Ah, my plot is bearing fruit!
Richard Heddleson emails to say that it's obvious I am having an effect!

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 04:55:00 PM. Permalink |

Sorry about light blogging today -
High work load and it's my daughter's 10th birthday to boot. Yes, she was a Halloween baby. And if you remember your own 10th birthday, then you remember it was a big deal to move into double digits. So we're celebrating and trick or treating and all that sort of thing like that there.

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 04:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Economic growth since Reagan's first term
Other than actual economics bloggers, I don't know of anyone who posts more frequently or cogently on economics than Bill Hobbs.

So read this - all of it, and wonder along with Bill why Howard Dean is lying about the economic picture - yes, lying - since 2001. Hint: Dean says, "Bush has compiled the worst economic record since the Great Depression and it is going to take a lot more than one quarter of growth to clean it up."

But eight of the last ten quarters - Bill has a neato graph - have shown positive growth, and the two that weren't positve were flat, not negative. Then there's this news from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The number of people working in January, 2001, when George Bush took office: 136.0 million

The number of people employed as of September 2003: 137.6 million

Adds Bill, "That's right. There are 1.6 million more Americans working today than at the end of the Clinton administration." Bill has a lot more, so take a look.

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 02:23:00 PM. Permalink |

Stop the internet sales tax
From Americans for Tax Reform:

The Senate is poised to pass historic taxpayer protection legislation this week. S. 150, the Internet Non-Discrimination Act will permanently extend the current Internet access tax moratorium. Unfortunately, the bill is being held up by a few misguided Senators. While opponents of the permanent Internet tax moratorium claim that the bill imposes significant costs on the states, the true agenda is to tax the Internet. Passage of the Internet Non-Discrimination act represents an important first step in keeping the Internet tax-free. If these Senators are successful in killing the bill, states and localities will be able to begin taxing everything that is available through the Internet, including e-mail, all sales and services, and even parental filtering software.

Incredibly, one of my two Republican senators, Lamar Alexander, wants this bill to be defeated. And the other, Bill Frist, the Senate's majority leader, could force the issue to vote in the Senate but won't. The word I hear is that if the bill went to vote today, it would pass. The House's version has already passed.

To contact your senator, go the the US Senate web page and follow the links.

Remember - ask your senator to vote in favor of S.150, the Internet Non-Discrimination Act.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's phone number is (202) 224-3344. If you are Tennessean (or not, for that matter) and want to gnaw on Sen. Alexander some, his phone number is (202) 224-4944.

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 01:39:00 PM. Permalink |

Methodist Church wins right to advertise next to porn star on Times Square
Porn star Jenna Jameson has an easier time getting billboard space on Times Square than the United Methodist Church, but it seems as if the UMC will get some space after all - and without hiring a single lawyer. Also, this tieback. HT: Jim Duffy, via email.

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 01:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Al Qaeda threatens to make more threats
Via Cori Dauber via Glenn Reynolds we find this shocking piece of breaking news!

Al-Qaeda planning US 'death blow'
From correspondents in Dubai
31oct03
OSAMA bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network is planning a "death blow" against Americans during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a Saudi magazine reports in its issue due out today.

Well, sorry, Osama, but I'm underwhelmed, because those who can, do. Those who can't, talk.

I do not pretend that al Qaeda has no more capability to conduct additional, deadly attacks. But "death blow"? Not a chance. See here, for example.

by Donald Sensing, 10/31/2003 10:37:00 AM. Permalink |

The funniest eBay auction ever
All over Beanie Babies. HT: BOTWT.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 09:37:00 PM. Permalink |

The Iraq-Vietnam FAQ
Ralph Peters has it in spades.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 09:16:00 PM. Permalink |

Female score: 516. Male score: 1908
Yeah, I'm male, says Gender Genie, much maler than either Andrew Sullivan (well, that just leaves me speechless) or Glenn Reynolds, who turns out to be, uh, shall we say, "gender confused."

Update: Daniel Chisholm emailed that he ran through the Genie the US Constitution's Bill of Rights and discovered it was 337-196 feminine weighted. The Declaration of Independence, though, is solidly male - although not as male as One Hand Clapping! Hah! Take that, you powdered-wig-wearing pansies!

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 08:50:00 PM. Permalink |

Toy drive, school supplies and threats to kill kids who accept them
You know (surely!) about Operation Give, supporting Chief Wiggles and his comrades' toy drive for Iraqi children. The Chief has also asked for school supplies. There is another operation working to provide school supplies, too, called "Iraqi Schools." Its military sponsor is Major Gregg Softy, 1st Armored Division. So far, Iraqi Schools has received 44,254 lbs of donations.

A link from there is to a site called, "Operation Gratitude," which tells how to send care packages to US troops in Iraq. This would be a good idea for the holidays!

Links:

Iraqi Schools

Operation Give and Chief Wiggles

Operation Gratitude

From Iraqi Schools:

In Baghdad, most to all schools are guarded by armed guards, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their job is to protect the schools from looters when school is not in session, and the children from thugs and criminals when school is in session. The guards and their family normally reside on the grounds of the school yard under miserable conditions.

Yeah, and now the jihadis are threatening to kill schoolchildren who accept supplies.

Someone has been writing graffiti all over Baghdad threatening to kill children who accept the new schoolbags that are to be gifted to them by UNESCO for the new school season. Also warning that any hand waving to the infidel Americans will be cut.

God have mercy, I just want to cry. Listen, people, get off yer duffs and support these relief efforts with donations or money!

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 02:25:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraqis who've had it up to here with other Arabs
This Iraqi dentist-blogger is one. Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 02:12:00 PM. Permalink |

What is the purest form of football?
High school, college or NFL?

Yesterday’s Tennessean ran a three part feature called, "Which football is best?" Three sports writers promoted one of the three levels football is played:

For the best in substance and style, turn to the professionals.

See the best players at every position, those who have been the fittest to survive. The bottom line is this morning the Detroit Lions (1-6) would have beat any collegiate team in the land — by 30.

