personally doubt it is possible to justify pacifism or objections to war based on this world.

Some history at http://www.cob-net.org/timeline.htm:

1882 Progressive leader Henry Holsinger, publisher of The Progressive Christian having been reprimanded by the 1882 Annual Meeting to refrain from 'slanderous and schismatic articles' is disfellowshiped from Annual Meeting

1883 The Brethren Church founded in Dayton, Ohio, by Henry Holsinger and other Progressive sympathizers, official voice of publication The Progressive Christian is renamed Brethren Evangelist

1908 Church of the Brethren is the new denominational label of the former German Baptism Brethren, officially adopted at it's bicentennial celebration on June 9 at the Des Moines, Iowa, Annual Conference. In the wake of the 1880 schism's of the Progressive Brethren Church and the Old German Baptist Brethren, this change now reflected the need of the very large central group to establish their own identity. The General Missionary and Tract Committee also became known as the General Mission Board.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 06:43:00 AM. Permalink |

US oil on-hand stock lowest in 28 years

The nation's oil supply dropped another 4.5 million barrels last week, leaving inventories the lowest since 1975 and below what the industry considers necessary.

The Energy Department said Wednesday that crude stocks were at 269.8 million barrels, just below the lower end of an inventory range needed to ensure that enough oil is available for efficient refinery operation.

While inventories are low, "it doesn't necessarily mean there will be shortages. . . . Refineries are still running," said Ron Planting, an economist for the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group of the big oil companies.

The decline of crude stocks -- at a time when the Bush administration is preparing for war in Iraq -- was expected to prompt renewed calls from some members of Congress for drawing on the government's emergency oil stocks.

The inventory decline is largely the result of the loss of crude from Venezuela because of political strife there and because refineries are pumping out more gasoline.

from StarTribune.com

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 08:59:00 PM. Permalink |

Here's a reason to go to the polls
Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun To Make Presidential Bid.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 08:55:00 PM. Permalink |

War, loss and remembrance
I went to visit Frances today, a member of my church in her 80s who has lived in a nursing home for a few years due to physical disability. Mentally she is fine, but she cannot get around. I have visited her regularly for six years. On the wall of her room is a portait of her as a 19-year-old, posing with her new husband, John, who wears the uniform of the US Army Air Corps of World War II.

For some reason Frances called my attention to it today and told me it was the only photograph she has of John. "We were only married six months before he went overseas to the Pacific," she said. John was killed. Frances never remarried. She spoke of him for a few minutes. "I still miss him so," she said. Then with energy she exclaimed, "War is hell!"

Yes, it is.

This poem, In the Name of Freedom, by Elliot McGuken. is presented today, along with others, by Best of the Web Today.

The night fell fast, I found myself alone,
A D.C. summer storm was blowing in,
I stood at the tomb, these soldiers unknown,
and knelt and prayed for the rain to begin.

Not for the monuments nor any money,
nor pomp, circumstance, nor the pedant's pride,
the politician's smile, nor lawyer's fee,
for these present treasures, none of them died.

I ran to Jefferson to read the wall,
to make sure that God was still written there,
then to Washington, and across the Mall,
where Lincoln invoked his immortal prayer.

Winded and ragged, lightning everywhere,
I slowed to a walk, pondered what would be,
if God's great Enlightenment weren't there,
we could still be brave but never be free.

I found comfort in the Mall's mud and rain,
without mines nor cannons nor raining shells,
so free from fear, iniquity, and pain,
because thousands had endured a thousand hells.

And I found myself back before the tomb,
humbled by the humbled, with naught for name,
shivering, though they had the colder room,
sans light, nor sound, nor tomorrow, nor fame.

I thought for a moment, what it could be,
the center and circumference of their dreaming,
it must have been the prophet's poetry,
that granted their souls eternal meaning.

So judges and congressmen, please don't forget,
the reason these patriots picked up swords,
not for perks nor power were their deaths met,
but for honor and duty--for mere words.

So do take pause before telling a lie,
for there's one more thing I saw on that night,
as the wind and the rain began to die,
I walked away, turned, and beheld a light.

Will 'o' wisp, reddish light, sailor's delight,
It hovered there--just above the tomb's stone,
As fading thunder whispered to the night,
"Freedom's the name of all soldiers unknown."

And it is also the name of soldiers known and remembered, including Frances' husband, John.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 03:14:00 PM. Permalink |

"The complete military history of France"
This is just too good to pass up: Clubbeaux the Seal's Complete Military History of France. (via Joe Katzman)

War of the Spanish Succession – Lost. The war also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

American Revolution – In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as “de Gaulle Syndrome,” and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare: “France only wins when America does most of the fighting.”

French Revolution – Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

The Napoleonic Wars – Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

The Franco-Prussian War – Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunken frat boy to France’s ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

World War I – Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it’s like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn’t call her “Fraulein.” . . .

World War II – Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the lyrics for “Deutschland Über Alles.” . . .

