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A Night To Forget

There was no premonition among those who bade their goodbyes that the ship's voyage was going to be it's last. The ocean was calm and no trouble was expected; so no one worried that there were too few lifeboats for all the passengers aboard ship. Few would have guessed that the ship was sailing towards a fatal collision that would mark the greatest peacetime sea disaster in history.

The vessel of course, was not the RMS Titanic, but the MV Dona Paz. The what? The MV Dona Paz. A ship whose loss on December 20, 1987 killed nearly three times as many as the famous Titanic.

One thousand five hundred and seventeen people died on that fateful Night to Remember on April 15, 1912. The events on that glamorous transatlantic greyhound, with its manifest of the rich and famous, have been memoralized in stage, print and film. But while the Dona Paz disaster eclipsed the Titanic by every measure of human tragedy practically no one remembers it . The four thousand three hundred and seventy five poor people who went to their deaths that night in the Tablas Straits, crammed into the rusty and asthmatic 2,215 ton ferry, were forgotten almost immediately.

A few contemporaneous accounts suggest what life was like aboard the Dona Paz that night. But just as the Titanic was a microcosm of Edwardian society, in all its contrasts, the final moments of the Dona Paz were a reflection of what Greg Bankoff called the Culture of Disaster, a mode of thinking in which physical causality is absent; where there is no relationsip between the prior and the subsequent; and where all occurrences arise from the operations of luck or the will of God. A contemporaneous Time Magazine article describes the atmosphere aboard the doomed ferry.

At about 10 o'clock on a moonless night, the grungy 2,215-ton ferry Dona Paz coursed through the choppy waters of the Tablas Strait, some 110 miles south of Manila. The people who crammed the decks on makeshift cots and slept three or four to a bed were scheduled to be in the capital by morning, and the air was filled with anticipation. Young women from the impoverished island of Samar talked excitedly about finding jobs as maids in Manila homes. Mothers and fathers tucked their children into bed and chatted about the relatives and the sights they would soon see.

As death in the form of a small tanker, the MT Vector, loaded with 8,800 barrels of gasoline, rushed at the Dona Paz from the opposite direction its crew was in a similarly fatalistic condition. A subsequent investigation showed that practically nobody was minding the store on either vessel as they collided with terrifying results. The New York Times reported:

The coast guard said today that its initial inquiry indicated that some of the officers of the ferry Dona Paz were watching television or drinking beer when she collided with an oil tanker, killing at least 1,600 people.

Later it was determined that far more than 1,600 died that night. The Dona Paz was packed full of passengers who had been admitted after the manifest had been closed. The crew of the tanker were not much better qualified. "An inquiry later revealed that the crew of the Vector was underqualified and that the boat's license had expired. ... the two survivors from MT Vector claimed that they were sleeping at the time of the incident." It was almost as if the crew on both ships simply pointed their vessels in the general direction of their destinations and left the subsequent management of affairs to Divine Providence. The entire ethos is summed up in the one indispensible Filipino phrase: bahala na, translated as "Let the future be. Fate will take care of it all."

The loss of the Titanic, operating on the Western mind, stimulated the establishment of the International Ice Patrol and mandatory capacities for lifeboats. Except for wartime disasters like the Lusitania and the Wilhelm Gustloff, Western sea travel became permanently safer after the lessons of the Titanic were fully absorbed. But because of the absence of cause and effect in much of Filipino culture, the loss of Dona Paz had no effect upon the subsequent safety of Philippine maritime travel.

The International Herald Tribune has a depressing list of disasters which followed the Dona Paz. Of ships sailing in disregard of typhooon warnings, catching fire for no apparent reason, overturning while packed with children, or just vanishing beneath the waves. One disaster which a friend of mine personally witnessed but which has left no record on the Internet, involved an interisland vessel that sank while already tied up to the pier. The gangplanks were being lowered but the passengers in their eagerness to disembark rushed to one side so quickly their combined weight overwhelmed the freeboard of the vessel and caused the sea to pour into the main deck, sending her to Davy Jones' locker within an arms length of the dock. And the cause of the sinking? That would be bad luck or the Will of God.

Today more than 800 people are missing as a ferry sank after it sailed into teeth of the worst typhoon of the season. The Scotsman reports:

Sulpicio Lines, the owner of the MV Princess of Stars, put the number of people missing to 845 after discovering an extra 100 passengers on the ship's manifest. Only 28 people were last night reported to have survived the disaster and they said many did not make it off the ship in time. ... "Many of us jumped, the waves were so huge, and the rains were heavy," a survivor identified only as Jesse told local radio. "There was just one announcement over the megaphone, about 30 minutes before the ship tilted to its side.