High school: Give me the game in its purest form.

Give me $1 bottles of water, $2 hot dogs and $3 programs (enter your Coliseum joke here).

Give me college aspirations instead of contract negotiations.

Give me a taped national anthem that's barely audible over the speaker system, not someone who thinks a recording contract is attainable at Floyd Stadium.

Give me book reports, not police reports.

Give me a coach who has mastered the Wing-T who also has a master's degree.

Give me $5 tickets and free parking.

Give me the parents of a third-string quarterback being able to sit on the 50-yard line, not CEOs in club seats.

College: For tradition, drama there's a higher education.

Every game counts for something. There are no playoffs, no wild-card games and typically no second chances at teams.

Every week is a sudden-death playoff. Lose the opener, and you're in trouble. Win seven in a row and lose your next two, and you're probably in deeper trouble. There's no margin for error, which makes the intensity each week as pure and as pressure-packed as it gets.

Who in high school doesn't make the playoffs? Why even have a regular season?

And in the NFL, how often do we see a team struggle through the first month of the season only to rebound in time for the playoffs? In the college game, there is no such luxury.

Here’s a humorous chart that shows the real differences.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 02:00:00 PM. Permalink |

Howard Dean declares self a "square metrosexual"
In case you don’t know what a metrosexual is, read this.

Now Howard Dean aims to be the first metrosexual president. But he’s still confused:

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

"I'm a square," Dean declared ... I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

Nope, he sure doesn’t. And neither does the Denver Post writer.

Talk about pandering - he sucks up someone without even knowing who (or what) they are!

Hey Howard, I’m a frazzledamper! Are you one, too? You are!? Okay, I’ll vote for you!

Wait a minute . . . you’re not a square frazzledamper, are you?

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 01:59:00 PM. Permalink |

US soldiers who "seemed Jewish" were sent to concentration camp
POWs of Nazis were victim of the Holocaust

Four World War II American POWs spoke this week at Vanderbilt University about their brutal captivity by the Nazis because they "seemed Jewish."

On a cold German morning shortly before the end of World War II, a 19-year-old Tennessee soldier named Wallace Carden stood before Nazi officers as they issued the command:

''Jewish soldiers, one step forward.''

None of the 4,000 U.S. soldiers captured in the Battle of the Bulge moved, so the Nazis decided to pick out the soldiers who ''seemed'' Jewish and send them to a forced labor camp.

Carden was among those picked.

Three hundred and fifty soldiers were loaded onto boxcars and sent on a journey without food or water to the Berga camp in northern Germany.

More than 70 were Jewish.

Most, like Carden, were not.

And 70 - one in five - did not survive their captivity.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 01:56:00 PM. Permalink |

Dating tips
Michael Williams has 'em. Really.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 01:50:00 PM. Permalink |

"On the battle of ideas, we have unilaterally disarmed."
So said former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg. Tying in with my post yesterday of transforming Middle Eastern societies and polity comes an article in today's Washington Times about how the United States is fumbling in the dark in winning the war of ideas.

Several recent studies by the Congress and academic institutions have stated that the State Department, the lead agency for promoting American ideas, lacks direction for influencing foreign and especially Muslim publics in ways favorable to the United States.

"Despite the best efforts of American officials, [Iraqi] media are not getting the U.S. story," according to a State Department report on public diplomacy in the Muslim world. It also said that the White House "should provide for more coherent messaging and better overall coordination."

This lack of focus is one reason Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wondered whether a new agency should be established to coordinate American information efforts.

What we are talking about here is a national-level psyops campaign oriented at specific populations.

by Donald Sensing, 10/30/2003 08:25:00 AM. Permalink |

The Big Picture
There’s a difference between a rationale for the war and its casus belli.

Over the past few weeks the blogosphere has beat to death the refutation of the accusations that the president claimed Saddam’s Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. I’ll take it for granted that you, gentle readers, are familiar with those arguments and I’ll not recap them here.

However, I offer the thesis that the underlying rationale for toppling Saddam was not the same as the casus belli for the war.

Essentially, the casus belli is the legal case for the war. In Western history and international jurisprudence, a nation may justly claim the right to wage war for only a very few reasons, such as response to aggressive war being waged against it (that is, in response to an actual attack), the defense of other states that have suffered such an attack or, more recently, for enforcement of humanitarian objectives (1992-1993 in Somalia or NATO’s campaign in the former Yugoslavia, in example).

Proper casus belli has for centuries been tied inextricably to the Western religious theories of Just War. Rather than recap Just War theory here, I’ll simply invite you to peruse my essays index and read the relevant essays linked from there. (Yes, I know I am way tardy in updating the index. It’s the "rountuit" problem, you see.)

I spelled out in general terms the casus belli for the Iraq war in my February essay, Just cause exists for action against Iraq, published by the United Methodist News Service.

The political sturm und drang over not having found actual weapons of mass destruction has mostly faded now (the administration’s opposition turning a blind eye to the facts that Saddam’s WMD programs continued mostly apace). Now the arguments of the anti-administrationists, including most of the Democratic presidential candidates, go like this:

1. The president’s whole casus belli against Iraq was founded on the assertion that Iraq possessed actual WMDS and therefore was an "imminent threat" (as I said, I’ll not recount this bogus claim’s refutation. The opposition continues to claim it, though).

2. No actual WMDS have been found.

4. Therefore, the war to topple Saddam was unjust.

5. Therefore, the United States should withdraw immediately from Iraq, or failing that, completely turn over the reins of postwar administration there to the United Nations.

There is a saner side of the anti-administrationists which recognizes that even if the war was unjust, to abandon Iraq now would be unjust as well. Says Slate’s chief political correspondent, William Saletan:

I never believed Bush's claim that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was essential to the war on terror. I'm angry that Bush continues to invoke that bogus rationale for the invasion. But the assassinations and indiscriminate bombings we're witnessing in post-Saddam Iraq really are part of the war on terror. We can't crumple under this pressure any more than we could have crumpled four years ago in the showdown with Milosevic. Bush is right, just as Clark was right [in 1999, regarding Yugoslavia]: War is a contest of wills.

