One Hand Clapping

What happened politically in the Clarke testimony
Dick Morris says that what the televised testimonies of the 9/11 investigative commission have really done is keep Bush's strongest issue - terrorism - before the public, and that's bad news for Kerry. Kerry's public positives on terrorism are so far behind Bush, says Morris, that even the hearings have been positive for Bush on the whole.

But that's not the whole problem for Kerry. Bush's ads against him have proven extremely effective. However,

Kerry's rebuttals have been late and ineffective. To counter the charge that he plans to raise taxes by $900 billion, Kerry just says it ain't so and highlights his support for "middle income" tax cuts. On Bush's charge that Kerry wanted to raise gas taxes by 50 cents per gallon, the Democrat makes no reply. And none of Bush's attacks on terrorism and homeland security get a word of rebuttal, just footage of Kerry on combat duty in Vietnam.

Kerry says that he has learned the lessons of Mike Dukakis - to always answer negatives. But his lame performance so far indicates that he has much to learn.

Yesterday the news shows showed Kerry, clad in a white shirt, tie and no jacket (to help you recall the clip), excoriating Bush on rising gasoline prices. Kerry said, "If gas prices go any higher, Bush and Cheney will have to car pool to work every morning!"

The audience did not respond to what seemed to be a - what? A throwaway line intended to garner some snickers? An attack line intended to raise rousing applause? The line just left the people flat. I cite it because apparently the media thought it was either the most memorable or cleverest bite from his whole speech, even though it laid an egg.

Update, 04-01: A WashTimes story's lead confirms why the hearings are turning out to be good for Bush after all:

Republicans are pleased that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify about September 11 because it keeps the presidential campaign focused on national security — President Bush's strong suit.

The Republican Party believes Democrats are repeating their blunder of the 2002 elections, when they demanded prolonged discussions about Iraq from Mr. Bush, who obliged and led Republicans to historic victories. Even some Democrats are becoming alarmed by the similarities between the two campaigns.

Does Mae West's line apply? "There no such thing as bad publicity?" No, not really, but ISTM that the American electorate isn't buying that Bush's eight-month stewardship of the nation's anti-terrorism programs, such as they were, was worse that Clinton eight years.

by Donald Sensing, 3/31/2004 07:21:00 AM. Permalink |

"A bland, complaisant achievement machine"
That's what David Brooks says a typical high school senior has been made into.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 10:18:00 PM. Permalink |

French toleration
It sure isn't what it used to be.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 09:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Why Tommy can't read
Tommy Atkins, that is, the Brit equivalent of GI Joe. Joanne Jacobs reports that a new study by the Brits about the educational attainments of their soldiers discovered that half of the army's new infantry recruits have the reading and writing skills appropriate to 11-year-olds. The Telegraph saw the problem:

. . . Within the next 10 years, the Army will be issued with equipment that will require all frontline soldiers to be computer literate and numerically literate if they are to fight and survive on the battlefield. They will also need to be able to read and understand ever-more complicated training manuals.

Actually, the manuals for both the British army and the US Army are likely to become less complicated, not more. As the machines get smarter themselves, operation, diagnostic and repair procedures become simpler. Be that as it may, soldiering in technological armies is becoming evermore intellectually and educationally demanding. The reason is that as computer and communications technology become more and more pervasive at every level, for everything, the human mind must work faster to integrate and analyze information.

Higher levels of critical thinking skills and analytical abilities are being required at ever lower echelons of the ranks. The reason is that technology enables faster and faster operational tempos. Faster tempos means that the old-style supervision become less and less that privates got from sergeants and sergeants from lieutenants and lieutenants from captains - and right on up the chain of command. More and more autonomy becomes not merely possible, it becomes required.

The most computerized US artillery system, for example, is the MLRS rocket system. It is what I call a "computerated" unit - the marriage of highly automated and highly computerized systems. As the result, a lieutenant in an MLRS unit has command-and-control problems and responsibilities that rest upon captains in traditional cannon units.

Back the Brits. Richard Heddleson emailed, "It has always been my understanding that while the Brits might not have the equipment or logistics of their richer cousins they made up for it in the quality of their soldiers. Does this fit with your experience of the average Tommy?"

The British army is extremely high quality, let there be no doubt. But that doesn't really "make up" for material deficiencies. So the question is a little of the apple and orange variety. That being said, I have no firsthand experience with the British army. Sorry!

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 07:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Soft power
James Joyner posts about Joseph Nye's piece in the WaPo about "soft power." Says Nye,

Soft power is the ability to get what we want by attracting others rather than by threatening or paying them. It is based on our culture, our political ideals and our policies. Historically, Americans have been good at wielding soft power. Think of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square with a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunity, are deeply seductive. But attraction can turn to repulsion when we are arrogant and destroy the real message of our deeper values.

Overall, Nye, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Clinton Administration, suggests that we spend way too little on soft power programs in relation to hard power (i.e., military) programs.

Some observations. I agree in principle with what Nye is saying; America's appeal abroad has always been based on the idea of what America is rather than its hard-power projection. But I think he glosses over some important details and draws too sharp a distinction between the two aspects of national power. (His WaPo piece is admittedly too short to draw fine distinctions.)

the fact is that America's soft-power has always been buttressed - indeed, relied on - our hard-power capability. It's true that FDR's Four Freedoms speech of January 1941 resonated strongly with the Congress to whom it was delivered. Yet the outlining of high ideals occurs only during the last third of the speech. The first two-thirds covers strategic and military matters. FDR said explicitly that the freedoms' existence would be ensured not by high idealism, but by force of arms.

Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe and Asia, Africa and Australia will be dominated by conquerors. ...

As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

FDR then outlines three bulwarks of national policy: an "all-inclusive national defense," "full support of all those resolute people everywhere who are resisting aggression" and, very sugnificantly,

... the proposition that principle of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.

Please note, again, the words of the most pre-eminent member ever of the Democratic party: "Enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom."

But, moving back to Nye's piece. He says that American spending on soft power is

... equal to one-quarter of 1 percent of the military budget. No one would suggest that we spend as much to launch ideas as to launch bombs, but it does seem odd that we spend 400 times as much on hard power as on soft power. If we spent just 1 percent of the military budget, it would mean quadrupling our spending on soft power.

Nye does not call for the military budget to be reduced by ¾ percent, he just wants soft-power spending quadrupled. Again, all well and good. But it would be helpful to know more details of what programs he thinks should be buttressed.

Of course, this piece is not Nye's only comment about the subject. In a speech in January 2003, Nye pointed out that America's soft power includes pop culture, for example.

From Hollywood to higher education, civil society does far more to present the United States to other peoples than the government does. Hollywood often portrays consumerism, sex and violence, but it also promotes values of individualism, upward mobility and freedom (including for women). These values make America attractive to many people overseas, but some fundamentalists see them as a threat.

Well, yeah, they are threatening, but not because they are merely offensive (many Americans find our pop culture offensive, too), but because of what they symbolize: political and social freedom. These are anathema to the Islamist who war upon us. Nye concluded,

The lessons for those in the Pentagon who want to enhance America's soft power is that it will come not from military propaganda campaigns but from greater sensitivity to the opinions of others in the formulation of policies. They should heed Teddy Roosevelt's advice. Now that we Americans have a big stick, we should learn to speak softly.

Is this back to multilateralism? Multilateralism, like unilateralism, is neither to be sought or shunned for its own sake. Being more "sensitive" (a pop-culture psychobabble word) to other nations for its own sake runs as much chance of being soft weakness As it does being soft power. If Nye thinks that enhancing America's soft power relies on "greater sensitivity to the opinions of others," then perhaps he and we might remember, "This is war. It's not an encounter session."

What really gives American soft power its strength is the realization by real or potential enemies that our hard power is really hard, but that the alternative to it is not merely one step better, it is magnitudes better. Unfortunately, the people who most need to understand this fact are the ones least likely to act on it - Kim Jung Il, for example, or the Iranian mullahs. In fact, Iran is a good test case for Nye's hypotheses because the Iranian people are mostly strongly pro-democracy, even pro-American. But they still live in tyranny because American soft power alone will not liberate them.

What I wish Nye had written, either in the Post or elsewhere, is that in wartime (such as when FDR enumerated the Four Freedoms, or today) soft power's successes spring from hard power's use or its potential use. And the heart of American soft power is American justice and fair play. There is a reason that tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered, without fighting, to the allies in both wars with Iraq, but no allied soldier surrendered to the Iraqis even in extremis, although some were captured when wounded or surrounded with no more means to resist. Mark Steyn, I think, wrote about a year ago of a small; detachment of British soldiers in the Iraq war who died fighting rather than submit to capture. They knew, he said, what captivity would be like in Iraqi hands.

The transition from hard to soft power or vice-versa is not always very clear cut. Pop quiz: when Libyan dictator Moammar Qadaffi opened his WMD programs to UN inspection and destruction, was it because of soft power (diplomacy and international institutions) or hard power ( the potential use of American hard power against him)? After all, Qadaffi said that he had seen what happened to Saddam Husein and didn't want to suffer the same fate. Hard power or soft power? Or does the distinction kind of blur?

What I haven't seen in Nye's work is the realization that there is an enormous amount of soft power built into the American defense budget. Billions of dollars have been spent by the armed forces in Iraq building schools, roads, clinics, the economic infrastructure and constituting democratic institutions there. This kind of work by the US military is nothing new. When I was stationed in Honduras in 1989, the Army and Air Force carried out major civil engineering programs there, including an interstate-quality roadway from the northern port area into the interior. We treated countless thousands of Honduran people medically and dentally, both at the Army clinic we ran and on medical/dental missions into the remotest areas of the country.

These kinds of missions were and are carried on around the world, but their budgets fall under what Nye counts as military expenditures.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 05:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Rice and rope-a-dope
I wish I had been able to follow to 9/11 commission's hearing more closely, but alas, work hasn't let me tune in much. But I have been tuned in enough to know that the commission's members, especially the Democrat members, have been insistent that National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleeza Rice give sworn, public testimony - despite her four hours of non-public testimony already. And until today, the White House has said no on the basis of executive privilege. Then suddenly, the White House appears to take a powder.

We await her testimony eagerly. But I wonder - was the White House more clever in this flop than we give it credit?

What this does is give President Bush essentially the last word in the public mind on the whole issue. Pretty much every figure from the Clinton administration of significance has already testified. Richard Clarke has shot his bolt, and slowly (real slowly) the gaping holes in his record are becoming more known.

What will happen, I think, is that Dr. Rice's statement to the commission will essentially do three things:

give a more comprehensive chronology of what the Bush administration did about the terrorist threat to the US than the administration has ever offered,

offer direct rebuttals to the testimony of Richard Clarke in major points as well as a more pointed criticism of the Clinton administration than the Bush White House has ever indicated,

detail the role Congress played in hampering the opening months of the administration's efforts by reminding the commission of the stonewalling the Senate did in confirming appointments to many key positions until mid-summer.

Others have remarked that whatever this White House's strengths, managing political adversity doesn't appear to be one of them. I tend to agree. Even postulating that Dr. Rice's appearance could garner benefits to the president as indicated above, I find it dismaying that the president flipped so quickly about executive privilege.

The White House stood on principle - or at least appeared to - and then caved at a curiously opportune time. Even if sending Rice to testify is politically astute strategically, it seems tactically blundered.

I wonder why the White House didn't tell the committee, backchannel, that Rice would testify as requested, but only last, and that if the commission made a stink about it, the White House would simply claim executive privilege and withhold her until it wanted.

Of course, maybe that's what they did.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 02:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Turning 50 is bad for you!
As I am bumping up against the half-century mark myself, I was shocked - shocked, I tell you! - to see what the years have done to Oprah Winfrey.

Alas, poor Oprah, we knew you when you were a sprightly 49, but one birthday too many has taken its toll.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 07:56:00 AM. Permalink |

Been away all day
I have spent the day reahearsing an Easter offertory that I wrote and our music director - an enormously talented man - set to music. When I wasn't doing that I was configuring a new computer. I spentg hours trying to migrate my app files and data files from my old computer to the new one, without success. It's a long story why no luck - please, no emails telling me to try something else. There's a hard driver problem on the old one and it's going to Phoenix Computer Services tomorrow.

Anyway, that's why I've been non-blogging. I hope to get something back up tonight, but can't promise. Than you to all who've been reading!

by Donald Sensing, 3/29/2004 06:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Richard Clarke said it was "silly" to think a comprehensive anti-terror strategy could be developed
Armed Liberal has posted a facsimile of a letter, on Congressional letterhead, from US Rep. Christopher Shays to Richard Clarke, dated July 2000, in which Shays tells Clarke that his classified testimony to Shays' subcommittee was "less than useful."

Shays also was unhappy with Clarke's assertion in his testimony that it was "silly" to think a comprehensive strategy could be developed to combat terrorism. And when Clarke was asked in the testimony how spending priorities were established, he "responded by providing a list of terrorist organizations."

So, Rep. Shays asked, "Why is there no integrated threat assessment?" And he had other pointed questions as well. Read it all.

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 05:43:00 PM. Permalink |

Close, but no cigar
Christopher Kremmer, writing on Australia's SMH.com.au almost gets the root causes argument about terrorism right. He correctly discounts the Islamist cause as "fantasy hogwash," which seems to align pretty well with Lee Harris' exposition of Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology. Says Chris,

Like a lot of hogwash, this fantasy has its roots in reality. The Islamic world is a once great civilisation that has fallen prey to the West. We do manipulate its politics and demand the free flow of its principal resource, oil. But the people who enfeebled the Islamic world were the mullahs who by the 12th century had equated science, art and literature with the devil's work. Their contemporary counterparts advocate that it remain in the Dark Ages.

So far, so good. But here he starts to veer off course:

Endemic violence in their homelands, lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement, diaspora and foreign occupation are the engines driving it. The cycle of violence may last for generations.

The current Western responses to fundamentalist violence are failing to take into account how our actions are perceived in the regions where youth holds the key to the future. From Indonesia to Iran, and Pakistan to Iraq, our actions are bolstering fundamentalist thinking.

(hat tip: Brendan Slattery) Now, I don't actually disagree very much with anything I've cited so far - except that Kremmer apparently thinks that "lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement" exist for no reason. They just are, all on their own. But instead of asking just why these conditions prevail in the terrorism-spawning lands, Kremmer puts on the brakes and falls back into the safe territory of blaming the West:

The war on terrorism, as our leaders have configured it, is a dead end. One could hope our leaders would admit their mistakes and pledge a new direction, but it seems unlikely. It might require a change of leadership to achieve that.

Bin Laden and his ilk are symptoms of a much deeper pathology. We need to address the root causes of terrorism, and acknowledge that the way the West plays politics is a significant element in the equation.

What Kremmer cites as "root causes" of terrorism are actually the symptoms of deeper pathologies, as he hints. So why didn't he name them? They are not hard to identify:

Political oppression and lack of liberty: except for Iraq, every Arab country is an authoritarian state ruled by an oligarchy, monarchy or dictator. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, explained it just this week:

Contrasting western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces.

"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege."

Lack of economic opportunity: free-market capitalism does not exist on a macro level. All economies are controlled by the central government.

Intellectual stagnation (which Kremmer does mention): Last fall in the opening speech of the Islamic Summit' in Malaysia, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad stated the Islamic world's intellectual status thus:

The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. ... The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage. ...

But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.

Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.

The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims.

Indeed. Now, all of these pathologies will be alleviated if the political and social structures of the countries can be liberalized. That doesn't mean there will be no murderous Islamist fanatics. It does mean that the soil from which they grow will be much less fertile.

I invite you also to read my essay about the problems of science and Islam.

Update: What about patriarchy?

Update 2: Glittering Eye makes the excellent point that another analysis to peruse along these lines is Ralph Peters' article in Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College, "Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States." He's right.

Peters characterizes the problems of non-competitive states:

* Restrictions on the free flow of information.
* The subjugation of women.
* Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
* The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
* Domination by a restrictive religion.
* A low valuation of education.
* Low prestige assigned to work.

So go read Peters' article, too!

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 12:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Identify the good guys!
But this isn't one of them

Phil Carter reports of a Seattle company breaking the law regarding the release from active duty of one Cpl. Dana Beaudine -- "an Oregon National Guardsman who fought in Iraq, was wounded by a mortar attack, and diagnosed with some residual disability." When Dana was called to active duty, his company of employment was called Argus, which employed Dana on the basis of a contract Argus had signed with the federal government. While he was deployed, Securitas bought out the contract. In vilolation of federal law, Securitas refuses to give him back his job or an equivalent one.

The Dept. of Labor has advised Securitas that it is in violation of the law. The company does not care. Observes Phil,

I personally hope that Securitas gets slammed by DOL with an enforcement action that costs them thousands of dollars in legal fees and many more thousands in damages. I find this company beyond contempt for its actions -- how dare it serve as government contractor, taking taxpayer money, profitting from our national security budget, when it can't deign to treat a reservist fairly and lawfully upon his return from combat?

In the wake of this event, and Phil's posting, Robert Macaulay emailed Phil, myself and several other bloggers:

I want to ask you to help, and to have you ask your fellow bloggers to help identify private sector companies that do a GOOD job of treating returning service members. Once they are identified, I want us to publicize their names and get people to patronize their businesses.

I'm starting out at my local newspaper, but you guys have a broader reach than I do. Please help me make a project of rewarding the good guys.

I am all for that. Please post on your sites what companies are supporting our troops and send me the link. Or if you don't have a blog but know of one, email me the company name and location.

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 11:26:00 AM. Permalink |

"Wishy-washy" Christianity driving old-line Britons to Islam
Al-Jazeerah news reports, "Thousands of British elite embrace Islam."

According to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon, carried by the Sunday Times on February22 , some of the country's top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior Establishment figures have embraced Islam after being disillusioned with Western values.

The new study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, provides the first reliable data on the sensitive subject of Christians' reversion to Islam.

He uses a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there are now14,200 white converts in Britain. ...

"I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world," said [Charles Le Gai] Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man.

(HT: Orthodoxy Today) I've been writing for months and months that the traditional mainline Euro-American churches are in large measure promulgating political ideology dressed up in Godtalk. The Church of England was founded for political reasons, but even so had a long period of vigorous missionary activity (usually accompanied, 'tis true, by naval cannon and army muskets). Yet it, along with Left-dominated American churches, is in serious and perhaps irreversible decline. As the last religious census of the United States shows, theologically conservative churches are growing, not liberal ones.

Political liberalism is not the only reason for their decline, but it's a big part of it. A lot of people are tired of having left-wing politics gussied up with Bible talk and presented to them literally as the Gospel truth.

Reinforcing this point is religion researcher George Barna's January 2004 survey, "Only Half Of Protestant Pastors Have A Biblical Worldview."

Based on interviews with 601 Senior Pastors nationwide, representing a random cross-section of Protestant churches, Barna reports that only half of the country's Protestant pastors - 51% - have a biblical worldview. Defining such a world view as believing that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, and having a biblical view on six core beliefs (the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and the personal responsibility to evangelize), the researcher produced data showing that there are significant variations by denominational affiliation and other demographics.

"The most important point," Barna argued, "is that you can't give people what you don't have."

Now, I would quibble with how Barna defines "biblical world view," but if we grant it purely for the sake or argument, we can see why its lack was said by Eaton to be wishy-washy and in compromise with the modern world. When people go to church they expect to encounter God, some sense of contact with the transcendent, the holy - not political litanies, pop-culture psychobabble or rock n' roll entertainment. Yet all three of these things are quite prominent in many worship services today.

I addressed some other concerns in my post, "The metrosexual Jesus" - Would you trust your eternity to this guy? Neither would I."

The question, though, is whether there are enough people in the West who are both substantially disillusioned with the churches and looking for religious anchors to the point where they will embrace Islam. And if significant numbers do, will Islam change them or will they change Islam? There is another impediment to such conversions, too. As Mr. Birt observed, "The image of Islam projected by political Islamic movements is not very attractive."

Update: I should also point out that as left-leaning churches have decided that religious faithfulness means adopting reflexive antii-American ideology oritented toward state socialism, here in America some denominations have gone the other way. Many conservative American churches promulgate a theology that seems awfully cozy with lassez-faire, I-got-mine capitalism, fairly blind to America's transgressions either domestically or abroad. Thus, at one of the spectrum are churches that think America is mostly condemnable, and at the other end is "My country, right or wrong - and it's not wrong."

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 11:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Oh, now they are constitutional constructionists
You may recall that last November the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, by a 4-3 vote, discovered that the state's constitution made it illegal to permit men and women to marry one another, but prohibit men from marryingh men, or women, women. So certain was the one-vote majority that it directed - nay, commanded - the Massachusetts Legislature to enact legislation legalizing same-sex marriage May 16.

The idea that the constitution's framers, the state's legislators and the people of the state themselves had the slightest inlking of such a guarantee when they wrote, enacted and voted the constitution into effect seemed never to have been a matter of the majority's concern. It simply did not matter to the court what "marriage" meant back in the dark ages of the state's founding. All that mattered was that activist judges personally wanted to legalize same-sex marriage and they decided to do so with the stroke of a pen.

Now, however, the high court has decided that maybe the original intent of the legislature does matter, and that the strict letter of the law prevails over nonsense like emanations and penumbras and included relationships and the such. It seems that the law prohibiting incest does not include stepparents.

In the narrow ruling handed down Monday, the court said the Massachusetts incest statute bans intercourse between people related by blood or through adoption. The court was acting on a case in which a 60-year-old man was accused of having sex with his teenage stepdaughter.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Robert Cordy, stated the wording of the incest law "cannot be stretched beyond their fair meaning."

But the constitution can - when it suits, you see.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 10:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Video from inside Iran
Here is video broadcast on PBS's Frontline that was smuggled from Iran. There are four clips, about 23 minutes total. Click here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 08:47:00 PM. Permalink |

Israelis rescue boy bomber
A 16-year-old boy who was rescued from a suicide bombing mission said his Palestinian recruiters told him would enjoy sexual paradise with 72 virgins if he carried out the attack.