War on Terrorism – Surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald’s.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:53:00 AM. Permalink |

Was it really Osama's voice?
Has somebody done a voiceprint analysis of the latest audio purportedly of Osama, broadcast on al Jazeera? Or might al Qaeda have an Arabic-speaking Rich Little? Inquiring minds want to know.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:52:00 AM. Permalink |

A mistaken analysis of what could go wrong for the US in Iraq
Orson Scott Card is a talented writer and perceptive essayist whom I have cited favorably in past months. But he misses the ball with his latest "War Watch" posting, "Lessons of War: Anybody Can Lose." The Iraqis, he says, have ways to counter our weapons:

All those satellite-guided smart weapons can have their radio signals jammed.

Sorry, no. This was an urban-legend-quality story making the rounds months ago that I and several others thoroughly debunked. Satellite-guided weapons are designed to work in a jamming-intensive environment.

Tanks and air power are useful, but not decisive, in urban warfare.

Well, infantry and artillery and engineers are useful but not decisive in urban warfare. The Army fights as a combined-arms team. No single arm is "decisive" all by itself. You may as well say about an NFL football team, "Running backs and linebackers are useful, but not decisive, in Super Bowls." Each arm has particular strengths and weaknesses, so they are employed to reinforce one another's weaknesses and amplify their strengths.

I suspect Orson has a flat idea of air power. It's more than bombers or F-16s. It includes everything from Predator drones to Apache helicopters (very useful in urban warfare) to airborne electronic-warfare aircraft to targeting and surveillance platforms. Don't forget spaceborne systems for all kinds of reconnaissance. All very useful, none solely decisive.

Siege tactics and supply lines work against us and for them, since Saddam feels no responsibility to feed his people and we do.

Siege warfare is not on the horizon. (I can't think of siege battles ever fought by the US Army except during the Civil War, for example, the siege of Petersburg and of Vicksburg.) Baghdad is too big to defend in toto, so if Saddam has a fortress to hole up in, all to the good. It will completely isolate him and cut him off. Routes out can easily be interdicted. Then the entrances and ventilation passages can be systematically destroyed and blocked by the air power that Orson says is not useful. A Festung Saddam will become nothing but a very large tomb.

American logistic capability is a strength, not a weakness. The more Iraqis we have to feed, the more obvious and complete our victory will become. It would be a huge propaganda windfall for us. We certainly have the industrial and logistic capacity to do it. And if Saddam's forces cannot interdict those lines, which they wouldn't, being under siege and all, then this objection dissolves like smoke.

Orson asks,

How good are our commanders, when we're losing? How good are our soldiers, when casualty rates are high?

Then he proceeds to answer, pretty doggone good, citing the Battle of the Bulge: "Why did we win that battle, after the initial reverses? Because of the courage, the toughness, the morale of our soldiers." In the context of his essay, though, I am unsure what his point is. Then,

Even the Iraqi army can fight. And nobody has tested them on their own soil, defending their own homes against an invader.

Yes, they have been so tested. A enormous amount of the Gulf War was fought inside Iraq. Most of the battles fought by UK, French and US Army units were fought inside Iraq. (US Marines attacked into Kuwait from the south, reinforced by the Tiger Brigade of the Army's 2d Armored Division.)

. . . an army whose doctrine has prevailed in one war tends to continue doing the stuff that worked before -- while the enemy, having learned from earlier defeats, can change its doctrine to neutralize the former victor's advantages. In other words, in victory we teach our enemies how to defeat us next time.

Except that we are not doing the stuff that worked before because we have much better stuff that will work better now. There has been an ongoing revolution in military affairs for many years now. Its pace is increasing. In just 12 years since the Gulf War, the US military's battle doctrine and capability have probably moved farther along than they did from the end of the Vietnam War to the Gulf War. But we didn't fight the Vietnam War all over again in 1991, and we are not going to fight the Gulf War all over again this year.

Orson is right that overconfidence is dangerous. But the things be cites as potential disasters aren't. There are many other potential disasters, and that is something I'll try to address soon.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:36:00 AM. Permalink |

Reservist emails update from Kuwait
Dennis Rogers has a reservist friend who emailed him an update. The word from him is,

The units on-ground are in the process of getting the basic combat loads or the bullets they will be given to fight. Several units have or will have completed the process in the next couple days. I predict something to happen by the first week of March.

BTW, Dennis is a exceptionally talented coffee roaster. Awhile back he had an offer on his site that he would send 2.5 ounces of fresh roasted coffee to the first 5 people who emailed him asking for it. I was one of the lucky (I mean very lucky) five. Before long, a vacuum-sealed packet of Columbia roast arrived in the mail. People, this is coffee heaven! It is just extraordinary.

If you want to know about roasting your own coffee, Dennis is the man to see (well, read). He has coffee links on his site, Legal Bean.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:35:00 AM. Permalink |

"The status quo is safe."
So says Andrew Sullivan, quoting a column in The Guardian:

"The status quo is safe. Iraq is in a box." His solution: keep sending the inspectors around Iraq for another year. But why? If Hans Blix is enough to deter Saddam, why bother with more inspectors? Why bother with Resolution 1441? Why even bother with military preparation? Just demobilize and leave the inspectors to keep the peace. Just remember: The status quo is safe. Iraq is in a box. Just close your eyes, whistle cheerfully and wait for the nerve gas.

Remember, "status quo" is Latin for, "the mess we're in."