What Saletan is saying is that Bush was, charitably, wrong (non-charitably, a liar) to have claimed that the campaign to topple Iraq was a necessary part of the war on terrorism, but that the postwar, lower-intensity, ongoing conflict certainly is part of it.

Saletan exhibits perfectly the cognitive disconnect between the causes of the war and the underlying rationale of the war. They are related, but not the same. Put another way, the war’s short-term objective and its long-term objective are linear, but not equal. The long-term objective is a natural, though difficult consequence of the short-term objective and in fact is a key, fundamental reason we went to war against Saddam’s Iraq.

Wait for it, please. Let’s continue.

Comes now a blog called Blackfive, whose author posts of a Muslim Pakistani-American friend of his and a visit to a Pakistani bar with said friend in northwest Chicago (I think he means Chicago; he isn’t explicit).

One of my friends is a guy I met in grad school a few years ago. He's a lawyer that practices IP law and was pursuing a MS in Computer Science to further his knowledge of programming. He is brilliant. Went to U of Chicago undergrad, then Northwestern University Law. He works for one of the biggest law firms in the world. He is from Pakistan. His name is Masood.

Then to the bar, which was crowded with many other Pakistani men. (I have edited out Blackfive’s profanity.)

The course of our conversation eventually turned from sports and business to politics and religion - and it went badly. Almost immediately, the Israelis were blamed for everything from SARS to the price of bread.

Masood's younger brother just came right out with what everyone of them was alluding to: "The Jews control everything." ...

Masood: "Just like 9-11 where the Mossad flew planes into buildings." ...

Masood's older brother spoke again, pointing at me: "You are just too stupid to see. Americans are puppets of the Jews."

Me, ignoring Masood's idiot brother: "That's really ridiculous. You are telling me that Al Qaeda is controlled by the Mossad?"

Masood looked me right in the eye: "No. Al Qaeda didn't bomb the buildings. The Mossad did."

What I can tell you is that experience scared me. How can a guy be so well-educated and smart and successful in America and be so close-minded at the same time?

How can we ever convince people like Masood that "the Jews" aren't the problem - that his blindness is the problem? And if we can't convince the likes of him, how can we reach countless millions that don't have Masood’s liberal education, facility with English, or access to our media?

In response to Blackfive, Andrew Olmstead asks,

I wish I could say that surprises me, but my own experiences with Muslims in college led me to realize the real problem a long time ago: until and unless we can find some way of changing Islamic society, the war is only going to go on and get worse. We're talking about over a billion people, the majority of whom are teaching their children the same tired rants about how Jews run the world and are trying to keep them down. This is the true enemy we face. But how do you solve a problem like this?

We start by invading Iraq. Here’s why:

1. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 convinced the president, his administration and the American people as a whole that the status quo of relations between America and most of the Islamic world could not continue, for the very simple reason that the status quo was deadly to thousands of Americans, killed on their own soil. This fact was the sine qua non of America’s military campaign against Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the former case, Afghanistan was the direct base of operations that al Qaeda and its Taliban allies used to mount the 9/11 attacks. Regime change there was so obviously justified that not even the administration’s most strident political opponents did not oppose it (I don’t refer to the looney-tune Left fringe).

The case against Saddam’s Iraq was equally justified, but in a different way. A direct connection between Saddam and 9/11 has not been either demonstrated by the administration, but there are prewar, irrefutable, direct links between Saddam’s regime and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, which I covered in some detail in these posts:

The Saddam - bin Laden connection

Osama bin Laden’s strategic plan

Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq

Why does al Qaeda fight Americans in Iraq?

2. This being so, toppling Saddam was a key element in fighting al Qaeda. It placed American military forces on the ground in the center of the very key terrain of the entire Middle East.

The first objective, to topple Saddam and company, was just and necessary in its own right. In the fight against al Qaeda proper, taking down Iraq was not as severe a blow as taking down Afghanistan, but it did hurt them.

But the after effects, the ongoing guerilla war in Iraq, is not a sign of failure in the anti-terror war, as Sen. Tom Daschle claimed on ABC News last night, but of success. It forces al Qaeda and its allies to fight us there - and better there than again in New York or Washington or elsewhere on American soil.

Hence, the short-term objectives of the Iraq campaign: topple Saddam, then force al Qaeda et. al. to show themselves in Iraq. Then kill them. The enemy's infiltratration of foreign jihadis into Iraq also presents intelligence opportunities that can be exploited to determine who is directing al Qaeda, from where and by what means.

This is called the flypaper strategy, which Austin Bay also explained very well.

3. The intermediate objective in both Afghanistan and Iraq is to establish reasonably democratic institutions and governments there and prove America’s enduring commitment to the well being of the ordinary people. Again, this objective is just and good in its own right.

Iraq formed an advantageous confluence of events and circumstances that no other Islamic country offered:

A. It is strategically important both for its geographic location and its oil reserves.

B. The casus belli against Saddam’s government was clear and unambiguous, at least to anyone who analyzed it without ideological blinders on.

C. The people there had suffered under Saddam so severely that they were willing even to accept American invasion and occupation as a preferable alternative to continuing their status quo

D. Of all the Arab countries, none is more amenable to democratization than Iraq, which has been organized as a secular (though totalitarian) state for decades.

4. The truly long-term objective in toppling Saddam and democratizing Iraq is what forms the fundamental rationale for doing so. That rationale is to attempt (there are no guarantees) to inculcate far-reaching reforms within Arab societies themselves that will depress the causes of radical, violent Islamism. This task shall take a generation, at least; President Bush has said on multiple occasions that the fight against terror will occupy more presidencies than his own. I wrote in October 2001,

It will take a new kind of national commitment. It will cost a fortune. It will require new kinds of armies, armies not of soldiers but of engineers, agriculturalists, financiers, administrators and educators.