Israeli soldiers became suspicious of the boy at a checkpoint and ordered him to remove his outer garment. He did, revealing the bomb belt beneath. The boy said that he agreed to carry out the attack because he felt like no one liked him.

The Israelis had him remove the bomb belt, which they retrieved and detonated elsewhere. So the Palestinian terrorists are not merely recruiting children (they had already tried to use a five-year-old, to bomb unawares), they deliberately seek out the most insecure boys to promise them fantasy rewards. Teenagers in the West Bank, like teenagers everywhere, want deperately to fit in. This boy felt marginalized and excluded.

Enter Hamas or Hezbollah or whomever, who actually want him. They need him. They brainwash him that he can be a warrior, a martyr in fact. He will be rewarded with an eternal, literal sexual heaven (as if a 16-y/o wouldn't be interested in that).

The depravity of Islamist terrorists really shouldn't surprise us any more, but just when we think there is no new low for them to sink to, they do.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 04:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Time magazine shreds Richard Clarke
Time gets the knives out and wields them like a Ginsu chef, with the hapless meat being Richard Clarke. Go read.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 03:03:00 PM. Permalink |

But aren't the Germans peace-loving?
Then why would Islamists want to assassinate German President Johannes Rau?

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 07:40:00 AM. Permalink |

Don't you love it when a plan comes together?
You may recall that when Richard Clarke's book was released, Time Magazine published a piece he wrote in which he said,

... maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us. If we do not focus on the reasons for terrorism as well as the terrorists, the body searches we accept at airports may be only the beginning of life in the new fortress America.

This is back to the old "root causes" argument, an argument that says that Islamic terrorism will continue to flourish until its root causes are resolved.

This argument was prominent among members of the anti-American Left (sorry for the redundancy) immediately after 9/11. Of course, the root causes that compelled 19 well educated Arab men of substantial means to kamikaze into American buildings lay in America itself, not in their native lands. Why do they hate us? Because America is oppressive, imperialistic and rapes the rest of the world for resources and cheap labor. The exploited poor of the rest of the world are becoming ever more miserable because of ruthless American capitalism. Lee Harris explained this view in great detail, so I'll not belabor it any more except to point out the obvious: it's false. See also "Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee ," by self-described "anti-materialist liberal Democrat" Ron Rosenbaum.

(In fact, I have compiled a brief list of highly read-worthy articles and essays by other writers, many of which address related topics.)

Yet asking the question, "What causes Islamist terrorism?" does not make one a de facto leftist by any means. In fact, that was exactly the question that the Bush administration started asking on Sept. 12, 2001. How it is framed and answered reveals the sharp divide between those who claim the Iraq campaign was a diversion from the War on Terror and those who claim - as I do - that the Iraq war was absolutely essential to succeeding in the WOT.

You remember the old saying, "It's hard to remember that your job is to drain the swamp when you're up to your waist in alligators." The "it was a diversion" side wants to do nothing, really, except kill alligators, as long as they appear. The other side says that killing alligators must be done, but it's urgent to remove the gators' nesting places unless you want to fight alligators down to the fortieth generation.

With the release of Clarke's book slamming the Bush administration, this philosophical division is clearer than ever. Glenn Reynolds links to Reason's piece by Michael Young that probes the rationale of the Iraq campaign's relationship to the WOT.

As far as the Bush administration was concerned, a democratic Iraq at the heart of the Arab world could become a liberal beacon in the region, prompting demands for openness and real reform inside neighboring states. ...

Iraq always was essential to the anti-terrorism battle precisely because victory there was regarded as necessary to transform societies from where terrorists, spawned by suffocating regimes, had emerged. One can disagree with the practicability of such a strategy, but it is difficult to fault its logic.

Which means that the root causes of Islamist terrorism lay inside Islamic countries, not inside America. (I am not claiming that America's foreign policy regarding Araby has been spotless, not at all. But I do say that the main root causes by far rest within Arab countries themselves - see my PDF paper, The Soil of Arab Terrorism for 17 pages of exposition thereof.)

That being so, coupled with the absence of evidence of close ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, it was practically a gift to us that Iraq had been at war with the United States since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Had we not had casus belli against Saddam's regime, the transformation of Araby from oppressive, socialist societies into reasonably free and free-market ones would be extremely difficult, and for sure isn't a cakewalk now. But Iraq is America's beachhead into those societies. We now literally occupy the key terrain of the entire Middle East.

Hence, as more and more people are coming to realize, there was not only a clear legal case for invading Iraq - Saddam had defied UN resolutions for 12 years and had deliberately concealed the nature of his weapons and weapons programs - there was also a comprehensive rationale for the Iraq campign that was much greater than simply Iraq itself.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I have been pointing this out since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. I rolled it up last October in The Big Picture:

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 infiltration 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.

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.

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 only 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.

Folks, if we don't drain the swamp, the alligators will eventually win.

BTW, see also my essay, Historic Economic Development of the Middle East the and West: why the West is free and prosperous and the Middle East is not.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 10:44:00 PM. Permalink |

British still living under tyranny
Best of the Web Today reports of,

... an Englishman [who] has been sentenced to eight years in prison for minding his own business. Twenty-five-year-old Carl Lindsay of Salford, near Manchester, "answered a knock at his door . . . to find four men armed with a gun. When the gang tried to rob him he grabbed a samurai sword and stabbed one of them, 37-year-old Stephen Swindells, four times." Swindells died, and Lindsay, who should be hailed as a hero, was convicted of manslaughter.

In Britain, it is illegal to defend yourself against home invaders. If you resist and either injure or kill an attacker - even one armed with a deadly weapon - you will be sent to prison, as Lindsay and another hapless victim, Tony Martin, discovered. If you don't resist, you will lose property and possibly suffer injury or death.

Either way, the average Briton is at the mercy of either the state or the attackers, and if that's not tyranny, nothing is.

Update: Okay, it turns out the Lindsay case was a drug deal gone bad. But two facts remain: first, read the Tony Martin case, linked above. to see why my basic point is true, that Britons are legally defenseless against violent criminals and that if they resis they are prosecuted for it. Second, posession of firearms in Britain is strictly forbidden except under extremely limited and tightly defined circumstances. Yet these criminals were so armed. Well, you know what they say about how if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them.

I invite you to read my May 2002 post, "Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment: Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people."

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 05:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Bomb found on French train track

French authorities have disarmed a bomb half buried under a train track near the city of Troyles. The track runs from Paris to Switzerland. No one has claimed tresponibility for placing the bomb - nor will they. After all, who wants to claim credit for a failure? This was the second bomb found along French tracks in recent days.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 05:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Richard Clarke: Bush team increased anti-terrorism effort fivefold from Clinton administration - before 9/11
Clinton administration's plans handed to Bush team dated from 1998

Retired counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, whose new book, Against All Enemies, blasts the Bush administration for its handling of anti-terrorism, praised the Bush team to reporters in August 2002. In fact, Clarke said that in March 2001 President Bush dramatically changed the "strategic direction" for dealing with al Qaeda "from one of rollback to one of elimination."

According to the transcript, Clarke said -

. "... there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration."

the Clinton administration's anti-terrorism strategy dated from 1998. There was no plan or strategy newer than that date.

In January 2001, "the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years." "At that time" - January 2001 - "the Bush administration decided" to "vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings. ..."

In February 2001, the Bush administration "decided in principle ... to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda."

The five-fold increase in funding and other strategic measure were confirmed after the Congress confirmed the principal officials. This was done by mid-summer, 2001.

This is key:

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

This from the mouth of Richard Clarke, now the administration's chief prosecutor in the court of public opinion. Yet only 19 months or so ago he had this to say about President Bush:

When President Bush told us in March [2001 - DS] to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

So what changed? Well, maybe no publisher was interested in a book that said the administration was doing well in the war or terror.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 03:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Move, shoot, ~~communicate~~ network
I posted last May that bandwidth is everything in modern combat, including a blurb about how Microsoft chat software is used for tactical communications on the battlefield. I elsewhere cited Time mag's quotation of an Iraqi Republican Guard colonel who complained that the Iraqi high command (especially Saddam), "forgot that we are missing air power. That was a big mistake. U.S. military technology is beyond belief."

Now Trent Telenko takes the ball and runs with it in describing the networked force. American military forces, especially the Army, have begun an era of hyper-communications that no other force in the world can match, not even NATO allies.

Mobility, lethality and communications have been the tripod that holds up military success since the Greeks fought the Trojans. Almost without exception, armies that have been able to do these things better than their enemies have prevailed.

Trent explains how the American military is becoming immersed in flexible, comprehensive, computerized and reliable communications at every level, from the individual soldier up to theater commanders.

But here is the key point:

I am of the opinion that this phenomenon is a logarithmic progression that the American military is only just beginning to climb. The reason we are light-years ahead the rest of the world in conventional military power is that we have invested enough in people and technology that we have gotten past an inflection point on the military effectiveness curve for the use of modern information systems [italics original].

I wrote another post last May that there is much more to America's military capability than technology, and the rest of it is even more important. Other advantages the US military brings to the fray are not shared by any other military force in the world, not even Great Britain's or Israel's, impressive as their forces are. They are, in no particular order:

Funding and equipping,

Training and training facilities

A horizontal organization

Read that post to learn more. American military technology is practically at the Buck Rogers level, so let other potential enemies stand in awe of it. 'Tis good they do so. But if they think that technology is the main thing we have going for us, so much the better. They'll focus only on ways to counteract our technology and remain vulnerable to the rest of our strengths.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 03:05:00 PM. Permalink |

Site has been transferred
Thanks to all who emailed to let me know my site was down earlier today. I changed the domain name server yesterday from Cornerhost.com to Navmonkey.net, and the changeover got propagated while I was away. So I have just finished republishing the blog to the new server, and on my browser it works fine. Please let me know if you see any glitches.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 02:35:00 PM. Permalink |

UMC Bishops respond to Damman verdict
As background, UMC pastor Karen Dammann was acquitted in a church trial last Saturday. She had been,

... accused of violation of church law proscribing "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" from serving as United Methodist pastors. In February 2001, she sent a letter to her bishop, Elias Galvan of Seattle, telling him she could "no longer live the life of a closeted lesbian clergyperson." She also disclosed that she was living in "a partnered, covenanted homosexual relationship."[link]

The denomination's canon law, called the Book of Discipline, is crystal clear about this matter. But no matter, the jury acquitted here in what is acknowledged by an increasing number of UMC pastors to have been a show trial intended by all concerned to end exactly as it did. The UMC news service from start to finish is here.

Now Bishop Larry M. Goodpaster, supervising the church's Alabama-West Florida Conference, has sounded off.

I am absolutely astounded by the announcement of a verdict of not guilty in the case of Karen Dammann in Washington. I am deeply disturbed that a group of United Methodist clergy has placed themselves above the law of the church and has clearly ignored specific statements and declarations in The Book of Discipline.

Let me remind all of you that Paragraph 304.3 is very exact and definite: "Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church." That is what our United Methodist Church has affirmed, and is the principle by which we are to be guided.

The efforts of the jury to explain away their disregard for the order of The United Methodist Church and their standing over against the decisions of General Conference is frustrating and disappointing. Their public statement places them in direct contradiction of both the letter and the spirit of past General Conferences and The Book of Discipline. I know that there are some within our denomination that disagree with the statements as contained in The Book of Discipline, and would like them changed. However, that does not mean that anyone can set the Discipline aside in favor of their own preferences.

Bishop Mike Watson and Bishop Lindsey Davis also released a statement:

The Discipline is the connecting covenant within our Church. We support The Discipline and on this issue we believe that The Discipline is clear. We are profoundly disappointed in the recent church trial court decision in the Seattle Area. It is a clear sign of rebellion when a group chooses to flagrantly ignore The Discipline, substituting their own perspective for the corporate wisdom of the General Conference. While we as bishops have neither voice nor vote at General Conference, we call upon elected General Conference delegates to go to Pittsburgh in April prepared to discuss this situation and to consider an appropriate response which will respect our connectional covenant.

The church's General Conference convenes next month. the GC is the only body that can set denominational doctrine on this or any other matter. It meets only once every four years. We expect something of a battle royal. (But the bigger issue will be the state of the church's finances.)

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 07:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Domain switching
I have changed Domain Name Servers, so if you see an interruption of service is accessing the site, that's why. It should be brief. The name and web address of the site are not changing. All your links will work the same.

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 07:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Admin work
I am switching host servers this week because my site is now running about a gig of bandwidth per day. My present host, Cornerhost.com, will start charging me more than $100 per month for that starting next month! Sorry, no can do. So I am switching to NavMonkey, which fortuitously is running a Blogad on the upper-right of my site. I opted for the "Magic Monkey" account, giving me 30 GB of bandwidth per month and 500 MB of server space. I bought six months for the price of five. I'll let you know how it turns out. I am working to switch the DNS over tonight, so probably no posting. I've been gone all day anyway, so have other catching up to do.

In the meantime, I found this piece pretty interesting - seems there are 1993 Iraqi documents that verifies collaboration between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden.

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 06:51:00 PM. Permalink |

Married Roman Catholic priests - yes, there are some
Commenter Seamole points out something I sure didn't know:

Beginning in 1980, under a special pastoral provision, the Catholic Church has let traditionalist Episcopal parishes convert en masse, minister and congregation both, to Catholicism. The minister becomes a Catholic priest who is allowed to remain married. A special liturgy was created, the Anglican Use, to service the congregations, and they were allowed to keep their 1940 Episcopal hymnals.

I find that fascinating. It needs to be recognized that of all American denominations, the Episcopal Church is closest to the Roman Catholic Church in theology and liturgy. The Episcopalians are basically the "American wing" of the Anglican church, which itself was formed from political rebellion by Henry VIII against the pope. But the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 09:34:00 PM. Permalink |

"Education" lottery puts schools in red
The "education" lottery that Tennessee voters fell for in 2002 will cost state-supported colleges and universities millions of dollars in overhead, money that by law cannot be paid from lottery proceeds.

Bob Adams, vice chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees the schools, said the schools,

"... will just have to reallocate some of their tuition income to setting those positions up.

Adams said the entire TBR system would probably have to add 40 full-time positions. The $1.2 million necessary for the administration of lottery scholarships includes part-time and graduate assistants’ positions.

That's just this year; salaries and office costs will have to be paid every year. But wait! There's more! Dr. David Foote, an assistant professor for management and marketing at Middle Tennessee State University, saad,

... because all the [lottery-paid] scholarship funding is going to tuition support and does not change the university's income, MTSU would have to come up with the additional money to hire staff for the scholarship program administration.

The lottery requires that students receiving a scholarship maintain a 2.75 GPA in the first semester and a 3.0 GPA in consecutive years.

"[This] means somebody has to keep up with their … scholarships and what their GPAs are and those falling below the required level and so forth,” Foote said. "It’s going to take extra people working in both the business office and in the records office in order to track all this information that’s needed to make sure that the right students have the scholarships and those who have fallen out of the standards dont continue to get the scholarships and also people just to do the bookkeeping that's associated with the funding."

Guess where the money to pay higher overhead costs is going to come from? Can you say, "higher taxes?" We told 'em, we told 'em we told 'em, but did they listen? Noooooooooooo. . . .

Why can't the new overhead costs be paid from lottery sales? Because the voters actually amended the state's constitution to bring in the lottery. Now the constitution itself specifies what the lottery's revenues can be used for, and these costs are excluded.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 08:54:00 PM. Permalink |

D-Link computer gear is la crapola
And the company stinks, too

I've spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to install a wireless internet connection in my home, using a D-Link DI-524 wireless broadband router. In fact, I've used two of them., with no success.

Just to set the scene, connecting up a wireless router is very simple. You connect the power to the router, unplug the ethernet cable from the 10/100 card in your computer and plug it into the WAN port on the router. Then you take a new ethernet cable and plug it into a port on the router and the other end into the computer's 10/100 card. Voila.

Then there is some configuration work of the router done through your web browser (the router has an IP address to access it) and - in theory - that's it.

Problem is, neither of the D-Link routers I installed ever recognized the fact that they were connected to the cable modem. The WAN-connection light never lit. I repeated the installation steps more than two dozen times, never with any different outcome. I punched the router's reset button. Nothing worked. the routers never detected the cable modem's presence through the 10/100 cable. Yet the cable worked fine when plugged into the 10/100 card and internet access was super.

So I called D-Link's 24-hour tech support number. Toll free, I'll give them credit. But their entire telephone tech support for this equipment consists of a recording telling you to look it up on their web site. Click.

So back it goes to Best Buy, again. I don't have the time for engineering. If it doesn't work out of the box, I'm done with it. But it'll be a cold day in a hot place before I buy another D-Link product.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 08:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Arafat pronounces The Passion of the Christ "not anti-Semitic"
Reuters reports,

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat watched Mel Gibsons's controversial "Passion of the Christ" at a private screening on Saturday and said it was not anti-Semitic, officials said.

He watched the film -- which Jewish groups say may foment anti-Semitic attacks -- with Palestinian Muslim and Christian leaders at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"The president did not feel the film was anti-Semitic," said Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian Christian who watched it with him on a DVD copy.

Armed Liberal sarcastically observes, "That settles it."

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 02:31:00 PM. Permalink |

Disgruntlement
Tom Donelson emails me George Smith's take on Richard Clarke's broadsides against the Bush administration with the preface,

With Richard Clarke's assertion that Bush was responsible for 9/11: Does any one seem that it is strange that Clarke choose to begin his book project on the first anniversary of the LIberation of Iraq and in connection with the massive anti-war demonstration? Color me cynical.

Below is from George Smith of Global Security with some interesting background on Clarke. Sounds like another disgruntled experts whose advice was ignored. In this case, thank goodness.

Smith writes of Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation,

The outgoing cybersecurity czar will be remembered for his steadfast belief in the danger of Internet attacks, even while genuine threats developed elsewhere.

The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind.

In happier times prior to 9/11, Clarke -- as Bill Clinton's counter-terror point man in the National Security Council -- devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing. While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict.

September 11 spoiled the fun, though, and electronic attack was shoved onto the back-burner in favor of special operations men calling in B-52 precision air strikes on Taliban losers. One-hundred fifty-thousand U.S. soldiers on station outside Iraq make it perfectly clear that cyberspace is only a trivial distraction.

Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.

Clarke's accomplishments during his terms in government were less than stellar and in fact some quite questionable. Read the rest.

Update: The Wall Street Journal has some more insights.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 01:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Artillery duels
. . . are being reported in Israel between Israeli and Hezbollah.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 01:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Separated at birth?
Assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin apparently had a twin brother, who wasn't a nice guy, either.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 01:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Reprise: same-sex marriage posts
As this topic has pretty much set a One Hand Clapping record for reader interest and commentary, here again is the index to my main posts on the subject. I recommend you read them in this order:

1. The "gay marriage" controversy: Traditionalists need to get a clue - we lost this fight 40 years ago

2. Separate the legal and the spiritual in the wedding business: Let the state do the former and the Church the latter; my solution to the "gay marriage" impasse

3. What makes a thing a thing? Defining what is marriage.

4. Answering Andrew Sullivan's "simple question" - explaining Jesus' silence on homosexuality.

5. Is the church really hypocritical about homosexuality? Responding to charges of ecclesial hypocrisy because the church tolerates divorce but not homosexuality.

6. My open letter to fellow United Methodist clergy.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 10:55:00 AM. Permalink |

Okay, better now
But still having problems making my browser cooperate this morning. IE hardly works at all. I installed Mozilla and it loads the pages correctly. although the Blogger posting page's appearance is different.

I'm scheduled to be interviewed by phone on on the Kirby Wilbur show on KVI radio 570 in Seattle in about 10 minutes. I'm sure a main topic will be the church trial and acquittal of the Rev. Karen Dammann in Oregon; who was charged by her bishop of violating church law regarding ordained service by "self-avowed" homosexuals, which Dammann said she was. I'll post more later.

BTW, here is the UMC News Service's coverage of the trial.

Update: GetReligion Blog says the verdict was that the UMC was found guilty of having a bad law. (Well, one the jury didn't like, anyway.)

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 10:22:00 AM. Permalink |

I can't get Blogger posting page to load right. IE won't work it at all and Mozilla (this) loads only the title field. Don't know why.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 09:56:00 AM. Permalink |

Appeasement cartoons
Before Dr. Seuss wrote children's books he was a political cartoonist. Here is a small collection of his pre-World War II cartoons that shred the appeasers of the day. Hat tip: Mike Perry.

by Donald Sensing, 3/20/2004 03:11:00 PM. Permalink |

Bloggers, do you run political ads?
I do not run partisan political ads on this site. If you do, there is a Georgia Congressional candidate's comm director who would like to hear from you. Just email Andy Payment and let him know.

by Donald Sensing, 3/19/2004 01:18:00 PM. Permalink |

NASCAR is a white man's sport . . .
. . . and the black driver is privileged to be allowed to get behind the wheel. There has to be a reason that pit crews and drivers are about 99 percent white. It can only be that black men can't do the work as well or drive as skillfully.

Does that offend you? Yes? Well, how about this:

The Vanderbilt basketball team, now playing in the NCAA tournament, is "too white" to beat Western Michigan in today's game, said Boston Globe sports writer Rob Ryan Wednesday on ESPN Radio's Tony Kornheiser Show. Reports The Tennessean,

Ryan said Wednesday on ESPN Radio's nationally syndicated Tony Kornheiser Show that the Commodores had ''too many white guys'' to beat Western Michigan in today's first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. ...

Kornheiser, a longtime Washington Post columnist, paused and seemed to try to help Ryan get past the remark. Ryan then reiterated, saying ''they have too many white guys, they always do.''

Do you remember that ESPN TV fired Rush Limbaugh for observing (rather tactlessly, to be sure) that the Philadellphia media were over-reporting Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb's accomplishments because the emdia wanted to have a black quarterback succeed? The exact quote:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

But Ryan, contacted by The Tennssean, refused to back down:

''The audience at ESPN is presumably a sports-savvy audience which means that in terms of basketball they know the code, ethics and culture of basketball, which is, in case anyone is new to the game like some of these idiots that apparently have responded in a negative fashion, the code is it's a black man's game and the white man is privileged to be allowed to step on the court,'' Ryan said. ''That is known by both blacks and whites. If it weren't easy to joke about this in the culture, you would not be able to have a movie entitled White Men Can't Jump.