Everything about the disaster, from the shambolic nature of the ship's manifest, the negligence of the Coastguard, the indifference to the weather report, the casual way in which the order to abandon ship was given -- one wonders why they bothered at all -- is redolent of the culture of disaster. Although some might be forgiven for imagining that there might be some correlation between seamanship, material condition, Philippine Coast Guard corruption, weather and ship sinkings -- that one might lead to the other -- those thoughts are alien to the Philippine bureaucracy. What will be uppermost in their minds is how the party will go on; how the bribes should continue. Those are the eternal things. And as to the perils of sea, well, bahala na. All memory of the MV Princess of Stars disaster, like that of MV Dona Paz, will leave as little trace upon Philippine shipping practices as a thrown stone leaves upon the face of the waters. Eight hundred people, half the Titanic, gone. Just like that.

Update

A reader recently returned from Iraq emails:

In his book, The Ends of the Earth, Robert Kaplan was traveling through Mexico and made the observation that basic maintenance -- paint, picking up the trash, etc -- is a sign of a belief in the future. I thought about that a lot in Iraq.

Also, I've encountered phrases in two very different contexts now that both have the same flavor: that of divine intervention, or fate, or a negative sort of destiny.

The first is Japanese: "shikata ga nai", sometime abbreviated as "Sho ga nai" means literally, "there's no way of doing it" and actually means "oh, well, what can you do?" Essentially, that's the way the cookie crumbles, though it can refer to things in either the past or the future.

And in Arabic of course, we have "insha'allah". One of my translators would get frustrated with us, noting that when Americans would say this to Arabs, we really meant "we'll see" as a way of brushing them off, or putting off a decision, whereas when they said it to us, they really meant "god willing" or "if god wills it."

It's amazing that two cultures so different should both have expressions that could be used almost interchangeably for this purpose. One of the Staff Sergeants I worked with upon my arrival shocked me when, in conversation with locals, he would twist the phrase and insert his own name: "insha'william". I was worried he would offend. But after several months, I did it a couple of times too, when someone was questioning my own ability to do something.

It's all a way of wringing your hands, isn't it? "insha'allah" or "Sho ga nai." It flies against what I was taught as an infantry officer: no matter what, IMPOSE YOUR F***ING WILL.

I think that's the key difference in cultures of disaster -- for whatever reason there is a lack of a belief in a future, and an abrogation of the responsibility to change.

Philosophers would perhaps claim this to be the key innovation of the West: reason, and its handmaiden science, can improve life such that people inherently believe in progress.

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Israel Alone

Two articles, one by Allison Kaplan Sommer and Lisa Goldman at Pajamas Media and the other by Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post, underscore the exorbitant price that Olmert is now willing to pay for a handful of international legitimacy. It's a telling reminder of just how well the campaign to marginalize what a French ambassador called a "shitty little country" has fared. To gain but a little diplomatic leverage Israel must now mortgage its future.

Caroline describes the unilateral concessions that Olmert has made to Hamas; concessions to deep that even the State Department and the UN are aghast.

Israel's decision to embrace Hamas is so outrageous that even the US State Department apparently hasn't had a chance to get its bearings. Reacting to the news on Wednesday, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said, "Saying you've got a loaded gun to my head but you're not going to fire today is far different from taking the gun down, locking it up, and saying you're not going to use it again." The agreement "hardly takes Hamas out of the terrorism business," Casey added.

The "cease-fire" with Hamas also has direct implications for Judea and Samaria. If Hamas holds its fire for six months, then Israel will be obliged to end its counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria. That is, if Hamas keeps its powder dry until January, Israel will effectively enable it to assert its control over Judea and Samaria and so place Iran in control of the outskirts of Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Afula and Netanya.

If the US was aghast at the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's capitulation to Hamas, UN officials are aghast at its second asset drop. This week the government conducted its second round of negotiations toward the surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria. Speaking of the surrender talks to a group of Israeli diplomats, Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, condemned the move, arguing just by holding the negotiations, "Israel has given Syria a huge gift, without thus far receiving anything in exchange."

Giving its enemies gifts without receiving recompense was exactly what Olmert hoped to achieve. The perverted logic behind this strategy is ably explained by Allison Kaplan Sommer.

No one knows exactly when the ceasefire will be violated - whether it is a matter of days, weeks, or months: when the first missile will crack the silence and represent the opening gun to what is expected to be a major military operation in Gaza. The pessimism is based on bitter experience - the Palestinian record on honoring ceasefire agreements is poor, to put it mildly.