It will take decades and there are no guarantees. But the alternative is to fight culture and religious wars generation after generation.

I still stand by that. Steven Den Beste explained the concept in outline form thus:

The large solution is to reform the Arab/Muslim world. This is the path we have chosen.

The true root cause of the war is their failure and their resentment and frustration and shame caused by that failure. [See my long essay, The Soil of Arab Terrorism - DS ]

They fail because they are crippled by political, cultural and religious chains which their extremists refuse to give up. The real causes of their failure is well described by Ralph Peters. Most of the Arab nations suffer from all seven of his critical handicaps, and the goal of reform is to correct all seven, as far as possible.

If their governments can be reformed, and their people freed of the chains which bind them and cripple them, they will begin to achieve, and to become proud of their accomplishments. This will reduce and eventually eliminate their resentment.

Their governments would then cease needing scapegoats.

Their extremists would no longer have fertile ground for recruitment.

This is a huge undertaking; it will require decades because it won't really be complete until there's a generational turnover. But ultimately it is the only way to really eliminate the danger to us without using the "foot-and-mouth" solution (which is to say, nuclear genocide).

The primary purpose of reform is to liberate individual Arabs. This is a humanist reform, but it isn't a Christian reform. There will be no attempt to eradicate Islam as a religion. Rather, Islamism as a political movement, and as a body of law, and as a form of government must be eliminated, leaving Islam as a religion largely untouched except to the extent that it will be forced to be tolerant. The conceptual model for this is what we did in Japan after WWII, where only those cultural elements which were dangerous to us were eliminated, leaving behind a nation which was less aggressive, but still Japanese. No attempt was made to make Japan a clone of the US, and no such attempt will be made with the Arabs.

This strategy is fraught with risk and may not succeed. But playing a deadly game of whack-a-mole with Islamic terrorists is a strategy doomed to fail.

The campaign against terrorism is foundationally a contest of wills - dare I say it, a spiritual struggle.

The real issue is whether the Western Civilization shall prevail against the last vestige of medievalism; whether the rule of men who shoot their prisoners, enslave their women and deny the rights of self-determination to their own people, shall kill us and displace us, to whom the individual and individual rights are sacred and whose laws require respect for freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and whose traditions preserve freedom from fear and cruelty. In the long history of civilization, this task is to be done now.

Toppling Saddam & Co. is not the end of our struggle. It is not even the end of the beginning of our struggle. But it is a crucial step in the beginning.

Update: Bill Hobbs points the way to Victor Davis Hanson's NRO essay, "The Event of the Age: Iraq is becoming the deciding issue of our time," which happens to make some of the same points I made in regard to the effects of a democratic Iraq on the rest of Arablandia. There is also this cogent, delicious sentence:

These Europeans like multilateral solutions not out of principle so much as because the tortuous process of implementing them creates the illusion that, in the meantime, nothing must be done.

I remember making something of the same point once, that the Left treasured the Middle East "peace process" not because it might lead to peace, but because it was a process.

Update 2: Social transformation of Middle Eastern states was also pretty clearly indicated as an American objective in the infamous leaked Rumsfeld memo.

Update 3: President Bush made this case explicitly in his 6 Nov. 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, in which he said,

The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.

I posted other thoughts here.

by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 05:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Iraqi Toy Drive on MSNBC
Bill Hobbs has it covered like a rug, including the transcript of the interview of Chief Wiggles on carborough County last Monday night.

You can view the segment online.

As Bill says, you can always find updates on the toy drive at Chief Wiggles' blog, and visit OperationGive.org to help out.

by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 05:00:00 PM. Permalink |

News from the front you haven't heard
And of the type you probably won't ever hear, not from the deadstream mainstream media, anyway. It's here.

by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 03:50:00 PM. Permalink |

Abrams tank crewmen killed in ambush
An unusual event occurred today in Iraq: two American Abrams tank crewmen were killed in an ambush.

The Abrams tank was disabled when it was struck by a land mine or a roadside bomb Tuesday night during a patrol near Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division. A third crewman was evacuated to a U.S. hospital in Germany, she said.

It was believed to be the first M1 Abrams main battle tank destroyed since the end of major combat May 1. During the active combat phase, several of the 68-ton vehicles the mainstay of the U.S. Army's armored forces were disabled in combat.

Although a handful of Abrams were lost in combat (most were reparable) my recollection is that only four crewmen were killed in action, lost when the tank’s driver was shot through the head, resulting in the tank plunging into a river, sinking and causing the drowning deaths of the other three men.

Today’s ambush os of no small interest to me because as I posted a few months ago, my eldest son enlisted in the US Marine Corps as an armor crewman. His choice of specialties was driven in part by me for reasons I explained here - mainly the fact that Abrams tanks are so highly survivable.

In other news, last night on ABC World news tonight, a reporter (name escapes me and I didn’t find the story on ABC News’ web site) filed a story from a day he spent riding around with Iraqi police. No American troops were with them. The Iraqi policemen were clear that they understood the danger they faced, that jihadis were targeting them. But they stuck to their job and were doing it well.

The reporter said that policement were uniformly angry at accusations they were collaborators with the Americans or American puppets. "We’re working for Iraq," one forcefully insisted. "We aren’t working for the Americans." That’s not an exact quote, but it’s pretty close. It was a good story, well done.

by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 09:18:00 AM. Permalink |

The US out of Europe now!
Eugene Volokh suggests that it is long, long overdue for the US military to leave Europe, by certain standards of honor. Which is what I said back in April, starting with these troops.

by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 07:17:00 AM. Permalink |

The Jihadists' three-fourths solution
Guerilla War Revisited:

The classic requirements for the successful prosecution of a guerilla war have traditionally been:

a secure base in a foreign sanctuary or remote fastness where forces can be trained, equipped and readied;
a secure source of revenue
a guerilla army, or body of armed men;
a political arm, such as popular front, national liberation front or other such organization which puts forward an alternative program of governance

All successful guerrilla movements, from the US War of Independence onward, possessed these characteristics. Although Vietnam conflict was largely fought by North Vietnamese regulars, it still had these attributes. The intifada is a modern example of how these principles are applied.

