One Hand Clapping

Blogs fill oldline journalism with dread
Second verse, same as the first

I wrote back in February about the great threat and offense two local radio talk-show hosts felt from my blog. A brief summary of their complaints: I am not a "journalist" and therefore have no rightful business publishing this blog. Furthermore, I am not accountable for what I write, like "real journalists" are. So I wrote a fairly detailed posting about the myth of journalistic accountability and the myth that journalism is a distinctive profession.

Now I learn that that the Hartford Courant newspaper has directed that none of its employees may write a blog for almost exactly the same reasons my blogging was denounced. A reporter named Denis Horgan had a blog. He was ordered to shut it down or lose his job. Horgan's editor, Brian Toolan, told another publication - yes this is a real quote -

"Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to the Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. 'That makes the paper vulnerable." . . .

The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. 'There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves,' said Toolan, who called his decision 'common sense.”

As Reid Stott says,

So, a long established newspaper with a staff of hundreds feels vulnerable to one guy with a web site? Aside from such apparent self-confidence issues, we have this incredibly sculpted phrase, “he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant.” Sir Editor, that parallel universe, the world wide web, wasn't “unilaterally created” by Mr. Horgan. . . . And your statement makes it appear that Mr. Horgan's site would be OK, if you just had editorial control. . . .

Yes, hundreds of people, the entire staff, could choose to exercise their individual right to freedom of speech, protected by the Constitution, and be silenced not by the government, but by their employer, whose business right to freedom of speech (and therefore profit) is guaranteed by that same Constitution.

What oldline media find so threatening about blogs is that they empower the average Joe or Joan to be a news and commentary publisher, not just a consumer. Blogstreet, for example, catalogs almost 132,000 blogs and says that there are more than 300,000 potential blogs it is aware of.

The issue for the oldlines is control. They are losing control of reporting on the news and commenting on it. What is most threatening to them, in many cases is that bloggers are even breaking the news first as they establish far-flung contacts - people actually doing newsworthy things - who directly email bloggers they know with information.

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.

As I once observed, blogging is information capitalism in the marketplace of ideas. And the marketplace is changing.

Update: I should point out that not all news organs are as shortsighted about this as the Courant. Geitner Simmons is a fine journalist with the Omaha World Herald. Geitner has been blogging Regions of Mind for quite some time now, and his paper is cool with that.

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 08:40:00 AM. Permalink |

Why do we pay attention to these Bozos?
Andrew Sullivan dissects Norman Mailer's latest exercise in verbal stupidity, and concludes,

Yes, it is offensive, in as much as it is offensively stupid. Mailer also ignores the other obvious facet of the new military: the presence of women. So apart from the fact that the military is a showcase for feminism and racial integration, it's a symbol of white male supremacy? Does no-one even edit this drivel?

My question is, Why is Andrew Sullivan paying the slightest attention to Mailer, or Mailer's colleagues in gold-medal foolishness? Mailer is not a serious man. His pronouncements on war, the Bush administration or American foreign policy have no more gravitas than if they came from Bozo the Clown.

Yet when he or Chomsky or the other nattering nabobs of Leftist foolery write such infantile drivel, Sullivan and other commentators of true stature rush to rebut them. Why on earth do they pay them any mind at all?

Andrew, you just tried to write a serious piece about an unserious person. You are treating kindergarten-level thinking as deserving weighty consideration. But remember, "Never mud wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but only the pig enjoys it."

Those people's opinions don't matter, and it's time to stop treating them as if they do.

Update: Geitner Simmons pretty much reinforces my thesis:

Mailer’s self-congratulatory intellectual posing grew tiresome long ago. The inanities he has spouted about 9/11, and now Iraq, merely reveal the full measure of his intellectual and moral shallowness.

Glenn Reynolds quotes novelist Roger Simon:

Talk about white boys who still need to know they're good at something--how about NM and political analysis? Mailer continues to see everything as sports--fills the article with stale athletic references--as if, unconsciously, he were still in competition with Hemingway. . . . That is also probably part of the reason he personifies the war in Iraq as Bush's affair. There always has to be some kind of human adversary for Norman. Issues are not the point because they are not, never have been, Mailer's forté. [Emphasis added]

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 07:35:00 AM. Permalink |

Pfc. Lynch's Iraqi rescuer granted asylum in US
I reported earlier that Mohammed Odeh Al Rehaief (I didn't get the full name), was en route to America. His wife and daughter came with him, and they have all been granted asylum here, which will allow them to stay and eventually apply for naturalization. Mohammed "walked several miles through hostile areas of Iraq on numerous occasions to meet with American soldiers and CIA officials and, eventually, to lead them" to the hospital where Pfc. Jessica Lynch was being held captive. She was seriously wounded.

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 07:25:00 AM. Permalink |

Another nail in NATO's coffin
The Axis of Weasels have announced that they will form a new combined army with its own command structure and headquarters.

France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg . . . vowed to press ahead with a full-fledged defence union, brushing aside warnings that the move would entrench the European Union's bitter divisions over Iraq and could lead to the break-up of Nato.

Increasingly, we are seeing that American defense interests are more and more alienated from France and Germany. (As for Luxembourg and Belgium, militarily they are irrelevant.) The linchpins of NATO have always been Germany, Britain and the United States. Germany is bailing out of its 50-plus year-old security arrangement with the US and the UK. Meantime, the US and UK find that their common defense interests are at least as strong as ever, and maybe stronger than anytime since World War II.

France and Germany cannot hope to mount a serious competitive challenge to the US alone, much less the US and UK together. In fact, the formation of this new combined army is almost a purely political act, not really a truly defense-oriented one. For one, there is no common enemy that France and Germany face that such an arrangement can defend against. For that matter, France and Germany really face no military threat at all. The USSR is gone and the only other significant land power in Europe in Britain, which is certainly no military threat to the continent.

So who do the weasels intend to defend against? The United States, naturally. Of course, we have no military designs against the continent, either, but the point is that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder want to form a power pole in opposition to the US. They want to be perceived as major players, not aligned with the US, on the world-power scene.

Fat chance. All four countries of the new alliance together cannot hope to match American military spending or manning, even if they had the will to do so (which they don't). Together they have exactly one aircraft carrier, very little airlift (none of it strategic quality), no heavy bombers and land forces much less resourced and poorly trained compared to the US. Technologically their militaries are at least a generation behind the United States with no hope of catching up.

The entire defense picture in Europe if very confused, though. There is NATO, which is politically stressed as never before. It entire raison d'etre, the USSR and Warsaw Pact, is gone, leaving NATO a defense alliance with no meaningful enemy. Besides,

Nato came close to buckling earlier this year when France, Belgium and Germany refused to sanction delivery of Patriot missiles to Turkey, a fellow member.

Then there is the European Union, which has a military headquarters structure that parallels NATO's. Finally, England and France agreed in February to form a combined aircraft carrier battle group to be permanently available for offensive military action worldwide. However, Tory leaders in England accused the Blair government of agreeing to the scheme to get France to back the then-upcoming Iraq war. France did not back it, and if the Tories are right, the combined carrier group idea may melt away by unspoken but common assent of Blair and Chirac.

My analysis: The United States will continue to prop up NATO with words and money, while in deed disentangling itself from it. A review of American basing in Europe is already underway, but will become quite serious before long. Philip Carter says that not only will the location of US bases in Europe change, so will the nature of the bases themselves.

Moving bases from one part of Europe to another is small potatoes. Instead, I think we're going to see a transformation of the nature of these bases -- from permanent garrisons to "lily pads" from which the American military can leapfrog abroad. Instead of maintaining large units in Europe like we do today, I think we're moving towards a model where we keep all these units in the United States, with their equipment pre-positioned in places like Diego Garcia and Eastern Europe, ready to deploy with them as a package to anyplace in the world. This would substantially lower operating costs, and increase the quality of life for soldiers who would choose to live in the United States (there will still be plenty of overseas opportunities for those who want to go). Moving out of Western Europe, with its gargantuan Cold War-era bases, is one step towards this new vision.

Quite so. At the same time, look for defense ties between the UK and the US to grow even more, with probably a lot more combined exercises in the years ahead. I'll even predict that the Iraq war was Britain's doorway to returning to true Great Power status. (But we won't know for a few years.)

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 06:39:00 AM. Permalink |

Say what?
Headline from Vanderbilt University news service: "Professor Receives Nuclear Waste Lifetime Achievement Award."

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:11:00 PM. Permalink |

ATTN: Vanderbilt alumni Iraq war vets
Email from Vanderbilt Alumni affairs: "We would love to hear from any Vanderbilt alumni serving in the armed services during Operation Iraqi Freedom. E-mail your name, rank and any special experiences on the ground in Iraq or aboard ships and planes supporting the land campaign to Lew.Harris@vanderbilt.edu."

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:09:00 PM. Permalink |

The French Army knife . . .
Has made its debut. Really.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 10:31:00 PM. Permalink |

This is sad
Really sad. Now you know why kidz kant rite.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 04:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Green Berets inside Iraq for past 8 months?
Bill Hobbs reports that a news release by US Central Command contains the tidbit that members of the US Army's 5th Special Forces Group "have been working with the townspeople [of the Iraqi town of Abu Ghurayb] for over eight months" and recently played a major role in the free election of a city council there. No military office would comment further on the duration of the Special Forces soldiers work with the town.

Eight months, eh? Nothing to add, huh? I'll bet the Green Berets have been there at least that long, and that the mention of "eight months" in the news release was not supposed to be there.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:53:00 PM. Permalink |

"It's all about the oooiiiiiilllll!"
Greedy American imperialists have showed their hand in their plan to control Arab oil fields by securing their military presence in the oil-rich Arab countries. Not content with occupying Iraq, which is swimming in oil, the American military has new designs regarding its basing of soldiers in Saudi Arabia:

The United States said on Tuesday it was ending military operations in Saudi Arabia and removing virtually all of its forces from the kingdom by mutual agreement after the Iraq war.

This proves that the American infidels are seeking to cement their hegemony and control of oil . . . uh, er, um, . . . wait . . . oh, never mind.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:43:00 PM. Permalink |

More on Hillary's book
I predicted this morning that Hillary Clinton's book, Living History, set for June 9 release, will wind up in the remainder bins at bookstores by the end of June. I had a long conversation with a book-industry insider today, one whom I have known very well for most of my life. Here are some nuggets he gave me about the book biz.

Take the announcement of a first-run printing of one million copies with a huge grain of salt. In the book business, a first run of 100,000 is considered the benchmark for a large run. It is common for the number of first-run books actually printed to be very much smaller than the hype-ridden number first announced.

It's also common for the list price of major-hype books to be inflated so that they can immediately be discounted by retailers, with the result that the actual sale price is what the publisher wants to charge to begin with. Example: J. K. Rowling's next Harry Potter book, due out June 21, lists at $29.99; Amazon is pre-selling it for $17.99. Amazon does not list Living History, but Barnesandnoble.com does, list price given as $28, preselling for $19.60.

Unlike music sales, there is no industry-wide way to capture retail book sales. Borders knows what it sells, Barnes and Noble knows what it sells, Amazon knows what Amazon sells, but there is no independent or third-party entity that tracks all sales. A system called Bookscan is being put into place to do that, but it is not fully embedded yet and is not yet well integrated electronically.

When a publisher says it sold X number of copies, this is open to very wide interpretation. It often means the number of copies they sold and shipped to distributors and to the large chains, but not the number of copies retailers sold. Publishers do keep track of retail sales through the major sellers (who sell the publishers the information), but generally hold the information rather than release it. Publishers always "spin" sales numbers for marketing advantage since there is no independent way to verify figures.

Publishers have been known to finance retail sales to pump up sales volume, especially for stores that report sales to the New York Times bestseller list, but this is uncommon for the major publishing houses.

Take Hillary's $8 million advance with a grain of salt. Advance contracts are riddled with escape clauses for publishers. The $8 million figure is the total amount payable under the contract, but does not necessarily mean that Hillary will ever see that amount.

Advances are prepayments of sales royalties to the author. Payments of advances are almost always "benchmarked" to certain sales figures after the initial advance payment is made. Large advances can sometimes take years to pay, depending on how the contract is structured.
It's not unusual for authors actually to have to refund part of advances paid because sales didn't meet projections. However, my source said that Hillary is probably protected against paying back.

The risk to the publisher for this book might be really huge if it did already pay Hillary a very large advance (likely because of her celebrity status). Retailers and wholesalers will return unsold books for refund or credit.

Update: Steve Zeitchick, an editor of "Publishers Weekly," just said on the Cavuto show that the book will be a hard sell to catch on with retail buyers.

Update 2: My source read this posting and offered some comments. He emailed:

I don't disagree with the spirit of your prediction, but I think the end of June timeframe is aggressive [for the book to start being remaindered]. BTW, in regard to first print runs, of course for a Harry Potter, or John Grisham, where the publisher doesn't need to hype, you can take those initial printrun numbers literally.

FWIW!

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Could SARS in China bring a Marxist revolution?
I have just finished rereading Lee Harris' outstanding article from last December, "The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing," which I commend to you strongly.

In it, Harris traces the evolution of Marxist theory from what Marx developed to its post-modern manifestation. But the pertinent part for now is the way Harris explains why the proletariat would finally, inevitably revolt against the capitalist, ruling class: the proletariat would become increasingly "immiserized."

Schematically the scenario went something like this:

The capitalists would begin to suffer from a falling rate of profit.

The workers would therefore be "immiserized"; they would become poorer as the capitalists struggled to keep their own heads above water.

The poverty of the workers would drive them to overthrow the capitalist system - their poverty, not their ideals.

Hence, for Marx, the revolution would spring from economic causes, but its effects would necessarily be political. Therefore, said he, the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class was based on economics, but it was really a political struggle.

Comes now this posting by Jeff Jarvis, quoting a Hong Kong blogger, writing of the classes in China and how the SARS epidemic there shows the truth about the economic repression of the Chinese masses:

The ruling class accumulates capital by brutally squeezing peasants. The rich live in obscene luxury while peasants are impoverished. SARS has erupted as a result of the unhygienic conditions the impoverished class face. The ruling class live separately from these conditions, but they have a moral duty and must help shoulder the responsibility to establish a fair foundation for all people in society. The price of the rich living extravagantly is the disorder of the lower classes and a disease like SARS.

Jeff notes that rioting in at least one Chinese city has already occurred because of SARS, then asks, "Could disease bring revolution?"

Would it not be delicious irony if the first-ever genuine Marxist revolution took place in a nominally Marxist state?

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:25:00 AM. Permalink |

Hillary's book: 1 million first printing
Hillary Clinton's ~~novel~~ factual account, Living History, of her years in the White House is scheduled for a first-run printing of one million copies, and will be released on June 9.

"Only a small handful of books have a 1-million-copy first printing, and I cannot think of another nonfiction book in recent history that has had that large a first printing," Robert Barnett, Clinton's lawyer, said Sunday.

The first lady-turned senator was paid an $8 million advance by Simon & Schuster.

Look for Living History in your bookstore's remainder bin by the end of June. Simon & Schuster will take a major bath on this one and the departure of its managers who laid out the money will soon follow.

The book is not yet listed on Amazon.com

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 08:06:00 AM. Permalink |

Saddam bought and sold media
Saddam Hussein once said that reporters are better than tanks - they are cheaper and he got more for his money. And no one bought and sold westerns news reporters like Saddam did. Read the whole sickening story.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 07:50:00 AM. Permalink |

Justified homicide by clergy
My post on the lethal shootings of two intruders by an Alaskan pastor, and my explication of putting myself in his shoes, drew a lot of commentary. In it I said that I would not shoot someone to protect my church's property (the circumstances of the Alaska killings), I would use lethal force if necessary to protect the lives of others, and would probably use force if necessary to protect only myself, "but if the other person did die, I do not think I could continue in the ministry."

Why, some folks wondered, would I resign my office if I justifiably took a life? (I mean "justifiably" in the legal sense.) Charles Austin emailed me that resignation struck him as odd:

Isn't forgiveness of your sins a central tenet of your faith? Or is this a matter of something other than sin? We all fall short. If you committed a serious crime, could you not admit your guilt, taking full responsibility and accepting the penalty -- and yet, still minister to others afterwards?

I disagree with another commenter in that I do believe we have the right to use force to protect our property. If you find an intruder in your home it can be problematical to ask whether he intends you any harm, or is he just interested in your property?

When I lived in northern Virginia the Washington Post Magazine carried a long cover story one Sunday about a DC clergyman who was a convicted murderer, second degree, as I recall. He had killed a man with a bow and arrow and was sentenced accordingly to a long prison term. While in prison he converted to Christian faith. When he was released from prison he came to believe he was being called to the ministry. His church's leaders (Presbyterian or Episcopalian, I can't recall which) became convinced he was sincere, agreed his call was genuine, and supported his candidacy for ordination precisely because of what Charles says: repentance must be followed by forgiveness, and that through the grace of Christ, though our sins be red as scarlet they will be washed white as snow, as Isaiah put it.

So for me the issue is not one of sin because Charles is correct: forgiveness of sins is a central tenet of Christian faith. My point is this: the act of giving of the Eucharist is fundamentally and completely incompatible with the taking of life. It is a question, really, of purity codes, the term of art used to describe incompatibilities between what people do (even what they must do) and the ideals of their religious faith. All religions have such codes, more or less explicitly. In Jesus' day a Jewish lay movement called the Pharisees emphasized purity codes very strongly, and this emphasis was one which Jesus argued and practiced against. I explained in some detail here.

I don't wish to get into a long discussion of how Christians managed to discard one set of purity codes, the Pharisees', for another (pick a denomination; they all have purity codes but often don't realize it). My point is that within my own conscience, I believe that to take a human life, even in the most obviously justifiable circumstances, crosses the line between the ideal of ordained ministry and the practice of it.

It is impossible to separate the minister from the office. What a minister is, is what he or she does; what he does is what he is.

The UMC, my denomination, has an appointment category for ministers called, "Leave of Absence." Because ordination is for life, we technically resign from pastoral service rather than the ordination itself. (However, a UMC minister can renounce his orders if he wishes, and the bishop can revoke orders for just cause as well; I have seen this done in Tennessee. The pastor concerned was having an affair with a married woman in his congregation, so I was told. So the bishop un-ordained him, as he should have.)

Leave of absence means a minister declines to accept pastoral appointment. It need not be permanent; some ministers on LOA do return. So that is what I mean - I would request leave of absence and try to work through the issues with the bishop and other pastors whom I trust.

I I would not use deadly force to defend my church building. A home intrusion is another thing because it involves other lives, namely those of my family.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 07:46:00 AM. Permalink |

Genocide
Dean Esmay takes a detailed look at genocide of the 20th century. He starts with Stalin's desire to kill all the Cossacks in the USSR. Stalin invented the concentration camp, where prisoners were literally worked and starved to death at the same time.

The Soviet government printed up signs in the affected parts of the Soviet Union, letting citizens know that eating their own children was an act of barbarism. They also did their best to crack down on the practice of cannibalizing corpses stolen from mass graves and hospitals by people who otherwise had nothing at all to eat. (The New York Times was on hand to report but, unfortunately, their correspondent was friendly to Stalin's regime.)

But this genocide was not at all the first of the century, and would soon be overshadowed by more notorious acts. Read it all.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:48:00 AM. Permalink |

Joke Break
Job Interview:
"Where did you receive your training?"
"Yale."
"Good, and what's your name?"
"Yim Yohnson."

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:08:00 AM. Permalink |

Debt and the Boomers
There was a story in yesterday's Tennessean (my local paper) about how the Baby Boomer generation (mine) has turned a corner and decided to be debt-free when they retire.

My question is, why wait so long? Most boomers have well over 20 years to go before retirement, some close to 30.

So I was all set to write up a post about killing The Great Satan Debt when Glenn Reynolds linked to Clayton Cramer's multi-part series on doing exactly that. So read it and come back here because I have a condensed version of the bottom line to raising your bottom line. I posted it last year on my anti-lottery site. But here it is again:

The absolute cardinal rule: You must live on less money than you make. If you are not willing to take this step, you will never become wealthy. Even if you hit a gazillion-to-one odds and won a lottery jackpot, if you live above your means you will go broke, no matter how much money you start out with.