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:33:00 AM. Permalink |

An eyeblink after the Big Bang
Scientists says they have made an image of the universe when it was only 380,000 years old, and that this image proves the universe will continue to expand forever.

The image was created from the most sensitive temperature measurements ever made of a faint glow that is dissipating through space, the last remaining light from the blinding flare of the big bang. By detecting subtle variations in the glow's warmth, scientists were able to discern the primordial structure of the universe a mere 380,000 years after its birth.

From that, scientists calculated even further back in time to determine the conditions that must have existed at the moment of cosmological conception. They also extrapolated forward to measure the matter that makes up the universe today and, from that, predict what it will do in the future.

"I think every astronomer will remember where they were when they heard these results," said John Bahcall, a leading astrophysicist from Princeton University. "I certainly will. This announcement represents a rite of passage for cosmology from speculation to precision science. I personally am thrilled by the results."

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2003 06:33:00 AM. Permalink |

Well, duh.
The WaPo reports, "Hussein Could Resort to Desperate Measures, Defense Dept. Says."

The article does give an excellent and sobering summary of what those desperate measures could entail. How do you say Gotterdammerung in Arabic?

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 05:11:00 PM. Permalink |

Well, this is a good question
Justin Sodano at The Weigh In has a question I'd like to hear Chirac answer:

If Saddam Hussein isn't compelled to give up his WMDs (or at least information about them) with over 100,000 U.S. and British troops massing around his borders, what makes France and Germany think that their limp-wristed plan to increase the number of inspectors and include a U.N. peacekeeping force in Iraq would work?

He also links to FEMA's Guide to Citizen Preparedness, which might be a good thing to review in light of the recent terrorism warnings.

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 04:46:00 PM. Permalink |

This started as a hobby . . .
But has become an extension of my ministry:

Dear Reverend Sensing,

I discovered your blog a week or so ago when Glenn Reynolds linked to you.

I am a United Methodist who has not attended church for some time because my minister has told my husband and me that our support of President Bush is immoral.

Under the circumstances, your blog means a lot to me.

Sincerely,

[name withheld]
San Marcos, Calif.

I am very grateful for this affirmation. My difficulty with accepting the counsel of my church's hierarchy is not that they oppose the looming campaign against Saddam's regime. I do not wish to be part of a church that is reflexively prowar. I absolutely guarantee you I hate war myself. But I am also convinced that war is the second-worst possible outcome in this case.

My difficulty with the antiwar arguments of my denomination's hierarchy is that they are not mature. I have already explained why (also here and here). The universal deficiency of the religious antiwar pronouncements is not that they want to avoid war, it is that they offer no better solution.

As I explained, sometimes the status quo becomes so unacceptable that even war is preferable to its continuation. That is why I think that war is the second-worse thing: continuing the status quo is much more potentially lethal to both America and Iraq than the coming campaign to liberate Iraq. This evaluation is what my denomination's hierarchy fails to address. They give no evidence of truly comprehending the very real threat that Saddam and al Qaeda pose to American lives and human freedom. They do not show me a way to a more secure future than what the administration proposes.

So disappointed did I become in the lack of strategic vision of American clergy that I even wrote a plan to topple Saddam without war. Of course it is imperfect, but at least it aims to solve the problem rather than merely throw religious language around.

I still await Christian-based opposition to the potential campaign that seeks to resolve the status quo and is not simply pacifist. The reason I make that exception is that pacifism is a theological position that is self consistent (though in my view theologically erroneous). Thomas Holsinger sent me an excellent summary of Christian pacifism that I will post shortly that will make this point more clearly. So I respect pacifists other than the ones I described here:

The problem is that for 99 percent of the so-called pacifists I have conversed with, pacifism is either --

a matter of personal convenience that enables the claimant to dodge dealing with the hard issues of nihilistic evil and is a shield that excuses them from risking their own mortal, precious bodies to protect the lives of others, or,
is just a matter of personal piety that reinforces their sense of moral superiority to others who don't have the purity of soul they do.

What their brand of pacifism decidedly is not is a self-risking position on which they are willing to risk their lives in mortal danger to bring peace through non-violent means. They don't go anywhere, certainly not anywhere dangerous. They just stay at home and tut-tut their way through the war. Then, after having had their freedom preserved through the sacrificial, blood-letting exertions of others, they congratulate themselves on what a splendid religion they have and how morally superior they are.

There are exceptions for whom pacifism is a cause they risk their lives. Mennonite missionary and teacher John Paul Lederach is one, and he should get a Pacifism Medal of Honor. But his sort is very, very rare.

Ironically, secular-based antiwar voices have come more and more to realize that simply proclaiming, "No war!" is a solution to nothing. Therefore they are offering alternatives that do seek to resolve the status quo. I posted a long excerpt of one such proposal by Jessica Matthews; the comments expose its serious flaws, but at least she tried. Morton Halperin also tried (analyzed here).

The UMC's bishops and lesser lights don't even try. They either urge continuing the status quo or just relapse into neo-Marxist rhetoric - and then they wonder why the majority of the rank and file UMC membership doesn't take them seriously. Bafflingly, their failure to persuade only cements their conviction that they are right, rather than making them re-examine their position. Hence, they seem profoundly unserious people.