''It's beyond my comprehension that anyone who likes basketball would be so dense and ignorant and just clueless not to understand where I was coming from.''

Everyone get that? If you think that Ryan's comments are, charitably, insensitive or more accurately, downright racist, you are an "idiot," according to Ryan.

Also, you may be surprised to learn that no white player can participate in the game with permission of black players. That's what he said. That's the "code" of basketball.

The Boston Globe defends both Ryan and his comments.

You see, it's okay to be racist these days if you are racist the right way. And yes, I think Ryan should be fired. But he won't be.

Update: Vanderbilt won 71-58.

by Donald Sensing, 3/19/2004 01:08:00 PM. Permalink |

Army basic training more combat focused
Back on Oct. 16 I reported that the then-new Army chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, had ordered basic training for new soldiers to be made tougher and more combat focused. I observed,

The Iraq War proved that the combat zone is enormous and there is no safety being behind friendly lines because as I explained to my son, there are no lines anymore . Every soldier a combat soldier is not a goal, it is the present reality; now the Army must train them accordingly.

And it is, with half of all new soldiers going to Iraq or Afghanistan either immediately or very soon after completing their training.

... the training is being overhauled for the first time in decades to immerse soldiers into the realities of modern warfare.

That includes training for fighting in city streets, detaining civilians and dealing with the threat of suicide bombers.

"This could be their only combat experience before they are in combat for real," said Lt. Col. Jim Larsen of the 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry, at Fort Knox, 40 miles southwest of Louisville.

The changes being tested in pilot programs at Fort Knox, Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Jackson, S.C., are part of a major shift taking place to update an Army basic training regimen that was based largely on the experiences of World War II and Vietnam.

"If you don't train him in the correct tasks, he won't react correctly and he'll die, and that's why we've got to shift in basic training to do that," said Capt. Stu James of Wheeling, W.Va., who fought in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division and now trains new recruits at Fort Knox.

As I pointed out before, now that the combat vets are moving into positions to shape and conduct basic training and AIT, the quality and relevance of the training are going way up.

by Donald Sensing, 3/19/2004 11:21:00 AM. Permalink |

"Could our dreams be true?"
Iraqi blogger Sarmad Zangna reflects on the opening of his country's liberation one year ago.

The shared dream for all Iraqis was to be released from Sadaam's regime... and many of them even said "I will accept any one who will help us, even if he was the devil himself!" That was because of what we suffered ,and you might feel for us, but you could not imagine our situation. Three destroying wars ,thirteen years of sanctions , two million killed , four million left the country, and the rest despaired in their ignorance.

But what happened on the 9th of April [the day Saddam's statue was famously toppled in Baghdad - DS] made many Iraqis feel like they were reborn, and brought others to life after they had been dead. ...

These days, Iraq is witnessing a great day. It's the Day that we will go on to see our first constitution , even it is not final and it needs more time to be done right--- ,but at least we've got one now ,and there is going be Law to be respect, We are all equal before The Law, and no one is above it . There will be freedom for people to express their opinions peacefully.

And even if all this is to only hold us for a limited time, so we can do elections ,we are so happy that they will sign this constitution . All those who bet on civil war in Iraq , well, their dreams have crashed on the rock of the new free Iraq . All the killing stuff they are doing, to "create a situation between the Iraqis" will fail.

I want to see one united Iraq: powerful, one in everything. ...

I love you Iraq ,
I owe you, USA, thank you .

There are people asking why I put the cost of the war in Iraq in my blog , I wanted people to see that the USA are serious in what they are doing.

They pay a lot of money to make the world a better place to live. I want you to see how your money is really used, here in Iraq, to rebuild a new country and I wanted to show my people that there is a lot of money being spent on Iraq and we are not alone .

This is much longer than I excerpted here, and very moving. Honestly, it brought tears to my eyes. Go read the whole thing.

Sarmad also has posted an amazing series of photos of events and life in Iraq today.

by Donald Sensing, 3/19/2004 10:41:00 AM. Permalink |

One year ago today
A look back to the first day of the Iraq War

The execute order has been given
I said after President Bush's Monday address to the nation that the deadline would be 3 a.m. Thursday morning, Iraq time. There are two developments that convince me that Bush has given the execute order to attack Iraq. First, Rand Simberg reports that weapons-laden B-52s have taken off from England. The flight time for the B-52s to Iraq is approximately seven hours, putting there between 3 a.m.-4a.m.

Second, President Bush has fulfilled the final requirement of Congress' authorization for using force against Iraq. Bush has given written notification to the Congress that there are no diplomatic recourses left, and that the Iraq war is consistent with taking actions against international terrorism.

Hell will be unleashed tonight at or very shortly after 7 p.m. EST.

Update: The report of the B-52s should now be considered unconfirmed, even thought it came from the BBC. Er, uh, you know.

by Donald Sensing. Link to this post: 3/19/2003 01:14:32 PM

The war has begun in earnest
MSNBC on cable reports that US aircraft have attacked Iraqi artillery positions north of the Kuwaiti border. That's it, folks. The war has begun.

by Donald Sensing. Link to this post: 3/19/2003 01:26:42 PM

Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation
The Oval Office
10:16 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

Read the rest.
by Donald Sensing. Link to this post: 3/19/2003 09:21:36 PM

by Donald Sensing, 3/19/2004 10:18:00 AM. Permalink |

Ukraine general wants to invade America
One year ago today on One Hand Clapping:

Ukraine's 19th Army Battalion anti-chemical weapons unit is readying for Persian Gulf deployment, where it would stand by to help neutralize the effects of a potential Iraqi offensive against neighboring countries. The 531-man volunteer unit has been training for four months, and is only awaiting parliamentary approval to go. Ukraine's government says it cannot fund the mission, which officials estimate could cost up to $1 million a month, and the United States is expected to help fund the force if parliament approves the project. Each soldier would receive a monthly salary of $600 to $1,000 if they don't participate in decontamination work and double that if they do. Asked where he preferred to deploy his force, deputy commander Lt. Gen. Valery Frolov replied, "Florida."

Actually, northern Florida tends to be chilly this time of year.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 09:26:00 PM. Permalink |

Nein! Der messer is verboten!
What do you do when you've bought a Swiss Army Knife - in Switzerland, natch - and want to fly back to the States with it in your checked luggage? Kein problem, ja? But what if said Swiss Army knife not only has the emergency saw, the corkscrew, the portable MRI, the black-hole detector, the Klingon translator - you know, all the standard Swiss Army knife stuff - but also has a butane cigarette lighter?

Rule number 1: Knives may be carried aboard airliners only in checked luggage, for obvious reasons.

Rule number 2: Butane lighters must be carried on the plane by the passenger (never in checked luggage because the checked luggage compartment is unpressurized).

What happens is you get this little Three Stooges routine:

Hans: Iss nicht possible to put in checked luggage -- iss flammable. Must carry in hand luggage.
Frantz: Nein! Iss unmütlich to carry in hand luggage.
Hans: Vy so?
Frantz: Iss knife!
Hans: Knife?
The Mrs. (helpfully): Yes, it's a Swiss Army knife.

Whereupon Hans runs off to fetch Dieter, who, it seems, is the only one who can resolve this terrible impasse.

Dieter: Iss not possible to carry knife in hand luggage, iss not possible to put in checked luggage.
Frantz: Yes!
Hans: Yes!

The ending is a real kicker.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 08:53:00 PM. Permalink |

Radio interview Monday on Seattle station
I have accepted an invitation to do a telephone interview on the Kirby Wilbur show on KVI radio 570 in Seattle this Monday, 22 March, at 8:30 a.m. PST. All you Seattle readers tune in!

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 08:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Fisking my fisker
It was inevitable, I suppose, that a blogger somewhere would fisk my OpinionJournal piece on same-sex marriage. And so one has. I didn't even know until Justin Katz kindly emailed me to say that he had defended my honor and fisked the fisker. Thank you, Justin, I am grateful. His defense is more than capable and slightly unexpected, since he and I have disagreed energetically (though always collegially) on this issue in weeks past.

Anyway, the fisker concerned is Sheila Lennon, said Justin, "who is the official blogger for the Providence Journal and is syndicated across various papers' Web sites." Justin's counterfisk is here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 07:57:00 PM. Permalink |

Not only terrorists, but gangsters
Not only is al Qaeda a terrorist outfit, it also forms a sort of Islamic mafia, with its hands in "arms smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering and covert financial trades," dealing with other terrorists and "extremist political factions, organized criminal gangs, rogue states and corrupt companies ... ." Austin Bay has the details.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 04:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Warmaking as police work
Alas for Kevin Drum, his piece in the Washington Monthly falls shredded by the precision of Geitner Simmons' analysis.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 04:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Digital photography has its own blog
Your one-stop shop for all digital photography stuff is Digital Photography Blog. 'Nuff said!

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 04:08:00 PM. Permalink |

"Brigades of death" to attack Australia
SMH.com of Australia reports,

Australia has been named as a terrorist target by a group claiming to represent al-Qaeda, which warned the "brigades of death" were ready to strike US "lackeys".

The apparent al-Qaeda statement follows calls from suspected Jemaah Islamiah leader Abu Bakar Bashir for a holy war against the US and its allies, and comes as Australia steps up efforts to keep the radical Muslim cleric behind bars. ...

The Abu-Hafs al-Masri/al-Qaeda Brigades delivered a letter to a London Arabic-language newspaper overnight, saying: "Learn your lesson, you lackeys of America, the brigades of death are at your gates . . . Our brigades are now preparing for a fresh strike. Will it be the turn of Japan, America, Italy, Britain, the al-Sauds, Australia . . .?"

The group said it was cancelling further operations against Spain after its new socialist government said it would withdraw troops from Iraq by July unless the UN became involved.

I think that the Abu-Hafs al-Masri outfit simply does not know Australians like I do. If the Islamofascists strike inside Australia, they will bring enduring wrath upon their heads. The Aussies won't take it.

Speaking of "lackeys": I have to wonder how well the term fits the new government of Spain under Señor Zapatero, who was swept into office because of al Qaeda's deadly attacks in Madrid three days before Spain's elections. Zapatero has pledged to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq within two months unless the United Nations assumes control there. Another story on SMH.com reports that al Qaeda announced,

Because of this decision [of the Spanish electorate to install Zapatero], the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories... until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

That makes Zapatero look pretty lackey-like to me.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 03:46:00 PM. Permalink |

More al Qaeda suspects identified to Pakistan government
In news related to the apparehtly-imminent capture of al Qaeda number two man Ayman al-Zawahiri (see next post down), the United States handed to the Pakistani government late last month a list of 53 names it believes are "hiding in South Waziristan Agency where the security agencies" are searching terrorists "involved in attempting on President Musharraf’s life."

“The Bush administration has extended a list to Pakistani authorities which contains the names of 53 al-Qaeda suspects who, it said, have taken refuge in South Waziristan Agency. This US contention is based on intelligence reports gathered from Afghanistan that these suspected terrorists have sneaked into the Pakistani side a couple of months ago,” well-placed sources confided to The Nation.

That's "The Nation" of Pakistan, not of the US. "So far," reports the Pakistani journal, Pakistan "has handed over about 550 al-Qaeda and Taliban activists to the United States."

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 03:33:00 PM. Permalink |

Al Qaeda's No. 2 man near capture, say Paks
The Pakistani government announced today that their troops "believe they have surrounded al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri in an operation near the Afghan border."

The officials, who spoke to news agencies on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that intelligence indicated al-Zawahri has been cornered in an operation that began on Tuesday in South Waziristan involving hundreds of troops and paramilitary rangers.

This is good news if true, of course, and shows that the combined Pakistani-American "hammer and anvil" operations in the border area are close to bearing fruit.

Al-Zawahiri is wanted by the United States for murder of American citizens, conspiracy to murder American citizens and fatal attack on a federal facility.

Zawahiri is really a more substantive terrorist to snag than Osama bin Laden. International law-enforcement agencies have long thought that he is the "the real brains behind" al Qaeda.

It may be that the USA would find it prudent to go after al-Zawahiri first if it wants to eliminate the enemy it has identified. ...

Al-Zawahiri was indicted along with Bin Laden by a federal grand jury in New York in 1999 for the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es Salaam in August 1998 and has been named as a prime suspect in the 11 September suicide attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

Since before the 9/11 attacks, many analysts have thoughts that although Osama bin Laden is al Qaeda's titular head and chief fundraiser, operational planning and control of al Qaeda is exercised by Zawahiri.

If the Paks capture him and he starts talking, he may be a bigger intelligence goldmine than bin Laden himself.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 03:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Sitemeter goes on the fritz
Imagine my dismay to discover this morning that Sitemeter had reduced my total-hit count by about 20,000. Now I discover that it says I didn;t have any hits at all last Friday-Monday! And none in the last hour. Methinks the service has gone bonkers.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 02:52:00 PM. Permalink |

An open letter to my fellow United Methodist clergy
A thought experiment about same-sex marriage

I am an elder in full membership of the Tennessee Conference of the UMC. Imagine that the next time the state puts a condemned criminal to death, I go to the death chamber and give a blessing to the execution. Note: I do not bless the condemned man so as to give him over to God's care, but bless the execution itself, and commend the executioner and the capital-punishment system as exemplary of the will of God.

Is that a problem? Why?

The UMC opposes capital punishment, but why should that stop me? If I, in my own conscience, believe that capital punishment is theologically justified (there is ample biblical justification for it), what reason could there be for me not to go to the state penitentiary to perform a "Litany of Blessing of an Execution?"

Would my blessing of an execution be a means of God's grace to the event? After all, I am ordained clergy - doesn't my giving the blessing means that God's favor is present?

Let's press farther. If I blessed an execution, would not the execution thereby have the blessing of the church also?

Or would blessing an execution do nothing but give it only my personal approval with no ecclesial substance or divine standing at all?

Now, don't worry, I do not support capital punishment. But if there is a qualitative, substantive difference between a pastor blessing an execution and blessing a same-sex union or "marriage," I'd like to know what it is. Hint: it's not the fact that the prisoner dies; the death of an unborn child in abortion does not prevent the UMC from condoning it.

The United Methodist Church's doctrine prohibits UMC clergy from performing or blessing same-sex unions, nor may they be performed in a United Methodist church. Clergy who think such same-sex unions should be celebrated by the UMC may with integrity work within the polity of the church to change the church's doctrine. But to "go solo" and perform or bless such unions anyway is both faithless to one's vows and deceptive to the same-sex couple concerned.

We placed ourselves under the authority of the denomination's rules when we accepted our ordination. When we cannot in good conscience uphold our ordination orders and obey the Discipline, then we must resign our orders and seek another vocation.

There are countless professions who have this same issue of integrity and discipline. We are no different in this regard just because we are ordained. Being ordained does not give us superior insight into right and wrong, nor are we free to act as we please because somehow, magically, we are especially filled with love of God and neighbor. Yet these are our common delusions!

I must speak the truth in love to you, my beloved colleagues, that in the seven years I have served the pulpit full time, I have sadly come to conclude that there is probably no social group in America today more certain of itself with less justification than we clergy.

A little clerical humility may be in order, to remember that not one of us has a lock on wisdom. Maybe, just maybe, the denomination as a whole is wiser than any one of us. Our pastoral office is not ours to do with as we wish: we are stewards of what we do not own, responsible to our Master who will demand an accounting:

"What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management ...." (Luke 16:2b).

The Lord will take action if our servanthood is deficient:

"Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom" (Mt. 21:43).

But there is another other issue of integrity in performing or blessing same-sex unions. UMC pastors who perform same-sex unions or blessings are deceiving the couples concerned. The couple may think they are getting the "blessing of the church," but they are not, for the pastor is acting wholly outside the church, not within it. There is no more a blessing of the church in such ceremonies than there would be if the couple drafted some stranger off the street to perform the ceremony.

Do UMC clergy who perform such ceremonies explain this fact to the couples concerned? Do they explain that their officiating does not mean that either the church or God are vicariously present and participatory? (Are they actually humble enough to realize it?) If not, they have broken the trust not only of their church, but of the couple concerned. How can such deceptiveness be acceptable in pastoral practice?

We hold our ordination in both sacred and public trust. Our office and authority are not given us to do with as we see fit. We are obligated by duties that we do not define on our own, duties to do some things and not to do other things. What we personally think about those duties is irrelevant to the fact that we are bound by them anyway until they are changed by those in whose trust we serve.

by Donald Sensing, 3/18/2004 10:18:00 AM. Permalink |

Coffee is good for you!
Bean Central Coffee Roasters reports (link may be perishable),

Over the past few years we have supplied small amounts of green coffee to the Vanderbilt Coffee study. Word leaked out early from the self described "lab rats" of the beneficial effects they were finding coffee provides us. Holly Edwards recently wrote about this in the Tennessean:
It's an antioxidant, absorbing destructive molecules linked to heart disease and cancer.

By combating depression and elevating mood, coffee can reduce the risk of suicide and prevent drug and alcohol addiction relapse.

Its ability to increase blood flow to the brain has been linked to prevention of degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

It can prevent diabetes by enhancing the liver's ability to metabolize sugar.

Smokers who drink it regularly have a lower risk of developing bladder cancer than smokers who are not coffee drinkers.
Lighter roasted coffees provide more antioxidants than darker roasts. Perfectly logical since the lighter roasts maintain/contain more of the original organic compounds as opposed to the darker roasts which contain more and more carbon.

Source: Vanderbilt University's Institute For Coffee Studies.

Vanderbilt, my alma mater, has a "coffee studies" institute? I never knew. So there you go: excellent reasons to drink coffe (which, btw, Bean Central will sell you fresh roasted if you are disinclined to roast your own).

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 10:32:00 PM. Permalink |

"Post-heroic societies"
I cited yesterday Jefferson Morley's roundup of European papers' post-Madrid-bomb editorials and wondered whether some of them are actually getting the point: that ostrichism is no strategy for survival.

David Kaspar offers some evidence that even the Germans are coming around to the real meaning of Madrid, that the terror war is not an American war only. Europe is also the infidel enemy. Says one paper David describes as "left wing,"

The strategy of the terror war speculates not without good reason on the moral impotence of western Europe. The announcement of designated Minister President Zapatero that he will pull Spanish troops out of Iraq can be celebrated by the assassins as a (wohlfeilen) victory.

The editorialist goes on to describe modern Germany and Europe generally as "post-heroic," not a compliment even from this "left-wing" paper.

I have to wonder when the Spanish electorate will awaken one morning with voters' remorse and understand that they relinguished control of their polity to al Qaeda.

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 10:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Tennessee legislature to consider ban on civil unions
By a 7-1 vote, the Tennessee Senate's Judiciary Committee sent to the floor a bill to outlaw civil unions in the state.

The legislation says same-sex civil unions or domestic partnerships are not legally recognized in Tennessee and that civil unions or domestic partnerships recognized in other cities and states are void and unenforceable here.

Benefits and rights extended under civil unions and domestic partnerships vary from place to place but can include inheritance, property rights, the ability to make medical decisions for a partner, banking, health insurance coverage, family leave, public assistance and adoption.

There is an eight-year-ol law on the books than bans same-sex marriage.

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 02:44:00 PM. Permalink |

Enormous bomb blasts Baghdad
A bomb estimated of 1,000 pounds weight shattered central Baghdad today near the Jabal Lebanon Hotel, killing at least 27 persons and injuring dozens of others. There was immense destruction on the street. Here are some grabs from news coverage.

Here is a a video feed (not live, via James Joyner, who posted the AP news feed).
In other news, presidential candidate John Kerry called upon Spain's new Prime Minister Zapatero to "reconsider" his announced decision to withdraw all Spanish troops from Iraq this June unless the UN gains operational control of military activities there.

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 01:53:00 PM. Permalink |

Seven figures
A red-letter day today, I suppose - my SiteMeter counter, positioned at the very bottom of the page, just passed over the 1,000,000 mark.

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 12:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Running over bin laden
If Osama bin Laden ever goes to France, he needs to keep clear of a certain French artist named Pierre who is determined to run him over with his car.

That's what Pierre tried to do this week. Except that his intended victim was not the Islamofascist terrorist, but a a man who was able to dodge Pierre's car.

Pierre's lawyer, David Mendel, said his client was the "victim of a hallucination" while driving Monday through Montpellier's historic center.

The victim, a man in his 30s, was able to run from the oncoming car, which crashed along the side of a street.

"If it was (bin Laden), we would have won $5 million," Mendel said, referring to a reward.

Actually, I think it more like $25 million. I think that Donald Rumsfeld should give Pierre an M1 Abrams tank, a crate of MREs, a full tank of fuel, and turn him loose in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border mountains.

by Donald Sensing, 3/17/2004 10:04:00 AM. Permalink |

"Dialogue about what? The manner in which we will be assassinated?"
The WaPo's Jefferson Morley surveys the content of European papers' editorials now that the immediate shock of the Madrid attacks is being displaced by cool reason.

Sociologist Emilio Lamo de Espinosa says Europeans have been dreaming. Writing in Le Monde (in French), Lamo says Europeans have thought they would be spared because they haven't supported the Bush administration's policies.

"When the Americans declared war on terrorism, many of us thought they exaggerated. Many thought terrorism was not likely to occur on our premises, [inhabited by] peaceful and civilized Europeans who speak no evil of anybody, who dialogue, who are the first [to] send assistance and offer cooperation. We are pacifists, they are warmongers. . . . . Don't we defend the Palestinians? Are we not pro-Arab and anti-Israeli?"

"Can we dialogue with those who desire only our death and nothing but our death?" Lamo asks. "Dialogue about what? The manner in which we will be assassinated?"

Many commentators of all political stripes are figuring out that the words of Eowyn to Aragorn in Lord of the Rings 2 are true: "Those without swords may still die upon them."

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 09:08:00 PM. Permalink |

An al Qaeda victory
Dan Darling has a fantastically comprehensive and link-rich essay on Winds of Change in which he surveys the range of trends and events leading up to the Madrid bombings and explains why they were "a definitive victory for al-Qaeda."