Never borrow money. If you are borrow money for any reason, you break rule number 1. The primary way Americans borrow money is by using credit cards and buying cars. So -- destroy your credit cards, close the accounts pay them off and get on a cash basis. I did this years ago and the relief and feeling of freedom was enormous. Still is! The only exception is to borrow money to buy a home to live in. That's because homes increase in value over time.

Invest 10 -15 percent of each month's income into mutual funds. Yeah, I know the market stinks right now. So what. This is for the long term. (Bad idea to put money into a mutual fund for less than five years; the risk is too high.) Do this only after you have saved up 4 - 6 months expenses in a savings account. Average-performing funds have returned 10-12 percent per year for decades. Investing only $200 per month from age 23-60 will give you more than $1,500,000. If you increase the $200 per month by only 3% per year, you'll have $2,000,000.

A special word about cars:

Never, never, never lease a car for any reason whatsoever. Never. Don't give me bunk about tax savings, paying only for the time you use the car, blah, blah, blah. It's all blah-blah-blah. Leasing a car is the most expensive way to drive a car. Period.

Do not buy a new car unless you are so filthy, stinking rich you can pay cash from the petty cash drawer. In which case you don't need to be reading my advice or Clayton Cramer's either. New cars plummet in value from the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot. They are more expensive to insure. The average car payment in America today is about $370. If you buy a $25,000 car and finance $19,100 for five years, my calculator says your payment is $370. But at the end of the five years, your car will typically be worth about $10,000. You haven't paid $370 per month, you've paid $620! Best bet: get a good three-year-old vehicle. The biggest chunk of depreciation has passed and some will still be under factory warranty. Then drive it forever.

Finally, listen to this guy on the radio or webcast for four weeks.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:07:00 AM. Permalink |

The Religious Left will never repent of its sins
The Left-wing clergy of America should be just as embarrassed about their prewar pronouncements as the Left-wing celebrities should be. But neither are, of course. Joseph Loconte documents some of the outrageous falsehoods propagated by the Religious Left, including members of my own denomination, the United Methodist Church. They willfully ignored or denied the plain, verified facts of the truth about Saddam Hussein, his regime, and what was happening to the Iraqi people.

Antiwar clerics remained silent about these facts, apparently in order to keep the faith about containing the Butcher of Baghdad: He had no serious interest, they said, in weapons of mass destruction. Seeing little evidence that Saddam was rearming, editors at the Christian Century rejected arguments for war as "extreme and unfounded." Jim Winkler, of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, complained of "an astonishing lack of evidence" to justify military intervention.

I await confessions of error at the minimum from the UMC's Bishops Peter Storey and Melvin Talbert; it is too much to expect that either will own up to their active role in urging that the Iraqi people be left to murder, torture, oppression and poverty under Saddam (and so urging in the name of Christ!). Storey wrote in February that the US military would kill more than 200,000 Iraqi citizens, he was off by a factor of about 100.

It seems clear to me that, as I have written before, the oldline American Protestant churches are dominated by people who are primarily political, not primarily theological in their world view. They seem perhaps evenly divided between the two main camps that I discussed here. Having predetermined their political identity, they pile on religious language to back it up.

The neo-Marxist politicization of Western Christian theology is not total, but it's very deep. These are men and women who have allowed themselves to be propagandized by postmodern dialectics and see no redeeming virtues in Western civilization, especially America. They have no theology, not really, they have only left-wing political philosophy (and not even a well-done philosophy) that they have dressed up in God talk and called theology.

They should be ashamed, but they aren't. And they never will be.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 12:57:00 PM. Permalink |

Are you as smart as an NFL football player?
The NFL gives an IQ test called the Wonderlic Test to its players. Believe it or not, offensive tackles as a group score higher than quarterbacks. "A score of 50 is perfect, 20 is about average, 10 means you need help tying your shoes."

You can take a sample of the Wonderlic test. My score was 93.3 percent, or 46.6 on the NFL's 50-point scale.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 09:15:00 AM. Permalink |

Academic blog research project needs blogger input
Rebecca Reynolds is in the Media Studies master's degree program at Newhouse School of Public Communications. She is conducting a blog research project and would like bloggers to give her some raw data inputs. Please email her if you would like to participate.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:54:00 AM. Permalink |

The Louisiana Purchase cemented American democracy
This week marks the bicentennial of the purchase by the United States of 556 million acres of land from Napoleon, emperor of France. What the Jefferson administration was really trying to do was gain unfettered access up the Mississippi river from New Orleans, but Napoleon, eager to raise cash for conquering Europe, threw in a expanse of land so vast that it's purchase doubled the size of the United States, literally overnight. The purchase was a huge cash cow for the US government. The purchase cost the US treasury three cents per acre, but federal land was then being sold to the American public for $2 per acre. Sale of federal land to the general public was a unique American practice.

Under Spain and France, the province had been a near-feudal domain, ruled by appointees from Europe, with the land sold only to those approved by the governor. In the United States, however, land could be owned by whoever could afford it. Since 1785, all federal land west of the Appalachians had, at Jefferson's urging, been measured out in one-mile-square sections for sale as real estate, and this grid of squares now extended into the Louisiana Purchase.

For the first time in history, land, the primary source of wealth production, could be owned by anyone: speculators, settlers, even squatters. "Power," said John Adams, with ice-cold accuracy, "always follows property." In the Old World property was distributed in a hierarchical manner with the powerful few owning most; but as America spread westward, more than one billion acres of public land, including most of the Louisiana Purchase, would pass into private hands. Power still followed property, but now it was spread democratically, and the nation it created possessed innate stability, because each property-owning citizen had a vested interest in a law-abiding society.

Private property rights are an essential precursor of democracy.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:50:00 AM. Permalink |

Some notes from the mailbag
Another legend falls to science?
Could Goliath (killed by the future King David) have attained his height by suffering from acromegaly? It is an oversupply of growth hormone in the body. That's what Rob ponders over at One Name Left.

The Hollywood homosexual agenda
Reader Mary in Oregon emails,

My husband just brought home "Far from Heaven" for us to watch, and he told me it was "a best picture about family values, etc." There was nothing to indicate it was about a homosexual relationship the husband in the movie was having. We both refused to watch any further when the true message was revealed. This kind of thing really steams me. I usually check out reviews on Christian movie review sites, but I didn't on this one. To me, it is really dishonest to write up reviews on the cover of a video that don't portray the real issues of the film. Do you think I'm being too judgmental?

The IMDB review of the movie is here. I have not seen the movie, so won't comment on it directly. Is there a social movement to get the American mainstream public to accept homosexuality as normal, or at least non-objectionable? Of course. Do some motion pictures support that effort? Seems so (although based on a viewer review of Far From Heaven, the gay husband is portrayed as a pretty contemptible character).

If you believe you were deceived by the marketing, then I don't think you are being judgmental. But I have not written very much about social issues such as this on my blog, since I have focused on political-military affairs, international relations and how theology can inform the affairs of state (or not, as the case may be). While I understand that the perceived "gay agenda" is a subject of debate in many circles. it is not a subject that attracts me for blogging.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:25:00 AM. Permalink |

Another reason the United Nations is really a joke
Not long ago the UN censured North Korea and Cuba for violating human rights. Now the UN wants them to join the UN Human Rights Comission, now chaired by Libya, a dictatorship with a dismal rights record.

Other nominees with dismal human rights records include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced the way the commission's members are selected.

The UN is now a bad parody of itself. America's interests are not served there, and neither are the interests of billions of people who live under the repressive regimes who sit on commissions such as these. The UN has become an instrument abetting repression and dictatorship. It is hostile to freedom and the dignity of humankind. It is also beyond reform. (via Braden Files)

Update: Anne Bayefsky, adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School and professor of political science at York University, Toronto, and a member of the governing board of UN Watch, writes today,

The sad fact is that the U.N. is not only a failed leader in the protection of human rights, but is itself a substrate of xenophobia and aggression. The U.S. pays 22% of the U.N.'s regular budget. Yet today's U.N. operates in fundamental opposition to the values of the U.S.--and to its own universal human-rights foundations.

The reason I said the UN is beyond reform is because the only people who can reform it are the ones who are most benefiting from the status quo. The UN has become a thugocracy clearing house. The UN is thoroughly corrupt, and it is being run by the corrupt. You may as well expect a Mafia family to lead the charge for law and order.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:59:00 AM. Permalink |

Toronto Blue Jays offer $1 tickets to buck SARS
When the box office for the Blue Jays opens Tuesday for the team's gamer with the Texas Rangers, all unsold tickets will be sold for one thin dollar. Everyone who already bought a ticket for face value will receive a voucher good for a $1 ticket later in the season. The American ambassador to Canada was invited to the game and has accepted. Said Jays president Paul Godfrey, "There's no quarantine sign hanging on Toronto."

Meanwhile the World Health Organization says that the worst of the SARS outbreak is over in Canada, as well as Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam, but appears still to be spreading inside China.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:45:00 AM. Permalink |

"Harry Potter" creator richer than Queen Elizabeth
British author J. K. Rowling literally went from rags to riches when she conceived of and wrote the Harry Potter books. Now she is worth 30 million pounds more than Queen Elizabeth.

he latest edition of The Sunday Times Rich List estimates J.K.Rowling's fortune at £280m - a full £30m ahead of the personal wealth of the Queen. With the fifth episode of her seven-book series due in June, Ms Rowling's income looks set to keep on growing. The 37-year-old author comes in at number 122, the ninth-richest woman in the list and the highest-placed female not to amass her wealth by marriage or inheritance.

I have seen both the Potter movies made so far - the third is being made now - and consider the second to be very superior to the first. But I have not read any of the books. My kids have read them all, natch, so the educated me on the basic Potter-series vocabulary, a necessity to understand the movies.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:41:00 AM. Permalink |

Gen. Tommy Franks to be indicted for war crimes?
A Belgian lawyer says that he has found 10 Baghdadis who will testify that American forces committed atrocities in the Iraq War. The lawyer says a Belgian court might indict Gen. Tommy Franks as a result.

The complaint will state that coalition forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad, the shooting of an ambulance, and failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals, said Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer. He is representing about 10 Iraqis who say they were victims of or eyewitnesses to atrocities committed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Mr. Fermon said the complaint will ask an investigative magistrate to look into whether indictments should be issued against Gen. Franks. If an indictment is filed against the general and other U.S. officials, they could be convicted and sentenced by a Belgian court.

The Bush administration warned, "there will be diplomatic consequences for Belgium" if the complaint is taken up. In 1993, Beligium passed a domestic (not treaty-based law) that they claim gives Belgium the authority to "to judge war crimes committed by noncitizens anywhere in the world."

Update: Steven Den Beste has more, including a suggestion that we move "NATO HQ out of the hostile enemy-occupied city of Brussels, to a city in a nation whose government is actually allied with us. Like Warsaw."

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 06:56:00 AM. Permalink |

The arms races are over
All of them. So says Gregg Easterbrook. The naval arms race - over. The aerial arms race - over. The land power race - basically over, also. Space? Over. Battlespace information processing and technology? Over.

The United States has won all of them. Combat experience? The US has it is spades compared to other militaries of the world.

Which means: the global arms race is over, with the United States the undisputed heavyweight champion. Other nations are not even trying to match American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States.

In what is a very good summary of the world military condition, Gregg makes one glaring error, though. He writes,

. . . experience has shown that military power can solve only military problems, not political ones.

In fact, all military problems are political problems (but not all political problems are military, of course). That is why, while military power can solve military problems, military power alone really cannot completely solve any problem in full. Political problems are multifaceted, and the military component thereof (if there is one) is only one facet. It can be a pretty important facet, even pre-eminent at times. But it is still only one facet. The other issues of complex political problems are affected, but not actually solved, by resolving the military part.

by Donald Sensing, 4/27/2003 07:25:00 PM. Permalink |

Bumping into a Sveedish Princess
Dave Francis literally did. At an art exhibit.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 09:49:00 PM. Permalink |

China talks about Korea a "debacle"
Force China to reassess its support for North Korea

The boast by North Korea at this week's tripartite talks in Beijing that it possessed atomic weapons came as a "shock" to China, according to a Chinese foreign policy analyst in Beijing. The talks between the US, North Korea and China were intended by the Chinese to cement their position as a major player in Korean affairs and an obstacle to American policy.

The talks in Beijing this week, which the Chinese had actively sought, "turned into a debacle for them," said a senior administration official. "The problem of nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula is more concrete than they thought before."

In Beijing, where Chinese diplomats earlier this week had been congratulating themselves on their country's new activism in bringing the United States and North Korea together, there was little disagreement with the U.S. analysis. "This is a shock," said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert in Beijing. "China will never allow a nuclear weapon in North Korea."

In many ways, China has been hoisted on its own petard. China provides enormous quantities of fuel and food to North Korea, without which the North would simply collapse.

But the North Koreans are starving to barely subsisting. If China withdraws substantial material support and aid, it faces the certainty that huge numbers of North Koreans becoming refugee on China's side of the Yalu river, bordering North Korea. If China does not rein in North Korea's regime, which the Chinese increasingly see as illogical and unpredictable, a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a threat to regional peace that China cannot accept.

Unlike 1951, when China massively intervened in the Korean War on the North's behalf, there is no "upside" to China for North Korea to start a war with South Korea. In fact, South Korea is more important to China's future than the North. But a military defeat of the North by America, South Korea and other allies (which is certain should the North make war) would be a huge propaganda defeat for China in a region where "face" is still critical.

But the good news from the Beijing talks farce is that the Chinese are starting to see more clearly that they have to veer toward America's position to protect their own interests. China is not actually more likely to support US initiatives in the future Instead of blocking them, but they are more likely to decline from working against them.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 09:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Documents prove Saddam - bin Laden direct link
The UK Telegraph is reporting that documents found in the former headquarters of Saddam's intelligence service prove conclusively that there was a direct tie between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. The Telegraph says that found Iraqi papers document in detail the 1998 visit of an al Qaeda representative to Baghdad.

The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

Handwritten notes on the documents show that the visit and followup was coordinated with such senior Iraqi intelligence officials that there is no chance Saddam himself was not personally involved in the affair.

Bin Laden is a Saudi native, of course, but the House of Saud stripped him of his citizenship several years ago. Bin Laden has said several times that the House of Saud is illegitimate and should be destroyed because it invited American infidel troops to be stationed on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the native land of Mohammed.

Update: Richard Heddleson emails that the document trove also showed that the French government was providing Saddam with regular summaries of its official conversations with the Bush administration. Wonders Richard, ""Think that will be enough to scuttle NATO?"

Well, it does NATO no good, but NATO, like the UN, has been gasping its last for some time now.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 08:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Pastor kills two burglars
The pastor of a very small church in Alaska shot and killed two men Thursday who were breaking into his church. Police said the shootings culminated a long period of break-ins and vandalism. Local residents interviewed cheered the shootings, with some saying it was "God's wrath."

One of the men died at the church. The other, mortally wounded, drove to his girlfriend's house and died there.

Kim du Toit wrote this up and observed, "Sorry, Donald, but this man definitely has The Right Stuff." I assume I am the Donald he refers to. Now I know that Kim knows that trap shooting is my favorite pastime and that I compete in it every chance I get. In fact, I had scheduled myself to shoot in a tournament today, but weather got in the way.

But Kim's post and the news story call renew the debate about the use of force, especially lethal force, by observant Christians and especially by clergy. The story does not say whether the intruders were armed or whether they threatened the pastor, armed or not. An investigation is underway by the district attorney's office. So let us not concern ourselves here and now with the legal question; in fact, let me assume for argument's sake that the DA finds the shootings legally justifiable.

The moral-ethical question has two parts: Is the use of such force by an observant Christian justifiable with a Christian ethic, and if so, is there a higher standard for clergy?

The question is not merely academic, as the controversy shows over the active use of weapons by an Army chaplain in a fierce battle in Baghdad. Within the law and ethic of the US Army, the rules are different for chaplains than for soldiers. They are strictly forbidden by policy to use weapons "under any circumstances," as a chaplain instructor told me (see the post).

In my post about the chaplain controversy, I explained the theological basis for chaplains should not use arms when Christian laity are theologically "clear" to do so. Basically, it is because clergy are especially called to consecrate and offer the Eucharistic elements, the body and blood of Christ. As Prof. Darrell Cole explains (see my posting),

Second [according to Aquinas], it is "unbecoming" for those who give the Eucharist to shed blood, even if they do so without sin (i.e., in a just war). Unlike Calvin, then, Aquinas finds the duties of clergy to be more meritorious than the duties of soldiers. However, this does not mean that, in Aquinas' view, the soldier's duties have no merit. Rather, he employs an analogy to make quite the opposite point: it is meritorious to marry but better still to remain a virgin and thus dedicate yourself wholly to spiritual concerns. Likewise, it is meritorious to fight just wars and restrain evil as a soldier, but more meritorious still to serve as a bishop who provides the Eucharist to the faithful.

One may argue that in the civilian arena, the Alaska incident for example, that such concerns do not apply. But I do not dismiss them so easily even though I am now a civilian. In my own mind and faith, I do see a certain incongruity, at the least, between using deadly force and the office of my ordination.

So what would I do if I were to find myself in my Alaskan colleague's shoes?

I would not kill anyone simply to protect my church's property. If I can find any justification for lethal force, within the context of my faith, it can only be to protect life, not property.

In 1999, Larry Gene Ashbrook, armed with two guns, killed seven people and wounded seven at a youth rally at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. No one in the church was armed. Ashbrook killed himself when police arrived.

Suppose that an off-duty, armed policeman had been attending the rally. Would he have been justified in shooting Ashbrook to stop the killings? There is no doubt that Ashbrook went to the church to kill people and started doing so almost immediately upon arrival. I assume that everyone reading this post agrees that an off-duty policeman would have been justified in drawing his weapon and shooting Ashbrook to stop him from shooting the youth.

Suppose that there was no police officer, but there was an armed adult there who possessed a gun-carry permit. (Texas law did not exclude churches from places arms could be legally carried.) Would that adult have been justified in shooting Ashbrook? I say yes.

Suppose the pastor there knew one of his members was a police officer, and suppose the cop was the first to fall. Would the pastor be justified in picking up the fallen cop's gun and shooting the killer? I say yes.

A different scenario: is a pastor justified to use lethal force purely in self defense, when no other lives are at stake? Historically, the Church has often answered, "No." In fact, one motto of missionaries in times past was, "Die if necessary, but never kill."

For me, to permit myself to be murdered would leave my wife a widow and our three children fatherless, with all that entails. Would I have the right, as a Christian, to permit that to happen to my family when its cause is a lawless person? Pacifism says yes, that is what I would have to do. And while I have no real religious compunctions about using lethal force if necessary to defend the lives of innocent others, I admit I am somewhat repelled by the prospect of killing to preserve merely my own life.

I think I would use lethal force if necessary to defend myself from potentially lethal attack, but if the other person did die, I do not think I could continue in the ministry.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 03:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Thriving arms trade in Iraq
Baghdad's bazaars now openly offer for sale almost any military small arms weapon up to and including RPGs.

From all around the plaza in the Baghdad al Jadidah district came the metal-on-metal sounds of men locking and loading -- jamming banana-shaped bullet clips into AK-47 assault rifles and working the bolts -- then firing bursts into the air.

The weapons are ones abandoned by Iraq's armed forces which have made their way into the underground economy. Regular gun dealers are unhappy:

Yassin Khodaier [said] from behind the counter of his licensed family business, the Target Gun Shop. "They are thieves! They stole all these guns and are selling them over there at cheap prices. . . . Good people are sitting at home crying about this situation. It is because of America that we are in this condition."

The arms are everywhere because there was no surrender of Iraqi units to allied forces. Iraqi soldiers either died or just abandoned the battlefield and went home. There was no occasion for Iraqi units to stack arms before the victors.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 06:45:00 AM. Permalink |

Muslim editor defends Pipes nominaton
The Washington Post has gone of record opposing the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Post' said it opposed the nomination because Muslims see Pipes as a destroyer of "cultural bridges to the Muslim world."