The terrorist forces now attacking Iraq have all these characteristics, save one. They have not, as yet, created a political arm which will widely appeal to the different Iraqi ethnic groups. ...

... the terrorist attacks, although they have succeeded in charming the Western media, have two glaring operational shortfalls: they have not dealt any kind of effective blow against US forces; second, they have killed dozens of Iraqis and maimed hundreds of civilians during a sacred holiday period. Their momentary fame on the pages of Le Monde must be paid for by incurring the hatred of ordinary Iraqis, and the cops in especial. There's nothing like bombing police stations to get the flatfoots really motivated.

RTWT. It’s not long.


by Donald Sensing, 10/29/2003 07:13:00 AM. Permalink |

Why the jihadists will lose
Quite apart from the fact that the jihadists attacking US and coalition targets are simply outgunned, they are also doing exactly the wrong things:

In the “hearts and minds” campaign, the “jihadists” are clueless. Their actions reflect this: those who are “resisting the occupation,” supposedly on the behalf of the Iraqi people and Islam itself, do so via attacks on the first day of Ramadan, in which over 90% of the dead and wounded are Iraqis. Fellow Muslims.

More and more. the jihadists - who are mostly (maybe exclusively) not Iraqis - are turning their weapons against Iraqi police and civilians.

It is clear even to a blind man, when an outsider with a Syrian passport is part of a larger plot that kills mostly Iraqis, that is not internal dissent against “occupation.” In Baghdad, Zeyad says, message received: “The Mujahedeen have sent the Iraqi people their Ramadan greetings [...] Several people were injured in nearby houses and the Furat secondary school adjacent to the Red Cross building.”

“My brother came home from school very early this morning and told us all about it. His high school is about 200 meters from the targetted site. He told us that blood was all over the place and people from the area were putting injured kids from the school into taxis taking them to hospitals. Parents were panicking trying to find their children among the mess.”

“I can see what they are trying to do. The Red Cross has been working in Iraq since 1980 and it has never been attacked before [...] Everyone I talked to today was dismayed.”

Will we hear outcries from the Left about the jihadists' war crimes of attacking the Red Cross in Baghdad?

Well, no. of course not. How silly of me even to suggest it.

by Donald Sensing, 10/27/2003 10:06:00 PM. Permalink |

How Parisian taxicabs wrecked the world
Would the world now be better off if Germany had won the Battle of the Marne? An historical thought experiment. . .

The other day famed radio commentator Paul Harvey’s "The Rest of the Story" segment told of the German army’s drive toward Paris in the opening weeks of World War I, and how it was halted. The Germans were following the Schlieffen Plan, named for its originator, strategist Alfred von Schlieffen, who devised it in 1905.

Every major power in Europe had various war plans in store in case war broke out. France had four major plans, all concentrating on recapturing Alsace Lorraine from Germany. France had lost the territory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

The Schlieffen plan was a national military strategy in its own right, not merely a battle plan. Schlieffen and his German General Staff successors understood that their principal enemy would be France. But they also had to be ready to fight Russia at the same time.

The main thrust of the Schlieffen Plan was to devote only enough resources against Russia to hold the line there, while sending overwhelming forces against France. France had to be defeated in no more than eight weeks so that German forces could be shifted to fight Russia. The calculated risk, which proved correct, was that while Russia enjoyed a near-bottomless pool of manpower, it would take more than two months to mobilize. France had to be defeated within those two months.

Though France and Germany shared a common border, the Schlieffen Plan called for invading France through Holland and Belgium, to the north. By the time World War I broke out, Belgium had long declared its neutrality in continental warfare; Great Britain had warned that violations of Belgium’s neutrality would invoke Britain’s armed might.

Nonetheless, heavy German forces under Helmuth von Moltke, who had replaced von Schlieffen as chief of staff in 1906, invaded Belgium in August 1914 (also Luxembourg). Holland was left alone to keep it out of the war.

An old soldier’s saying goes, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Neither did the Schlieffen Plan. The Belgian army, less than 200,000 strong, offered stiffer resistance than the Germans had anticipated. Also, the Russian Second Army advanced into East Prussia and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) entered Belgium much more quickly than had been anticipated.

Nonetheless, the momentum continued to favor the Germans. The Germans decisively crushed the Russian army in late August in the Battle of Tannenberg. French and British forces fell back into France. By early September German units were within 30 miles of Paris. By that line, however, the German supply and command-and-control system was strained. Von Moltke wanted to exercise more control over the field forces than technology permitted him to do effectively from his headquarters far away. He refused to go closer. The supply lines were stretched as well.

Yet the allied situation was approaching chaos. The French government evacuated to Bordeaux and Paris began preparations to be besieged. French and British forces were exhausted, having been in near-constant combat for a month and in constant retreat for almost two weeks. Finally, the French forces, joined by the much smaller BEF, made a line south of the river Marne.

Here the tide of war turned. The Franco-British forces counterattacked and stopped the German advance cold. But as I wish to explore, was this really a good thing, considering history since then?

The French and British attacked the Germans on Sept. 6, opening a 30-mile-wide gap in the German lines when the Germans shifted forces to meet the attack. The allies promptly poured through this gap. This battle was later named the Battle of the Marne.

But by Sept. 7 the battle was again grave for the allies. The Germans had not only contained the allies’ advance, they were positioned to destroy the French Sixth Army.

The Sixth Army was saved only by the innovative use of Parisian taxicabs, 600 in all, to ferry 6,000 French infantrymen from Paris to the front on Sept. 7.