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 08:35:00 PM. Permalink |

Oh, no, not again!
Remember, "Why do they hate us?" It's baaaaaack!

Whatever we do to the original members of al-Qaeda, a new generation of terrorists similar to them is growing. So, in addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us. If we do not focus on the reasons for terrorism as well as the terrorists, the body searches we accept at airports may be only the beginning of life in the new fortress America [emphasis added].

This from Richard A. Clarke, former Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security within the National Security Council. With his prior credentials across four administrations, I am surprised he even asks the question. He should know the answer, and he should know that al Qaeda's lethal hatred of the West in general and the United States in particular is not a mere policy issue. Policies can be negotiated, but as I pointed out in a few days after the 9/11 attacks, the attacks were not political attacks:

In the Islamists' view, certain concretized social structures are absolutely essential, springing from and required by the command of Allah, as revealed in the Koran. Without those structures, a society is wholly corrupted and reality itself is threatened. We see them as hopeless religious fanatics; they see us as irredeemably godless and degenerate.

Thus, this struggle is not principally a clash between political systems. It is a clash of incompatible world views and irreconcilable ways of understanding the nature of reality itself. Hence, we should not be surprised to discover that bin Laden's minions tried to mount a devastating attack on Muslim Jordan in 2000 - Jordan is a westernized Arab country. King Abdullah and his father were educated in England and the king's mother is American. ...

Many commentators insist that America is targeted by Al Qaeda because we support Israel. It's not that simple. ...

Hostility resulting from America's Israel policy may indeed motivate some Arab men to join al Qaeda. But al Qaeda's leadership is motivated differently. ... In an interview with the BBC, former American special envoy to the Mid-East peace process Peter Ross said that radical Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America because of its support of Israel. "They hate who we are," he said, "they see us a threat to their religion."

America was not attacked on Sept. 11 because we support Israel. Quite the opposite, Islamists oppose Israel because it is western. Al Qaeda's hostility to western culture is the foundation of their hostility to Israel. The West is their principal enemy, not specifically Israel. If America utterly renounced Israel, broke all diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, and took up the Palestinian cause, bin Laden and Al Qaeda would still attack us.

Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early 1990s, was one of the terrorists killed by Saudi security forces in Riyadh last June. Not long before, wrote a book published by al Qaeda entitled, The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad . In it Ayyeri wrote, as Amir Taheri summarized

"It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." . . .

Al-Ayyeri then shows how various forms of unbelief attacked the world of Islam in the past century or so, to be defeated in one way or another.

The first form of unbelief to attack was "modernism" (hidatha), which led to the caliphate's destruction and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith. . . .

What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's "seductive capacities."

This form of "unbelief" persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. ... [italics added]

Modernity is what bin Laden and his allies are fighting against, for modernity carries within it the idea that human societies should be able to shape their culture as they please. But such is anathema to al Qaeda's radical Islamism. They want to make strict sharia, Islamic law, the sole rule of society.

Why do they hate us? Because we are free. As the Jerusalem Post put it today about the Madrid bombings,

Now, some Spaniards can be expected to blame themselves for their own victimization. If Spain had not joined the war on Iraq, they will say, it would not have been attacked. We cannot but implore Spain to avoid that kind of thinking; we've been through all that and can now confidently say that Spain was targeted not for anything it did or failed to do, but for what it is, namely a country that embraces and offers all the freedoms that Muslim fundamentalism detests.

See also my PDF paper, The Soil of Arab Terrorism, an historical survey of the rise of Islamism over the last century. A taste:

In June 2003, Alan B. Krueger, professor of economics and public policy at Princeton University, and Jitka Maleckov, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Charles University in Prague, published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education called, "Seeking the Roots of Terrorism." They concluded, "Instead of viewing terrorism as a response . . . to poverty or ignorance, we suggest that it is more accurately viewed as a response to [the terrorists' own] political conditions and longstanding feelings of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economic circumstances. We suspect that is why international terrorist acts are more likely to be committed by people who grew up under repressive political regimes."

So the real question is why does their own political repression lead them to attack us?

So, if I may say, read the rest.

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 08:29:00 PM. Permalink |

D - fence
Bill Hobbs explains why sci-fi author Robert Heinlein was right: " No department of defense ever won a war," and what that means for us today.

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 07:51:00 PM. Permalink |

Thanks to all who emailed this week
I have received an enormous amount of email in response to my op-ed on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal page of March 15. I would love to be able to reply individually to each one, but alas, the volume is too high.

I am gratified that not one email was a flame - not all writers agreed with me, but no one was anything other than collegial, and most were very complimentary. Heck, even Andrew Sullivan was grudgingly complimentary (he called my column a "digression into the bleeding obvious," heh). A number of emailers asked me to answer follow-on questions. Again, it's just not possible for me to address individual questions, although in future posts I will try to integrate them into the essays where appropriate.

A lot of emailers wrote to point out the similarities between my conclusions about the last 40 years and Pope Paul VI's prediction in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae. In fact, many Catholic correspondents assumed that I recently read it. Actually, I haven't read it; I pretend no expertise in contemporary Catholic theology. And the main thrust of my column was based on psychobiological readings rather than biblical ones.

Geitner Simmons, a columnist for the Omaha World Herald, is one of my earliest readers. I count him as a fine friend, too; we even met for dinner when he was passing through town. Geitner also writes the most finely-crafted blog there is, IMO, called Regions of Mind. Anyway, he emailed today to tell me that I am now ranked as the 29th most influential blogger or reporter on Blogrunner.com. I mist say I am gratified - I remember thinking when I started blogging two years ago this month that three dozen hits per day was pretty good! So I thank every reader past and present.

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 06:19:00 PM. Permalink |

Blogger's parents killed in Iraq yesterday
I've been at work all day and not online. When I returned I had an email from Daniel Kauffman of The Command Post advising me that the parents of blogger Scott Elliot were killed yesterday in Mosul, Iraq.

Four Americans researching needs for humanitarian projects in northern Iraq were killed and one was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting March 15 in Mosul. The workers were in the area under the auspices of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

Killed were Larry T. Elliott, 60, and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of Cary, N.C.; Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, Calif.; and David E. McDonnall, 29, of Rowlett, Texas. The Elliotts had served with the International Mission Board in Honduras since 1978 and transferred to the Middle East in February 2004. Watson had been with the board since March 2003, McDonnall since November of last year.

McDonnall's wife, Carrie, 26, also of Rowlett, Texas, remains in critical condition March 16.

David McDonnall died the morning of March 16 en route to a military support hospital in Baghdad. Four U.S. military surgeons had worked six hours to save his life. ...

According to the IMB, the four workers died from bullet and shell fragment wounds reportedly fired by unidentified assailants wielding automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

Before heading to the mission field the Elliotts were members of First Baptist Church in Cary, N.C. They kept close tabs with members of the church; whenever they were stateside, they stayed at First Baptist’s mission house.

Scott posted a brief advisory on his blog that he won't be posting for awhile because of the tragedy, and posted photo-portraits of his parents. BPNews also published a profile of the Elliots.

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 05:37:00 PM. Permalink |

More commentary on Spanish ostrichism
I hereby invent the word, "ostrichism" to stand for how Mark Steyn so eloquently concluded his column yesterday, referring to the appeasement policies of the western Left in general toward Islamofascists and now the Spanish electorate speccifically.

The choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you can't wage war against a phenomenon, in fact you can – as the Royal Navy did very successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.

Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt. But they'll blow it up anyway.

Anyway, Real Clear Politics has a choice selection of more commentary about the Spanish elections (if you happen not to know why the election is so newsworthy, read here). Note: RCP does not have daily permalinks, so if you're reading this post after March 16, you'll have to find the entries for March 16 there.

by Donald Sensing, 3/16/2004 06:40:00 AM. Permalink |

How al Qaeda is trying to reconstitute
Jim Dunnigan surveys how al Qaeda is trying to reconstitute, having lost Afghanistan's territory, come under more severe repression by by Saudi Arabia, and being killed in numbers in Iraq. Despite al Qaeda's likely guilt in the Madrid bombings, a spectacular success by any standard, all is not well for them. For example says Jim,

Iraq has become a training and testing ground for al Qaeda recruits. Unlike pre-2001 Afghanistan, where the fighting was against anti-Taliban Afghans, in Iraq the enemy is American troops. This makes a big difference because the al Qaeda suffer much higher casualties fighting American and coalition troops. This may be why the coalition has been unable to identify more than a few hundred "foreign" fighters in Iraq. There may have been a few thousand a year ago, but most of them were killed in battles with American troops. These fighters were eager, but not well trained. Those few that survived and fled back to their home countries were probably not very helpful when it came to recruiting. War stories that feature your side getting wiped out tend to discourage new volunteers.

But al Qaeda has moved operations to southeast Asia, south-central Asia, the Philippines and Bosnia. Al Qaeda has not yet been defeated.

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 08:29:00 PM. Permalink |

Blogvertising
Making the rounds today is the WSJ article (on its for-pay site) about advertising on blogs. The WSJ piece says blog advertising, or "blogvertising" as I call it (all meme makers, please take note) is already a resounding success and will get even bigger. Via Bill Hobbs:

And the ads are effective - one marketer reports selling 1,000 copies of a Christmas CD after running $450 worth of ads on blogs - a very good return on his investment. The story shows how the growth of the blogosphere is making the online publications more and more attractive to advertisers.

Glenn Reynolds quotes the CD vendor,

"I don't think the bloggers realized how much these ads are worth," he says. "Next year it will be much more expensive."

The real harbinger of the future of blogvertising is Pressflex LCC's Blogads service. I have three blogads running in the right column of this site. Advertisers who want to run a blogad clicks on the line at the bottom of the last one that reads, "Click to place your ad!" Then follow the instructions. To take out an ad through Blogads, blogvertisers pay Blogads, who takes a cut subsequently pays the blogger.

I have not yet received any money from Blogads. I assume the reason is that the ads' term to run on my site has not expired. All three ads were bought for a month, none of which have reached that term yet.

The other ads you see are "clickthrus." Those ads generate no income for me unless a reader clicks on them to go to the site and then becomes a customer of the company concerned. I am thinking about dropping them, however, and converting the space to blogads.

Like traditional advertising media, the larger viewership/readership a blog has, the higher fee it can charge for blogads. Because blogads has a listing and description of the blogs using its service, with weekly readership noted. However, each blogger sets his/her own fees, and these can vary pretty widely for approximately the same stated readership.

I told a Knoxville newspaper not long ago, "The question is whether it will be a long-term trend. I think so, but the dynamics have yet to be worked out."

In the meantime, if you want to take out a blogvertisement, all you have to do is click here!

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 08:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Taps
US Marine Reserve Major Bob Zangas was blogging his experiences in Iraq; his last entry was dated 1-6 March and features an excellent photo of him. He was not on active duty in Iraq; he was working as a civilian for the CPA. He died last Wednesday in an ambush south of Baghdad. (hat tip: Dean Esmay)

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 05:54:00 PM. Permalink |

The dawn of third-wave terrorism
A review of al Qaeda's objectives and why the Madrid bombings may indicate some real strategic thinking (finally) on al Qaeda's part

Last September I wrote a long essay about Osama bin Laden's strategic plan, in which I concluded that although Osama bin Laden has a strategic goal, he does not actually have a strategic plan to accomplish it. I based this conclusion on bin Laden's own words and announcements and my analysis of how practical his goals are as related to the means he uses to accomplish them.

Bin Laden and al Qaeda rest their entire campaign on grievously flawed understandings of the nature of the conflict he initiated with America. His jihad is flawed in its fundamental assumptions. Rather than take up space excerpting from my own post and its citations, let me urge you to read it if you have time. If not, here are the main points:

Osama bin Laden's world view is a radicalized form of Islam that has come to be called Islamism. Making no distinction between religious and political realms, bin Laden thinks that all Islamic societies and nations should be placed under strict sharia, or Islamic, law.

the primary long-term goal is the downfall of the House of Saud and the emplacement of a pure Islamic regime there, then the establishment of Islamic regimes in the other Persian Gulf countries. Eventually, bin Laden wants the Muslim countries united under a grand Muslim caliphate, starting with the Arab countries. (I discussed the instability of the House of Saud and its vulnerability here and here.)

the main prop of the House of Saud is the United States, which bin Laden considers to be in occupation of Saudi Arabia. Hence, the United States is the main enemy; without its support, the House of Saud would fall easily to the Saudi people, whom bin Laden thinks are chafing for the chance to revolt. Attacking the United States is required to remove the props from under the House of Saud.

al Qaeda understands its primary strength to be their pure Islamist faith. They see themselves as the only keepers of true Islamic faith. They also believe that the Arab people yearn for pure Islamic society and the implementation of sharia law. Thus, al Qaeda sees the Arab ummah (masses) as their natural allies, not foes.

as long as they maintain their Islamist faith, Allah will show fabor upon their struggle and give them victory. Victory is indeed inevitable for true Muslims to achieve.

The role of terrorism

Bin Laden has said in interviews that America does not have the strength or will to suffer either military or civilian casualties over a long term. Bin Laden said so specifically when giving an interview in which he discussed the American withdrawal from Somalia after 19 American soldiers were killed in the "Black Hawk Down" battler of October 1991. Hence, bin Laden decided that when attacked with force, America always yields. This was his fundamental assumption about us in his self-proclaimed jihad against us. (Until Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden's conviction that America would not fight back was proven correct.)

Of course, Osama bin Laden realized that al Qaeda could never hope to challenge America in conventional terms. Terrorism was his only recourse to take the fight to America. They believed that the weakness of American will, the continuing success of terrorist attacks, and the chafing of the ordinary people for true Islamism would combine to achieve the goals I described above.

Their willingness to kill themselves in executing attacks not only gives the attacks a higher chance of success, it also proves to Allah that they are supremely faithful. This faithfulness is not intended to make Allah suddenly, personally strike his enemies dead, but to make Islamist victory inevitable. Why? Because when they order their lives according to Islamic dicta (as they propound it), the flow of human affairs will naturally lead to Islamic triumph. In their religion, that's the way Allah has ordered the world.

Third wave terrorism?

Mark Steyn explains why al Qaeda terrorism is different than what he terms "old school" terrorism.

Old-school terrorists have relatively viable goals: They want a Basque state or Northern Ireland removed from the UK. You might not agree with these goals, you might not think them negotiable, but at least they're not stark staring insane.

But al Qaeda's terrorism, he says, is killing for the sake of killing:

If Islamic terrorism were as rational as Irish or Basque terrorism, it would be easier. But Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." You can be pro-America (Spain, Australia) or anti-America (France, Canada), but if you broke into the head cave in the Hindu Kush and checked out the hit list you'd be on it either way.

Steyn thinks that al Qaeda kills Americans (and apostate Muslims) just to kill them. And for many of al Qaeda's members or sympathizers, that is true. But the foundational reason al Qaeda resorted to terror was to achieve what we would consider a political, if impossible goal: the total withdrawal of every non-Muslim from Saudi Arabia starting with Americans, followed by the Taliban-like rule over the Arab countries.

But Steyn's analysis isn't altogether off the mark, either. Western terror groups such as Spain's ETA or the Irish Republican Army have used terrorism to gain concessions from the sovereign power, often through negotiations. That is, terrorist acts were a deadly form of bargaining chip. But there are no concessions we can make with our Islamist enemies because there is no middle ground in their world view. A nation or a person either is inside the dar al Islam, "the world of Islam," or the dar al harb, the "world of war." We are infidels in their mind, and one does not negotiate with infidels. In the violent jihad al Qaeda is waging, our choice is to submit or to die. Hence, the nature or timing of the terrorist target was itself of no matter to the al Qaeda, as lonmg as its destruction was great.

I call the distinction Steyn makes (as I have amplified it) the transition from first wave terrorism to second wave terrorism.

Now I wonder whether the Madrid bombings signal a third wave terrorism. Even if al Qaeda didn't conduct the attack (which is becoming less tenable to conclude) they are learning from it. Spain's Aznar government fell because of the bombings; some commentators wonder whether such an attack will be attempted in America come November.

If al Qaeda has decided to time terrorism not so much for shock effect itself, but to use destruction and shock to influence the outcome of Western electoral processes, then there may be a sophistication in al Qaeda's thinking that it has not displayed before.

By no means does this change - if change it is - amount to anything like a grand strategy. But it does mean that we need to be open-eyed about the continuing jihad that will be waged against us. Al Qaeda may well leave Spain alone under its new government, but not America no matter who is elected this fall to the White House. For neither George Bush nor John Kerry can possibly yield to al Qaeda's goals. We will never simply withdraw from the Middle East, nor will the Arab masses accept a Talibanic government.

Therefore, third-wave terrorism will be no more successful for al Qaeda than second wave, but it will likely prove more violent.

Update:Barbara Amiel in the UK Telegraph buttresses my argument thus:

By their own mad statements, the Islamists will not be content until all the lands they believe belong to the Muslim world are free of the infidel and the "humiliation of 80 years ago" is reversed, meaning the reversal of the end of the Ottoman Empire. Given their rather bloody interpretation of the command of the Koran to spread the word to all infidels, unless we pull ourselves together we shall find ourselves spread all over streets and railway lines.

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 02:23:00 PM. Permalink |

Did Spain surrender yesterday?
Yesterday, Spanish voters ejected the tough-minded, anti-terrorist, pro-American government of Jose Maria Aznar, and put in a socialist government to be headed by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who has vowed to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq when their tour ends in July.

The vote followed by only three days the spectacular attacks on Madrid commuter trains that killed 200 people and injured more than 1,200 others. The Basque separatist terrorist organization ETA was immediately suspected as the most likely perpetrator, but ETA has strenuously denied responsibility. There is also evidence that Islamist terrorists either part of, allied with or sympathetic to al Qaeda carried out the attack. Claims of responsibility - suspect in themselves, though - have been made by Arab groups. Spanish authorities have not fixed blame for the attacks on any group. But the Spanish public's perception that al Qaeda mounted the attack and that Aznar and his government were suppressing the information showing it was strong in the public mind. Reports the Washington Times,

Many voters said Spain was paying in blood for having backed the United States in an unpopular war, and that Mr. Aznar had been afraid to reveal al Qaeda's role for fear of a voter backlash perhaps made worse because of his purported deceit.

Andrew Sullivan thinks yesterday's vote amounts to a Spanish surrender to Islamist terrorism and he doesn't like at all what it forebodes for America come November.

And in yesterday's election victory for the socialists, al Qaeda got even more than it could have dreamed of. It has removed a government intent on fighting terrorism and installed another intent on appeasing it. For good measure, they murdered a couple of hundred infidels. But the truly scary thought is the signal that this will send to other European governments. Britain is obviously next. The appeasement temptation has never been greater; and it looks more likely now that Europe - as so very often in the past - will take the path of least resistance - with far greater bloodshed as a result. I'd also say that it increases the likelihood of a major bloodbath in this country before the November elections. If it worked in Spain, al Qaeda might surmise, why not try it in the U.S.?

No one can sanely deny that al Qaeda still wants to kill Americans, and kill us by the carload lot if possible. Two years ago, al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith announced that al Qaeda "has the right to kill four million Americans, half of them children." There is no reason to think that al Qaeda has decided otherwise.

That being said, it is still not certain that al Qaeda committed the Madrid attacks. But now it does not matter, for even if innocent, al Qaeda has learned a valuable lesson: that such attacks can sway elections in democratic countries. Our Islamist enemies know about President Bush's determination to defeat them. What are they concluding about John Kerry's? I can't read their minds, but Jeff Jarvis, no member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, draws his own conclusions:

Yes, I want to see defense and homeland security as issues in this campaign.

But when I go to Kerry's site, and look at the box on the upper-right of the page, listing big issues -- Economy & Jobs, Education, Health Care... -- defense isn't even listed.

Homeland Security is listed but going there gives you ideas about expanding Americorps and its role in Homeland Security but nothing about defense.

In other words, there's nothing about going to get the bad guys where they fester.

Jeff did, however, finally find a Kerry speech that he likes, but it is wholly theoretical, not practical. Adds, Jeff, " I want to hear the guy say he will not rest until he gets the bad guys. I want to hear the guy say he will spare nothing to defend us."

Some commentators have characterized Spain's victorious socialist party as the party of appeasers, even though PM-elect Zapatero has promised a tough stance on terrorism and said the defeating it is his "most immediate priority."

But how such a vow will find its way into his government's policy is key, of course. He, and whomever Americans send to the Oval Office this November, would do well to remember Theodore Roosevelt's dictum to speak softly and carry a big stick.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has added more bad news from Europe:

Romano Prodi, the chief of the European Commission, puts it as bluntly as anyone: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," Prodi said. "Terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago." This is classic appeasement. And it's also demonstrably untrue. Al Qaeda has been seriously weakened since 9/11, thanks almost entirely to those countries, especially the U.S., that chose to confront it. But it seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice between Bush and al Qaeda. Al Qaeda won.

Too bad that Prodi doesn't realize that al Qaeda and other Islamofascists see America and Europe as pretty much the same: infidels to be slain or converted to the True Faith. SWinston Churchill's old definition of appeasement is coming true before our eyes: it is bargaining with crocodiles in the hope of being eaten last.

My prediction: now that Europe has certified itself as frightened and unwilling to defend itself, al Qaeda will hit it again, somewhere, and hit hard.

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 09:35:00 AM. Permalink |

More on same-sex marriage
Here are some other essays of mine relevant to same-sex marriage.

Should we separate the legal and the spiritual in the wedding business? Let the state do the former and the Church the latter - a solution to the "gay marriage" impasse?

What makes a thing a thing? The Problem of Universals and defining what is marriage.

Answering Andrew Sullivan's "simple question" - explaining Jesus' silence on homosexuality.

Is the church really hypocritical about homosexuality? Responding to charges of ecclesial hypocrisy because the church tolerates divorce but not homosexuality.

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 08:17:00 AM. Permalink |

Noise that drives people insane
Or so they say. The world's largest cicada population is in Tennessee - the "Brood X" cicada, which emerges from the ground once every 17 years.