Tashbih Sayyed, editor in chief of the US-based paper Pakistan Today, informs the Post,

At best, your editorial confuses Pipes's opposition to militant Islam with opposition to Islam as a whole. At worst, it reduces all Muslim opinion to an enthusiasm for a totalitarian form of the religion. Fortunately, a broader spectrum of Muslim opinion exists. Unfortunately, many anti-militant Muslims do not speak out, fearful of retribution even in the United States. . . .

The premise of the U.S. government over the past decade has been that political activism on behalf of Islam is or can be made moderate. Sept. 11 should have made clear the falsehood of this assumption. Had the true nature of militant Islam been better recognized, thousands of lives might have been saved; worse, we now jeopardize more lives by not shaking off lazy attitudes, especially in such critical areas as immigration policy and law enforcement.

I, for one, appreciate what Daniel Pipes is doing because I fled my homeland of Pakistan to escape militant Islam. The Senate should confirm his nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The Post, unsurprisingly, is guilty of group-identity politics. But all that does is attribute to everyone in the group the same extremist views of the most strident among them.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 06:45:00 AM. Permalink |

More on potential for Iraqi democracy
Patrick Basham of The Cato Institute examines the potential for democracy in Iraq, quoting Bernard Lewis, "In Europe, they are afraid it won't be possible. In the Middle East, they are afraid it will be possible." Says Basham,

The building blocks of a modern democratic political culture aren't institutional (elections, parties, legislatures, and constitutions) in nature. Rather, they are found in apt economic conditions (rising living standards and a large, thriving middle class) and supportive cultural values (political trust, political participation, tolerance of minorities, and gender equality). . . .

The economic and cultural conditions prevalent in Iraqi society fall far short of what is found in all established democracies. Like many of its Arab neighbors, Iraq has failed to come to terms with the modern world. For example, significant numbers of Iraqis subscribe to a traditional tribal culture that manifests itself in everything from unquestioning obedience to tribal sheiks to such anachronistic customs as polygamy. . . .

Iraqi political culture is characterized by "identity politics," i.e., the elevation of ethno-religious solidarity over all other values, including individual liberty. Hence, political freedom is an alien concept to most Iraqis. . . .

Iraq's educated middle class can contribute to the reconstruction and democratization of their country; but it doesn't constitute a critical mass capable of moderating and channeling the political debate. However, most of the 1.5 million Baath party members will keep their regular jobs, as they collectively constitute the most skilled, yet undemocratic, constituency in Iraqi politics. . . .

At this stage, optimists may care to consider Prof. Lewis's historical reminder: "In the Islamic calendar, this is the beginning of the 15th Century, not the 21st Century. They are at a different stage of political evolution. One hopes that in the not too distant future they will have a Reformation." But we should not count on such radical change occurring any time soon.

What we tend not to recognize is that the things we consider the fruits of Western democracy - economic freedom, property rights, factory economies and capitalism - were actually the roots of democracy, not the result. I have been pessimistic about the chances of democracy in Iraq, and still am. Unfortunately.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 06:44:00 AM. Permalink |

Why betray your country for the Axis of Evil?
Some people are befuddled that British Member of Parliament George Galloway allied himself with Saddam Hussein for something so crass as money. Yet intelligence services have known for, oh, hundreds of years, that there are four main reasons someone will betray his/her own country. In English, they use the acronym MICE:

Money. It is amazing how many people will become turncoats simply for pay. Former Soviet spy Viktor Suvorov recounted how he recruited a high-level US defense civilian working at the US Navy base in Rota, Spain, to tell everything he knew about American nuclear submarine operations. The man did it for no reason other than money. John Anthony Walker, Jr. also was a traitor for money.

Ideology. Some people do betray their country because they ideologically identify themselves with the other side. Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs are two examples. But intelligence services who use such people do not trust them. During the Cold War, the communist services were very leery of anyone who wished to help them for claimed ideological reasons becdause it was then easiest way for the CIA or MI6 to try to plant a double agent. Also, Soviet operatives understood the Soviet realities better than almost everyone else, and could not comprehend why anyone would voluntarily want to defect. Hence, they always suspected trickery.

Before being even minimally trusted, presumptive ideological turncoats are always checked out very carefully, and they are always compromised another way, often by making them accept payment for services.

Compromise. This is just plain old blackmail. If an hostile intelligence service can identify a weakness in a person and exploit it, they can persuade him to work for them or face disclosure. Sexual compromises or hidden addictions work very well for this purpose. Once the hook is made, though, the compromised person is usually put on payroll. Nothing cements a relationship of betrayal like money, and intelligence services generally do not trust someone who adamantly refuses to accept money, no matter why the original betrayal was done.

Ego. This is a common reason for intelligence operatives to become turncoat themselves. If one is good at the spying game, how much better could one be by playing the double game? It's an ego trip.

But as the Galloway caper shows, nothing seals a traitorous deal like money. All intelligence services insist a turncoat accept payment. Once an audit trail of betrayal has been established, the turncoat is owned both body and soul.

I'm betting that when all is said and done, Galloway will prove to have been Saddam's Parliamentary attack dog simply for the money. Greed, in other words.

by Donald Sensing, 4/25/2003 11:54:00 AM. Permalink |

Political martyrdom
Howard Dean just attained it while talking to Wolf Blitzer.

by Donald Sensing, 4/25/2003 11:54:00 AM. Permalink |

Celebrities then and now
"They don't make 'em like they used to," says Lawrence Braden.

Eddie Albert (Green Acres) was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroic action as a U.S. Naval officer aiding Marines at the horrific battle on the island of Tarawa in the Pacific Nov.1943.

Brian Keith served as a Marine rear gunner in several actions against the Japanese on Rabal in the Pacific.

Lee Marvin was a Marine on Iwo jima when he was wounded. He received the Navy Cross.

Captain Kangaroo likewise.

The Braden Files is now a daily read for me. I highly recommend it!

by Donald Sensing, 4/25/2003 11:48:00 AM. Permalink |

Blogger has been dead
And that's why I've had almost no posting last couple of days. Yesterday, Blogger would not post anything to my site - I FTP from Blogger to my Cornerhost site server.

by Donald Sensing, 4/25/2003 11:42:00 AM. Permalink |

Dixie Chicks say, "Stuff it!"
The cover of Entertainment magazine features the Dixie Chicks nude. No fooling, it's really them, not a Photoshop. Calm down, nothing, uh, "significant" is revealed (except the Chicks enduring stupidity, read on). Their bodies are plastered with words or phrases, including, "Boycott," "Traitors," "Shut up!" "Peace" and "Saddam's Angels." The cover accompanies an interview-article with the trio.

In case you have been living on Jupiter the last couple of months, the controversy started when trio member Natalie Maines said in Europe, at a concert, that the Chicks were ashamed that President Bush was from Texas, like they are. Across America, country stations pulled DC music off their playlists. Fans said they were now former fans and there was big buzz about boycotting their new album. (But it recently opened at number one.)

This magazine cover is the Chicks saying to their fans and America at large that they meant what Raines said, that they are unrepentant. This cover says to their fans and the country at large, "Cram it, we don't respect you, we don't like the president, and we don't care what you think. We just want your money, and you're going to give it to us no matter how offensive and America-hating we are."

And the shame is, they're right.

by Donald Sensing, 4/25/2003 06:52:00 AM. Permalink |

More MPs!
Phil Carter says the Army needs more military police. He's right.

BTW, one thing I discussed with my son about joining the Army was that the support branches spend more time on deployments than the combat units. And MP units have been for several years among the most deployed units. It's really rough for families, and not a cakewalk for the soldiers, either, including the single ones.

by Donald Sensing, 4/24/2003 07:42:00 PM. Permalink |

Playing catch up
I really hate to beat this drum, but today Glenn Reynolds cites and quotes an ABC News story that inquires whether al Qaeda is much of a threat any more. Says the lead graf:

The al Qaeda terrorist network is becoming increasingly ineffective, according to a written assessment produced by the U.S. intelligence community, sources told ABCNEWS.

I wrote back in June that al Qaeda was already basically finished. (A few other commentators were making similar points, not only I.) Today's ABC News story says,

Analysts who track al Qaeda for the intelligence community believe that evidence is mounting that the terrorist organization may lack the command and control, the resources and coordination to conduct an operation of the same magnitude as 9/11.

As I wrote last June:

I do not predict that al Qaeda will neither attempt nor succeed in deadly attacks inside the US again. I do predict that they will not be able to mount an attack approaching the magnitude of Sept. 11's. They have been hurt too much in personnel losses and interruption of their command and control.

Until 9/11, the US and other Western governments treated acts of terror as crimes, using law-enforcement and judicial procedures as the remedy. Before 9/11, Western military action against al Qaeda was rare. When it was done it was weak, erratic and ineffective.

In 1988, an embryonic al Qaeda abducted 16 western tourists in Yemen that resulted in four deaths. The West's response: none. Later, the West's purely legalistic response to terror convinced al Qaeda that it would not pay a meaningful price for their acts, and that the West, especially America, would actually shrink from confronting al Qaeda.

Some sort of plan to attack America itself was in the works before the attack on USS Cole in 2000. 9/11's head hijacker, Mohammed Atta, entered the US with a tourist visa the first half of 2000, and petitioned for a student visa in June of that year. Yet the almost purely rhetorical response of the United States to a decade-plus repeated attacks convinced Osama bin Laden and the rest of al Qaeda's leadership that the way was clear to a massive action within the United States itself. The Cole attack was the proving event. Attacking a country's warships has been for centuries considered at outright act of war. Yet the Clinton administration literally took no action whatsoever in response. Atta and his team got the go-ahead for the next year's catastrophe.

I have no doubt that al Qaeda was entirely unprepared for America to send ground combat troops to Afghanistan in response to 9/11. American special operations forces (SOF) especially surprised them. The speed and agility of SOF in linking up with the Northern Alliance and SOF's deadly coordination of air power, especially heavy bombers, was something for which al Qaeda gives no evidence of ever having foreseen. Al Qaeda was also unprepared for America to track down its members patiently, one by one, and either capture them or kill them; we have done both. And American efforts have not stopped. The heat is still on. I still think that al Qaeda is on the ropes. We are winning.

by Donald Sensing, 4/24/2003 01:03:00 PM. Permalink |

Thoughts about dying
Not thoughts about my own dying, however. This week here in Franklin, Tenn., an 84-year-old man died instantly in an auto accident. He turned across traffic at a blind spot and got broadsided. He died from impact forces, his body remained unbloodied.

James was a retired barber. He started cutting hair in 1936 and didn’t retire until 2000. Rather than sit and watch the grass grow, he would go to shut-ins and cut their hair. He was on the way to such a man when he was killed.

Consider: James lived 84 years, a long life even if cut short. He was in excellent health when he was killed, still enjoying full mental faculties.

Tragic?

Of course, at least to his wife and children and their children. No way around it.

But my experience shows that almost every old man or woman fears dying more than death. For the aged, dying is almost always long, slow, painful, confining and expensive. Children of elderly parents (as my parents are) fear them being stricken by geriatric illnesses. I know I do; both my parents are cancer survivors.

During visitation for James I was struck by how many people there whispered that James was actually lucky, in a perverse way. Don’t get me wrong, there was not a large number of people who expressed it, but certainly I had never heard it indicated at other funerals of old folk - and I have been to a lot of funerals of old folk over the last six years.

Then it struck me. James is the only person of his age group that I can recall dying accidentally. All the rest got sick and died; almost all died after a long, long time being sick.

As one man of my church put it before he died of cancer in 2001 at 76, “If your heart don’t kill you, the cancer will.”

So there was a latent feeling among some of James’ mourners (his friends, I did not hear any family member say so) that James was lucky to go out the way he did. He lived a long time, was healthy until his last breath, and died doing what he loved.

But that still seemed unsatisfactory. Just why nagged me until someone said to me, “At his age, a diagnosis could have come any day.” The speaker was another elderly person.

It seems no one expects to have a good end of life any more. Cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s are the swords everyone older than 70 feels hanging over their heads now. Add money worries, and perhaps you can understand the dread of dying eating many of the aged like termites chewing a home’s frame.

Maybe James died in a way that his age-peers secretly wish could happen to them, too. I don’t know. But I do know that everyone wants to live a long time and be sound in body and mind right up their last breath. Very few people do, however. And James’ friends acknowledged that he had done it, even though his death was sudden and tragic.

Perversely, there was an undercurrent that somehow James had cheated death (or at least dying), rather than the other way round.

But I also have to say that his wife and family don’t feel that way. They are stricken, and rightly so.

But I am still processing this.

by Donald Sensing, 4/23/2003 05:00:00 PM. Permalink |

What if . . . .
A little imaginary journey into conspiracy theory heaven --

What if the reason al Qaeda has made no more attacks inside the United States is because US special operations forces captured Osama bin Laden early in 2002? Just suppose that we got him and he sang like a bird, or a parakeet, at least. And suppose that the bin Laden audio tapes were actually CIA constructs, laboriously made from dozens of hours of tapes of interrogations, from which selected words and phrases were electronically extracted? The tapes made promises that were never fulfilled. The result: OBL is now irrelevant.

What a great urban legend this would be to start!

by Donald Sensing, 4/23/2003 03:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Joke break
Police are called to an apartment and find a woman holding a bloody 4-iron, standing over a lifeless man. The detective asks, "Ma'am, is that your husband?"

"Yes, it is." said the woman.

"Did you hit him with that golf club?" demands the detective.

"Yes, yes, I did." The woman began to sob, drops the club, and puts her, hands over her face.

The detective asks, "How many times did you hit him?"

Says the woman, "I don't know ... five, six, maybe seven times . . . but just put me down for a five."

by Donald Sensing, 4/23/2003 03:38:00 PM. Permalink |

NASCAR seeks black drivers
Is NHL next for diversification?

Geitner Simmons posts about the lack of diversity in NASCAR. No black driver - and there have been only one or two to begin with - has ever hoisted a winner's trophy. Black driver Wendell Scott did win a race, but,

NASCAR officials were worried about how the predominantly white crowd in Jacksonville might react to seeing a black man hoist the winner's trophy.

Buck Baker was declared the winner, and only after two hours of review -- with the crowd long gone -- was a "scoring error" detected and Scott named the official winner.

I am reminded of how one comedian explained NASCAR: "It makes the NHL look like a melting pot."

by Donald Sensing, 4/23/2003 08:29:00 AM. Permalink |

Colin Powell, Teflon Man - but why?
Yesterday former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich made a speech that ripped the State Department's diplomatic failures over the last six months, and they seem massive failures indeed. Said Newt:

"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after the military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory."

He then listed those failures, ones both completed and still ongoing. The list is long and negatively impressive.

So why is Secretary of State Colin Powell not being called onto the carpet, at least by the press, for supervising these failures? Some were rather spectacular ones. I have mind specifically the abject failure to secure Turkey as a base for the 4th Infantry Division. This failure almost certainly lengthened the war and cost additional American lives (mainly Marines' lives, I would say, since they had to make up the combat power lost by the 4th's absence).

Powell's star still shines so bright despite these failures because he is still seen by the media as the warm, gentle voice of reason in an administration full of hawkish, pro-Israel neoconservatives. Consider how the media portray Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, for example, or administration insider Richard Perle, or for that matter, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld himself. They get personally involved in the fray of defense and defense-related foreign policy- as in securing war-basing rights in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for example. As Newt explains, these rights were not gained by Powell & Co but by Rumsfeld, et. al. Despite their successes, reading or hearing through the media about those men over time leaves you with the distinct impression that they are only slightly in control of their faculties. They're sort of dangerous, you see.

But Powell is above the fray of rough and tumble politics, at least as far as the media are concerned. He is upheld by them as a pure of principle, serving selflessly for his nation's greater good. His efforts were well intended but (so the line goes) actually thwarted by the right-wing neocons, who, unlike Powell, are not team players. The media love to portray Powell, the hugely successful Army general, paradoxically as a man of peace who abhors war. It may be a true characterization, but it is also beside the point because the media lives by its own myths no less than other distinct groups live by theirs.

The media don't put Powell's actual record under the microscope because they can't dismantle the Powell-construct they have so carefully created since they learned that Powell advised against military action to free Kuwait from Saddam's conquest in 1990.

There is another reason, too, I think. It is an "elephant in the living room," something that everyone sees but no one will acknowledge publicly. So I'll take a deep breath and plunge ahead. Powell's Teflon coating is greatly enhanced by the fact that he is black. But Powell's race confuses the media because he is also Republican. So here they have the first black person ever to become the SecState, but he's conservative, nominally, at least. In the minds of many of the media, it doesn't compute; it's just a null set.

So to some degree the media refuse to examine Powell's performance with vigor for the same reason they refuse to examine that of other prominent black American, Jesse Jackson, for example. To do so would smell of racial bias, so they believe. And were Powell the second or third black SecState, the media might press harder, but the fact that he is the the first creates a force field around him: to examine him with the same merciless scrutiny that other persons of prominence have been given is not tenable for the first black person to hold that office.

All that being said, Powell just does not offer as many handles for the media to grab onto as, say, Cheney or Rumsfeld. Powell has no business ties with corporate America. Compared to non-government earning of other people in the administration, from Bush on down, Powell's life has been spent in practical pauperism. Powell's lack of external entanglements gives the media little foothold because whatever else the media like to do, it is find presumed ulterior, covert motives to explain what a conservative government figure is really all about.

Successes are thus explained away as merely means to a secret end, i.e., enriching Halliburton, Inc. The media have no real idea how to examine a record of performance purely on its own merits. So the question, "Is or is not Colin Powell actually competent as the nation's chief diplomat?" is a question the media do not really know how to answer, and neither do they want to.

by Donald Sensing, 4/23/2003 08:08:00 AM. Permalink |

Pfc. Lynch's Iraqi rescuer en route to states
Mohammad Uda more than once risked his life to tell American forces where Pfc. Lynch was being held so she could be rescued. He has been at the American embassy in Kuwait awaiting completion of his passport and visa, according to Gunnery Sgt, Michael Harris, US Marine detachment commander there. GySgt. Harris' email indicates that Uda is actually in the US by now. There is a photo of Uda with GySgt Harris.

I already wrote that Uda should be decorated by the US government. I hope he is strongly honored for his bravery.

Also at the link is an account of a USMC KC-130 flight into a recently-secured airstrip to deliver artillery ammunition. Good look at how GPS technology is used now, just fascinating.

by Donald Sensing, 4/22/2003 02:24:00 PM. Permalink |

"Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy" - Now a song!
You may recall that an Iraqi man greeted the 101st Airborne into Najaf by shouting, "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" Now his cry has been turned into a song that you can hear online. (via Bill Hobbs)

by Donald Sensing, 4/22/2003 02:11:00 PM. Permalink |

Jesus the Jew
I have posted a long essay on how Jesus fit in with the Judaism of his day. It is a text file. You are welcome to leave comments below!

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 06:19:00 PM. Permalink |

New Iraqi currency displayed
It's a radical new design with deep historical significance. Really. (via CPO Sparkey)

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 05:18:00 PM. Permalink |

End of the world scheduled for 2032
You can read it here first.

Last week, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the destruction of 70% of the natural world in 30 years, mass extinction of species, and the collapse of human society in many countries ... More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95% of people in the Middle East with severe problems ... 25% of all species of mammals and 10% of birds will be extinct ..." Etc., etc., for 450 pages. But let's cut to the chase: As The Guardian's headline writer put it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."

Say it ain't so! Oh, it ain't so. Read the article to see why.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 05:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq's sixth-graders were taught to "expend blood and soul" for Saddam
Part of the curriculum of Iraqi elementary education under Saddam was the militarization of the children. Said a textbook:

Volunteering for the armed forces is an important way to defend the nation and sacrifice for it. . . . It is possible for those with an elementary school education to volunteer in formations of the armed forces and their various branches — the air force and air defense, the navy, the land forces and infantry and intelligence .

hat tip: Joanne Jacobs.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 05:08:00 PM. Permalink |

More on prospects of Iraqi democracy
I have said more than once that I am not optimistic about the long-term chances for democracy in Iraq. Michael Totten, however, quotes Iraqi historian Hussain Hindawi and journalist John Thomson to the contrary.

Even diehard royalists, romantically loyal to the British-imposed Hashemite rule that held sway for three decades until deposed in 1958, agree that sentiment is overwhelmingly strong for a Western-style democracy.

The democratic dream is far stronger than the purported divisions among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. At the London conference of Iraqi opposition groups, in fact, there was more tension among factions within each of these communities than between them.