I want to point out, though, that the United Methodist Church is not a pacifist church. The UMC's Book of Resolutions set out denominational positions of various issues. In it, the the church declares that war is incompatible with the teachings of Christ and urges the peaceful settlement of disputes among nations. However, the church acknowledges that when peaceful alternatives have failed, armed force may be necessary.

The UM News Service also has a well-balanced article on how UMC congregations are struggling over the possibility of war.

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 04:16:00 PM. Permalink |

A furious pro-American tirade
John Hawkins reports at length on "a furiously pro-war, pro-American, anti-French article that deserves more attention" in the UK's Sun. This part of the article, named, "Shame on you Chirac," hits hard:

"THE Sun today prints a single white feather to show our disgust at cowardly French President Jacques Chirac.

And we urge our ten million readers to post it to Chirac’s headquarters in Paris to symbolise British anger at France’s soft stance on Saddam Hussein.

To send your white feather protest print this page and send to:
President Jacques Chirac, Palais de Elysee, 75000, Paris.

The paper also printed a color photo of weather-worn headstones in the American military cemetery in Normandy captioned, "Sacrifice ... Normandy graves of servicemen killed liberating Europe in World War Two." In the context of the article it is quite moving.

Underneath the head shot of the Belgian PM is printed the caption, "Belgian bloke no one's heard of ... worried about chocolate shortage." This is John Bull at his finest.

Update: I went to www.Paris.org's FAQ page and found this entry:

Can you please send me Jacques Chirac's email address?
No, we cannot. As far as we know, he doesn't have one.

Ya know, I don't blame him.

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 02:43:00 PM. Permalink |

Government says to stockpile food, water for possible terror atack
I don't think the US government ever got this specific before:

Top federal officials yesterday issued their most pointed advice since Sept. 11, 2001, on precautions the public should take against terrorist attacks, warning that every home should be stocked with three days' worth of water and food in case of a strike with chemical, biological or radiological weapons.

They also recommended that families consider designating a room where they will gather in the event of such an attack, and have on hand duct tape and heavy plastic sheeting to seal it, as well as scissors, a manual can opener, blankets, flashlights, radios and spare batteries.

I would also suggest a cell phone or two and a FRS radio for everyone in the home age 13 or older.

Update: This is why the government is urging that: FBI, CIA believe mass-casualty al Qaeda strike more likely.

Intelligence from both the FBI and CIA indicates that al Qaeda is preparing to conduct a major attack that will cause mass casualties, like the September 11 attacks, according to officials.

The CIA is worried that the new attack will be al Qaeda's first attempt to carry out a terror strike using deadly chemical, biological or radiological weapons, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 08:08:00 AM. Permalink |

Saddam caves to demands from his strength, not weakness
So says Iraqi exile Khidhir Hamza, former director of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.

First, the U.N. weapons inspectors will not find anything Saddam does not want them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to a degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq mainly because they maintain lucrative trade deals with Baghdad, many of which are arms-related. , , ,

Put simply, surprise inspections no longer work. With the Iraqis' current level of mobility and intelligence the whole point of inspecting sites is moot. This was made perfectly clear by Colin Powell in his presentation before the U.N. last week. But the inspectors, mindless of these changes, are still visiting old sites and interviewing marginal scientists. I can assure you, the core of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program has not even been touched. Yesterday's news that Iraq will "accept" U-2 surveillance flights is another sign that Saddam has confidence in his ability to hide what he's got. . . .

What has become obvious is that the U.N. inspection process was designed to delay any possible U.S. military action to disarm Iraq. Germany, France, and Russia, states we called "friendly" when I was in Baghdad, are also engaged in a strategy of delay and obstruction.

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2003 07:50:00 AM. Permalink |

The Cross-blog debate on the Iraq war is on
NZ Bear and Stand Down are co-sponsoring a blog debate with two sets of five questions, one set for the anti-war side and the other for the prowar side. Both sets are posted on both sites.

Anyone may participate; just read the directions on each site.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 08:49:00 PM. Permalink |

What is the difference between UN inspections and war?
Not much, if this inspection plan was adopted. Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, puts forward a plan for a highly strengthened weapons inspection plan that, by the time she finishes describing it, appears little different from invasion. It certainly isn't a nonviolent plan, and Jessica never claims it is.

The idea isn't to avoid war at all costs. The idea is to disarm Iraq, and that can be done by truly muscular inspections backed by a multinational military force.

1. Put the right people in the field. Resolution 1441 directs that the inspectors be "the most qualified and experienced experts available." Decoded, these are not the anodyne words they seem. They direct that technical expertise be put ahead of the usual U.N. need for geographic balance in hiring. That has not been done. They also mean that every possible former inspector, the only individuals with experience, should be rehired. . . .

2. Get the U-2s flying. U-2s are, in the words of former chief inspector Rolf Ekeus, "uniquely effective tools of inspection." . . .

3. Enforce "no-fly" and "no-drive" zones. The cat-and-mouse game can be largely ended and the odds of success tipped decisively in the inspectors' favor by giving them several additional powers. These measures should begin with expanding the existing authority to stop Iraqi helicopters and planes from flying and military vehicles from driving in broad regions designated by the inspectors. Violators would be subject to destruction. These zones can be enforced by strengthening the American and British air forces that currently patrol no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, and broadening their composition to include forces from other countries. Doing so will give many states that oppose or deeply fear a war the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to disarming Saddam Hussein.