After spending 17 years underground, sucking the sap from tree roots, billions of the red-eyed insects will burrow their way to the surface, mate for six weeks and die.

The shrill, piercing, incessant sound that drives many people to near insanity is the male cicada's mating call, a love song designed to lure as many female cicadas as possible during the brief breeding cycle.

There is also a species of 13-year cicadas here that emerged four years ago. They were very loud, too. My church is in the countryside, and you can't get away from the noise. Eastern Tennessee will see the highest densities of Brood X - about 1.5 million per acre this year.

Washington, DC, is also bracing for the onslaught.

by Donald Sensing, 3/15/2004 06:38:00 AM. Permalink |

New essays index online
I have finally updated my essays index, so take a look!

by Donald Sensing, 3/14/2004 11:35:00 PM. Permalink |

Securing American trains
Trains are extremely difficult to protect from terrorist attack. Phil Carter explains why.

by Donald Sensing, 3/13/2004 04:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Massive demonstrations in Madrid

Millions of people turned out across Spain today to show their anger at the terrorists who bombed Madrid commuter trains yesterday, killing almost 200 people and injuring more than 1,200.

Candles were lit to honor the dead and injured at the train stations affected by the attacks.

Rain did not keep the people away from the streets.

The black ribbon on the banner shows grief and mourning. The banner of Spain's national colors shows the people's defiance and unity.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the Dept. Of Homeland Security raised the level of security precautions for American subways and buses.

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 05:20:00 PM. Permalink |

Background on the ETA
Joe Gandelman, who lived in Spain as a foreign correspondent, continues with his backgrounder series on the Basques separatists and the ETA.

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 04:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Christians are the worst tippers
So says Jervis Tetch in a post on StainedApron.com, a site "Dedicated to the venting of food servers' frustrations and a harsh education of the dining public!"

I'm talking to the hostess and for some reason she asks who the worst customers are. Without hesitation I say, "Christians." Being a gigantic Christian she is shocked and asks why. I tell her about another restaurant where I worked where on Saturday nights, after late night mass I would always get this table of Catholics that would run my --- off, want a dozen separate checks and would leave me this folded up piece of paper that looked like a twenty. On the inside of the paper it said "Why are you disappointed that this isn't money? All the riches of heaven await you if you take Jesus as your savior." As a lapsed Christian I have taken Jesus as my savior, but little pieces of paper that aren't actual money don't pay my ------- rent. I continue telling her similar stories about how stingy Christians are especially on Sundays. You couldn't pay me fifty dollars an hour to wait tables on Sunday morning right after church. Everyone is a complete -------. All those little kids who aren't allowed to run around screaming in church have carte blanche in my restaurant. Then they argue about the service. Then they argue about the prices. Then they leave a quarter on the table because they just gave 10% to God, so why should they give even a dollar to some guy that just brought them coffee and pancakes. After an hour of berating Christian customers the hostess is in tears and asks to go home early. So, I send her home.

Next time I work with this hostess she apologizes to me. After I sent her home she called her Pastor, then went to his house and told him all the horrible things I said. The Pastor was disturbed and in Bible Study the next week he initiated a discussion about restaurant etiquette. He found that his whole flock were -------- in restaurants and bad tippers. He then quoted some scripture that went along the lines of "The law of the land is also my law and you shall obey it." Then said that tipping 10% or better was the law of the land. It's a small dent in the bad Christian customers, but hopefully it will spread.

That "scripture" quote doesn't turn up in my Bible software. I'd also be willing to bet that the great majority of customers who leave generous tips are also Christians. After all, more than 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, according to an ABC News poll announced on the Dateline show of Feb 14 in connection with Mel Gibson's interview.

So this guy's beef is apparently with a few Christians who apparently think that "sharing the Gospel" is tip enough. To which I say, no.

Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:15-16)

As Paul wrote,

Now when people work, their wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation (Rom 4:4) [and] For the Scripture says, ... "The worker deserves his wages" (1 Tim 5:18).

But there are harsh words in James:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty (James 5:1-4).

Remember what Martin Luther said, that human beings have fingers, not webbed hands like duck's feet, so that money can fall through. Or John Wesley's dictum: "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can."

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 04:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Basques very insistent they didn't do it
"Two news outlets in the Basque region of northeast Spain traditionally used for communication by the armed group said they received phone calls Friday from someone claiming to represent ETA saying it had 'no responsibility whatsoever' for the attack," reports the WaPo.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar "related a list of recent, foiled ETA attempts to stage a major strike in the capital, including the capture of an explosive-laden van two weeks ago, and another foiled plot to bomb trains on Christmas Eve. 'Isn't it reasonable to think that group would be the culprits?' Aznar asked rhetorically."

But Aznar responded hotly when asked by reporters to state the probability that the attack was carried out by ETA or al Qaeda, saying. ""I'm not going to play Lotto. We can't talk of probabilities. The government is not going to play with hypotheses."

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 01:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Bumper stickers for bloggers
"I think, therefore I blog" bumper stickers are available from Bill Hobbs, and nowhere else. Only 100 were printed, and they're selling, so get yours now.

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 01:39:00 PM. Permalink |

More on same-sex marriage
Gary Gagliardi at Strategy Blog takes on a recent article by Jonathan Rauch that addresses Bush's speech supporting a constitutional gay marriage ban. Gary posted a response to the ideas in Rauch's article, going through the arguments one point at a time. Read Gary's essay here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 01:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Madrid paper: almost 100 kilograms of explosive used
The Madrid newspaper Cinco Dias reports that almost 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of high explosive was used in yesterday's bombings of commuter trains. (Link is to article in Spanish.) For a little perspective, that is more explosive than is packed into two eight-inch US Army artillery projectiles, the largest field artillery cannon the Army ever used.

The article also reports that the European Parliament declared March 11, "European Day of the Victims of the Terrorism" and that political parties in Spain are unified in sponsoring demonstrations in the streets of Spain this afternoon as a manisfestation of national revulsion at the attack.

by Donald Sensing, 3/12/2004 09:55:00 AM. Permalink |

A short history of Original Sin
I posted an essay about this topic here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 11:17:00 PM. Permalink |

Don't tell the jury that murder is wrong!
Doug Payton has some thoughts about a "copy of the Ten Commandments hanging in a North Carolina courtroom [being] covered up after the attorneys for an admitted killer on trial claimed the Sixth Commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' might sway jurors against their client."

This wasn't even a religious issue, as best I can tell from the news article. It was simply the thought that considering murder as wrong was not an idea worth hanging on the wall in a courtroom. This is not a precedent I think needs to be set. Do we really want folks who can't tell right from wrong declaring innocence and guilt?

Good questions.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 10:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Active Army's restructuring most massive in 50 years
The US Army is undergoing the most massive resturcturing of its regular force since the end of the Korean War.

The aim is to reshape the Army to be faster to the fight, to relieve the stress on a relatively small number of Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers who have been called up repeatedly in recent years and to tap 500,000 reservists from all services who have not been activated in the past decade. According to the Defense Department, since 1990 the brunt of the duty has been borne by only 7 percent of the 876,000 reserves assigned to units that have been involuntarily mobilized more than once.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 10:43:00 PM. Permalink |

ISPs join to sue spammers
America Online, Earthlink, Yahoo and Microsoft have filed suit in federal court against "suspected spammers," according to the NYT.

The suits, which are seeking monetary damages and injunctions against further mass e-mail messages, are among the first to invoke the new federal antispam law, which went into effect Jan. 1.

The story says that 62 percent of all email is spam.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 10:38:00 PM. Permalink |

North Korea's starved army
James Dunnigan discusses the military and economic implications of the severe malnourtishment of North Korea's people, including its military. Good stuff, RTWT.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 10:34:00 PM. Permalink |

Cancer drug a failure - reduces cancer deaths by mere 12 percent
What's that, you say? A new drug that reduces deaths from cancer by "only" 12 percent is a failure? Why, sure, if you do math like the New York Times. Hint: this is not a story about a real cancer drug, but about "slipshod reporting" about science matters.

Dean Esmay is asking a simple question: why would a drug that reduced cancer deaths by about 12 percent be hailed as an enormous breakthrough, but a programs that reduces teen premarital sex by 12 percent be hailed as a failure? Dean, who has plenty of bones to pick with social conservatives, nonetheless calls the Times to account for its "egregious example of press spin, not to mention shallow science reporting." As well he might.

That being said, in his exploration of the changing sexual mores of America, I think Dean misses a point or two. Dean says that in earlier years - as late as the 1800s, for example - women got married much earlier than nowadays, which is true. But he pairs this fact with the claim that girls reached reproductive capability much later in life then than now, which is also true.

... as a society, we have over the last 100 years or so begun to expect people to marry at ridiculously advanced ages. People used to get married around the age of 13 or 14. A girl who was 18 and unmarried was practically an old maid, and if you didn't have kids by the time you were 20 you were suspected of being barren. That has been human reality pretty much throughout all of human history, until the 20th century.

But ISTM that Dean misses a disconnection between his two data points: if he is correct, it means that girls were getting married before they were able to have children. The question is why?

First, I am far from sure that women did get married nearly as young as Dean claims. In colonial New England, for example, women married in their early 20s. If there was real downward pressure on the marrying age, the main reason could only be mortality. Until recently in America and other technically advanced countries, women have always had shorter life expectancies than men. In fact, in early-colonial America, "About half of all marriages were broken by the death of one of the partners within seven years." (Interestingly, about a third of all marriages in the southern half of the colonies occurred when the bride was already pregnant, due primarily to the fact that men greatly outnumbered women in that place and time, and so "chastity was a less important qualification for marriage when there were fewer women" than men. Beggars, as they say, can't be choosers: men outnumbered women in America until the 20th century.

Until just a few decades ago, childbirth itself was fraught with great risk for the mother and for a woman to die giving birth was by no means uncommon. As late as 1900, almost 61 women of every 1,000 giving birth died doing so, compared to 0.8 per 1,000 today.

American women are today having children at the latest age ever, almost 25, according to the CDC, and that's up from 21.4 years old just since 1970. (Women are having fewer kids altogether.) Consider, too, that the average age of first marriage has advanced to 25.1 years, up from 20.8 since 1970 (which was almost a year younger than in 1900). What these data show is that a larger percentage of women getting married either already have had a child or are about to.

This is significant, as Dean recognizes, though he ascribes the advancing age of first-birth moms to a social expectation of it. But the CDC report is more specific:

Several factors may account for the delay in childbearing, most importantly educational opportunities and career choices for women. From 1970 to 2000, the number of women completing college has nearly doubled and the number in the labor force has gone up by almost 40 percent. Changes in contraception use, economic cycles, social support and marriage patterns should also be considered.

Dean thinks that this development is a "huge mistake":

I could write a whole essay defending that, but here's a basic point to ponder: one of the biggest frustrations for women these days is that they delay and delay and delay having kids, put tons of time into career, then find themselves in their 30s with their biological alarm clocks going off, frantically thinking about having kids. Then when they have kids, they get hugely frustrated because balancing career and childrearing is exhausting.

Time magazine's cover story of Aug. 21, 2001, reported,

Danielle Crittenden, author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, argues that women have set themselves up for disappointment, many putting off marriage until their 30s only to find themselves unskilled in the art of compatibility and surrounded by male peers looking over their Chardonnays at women in their 20s. "Modern people approach marriage like it's a Bosnia-Serbia negotiation. Marriage is no longer as attractive to men," she says. "No one's telling college girls it's easier to have kids in your 20s than in your 30s."

Michael Broder, a Philadelphia psychotherapist and author of The Art of Living Single, decries what he calls the "perfect-person problem," in which women refuse to engage unless they're immediately taken with a man, failing to give a relationship a chance to develop. "Few women can't tell you about someone they turned down, and I'm not talking about some grotesque monster," he says. "But there's the idea that there has to be this great degree of passion to get involved, which isn't always functional. So you have people saying things like, 'If I can't have my soul mate, I'd rather be alone.' And after that, I say, 'Well, you got your second choice.'"

So there you go.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 10:28:00 PM. Permalink |

The Madrid bombing
Scenes of cruelty and suffering:

Ten terrorist bombs exploded aboard and alongside Spanish commuter trains today, killing 200 and injuring more than 1,200. The Spanish government pretty quickly blamed Basque separatists, whose terror wing, the ETA, has conducted terror bombings and attacks in the past, though none of this scale.

The UN Security Council unanimously voted today to condemn the attacks, and named ETA as the perpetrator, based on Spain's doing so. But ETA and the Basques quickly denied responsibility. Joe Gandelman, who covered Spain as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, has some history and insights.

Now, however, al Qaeda is taking credit and promising that an equally deadly attack will soon take place inside the United States. Trains are an especially lucrative target in Europe because Europeans use trains for travel far more than Americans do. The entire continent is crisscrossed with tracks. Train systems are much more difficult to secure than airliners because there are so many train stations and easy ways to attack a train even while it is traveling. News reports said that one million people commute in and out of Madrid per day.

Spain was an early and consistent ally of the United States in the war on terror, including sending troops to Iraq.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 04:58:00 PM. Permalink |

My Last Passion Post
I've said pretty much all about The Passion of the Christ that I want to say, except for this post. The front part of this post is a slightly edited email from Joseph Spiezer. I comment afterward.

A couple of points on the "Passion." Beliefnet has an interesting and well written article by Steven Waldman, the point of which is that Jews and Christians are watching two different movies when seeing the film. Jews see centuries of antiSemitism, Christians see an opportunity to experience God’s love. As a Jew, I really do understand the emotional bond that the movie seeks to convey for Christians. But let me explain my concerns about the movie:

1. Anti-semitism. Mel Gibson belongs to a church which rejects Vatican II. Vatican II said that Jews were not to blamed for the death of Jesus, and that antiSemitism was to be contrary to Catholic teaching. After Vatican II, the Church went so far as to say Jews were not to be targeted for conversion. After centuries of antiSemitism, in which normative Christianity viewed Jews as having murdered and rejected Christ, Vatican II is quite literally a Godsend to my fellow Jews and me. Since Gibson rejects Vatican II and all that followed, the natural concern is that he believes that the ideas that Jews are fundamentally evil and followers of Satan and therefore that is the message of the movie.

2. Anti-Judaism. Nothing is more important to me than my children. They represent the continuity of my life, the passing of my ideals. To the extent that missionaries of any religion try to change the values and religion of my children, they are violated me in the most gruesome and painful way possible. This idea, that Judaism is somehow inauthentic, since it does not accept the truth of the movie, is what I am most afraid of. The notion that missionaries will become reinvigorated not to seek to encourage fellow Christians to develop a more spiritual relationship with God, but to seek to convert my children to their religion. It is not so long ago, in the history of time, that the conversions were not through argument, but through force. The story of Pope Leo XIII, and the kidnaping of Edgardo is well known to Jews.

3. Not a concern, but my hope for the future. The difference between is really much more fundamental than Jesus. The basic difference is Christians believe in Original Sin, which breaks the relationship between man and God, a break which is only mended through the life and death of Jesus. For Jews, there is no break, hence no need for a Messianic Savior in the sense that Jesus is for Christians. Thus, Jews could not have rejected Jesus, because the whole concept of repairing a break doesn’t make any sense. If we can understand that basic concept, that really we have different starting points, that it makes no sense to try and convince each other of the logic of our arguments since we have different axioms, then perhaps we can get to the point where we can appreciate each other’s insights and beauties with being afraid of each other.

Joe, thank you for these thoughtful and indeed collegial points, which I am happy to post for everyone to consider. I'd like to make a few points.

Your observation that Christians and Jews seem to be viewing two different movies on the same screen is a good one. From my conversations with a few other Jews, it is obvious to me that Jews almost instinctively identify many threads of anti-Semitism that pass right by most Christians. I have either posted or linked to identifications of many of these elements in past posts.

I should say that few American Christians will pick up on the latent anti-Semitism. Some Jews have said they are much more concerned about the movie's effects on overseas audiences than domestic ones. The relevant images and dialogs will be much more evident to Euro audiences than American. European Christians have a deeply-rooted anti-Judaism that few Americans can understand.

See, for example, Jared Keller's review (via Bill Hobbs) of The Passion in which Jared writes,

My appreciation for His sacrifice - for His willingness to suffer physical torture, and inconceivable spiritual torment for the sake of my salvation - is now visceral, thanks to Mel Gibson. I put Jesus on that cross. He bore my sin, and lowered Himself for me - for humanity. Had I lived in that place, at that time, I would likely have been one of the throng shouting for his death.

But Jared is entirely blind to the anti-Semitic scenes of the movie:

What about anti-semitism?

There is none to be found. Caiaphas is certainly portrayed as amoral, but his corruption springs from his lust for political power - not his ethnicity, or his religion. During Jesus' first appearance before the Sanhedrin, there is a great deal of disagreement among the priests, with many storming out in protest over Jesus' treatment. The Jews are never portrayed as some sort of monolithic group.

What Jared does not see is the caricaturist portrayal of the High Priest, the overdone robes of the priests, the money-grubbing-on-his-knees Judas (not a biblical scene), how Judas is driven to suicide by demon-children dressed as Jews, the priestly elite bribe the people to denounce Jesus, the near-total absence of Jewish clothing worn by Jesus, and so on. Yet Jared, and I think a large majority of American Christian viewers don't recognize these things and focus less on such aspects of characterizations and dialog, and more on the deep meaning for Christian faith of Jesus' suffering and death.

Hence, the primary reason Christians and Jews see two different movies on the screen is that Christians tend to see the movie as a theological drama while Jews tend to see it as an historical drama. The vast majority of Christians I have discussed the movie with can identify at least a few of the anti-Semitic scenes, but are by far struck much more strongly by the soteriology of the movie. As I have written, the movie's most powerful effect on me was a demand that I examine my life through the lens of the Christ's teachings and their relationship to his death.

As for Original Sin - I don't think that many Christians actually do believe in it, though it remains a doctrinal point of the Roman Catholic and many other churches. The Augustinian theory of O.S. simply is not tenable in this age. Hence, most Christians argue that the reconciling work of God is not really repairing a break due to O.S., but is understood in other ways.

That being said, the earliest proponents of Original Sin were actually Jews, not Christians, especially Paul. What many Jews (IMO) fail to recognize is that the New Testament writings of the apostles are Jewish writings, for all the apostles were Jews before they followed Jesus, and remained Jews until they died. In fact, no kind of decisive break between Judaism and Christianity occurred until after the destruction of the Temple in 70, long after the apostolic letters had been written.

Furthermore, a nascent backing of O.S. is found in the Jewish Scriptures, Psalms 51:5 for example, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

My point is that I don't think that Jewish and Christian thought about the human condition is quite as far apart as I think Joe is indicating. If the fundamental issue is human sin - as the long line of Hebrew and Jewish prophets all agree, as did Jesus - then only real point of departure of Christianity and Judaism is how sin is overcome.

For Jews, at least throughout the biblical eras (I am not as well acquainted with modern Jewish theology) the answer was Covenant. Beginning with Noah, God had made covenants with human beings. The covenants with Abraham and much later with the children of Israel at Sinai focused divine covenant upon the Hebrew people. By faithfully keeping the covenant the nation would be saved.

Christians also see their salvation as coming through divine covenant, except it is through neither the Sinai covenant or the Mosaic covenant, but the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (see Jer. 31). It is arguable that Jeremiah was trying to invigorate the Sinai covenant rather than foretell a successor or refinement to it. But in either event Jesus specifically tied his death to the new covenant at the Last Supper.

So for the Jews, the covenant of salvation is something akin to an agreement, a sort of meta-contract. But Christians understand the covenant of salvation is a person, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. Hence, said the Pharisee Paul, whomever believes in his heart Christ was raised by God from the dead and confesses with his mouth that Jesus is Lord, shall be saved. For this faith is accounted to us as righteousness.

For Jews, Passover commemorates not merely an historical event but a deeply theological one. The Exodus was the principal way the YHWH identified himself to the children of Israel: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" (Exod 20:2) is how God began the Ten Commandments, which are the very heart of the law. And while Christians understand the importance of the Exodus and deliverance, very few can comprehend the deep meaning of the Passover commemoration that Jews attach to the holy day.

Similarly, even Jews who understand the soteriology and christology of Christian faith really don't grasp the deep meaning to Christians of the person of Christ, whom we profess to be "one and the same" with God, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form."

Now, having gone through that stemwinder, I have some closing thoughts about the movie again. I find that as more time passes since I saw the movie, I am more disappointed in it. Part of this disappointment no doubt comes from the fact that a lot of the scenes come from Catholic traditions that are rather opaque to me. That's not Gibson's problem, though; it's his movie, not mine.

Rather, there is nothing in the movie that cuts to what I believe is the crux of the unjust execution of the innocent Jesus: that it was Roman law and Jewish religion conspired at some level to deliver Jesus to the cross. For in all the world until that time, the Roman legal code was the best the world had ever seen, and across the entire ancient world Judaism was highly respected even by pagans as the finest of religious faith there was.

Jesus was put to death not by the worst that humanity had to offer, but by the best. The movie, though, concentrates on Christ's suffering without delving into the suffering's broader context. Furthermore, it is Jesus' death, not his suffering, that is the central element of the passion story, yet the movie so overwhelms with scenes of torture that Jesus' death is presented practically as an afterthought.

Yet the movie does seem to edify most Christian believers who see it, including me, so I still assess it as a worthy experience. There are many sequences that are exalting and deeply moving. But there are so many places where the movie is deeply flawed, and some, in fact, where it outright contradicts the Gospels. All this is to say that my disappointment is that The Passion of the Christ could have been a contender for something truly extraordinary, but sadly falls short.

by Donald Sensing, 3/11/2004 11:15:00 AM. Permalink |

Sandwich bar, Sunglass Hut and machine guns
At least the New York cops have new and well-maintained machine guns when they patrol the shopping malls. Ian Wood discusses the difference between the weaponry of the NYC cops and the cops of Mexico City.

But it's still unnerving to see such things here. I think that's partly due to the nature of the weapons: in Mexico, the guns were of various types, some obviously old and worn, and I suspected that many of them--like the big-barrelled sawed-off shotguns--were the personal property of the men who carried them. A few of them, with their duct-taped wooden stocks, looked like they might not fire at all. It was the sort of thing you expected to see in a capital of the Third World.