The original article is here. My posts about the topic are here and here.

Update: Stanley Kurtz says that how the British democratized India (albeit accidentally) would be a good model for us to bring democracy to Iraq. Kurtz shows how a well functioning bureaucracy is vital to healthy democracy.

To be sure, excessive bureaucracy can suffocate democratic liberty, but modern bureaucracies are generally democratizing forces. They embody intrinsically modern, democratic ideas--that the government office is distinct from the individual who holds it, for example, and that rules apply to all with equal force. They blow apart traditional social relations--relations that are often powerful barriers to democratic reform--by centralizing authority and power in a national government.

However, Kurtz writes that Arab-Muslim cultures intrinsically have some strikes going against them.

Arab Muslim societies remain unmodern and undemocratic not just in their attitudes toward political authority and law but also in their social organization. For men and women living within a universe where tribal identity, the duties and benefits of extended kinship networks, and conceptions of collective honor organize the relations of everyday life, democratic principles will be incomprehensible.

And therefore democracy would be impossible. How could a modern, democratic bureaucracy function, for example, if officials remain loyal primarily to tribe, faction or family? The power of such ties pre-empts any ethic of disinterested public service. A government office becomes a means of benefiting your family and harming your enemies, not applying the rules fairly. Saddam's Iraq largely functioned like one big tribal patriarchy, with Saddam the patriarch. His kin, together with members of his tribe and allied tribes, ruled.

Compare his observation with this one:

The organizing principle inside Iraq has always been the tribe. Political idealism as we know it has no history there. In fact, citizenship as we know it has no history there. The boundaries of Iraq were drawn up by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In the West, citizenship is by definition territorial; it was the shared territorial identity among different people, unified by language and religion, that gave rise to the modern nation state. This territorial loyalty did not arise from nationhood, it was a precondition of nationhood. But the tribes of Iraq have never thought of themselves as common citizens of the entire territory bounded by the British-drawn lines on the map. Tribal territorial loyalties are far more limited than that. Hence, whatever loyalty Iraqis have for "Iraq" as a nation has been imposed from above, not grown from below.

It does not help that the Iraqi people have never known a government that was staffed from the top down with public servants; what they have known is imperial rule and dictatorship. So any democratic-type government that might be instituted is handicapped at the outset: the people will not invest their full trust and confidence in it right away because all their governments have proven to be untrustworthy and oppressive. And the people elected to the actual offices will not take them understanding what it means to be a democratically elected office holder.

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.

Right now we are entering an "Era of Good Feelings" with the Iraqis concerning their democratic future. Everyone involved in the barely-begun process is using "for company" manners. But familiarity breeds contempt, and the true test will be how their comity looks 6 - 9 months from now, if that long.

One thing that Kurtz mentions in passing is that the Brits ruled India for 150 years. The prospect of America as a modern Raj of Iraq until 2153 is a jarring one! Whatever we do, we must do it much more quickly.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 04:33:00 PM. Permalink |

Some human shields were CIA agents
So says a "reliable report" from a Lebanese newspaper (!).

some of those "human shields" who went to Iraq were really CIA agents sent to deal with Iraqi generals thinking of defecting as well as to identify the military targets where Saddam put them. . . .

Thus the use of the "human shields" at vital locations became a trap set for the Iraqis. Those "human shields" were equipped with hard-to-detect delicate communication devices used to communicate with U.S. forces during the bombing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 04:32:00 PM. Permalink |

The deafening silence of the Left . . .
. . . continues even in the face of new rvelations like this:

One former prisoner he talked to, Anwar Abdul Razak, remembers when a surgeon kissed him on each cheek, said he was sorry and cut his ears off. Razak, then 21 years old, had been swept up during one of Saddam Hussein’s periodic crackdowns on deserters from the Army. Razak says he was innocently on leave at the time, but no matter; he had been seized by some Baath Party members who earned bounties for catching Army deserters. At Basra Hospital, Razak’s ears were sliced off without painkillers. He said he was thrown into jail with 750 men, all with bloody stumps where their ears had been.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 04:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Cliches come to real life
Or rather, they are real life. Writing of his weeks with the Marines in Iraq, Richard Tomkins of UPI said,

Take the characters in any war move you've ever seen. There is the jokester, the screw-up, the smart mouth, the lothario, the kindhearted sergeant with a tough-as-nails exterior, the good-natured medic and the caring-but-firm commander.

It's no wonder these characters exist on paper and celluloid. They exist in real life, just as the scenes of GIs passing out candy to civilians, sharing their last smoke or holding up a magazine pin-up to troops in a passing convoy.

There's a lot more. Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/21/2003 04:30:00 PM. Permalink |

A blinding glimpse of the obvious
Wapo headline: "In Wake of War, Syria Wary of U.S."

by Donald Sensing, 4/19/2003 10:03:00 PM. Permalink |

"Help! I'm being oppressed!"
Chris Noble has a good photo essay and thoughts about the cruel American oppression of the Iraqi people.

"Did you see that? He's oppressing me!"

by Donald Sensing, 4/19/2003 08:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Two men named Jesus, and one of them shall die
A look at what was going on with Pilate, Jesus and Barabbas

There are two men in the custody of the Roman governor. They are both named Jesus. To the Romans, Jesus Barabbas is a Jewish insurrectionist who killed someone (perhaps a Romans soldier or two) in an uprising. To the Jews he is a hero, fighting foreign oppression in the name of freedom. His last name is really no kind of name at all. Barabbas is a compound word from “bar abba,” meaning “son of the father.” He is Jesus, son of the father. He is a criminal who has clearly committed a capital crime.

The other man is Jesus of Nazareth. His family name is not recorded. He claimed to be one with God, and at one time Peter called him the Christ, the son of the living God. This Jesus proclaimed his Father in heaven, God the father, with whom he was so intimate he called him Abba, an Aramaic word for "Dad."

What a pair Pilate has. The crowd can choose one or the other. But which one? Are they not both Jesus bar Abba, Jesus son of the father?

One Jesus is purely human, clearly guilty, a man of violence. The other Jesus will come to be understood as both human and deity, a man whom Pilate has already found innocent, a man of peace.

The crowd wants violence. Often, Christian interpreters have said that some time between Palm Sunday and Friday morning, when they will be asked to choose between the two men named Jesus – sometime in those four days, the crowd turned. They greeted Jesus of Nazareth with hosannas on Sunday and shouted for his blood on Thursday, so somewhere in between they turned, it is said, they went bad.

Well, maybe. But the crowd never understood what Jesus was all about in the first place. Why on earth did they hail Jesus like that when he came into town riding on a donkey? Conquering kings don’t ride donkeys, they ride stallions. When Jesus came in riding a donkey, he was sending a clear message, which was, “I come in peace, not war, and I’m not going to take up the sword to kick out the Romans.” But the crowds threw palm branches in his path, showing that kicking out the Romans is exactly what they wanted.

So the crowd hasn’t changed by Thursday morning at all. They looked forward to violence on Sunday, they still want it on Thursday. But let’s not judge them too harshly. They want freedom, after all, self-determination. Can’t blame them for that.

Pilate caves in. Despite his wife’s warning to keep his distance from Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate fears a riot. (He’s not the first man who got into trouble for not listening to his wife, and he won’t be the last.) The crowd screams for Jesus’ blood, and Pilate gives in. He frees the guilty Jesus and sends the innocent Jesus to die in the other’s place.

Once in awhile we need to read about the guilty Barabbas living instead of dying, and the innocent Christ dying in his place instead of living. And if we remember that Barabbas was loved by a crowd that wanted violence, even if it spilled innocent blood, then we can come to grips with the fact that we really are guilty, in some way, at some level. We, too, we too have called for violence at some time, even for the best of reasons, in the name of freedom and self-determination or self defense. But even our best reasons flunk before God’s holy nature.

The collective guilt of the crowd is symbolized in the person of Jesus bar Abbas. We are children of the father, too. Maybe, then, we can start to understand what was going on that day in Jerusalem, when the guilty one lived because the innocent one took his place.

by Donald Sensing, 4/19/2003 08:10:00 PM. Permalink |

The Democratic presidential candidates
Mike Silverman, self-described liberal, has a very entertaining profile of each of the Democratic presidential candidates. RTWT!

by Donald Sensing, 4/19/2003 04:11:00 PM. Permalink |

US troops destroy some of Uday's left-behinds
Some of the personal wealth Uday Hussein left behind in his palace has been deliberately destroyed by American soldiers, according to the Washington Post. Among the things found there was a huge quantity of fine Cuban cigars, which an American commander at the scene said his soldiers had destroyed by burning them.

Well done!

by Donald Sensing, 4/18/2003 06:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Little posting until Monday
I am taking the Easter weekend mostly off from blogging. As you might imagine, it is an important and busy time for me.

Grace and peace to all, of all faiths and creeds.

Update: Easter takes place the Sunday after Passover, which is the Jewish commemoration of the Exodus of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh let the people go after he and Egypt had endured 10 plagues sent by God as punishment for his disobedience to Moses' command to let them go.

I thought I had linked to Joe Katzman's explanation of the 10 plagues of Iraq, but the post didn't make it (I think blogspot swallowed it). In case you have not read it, it's worth your time, whether Jewish, Christian or neither.

Update 2: I have also posted a significant addendum to my posting on whether Judas was really a traitor to Christ or his secret accomplice.

by Donald Sensing, 4/18/2003 01:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Was Judas Iscariot really a traitor to Christ?
Or was he actually a secret accomplice?

One of the most deeply-rooted traditions in Christian faith is that one of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, cruelly betrayed Jesus in Jerusalem, guiding Temple soldiers to Jesus and identifying Jesus to them. Jesus was immediately seized and taken away. He was shortly condemned by both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

Not long ago a documentary on the Discovery Channel examined the last week of Jesus' life. One scholar posed the idea that Judas did not betray Jesus, but was Jesus' accomplice in carrying out a course of action that went bad in ways Judas did not foresee, but Jesus did.

I don't recall the scholar's name, but his position was based almost exclusively on word studies of the Greek texts of the Gospel's accounts of the events, especially the word translated "betray," which is translated elsewhere as hand over or deliver up - about which, more in a moment.

The idea that Judas was traitor has very ample evidence, not least of which is the testimony of the Gospels themselves. Luke identifies Judas as a traitor early:

Luke 6:16: Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. [There were two disciples named Judas. The infamous Judas was termed "Iscariot." This term refers to his hometown of Kerioth, in southern Judah. Hence, Judas was the only one of the Twelve who was not a Galilean.]

John's Gospel also identifies Judas as a traitor:

John 18:5: "Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "I am he," Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.)

There are other such specific attestations as well. (The Greek used for "traitor" is prodotes, which has no other connotation.)

"Traitor" is not the only pejorative term used about Judas in the Gospels. He is also called a "thief" in John 12:6; as the "keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it."

So an attempt to paint Judas in more favorable terms has very strong scriptural obstacles to overcome, to say the least. There are, however, some questions that intrigue:

How did Jesus know that Judas would betray him? None of the other disciples knew. Like the other Gospels, John 13 relates that Jesus gathered his disciple for a meal on his last evening as a free man. After an instructional discourse to them, Jesus informed them, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me" (v. 21). Jesus identified the traitor as one who with whom he would share bread, then handed bread to Judas.

As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. "What you are about to do, do quickly," Jesus told him, but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him.

Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Feast, or to give something to the poor [v.27-29].

How did Jesus know he would be betrayed in the first place, and that Judas would be the traitor? The Gospels give no clue.

The Greek word used for betrayal, paradidomi, does not mean only a traitorous action. It can also be translated, according to Strong's Greek Dictionary (a standard reference) as "to surrender, yield up, entrust or transmit," without necessarily implying underhandedness. My Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon indicates the word is multivalent (as are so many Greek words) and betrayal is one of several meanings the word implies. Context is everything.

The King James version translates paradidomi as "deliver up" in other parts of the Gospels. The modern NIV translates it in other uses as "hand over." In Mark 10:33, Jesus foretells that the Jewish authorities will "hand him over" to the Romans, and the word used there is paradidomi, the same word translated as "betrayal" when referring to Judas' deeds.

The ambiguity of the word at least leaves open the possibility that Judas' actions were not actually traitorous. In fact, the NIV translates paradidomi as "hand over" in Matt 26:15-16. Judas went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over."

(The money, by the way, was standard bounty money paid to good citizens who identified wrong-doers.)

After Judas left the Upper Room, Jesus completed the Last Supper. Then he and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives, outside the city. Matthew and Mark say they went to there and then to "a place called Gethsemane," where he was arrested. Luke says he was arrested at the Mount of Olives and does not mention Gethsemane. John merely says they went to an olive grove across the Kidron Valley from the city. (The Gospels never refer to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane.) John confirms, though, that the place was known to Judas "because Jesus had often met there with his disciples" (John 18:2).

After a period of prayer and speaking to his disciples, Judas arrived with soldiers from the Temple, sometimes called Temple police because they were more a constabulary than a fighting force. (The synoptic Gospels say it was "a crowd" armed with clubs and such. John is probably more accurate.) Judas identified Jesus to them, and they apprehended him.

Events then proceeded apace. After a tempestuous confrontation with the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, and the high Jewish council (the Sanhredrin), Jesus was convicted of the religious crime of blasphemy for claiming messianic identity. This crime was one for which the Jewish law required death, but the Sanhedrin did not have authority from the Romans to carry the a sentence out. And they knew that Pilate didn't much care about what religious offenses Jews committed. So they persuaded Pilate that Jesus was actually attempting insurrection against Rome. For that, Pilate sentenced Jesus to be crucified, the standard punishment for defying Roman rule. The sentence was carried out.

Judas attempted to return the silver coins to the chief priests, then hanged himself. (Acts says, though, that he bought a field with the coins, fell headlong into it and was disemboweled.)

There are the bare facts of what Judas and Jesus had to do with each other the last week of both their lives.

So - did Judas actually turn traitor against Jesus, or did Judas do what he did at Jesus' bidding?

The claim that Judas was a traitor has the substantial weight of text behind it, as I have explained. But it does not answer four key questions:

How did Jesus know he would be betrayed, and betrayed by Judas, and why were the other disciples clueless about it?

How did Judas know exactly where to lead the Temple police to arrest Jesus?

Why didn't Jesus escape away from Jerusalem when he had the chance. The Mount of Olives was the near edge of safety for him, from there he could have easily gotten away across Jordan River, which land John 11 identifies as safe haven for Jesus.

Why did Judas try to return the money and why did he commit suicide? Judas was no fool, he surely knew his betrayal would risk Jesus' life and could not have been surprised when Jesus was condemned.

Postulating that Judas has gotten a bad rap and that Judas was actually doing what Jesus wanted answers these questions. So consider some pluses and minuses of the "Judas as accomplice" theory:

As the only Judean, Judas was the only choice to be Jesus' messenger or intermediary with the high priests. The people of Jerusalem considered Galileans to be hicks from the sticks - John 7:41 records the incredulity of Judeans that Jesus was a Galilean: "How can the Christ come from Galilee?"
Advantage: accomplice.

Passover week in Jerusalem was always a tempestuous time. Tempers against the Roman occupiers ran high then, so high in fact that Pilate left the resort city of Caesarea and moved to Jerusalem for the duration, where he could control his forces on scene. Jesus was loved by many of the ordinary people. That would explain why the high priest didn't want to arrest Jesus during the daytime when the crowds could see.

But it does not explain why Jesus would arrange to meet with Caiaphas at night, nor for that matter why he didn't arrange to meet Caiaphas himself, without using Judas. If Jesus wanted to meet Caiaphas all he had to do was walk into the Temple and say hello.
Advantage: betrayal.

If Judas was Jesus accomplice, why did Jesus tell the disciples, including Judas, that one of them would betray him? They all understood what he meant. For Jesus to call Judas a betrayer while actually being in collusion with him makes Jesus deceptive.

Not only that, Jesus threatened that it would be better for Judas had he never been born (Mark 14:21).
Advantage: betrayal (a major advantage at that).

But Jesus knew what Judas was going to do.
Advantage: accomplice.

Jesus went to exactly the place where Judas led the Temple police and did not attempt to evade them.
Advantage: accomplice.

Working at Jesus' initiative, Judas had no reason to believe that the Jewish high council harbored lethal intent toward Jesus. Thus, when Jesus was condemned, Judas was overcome with grief and remorse at having had a part in delivering up Jesus to that fate. So he killed himself.
Advantage: accomplice.

Judas took the silver coins from the high priests because he was avaricious and wanted to be paid for betraying Jesus,
or
the 30 pieces of silver were "market rate" and a routine matter for the high priests to pay for cooperating with them.
Advantage: neutral.

Outside the Gospels, Judas is mentioned a couple of times in Acts, written by the author of Luke, but that is all. The rest of the New Testament is silent about him. But the Gospels' record is uniformly negative. Clearly, there was an apostolic and early church understanding that Judas was a traitor.
Advantage: betrayal.

The idea that Judas was an accomplice of Jesus rather that his betrayer rests on too thin evidence to be accepted. The verdict of the early witnesses is upheld.

Update: I see I neglected to explain what the reason would be for Jesus to send Judas on a secret mission to have him delivered into the hands of High Priest. According to the ruminations of a couple of scholars on the Discovery Channel, Jesus wanted to force the issue of who he was with the High Priest and the Sanhedrin. Judas, being the sole Judean among them, could most easily act as intermediary with the Temple.

By this idea, the notion to see Caiaphas by subterfuge would have to be a very late idea in Jesus' mind. We could say the Jesus had tried to force the issue of confronting the Sanhedrin by his violent (note well: violent) cleansing of the moneychangers from the Temple earlier in the week. And according to Matthew 23, Jesus launched into verbal broadside against the Temple class that we bloggers might say was the mother of all fisking of their religious practice and indeed, their very identity. He actually called them sons of Hell, not a move calculated to win their affection.

But these events did not cause the religious authorities to apprehend Jesus, forcing Jesus to arrange his "betrayal" to them by Judas. Judas thus would have been faithful to the end; he committed suicide from shock that his faithfulness had led to Jesus' death.

What this theory fails to explain is why Jesus was so desirous to stand before the High Priest. It could not have been merely to respond affirmatively to Caiaphas' question that he was indeed the "Son of the Most High." Jesus had been declaring his Messianic identity openly for some time; in fact, driving out the moneychangers was a Messianic act. He had personally forgiven sins in front of scribes and Pharisees for a couple of years or so, angering them because they knew that only God can forgive sins.

Nor does it hold up that Jesus expected the High Priest to confirm his Messiahship, for the Gospels are full of Jesus saying that judgment would fall upon "this generation" (meaning his own contemporaries) for not recognizing him.

There is one reason, though, that Jesus could have sent Judas to do what Judas did: Jesus intended to force his own execution. His death, then, was not the result merely of a good disciple gone bad, but the actual objective Jesus had in mind all along. And in fact, the Church has usually been quite comfortable with the idea that Jesus’ death was a cosmic necessity. But with Judas a true traitor, Jesus' death can seem practically accidental - it might not have taken place if Judas had reconsidered and heeded Jesus' warning, for example. And a near-accident is a mighty thin lifeline upon which to hang the redemption of humanity! So this part of the Jesus story is a buttress of the notion that Judas was Jesus' agent rather than his betrayer.

But there is an even stronger argument against the theory that did not occur to me until last night: Jesus kicked Judas out of the Upper Room before he instituted the Eucharist. Jesus and the disciples gathered there for a meal (not necessarily the Passover Seder; John says it was not, the other three Gospels say it was). It was only after the meal was done that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks for it, blessed the bread and gave it to his disciples. Likewise, it was after the supper that Jesus took the cup of wine and proclaimed it was the cup of the new covenant.

There is no question that Jesus saw the Eucharist as a defining ritual for his followers. He told them to practice it often and that he would share it with them again at the eschaton. That Jesus dismissed Judas from the room before the sharing of the bread and cup must be considered, I think, as proof that Judas was free-lancing, not secretly abetting Jesus' plans. To use a later religious term, Jesus excommunicated Judas from discipleship, and discipleship identity in Christian faith is practically defined by partaking of the Eucharist.