The next night the French again attacked, and on Sept. 9 the German army began to retreat under orders from von Moltke, who feared a crushing breakthrough by the allies. But the Germans withdrew only 40 miles and dug in north of the River Aisne. In no shape to continue their offensive, the French had lost a quarter-million men (the smaller Brit force lost 12,733). The French and British forces prepared trench works facing the Germans. Before long the two sides were racing to extend their defensive belts from the English Channel to the Swiss border.

Four years of stagnant trench warfare would ensure, broken only by the arrival of the American Expeditionary Forces in the spring of 1918. Germany agreed to an armistice to take effect on Nov. 11, 1918, and formally surrendered subsequently.

What if the Germans had taken Paris?

After the war, the Germans generals involved in the Battle of the Marne declared that von Moltke’s order to withdraw was far premature and that the Germans could have finally prevailed against the allies. This declaration is not without justification, but on their heads must lay some of the blame: their communications and status reports to von Moltke were fragmentary and not timely because land lines had not been laid sufficiently and wireless signals had to be relied on - this in 1914 at the infancy of the radio age. More energy in fixing their communications might well have won the war for the Germans, for they had so far advanced only from victory to victory.

General Alexander von Kluck, commander of the German First Army, forcefully argued after the war that his army should have counterattacked rather than retreated. But von Kluck never got the chance to press his case at the time; his orders presented him with a fait accompli and in light of the withdrawal of friendly forces around him, he had no choice but to comply with von Moltke’s order to withdraw as well.

Yet it does seem apparent that the French offensive, despite the enormous gap it caused in the German line, presented the Germans with a great opportunity as well as great danger. More imaginative commanders, say those Germany enjoyed in the early days of World War II, might have been able to bring the action to a point that enamored the Germans generals for decades: kasselschlacht, or "cauldron battle," in which they hammer the enemy so mercilessly that he must abandon the field headlong, die or surrender.

Had they done so, the way to Paris would have been open. The British were not committed to ground warfare on the continent in a truly major way then, it was only the second month of the war, after all. With Paris occupied and the French field armies destroyed or scattered, the French would have every reason to sue for peace and the Brits would not have stood in their way.

The French would not have been subjected to abject surrender. The Germans had occupied Paris before, in 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Under the terms of France’s surrender, Germany kept Alsace-Lorraine and dictated the French to pay $1 billion in reparations. (It should be noted, though, that the Germans physically occupied a fairly small area of Paris, and the occupation itself was done only as part of the terms of the peace.)

As far as Franco-German relations were concerned, the 1871 war ended with the Germans going home, except they kept Alsace-Lorraine.

Had the Germans besieged Paris again in 1914 - it had withstood several months siege in the earlier war - it is most likely that the war very soon would have ended with a negotiated peace. The domestic aftermath of the F-P War in France was terrible. Civil war raged in Paris for more than three months and was very violent. More than 30,000 Parisians died and many were exiled by the government when it regained control. Paris remained under French martial law for five years afterward.

No one in the French government of 1914 would have been easy-minded about that experience possibly being repeated, hence the government would have certainly sued for peace had the Germans surrounded Paris, in my opinion. The British would have pressed for the un-occupation of Belgium, which the Germans would have gladly acceded. Other than that, the Brits had no dog in the fight, as their entire strategy regarding the continent was wholly reactionary to events. France and Britain had been historical rivals and often outright enemies for centuries, while Britain and Germany had long been friendly and had long enjoyed ties between their royal families. France and Britain had been on the verge of war as late as 1898 over events in Sudan. However, the two countries had established in 1904 an Entente Cordiale, a "friendly agreement" to be at peace with one another.

Likewise, Britain and Russia were at imperial odds before the war, but they had come to a friendly settlement, with its own entente, in 1907. The object of forming the two ententes was Germany and its allies Italy and Austria-Hungary. (Italy dropped out in 1914, though, and joined the allies in 1915.) So by 1914, Britain, France and Russia were essentially, though not formally, allied with one another against Germany and Austria-Hungary, a fact they formalized, ironically, only two days before the Battle of the Marne began. They announced the Triple Entente, which bound the three governments to make no separate peace with Germany.

But there is little reason to suppose that the Czar would have continued the war against Germany in the east if France fell. And a mere treaty agreement of the Triple Entente would not have stood in the way of France capitulating to Germany by reason of German force majeur on the battlefield.

So had the allies lost the Battle of the Marne, the status quo ante bellum would have almost certainly formed the basis of the peace. Other than keeping Alsace-Lorraine, Germany had no territorial ambitions to the west, nor to the east. (Russia was very wary of Austria-Hungary’s influence and ambitions among the Slavic lands, though, and that may have been a continuing theater of conflict.)

Effects of World War I

The war lasted four bloody years after the Battle of the Marne. Millions of soldiers of all four major European powers died and millions more were maimed. An entire generation of men was gutted.

In the east, the war led directly to revolution and the overthrow of the Czar in Russia. Within a few years a communist government was established and the USSR was a reality.

British politics were permanently transformed. The rise of the Labour Party is directly attributable to social and demographic changes in the UK, brought about by the war.

France suffered catastrophic losses of people and material. Its political leadership did not recover by the time the Nazi army invaded in 1940. It fell quickly then.

The effects upon Germany were extreme. Punitive reparations were imposed by France and Britain. The imperial family went into exile in Holland and the Social Democrats assumed power. But this party enjoyed stratified support, not broad support, and was not able to govern effectively. The terms of the peace were despised by the German people. The 1920s saw economic collapse and severe domestic unrest in Germany. Those conditions enabled Adolf Hitler to assume the chancellorship in 1933.

The Ottoman Empire of the Near East had allied itself with Austria-Hungary; both were defeated. The Ottoman Empire, holding sway over Islamic lands from Turkey in the north to Egypt and northern Libya in the west and all of modern Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and most of northern Saudi Arabia. This empire was dissolved by Britain’s military might in 1917, beginning 30 years of British rule over the former Ottoman lands. But the British could not provide a stable alternative to the former Islamic empire.