4. Destroy any site being sanitized. Henceforth, evidence that material is being removed, or a site otherwise altered, should be taken as prima facie evidence of banned activity. The site should then be demolished by inspectors on the ground or by an airstrike from coalition forces.

5. Don't let lethal items slip away. If inspectors on the ground find lethal items being moved -- warheads, for example, or a mobile biolab -- and cannot stop it, they should be able to direct airstrikes to destroy it. The same should hold true if something is detected from the air and inspectors cannot reach it on the ground.

6. Put troops on the ground. If inspectors with these new powers find that they still need additional ground support in order to operate effectively far from Baghdad, the U.N. should be prepared to put bases on the ground.

These steps all assume the best possible intelligence, delivered in real time.

Ms. Matthews is a serious person, but she has made a fundamental error, I think: that the voices screaming loudest for more inspectors and more time actually want Saddam disarmed. I am highly skeptical that Chirac and Schroder want that; they seem to be pursuing policies that have the chief domestic benefit for them of opposing America. Neither man is a global-scale thinker. As Tim Hanes points out,

A crew of 2,000 UN peacekeepers would be little more than tourists. Saddam could let them in, ensure the Americans stayed out, and wait until boredom set in among his opponents.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 04:44:00 PM. Permalink |

Blix says nix on the proposal for peacekeepers in Iraq
In an interview with Fox News just broadcast, UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix rejected the French proposal for "peacekeepers" on the ground in Iraq to assist the inspectors.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 04:41:00 PM. Permalink |

What happened to Glenn Frazier?
When I try to open his blog site, all I get is:

Fatal error: Failed opening required '/home/virtual/site203/fst/var/www/html/includes/gfrotator.php' (include_path='') in /home/glennfrazier/public_html/index.php on line 11

Glenn had the best coverage of Iran in the blogosphere. Glenn, come back!

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 03:52:00 PM. Permalink |

Is the UN Two-Step part of Bush's longer view?
William Quick wonders whether the willingness of President Bush to put up with the nonsense of France, Germany and the UN (which is a lot of nonsense) is part of a Bush plan that has a longer view than just dealing with Iraq:

. . . there is an even more important issue at stake: Whether Bush intends to push farther in the Middle East and elsewhere (Korea) in order to destroy the Axis of Evil Regimes he's already listed. If so, he can't afford to do this dance every time he wants to make a move. Which means he must thorougly discredit the United Nations, NATO, and the EU, and France and Germany. Already a poll shows that Grance's popularity in the United States has plummeted, and other polls now show that a majority of people favor attacking Iraq even without UN approval.

Three more weeks of anti-American stupidity and treachery should be enough to break the naive US public's trust in the UN and the others for good, and if not, the atrocities that Hussein committed in Iraq will be more than enough to reveal the anti-American, antiwar nations and organizations for the idiots and fools that they are.

Interesting hypothesis.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 02:26:00 PM. Permalink |

The Bush wobbly meter is in the yellow zone again.
The Washington Times reports, "Saddam to get 48-hour notice to flee Iraq."

The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to give Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as little as 48 hours to flee Baghdad or face war if U.N. weapons inspectors report this week that he is still refusing to disarm fully.

The proposals will form the framework of a long-awaited second resolution, which could be put before the U.N. Security Council by the weekend.

I already explained why exile for Saddam is a bad idea, so take a look.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 02:16:00 PM. Permalink |

"Does that strike you as a safe bet?"
As with almost everything Peggy Noonan writes, just read all of this.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 01:57:00 PM. Permalink |

. . . The second time as farce.
A month ago I accused Steven Den Beste of making me a cynic because he quoted an AP report that said France was preparing its armed forces for possible deployment to Iraq. To which I replied, "What makes the AP think that if there is war in Iraq involving France's military that the French will be fighting against Iraq?"

Comes now the UK Times addressing the Franco-German proposal for more inspectors and UN "peacekeepers" to deploy to Iraq:

Iraq’s armed forces, most observers accept, have neither the means nor the motive to keep President Saddam Hussein in power. He might, however, receive crucial support from another source, the French Foreign Legion.

Read the whole thing.

Update: BOTW comments:

But surely both countries would contribute troops to the proposed U.N. force, since it's their initiative. Chirac and Schroeder, in other words, are willing to put their boys in harm's way to keep Saddam in power.

Why are France and Germany willing to take such immense risks for Saddam's sake? The usual explanations--commercial interests, anti-American pique, intra-European politicking--don't seem entirely satisfying. We're drawn back to Steven Den Beste's speculation [that France and Germany] "actively and deliberately broke the sanctions and sold equipment and supplies to Iraq which helped it to create these things, and that the governments of Germany and France knew and approved of this and actively helped."