So, in my mind, the idea that Judas was actually Jesus' ally rather than traitor is definitively refuted.

by Donald Sensing, 4/17/2003 04:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Update to my post about fighting chaplains
I have posted a major update and partial rewrite to my post about chaplains bearing and using arms in combat. That post has gotten more comments than any other post of mine.

Speaking of commenting, a quick reminder: I summarily delete any post using profanity. And my threshhold of what constitutes it is pretty low. Hey, this is a family site!

by Donald Sensing, 4/17/2003 03:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Recruiting for the peace movement
I wrote earlier about the lalaland inhabited by what passes for a peace movement these day, specifically an article by Brian Corr about how he and his comrades should take their cause into the American mainstream. To which I said,

He believes that even though his movement is fringe now, it can become mainstream simply through good PR and something akin to membership drives. While such would increase participation somewhat, the fact is that the "issues and concerns" of the mainstream are sharply divergent from Corr's fringe movement, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, the more America's centrists understand what the fringes (either on the left or the right) want, the less they have to do with them.

Today CPO Sparkey links to a David Corn article in LA Weekly from last fall that makes the same point (and others, it's pretty long):

At the rally, speaker after speaker declared, “We are the real Americans.” But most “real Americans” do not see a direct connection between Mumia, the Cuban Five and the war against Iraq. Jackson, for one, exclaimed, “This time the silent majority is on our side.” If the goal is to bring the silent majority into the anti-war movement, it’s not going to be achieved by people carrying pictures of Kim Jong-Il — even if they keep them hidden in their wallets.

The problem with fringe movements of whatever stripe is that they have a boundless ability to deceive themselves. They seem always to have a savior complex that makes them think the masses will hail them as heroes or better once their cause is known and understood. They think what they believe is in fact latently mainstream, and they can make it burst into full flower. Thus, they quickly come to consider themselves the enlightened ones who know what is best for all.

by Donald Sensing, 4/17/2003 08:37:00 AM. Permalink |

Captured documents detail Saddam's terror techniques
No one was immune from the reach of Saddam's terror apparatus, not even the men who carried it out, documents captured in Basra show.

"We lived in a state of terror," he said. "The party's principles were to ignore social and economic issues and to only pay attention to security. The job of a party member was only security and to love the president and to show support for the party."

Like police states have done throughout history, Saddam ruled through combinations of fear and money. Party officials, soldiers, policemen and ordinary citizens were paid for loyalty, but also terrorized for failing to show it.

by Donald Sensing, 4/17/2003 08:19:00 AM. Permalink |

Chaplains bearing arms in combat - is it ever permissible?
The Battle of Moe, Larry and Curly

A battalion-size task force of the 3d Infantry Division found itself embroiled in what was probably the bitterest fighting of the Iraq war when it entered Baghdad to take three objectives on April 7. Known for the nonce as the Battle of Moe, Larry and Curly (after the code names of the three objectives), a long and highly read-worthy account of the battle appeared in the Telegraph, which gave this account of fighting at the task force's tactical operations center:

The moment they arrived they were set upon by up to 600 fanatical, well-dug-in fighters. Supply sergeants, who never imagined they would fire their weapons in anger, found themselves shooting back for hours on end. Even the battalion chaplain, Steve Hommel, ended up shouldering an M16 rifle.

The Toronto Star adds more detail:

Chaplains aren't even issued firearms but this one, Steve Hommel, had the foresight to order his assistant to carry two M-16 rifles, just in case. And this was that case.

"He did what he felt he had to do," Maj. Denton Knapp was saying yesterday, as his platoon rested on ornate settees inside the Baath party museum in a now-secured sector command post codenamed China. "He did what was necessary to protect himself and his soldiers."

The chaplain helped kill the enemy - . . .

MSNBC cameraman Craig White was in the thick of the fighting and took compelling video of the fighting close up. White said on camera two days later that the chaplain had manned a .50-caliber machine gun during the fighting. (White said he almost picked up a rifle himself.)

The issue is this: is it permissible for chaplains to fight, even in extremis?

Regulations and policies of the US armed forces

The question is more than academic. Chaplains are specially categorized, along with medical personnel, under the Geneva Conventions. The US Army's Field Manual 16-1, Religious Support Fundamentals, states,

The Geneva and Hague Conventions give the chaplain noncombatant status, and the policy of the Chief of Chaplains forbids chaplains to bear arms. If captured, the chaplain is not a prisoner of war, but a "detained person" for the purpose of ministering to prisoners of war.

Field manuals are not law, but an Army-level policy, such as this one, has the force of law. Furthermore, Army Regulation 165-1, para. 4-3c states,

Chaplains are noncombatants and will not bear arms.

That's as clear and unambiguous statement as I have ever seen in an Army Regulation. Violating an Army Regulation is punishable under the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Department of the Navy's policy is stated thus:

Chaplains are forbidden to carry weapons. (SECNAVINST 1730.7; OPNAV 1730.1, Religious Ministries in the Navy; MCO 1730.6, Command Religious Programs in the Marine Corps; and the Marine Corps Manual) This restriction arises from the provisions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 that accord a special protective and noncombatant status to chaplains. Pursuant to the Geneva Conventions, chaplains are exempt from being treated and retained as prisoners of war, and they are permitted to carry out their religious duties after falling into enemy hands. To be entitled to this immunity, chaplains must at all times, both in time of war and in time of peace, be engaged exclusively in religious duties; and they must always abstain from hostile acts. The Department of the Navy's policy is that bearing arms is incompatible with a chaplain's religious functions and spiritual duties. An individual chaplain who violates this policy endangers the noncombatant status of other chaplains. [emphasis added]

The chaplain in the Baghdad battle was an Army chaplain, not a Navy one, but it's clear that the principle is the same.

It seems unarguable that the intention of the services is that chaplains will not bear arms or use weapons in combat under any circumstances.

Provisions of the Geneva Conventions

Under the provision of Article 6 of the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions are US law, being treaties ratified by the US Senate. (See my long explanation of the legal status of treaties in relation to the Constitution.) And the Conventions state,

Members of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict (other than medical personnel and chaplains covered by Article 33 of the Third Convention) are combatants, that is to say, they have the right to participate directly in hostilities [emphasis added].

The Conventions in the cited article thereof exclude chaplains from the category of combatant, and under the provisions of the Conventions, only combatants have the right to bear arms and fight. The American armed forces do not consider this distinction academic, either, because chaplains are issued military ID cards specifically identifying them as noncombatants, which is different than cards for other personnel. And though not a legal opinion, an article in Soldiers magazine (an official publication) says, ". . . the Geneva Convention precludes chaplains from bearing arms . . . ."

Some theological considerations

Clergy have accompanied military forces of Western nations for many centuries. In fact, by the end of the fourth century AD, probably 10 percent of the Roman army was Christian, a fact which made the government's final and fiercest persecution of Christians finally unsupportable, and which eased the ability of General (later Emperor) Constantine to proclaim openly his Christian faith.

Classical theology's fullest fruition came with Thomas Aquinas, who wrote extensively on the use of military force by civil authorities. According to Prof. Darrell Cole in "Good Wars," Aquinas reasoned that

. . . bishops and clerics cannot be soldiers because these occupations cannot "be fittingly exercised at the same time." Aquinas offers two reasons why. First, warlike pursuits keep clergy from their proper duties. In other words, their participation is unlawful, not because war is evil, but because warlike pursuits prevent them from doing their jobs.

(Note the Navy's requirement, above, that chaplains "must at all times, both in time of war and in time of peace, be engaged exclusively in religious duties.") Cole continues:

Second [according to Aquinas], it is "unbecoming" for those who give the Eucharist to shed blood, even if they do so without sin (i.e., in a just war). Unlike Calvin, then, Aquinas finds the duties of clergy to be more meritorious than the duties of soldiers. However, this does not mean that, in Aquinas' view, the soldier's duties have no merit. Rather, he employs an analogy to make quite the opposite point: it is meritorious to marry but better still to remain a virgin and thus dedicate yourself wholly to spiritual concerns. Likewise, it is meritorious to fight just wars and restrain evil as a soldier, but more meritorious still to serve as a bishop who provides the Eucharist to the faithful.

Here is one root of the custom against, later the prohibition, of chaplains bearing and using arms: to wield the sword in a just cause, justly employed, was no sin, but for clergy both to wield the sword and to offer the Eucharist (Lord's Supper) meant that the chaplain had abandoned his particular calling as a disciple of Christ. Both Reformer John Calvin and Aquinas (and for that matter, Martin Luther), held that soldiering justly could be considered a form of the Christian ministry of charity. But at least in Catholic theology, the battlefield forces a choice: the same person may not offer the Eucharist in ministry and also fight as a soldier. The two ministries were not contradictory, but they were incompatible in the same person.

My own thoughts

I am a former career artilleryman, now an ordained Methodist minister. I can easily envision that were I a chaplain in an intense battle that I might want to pick up a weapon to protect the lives of American soldiers. After all, although the Conventions are clear, the enemy faced that day was notorious for having no regard for the Conventions.

I'll never face that situation as I cannot re-enter active duty as a chaplain. But I have pondered Chaplain Hommel's dilemma and have asked myself what I would have done in his shoes.

The question for me would be this: Where would my greatest duty lie? I am more than sympathetic with Aquinas' concerns about the difference between the mutually exclusive soldiers' ministry of charity and a chaplain's ministry of bread and wine, although I am not sure that other Protestant chaplains would be very worried about it. Probably as a rule all clergy would consider their greatest loyalty must lie to God and the vows of ordination they took. The moral and legal conundrum is a highly personal one that can hoist a chaplain on the horns of a dilemma: shall he permit other soldiers to die in order to preserve an Army policy or his personal sense of piety? What is the greater good?

The question is not as simple as it seems. There is a bigger picture than the 50 feet surrounding soldiers in battle (50 feet being about the "give a hoot" circle soldiers in battle tend to have). In his book, Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose told of an attack in Normandy by 101st Airborne infantry against well-emplaced Germans. Several American soldiers were shot on a narrow road, down which a German machine gun had a clear field of fire. The chaplain with the 101st men went from wounded man to another on the road, ministering to them as best he could with water, prayer, while German bullets flew down the road. The chaplain was not hit and he was awarded the DSC for this action.

But I wonder: did the Germans gunners miss him on purpose, seeing his paraments and recognizing his protected status? Ambrose does not say. But I think it is likely.

The special status of chaplains under the Conventions is intended as a measure to ameliorate the cruelty of the battlefield and captivity and allow, even in war, for the spiritual care of combatants and POWs. If this status is violated by chaplains bearing and using arms then the enemy would have reason to target all chaplains as potential combatants and deny them their status as a detained persons, rather than POWs, under the GC if captured. The GC's rules are not for the chaplains' benefit, but for the troops and POWs. The Conventions recognize that the spiritual care of POWs and soldiers in battle is an obligation of warring parties that must be respected.

Is this concern a higher good that must be preserved, even at the cost of a chaplain's own life? I think that Christian chaplains (I would not presume to speak for other faiths') would answer, "Yes." We would remember that, like St. Paul, we have already died with Christ and that we will also live with him. So were I a chaplain, I would not arm myself to prevent my own capture or death.

The harder question is whether the greater good is to be preserved at the expense of other soldiers' lives, whom a chaplain could save by wielding arms. Or put another way: Would the potential abandonment of the overall benefits of chaplain noncombatancy be outweighed by a chaplain using arms to save a single soldier's life? A dozen soldiers' lives? A hundred? More?

For myself, were I a chaplain, I not sure that in extremis I could allow American soldiers to die when I could protect them by using arms. I am not sure that in good faith I could maintain my personal piety at the cost of other's lives. But I also don't think the question of "is it worth it" is simple, nor is my own personal piety the only issue. If chaplains generally discard or lose their status due to their own frankly unlawful acts, that loss would be terrible not only for chaplains, but for the Army at large.

What cost in lives should the Army be prepared to accept in order to preserve that status? In policy, the US armed forces say, "any cost." A cruel fact of war is that it necessarily forces value judgments about human life. Paul Fussell, an infantry commander in World War II, wrote that the enlisted ranks are material of war whom he said must be "used up" to gain the objectives desired. (But officers have historically suffered much higher casualty rates than the ranks.) If the Army is willing to expend its soldiers' lives to take Objective Moe, it's not such a leap to be willing to expend their lives to preserve law or the ideals of Western civilization, from which the Conventions spring. If that seems heartless, it is, and I don't like it myself. But there it is.

The fundamental duty of a soldier is obey the orders he is given, even at great risk to his own life. The Army's policy and regulation are clear: chaplains may not bear or use arms. I called the US Army Chaplain Center and School April 17 and spoke to an instructor what is taught to chaplain students there about the subject. He said chaplains are taught they may not bear or use arms "under any circumstances" (his words). The grim calculus of combat is that obeying any orders in battle carries the risk of dying or seeing your soldiers die. The prohibition of chaplains fighting is really just one of many orders that might be hard to obey in battle, or cause blood to be shed that might not have been shed otherwise.

I conclude that the prohibition must be maintained, even in extremis. But I would not want to be a chaplain speaking to a child whose dead soldier-father might have lived had I picked up a rifle at a critical moment.

Sometimes all courses of action are undesirable.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 05:07:00 PM. Permalink |

The US Marines must be carefully watched
The US Marines are so careless with the lives of innocent Iraqis that they must be carefully watched at all times, and the closer the Iraqis can watch them, the more secure they feel.

The combat vehicle in the picture is the USMC's Light Armored Vehicle.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 07:44:00 AM. Permalink |

How fallen are the mighty
Joe Katzman says,

About 19 months ago, Al-Qaeda was ramming airliners into buildings. During the war in Iraq, the best they could manage was ramming pickup trucks into tanks.

He invites discussion. Well, I wrote last June that al Qaeda was already on the ropes:

They also had little idea of the sophistication and capabilities of American technology and weapons, or of the enormous destructiveness of our weapons. They adapted poorly, at best, to the pervasiveness and effectiveness of American sensors and target acquisition systems. They never got time to rest, recuperate or refit because they were neither equipped nor organized to do so. The record shows that after only a few days of active resistance, all they could do was hunker down, try to hide, and take our pounding.

In short, they were entirely unprepared for the level and intensity of the attacks America's armed forces made against them.

Al Qaeda was much more fagile than we thought. I do not predict that al Qaeda will neither attempt nor succeed in deadly attacks inside the US again. I do predict that they will not be able to mount an attack approaching the magnitude of Sept. 11's. They have been hurt too much in personnel losses and interruption of their command and control.

BTW, this my essay on al Qaeda is listed on my essays index page, which I invite you to examine.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 07:39:00 AM. Permalink |

The dark side of Non-Governmental Agencies
Geitner Simmons details how Non-Governmental Agencies, or NGOs, see a large part of their purpose as opposing the United States in international affairs.

Many foreign policy NGOs are working tirelessly to undercut the ability of the United States to protect its interests. Many seek to nurture a foreign policy culture that empowers an “enlightened” transnational elite made up of U.N. functionaries, like-minded diplomats and, of course, NGOs at the expense of the sovereignty of individual nations.

NGOs are not somehow virtuous simply because they are "non-governmental." Their bureaucrats are just as self-serving, turf-protecting and ideologically biased as any bureaucrats anywhere.

Update: Anne Applebaum writes in the WaPo about the U.N. Human Rights Commission's "rituals" that characterize its annual meetings:

One of these is the condemnation of Israel. This year there were four such resolutions, one of which passed 50 to 1 (the "1" being the United States) and another of which passed 51 to 1 (ditto). Another ritual is the condemnation of the United States. Last year the other members actually kicked the United States off the commission. This year the United States is back on, but Syria was unable to resist putting forward a proposal to discuss "U.S. war crimes" in Iraq. Nor would any commission session be complete without an organized campaign by China (this year's is so far successful) to prevent anyone from saying anything mildly unfavorable about anything the Chinese government does. . . .

It may all be a political game to us -- or to the French -- but to the Russian or Sudanese governments, any U.N. statement that absolves them of blame for civilian casualties in their respective wars will help legitimize those wars in the eyes of their own people as well as foreigners', and allow them to continue.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 07:23:00 AM. Permalink |

More on prospects for democracy in Iraq
I wrote in February that an American-style federal democracy in Iraq is unlikely, and that probably the best we can reasonably hope for is a confederation of tribal/ethnic areas united mainly by their desire to get some of the oil money that is sure to flow. One of the greatest impediments, I said:

It does not help that the Iraqi people have never known a government that was staffed from the top down with public servants; what they have known is imperial rule and dictatorship. So any democratic-type government that might be instituted is handicapped at the outset: the people will not invest their full trust and confidence in it right away because all their governments have proven to be untrustworthy and oppressive. And the people elected to the actual offices will not take them understanding what it means to be a democratically elected office holder.

Comes now Dr. Amitai Etzioni of The George Washington University, referring to a group called the New America Foundation, which he says, "is a place full of whiz kids, who come up with one brilliant idea a week, and typically aren’t consumed with doubts about their insights."

The foundation has written that the war with Iraq is, among other things, "remaking the Middle East in our democratic image." Says Etzioni,

Sadly, our record in truly democratizing nations that do not have the necessary social and cultural foundations, is very poor. Among the many places we've tried and failed are Haiti, Cuba, South Vietnam and Cambodia. In any case, the phrase, "to make something in the image of" is generally reserved for a much greater authority and much higher power. We'd best limit ourselves, as we are doing in China, to opening up societies such as Iraq to the free flow of ideas, people, and goods, and then let the local people work out the kind of political regime they are willing to live with.

A similar tone was struck by Bruce Fein earlier this month:

The Bush administration is romanticizing about democracy in post-Saddam Iraq. It is contemplated that both exile and indigenous Iraqis will be entrusted with government power days after Saddam's defeat. It is expected these unelected officeholders will usher in the trappings of democracy and a democratic culture in a land that has witnessed neither in more than 4,000 years.

(Fein, btw, has urged that we govern Iraq in the same way we governed the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, and for about as long.)

I think all we can do is wait and see, and work for success the best ways we can. But my lack of confidence that Iraq will become a Garden of Democratic Eden remains.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 06:24:00 AM. Permalink |

God and Allah
Disaffected Muslim is the name of a blog written by "an unhappy American Muslim." In an essay called, "The Distance of Allah from His Creatures," he writes,

Allah seems more distant in Islam than in Judaism and Christianity; there is more of an emphasis on His might and His power, His inapproachability, the fact that He has no need of His creation and says, "I have only created Jinns and men, that they may serve Me." (51:56) Note the word serve, not love. In Islam one submits to Allah; in Judaism (repeated in Christianity) the Shema says, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might," a concept totally lacking in Islamic prayers. Men and women are slaves of Allah in Islam; in Christianity they are children of God. Children are a source of love and worry for their parents; slaves exist merely to serve. Allah lets it be known in the Qur'an that if a people or nation rejects His message, He will simply wipe them out and put another people in their place who will serve Him better. Islam means submission; this does not leave much in the way of personal interaction. Allah orders, you obey. No debating or bargaining, like when Abraham got God down from fifty to ten righteous people to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. Moses speaks directly with God; Allah communicates with Muhammad via the angel Gabriel, since "it is not fitting for a man that Allah should speak to him except by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by the sending of a messenger to reveal, with Allah's permission, what Allah wills: for He is Most High, Most Wise." (42:51)

See also his description of the consistent descriptions of the erotic character of Paradise: "this doesn't seem like a very spiritual haven, to say the least, more like a heavenly Playboy Mansion (and what's in it for the girls anyway???)." (via LGF)

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 06:20:00 AM. Permalink |

Celebrities fleeing to Syria
The government of Syria has said that the United States must take immediate steps to halt the flow of celebrities seeking asylum there. Also, the captured terrorist Abu Abbas said he was thrilled the the media have proclaimed him a "Mastermind."

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 06:19:00 AM. Permalink |

The Church's complicity in Saddam's terror
A Sydney Morning Herald op-ed says that Saddam and company became convinced that Bush and Blair would not actually opt for military force because of the antiwar activities of the churches.