The United States became the world’s pre-eminent economic power and rivaled Great Britain militarily. But the US entered a period of isolationism after the war. Warren Harding won the presidency on the slogan, "Return to Normalcy."

All of these effects, reverberating to this very day, may be argued to have resulted from the allied victory at the Battle of the Marne. Had the allies lost that battle, I think one may make a good case that none of the following would have occurred:

The rise fascism in Italy and of Nazism in Germany,

The rise of a communist Soviet Union, although the Czar would likely have been deposed eventually (more likely, would have become a figurehead monarch along the lines of Britain’s)

World War II in Europe, and probably not in Asia. Japan would still have had imperial ambitions, but they would not have brought the world into conflict, and perhaps not the US.

Hence, no Cold War and none of its attendant ravages

A much less powerful United States, but one still secure and free

No communist China

No Vietnam War

No Korean War

No free and democratic Japan

No Holocaust

Hence, no establishment of the state of Israel

Hence, no history of war, conflict and terrorism in the Middle East

No Iranian Islamic revolution,

Hence, no rise of modern radical Islamism

Hence no 9/11/01 attacks.

Of course I expect that this short list is neither exhaustive nor non-debatable. This is a thought experiment, after all. Add that science and technology would have progressed in wildly different ways and pace, as well, so perhaps no space race or moon landings (yet) nor medical MRIs nor even perhaps any personal computers (again, yet).

But also consider: the Ottoman Empire was a liberal one for its day. It was headed by Turks, not Arabs, and would have dissolved in the 20th century anyway - but not before civil societies could have been established throughout its reach.

Imagine the governments of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and possibly Saudi Arabia being much more representative of their people than now. Imagine that radical Islamism never had Israel as the object of its hatred, and that Western relations with the Arab countries had never been corrupted by the Cold War and fueled by World War II.

Imagine no significant militant Islam anywhere in the world.

Some historians say that the taxicabs turned the tide of battle 89 years ago. The arrival of those 6,000 French infantry from Paris blunted the Germans’ efforts of the day, and the Germans never got another chance.

It was the first large-scale use of motor transport for moving combat troops ever. Those taxicabs just maybe gave us the world we have today.

The Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme in human affairs, does it not?

Update: My dad, who can recount the history of the Great War without pausing to think hard, directed me to this interview in American Heritage with historian Walter Boyne, who claims,

British and French reconnaissance aircraft turned the situation around. Their greatest coup came on the last day of August, when a British plane noticed that the Germans had stopped moving east—in effect, abandoning their strategy —and had turned to envelop Paris. Two more British aircraft confirmed this, and a couple of days later French planes saw the same thing. The first French aircraft relayed the news directly to the military governor of Paris, and he persuaded the French and British high command to make a stand at the Marne. They held, and at that point the Germans lost the war. They’d planned on knocking out France in six weeks, and now it wasn’t going to happen. But what is amazing about all this is not that pilots realized what was happening; what is amazing is that field marshals believed them, and acted on the intelligence.

You point out that, strangely enough, the same thing happened on the Eastern Front, but there airpower saved Germany.
That’s right. In the east, Germany planned to hold the Russians with weak forces while they were busy crushing France. They thought they had six weeks to deal with France, but Russia mobilized much faster than the Germans thought possible, and in a matter of days the Russians were poised to destroy the German armies they faced. The parallel to the Marne is uncanny. German reconnaissance aircraft spotted the Russian buildup, confirming intelligence gathered from radio intercepts, and this allowed the German commander, Paul von Hindenburg, to win the Battle of Tannenberg, which cost the Russians 140,000 men. It was the Marne of the East, and it saved Germany. As Hindenburg said, “Without airmen, no Tannenberg!” Again, what is surprising is that Hindenburg, who was 67 years old, had the insight to exploit this new technology.

As I might point out that the generals commanding American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq came into the service late in the Vietnam War or shortly afterward, yet no one has embraced new technology better than they have, with the enormous savings of both American and non-combatant lives. I also argue that enemy combatant dead are fewer as well, simply because we concluded the wars so quickly.

by Donald Sensing, 10/27/2003 03:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Americans believe in nothing
American Digest points to an article in First Things called, "Christ and Nothing," that ponders the state of Americanxs' religious beliefs.

As modern men and women —to the degree that we are modern—we believe in nothing. This is not to say, I hasten to add, that we do not believe in anything; I mean, rather, that we hold an unshakable, if often unconscious, faith in the nothing, or in nothingness as such. It is this in which we place our trust, upon which we venture our souls, and onto which we project the values by which we measure the meaningfulness of our lives. Or, to phrase the matter more simply and starkly, our religion is one of very comfortable nihilism. ...

And so, at the end of modernity, each of us who is true to the times stands facing not God, or the gods, or the Good beyond beings, but an abyss, over which presides the empty, inviolable authority of the individual will, whose impulses and decisions are their own moral index.

... Thus this man may elect not to buy a particular vehicle because he considers himself an environmentalist; or this woman may choose not to have an abortion midway through her second trimester, because the fetus, at that point in its gestation, seems to her too fully formed, and she—personally—would feel wrong about terminating “it.” But this merely illustrates my point: we take as given the individual’s right not merely to obey or defy the moral law, but to choose which moral standards to adopt, which values to uphold, which fashion of piety to wear and with what accessories.

There's a lot more, of course; the essay is fairly long, and thought-provoking.

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 09:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Man fights bear in wild - captured on video
One of the most incredible fights ever caught on tape - the desperate fight of a man with a bear beside a northwestern river. Incredibly, the man gets away! HT: Hawspipe

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 07:34:00 PM. Permalink |

How to beat Spam, for real
Steven Den Beste tells all about it - it's technical, as usual, but engrossing.

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 07:08:00 PM. Permalink |

Another memo surfaces - proves situation graver than ever admitted
Geitner Simmons has it covered.