Here, the weapons are all shiny and black, with various scopes and gadgets attached, dark and metallic and intricately lethal. First World technology, to be sure, but one of the supposed benefits of living in the First World is that you don't often see such technology on ready display. Not any more. These days, security squads patrol malls, ferry docks, train stations, and random street corners.

When I lived in Germany the polizei also patrolled places like train stations carrying military-class weaponry. As I recall, Heckler & Koch 91s or 93s were favored. That was back in the mid-1980s when Soviet-sponsored terrorism was alive and well in what was then "West" Germany. The Rote Armee Faction (formerly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang) was in its heydey. They carried out a number of successful, lethal bombings against US installations and bases while Other Hand Clapping and I were there.

So we adjusted. We took precautions such as inspecting the undersides of our cars before we drove them (ignition bombs being a favorite of theirs). We drove randomly different routes to and from work where possible. We parked away from buildings when we could. And we got a little fatalistic, too. I figured I was doing all I could and if they still killed me, well dang it, I hadn't made it easy for them.

They missed us - once by only a couple of hours, blowing up an outbuilding of the Frankfurt PX not long after we had driven away from it. A few people did get killed. The German authorities finally did round up all the RAF. I think a couple committed suicide, too. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the communist terrorist outfits didn't hjave much of a future. When the USSR went away, they did, too.

by Donald Sensing, 3/10/2004 09:11:00 PM. Permalink |

Shazam!
Guess who looks like they were separated at birth!

by Donald Sensing, 3/10/2004 05:36:00 PM. Permalink |

A "Social Impact Staement"? There is one
Following Orson Scott Card's thought that any significant change to America's physical infrastructure - building a new road system or a shopping mall, for example - requires an extensive Environmental Impact Statement first, I wondered yesterday why no "Social Impact Statement" needs to be done before legalizing same-sex marriage. After all, the changes to America's social structure by legalization would be much greater than a new loop of interstate is to the country's physical structure.

As it turns out, a Social impact Statement has been done - by Sweden. And the results are grim for children:

Data from European demographers and statistical bureaus show that a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are now born out of wedlock, as are 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark. In socially liberal districts of Norway, where the idea of same-sex registered partnerships is widely accepted, marriage itself has almost entirely disappeared.

Certainly Scandinavia's system of registered partnerships is not the only cause of marital decline. Factors like contraception, abortion, women in the work force, individualism, secularism, and the welfare state are also at work. These factors are weakening marriage throughout the West. Yet scholars note that many family changes that eventually sweep the West show up first in Scandinavia, probably because of Scandinavia's unusually large welfare state and its notably strong secularism.

Same-sex registered partnerships are Scandinavia's latest contribution to Western family change -- a sharp cultural separation between the ideas of marriage and parenthood. Even before the establishment of registered partnerships, many Scandinavians were starting to have their first child outside of marriage. Although the couple's relationship was still considered experimental through the birth of the first child, most parents did marry before the birth of the second child.

The problem with this system is that unmarried parents break up at two to three times the rate of married parents. So as Scandinavians separated the ideas of marriage and parenthood, family dissolution rates rose -- placing first-born children at particular risk. The growing Scandinavian separation of marriage and parenthood made it difficult to deny marriage to same-sex couples. Yet the creation of registered partnerships has only locked in and reinforced the separation between the ideas of marriage and parenthood, thereby accelerating marital decline.

I already pointed out that the separation of sex from marriage from procreation actually began with the invention of the birth-control pill. But we'd better think hard and go slow before we compound the problems by redefining "marriage" so radically.

by Donald Sensing, 3/10/2004 10:19:00 AM. Permalink |

The homosexual conformity patrol
Clayton Cramer links to a New York Times piece about homosexuals who are less than thrilled with the same-sex marriage movement.

"It's very hard to speak freely right now," said Judith Butler, a gender theorist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "But many gay people are uncomfortable with all this, because they feel their sense of an alternative movement is dying. Sexual politics was supposed to be about finding alternatives to marriage." ...

... These days, with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund publishing an "educational guide" stating that gay people are "very much like everyone else," mowing lawns and having children, and that not allowing them to marry keeps them "in a state of permanent adolescence," you have to wonder if the freedom to define your own life in your own way is going the way of cigarettes in bars.

"Being gay and single is the new smoking," Mr. Rudnick said. "It won't be socially acceptable anymore, and you will have to go outside." Or as Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, told me: "It used to be that the whole point of coming out of the closet was to get people to stop asking you when you are going to get married and have children."

But, says Clayton, the conformity patrols about homosexuality aren't limited to homosexuals themselves. Go there and see what he means.

by Donald Sensing, 3/10/2004 07:59:00 AM. Permalink |

Russians want to stay in Cuba
I posted yesterday about the three Afghan boys returned home from the American military's detention facility in Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba, and how the boys were effusive in positivism about their stay there.

Now the Russian detainees are saying they don't want to go back to Russia. Quoting the London Times, Phil Carter posts:

Fatima Tekayeva and Nina Odizheva said that they had received letters from their sons saying that they wanted to remain at the prison camp rather than face the beatings, torture, malnourishment and rampant tuberculosis that exist in Russia’s overcrowded jails.

"Of course they wanted to stay there," Mrs Tekayeva said by telephone from the southern city of Nalchik. "They had human rights and good living standards there. They had dentists and good meals — everything they wanted. And here, in Russian prisons, there are very bad conditions and very bad punishments."

The meals and health and dental care that "Gitmo" provides its prisoners have routinely been touted by Russian kin as almost unbelievable, certainly far better than they would receive in Russia.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 09:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Saddam must die?
So says Michael Totten, "because former dictators are potentially dangerous as long as they are alive." He has contemporary examples.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 09:11:00 PM. Permalink |

What's not to like?
Stryker has good things to say about the new Iraqi constitution in a ~~sardonic~~ flippant sort of way.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 09:05:00 PM. Permalink |

Why not require a "Social Impact Statement" for same-sex marriage rulings?
The issue remains - who shall rule?

Years ago when I was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, the time came for the post to build a new motor pool for my unit, 3d Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment. The process took years. The construction itself, once it started, took maybe three or four months. All the preliminary time was spent holding public hearings and conducting and filing the Environmental Impact Statement and then holding more hearings about that.

Then the Army and the EPA learned that the stand of pine trees scheduled to be bulldozed for the motor pool was home to the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker, an endangered species. More time was consumed as the location of the motor pool was changed and another EIS and series of hearings was conducted for the new site.

This history came to mind when I read Orson Scott Card's long essay on the Massachusetts supreme court, judicial fiat and same-sex marriage. Orson wrote,

In fact, it [SSM] will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it's another nail in the coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America.

Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.

You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.

We couldn't push a spade of dirt at Ft. Bragg without months of study followed by public hearings to allow the public to speak to the issue of a new motor pool. But four Massachusetts judges, one California mayor and a couple of other officials around the country get to radically redefine what marriage is, what it means and what it is for - and the American public is simply disenfranchised, marginalized and in fact, ignored.

As I wrote on Feb. 13, the root of this issue is power - that is, who shall be sovereign? Shall the people be sovereign or an oligarchy of men and women who ignore law and custom and the responsibilities of their offices and rule simply by whim? That is the basic issue, not who gets to shack up with whom.

But that basic issue is certainly not the only issue. Orson says that civilization itself is at stake because civilization is rooted in reproductive security. This section is an excellent complement to my psychobiological explanation of the evolution of marriage. Orson says that the rule of monogamous society must be largely observed: because it maintains trust between the sexes.

If trust between the sexes breaks down, then males who are able will revert to the broadcast strategy of reproduction, while females will begin to compete for males who already have female mates. It is a reproductive free-for-all.

Civilization requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave unnaturally, and when those who don't follow the rules are censured in a meaningful way.

Why would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their natural desire to mate with every attractive female?

Why would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he already has a wife?

Because civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood. So even though civilized individuals can't pursue the most obviously pleasurable and selfish (i.e., natural) strategies for reproduction, the fact is that they are far more likely to be successful at reproduction in a civilized society -- whether they personally like the rules or not.

Civilizations that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations that last the longest. It's such an obvious principle that few civilizations have even attempted to flout it.

Even if the political system changes, as long as the marriage rules remain intact, the civilization can go on.

That is why every social system in history has granted special privileges to male-female marriage, and denied that marriage is anything else. And that long history of thousands of years of human experience and wisdom is what a tiny number of officials, acting wholly without public warrant or consent, are trying to throw onto the ash heap - without even a feeble attempt of a "social impact statement" to persuade us that it is not potentially harmful.

(Read all of Orson's essay. Interestingly, Orson's essay, dated two days later than mine, uses exactly the same pericope from Alice in Wonderland that I used to explain the issue.)

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 08:21:00 PM. Permalink |

A theology of marriage
Alan at Imago Veritas has a not-too-long look at what is marriage from a Christian perspective. I don't find myself in full agreement with all his points, but overall it's quite worth reading and considering.

After that, browse over to Townhall.com and read about complete sexual freedom and what it has led to.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 07:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Pure faith
Jason Van Steenwyk, serving in Iraq, posits a la Kant about the Critique of Pure Hooah and observes about faith:

I have seen the unshakable faith of the Mohammedan. And I have seen that faith shattered by the effects of American firepower.

I have also seen devout Christians become atheists and atheists turn to God in times of crisis. Personal faith is fragile, in the religious sense, anyway. Man's perception of God is a fickle and protean thing.

But there is no faith so lasting, so innocent, and so pure, as the enduring, simple faith that a Lance Corporal has that the weapon he is nonchalantly pointing at his foot is clear.

Heh, as they say. HT: R. Heddleson

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 06:39:00 PM. Permalink |

Understatement of the day
. . . goes to Strategy Page for its article, "IRAQ: Why American Casualties Have Dropped So Fast." In a very good analysis of the question, we find this gem: "... serving in a combat zone is very stressful." Uh, yeah.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 07:45:00 AM. Permalink |

Combat detectives
Strategy Page profiles the US Army Criminal Investigation Command, in which I spent the last two years of my military career serving as the command's chief of public affairs.

CID agents rank at the top of the list of professionalism in the Army. All its investigators are either warrant officers or NCOs, except for some civilian investigators who are all the the fraud investigations unit. CID has a small unit as well that is cleared at the highest level to investigate possible crimes relating to covert operations or highly classified programs or operations.

My two years in CID were an amazing education into the world of investigative law enforcement. I am glad to see this world-class organization get some recognition.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 07:41:00 AM. Permalink |

Same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue
Jeff Jacoby cogently and accurately explains why.

... when Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain approached the lunch counter of the Elm Street Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C., on Feb. 1, 1960, all they asked for was a bite to eat. The four North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College students only wanted what any white customer might want, and on precisely the same terms -- the same food at the same counter at the same price.

Those first four sit-in strikers, like the thousands of others who would emulate them at lunch counters across the South, weren't demanding that Woolworth's prepare or serve their food in ways it had never been prepared or served before. They weren't trying to do something that had never been lawful in any state of the union. They weren't bent on forcing a revolutionary change upon a timeless social institution. ...

The marriage radicals, on the other hand, seek to restore nothing. They have not been deprived of the right to marry -- only of the right to insist that a single-sex union is a "marriage." They cloak their demands in the language of civil rights because it sounds so much better than the truth: They don't want to accept or reject marriage on the same terms that it is available to everyone else. They want it on entirely new terms. They want it to be given a meaning it has never before had, and they prefer that it be done undemocratically -- by judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn't civil rights.

As Jeff says, in a culture war as in any other, "truth is the first casualty," and advocates of SSM have tried to deal truth a mortal blow.

by Donald Sensing, 3/09/2004 06:45:00 AM. Permalink |

A call for strategic clarity
Just a few minutes after I posted about how John Kerry clumsily but accurately distinguished between the legal case for the Iraq War and its strategic justification, Ian Wood sent me the link to his thoughtful post about the perils of unfounded certainty.

But what the People need to hear is not inerrancy, but firm and reasonable commitment to the valid principles of national self-interest. Not absolutist declarations of perfect American righteousness, but sensible presentations of risks and rewards.

It's OK to be mistaken, Mr. President...but tell us why it was still worth it.

As several bloggers have pointed out, Tony Blairs speech a few days ago actually did just that, but the pity is that President Bush isn't making the explanation. Ian's post is good, so RTWT, and onto my blogroll he goes.

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 05:12:00 PM. Permalink |

US military news agencies to sidestep American media
Ambitious project to send news stories directly to the people about to begin

The Pentagon will soon offer direct news feeds from Afghanistan and Iraq "to send military video, text and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets."

The $6.3 million project, expected to begin operating in April, is one of the largest military public affairs projects in recent memory, and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an increasingly combative press corps.

U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focuses on catastrophic events like car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts.

The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," said Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command. "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene."

Needless to say, the plan is being greeted with skepticism.

"This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told The Associated Press.

However,

Much of the effort is aimed at packaging and shipping locally focused stories to small and medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the United States, said Army Col. Rick Thomas, who heads the effort.

I served with Col. Thomas in the Pentagon when he was a captain, btw. We were both public affairs officers in the Office of Chief of Public Affairs on the Army Staff. And if I could make one suggestion to Col. Thomas, it would be to set up a civilian ombudsman system to keep the reporting on the straight and narrow. There needs to be independent eyes overseeing the reportage to prevent it from being perceived as mere propaganda, even if it isn't. (HT: Richard Heddleson)

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 05:02:00 PM. Permalink |

Excellent series on Iraq campaign
With "The Long, Blinding Road to War," the Washington Post's Rick Atkinson begins a three-part series on the military leadership in Iraq. Atkinson was embedded in HQ, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) for the campaign.

Part two is, "Shifting Sands and Shifting Plans"

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 04:52:00 PM. Permalink |

Kerry gets something right on Iraq
By accident, it seems, but right it is nonetheless

James Joyner points to a passage of a Time Magazine interview wherein Kerry says,

TIME: So, if we don't find WMD, the war wasn't worth the costs? That's a yes?

KERRY: No, I think you can still - wait, no. You can't - that's not a fair question, and I'll tell you why. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn't mean [transforming Iraq] was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go. You have to have that distinction.

James links to Stephen Green and Steven Den Beste , whom James says take apart John Kerry's statements on the Iraq War.

Now, there's lot to find fault with in Kerry's interview overall, but in the point above, Kerry managed to hit the nail on the head, albeit clumsily. For what Kerry does seem to see is that the legal case, or casus belli for the Iraq War is one thing, and the strategic justification for it is another, especially the very long-term strategic rationale. I wrote about the distinction last October, but will expand my thoughts here with help from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent speech about the decision to end Saddam's regime last year.

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). Indeed, Prime Minister Blair explained how the casus belli against Iraq and the short-term strategic rationale interlinked in his speech about the war just four days ago.

Had we believed Iraq was an imminent direct threat to Britain, we would have taken action in September 2002; we would not have gone to the UN.

Instead, we spent October and November in the UN negotiating UN Resolution 1441. We then spent almost 4 months trying to implement it.

Actually, it is now apparent from the Survey Group that Iraq was indeed in breach of UN Resolution 1441. It did not disclose laboratories and facilities it should have; nor the teams of scientists kept together to retain their WMD including nuclear expertise; nor its continuing research relevant to chemical weapons and biological weapons.

As Dr Kay, the former head of the ISG who is now quoted as a critic of the war has said: "Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of Resolution 1441". And "I actually think this [Iraq] may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought."

Then, most recently is the attempt to cast doubt on the attorney general's legal opinion. He said the war was lawful.

Blair makes the case that his government's decision to war against Iraq was grounded on Iraq's persistent refusal to comply with the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and its predecessors, stretching all the way back to 1991. It bears repeating that the legal responsibility of proving compliance with the resolutions relevant to WMD rested not on the USA or the UK or any other power, but on Saddam and his government alone.

Every UNSC member understood that key requirement. Iraq was called upon to declare fully its WMD stocks and programs, cooperate with UN inspectors for their identification and destruction, and provide conclusive documentation of the destruction of stocks and programs that had already been ended.

Iraq did not do any of that. It may well be that Iraq had no actual chemical, biological or atomic weapons after 1994, as some experts in a position to know have said. But for making the casus belli, it does not matter. The burden of cooperation and proof, according to the terms of the resolutions, rested upon Iraq. Coupled with the undisputed existence of other prohibited weapons programs, the casus belli against Iraq was and remains airtight.

As important as affecting regime change in Iraq was, it was a conclusion, not a component of the legal case for war. PM Blair said Saddam's intransigence, defiance and pursuit of prohibited weapons programs, paired with the undisputed evidence that such programs and al Qaeda terrorism would eventually find each other, constituted a present crisis:

We were saying this is urgent; we have to act; the opponents of war thought it wasn't. And I accept, incidentally, that ... regime change alone could not be and was not our justification for war. Our primary purpose was to enforce UN resolutions over Iraq and WMD.

I continue to say also that talk about "going to war" with Iraq last year severely misstates what was really going on. It presumes that there was a peaceful status quo antebellum that was shattered in March 2003 when allied forces crossed into Iraq. This is false. The United States and the UK had legally and actually been at war with Iraq since January 1991, at least, and had both conducted military strikes against Iraqi targets many times between 1991-2003, always using existing national or UN legislation as the authority. When President Clinton ordered four days of intensive bombardment of Iraq in 1998, for example, he specifically stated that the Congressional authorization of 1991 were still in effect, and no additional Congressional approval was needed.

Hence, the decision both President Bush and PM Blair faced in late 2002 and early 2003 was not whether to go to war with Iraq, for at war with Iraq we already were. The decision was how to end the war that had been waged since 1991.

The Iraq War's short-term objective and its long-term objective are linear, but not the same. 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, though it was not bundled into the casus belli by either the US or UK.

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. As PM Blair put it,

The point about September 11th was not its detailed planning; not its devilish execution; not even, simply, that it happened in America, on the streets of New York. All of this made it an astonishing, terrible and wicked tragedy, a barbaric murder of innocent people.

But what galvanised me was that it was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit. They killed 3000.

But if they could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 they would have rejoiced in it.

The purpose was to cause such hatred between Moslems and the West that a religious jihad became reality; and the world engulfed by it.

A direct connection between Saddam and 9/11 was not demonstrated by the administration although there is hard evidence of prewar, direct links between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. The administration, however, did not include that evidence in its casus belli against Saddam for 2003. This fact, though comprises the point of departure between the legal case for the war and its long-term rationale. Though there was no component of the legal case against Iraq that included al Qaeda, 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.

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, however, 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 solid. As Blair pointed out, the facts of Saddam's regime and its threat were not disputed, what to do about them was.

C. The Iraqi people 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.

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.

Prime Minister Blair alluded to that very long-term goal also,

This war is not ended. It may only be at the end of its first phase. They are in Iraq, murdering innocent Iraqis who want to worship or join a police force that upholds the law not a brutal dictatorship; they carry on killing in Afghanistan.

They do it for a reason. The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.

That is precisely why the terrorists are trying to foment hatred and division in Iraq. They know full well, a stable democratic Iraq, under the sovereign rule of the Iraqi people, is a mortal blow to their fanaticism.

That is why our duty is to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as stable and democratic nations.

The real issue in the war against terrorism is whether Western civilization shall prevail against the last vestige of medievalism; whether the rule of men who crucify 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.

See my related essays:

The Saddam - bin Laden connection

Why Osama bin Laden has no strategic plan

Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq

Why does al Qaeda fight Americans in Iraq?

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 04:29:00 PM. Permalink |

News article on blog advertising
Michael Silence of the Knoxville News-Sentinel's online site writes today about Weblogs generating ad bucks, quoting Glenn Reynolds, Bill Hobbs and me.

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 02:30:00 PM. Permalink |

The 10th anniversary from, well, you know
It was Saturday. And the Internet has never been the same.

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 06:58:00 AM. Permalink |

Blog photos
Here are a few nice original blog photos I have come across while blogbrowsing.

Highway and Lake at Sundown

Number One Rotten Kitty in the Whole Web World

East Tennessee mountains

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 06:57:00 AM. Permalink |

American soldiers - very strict about Islam
A story in the UK Guardian is making the rounds now, telling of three boys in Afghanistan who used to be in the American detention facility in Guantanamo Naval base, Cuba. Now back home, they want to live in America. Said Naqibullah, "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer - or an American soldier." ...

Naqibullah, Asadullah and Mohammed Ismail were moved into one large room, which was never locked. They were taught Pashto (their own language), English, Arabic, maths, science, art and, for two months, Islam. "The American soldiers ate pork but they said we must never do that because we were Muslim," said Naqibullah. "They were very strict about Islam."

The boys played football every day, and sometimes basketball and volleyball with their guards. Asadullah said his particular friends were called Special Sergeant M and Private O - their real names were kept from him. Officially, he was called Prisoner 912. "But my friends called me Asadullah, which made me happy."

They were allowed to write home - their letters went through a US military censor - but it was still a long time before their families knew what had happened to them. In the meantime, they were in emotional agony. Now that the boys are home, one family is forgiving of America, another is not.

When Asadullah returned to Khoja Angur last month - at a day's notice - the village elders gathered to ask how the Americans had treated him. When he said they had treated him well, they ruled that the matter was closed. "We have nothing against the Americans, they looked after the boy. They taught him English and other things," said Haji Mohammad Tahir, an elder of the village, gesturing to Asadullah's drawings of the planets, which were proudly displayed on the floor.

But, for Asadullah's father, the matter is not closed. He borrowed several thousand dollars to support his relatives' families while they looked for his son. To raise the money, he was forced to forfeit his land. Now, his creditors come visiting every day to demand money that he cannot repay, he said. His eldest son - a shopkeeper in Kabul - last week cancelled his engagement, for want of $2,000 to pay the dowry. And that is not Abdul Rahman's only concern. "I thank God that my son has come back, but he has changed," he said. "He is impatient and refuses to listen to his elders. He has grown disobedient."