An unintended consequence of Aziz's audience with the Pope was to send a false message to Saddam in Baghdad. He came to believe that the West was too soft to stand up to Iraq.

hat tip: Mark Sullivan. See also his revealing entry about the recent riots and civil disorder.

by Donald Sensing, 4/16/2003 06:18:00 AM. Permalink |

Saddam's Western values
Sheila at Redheaded Ramblings deliciously fisks a CNS News piece about the clear and present danger that will face Iraqis when exposed to Western culture.

but I must ask: did you get a load of Saddam's love shack?? It is a shrine to western cultural values, and actually: as a woman from the West I take offense. The man's taste is heinous. An embarrassment to anything "Western". Lamps shaped like women, mirrored bedroom, air-brushed "paintings" (scare quotes necessary, pardon) of nude women in the arms of massive blonde muscle men...Beanbag chairs, whirlpool bath ... blah blah. The Marines who discovered the "love shack" kept referencing Austin Powers, walking through the opulent cheesy decor, calling out to each other, "Groooovy, baby!" You just can't get more stereotypically Western than that.

Saddam Hussein wasn't sitting around on dusty carpets from Mesopotamia's ancient past, drinking camel's milk, and sipping on tea brewed from a sacred recipe of the sheikh who founded his village in 654 A.D. (or whatever) ... Hussein was slugging back cognac and whiskey, watching porn videos, and taking bubble baths. I think the "adoption" of "western cultural values" started at the top.

Also: just a reminder: "Western cultural values" does not just mean McDonalds and the Gap. Western cultural values include such things as :freedom, liberty, human rights. These earnest anti-globalization types always conveniently forget that. Or they put all those values in scare quotes. To show their contempt.

There's more.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 05:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Looted antiquities
Jeff Jarvis has some cogent observations. As he said, if the worst news coming out of Baghdad is that some relics got pinched, that's good news, not bad.

But . . .

I wrote before that the ransacking of the museum was a cultural tragedy for the whole world. That the United States failed utterly to foresee the degree that law and order would temporarily break down in Iraq seems indisputable. I didn't foresee it, and neither did anyone in the Bush administration from the White House on down. And Brig. Gen. Brooks said during the CENTCOM briefing today, no one there imagined that the Iraqis would loot their own national treasures.

The failure to protect the museum, if "failure" it was, was a systemic failure, not one that can be laid at he foot of Gen. Franks or his subordinates. And the museum is not the only place by any means that was plundered; it just happened to be one of the highest-profile places.

Hospitals were also reportedly looted to the the point where patients' lives were endangered. Should the troops have protected hospitals in addition to the museum? What about instead of it?

CENTCOM had apparently made no plans for initiating law and order operations (there is such a doctrine) so soon after combat forces swept through. This may turn out to be one of the glaring blind spots of the entire campaign. But we were all blind together, and I don't recall reading any warnings from exiled Iraqis her or abroad warning it would occur. Heck, it surprised the people in Baghdad.

But combat troops have elsewhere proved to be to be the wrong troops for law and order ops. And I also say that the all the antiquities in the whole museum are not worth the blood of one Marine rifleman or soldier.

Update: Glenn Reynolds explains that the looting was probably an inside job. Quoting an AP story,

“The fact that the vaults were opened suggests that employees of the museum may have been involved,” said the employee, who declined to be identified. “To ordinarily people, these are just stones. Only the educated know the value of these pieces.”

Which is a good point. Fred Pruitt also has wisdom to share about the thefts.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 04:42:00 PM. Permalink |

More on the Corrupt News Network
Serenity Now relays this sad tale related by Peter Collins, a former CNN reporter, about CNN's lust for access to the dictator.

I was CNN's reporter on a trip organized by the Ministry of Information to the northern city of Mosul. "Minders" from the ministry accompanied two busloads of news people to an open, plowed field outside Mosul. The purpose was to show us that American warplanes were bombing "innocent Iraqi farmers." Bits of American ordinance were scattered on the field. One large piece was marked "CBU." I recognized it as the canister for a Cluster Bomb Unit, a weapon effective against troops in the open, or against "thin-skinned" armor. I was puzzled. Why would U.S. aircraft launch CBUs against what appeared to be an open field? Was it really to kill "innocent Iraqi farmers?" The minders showed us no victims, no witnesses. I looked around. About 2000 yards distant on a ridgeline, two radar dishes were just visible against the sky. The ground was freshly plowed. Now, I understood. The radars were probably linked to Soviet-made SA-6 surface-to-air missiles mounted on tracks, armored vehicles, parked in the field at some distance from the dishes to keep them safe. After the bombing, the Iraqis had removed the missile launchers and had plowed the field to cover the tracks.

On the way back to Baghdad, I explained to other reporters what I thought had happened, and wrote a report that was broadcast on CNN that night.

The next day, Brent Sadler, CNN's chief reporter at the time in Baghdad (he is now in northern Iraq), came up to me in a hallway of the al Rasheed Hotel. He had been pushing for the interview with Saddam and had urged Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan to come to Baghdad to help seal the deal. "Petah," he said to me in his English accent, "you know we're trying to get an interview with Saddam. That piece last night was not helpful."

Original appearance: WashTimes.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 04:19:00 PM. Permalink |

Once again. . . .
I received this email today.

We at the Communitarian Network have had an opportunity to look at your blog, and have found much of the material to be very thought provoking. We wonder whether you might be interested in establishing a mutual link exchange with a blog hosted by our founder and director, Dr. Amitai Etzioni, who is a university professor at the George Washington University. His blog can be found at:

http://www.amitai-notes.com/blog/

I am complimented that the network wants to link to me, but hey, what's stopping them? I am grateful for every reader. If you want to link to my blog, please go right ahead. If you want me to take a look at your blog, I'll be glad to do so. But please don't write me trying to make a deal out of it. Link or don't link, your call.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 04:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Embedded journalist called out targets for troops
Howard Kurtz writes a pretty good media review column for the WaPO. Today he examines the gunfight CNN's Brent Sadler and crew got it with fedayeen the other day, and discusses how Boston Herald embedded reporter Jules Crittenden "called out Iraqi positions as his unit rolled through Baghdad, thus helping to kill three Iraqi soldiers." Wrote Crittenden,

Some in our profession might think as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I'm sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I'll keep the argument short. Screw them, they weren't there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism.

Crittenden, btw, is en route home now. Here is his last file from the war zone. It's good.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 03:23:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq War Haikus
In case you don't know what a haiku is, it is a form of Japanese poetry.

Japanese haiku have been traditionally composed in 5-7-5 syllables. When poets started writing English haiku in the 1950's, they adopted this 5-7-5 form, thinking it created a similar condition for English-language haiku. This style is what is generally considered "traditional" English haiku.

Over the years, however, most haiku poets in North America have become aware that 17 English syllables convey a great deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables, and have come to write haiku in fewer syllables, most often in three segments that follow a short-long-short pattern without a rigid structure. This style is called by some "free-form" haiku.

Some good Iraq war haikus are at Winds of Change. One example:

Ah, Peter Arnett
Finally they realize
What a fool you are

This is a "traditional" 5-7-5 English haiku. Here is one I made up:

Where is gone Saddam?
Bomb craters have DNA.
Perhaps some is his.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 02:37:00 PM. Permalink |

New WMD developed
It has been announced that the heaviest element known to science makes a truly fearful WMD.

The element, Administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of particles called morons.

Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes in contact. According to the discoverers, a tiny amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally occur in less than 1 second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately 3 years. At this time it doesn't actually decay but instead undergoes reorganization in which assistant neutrons, vice neutrons, and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Some studies have shown that the atomic mass actually increased after each reorganization.

Researchers have indicated that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points such as CNN, universities, government agencies, large corporations, and schools. The element can be found in the newest, best-appointed and best-maintained buildings.

Scientists point out that Administratium is known to be toxic at any level of concentration and can easily destroy any productive reactions where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are being made to determine how Administratium can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results are not promising.

Oh, the horror!

I slightly edited this text from the linked page's version. Another version aappeared in Reader's Digest, and other versions are floating around the internet.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 02:26:00 PM. Permalink |

The French have 674 years to go
Do you remember all oh-so-sensitive commentati, including former President Bill Clinton, who spoke last year about how the Crusades remain a powerful event shaping the modern attitudes of the Arabs toward the West? This part of his speech on Nov. 7 at Georgetown University was widely quoted:

Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless. Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple mound, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told to today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.

The Crusades were a series of campaigns from 1095 - 1270, meaning they occurred from 900 - 733 years ago. Personally, I think it's time for them to get over it, but let's hold that thought while we turn to today and the state of Colorado.

Colorado Governor Bill Owens recently declined to meet with France's Consul General. He told the CG, among other things,

"I am also proud of my uncle who was killed in action in France on his eighteenth birthday. I give you this background as a preface to my feeling that France's actions over the past few months will have serious and long-term consequences on relations between our countries."

If the French ever ask when we are going to stop reminding them of Normandy and the liberation of Paris (1944) every time France attempts to hinder America's national security measures, I suggest we tell them there are at least 674 years to go.

(BTW, here is a Roman Catholic explanation of the Crusades.)

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 02:02:00 PM. Permalink |

What do Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Michael Jordan, Walt Disney, Harrison Ford and Elvis Presley have in common?
They were all failures. As were a lot of other famous people.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 08:06:00 AM. Permalink |

Don't we wish!

IRS Humor:
A man had fallen between the rails in a subway station. People were all crowding around trying to get him out before the train ran him over. They were all shouting, "Give me your hand!" But the man would not reach up.

Joe elbowed his way through the crowd and leaned over the man. "Friend," he asked, "What is your profession?"

"I am an IRS agent," gasped the man. "In that case," said Joe, "Take my hand!"

The IRS agent immediately grasped Joe's hand and was hauled to safety. Joe turned to the amazed by-standers and declared, "Remember: a tax collector never 'gives,' only takes!" (via Dan Miller)

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 07:50:00 AM. Permalink |

Baghdad Muslim clerics demand the "Lysistrata" solution
You may recall last month pro-Saddam activists staged Aristophanes' ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata, to protest the coming Iraq campaign. In the play Athens and Sparta have been at war for years (the Peloponessian War) with no end in sight. So an Athenian woman named Lysistrata convinces the women of Athens to deny their husbands conjugal privileges until the war ends.

Comes now the report that in Baghdad many looters are returning their plundered treasure to its rightful owners because Muslim clerics have declared - or are rumored to have declared, which is just as good - that no faithful Muslim wife can have marital relations with a thief until the stolen goods are returned. While no cleric has confirmed such an edict, several have said that the rumor is consistent with Muslim teaching, and that stealing is a sin in Muslim faith. Sheik Ali Jabouri preached Monday that looters must return the goods.

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 07:43:00 AM. Permalink |

Happy Tax Day!
Ha, ha, I didn't really mean, "happy." Of course, when The IRS is read as one word, that word is "Theirs." (Found this on The Braden Files.)

by Donald Sensing, 4/15/2003 06:50:00 AM. Permalink |

No-Fly Zones are no more
According to a local news report, DOD has officially declared the end of the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 10:07:00 PM. Permalink |

Bush forbids Syria war planning
The UK's Guardian says that President Bush "has blocked preliminary planning" for a Syria campaign in the Pentagon:

However, President George Bush, who faces re-election next year with two perilous nation-building projects, in Afghanistan and Iraq, on his hands, is said to have cut off discussion among his advisers about the possibility of taking the "war on terror" to Syria.

"The talk about Syria didn't go anywhere. Basically, the White House shut down the discussion," an intelligence source in Washington told the Guardian.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 09:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq's liberation began in 1776
In March 2002 I wrote,

America's founders understood that the good society required maximum individual freedom with government acting as a safeguard, rather than a source, of the people's own pursuit of happiness, as they choose to define it.

I think that this core idea of the American world view must form the central message of our campaign against terrorism. We should take it directly to the populations of Iraq, Iran, North Korea and all the Arab nations. The most powerful political words ever written are these:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

That quote is, of course, the opening words of the American Declaration of Independence. Now The Times Online says, "The liberation of Iraq started on July 4, 1776."

The battle for liberty had been the core of US history from the beginning. In the 1770s, the United States fought a victorious war to free themselves from British rule, with some help from France. They fought England for self-government, inspired by English ideas. . . .

The American victory in Iraq is a warning to the tyrants and terrorists of the world. The momentum of liberty continues to accelerate. The dictators have had a very bad couple of decades; in 1980 the world was still “half slave and half free”. Now the remaining dictators, old Castro, young Assad, Kim Jong Il, mad Mugabe and the others, look foolish and obsolete, though still horrible. They must mend their ways or liberty and democracy will amend them. In the Lockean phrase quoted in the Boston Freemen’s Declaration of 1774: “‘Just and true Liberty, equal and impartial Liberty’ is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to.” Despite the failures of the Security Council, the people of Iraq now have the expectation of liberty.

And we Americans need to remember that it's no accident that it was England who is our strongest ally in Iraq. (The Australians, also England's descendants, have been steadfast also, with lesser numbers of troops.) Freedom, as we Americans understand it, sprang mostly from English ideas and philosophy. As the Times points out,

The American idea of liberty developed from the English revolutionary ideas of the 17th century, from the history of two civil wars, above all from the philosophy of John Locke.

Polls in the UK show that Prime Minister Tony's Blair's approval ratings are way up since the war began. I can only think that the English people have come to understand what they really stand for as a nation, and what their bearings should be in the world today.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 04:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraq war "essentially over," says Pentagon
This is really good news:

Iraqi fighters have not mounted "a coherent defense" and major combat there is essentially over, [said] Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal [to] reporters during a Defense Department briefing. . . .

While there is still a lot of work to be done, McChrystal said, "I would anticipate that the major combat operations are over."

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 03:42:00 PM. Permalink |

Multimedia war coverage
The NYT has 100 photo slideshows posted on its site.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 01:04:00 PM. Permalink |

Abraham Lincoln's assassination was today
On this date in 1865, President Lincoln was shot. Just thought we might want to remember that.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 01:02:00 PM. Permalink |

Why the president should never return a salute
John Lukacs says the habit of the president returning salutes of his military staff started with Reagan, who never served in the military.

In the past, even presidents who had once been generals employed civilian manners. They chose not to emphasize their military achievements during their presidential tenure — in accord with the American tradition of the primacy of civilian over military rule.

Lukacs says that "such a salute has always required the wearing of a uniform," but he's wrong about that. Anyway, I see his point. What do you think? Should the president return salutes or not?

Update: Bill Quick tells the story of how and why Ronald Reagan started returning salutes. I also remember reading an anecdote about Harry Truman. As president, he took walks off White House grounds from time to time. On one such walk he passed a soldier, who saluted. Truman had been an artillery battery commander during World War I. He stopped, came to attention, and returned the salute. As I recall, when later asked by a reporter about why he saluted in civilian clothes Truman replied, "When I was in the Army I was taught you always return every salute you receive. If that soldier was respectful enough to salute me, I'm respectful enough to salute back."

Apparently, it was not the custom then or before for non-honor-guard military personnel to salute the president.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 01:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Most sweeping military reorganization in 50 years
That's what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked Congress for the authority to do.

He said the proposed legislation requests greater flexibility over personnel policy affecting the very senior levels, allowing a defense secretary to extend the tenure of generals and admirals in especially important jobs, while easing the early retirement of those unlikely to be promoted further.

Lower in the ranks, the legislation would clear the way for transferring a large number of military support jobs to civilian employees — about 300,000 are under consideration, Mr. Chu said — increasing the numbers of combat troops without adding to the roughly 1.5 million people in uniform today. And it would change the peacetime schedule of reservists, who have been called up by the tens of thousands over the past two years for the campaign against terror.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 12:55:00 PM. Permalink |

"Lies in the Absence Of Liberty"
Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 08:46:00 AM. Permalink |

Media coverage ups and down
Howard Kurtz of the WaPo has a pretty good article about media coverage of the war so far, including a sharp criticism of the "quagmire" prediction only a week into the campaign.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 07:45:00 AM. Permalink |

More on what the US Army uniquely brings to the fight
Earlier this month I wrote about the bogus Marine v. Army debate that the mental midgets enjoy in the public media. I said,

What the Army brings to the fight is an array of unique capabilities that can be summed up quite simply: heavy combat power, incredible battle-area mobility and immense staying power.

Now comes two articles about heavy fighting in Iraq that illustrate the point. The Telegraph writes compellingly about a vicious Army fight inside Baghdad:

The troops at Objective Moe met equally fierce resistance. "We had four tanks, 10 Bradleys and seven personnel carriers," said First Sgt Jeff Moser, 35, from Detroit. "Just about every vehicle took three or four RPG hits."

As Trent Telenko pointed out in an email, "This is something that a Stryker LAV company would not be able to withstand." Early in the campaign, one Marine unit lost two LAVs destroyed and Marines killed, each hit with single RPG, according to news reports I saw. (This is what an RPG is.) But the Army task force in the Baghdad battle lost no armored vehicles and

The only American fatalities were the two men killed when the fuel train was ambushed. There were 30 American casualties.

The fact is that the accusations made by the two inchers that the Army is "too heavy" ignore the fact that armor takes poundage. The LAV weighs about 28,000 pounds, the Bradley weighs about twice as much. The difference comes from more than the fact that Bradleys are bigger overall and are tracked while the LAV is wheeled. The Bradley's armor is thicker and thus tougher to penetrate. It's possible for an RPG to knock out a Bradley, but quite unlikely, while LAVs are very much more vulnerable.

The fedayeen were suicidally ineffective against American tanks. As one tank commander said about the truckborne fedayeen,

"We were wondering why these guys would take on tanks with small arms and RPGs. We were also getting suicide bombers trying to get to the tanks. But they just didn't seem to realize how powerful these tanks are," he said.

The Army and Marines both use the Abrams tank, but a single Army division has more of them than the entire Marine Corps.

Frankly, I am filled with admiration at the Marines for conducting an extended land campaign, using combat vehicles not designed for the job. That their losses in [personnel and equipment was not higher can be attributed to two main things: the Marines' outstanding training and leadership, and the lack of heavy armored resistance by enemy forces.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 07:08:00 AM. Permalink |

Can you do this?

Neither can I.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 07:06:00 AM. Permalink |

Will Iraqis beat Bush's image with shoes soon?
Other Arabs wonder who is next in America's crosshairs

Arabs in other countries are highly suspect American motives in targeting Saddam. Like this guy:

"No, no, no," yelled Shaaban Mohamad, watching television at a Cairo bookstore. "If the U.S. really wanted democracy, they would have taken out just about every Arab leader we have. This is very suspect. The U.S. just wants to protect Israel and wants the riches in the region."

Says another Arab man on the street about Iraqis beating Saddam's picture with their shoes:

They may want Saddam out. But in a few weeks they will being doing the same thing to a picture of George Bush."

Yes, they very well may be shoe-beating George W.'s likeness, and then we'll round them up and torture them and beat their children until they betray their friends and rape their women and . . . .

No, we won't, will we? If Bush-beating images are broadcast on Al Jazeera and the rest of the Arab world sees them, what will the Arabs think when the response of the American forces and civil administration is to . . . intensify humanitarian aid and continue to work for democratic institutions in Iraq? What will they think when Bush's image is defaced and insulted in the presence of armed Marines or soldiers and . . . the troops just keep on walking?

More important, what will the dictators and authoritarian leaders of the other Arab governments think? I would say to them: Your people, whom you have repressed (hey Hosni! How ya doin'?) or ground under your heel (Bashar! How's it going?) or ruled with fundamentalist, theocratic cruel rigidity (Fahd! My man!) - your own people will come to realize that their own best interests and deepest aspirations are being realized by ordinary Iraqis, and the cause is America and Great Britain. Not you.

So when you see the shoes battering Bush's image, be afraid. Be very afraid!

It will mean that freedom has been uncorked. Freedom will be a jinn to you, but Israfil to your people. And you already know it.

Here is an AP article with a country-by-country summary of "Democracy in the Arab world." (via Command Post)

Update: The Times Online says, "The liberation of Iraq started on July 4, 1776," then warns,

The American victory in Iraq is a warning to the tyrants and terrorists of the world. The momentum of liberty continues to accelerate.

by Donald Sensing, 4/14/2003 07:03:00 AM. Permalink |

A spectacularly stupid op-ed
Once in awhile other bloggers come across a story or piece that is so good we just can't excerpt it. We just link it and wrote, "Read the whole thing."