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 01:39:00 PM. Permalink |

Here's the latest on Alvin C. York, late of the AEF
Maybe I should email this story to Chirac.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 12:59:00 PM. Permalink |

All the members of the UN Security Council
Just in case you were wondering, here are all the members of the UNSC. Under the terms of the UN Charter, the functions and powers of the Security Council are:

to maintain international peace and security in accordance with the principles and purposes of the United Nations;

to investigate any dispute or situation which mightlead to international friction;

to recommend methods of adjusting such disputes or the terms of settlement;

to formulate plans for the establishment of a system to regulate armaments;

to determine the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression and to recommend what action should be taken;

to call on Members to apply economic sanctions and other measures not involving the use of force to prevent or stop aggression;

to take military action against an aggressor;

to recommend the admission of new Members;

to exercise the trusteeship functions of the United Nations in "strategic areas";

to recommend to the GeneralAssembly the appointment of the Secretary-General and, together with the Assembly, to elect the Judges of the International Court of Justice.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 11:03:00 AM. Permalink |

Another side of clergy looking at the present crisis
Geitner Simmons quotes from and links to "a two-part [UPI] look at how some leaders in U.S. mainline denominations are approaching the application of just war principles to the Iraq situation."

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 09:57:00 AM. Permalink |

Getting the OODA loop right
If you don't know who John Boyd is, you should.

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2003 09:54:00 AM. Permalink |

Wrestling with pre-emption
Donald Rumsfeld explains the new facts of life in Munich. As Glenn Reynolds would say, read the whole thing. Or you could read TRFogey's excerpts and comments.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 11:02:00 PM. Permalink |

State of the Coalition
Thirty-four and counting:

But consider the alliance of countries that now supports Bush in one form or another. It's global: Albania, Angola, Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Guinea, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen. That's 34 countries, and no doubt more are to come.

I said it before and I'll say it again: What makes a coalition? Three nations? Ten? Forty? What gets the administration's opponents' goat is not the lack of a coalition, because there is a coalition. It's that the coalition is made up of the wrong people in their view.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 10:55:00 PM. Permalink |

Colin Powell will only take so much
France, Germany and Belgium have refused a request by their NATO ally Turkey for military equipment to prepare for the probable war against Iraq. Their refusal drew this reaction from Secretary of State Colin Powell:

"For three NATO nations to say, with respect to a fourth NATO nation, `We won't even consider that at this time because of a dispute, really, we're having within the United Nations Security Council about what follows next,' I think is inexcusable on the part of those countries."

If it seems that Mr. Powell is talking tougher lately, it's because he will only let himself get jerked around so much, then he's done with you. I wrote last Aug. 3:

I think that what the rest of the world will discover is that Powell acts in good faith. He gives the other side the chance to respond in good faith, some say he gives them too many chances.

But there comes a time when enough is enough, and he just cuts you off at the knees for jerking him around. When Bush announced that the US government would not do business with Yasir Arafat any more, one pundit after another said that the decision showed the marginalization of Colin Powell. On the contrary, I thought (but did not write) that the idea was Powell's all along.

I know former General Powell's type (I met then-General Powell on a couple of occasions, briefly); most successful military officers are like that. I was, too, when I was on active duty. They will give you one chance after another. They will explain, train, etc., but eventually you have to perform to standard or you're out. Just. Like. That. Such people are never co-dependents and they are not enablers of others dysfunctions.

I think that's where Powell is now regarding the UNSC and certain Euro nations. He has been patient, collegial and diplomatic perhaps to excess. But his patience has pretty much expired.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 10:40:00 PM. Permalink |

Haloscan comments are restored
I had taken Haloscan comments off the site and started using Klink comments. Now Haloscan is back on. I have not removed Klink yet, but will in a couple of days. Please use Haloscan comments again, not the Shout Out.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 07:44:00 PM. Permalink |

Diplomats are leaving the area
One key sign that the end of diplomacy is rapidly being reached is when governments begin to recall their diplomats out of a potential war theater. (via Wayne Lutz).

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 07:17:00 PM. Permalink |

Politics, national interest and just war
I spent two hours being interviewed for radio and TV Friday on the topic of Iraq, except for a few minutes at the front of the show when the host wanted to talk about Michael Jackson's documentary that had aired the night before (and which I didn't see).

One of the things I tried to explain was that there is a political process of the decision to wage war and that in Western countries, this process is theoretically and practically wedded to Just War Theory. So I'd like to say a word about that process.

Western politics and Just War Theory were wedded to each other by Caesar and Jesus
I said in my last post, citing Propositions Online, that there are three theoretical bases from which the decision to wage war is made: realism, holy war and just war.

Realism says that war is essentially about power and self-interest, and that moral analysis is therefore largely irrelevant. Holy war or crusade says that God, or some secular ideology of ultimate concern, can authorize the coercion or killing of non-believers. And just war says that universal moral criteria should be applied to specific situations to determine whether the use of force is morally justified.

Just war is a specifically Western concern, although Lord knows the West has seen its share of realism and holy war, too. But the structure of Just War Theory (JWT) is specifically contextual to the West, arising as it does from two parents: our Greco-Roman political tradition and the Christian religion.

From Rome we inherited the concept of nation states. Nations states existed before the empire, of course, and elsewhere in the world, but national statehood as we understand it is rooted in Roman law. The West has for centuries understood war as the exclusive right of nations. The legal concept of "unlawful combatants," such as the al Qaeda members imprisoned at the US naval base in Cuba, arose out of our Roman legacy.