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 05:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Reuters snubs United Methodist Church
The most famous billboard in Times Square, New York, won’t display an ad by the UMC even though the denomination had signed an agreement Sept. 23 for it to be displayed.

United Methodist Communications signed an agreement Sept. 23 with Outdoor Television Network Limited of Toronto to feature the denomination's message of "open hearts, open minds, open doors," along with images from the church's Igniting Ministry media campaign, on the billboard beginning Nov. 15. The billboard spans 28 floors of the Reuters and Instinet building and is seen by an estimated 1.5 million people daily.

A top official with Outdoor said his company erred in making the agreement for the church's message to be displayed on the billboard.

Outdoor has an agreement with Reuters not to accept any advertising with messages of religious, political or sexual content, said Ron Walker, chief executive officer of the advertising agency. When the company signed with United Methodist Communications, "it was a mistake on our part," he said.

The Rev. Larry Hollon, chief executive of United Methodist Communications, said he would work with Outdoor to place the ad in other venues at Times Square, but added, "A policy that arbitrarily shuts out religious organizations from speaking in the public marketplace is discriminatory. I will continue to speak out against such discrimination."

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 04:39:00 PM. Permalink |

Rumsfeld "not currently in danger" of being fired
Speculation that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may be eased out before President Bush has to start campaigning in earnest for reelection are the talk of the DC town. So much so that Democrat candidate Joe Lieberman has already capitalized on the buzz that Rumsfeld will be a real liability to Bush for reelection, saying on "Face the Nation" today,

''Judgment about whether he stays or not is up to President Bush. But if I were president, I would get a new secretary of defense,'' Lieberman said.

A well-placed Republican source said Rumsfeld was not currently in danger of being replaced, but doubted he would return as defense secretary if voters give Bush another term.

''I think Rumsfeld has had it. He's put in place some (Defense Department) reforms, and now it's up to others to implement it,'' the source said.

The Republican thought Rumsfeld himself leaked the memo. ...

I wrote in my post about me about the memo that its leak was probably deliberate, enabling Rumsfeld to get some items on the policy agenda that he couldn't get there otherwise. The idea now that his real agenda was domestic is intriguing, and interesting.

Rumsfeld has decades of experience in the wily ways of Washington. He's north of 70 and has no reason to bide his time in pushing his agenda. Some insiders think that within the administration (meaning within the mind of President Bush) Rumsfeld is now a second-tier player, trailing National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice in influence.

If so, then "leaking" the memo would be a classic Machiavellian move to ensure his agenda stays on the table. My guess is that the other players - Rice, Cheney, Powell and others, including Bush - figured the memo for an intentional leak within, oh, five minutes of reading it. The situation does not cement Rumsfeld's position for longevity; Bush just hates this kind of politics. But Rumsfeld probably doesn't care. He has literally nothing to lose except his job, and isn't clinging to it with typical Washington intensity.

My guess: if Rumsfeld leaves the administration, it will be during the first quarter of 2004, probably mid-February. But then, this could all be Washington fluff and nonsense. (HT: Richard Heddleson)

by Donald Sensing, 10/26/2003 04:29:00 PM. Permalink |

Been gone all day, just got home
A combination of work and pleasure (mostly work) has kept me away from my desk today until now. I'm just too tired to blog. I had thought about commenting on the following two posts, and still may. But not tonight.

Michael Williams posts about a recent survey of American religious beliefs. Even atheists are confused along with the rest of us.

There are some people in southern Tennessee who are claiming to be Cherokee Indians and want federal tribal recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Yes, there are commercial factors at play here (there always are) but the claimants have had no success. For the reconrd, I have no reason to doubt their claim that they are significantly descended from the Cherokees who inhabited tennessee and elsewhere in the east before being ejected by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and its resultant, infamous Trail of Tears. But they don't now have the lgal right to call themslves Indians for certain commercial purposes.

See you tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

by Donald Sensing, 10/25/2003 09:16:00 PM. Permalink |

USS Liberty - the story has still not been told in full
New affadavits state Israel deliberately tried to sink American vessel

In 1967, during the height of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the American National Security Agency's spy ship, USS Liberty , was attacked by several Israeli Air Force Mirage fighters. Thirty-four American sailors died and 172 others were wounded. The planes attacked repeatedly despite the display of a very large American flag from the vessel and repeated radio signals to the planes.

The Israeli government apologized after the attack, claiming that their scouts and pilots had mistaken Liberty for an enemy vessel. The Johnson administration accepted the apology and announced the case was closed.

Except it wasn't, and isn't.

If there was a more apt group of government officials to be the subjects of Al Franken's latest book (if you don't know it, sorry, that's all I'll write) it was the Johnson administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The WashTimes reported yesterday,

A private commission headed by a former chief of naval operations, retired Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, made public an affidavit by retired Capt. Ward Boston, formerly of the judge advocate general's office and one of two senior naval officials investigating the attack.

"The evidence was clear. Both Admiral (Isaac) Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 America sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack as well as their superiors who had ordered the attack, were aware the ship was American."

It was impossible to mistake Liberty for anything other than what it was: an American electronic-signals, intelligence-collection ship.

The Liberty was a World War II freighter converted to the role of a spy ship that the Navy said was very distinctive with massive aerials and satellite dishes. These spy vessels and spy flights later were replaced by satellite surveillance.

Why the Israelis would want to attack an American vessel has never been explained, but the incident came a few months before the 1967 Middle East war in which Egypt and Israel were adversaries.

That last statement of the article is incorrect: the "incident" occurred at the height of the fighting between Israel and Egypt. The Six Day War began on June 5, 1967, Liberty was attacked three days later.

In fact, why Israel would want to attack Liberty has been explained. Ariel Sharon, now Israel’s prime minister, commanded an Israeli armored division during the war. Liberty was barely in international waters near the Sinai, sucking up Israeli and Egyptian signals like an electronic Hoover vacuum. And some of those signals were Sharon’s.

According to researcher and author James Bamford in his exhaustive book,