After 13 months of blogging, I have found the doppelganger. The Tennessean has a piece about the war today that is too stunningly idiotic to excerpt. It is so pathetically bad that you must read it to believe it. Okay, one excerpt. This is one of the more intelligent things it says:

Everyone at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., is breaking out their atlases, looking for the next country to ''liberate,'' at least through November 2004.

I hear that Canada is pretty oppressive, at least during the winter.

Read the whole thing, if you have the stomach to get to its end. Frankly, I didn't.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 09:27:00 PM. Permalink |

Yet another short posting about email
I am very grateful that my readership had risen sharply over the past week or so. I do appreciate the gentle readers who come by here daily or so. Truly I do. And I do read your email, all of it. I have not yet been overwhelmed by email to the point that I have to delete masses of messages unread, as Glenn Reynolds has said he has had to do, in order to unjam my mail server.

That being said, I am now receiving enough email that I simply cannot promise an answer to you. Necessarily, my work-related email has to take priority. Many of you thoughtful readers have asked for my opinion on various issues or questions, and some of the topics are pretty tough! Thank you for the compliment of thinking that I can shed light on them, but I am not able to give you a personal return reply. I just don't have time.

If I think your question appeals to my general readership, I may write about it on my site. Sorry, truly, but that's the best I can do.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 07:18:00 PM. Permalink |

What role for the Air Force now?
In the same article I cited below comes this nugget:

Operation Iraqi Freedom drew one major lesson from the war in Afghanistan. Air power can now substitute for artillery.

I wrote about that very point last August, citing Austin Bay's earlier observation,

The Air Force fighter jock doesn't want airpower reduced to artillery. The irony is, once the Air Force has smashed enemy air defenses, that is what air becomes -- and should become. Precision munitions, in fact, make air-delivered munitions excellent artillery . . . .

Austin went on to say that the time has come seriously to consider merging the Air Force and the Army back into one service, as they were until 1947.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 06:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Media bias alert
From Newsweek: "While marching on to Damascus or Tehran remains, for the time being, a neoconservative fantasy, . . ." in an otherwise pretty good article about psyops and special operations.

Can anyone cite a single verifiable quote where a "neoconservative" has favorably spoken of war against Syria or Iran? (BTW, what is the real source of the term "neoconservative?" Is it a self description of the people concerned or is it a media-invented word of dismissal of certain administration figures?

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 06:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Garden of Eden now a wasteland
From Sify News:

It is believed to be the Garden of Eden, the mythic place where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join, the cradle of mankind where Adam came to pray to God.

Today it is a desolate wasteland of excrement, cracked paving stones and bullet holes. The eucalyptus known as Adam's tree, a place of holy pilgrimage for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, stands bleached and dead.

Even those who scoff at the idea of an original Garden of Eden cannot scorn the legacy of Mesopotamia for humankind:

It was here that the alphabet was invented and our days divided into 24 hours. It was here where the first epic poems were composed to hand down our collective history, and where we learned how to cultivate crops.

But Saddam's war against Iran destroyed it and his destruction of the wetlands as he waged war against the March Arabs who lived in them finished the job.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 05:39:00 PM. Permalink |

More Time Magazine ignorance
Time captioned this campy photo, apparently with all seriousness,

Infantrywoman Felicia Harris poses for a picture on the four poster bed at the palace of Uday Hussein.

It's a gag photo, as is evident from Harris' pose, though Harris is certainly a real soldier and the bed she reclines on is doubtless really formerly Uday's.

But there is no such thing as an "infantrywoman" in the US armed forces. And some media folks wonder why many is us are skeptical of their competence in covering military affairs. The article with the photo is here.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 05:24:00 PM. Permalink |

"Nuisance sniping" and New York anchors
Just now on Fox news there is a live broadcast of a nighttime fight between some US Marines and some jihadi gunmen. I came in during the middle of it, so I don't know details. But I did hear the Fox anchor in New York tell Steve Harrigan, the reporter with the Marines, that it seemed to be "nuisance" sniping.

To which Steve exploded, "It's easy to say this is a nuisance when you're sitting in New York! But when the rounds are going by you it's a d---- scary thing! These Marines' lives are in danger, and that is no nuisance!"

Indeed!

Update: With gunfire still nearby, the Marines ran at least one prisoner down the street to evacuate him. Right behind them ran one or two TV cameramen with bright lights shining full on the Marines as they ran. I am sure the Marines were very grateful to be fully illuminated for the convenience of the jihadi riflemen.

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 05:09:00 PM. Permalink |

Saddam found Saturday night, live in New York!
To the dismay of the Bush administration, Saddam Hussein surfaced last night in New York City. Found in the TV studio where his wartime videotapes had been final-edited and computer enhanced, the former bloodthirsty dictator said he was willing to let bygones be bygones.

"All I want to do now is work with disadvantaged children and read stories to old, blind people," he said. "My torturing days are over, by J-DAM."

Saddam's plea: "Can't we all just get along now?"

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 01:39:00 PM. Permalink |

A few short posts

"Sir, I am fine. I have everything I need. I have nothing to complain about."
Said by an American soldier whose two legs bad been blown off, US Army hospital Landstuhl

Lots of good stuff over at Petrified Truth, including a story about a soldier whose legs were blown off by a landmine. The medic who went to aid him stepped on a mine, too, and lost one leg. Their ICU rooms in Landstuhl hospital are side by side. The commanding general of United States Army Europe and 7th Army, Gen. Burwell B. Bell III, visited him.

The soldier who had lost both legs said, in response to B. B. asking him what he could do for him, "Sir, I am fine. I have everything I need. I have nothing to complain about."

*******************************
What mustard and France have in common

Reputedly a real press release from the company that makes French's Mustard:

"We at the French's Company wish to put an end to statements that our product is manufactured in France. There is no relationship, nor has there ever been a relationship, between our mustard and the country of France. Indeed, our mustard in manufactured in Rochester, NY. The only thing we have in common is that we are both yellow".

No permalink; I found it at The Braden Files. Check out this story about laser designating Saddam, too.

*******************************
Looting of Baghdad's Antiquities Museum is cultural tragedy

Looters have plundered bare Baghdad's antiquities museum. More than 17,000 items have been lost. Many of them date to the beginning of civilization itself. The museum's deputy director said the collection was worth "billions of dollars," which I take as an inadequate way of expressing the fact that it was actually priceless beyond imagination.

The land of the Tigris and Euphrates is one of only two places in the world where civilizations were born whose influence still shapes the world today. The other is Egypt. Apart from the primordial myth that located Eden there, verifiable historical cities of ancient renown and influence were found there such as Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire and Babylon. As for the museum,

It houses items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There are also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery. . . .

Iraq, a cradle of civilization long before the empires of Egypt, Greece or Rome, was home to dynasties that created agriculture and writing and built the cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon -- site of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.

The Hebrew patriarch Abram (later named Abraham) was from the region. After moving to what is modern Israel, he founded the Hebrew tribe, which reverberates rather strongly down to this day in uncountable ways.

People who have never wandered through a museum such as Baghdad's won't see what the fuss is about. I can no more explain why the ransacking of the museum is world-scale tragedy than I can explain red to a man blind from birth. Let us pray that when stability is restored, most of the missing items will be returned.

*******************************

Why combat soldiers make poor law and order enforcers

US soldiers shot and killed a Baghdad shopkeeper who was defending his shop with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against looters, neighbours told an AFP photographer.

The merchant pulled his rifle on the thieves when they began sacking the shop, neighbours said.

When US soldiers approached the area, the looters told them that the shopkeeper was a member of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Fedayeen paramilitary force.

The American troops opened fire with heavy machine guns, killing the man, the neighbors said.

(cite) That's why we need military police.

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I am now an "adorable little rodent"

In fact, I lead the pack of Adorable Little Rodents on N.Z. Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem, where I am no. 81 of 1,742 blogs ranked. Since I started off as Insignificant Microbe, being an Adorable Little Rodent seems awfully fine!

by Donald Sensing, 4/13/2003 06:36:00 AM. Permalink |

Many thanks to all tip jar donors!
I am very grateful to all readers who have hit the Amazon tip jar recently! Much appreciated!

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 02:45:00 PM. Permalink |

North Korea softens hardline nuclear stance
CNN just said the communist state says now that it is open to multilateral talks about its nuclear program, no longer insisting on unilateral talks with the US.

Surprise! I said this would happen at the end of this post.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 02:04:00 PM. Permalink |

The Third World as Leftist entertainment
Bill Quick posts an excerpt of a moan by Stephanie Schaudel, co-coordinator for Voices in the Wilderness, bemoaning that American corporations may do business in Iraq. That would destroy the "richness of culture" in Iraq, she cries.

Bill's response and those of the commenters are excellent, especially the one who points out the according to the Left, ". . . as well as having a duty to be poor, the people of the Third World also have a duty to be picturesque." Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 02:03:00 PM. Permalink |

"A question of surrender"
Geitner SImmon posted two emails drawing parallels between the military and governmental collapse of the Confederate States of America and that of Iraq. All analogies break down eventually, and this comparison does too. Example, our war with Iraq is obviously not a civil war. But it is still pretty interesting.

I already wrote about this analogy back in March (which I am proud to say was remarkably prescient about Iraq), pointing out that no one surrendered the CSA government nor did anyone surrender all the armed forces of the CSA. All the field armies surrendered one at a time, as did ships at sea. By the end of the war, enormous numbers of Southern soldiers had simply left their units and gone home.

One of Geitner's correspondents tells an interesting historical tidbit:

The closest we came to a formal surrender was in Feb. 1865 when Alexander Stephens, the Confed VP, led a delegation to Hampton Roads to confer with Lincoln about a negotiated end to the war. Had he accepted it them you would have then seen a formal negotiation between the two gov'ts. However Abe told them that there were three non-negotiable conditions for peace -- 1) lay down your arms and disband your armies 2) end slavery and 3) rejoin the Union. The conference was a failure.

A footnote: I wrote here that Alexander Stephens was my wife's great-great-great uncle, as well as my daughter's relationship with General Lee.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 01:39:00 PM. Permalink |

The Russian military's shock and awe
A Russian writer describes the deep impression (maybe depression!) the Iraq campaign made upon Russians.

Russian generals were expecting another prolonged so-called non-contact war, like the one against Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2001 or the first gulf war in 1991, when a four-day ground offensive was preceded by a 39-day air bombardment. It was believed that the Americans were afraid of close hand-to-hand encounters, they would not tolerate the inevitable casualties, and that in the final analysis they were cowards who relied on technical superiority.

In the first week of the war, allied forces rapidly fanned out of Kuwait, occupied most of southern Iraq and moved deep into the central part of the country without prolonged preliminary air bombardment. This successful blitz caused shock in Moscow.

Already many in Russia are beginning to ask why our forces are so ineffective compared to the Brits and Americans; and why the two battles to take Grozny in 1995 and 2000 each took more than a month to complete, with more that 5,000 Russian soldiers killed and tens of thousands wounded in both engagements, given that Grozny is one tenth the size of Baghdad.

The article also points out that two retired Russian generals were awarded medals by Saddam not long before the Iarq war began for planning the defense of Baghdad. I'll bet Saddam wishes he could take them back, if he is still alive. And I'll bet those two generals won't wear those medals much, either! (via Blogs of War)

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 08:59:00 AM. Permalink |

I await the protest rallies for this
We'll never see Hollywood stars and ANSWER campaign against what Castro just did.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 08:21:00 AM. Permalink |

Some TV screen grabs
In the pre-ban-the-flag days, the American flag flew over the Tigris river. This is a still captured from video shot by Steve Burca, reporter for National Geographic Explorer, shown on MSNBC last night. Steve is embedded with a Marine unit. He told anchor Lester Holt that he never felt prouder to be an American than when he saw this flag flying over the pontoon bridge Marine engineers had erected over the Tigris. (The span in the background was too damaged to support the Marines' vehicles.)

Some other grabs I made last night from Burca's video:

An Iraqi man holds a small homemade sign, "Bye Bye Sadam" [sic].

Happy Iraqi women wave joyously to Marines.

A Navy corpsman treats a five-year-old boy. Burca said that the boy's entire face from eyebrows to lower lip had been shot or blown away. He said it was the saddest thing he had ever seen.

Marines on a street crouch by a low wall as enemy fire comes in.

A Marine unit that had already passed by shot up a minivan, killing the driver. There was another dead Iraqi man lying on the ground near the van.

Inside the minivan was a wounded man and a woman. After the Marines ensured they were no threat, they treated them. Burca said the pair had stayed inside the van the entire previous night, afraid to go out.

Here are some grabs from Fox News yesterday:

Who an Iraqi woman thinks is a peace hero. Anyone at The Nation tuned in?

Let's have a truck party!

Riding the head of Saddam's statue down the street.

Iraqis along a street cheering US forces.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 07:03:00 AM. Permalink |

The CNN scandal
I havven't blogged this because several other bloggers were already well on top if it when I first read of it. No one I know of is more thorough than Bill Hobbs, who brings his professional journalist's skills to the scandal - and a scandal it is. His post is your one-stop shop for this topic.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 06:58:00 AM. Permalink |

Saddam's foreign jihadis
A few are captured - what to do with them?

The Times Online reports that captured Iraqi documents prove that before the invasion, Saddam brought in hundreds (if not more) foreign men to fight for him (via Command Post). These are the gunmen that have been fighting Marines and soldiers in Baghdad. The Marines days ago characterized them as terrorists, the Times quotes a British investigator,

"These are not just zealots who grabbed a gun and went to the front line. They know how to employ guerrilla tactics so someone had to have trained them. They are certainly organised, and if it's not bin Laden's people, its al-Qaeda by another name. But they certainly came here to fight the West."

One captured Syrian's passport was stamped, "Jihadi."

Are the jihadis mercenaries?

A key point is that the jihadis were paid by Saddam. That legally might make them mercenaries. (Actually, they may qualify as mercenaries no matter who paid them.) The International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, dated 1989, states,

1. A mercenary is any person who:

(a) Is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) Is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar rank and functions in the armed forces of that party;

(c) Is neither a national of a party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a party to the conflict;

(d) Is not a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict; and

(e) Has not been sent by a State which is not a party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

The foreign fighters in Iraq clearly meet all of these conditions except two, which have yet to be proven: we do not know whether Saddam has paid them an amount "substantially in excess" of that paid to members of the Iraqi army or Rep. Guard. If so, then it is prima facie evidence that they are motivated "essentially by the desire for private gain," no matter what religion or ideology they profess.

Second, I think it is an open question whether at least some of the fighters' home governments have no role in their being there and I would unsurprised to learn that at least some of jihadis are present or very recent members of those countries' military. Countries of origin identified so far are Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia,Syria, Morocco, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The Times reports, "The 'foreign legion' stunned British troops with their skills and fanaticism." The jihadis don't sound like angry young Islamist ideologues who just decided one day to pick up a gun and kill Americans and Brits.

The Convention continues:

Any person who recruits, uses, finances or trains mercenaries, as defined in article 1 of the present Convention, commits an offence for the purposes of the Convention.

That includes everyone in Saddam's regime from Saddam on down who had any involvement in the jihadi program, if indeed the jihadis do qualify as mercenaries. (If they do not qualify as mercenaries their category is governed by other Conventions). Any non-Iraqi who was involved in their recruitment, financing, training, equipping or transporting is also guilty.

It is a violation of the Convention either to employ mercenaries or to be one.

What if the jihadis are not mercenaries?

The jihadis are not enrolled in the forces of Iraq. If they do not qualify as mercenaries, what is their status? To be categorized as a prisoner of war, POW, they must meet all four of these criteria:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) that of carrying arms openly;

(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

The jihadis fail all four counts. There is no evidence of any command and control structure, according to Marine and Army commanders fighting them. The jihadis deliberately blend into the local population, thus having no "fixed distinctive sign," and they do not carry arms openly except when shooting at allied forces. They also have killed many Iraqi civilians and yesterday made a mosque a base of combat, just two of their habits that violate the "laws and customs of war."

Hence, the jihadis are unlawful combatants. They do not deserve and are not entitled to the protections and guarantees prescribed for POWs. (They must nonetheless be treated humanely.) So far, the US government had held that unlawful combatants may be tried for by special military tribunals and if not so tried, they may be held captive as long as we wish, incommunicado if we wish. They, like unlawful combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be given "three hots and a cot," medical care and religious privileges, but they might never be repatriated, visited by the Red Cross (a POW's privilege) or even publicly identified. This is not to say the the US or UK governments must treat them thus; it is to say they they may.

The fact is, though, that "unlawful combatant" is a term defined negatively, but what such a person is not. A POW or mercenary is thus and such, but an unlawful combatant is someone who is not that. The Conventions are not much help:

"One problem is, when the Geneva Conventions were drafted there was an assumption you're either in the army or not," [Prof. Hurst] Hannum said. "I don't think when they were drafted they foresaw this never-never land of guerrillas and terrorists."

Hannum is professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. This hole in the Conventions was also recognized by Anthony Dworkin, editor of the Crimes of War Project website:

Broadly speaking, the framework of existing international law envisages two kinds of war: international armed conflicts, between two or more countries, and civil wars, occurring within the territory of a single state. . . .

The Conventions do create the category of "unlawful combatants," but do not address the character of a conflict between a force composed entirely of such combatants, and a country or alliance of countries.

Legally, then, the Bush administration is in precedent-setting territory. (The privileges and protections of POWs under the Geneva Conventions are found here.)

Update: However, these men pretty clearly are mercenaries.

by Donald Sensing, 4/12/2003 06:51:00 AM. Permalink |

US troops may not display US flag
So reported CNN, citing CENTCOM. Okay, so Americans can't fly the American flag.

But liberated Iraqis can.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 10:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Design for new Baghdad Bob Tee Shirt
Heh!

And this post on the same site cracked me up.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 10:34:00 PM. Permalink |

Memorial for the Fort Bliss fallen

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 04:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Outstanding images
This page links to all the slides and photos used in today's DoD News Briefing. They are all good; check out this one. (via Command Post)

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 04:33:00 PM. Permalink |

Today's media smackdown. . .
is provided by Chris Noble, referring to an article from The Newspaper Guild. The article concerned is a remarkably self-congratulatory and self-serving screed.

The most astonishing thing I found about it is how it excoriates the reporters who literally risked their lives to travel with the units of soldiers and Marines. Chris quotes this part, too:

Then there is the threat of being expelled from the Pentagon group if the news is not flattering to the U.S. military. Raise your hand, anybody who thinks that the Army will be conducting tours of the destruction in Baghdad caused by 800 cruise missiles.

To which Chris sardonically responds,

Well, the Iraqi Disinformation Ministry seemed to revel in taking reporters around to show the damage. I can only remember the IDM "exposing" maybe 5 instances of massive damage. I guess the other 790 or so cruise missiles must have missed their civilian target and inadvertently slammed into something of military importance . . . .

Bottom line: The Newspaper Guild is a thinly veiled anti-American club, and any reporter who does not tow its party line can expect to be blacklisted. Thus are the self-proclaimed defenders of a free press.

Update: Joanne Jacob's comment compels me to point out my perjoration here is intended only for the paper referenced, and not for newspapermen or women generally. I daily read and frequently link to journalists' blogs, Geitner Simmons and Bill Hobbs come to mind readily. I have known and worked with a very large number of print and broadcast reporters and only a few were nincompoops (or worse, for a very few). The rest - the truly huge majority - were genuinely conscientious and devoted to their craft. They made every effort to get and report the facts straight (getting and reporting ain't the same thing!).

The embedded reporters in Iraq have especially earned my admiration: they get shot at like the troops do, but all they can shoot back in pictures. And they don't have to be there. Unlike a soldier or Marine, the embeds don't have to be there and they can go home any time they want. We really do owe them our gratitude and deep respect for bringing us the coverage we have seen, heard and read.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 04:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Complaints, not solutions
A pro-tyranny opinion piece in the The Stanford Daily comes in for a fisking on Bo Cowgill's site. As he says, the writer has issues but no solutions. Which pretty much describes most of the Left. (via Chrislin)

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 01:29:00 PM. Permalink |

Combat video
I have posted TV-captured combat video that I referred to in this post. My grab is VCD format and should play well on Windows media player. This is compelling combat video taken by MSNBC camerman Craig White. My grab is much higher resolution, but shorter, than the segment at the link I gave to an eight-minute segment on MSNBC's site.