Disobedient? It's that corrupting American culture. One of the boys said that compared to living with the Americans, his village is "boring." Well, as American women wondered just after World War I, "How Do You Keep Them Down on the Farm After They've Seen Gay Paree?" Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 3/08/2004 06:54:00 AM. Permalink |

The violence of redemption and the redemption of violence
The unifying themes of The Passion of the Christ, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List

More people in America are talking about Jesus Christ and what he did and what he means than at any time in American history. They don't all agree on the answers, but the debates themselves prove that the questions still matter, and matter a great deal.

The reason of course is Mel Gibsons' move, The Passion of the Christ, which opened Ash Wednesday and had made more than $135 million as of last Sunday. Revenues since then have not been announced yet.

The movie's controversy stems in no small part from its graphic and unrelenting portrayal of violence, all of which is directed at one man, Jesus of Nazareth. In the movie he is assaulted from the moment he is arrested until he dies on the cross, all presented in technicolor detail, up close and personal.

The movie repels some viewers and edifies other. One Christian critic called The Passion a "religious snuff film." Another said the violence, while difficult to watch, was a needful lesson to learn in a time when churches portray a mostly Americanized, middle-class, Madison-Avenue Jesus who seems always to be above the fray of the dirty world where real people live, suffer and die.

No one today knows exactly what level of violence Jesus endured. The Gospels give no graphic details; they state the barest facts. The people of the time the Gospels were written knew what flogging meant and knew what crucifixion really entailed. The Gospel writers didn't need to describe them.

Even so, Jesus' suffering was very great. Crucifixion alone was horrible enough. The Roman statesman Seneca wrote that a crucified victim wasted away in pain, died "limb by limb" and let out his life drop by drop with swelling ugly wounds on shoulders and chest, breathing in long, drawn-out agony.

Crucifixion was the cruelest form of execution ever devised. One modern analysis says:

The crucified person could not exhale properly and this eventually would lead to painful muscle cramps. Furthermore, adequate exhaling required the crucified to lift his body by pushing up on the feet and rotating his elbows. This, of course, resulted in searing pain in both feet and hands. ... On the cross every breath would be an agonizing affair and finally in combination with exhaustion would lead to asphyxia. This also explains why the legs of the crucified were often broken, as was the case with the two robbers who were crucified with Jesus ... Without the support of their legs, the crucified were unable to raise up their bodies, which in turn made it impossible for them to exhale properly thus greatly speeding up death, often within minutes. All of this means that the seven sayings of Jesus were uttered with great difficulty, for speaking takes place during exhalation.

So the suffering of Jesus was very great, whether Mel Gibson captured it with historical accuracy or not. It is exactly the graphic portrayal of the violence that gives the movie its power. The violence against Christ and his suffering are shocking to behold, literally revolting.

This movie is not the first unblinkingly to face a subject previous movies tended to sanitize or glamorize. Ironically, probably the most talented director to show violence in its raw form is a Jewish director named Steven Spielberg.

Like Gibson, Spielberg has a reputation for making violent movies, all the way back to Jaws in 1975, the story of a great white shark that eats people alive. But it was Schindler's List of 1993 and Saving Private Ryan of 1998 that cemented Spielberg's skill in weaving scenes of shocking violence into compelling narratives of salvation. For, like The Passion of the Christ , Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List are about salvation and the costs of attaining it.

The plot of Saving Private Ryan is simple: a paratrooper fighting in Normandy in 1944 has lost all three of his brothers to death in battle.

Captain John Miller and seven soldiers are assigned the mission of finding him and bringing him out of combat. Spielberg shows the violence, horror and devastation of combat as it had never before been shown on the silver screen. The movie's final battle sequence is 22 minutes of bitter, bloody terror, the most compelling and violent sequences ever to come from Hollywood. Before the battle ends, all but one of the men sent to save Private Ryan have died in action. Captain Miller, mortally wounded, utters his last words to the uninjured Ryan: "Earn this."

Schindler's List was named after the list of names of more than eleven hundred Jews a real man named Oscar Schindler saved from Nazi ovens during the Holocaust. The movie shows Nazi cruelty in unsparing, graphic detail, including an explicit scene of child murder. A work-camp commandant Schindler deals with takes his recreation by shooting randomly-picked Jews from his home's balcony with a hunting rifle. When a Jew escapes, he forms a platoon of Jewish men and in a frenzy stalks through the ranks with his pistol, stopping every few seconds to shoot a Jew through the head, twenty-five in all. To protect his Jews, Schindler takes great risks. He is even imprisoned for awhile by the Nazis. By the time the war ends he is bankrupt from spending his personal wealth to bribe Nazi officials and officers.

Three movies - Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, The Passion of the Christ - are all stories of explicit violence, undeserved suffering and deaths taking place in violent times. And all three leave viewers pondering the same basic question: What do I do now? As Jesus' bloody, dead body is lowered from the cross into his mother's arms, she faces the camera - you the viewer - and fixes a penetrating stare on you, confronting you with the body of Christ, broken for you, the blood of Christ, shed for you.

A grotesque paradox is that while violence itself is not redemptive, we are sometimes redeemed through violence, whether we take a secular or religious perspective.

The last we see of Private Ryan, he is an elderly man kneeling at Captain Miller's grave in Normandy, wondering piteously to his wife whether he has been a good man who made the deaths of Capt. Miller and the other soldiers worthwhile.

In gratitude to Oscar Schindler, some Jews he saved give up gold fillings of their teeth to make a ring for him. They inscribe it with an ancient Jewish saying, "Whomever saves one life saves the world entire."

As Schindler walks to his car to drive to surrender to allied officers, he is overcome with grief and guilt. "I could have sold the car," he exclaims. "This car was ten more people! Why did I keep the car? Ten more people!" He pulls the Nazi party lapel pin from his coat. "Two people. This is gold. Two more people. It would have given me two more. At least one. One more person. I could have got one more person and I didn't." Overcome by grief and remorse, Schindler collapses into the arms of his Jewish accountant.

Catholic writer Mark Shea wrote of his church group's reaction at the end of The Passion of the Christ.

It made us feel ashamed of our sins. It made us embrace each other. It made us weep. It took our breath away at times - both because of the depth of human cruelty and the awe of divine love. ... We left the theater in silence ... I thought of the sins I'd confessed and been forgiven of a couple of days before - and what it cost to have those awesome words of absolution given me. I thought how easily I hold grudges and how much I've fallen into the habit of contemptuously dismissing people who hurt me. ... I came away from it asking God for a compassionate heart.

Redeemed through violence, we are compelled to ask of ourselves whether we have redeemed back the violence of our redemption. A sense of guilt like Mark Shea relates is a good thing, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Sorrow and repentance are necessary, but the Scriptures are clear that they are the starting point of holiness, not the end. To have left the movie, as I did, overcome with the conviction of having significantly failed to make Christ's suffering and death worthwhile is really only the first step to take.

Tuesday night Vanderbilt University hosted a symposium about The Passion of the Christ at the Jewish center on campus. One of the presenters was my colleague, the Reverend Mark Forrester, Vanderbilt's Methodist chaplain. He explained the problem the movie poses for those of us who profess that Jesus' atonement for our sins on the cross has canceled our debt before God and granted us forgiveness and redemption.

"It seems to me," Mark said, "that the once-and-for-all atonement of Christ encompasses not only individuals in movie theaters, but the worst of society as a whole. After all, the first person redeemed at the cross was a thief who shared Jesus' fate, and Jesus his. Consequently, the evangelical fervor now surrounding The Passion needs to demonstrate how this terrible, beautiful sacrifice is really 'good news' to those who sit in the darkness of social, economic and political disorder. Until then, the sound and fury behind this box office hit may evoke tears and fears, but the real work of redemption in this world is still conspicuously absent."

So I find that instead of beginning this sermon with Scripture, as is customary, I am ending it with Scripture. For we must take seriously the words of Christ in Matthew 25 that are both assuring and warning.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life" (Mt 25.31-46).

Christ's suffering was great. The fact compels us to ask whether our Lord so painfully lay down his life just so we can live the way we are living. God's grace is free, but God forbid we ever think it cheap. We were, wrote Saint Paul, bought at a price.

Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matt 22:36-39).

These are the words of God to be heeded by the people of God. Thanks be to God.

by Donald Sensing, 3/07/2004 06:57:00 AM. Permalink |

Crucifixion still being used
So reports Stryker, quoting a report coming from (how unsurprising) Saudi Arabia. Actually, the sentence was for two men to be put to death "by partial beheading and crucifixion." Partial beheading? I'd like to know that means.

No, on second thought, I wouldn't.

Update: Here is the page of Google results for searching - sudan crucifixion -. It's very grim.

by Donald Sensing, 3/06/2004 09:45:00 PM. Permalink |

Same-sex unions put churches in a quandary
So says the New York Times, anyway, but it's a bit of an overstatement. The point of the piece is that all the civil "marriages" going on in San Francisco and elsewhere confront clergy with a dilemma.

One of the most difficult questions facing some clergy members is whether to sign the licenses of the gay and lesbian couples. That would amount to an acknowledgment that the marriages are of equal standing with opposite-sex marriages.

I don't see anything "difficult" about the question. I am clergy and I know that the United Methodist Church's canon law, called the Book of Discipline, is completely unambiguous: "Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches."

But such a clear statement of ecclesial doctrine apparently presented interpretive obstacles for the pastor of San Francisco's Bethany United Methodist Church, says the Times.

The pastor there, the Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto, was called before a bishop this week after a formal complaint was filed against her for performing a same-sex marriage ceremony in the church. The complaint accused her of "disobedience to the order and discipline of the United Methodist Church" for officiating at the marriage of two men on Feb. 15.

Dr. Oliveto said she was caught off guard by the complaint because she had performed numerous same-sex blessings at the church. Dr. Oliveto said she could face a church trial and lose her pastoral license as a result of the complaint, which she said came from someone outside her congregation.

"The United Methodist Church holds a variety of opinions regarding homosexuality," Dr. Oliveto said. "That is the tension we live with. We are not of one mind."

In addition to the Feb. 15 wedding, Dr. Oliveto performed eight same-sex marriage ceremonies at City Hall and signed all nine marriage licenses.

Karen, honestly, what part of "no" don't you understand? And you are incorrect: the United Methodist Church does not "hold a variety of opinions regarding homosexuality." The denomination's General Conference is the only body that can set denominational doctrine and positions on any subject. It meets every four years and for at least the last two Conferences (I think more) has specifically rejected the position that there "a variety of opinions" of equal merit on the subject.

But Dr. Oliveto presses on:

"For me, we are doing something new in ministry that has never been done before," Dr. Oliveto said. "We have never been able to sign marriage licenses of same-gender marriage couples. The church has a lot to learn in this historical moment."

Get all that? First, it's not about the Church's doctrine or the historical teachings of the Church or even the teachings of the Bible itself, which you might expect to be of some level of concern. Nope, what she says it is about is, "For me." Oh, yes, that and "doing something new." Novelty, you see, is now a theological imperative.

"We have never been able to sign marriage licenses of same-gender marriage couples," Dr. Oliveto says. Oh, boy, a new frontier! The thougt occurs to me that we've never been able to sign the death warrants of condemned prisoners, either. So?

But fear not, Rev. Oliveto. Despite being a denomination governed by a book called the Discipline, we United Methodists have practically none of it, so your job is safe.

by Donald Sensing, 3/06/2004 09:29:00 PM. Permalink |

Give credit where it is due
Dan Darling of the group blog Winds of Change predicted five months ago that Africa would gain importance to al Qaeda because the terrorist organization is being killed and driven out of its former regions.

That is exactly what the deputy head of U.S. forces in Europe, Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, told the Associated Press in a piece published today.

Dan's other predictions were also prescient.

This is one reason Winds of Change, under founder Joe Katzman's leadership, has become one of the go-to blogs for analysis and reporting on international affairs.

by Donald Sensing, 3/06/2004 08:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Groaning puns, part 1
1. A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.

2. What's the definition of will? It's a dead giveaway.

3. A backward poet writes inverse.

4. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

5. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.

7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

8. If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

9. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

10. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft, and I'll show you A-flat minor.

11. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN downunder.

No trees were killed in posting these puns, however a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 09:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Is America's end game near in the WOT?
Jonathan Ariel thinks it may be. He says the US is shifting its attention back to al Qaeda and nuclear proliferation. The ket allies now are Israel and India.

Iraq was chosen as the opening battlefield for three reasons: military, political, and historical. The terrain was the military one, an open flat country with relatively little natural cover for guerrillas, almost made to order for maximizing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of US military capabilities. The US, embarking on its first unilateral major military undertaking since Vietnam, had to ensure a swift and decisive military victory. Iraq was the best place to ensure such an outcome.

Ariel overstates by quite a bit just what and how quickly the US hoped to achieve its regional objectives from the Iraq War, but his analysuis overall sounds a lot like what I wrote last fall in The Big Picture.

He then says that India and the US are putting the squeeze on Pakistan, aided in background by Israel, which i selling advanced military technology to India. So, says Ariel, Pakistran's President Musharraf is in a bind.

He knows that if Pakistan doesn’t clean up its act, there is a real danger of a coordinated Indian-American offensive against it. However he knows that convincing his countrymen of this danger is not going to be easy, least of all in the all important North-Western frontier area. This is heavily populated with Pushtuns, many of who do not like what the US did to the Taliban, which was dominated by Pushtuns.

Either way, as soon as the spring thaw begins, things will begin to happen. Either the Pakistani military will apprehend Al Qaida terrorists, or the US military will. It may not be the cakewalk Iraq was, given the much more rugged terrain, but it is doable. If this happens, India will make sure that the Pakistan military doesn’t get in the way. Any attempt by al Qaida, which has transferred many of its fighters to Iraq, to start a second front in the Middle East would require Syrian cooperation, unlikely in view of the threat from Israel. The US may be poised to go for the kill, trusting India and Israel to protect its flanks.

It's an interesting analysis that I haven't yet studied thoroughly, but I thought I'd pass it on. Hat tip: Scott Harris.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 09:31:00 PM. Permalink |

Capturing Osama - a poll
Murdoc is surveying "what window is available [for President Bush]to capture OBL without appearing to have staged it" for political gain. Vote here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 09:07:00 PM. Permalink |

Finns to examine Iraq's mass graves
Evidence may be used in Saddam's trials

The US government asked for specialist teams to examine Iraq's graves, but was refused by several nations, including noted multilateralist nations Sweden and the Netherlands. Finland agreed, viewing the work as humanitarian. Which just goes to show that friends are not always where you expect them, and often aren't where you think.

The government-sponsored group will spend six weeks digging trenches, measuring the depth and size of the graves, and assessing the amount and condition of the bodies. Most of the mass graves are from the post Gulf War period, but there also are older ones.

"The graves are in the hundreds, and the victims number hundreds of thousands, but under 500,000," Helena Ranta, the group leader, told The Associated Press.

I remember seeing the photo-documentation of mass graves in Somalia, surveyed and exhumed by investigative pathologists of US Army Criminal Investigation Command.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 07:51:00 PM. Permalink |

Baghdad burgers
According to Army Echoes, the Army's newsletter for its retirees that I received in the mail today, there are 247 PX employees working inside Iraq operating at least 30 Post Exchange and Base Exchange loocations, with more opening almost daily. The exchange system operates three Burger Kings and two Pizza Huts in Iraq. The Burger King at Baghdad International Airport is one of the top 1o in the world - and it operates out of a trailer.

You can send an exchange gift certificate to deployed soldiers and airmen by logging onto aafes.com or calling toll-free to 877-770-4438.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 07:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Martha Stewart convicted of doing nothing to be convicted for
John Cole understands the situation about Martha Stewart's conviction today on all counts of charges remaining after the judge threw out the central one.

The government had no case that Martha Stewart did what they actually accused her of, but was convicted of trying to keep the government from proving that she did nothing wrong, and for that she could spend the rest of her life in jail.

That sums it up. I don't care personally about Martha one way or the other, but this case sounded ricdiculous to me from the beginning.

While you're at it, see Cole's proof that of a Democratic presidential candidate explicitly using national disaster to bolster his campaign for office.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 06:38:00 PM. Permalink |

Ten men with guns, ten without - a thought experiment
Lee Harris ponders a potential new reality TV show and what it could teach about some basic facts of life and America itself.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 06:04:00 PM. Permalink |

More "Passion of Christ" links
I have added these links to my earlier post of links, but thought I'd post them here to save you the effort of link jumping.

"Mel Gibson, the Scribes and the Pharisees," by Amy-Jill Levine

"Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A Challenge to Catholic Teaching," by Philip A. Cunningham, Executive Director, Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College.

Advice for Jews on handling The Passion of the Christ - Jewish Journal has a list of 'Passion' Response Dos and Don'ts"

Here is the May 2003 Ad Hoc Scholars Committee Report on The Passion, hosted by Boston College and conducted by both Catholic and Jewish scholars. This review was of the script that Gibson later claimed was stolen, though he did not make the claim until after he had seen the scholars' report; prior to it he had said he was eager to read the report. This report is very easy to read, not "academic sounding" in style.

New Testament scholars Ben Witherington III (on the right) and John Dominic Crossan (on the left) exchange views on The Passion's religious themes.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 01:25:00 PM. Permalink |

History of "separation of church and state"
Here's a good and reasonably concise historical examination of the principles behind separation of church and state, focusing on the evolution of the concept in pre-Constitution America. My only real nit to pick is the fictitious quote attributed to John Adams that we "have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion ...." etc. It's a great quote, but Adams never said it.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 01:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Kerry on defense policy
Armed Liberal does a very throrough analysis of John Kerry's recent national-security speech that the candidate gave in Los Angeles.

Update: A.L. also has some things to say about Tony Blair's speech on the terror threat facing the UK and defending the Iraq war. Blair's rhetorical skills are probably the greatest of any English-speaking political figure in the world today, and this speech shows it.

by Donald Sensing, 3/05/2004 09:41:00 AM. Permalink |

"Never again!" - Impressions of Dachau
Kim DuToit and family are touring Germany and blogging it. Great photos on his site. His post of a day at Dachau concentration camp is today's must read. I have visited the Dachau prison as well. Never again! is really too mild a phrase in reaction thereof.

We were there on a bitterly cold day -- flakes of snow, an icy wind, and a simple question came from one of the kids: "Did they have coats?"

Suddenly, The Mrs. started sobbing: great heaving sobs which stopped her in her tracks, and forced her to bend almost double with their power. I held her, and cried too.

After a while, we recovered, and walked on. No, David, they weren't given coats. They were expendable.

At the end of the trip, we turned to the kids and said: "One day, someone may say to you that this never happened. You are here to bear witness that it did. Never, ever allow those lies to take root and spread. Make sure your children know that this happened, too. This cannot be allowed to happen again."

As he says, there must be no more witless, grotesque equations by the Left of Adolf Hitler with George W. Bush (or any other president). Why not? Because, "Ich habe Dachau gesehen."

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 07:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Critique of European culture
George Weigel, Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, discusses "Europe’s Problem - and Ours." J.D. Whitlock blogs some commentary thereof. Weigel is always worth reading.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 05:48:00 PM. Permalink |

US and Pakistan working together to protect nukes
India Times reported last month that Paksitan and the US have been secretly working together to protect Pakistan's nukes from falling into the hands of terrorists. HT: Kenyon Vandervelde.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 05:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Law students file to enforce ability of military to recruit on campuses
Phil Carter reports, "Law School Veterans Organizations File Amicus Brief in Support of Military's Right to Recruit on Law School Campuses."

The brief was filed by Howard J. Bashman, a Philadelphia-based appellate lawyer who edits the How Appealing weblog, on behalf of three veterans organizations: the UCLA School of Law Veterans Society, Washburn University Veterans Law Association, and the College of William & Mary School of Law Military Law Society. It marks the first time in the current series of court battles over this issue that a student organization has filed a brief supporting the military’s unrestricted ability to recruit on law school campuses.

You can read the brief online.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 05:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Same-sex unions celebrated by medieval churches?
The Irish Times says there is solid evidence that same-sex unions were celebrated a thousand years ago by Catholic (not necessarily Roman Catholic) churches in Greece and Ireland and other places - including St John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish Church) in 1578. The article cites the work of "Yale history professor John Boswell [who] has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual 'marriage' did exist as late as the 18th century." The piece is not long, RTWT.

Update: Reader Don R. points the way to this rebuttal of Boswell's claims.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 05:07:00 PM. Permalink |

Sending me links, reprise
I posted last month on "What to do to get a link," which must have got passed around the blogosphere pretty well, especially after Glenn Reynolds linked to it.

Since then, my email inbox has never lacked for potential links. Rest assured, I scan them all at minimum. But this is crucial for me to link to you or another web site: email me the post itself instead of only the link. Just copy and paste the post into your email; HTML format works better for this purpose than plain text. Also, please paste the actual link like this: http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004_02_01_archive.html#107670208522395156, rather than embedded in a text fragment.

Please send the individual permalink, not the main URL to your site. I really don't want to take the time to scroll through sites looking for specific posts - as I have said, by the time I read your email it may be two days old and the post has since been buried with subsequent ones.

Many readers have sent me probing, thoughtful questions regarding religion or international affairs. Alas, I simply cannot give personal responses because of time. Your questions are not superficial ones, and I do not wish to answer superficially. Hopefully, I will be able to address some of these concerns in my posts.

I am grateful to everyone for reading. My daily unique readership has been well above the 3,000 mark for a long time now and Technorati records more than 150 new "inbound blogs " to mine just within the last three weeks or so, and more than 300 new "inbound links." I am grateful!

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 04:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Editorial on same-sex marriages in Oregon
Four judges in Masschusetts and now four commissioners in Multnomah County, Oregon, have decided the law is what they say it is. The Oregonian weighs in, with commentary by OutdoorsPro.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 04:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Martin Luther reads Bible in public high school!
Walls do not fall in, women do not faint, babies do not cry! Incredibly, the Republic remains sound!

Martin Luther, newly resurrected from the dead, appeared before in a 10th-grade high school classroom today to explain his rationale for rebelling against the Roman Catholic Church beginning with his posting of the "95 Theses" in 1517. Luther also explained his theology of justification by faith and read passages from the New Testament book of Romans to buttress his explanation of divine establishment of civil authority.