But this legacy shaped by the teachings of the Christian faith, too. The religious idea of two kingdoms, one secular the other heavenly, is implicit in the teachings of Christ and fairly explicit in Paul's letter to the Roman church (though poorly developed). But war posed a particular problem for Christianity because alone among the world's religions, Christianity claimed a cultic center, Jesus Christ, whose nickname was the Prince of Peace, and whose central ethic was to love and show kindness to one's enemies. How then could a follower of Christ kill people in war?

The early Christians eschewed military service, and in some times and places soldiers, judges, law-enforcement officials and executioners could not receive the Eucharist. Such restrictions are understandable considering that in those days Christians were persecuted, imprisoned or killed because of their religion. Yet through almost all the history of Christian theology, tolerating unjust peace was held to be more ethically unacceptable than battle. That is to say, an unjust peace could be so corrupt that not even war was worse. You didn't have to a Christian to think that, but Christianity, like Judaism, placed a particular emphasis on justice as God's will for human society. Moreover, establishing justice among human communities was a persistent theme of the Hebrew prophets and has always been understood by Christians as a positive duty of discipleship.

The positive Christian duty to establish justice sometimes conflicted with the teaching of preserving life. Hence, JWT was born. Explaining its birth process and its present content is not my intention here; I have already written relevant essays about that. An excellent online overview of the theologies of war was written by Darrell Cole, who teaches religion at The College of William and Mary.

Instead, I want to focus on the process by which America should follow, and generally has, when considering going to war.

Diplomacy, peace and war
Relations among nations are always in flux. As Lord Palmerston observed, there are no permanent alliances between nations because nations always look to their own self interest that change over time. Today American has no closer ally than Great Britain, but America fought two wars against Britain. The possibility of a third was a real concern of the federal government during the American Civil War. Ironically, France was a directly responsible in great part for the success of the American Revolution, but today many sober heads in and out of government have struck France from our current list of allies.

Disputes among nations routinely arise. Diplomacy was invented to handle them. The huge majority of disagreements between nations are handled that way. Sometimes disputes may go for many years, decades even, with no resolution, yet the peace is not broken. Only a tiny minority of disputes strike to the very heart of a nation's self interest. And only disputes serious enough to do that gravitate toward resorting to force. Of those, a minority actually come to the use of force. The stakes and the costs incurred by either victory or defeat can be so high that nations pull back from the brink if at all possible.

But history shows that some nations have been and will be so determined for conquest that they resort to force sooner rather than later. Reasonableness among international relations - the will to compromise - cannot be always relied on. One of the weaknesses of democratic countries is that they tend to ascribe goodwill to militaristic nations equal to that democratic countries show for one another. Chamberlain at Munich and Truman at Yalta are two examples. Chamberlain thought Hitler was a man of his word because Chamberlain was such a man. Is it not the responsibility of any country's leader to tell the truth and negotiate in good faith? Yes, as Chamberlain understood governance (and as we do, too). Chamberlain's errors of judgment were practically xeroxed by Truman in dealing with Joseph Stalin at Yalta and later, but fortunately without the same kind of catastrophic results.

The goal of diplomats is to maintain peace. But enduring peace is contingent on other things, chiefly justice. Justice is a topic for Ph.D. dissertations in itself, but for my purpose here I shall define justice as the ordering of relations among nations with the aim in mind of increasing human flourishing as equitably as possible. Perfect justice would yield perfect peace, but because we are imperfect creatures, justice eventually breaks down. When it does, peace inevitably breaks down, too. If you think I mean that war or conflict is an inevitable condition of human existence, you are right. Furthermore, I believe that such is exactly what the Bible teaches, though certainly does not approve of.

Diplomacy goes on all the time, not just during crises. Diplomacy will inevitably, eventually fail to maintain justice, and thus fail to prevent war. We often hear that conflicts among nations arise because of " a failure of diplomacy." This may be so, but it is also true that one of the trickiest and most important tasks of a country's diplomats is to discern when further negotiation would be futile and the nation's vital interests cannot be served simply by diplomatic processes anymore. Sometimes war may be the tragic result of astute diplomacy by free nations rather than the result of its failure. However, the diplomatic corps of democratic countries do not see things that way by disposition or training, and that is why democracies sometimes suffer hard blows at the hands of aggressors for whom diplomacy was a smokescreen for preparation for war rather than a means to avoid it.

Some disputes between nations become intractable and strike to the heart of one of the nation's self interest, or at least the dispute is perceived to do that. These are the disputes that may lead to war. And how that is worked through is the subject of my next installment.

Update: Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger makes much the same point:

Diplomatic negotiations and solutions will not work when you have to negotiate with liars whose history demonstrates that they will not keep their word. The only diplomatic solution that would avoid war would be to give Saddam what he wants: weapons to terrorize the world, the opportunity to practice nuclear blackmail unhampered, and agreements that allow him to dominate the Middle East.

We fought several wars because diplomatic solutions were not possible without appeasement. Yet appeasement is essentially what our opponents call for now.

And appeasement is, said Winston Churchill, is feeding a crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 06:10:00 PM. Permalink |

"Thank you, you can go home now!"
Richard Heddleson emails:

What is going on with the Old Europeans?