Please be advised, due to storage and bandwidth issues, I cannot leave this video segment online indefinitely.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 01:04:00 PM. Permalink |

"What's Next for the Peace Movement?"
Common Dreams is a Left-wing web site where you can find Brian Corr's article asking that question. I would say I will fisk it, but since Robert Fisk is a regular contributor to the site, I'll just say I'll critique it.

First, we must put forward a clear and achievable plan for ending the war in Iraq and preventing similar future conflicts.

"Achievable" is a key word. As I have pointed out before, wishful thinking is not a plan. Even if I agreed with the Left's goals, which I certainly don't, I would still slam them for having no obvious connection of goals to means. As the rest of Corr's essay shows, he is likewise living in lalaland. He thinks that the status quo ante bellum can be restored simply by wishing it so. Read on.

We believe in the rule of international law over the rule of force -- and that international conflicts must be resolved by the international community.

Well, bucko, the conflict in Iraq is nearly resolved now, and it was resolved by the international community. Fifty nations are part of the coalition (with varying participation, to be sure), and the campaign has the authority of 17 UN resolutions over 12 years. As I pointed out in a different context, without force there is no rule of law, and that in fact, international good order and indeed, civilization itself, depends upon force.

The peace movement must demand an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of US and British troops from Iraq, supervised by UN peacekeeping forces. This should be part of a broader UN directed effort, both to provide humanitarian relief efforts and return weapons inspectors to finish the job that they had begun before the Bush Administration launched this war. All sanctions against Iraq -- other than arms-related sanctions -- should be immediately lifted and the Iraqi people allowed to rebuild their economy through an UN-administered program along the lines of the Oil for Food program.

Is any further proof than this paragraph needed to show that the so-called "peace" movement is intellectually bankrupt, bereft of rationality? Demand all you want, it means nothing. Having failed to prevent the establishment of justice in Iraq, Corr thinks he can stomp his foot, hold his breath and "demand" that coalition forces withdraw. And get this - they would do so under the supervision of "UN peacekeeping forces!" Yes, I can see Cameroon and Canada and France, et. al., just lining up to send troops to "supervise" American and British forces!

Note the claim that the "Bush Administration launched this war." Corr ignores the UN's role (UNSCR 1441, unanimously passed), the Congress's authorization and the British parliament's endorsement of PM Blair's resort to force. But all that aside, it was not any of them who "launched" this war. It is we who are ending the war. The war was begun by Saddam Hussein in August 1990 with his invasion of Kuwait, for which the Gulf War was a temporary solution, but not finally a peaceful one. Conflict has continued with varying levels of intensity since then, and Saddam has made war upon his people remorselessly.

As for the UN sanctions being lifted, this will certainly be done soon. But not from appeasement and surrender, but from victory.

Second, we need to make sure that our movement looks like our country. Although there are unprecedented numbers of people of color, working-class people, and youth currently involved in peace activities, we still have a long way to go. We must bridge old divides of race and class, of young and old, and between the cities and suburbs. We must work to ensure that the issues and concerns of all of these constituencies become central to our movement -- and that activists move from working, not only against the war in Iraq, but to transform a range of US domestic and foreign policies.

Let us praise Mr. Corr for realizing that the "peace" movement is not mainstream. But he then shows that the self deception of the Left is boundless. He believes that even though his movement is fringe now, it can become mainstream simply through good PR and something akin to membership drives. While such would increase participation somewhat, the fact is that the "issues and concerns" of the mainstream are sharply divergent from Corr's fringe movement, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, the more America's centrists understand what the fringes (either on the left or the right) want, the less they have to do with them.

The next two grafs call for "grassroots social change," whatever that is. Corr doesn't define it, but my guess is that the phrase is insider code-language of the Left. Then we get to the real point of the whole essay:

Finally, after this war ends, the peace movement needs to begin working on its own project of regime change -- not in Iran, or North Korea, but in Washington. And our "regime change" won't come through an invasion or bombing, but through sustained, grassroots, democratic activism.

Peace is not really the point of the "peace" movement. Defeating George W. Bush is the entire raison d'etre of the American Left.

A final but important thought: nowhere in Corr's piece does he give the slightest nod to the right of the Iraqi people to have a say in what happens inside their country. Only Bush and Blair have called for Iraqis to determine their own future anc control their own resources. The Left does not want the Iraqis to do either.

Update: Chris Lansdown read this post and added some worthwhile thoughts about how the the two sides talk past each other, mainly because they understand the authority and purpose of the UN and other transnational arrangements differently. He also says that it may be true, but irrelevant, that there are 17 UN resolutions backing the US/UK and allies liberating Iraq. Which is a good point.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 10:54:00 AM. Permalink |

Front page compilations of Baghdad's liberation
Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer's front page from yesterday, reflecting coverage of Baghdad Liberation Day. Links to images of other front pages follow.

Some of these sites only link to a week's worth of front-page images, so every seven days some images change. After April 16, some images may be overwritten.

Denver Post

The Age, Australia

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Miami Herald

Dallas News

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (link is overwritten over every week)

Quad-City Times

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:40:00 AM. Permalink |

What, me worry?

via Federal Review

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:39:00 AM. Permalink |

Huge rally in New York backs Iraq campaign

NEW YORK (AP) -- Thousands of construction workers and firefighters packed a noontime rally at ground zero Thursday in support of the war in Iraq which, to many of them, began right there on Sept. 11, 2001.

The rally stretched for several blocks north from the World Trade Center site. Carpenters, electricians and firefighters carried American flags and homemade signs and chanted "USA! USA!"

Police and organizers estimated the crowd at more than 15,000. The rally was sponsored by the Building & Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. (cite)

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:37:00 AM. Permalink |

Captured Iraqi colonel was a key to taking Baghdad
And a lot more good information about the fall of Baghdad in yesterday's USA Today.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:37:00 AM. Permalink |

Quotes of spectacularly wrong people
Compiled by Andrew Sullivan.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:36:00 AM. Permalink |

The Grinch watches Baghdad freed
Steven Den Beste's posting, "The Grinch Who Stole Quagmire," is the must-read bit of the day.

by Donald Sensing, 4/11/2003 06:36:00 AM. Permalink |

Any display of American flags is now forbidden
CNN just reported that any display whatsoever of the American flag by US forces inside Iraq is now prohibited by CENTCOM.

I presume that the troops will rip the flag patch off their uniforms now.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 11:10:00 PM. Permalink |

"Thousands and thousands" of Iraqi soldiers heading for allied lines
CNN's Brent Sadler is reporting as I write this that many thousands of Iraqi soldiers in northern Iraq, 75 km south of Kifri, are walking unarmed toward allied lines. "These are beaten defeated people," Brent just said. He said he has spoken with some of them who said they had been positioned near Kirkuk. Some are barefoot. They don't seem to have any idea where they are going, says Brent, but some have told him that they are quitting the fight. They have no provisions or transport. They say they gave their weapons to the pesh merga, the Kurdish fighters allied with the US and UK. The PM allowed them to depart.

Many of the Iraqi soldiers are wearing civilian clothes, or what is left of them. Brent said that the rows of men stretches over the horizon. He said that several of them said their commanders abandoned them days ago when the bombing got hard.

Here are two TV captures:

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 11:05:00 PM. Permalink |

The critics
Heh!

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:58:00 PM. Permalink |

After the fighting
Austin Bay explains a few of the postwar tasks for the allies in Iraq.

The dicey changeover, the phase the Pentagon calls "war termination," is extremely complex and its strategic political significance extraordinary.

With a peaceful and more just 21st century the grand strategic goals, US and allied forces liberating Iraq must –more or less simultaneously-- end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, explain the inexplicable to orphans, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law from embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, re-arm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, scotch terrifying rumors, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers and blackmarketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes, get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and al-Jazeera.

Update: David Warren makes another point:

Saddam Hussein had 30 years to make Iraq unliveable; naturally people such as the West's peace marchers in street and media expect the U.S. military to put it right in 30 minutes.

Just wait for the howls to increase. The UN has already accused US and UK of violating Geneva Convention for failing to protect hospitals from looters. There will be a lot more such ankle biting to come.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Is this letter writer embarrassed? She should be!
From the letters section of this morning's Tennessean:

How ironic that the same people who want to take away the war protesters' First Amendment rights, are the same people to wave their Fifth Amendment rights at the mention of gun control.

And before any of you flag-wavers out there call someone un-American, I suggest taking a look at the kind of car you drive.

Yeah, my Fifth Amendment shotgun is cleaned and oiled. As for my cars, one is a Chevy (remember, "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet"?) and the other is a Nissan, which is Japanese. I seem to recall that we once had a period of unpleasantness with Japan 'bout 60 years ago, but it is a dues-paying member of the coalition of the willing today. So what's her point?

She claims that people "want to take away the war protesters' First Amendment rights." Who wants to? Nobody I know of have read of. This is a typical left-wing accusation - their opponents are freedom-bashing dissent crushers, but no specifics are given, of course. All are tarred with the same broad brush. So, letter writer, go all the way: what are the names of the persons who want to revoke protestors' First Amendment rights, and what is the proof?

I ask the question, and the sound of one hand clapping ensues.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:42:00 PM. Permalink |

Compelling video of firefight
MSNBC today broadcast video from Monday of the thick of a firefight by a 3d Inf. Div. supply column, some of the best video of the war (click the entry, "Video: Monday firefight in Baghdad"). Cameraman Craig White, who has covered other wars, said on MSNBC that the fighting was so intense that he almost picked up a rifle and started shooting himself. He said the chaplain actually did so.

In one scene, while four soldiers are carrying a wounded soldier away on a stretcher, the wounded man picks up his shotgun and shoots two rounds.

Most of the soldiers were not infantrymen; White said it was the first time most of them had seen battle. Altogether, the fight last several hours. It was ended when a couple of Bradleys arrived.

The video at the link is eight minutes long. The resolution is poor, but it is still worth seeing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:16:00 PM. Permalink |

The Best of Baghdad Bob
Is all right here. (via Command Post)

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 04:42:00 PM. Permalink |

A Marine's unedited email from the very front line
2d Battalion, 23d Marines, has probably seen the heaviest combat of the war. Brian Taylor of the battalion emailed his brother about it, posted in its entirety by CPO Sparkey. Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 04:23:00 PM. Permalink |

George McGovern: US should nuke them all
At least, that's Bill Hobb's take on McGovern's latest lunacy. I think Bill's right. But does McGovern really even realize the enormous immorailty of his position? Read Bill's post, then take a look at this one.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 04:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraqis must buy US-supplied water
But not from the United States.

Earlier this week, U.S. military officials came up with a solution to the chaos surrounding the distribution of water to civilians in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr : They are providing water free to locals with tanker trucks, who are being allowed to sell the precious liquid for a "reasonable" fee. "This provides them with an incentive to hustle and to work," an Army commander told a reporter for the New York Daily News. (cite)

Hat tip: I Should Be Doing Homework.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 04:08:00 PM. Permalink |

Privatizing Iraq's oil production
Iraqi exiles say that the next Iraqi government should not have the oil monopoly.

"We are going to 'demonopolise' the oil," Dara Attar, an Iraqi Kurd oil consultant told AFP after two days of meetings in London.

"The government is going to be a federal state, therefore the economy will be different. It's going to be done in a way to serve the federal state," said Attar, one of a 15-strong body charged by the US State Department with planning Iraq's post-war oil policy.

About which a Canadian blogger responds that such a plan,

will have the leftists all in a tizzy. First, the war, and now the welcoming of multinational oil conglomerates into the country! The horror. Yet the model works remarkably well in Alberta. The government's coffers are flush with the revenue of resource royalties, and Albertans are reaping the benefits. In fact, there is serious talk within the PC Party there of scrapping income tax within the next ten to fifteen years. I have faith that much the same experience can be had in Iraqi if they do it right. Remember: monopolies bad (especially STATE monopolies), competition good.

Of course, as this blogger points out, the Left opposes any privitization.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 04:04:00 PM. Permalink |

Marines take 3 dozen casualties
Ollie North, with 1st MEF, reported a short time ago that since dawn in Iraq today, the Marines suffered one man killed and 35 evacuated with wounds from fighting in north baghdad. He said this is the highest number of casualties suffered in a single day since the campaign began. CNN is reporting 22 wounded, not 35.

CENTCOM has been saying all along that this fight is not over by a long shot.

Update, late evening April 10: Ollie North is live reporting that the Marines took about 50 casualties. The fight started at a Saddam palace, then moved to a mosque. Most of the enemy were foreign mercenaries with no overall command and control. They were small groups, sometimes only pairs, of gunmen. An iman told the Marines that he was asking his faithful to turn the mercenaries over to the Americans.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 11:00:00 AM. Permalink |

"GIs meant candy. . . "
That's what a WW 2 veteran told Stephen Ambrose (I have posted this quote before), but here is a great shot from Gannett that makes the point anew:

The caption reads, "Spc. Ryan Muller, 21, of Popular Bluff, Mo., with the 1-327 Infantry Regiment, hands candy to an Iraqi child in the town of Kufa near Najaf, Iraq, April 9. (John Partipilo/The Tennessean)."

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 10:30:00 AM. Permalink |

Good photo slide show
The Tennessean has a link to Gannett's slide show. It's pretty good.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 10:26:00 AM. Permalink |

The three most important national capitals watching Iraq's fall
Who they are might surprise you;
Why Britain is the key player for the next step

My friend and longtime reader Richard Heddleson emails,

Even 40 years after Marshall MacLuhan I'm not sure we understand the power of the medium of television. It reaches the reptile brain as nothing else does. TV has the power to convey today's events much more realistically than the newsreels of 50 years ago conveyed D-Day weeks after the fact.

So what I'm wondering is how is this being viewed in three capitals? No, not Paris, Berlin and Russia, that's old Europe. I'm thinking Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran.

Beijing has got to be looking at a kill ratio of maybe 500-1,000 to 1 and wondering exactly how they will compete. I suspect they pushed any plans for invading Taiwan or getting the U. S. upset back for 25 years or more. This was already apparent in their willingness to sit on Kim Jong-il last week.

In New Delhi, they have got to be wondering about all that Russian equipment they have bought and continue to buy. I wonder how much of the doctrine they bought? They also have to be wondering how to warm up to the U. S. There seems to me to be a lot in common, a lot of mutual interests, but we never seem to have a relationship that jells.

In Tehran, they are now just about surrounded by us. They know the CIA must be working hard to quietly stoke the fires of internal revolution. Externally, the worst thing that could happen is to have a prosperous, confident, liberal democracy next door. Once they fall, the rest of the Arab tyrants have a real problem, so there is a lot to be said for pushing them.

Well, I said in January that when the North Koreans see how Iraq is finished, they will come to their senses very rapidly.

As for Iran, Britain will be key. American columnists started to whine not long before the Iraq campaign began that instead of a "rush to war" we had adopted instead a slow amble to war, with endless diplomatic gambits. Several national columnists explained that Bush's willingness to offer yet another resolution to the UNSC was to prop up Blair's teetering government. (The resolution was never offered, though.)

I think a more compelling reason for keeping Britain in the Iraq fight is dealing with Iran. Since the ejection of the Shah and the rule of the ayatollahs, more than two decades ago, the United States has had little contact with Iranians inside the country. But the Brits still have an open embassy there and enjoy a wide array of formal and informal contacts of every kind. The real key player in grappling with Iran will be Blair, not Bush, and for this reason it was indeed critical to help keep Britain in the fray.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 10:07:00 AM. Permalink |

Meanwhile in an alternate universe, the New York Times
I am not the first to observe that the New York Times has multiple personalities that never acknowledge each other. Right on the heels on M. Gordon's good article about the speed and adaptability of US forces in winning the war (see next post down) comes this piece of junk:

A dismayed hush fell over Firdos Square in Baghdad yesterday as a United States marine [sic] pulled an American flag over the head of Saddam Hussein's statue like a gallows hood.

The sight also silenced news anchors and many viewers: the tableau of conquest was exactly the image most likely to offend the Muslim world.

First of all, I was there - vicariously by live TV - and there was no "dismayed hush" when a US Marine draped the American flag over Saddam's statue's head (photo here). The crowd around the statue cheered. The dismay in is the mind of the Times' writer, Alessandra Stanley, not the Iraqis.

The sight didn't silence news anchors. Anchors are paid to talk, and talk they did. I was surfing all three main cable news shows, and all of the anchors and reporters kept right on talking. And how does Stanley know the sight silenced "many viewers"? What, did they call her up right away and tell here, "I was screaming with joy until I saw that flag go up, and then I was silenced - silenced, mind you! In dismay!"

As for "offending the Muslim world," let me see . . . uh, I don't care! I get offended when 18 Muslim terrorists, all Arabs, fly airliners into buildings or crash them into a field, killing all aboard. I get offended when Muslim terrorists kill US Navy sailors aboard USS Cole. I get offended when they truck bomb American embassies, killing Americans and hundreds of other, non-Arab Muslims.

If draping the US flag over an Arab dictator's bronze head offended Arabs then I say raise as many such flags as we can. Let them be offended all day long, and let them worry about the American street, because we will no longer worry about theirs. As I posted at the time, that flag was the funeral shroud of tyranny. Let all who saw it take that to heart.

Ms. Stanley, bless her left-wing soul, has inexcusably lumped "Arabs" and "Muslims" into one indistinguishable mass. She either does not know or does not care that a small minority of Muslims are Arabs. There are more Muslim Indians than there are Arab Muslims. Indonesia has more than 200 million Muslims. And they don't give a tinker's dam about Saddam Hussein. Hussein has never presented himself as a Muslim hero and the vast majority of Muslims worldwide have never thought of him as one.

Any Muslims "offended" by the flag were only Arabs whose Islamic faith was coincidental to their taking offense. It was their arabism that suffered a body blow, not their religion. And they know it. Too bad the Ms. Stanley doesn't.

More left-wing slop from the NYT. What a crock.

Update: Jeff Jarvis has a few choice words about this article as well.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:34:00 AM. Permalink |

Patton's rule reigned for the last three weeks
I wrote a medium-long post last January predicting that the Iraq campaign would demonstrate why improvisation is central to how the US military fights. Or, as we used to say somewhat sarcastically when I was a young officer, "Flexibility is the key to success in today's modern, volunteer, all-action Army!"

But undergirding the American military's flexibility is professionalism, the true foundation of successful improvisation. Even as skilled a tactician and professional officer as Gen. George S. Patton knew that. He drilled his men mercilessly on the fundamentals of warfare, but emphasized to them, “There is only one principle of war that is true in all times and situations: use all the means at hand to inflict all the damage you can upon the enemy.” That, to Patton, was a rule, all else was mere guideline.

So, observes NYT reporter Michael Gordon,

If there is a single reason for the allied success in toppling Saddam Hussein's government, it is the flexibility the American military demonstrated in carrying out its campaign.

From the very start the American military had to adapt to fickle allies, changes ordered by superiors in Washington and new tactics by their foe.

American forces began the campaign without the northern front called for in the strategy and with fewer troops than had been planned. They were forced to advance the date of the land attack, and they fought battles in the southern cities of Iraq that had never been anticipated.

In the final analysis, the speed of the allied land assault, coupled with American airpower, enabled the military to arrive at the outskirts of Baghdad before the Iraqis could set up an adequate defense.

"We executed faster than they could react," a senior American military official said today.

Executing faster than they can react is known as "getting inside their OODA loop." OODA stands for Orient-Observe-Decide-Act, a model for decision-making and followup developed by Korean War fighter pilot John Boyd. Now used in business and academia as well as the military, Joe Katzman has a post with other good links about it.

Why is this ability so important? John Allison commented on on of my earlier posts about training Arab soldiers:

My students were sufficiently intelligent to grasp the info and quite capable of memorizing sufficiently to appear to know what they were doing but any sense of understanding was rare. I tried on a number of occasions to explain that doctrine was a skeleton that experience fleshed out and could then be bent to serve your needs while they mostly looked at it (doctrine) as a cookbook that must be followed at all times.

It's not that American commanders throw away the manual; they don't. It's that doctrines are broad avenues rather than narrow paths.

by Donald Sensing, 4/10/2003 08:06:00 AM. Permalink |

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