Luther spent 20 minutes fielding questions from the students, including why he decided to marry and have children, his relations with other religious reformers of the day, his dramatic face-down of the Roman Catholic prosecutor Johann Eck and his support of the nobility during the Peasants Revolt.

Also appearing were two other resurected historical figures, William Wallace, leader of Scottish rebellion against England, and Amelia Earhart, famous American axiatrix who disappeared with the copilot Fred Noonan while trying to fly across the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

Scheduled to appear at other dates are Winston Churchill, Gen. George C. Patton, Jr., Dorothy Dix and D. W. Griffith.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 01:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Separation of church and state continued
For years here in my hometown of Franklin, Tenn., the county school board has rented space in public school buildings to private organizations that wanted to use them during non-school hours. Examples are blood drives, bone-marrow matching clinics for leukemia victims, sports leagues - and church congregations that do not yet have their own church building. All totaled, there are more than 30,000 different uses of school facilities annually.

Now school board member Bill Peach wants to kick the churches out, but leave the others in. Responding to the request of two new congregations to meet in a school, Peach said,

''I am convinced that this practice is not consistent with the constitutional principle of separation of church and state,'' Peach said. ''As a citizen of this community, as a trustee for the academic population, I will support our commitment to current tenants, but I intend to vote against these two requests and oppose all future similar requests.''

What happened to "equal access?" Chris Haynes of the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., says it has to apply.

"I would predict that the Supreme Court would tell the district if you all let the Kiwanis club have lunch in the school on Saturday, you can't tell the Baptist church they can't use the school for worship services.''

I wonder whether Mr. Peach realizes that if he gets churches kicked out of renting schools on Sundays, he also has to eject the Boy Scouts but let Catholic Charities in.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 08:26:00 AM. Permalink |

Religious mutilation
Ashoura Day - a participatory Muslim "Passion Play" and Christians crucifying themselves

Josh Claybourn has posted photos of the bloody celebration of Ashoura Day by some Shiite Muslims. "Ashoura day marks the Shiite Muslim’s commemoration of the 7th century killing of their most revered Saint Imam Hussein" in a battle in 680, along with all the men with him. Hussein was the grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

Parents take swords or knives and cut their children on the head, drawing considerable blood. Adults also flagellate themselves with chains and cut themselves with swords. The Hartford Courant reports,

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites around the world traditionally gather at the Hussein's tomb in Karbala and other Shiite holy sites in Iraq. Black-garbed pilgrims flagellate themselves with chains and cut themselves with swords in grief at Hussein's death while others perform plays recreating the battle in which he was killed.

But bloody self-mutilation to commemorate religious events is not only a Muslim practice. Some Philippine Christians do so as well by literally reenacting Christ's crucifixion. "Filipino penitents re-enact the Crucifixion to the extent of having themselves actually nailed to a Cross. Although no vital damage is ever done, the process is still pretty painful." I would think so.

An undated news story on Ananova.com has photos of the actual crucifixions that take place.

The Catholic Church officially disapproves of the rituals, but does not attempt to stop them. ...

A double line of self-flagellants, stripped bare to the waist, started off the procession, the rhythmic thud of bamboo whips slapping against their bloody backs.

Their faces hidden behind scarves and crowns of leaves, the penitents get their backs cut open and whip themselves into a frenzy. The faithful believe it is a form of penance that helps prayers get answered.

Oscar Garcia, 55, his white trousers soaked in blood, said: "I made the vow to do this after I got sick and nearly died. I've been doing it for 10 years now."

Following behind were those who chose to be nailed, including one elderly woman. Displaying a veteran's aplomb, 64-year-old Bob Velez calmly walked around a small clearing where three wooden crosses had been set up. He wore a white loincloth and a crown of barbed wire. He said: "I feel the nail, but not the pain. I am strong in my heart."

When his turn came to be hoisted up onto a cross, a grimace of pain and then a smile crossed his face as thin, sterilised, eight-inch-long nails were driven through his palms. At the bottom of the small hill, thousands of people watched, gasping as the hammer came down.

So there is your religious news of the weird today.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 07:58:00 AM. Permalink |

Exploding $20 bills?
Update: This story is bogus, as several commenters have demonstrated.

Almost. It seems that the new $20 bills have RFID tags built in to them. I presume this is an anti-counterfeiting measure, because the government would never be up to something more nefarious and intrusive than that, would they? Nah.

RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which some manufacturers have managed to shrink to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting a unique ID code, typically a 64-bit identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. Most RFID tags have no batteries. They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response. [link]

To disable the bills' RFID chips, all you have to do is microwave them, so they say. Problem is, though, that the chips explode and ruin the money. Here are photos. hat tip: Joe Gandelman.

by Donald Sensing, 3/04/2004 07:38:00 AM. Permalink |

Choose your laws
. . . and the return of "separate but equal."

Clayton Cramer has some links to news stories about public officials choosing which laws they think they have to obey, and another post about Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, urging the Bush administration to support returning public schools to the days of separate but equal.

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 10:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Catholics aren't religious but Boy Scouts are
That's what Matt Hoy says recent court rulings seem to indicate.

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 10:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Scholarly smackdown?
James Foster emails, "New Testament scholars Ben Witherington III and John Dominic Crossan exchange views on The Passion's religious themes.

Part 1: Suffering, Sacrifice, and Sadism

Part 2: Must Christians Believe in Blood Atonement?

Part 3: Christ's Death: Because, For or From Our Sins?

I've read a pretty fair amount of work by both scholars. Crossan, a founder of the infamous Jesus Seminar, leans left (okay, way left) and Witherington leans right (but not way right).

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 10:17:00 PM. Permalink |

"The Threats to Democracy in Iraq "
Austin Bay discusses what they are, and here he explains why "Bad bugs and big jets present a challenge" in combating potential bioterroism: "What once appeared alarmist — terrorists disseminating bio-engineered diseases — is now recognized as a multidimensional international security threat."

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 10:10:00 PM. Permalink |

The death of separation of church and state, continued
Conservatives have long complained that the federal government has driven relgion away from the public awuare in a way that America's founders never envisioned. Now the government (translation: authoritarian judiciary) is driving religion away from the private square as well. For example, specifying what a parent may teach her child, in her home, about the Bible:

Denver County Circuit Judge John Coughlin recently prohibited professing Christian Cheryl Clark from teaching her eight-year-old daughter about the biblical view of homosexuality.

Rocky Mountain News reports here. hat tip: Tom Cohoe

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 10:05:00 PM. Permalink |

Kerry wants to dump McAuliffe?
Darren Kaplan ain't buying it.

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 09:46:00 PM. Permalink |

Links - The Passion of the Christ

Fringeblog hits back at some of the gutter reviews of the movie, and explains that the movie's Jesus is not the plastic Jesus we've come to expect.

Jeff Jacoby of the BoGlobe writes about whether the movie is anti-Semitic. Then a look from a Christian perspective by Raymond Keating in Newsday.

Two read-worthy articles from US news and World Report, here and here.

Judith Weiss has more links.

Update: some new additions, 3-5-04:

"Mel Gibson, the Scribes and the Pharisees," by Amy-Jill Levine

"Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A Challenge to Catholic Teaching," by Philip A. Cunningham, Executive Director, Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College.

Advice for Jews on handling The Passion of the Christ - Jewish Journal has a list of 'Passion' Response Dos and Don'ts"

New Testament scholars Ben Witherington III (on the right) and John Dominic Crossan (on the left) exchange views on The Passion's religious themes.

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 09:43:00 PM. Permalink |

AWOL
Me, that is. I awoke this morning in near-screaming pain in my lower right side. I toughed it out until my doctor's office opened. Tests for kidney stone or other disorder were negative. Liver, appedicitis, negative. "Must be muscular," they said, which is good news considering the alternative. So I am well fortified with drugs. I still had to work all day - it's tough to call in sick to the office when you are the office. So that's why no posting today.

I'm waiting for the drugs to kick in and then will hit the rack. Maybe I'll try to post something in the meantime, and maybe I won't.

AMC is showing the 1950s version of War of the Worlds, starring Gene Barry. I posted about the Martian-war scenario last August.

by Donald Sensing, 3/03/2004 09:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Today in history
Okay, it's after 10:30 p.m. where I live, so "today in history" is a little late. But it has come to my attention that today is the anniversary of Texas permitting the United States to join it.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 10:37:00 PM. Permalink |

WSJ piece postponed until Monday
I just got an email from James Taranto of OpinionJournal saying that my op-ed on the site has been postponed for publication from tomorrow until "tentatively Monday." There was already a WSJ piece on the same-sex marriage to be put online tonight, and they'd prefer not to run two pieces on the topic on the same day. C'est la vie!

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 05:35:00 PM. Permalink |

"Bring the Shia into the battle"
That was the desperate prescription of al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the now-famous memo captured by Kurds late last year and turned over to the Americans.

After tacitly admitting that al Qaeda cannot defeat America militarily in Iraq, Zarqawi writes that al Qaeda must turn to terrorism against the Iraqis in order to destabilize the country so much that its return to sovereignty this summer cannot happen effectively.
"So the solution, and only God knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle," the writer of the document said. "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands" of Shiites. ...

"You noble brothers, leaders of the jihad [meaning other al Qaeda leaders - DS], we do not consider ourselves people who compete against you, nor would we ever aim to achieve glory for ourselves like you did," the writer says. "So if you agree with it, and are convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects, we stand ready as an army for you to work under your guidance and yield to your command."
Zarqawi goes on to write that al Qaeda fighters in Iraq must wage war against the Shiite Iraqi majority (i.e, the "perverse sects") and that this war must be well underway before the US returns sovereignty to the country. That way al Qaeda can propagandize that the Americans are responsible for the sectarian violence. "After that, the writer suggests, any attacks on Shiites will be viewed as Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence that will find little support among the people" as a reason to unite against America.

Sadly, it appears that al Qaeda is determined to carry out this plan. Today's vicious bombing against Shiites proves it.

Suicide bombers carried out simultaneous attacks on Shiite Muslim shrines in Iraq on Tuesday, detonating multiple explosions that ripped through crowds of pilgrims. At least 143 people were killed and 430 wounded - the bloodiest day since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Unofficial casualty reports, however, put the toll in Baghdad and Karbala as high as 223.

But the Iraqis don't seem to be buying the idea that Americva is behind the violence, or that Iraqi Sunni Muslims are united against them. James Joyner cites a news report thus:

“Whoever did this is trying to divide the Muslims,” said a voice on a loudspeaker. “Don’t let them succeed.” Another said “Don’t be sad for the people who died. They are going directly to God.”

However, some Iraqis do blame the US for not having more effective security.

Several Iraqi leaders blamed the U.S.-led occupation forces for the deaths because they did not provide adequate protection for the pilgrims. “They are supposed to be responsible for the security situation,” Ahmed Safi, a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential cleric, told the Arabiya television news channel. Sistani’s words carry the force of law for many of his Shiite Muslim followers.

However, the United States has steadily been turning security operations over to reconstituted Iraqi military and police forces. More than half ther patrols and anti-terrorist missions performed are done by the Iraqis. If the US has any blame, it may be that we are withdrawing from antiterrorism too quickly in Iraq. Maybe.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 05:26:00 PM. Permalink |

Questions for tonight's seminar on The Passion
I'll attend a panel discussion at Vanderbilt University tonight about The Passion of the Christ.

Panelists include Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt; The Rev. Philip Breen of St. Ann's Catholic Church; Mark Forrester, Methodist chaplain at Vanderbilt; and Brian Habig, Presbyterian chaplain at Vanderbilt.

Prof. Levine (her CV is here) was my New Testament professor when I studied there. I know Rev. Forrester, of course (a Methodist colleague). I do not know the other two clerics.

My guess (and a guess is all it is) is that the panel will focus on the historical questions initially. As I said in my review, the movie accords with the Gospels, it isn't really a movie of the Gospels. There is much the Gospels include that Gibson didn't, and much he included that the Gospels don't. Roman Catholic tradition influenced Gibson quote a lot, especially in the sequence of Jesus carrying the cross to Golgotha. I look forward to hearing Rev. Breen explain these traditions.

Having known A-J Levine for several years, I can attest that her knowledge of the Scriptures and history of the time beats me all hollow. She is considered by her peers to be a world-class expert on historical questions about the life and times of Jesus and the apostles. She is expert also on first-century Judaism.

Here are some questions I would like the panel to address:

1. There was considerable concern expressed by various Jewish and Christian religious leaders that The Passion would result in anti-Jewish actions by its viewers. After garnering more than $135 million in ticket sales and being seen by more than 20 million viewers (at least), news media have reported no such deeds. Please discuss whether this fact does or does not show that the pre-release fears were unfounded. (See endnote to this post, too.)

2. Although many Christian viewers have not reported the movie affected them spiritually, the vast majority I have talked to say it did. According to my conversations with viewers, and news media reports, the great majority of Christian viewers say the movie led them to be very introspective about their own commitment to Christian discipleship, especially as to whether they embody the love of Christ in their own lives. What do you think the movie did to bring forth that reaction?

3. What consensus, if any, is there among scholars today of what caused the leaders of the Sanhedrin to consider Jesus so threatening that they thought they had no choice but to cause him to die?

4. Same question as above, but from Pilate's perspective. Nailing the sign above Jesus' head on the cross that he was "King of the Jews" indicates Pilate saw Jesus as a political threat. Why so, especially since Jesus pointed out to Pilate the self-evident fact that his followers were not fighting to free him?

5. Please explain Christ's passion within the contexts of Roman Catholic and Protestant faith and practice. I have observed that Protestants tend to conflate the events of Palm Sunday through Easter into one continuous narrative, whole Catholics distinguish more sharply between the events of the passion and those of Easter morning. Is this an accurate assessment? How does this play out in ecclesial life?

6. Please trace the development of the concept of "Messiah" in Judaism and explain what Jews meant by the term during Jesus' lifetime. Did Judean Jews of Jesus' life expect a Messiah was near at hand, and did they see the Messiah as political, spiritual or both?

I'll probably be lucky to get two of these answered, as the general public was invited to the panel discussion. I'll blog about it later, hopefully tomorrow.

Endnote: On the topic of Christians leaving the movie anti-Semitic, Dennis Prager has an excellent observation. After discussing the validity of concerns of persecution after enduring two millennia of it (almost all in Europe, not America),

What Jews need to understand is that most American Christians watching this film do not see "the Jews" as the villains in the passion story historically, let alone today. First, most American Christians -- Catholic and Protestant -- believe that a sinning humanity killed Jesus, not "the Jews." Second, they know that Christ's entire purpose was to come to this world and to be killed for humanity's sins. To the Christian, God made it happen, not the Jews or the Romans (the Book of Acts says precisely that). Third, a Christian who hates Jews today for what he believes some Jews did 2,000 years ago only reflects on the low moral, intellectual and religious state of that Christian. Imagine what Jews would think of a Jew who hated Egyptians after watching "The Ten Commandments," and you get an idea of how most Christians would regard a Christian who hated Jews after watching "The Passion."

Quite so.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 04:33:00 PM. Permalink |

Watch this space
I mean the space of the Wall Street Journal's editorial and opinion website, OpinionJournal. I will have a piece running in it tomorrow under the "Culture Wars" heading.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 02:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Greetings then, greetings now
Relations between America and Germany (maybe more accurately, President Bush and Chancellor Schroeder) have not receovered as well as a lot of recent media coverage indicates, reports David Kaspar from Deutchsland.

The relationship between the American President and the German Chancellor has, in fact, cooled significantly. Just compare Bush’s greeting for Schroeder in 2004 with that of 2001.

Bush 2001: It's my honor to be meeting today with one of America's strongest friends and allies, and one of Europe's strongest and best leaders. ...

Bush 2004: Mr. Chancellor, welcome back. It's good to see you. We've just had a really constructive dialogue about our mutual interests, our mutual desires to work together. ...

Let's hope relations do mend, though. I really liked living in Germany and had good German friends. I've seen other reports that Ch. Schroeder is discovering that his harsh anti-American rhetoric is not helping him in the court of German public opinion, and that's why he has been much more conciliatory in recent weeks.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 08:12:00 AM. Permalink |

Who is AWOL now?
Who'd a thunk it?

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 07:50:00 AM. Permalink |

Arab Palestinian mayor supports Israel's security fence
Judith Weiss reports on the town of Umm al-Fahm, which sits on the demarcation between the territory of Israel proper and the West Bank. The town had long been a gateway for terrorists entering Israel; some terrorists acts were committed at the gates of the town itself. Says the mayor,

... we have mixed feelings about the fence. For Umm al-Fahm it is very good. A blessing. For our Palestinian brethren - the beloved members of my nation, who are flesh of my flesh - and for the prospects of achieving peace, the fence is bad and unfair. But now there is a fence. And from the moment it was built, that phenomenon stopped. What will you say now? Are the city's residents to blame for what happened in the past? After all, this is the proof that it was all by chance. They simply chose us as an access route. What do you hear now on the news? Rosh Ha'ayin, Kafr Qasem, Baka al-Garbiyeh. Why? Because the hole in the fence moved there. . . .

Then the interviewer asks:
What do you think about the idea of annexing Umm al-Fahm to the Palestinian Authority?

"Absolutely not. Ninety-three percent of the city's residents are against that, and I am one of them. This is our home, we are citizens like everyone else, and we have it good here."

What's so good here for you? What about all the complaints of persecution, oppression and discrimination?

"It's all true, as you know. Yet our situation here is still far better than it would be if we were in an Arab state. I admit it. I also say it in talks abroad. It's a fact. That doesn't mean that there is nothing to improve. There's plenty."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed putting Umm al-Fahm on the other side of the fence from Israel, which garnered this response from one Walid Mahajni, owner of a pastry shop in the town,

"You want to take us from one of the most advanced countries and put us in one of the most depressed?" ... But, he adds, his attachment to his Israeli passport isn't just financial. "The Israeli mentality has become part of us. When I traveled in Egypt and Jordan, I realized I couldn't live in an Arab country. We've gotten used to speaking our minds."

"We have a saying here," said Shoaa Saad, 22, "that the 'evil' of Israel is better than the 'heaven' of the West Bank. "Here you can say whatever you like and do whatever you want — so long as you don't touch the security of Israel. Over there, if you talk about [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat, they can arrest you and beat you up." . . . "The problem is we're treated here as B-class citizens, but we're seen [by West Bank Palestinians] as 'almost Jews,' " said Issam Abu Allo, 29, one of three young Israeli-trained lawyers who discussed their situation over a late-night dinner at a pizza parlor. "Mr. Sharon seems to want us to join an unknown state that doesn't have a parliament, or a democracy, or even decent universities," said Mr. Allo, who studied law and social anthropology at predominantly Jewish colleges in Haifa and Netanya.

Why so many people of the West think that Yasir Arafat is a freedom fighter is beyond me. He is nothing but an oppressive dictator interested almost exclusively in self promotion and enrichment. What he is not doing is working on behalf of the welfare of the Palestinian people, whom he oppresses worse than anyone else, including the Israelis. I explained the details about this fact here and here and here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/02/2004 07:16:00 AM. Permalink |

Say goodbye to separation of Church and State
One of the cries oft heard from the secular Left is that religious people (always meaning the Christian "religious right," never the religious left or non-Christians) have no right to impose their values on the rest of society.

It's separation of Church and State, don't you see? Let us consider, though, whether this "wall of separation" that Thomas Jefferson wrote of in a letter has a doorway. Yes, it does, but it only opens one way. The state gets to be separate from religion, but not vice-versa.

California's Supreme Court has ruled that a Roman Catholic charity in San Francisco "must provide employees with birth-control coverage despite its opposition to contraception."

The 6-1 decision Monday, the first such ruling by a state's highest court, could open the door to mandated insurance coverage of abortion, said Carol Hogan, spokeswoman for the California Catholic Conference, which represents the church's policy position in the state.

The court said that the charity is not a religious employer because, even though directly sponsored and paid for by the Catholic church, it offers

... such secular services as counseling, low-income housing and immigration services to people of all faiths, without directly preaching Catholic values.

In fact, Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote that a "significant majority" of the people served by the charity are not Catholic. The court also noted that the charity employs workers of differing religions.

Justice Werdegar apparently skipped her childhood Sunday School classes when it was taught that everything she mentioned is solidly rooted in the teachings of both testaments of the Bible. "Counseling, low-income housing and immigration services" are Catholic values; they are founded on the teachings of the Jewish prophets and the New Testament. Werdegar seems to assume that absent the church, someone else (oh, yeah, the government, I guess) would do this mission. But the fact is that absent the church, these charities would not have begun in the first place, by the government or anyone else.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown was the lone dissenting judge. Brown wrote that the Legislature's definition of a "religious employer" is too limiting if it excludes faith-based nonprofit groups like Catholic Charities.

"Here we are dealing with an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization's expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission," Brown wrote. "The government is not accidentally or incidentally interfering with religious practice; it is doing so willfully by making a judgment about what is or is not a religion."

Separation of church and state? Don't we wish. The ruling is online here. Turn we now our attention to the US Supreme Court's ruling that makes mockery of the legal principle embodied in the US Constitution of "equal access" before the law - the very principle so loftily praised by the Massachusetts high court and San Francisco's Mayor Newsom in declaring that same-sex marriage was a matter thereof.

Equal access now excludes religious studies from using a state's general scholarship funds that are available to anyone else.

The state's constitution prohibits underwriting degrees that are "devotional in nature or designed to induce religious faith." The purpose is to discourage faith-based professions or vocations, an illicit government objective under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

Yet a decisive 7-2 majority in the U.S. Supreme Court constitutionally blessed the scholarship exclusion last week in Locke vs. Davey (Feb. 25, 2004). Religious neutrality - the customary commandment of the First Amendment - was cast out of the constitutional heavens.

The Court's ruling endorses discrimination for the sake of discrimination. Equal access? Not for religious people.

More and more, the relationship between the state apparatus in America and religious people and denominations is resembling how the old Soviet regime dominated eastern Europe: "I get to do what I want to do, and you get to do - what I want to do."

by D

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