It seems like they (France, Germany, Benelux) are daring us to trash NATO as well as the UN over Iraq. And it doesn't seem to be just the radicals in government. It seems the policies they are pursuing are the policies their people want.

After the Berlin Wall tumbled, an Army-officer friend of mine told me what he had experienced in Germany the night that the wall came down. Ed had been stationed in Germany for six straight years. He and his wife rented a large house in a German town. There were only a few Americans living in that town. Ed had made a number German friends.

The night the wall fell, Ed and his wife went to Konrad's home to watch, along with many men and women of the neighborhood. They saw the frist section of the Berlin Wall get yanked to the ground. Ed told me later, "As soon as it hit the ground, my next door neighbor turned to me, shook my hand and said, "Thank you, American soldiers. You can go home now."

I think that the central Europeans have never been happy that an American army was emplaced there. The Cold War presented them with a threat for which they accepted the American presence, but they never liked it. The Cold War has been over for many years, and I think that our Cold War allies think it is past time for us to have gone home.

But that is only one of may influences. Also, Mark Steyn sheds some light on the subject.

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2003 05:42:00 PM. Permalink |

Categories of objections to war
Says Propositions Online:

Moral and intellectual approaches to war divide into four basic categories. Pacifism says that all war is morally wrong. Realism says that war is essentially about power and self-interest, and that moral analysis is therefore largely irrelevant. Holy war or crusade says that God, or some secular ideology of ultimate concern, can authorize the coercion or killing of non-believers. And just war says that universal moral criteria should be applied to specific situations to determine whether the use of force is morally justified.

These are the frameworks under which war is actually waged, except for pacifism, of course. I would exclude pacifism here, because the other three categories are ways in which war is claimed to be justified, while pacifism claims war is never justified.

I have identified four categories of objections to war:

Moral-philosophical, which includes pacifism. The category is the belief that the use of military force is always to be shunned without exception.

Ideological, the objection that the war being objected to does not serve a valid political end or is springs from the wrong political source. I described two examples of ideological anti-war groups. It is important to note, though, that these groups do not object to war in itself, only to war waged under particular conditions or from certain circumstances.

Prudential, which questions the wisdom of a war or prospective war. For example, the objection that certain kinds of weapons should not be used is a prudential objection. I made such an objection here. Another example is General of the Army Omar Bradley's warning that war in Vietnam would be "the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong enemy."

Consequential objections are those that say the results intended will not be met, or that unintended results will unacceptable. An example is the claim that suicidal volunteers will flock to al Qaeda if there is war in Iraq. Miami Herald columnist John Quigley's obections are mostly consequentialist.

Except for hardcore ideologues and true pacifists, most war objectors voice from all four bases, though individual objectors tend to favor one category over another. It's trite to point out that war is a serious issue, but not trite at all to recognize that the decision to undertake a military conquest of Iraq is one on which reasonable people may disagree. However, the disagreements must be reasonable. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own sets of facts. We all have to deal with the same facts. I would have had a lot more respect for Mr. Quigley's antiwar argument if he hadn't dredged up the old shibboleth, "The true aim is gaining access to Iraq's oil reserves." This is not a reasonable assertion; it is just nonsense. Cynicism is not insight or wisdom, yet so many times that's the "argument" presented by many antiwar people.

That said, it needs to be remembered that the burden of proof rests on the administration and its supporters. The antiwar people do not need to prove anything. As Richard Heddleson wrote me, embarking on a war is like entering a dark room blindfolded. The decision of our nation to make open war on Iraq is not a morally neutral one in which the best argument wins the day and gets to make the decision. The antiwar side need make no argument at all. But the argument to go to war must be decisive.

That said, if the antiwar side does object, it must make reasonable objections, meaning it must take into account the same facts and circumstances as those who argue for war. This has not been a widespread habit. So we might add another category of antiwar arguments: willful denial. I submit that a very large part of the antiwar movement was until recently in just this state. They claimed that Iraq is no threat to America, that Saddam's rush to acquire WMDs was no signal of his lethal intent to use them, etc. These are not reasonable positions unless there is evidence to back them up. But there isn't. However, increasing numbers of war objectors are comng to acknowledge that Saddam is a murderous tyrant who does pose a threat to us. Now the argument has becomes more and more about what to do about it, and those arguments are almost exclusively prudential or consequentialist.

Update: In a comment, George Peery says, " the Administration must explain why it is abandoning the liberal democratic tradition of not starting wars. Perhaps it has done so; perhaps it has not. But regardless, the moral onus is not on the antiwar crowd. It's on the Administration and its friends."

However, the entire debate about whether to go to war assumes that those opposed and those in favor share some common goals, chiefly preserving the lives and security of our people. Those who favor war must show why there is no other way; that's why the burden of proof rests on them. Those who oppose war are morally obligated to show either that the national security concerns the prowar side has are invalid or mistaken, or how those concerns could be safely addressed without war. I do not think that the antiwar crowd today is doing that very well. Even so, the moral onus remains on the administration to state its case, and that moral argument must include why war is preferable to the alternative.

The the administration is not obligated to consider antiwar arguments that are not reasonable as I have defined reasonableness.

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2003 03:55:00 PM. Permalink |

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