So if no one believes it will last, why bother? The overriding reasoning of the Israeli leaders behind the agreement to it is to show that their side everything possible has done to avoid bloodshed - so that when the war in Gaza - which is viewed as inevitable, occurs - the world will know that Israel did all it could.

That, in all its pathetic absurdity, is all that Olmert hopes to purchase at the certain cost of Israeli blood: a baring of the neck to the dagger so that when the "inevitable, occurs - the world will know that Israel did all it could". It's what the Peace Lobby calls 'confidence building'. But the confidence it builds is entirely of the wrong sort. Caroline Glick describes the almost gloating tone in which these pitiful offerings have been received by countries as distant as Iran.

No doubt buoyed by the government's strategic incapacitation, Iran mockingly told the Europeans that it will be happy to consider their European-American offer to build Iran nuclear reactors and normalize relations with it - so long as it is understood that they will accept their largesse while continuing their uranium enrichment activities.

Ironically, even the Peace Lobby is probably convinced that Israel's abject concessions are only likely to increase the likelihood of war. In fact the entire point of its abjection is to eke out whatever sympathy the International Community may deign to give at the moment the thundering freight train of Mars hits Israel. And yet the fact that surrender will increase the perils of war cannot undo the Pavlovian reflex to grovel and grovel yet again.

But in this last, Olmert will have probably have miscalculated . He will get weakness and he will reap war, but Israel will get no sympathy. Sympathy in this hard world is another word for admiration; sympathy was what European diplomats felt when Israel's armies defeated the combined Arab armies in 1967. Then the shitty little country wasn't so shitty. Besides, they bought Mirage fighters from the French and that always counts for something. Today what retreat and capitulation will bring from the capitals of the Old World is contempt.

There is always the danger, when electing appeasers into office, of assuming that when they go too far and overstep, the public will rise up and regain their senses. But that is to forget that each concession they provide the foe increases the cost of recovery until finally sheer hopelessness overcomes indignation. The familiar drama of Britain's recovery from the blunders of Munich often makes us forget that had Britain not been rescued by the America and Hitler's foolish attack into Russia, not even their Finest Hour could have save them from the blessings of Peace In Our Time.

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Disinformation

Ken Schram and the idiocy of Libyan leader Muhammer al-Quadafi.

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Source: Memri. Title of the video: Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: Obama Suffers Inferiority Complex That Might Make Him Behave "Whiter Than the White." He Should Be Proud of His African, Muslim Identity. Ben-Gurion Gave the Green Light for the Killing of JFK"

Wikipedia has a few choice quotations on the subject of postmodernism, the belief that truth is whatever we want it to be.

In 1994, Czech Republic President, Vaclav Havel gave a hopeful description of the postmodern world as one based on science, and yet paradoxically “where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.”

Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.”

In the introduction to his Treatise on Twelve Lights, Robert Struble, Jr. states: "The postmodernist worldview dismisses all forms of absolutism from eras past, especially Judeo-Christian faith and morals; yet the postmodernists idolize absolutely their new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice."

Maybe there is no answer to the question: what is an idiot?

What has happened to us? After watching this brace of videos I went instinctively to my copy of Johan Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages, because I wanted to recapture a sense of what it was like to live in a world where light was precious. We love the shadow now, and indistinct form. Once we sought to see; and now we turn away.

When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had the degree of directness and absoluteness that joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child. Every event, every deed was defined in given and expressive forms ... The great events of life -- birth, marriage, death -- by virtue of the sacraments, basked in the radiance of the divine mystery ...

Just as the contrast between summer and winter was stronger than in our present lives, so was the difference between light and dark, quiet and noise. The modern city hardly knows pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout.

What light? What shout?

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Thinking the unthinkable

One of the more embarrassing aspects of the Cold War, which we can acknowledge without undue shame in retrospect, was that the safety of both superpowers depended on collective punishment. The vast arsenals of nuclear warheads on both sides, especially in the early days of missile guidance, were aimed not at military bases or government centers. They were not aimed at the White House, the Capitol or the Kremlin. They were aimed at the cities in which millions of civilians lived. Another word for the sonorous term of "deterrence" was holding the enemy nation's population accountable for the actions of the leaders.

Elbridge A. Colby at the Hoover Institution Public Policy review revisits collective responsibility in the age of possible nuclear terror in his article, "Expanded Deterrence: Broadening the threat of retaliation". His thesis, as you might have guessed, is that to prevent deniable nuclear attacks it is necessary not to listen to denials.

The problem is arises from the fact that we cannot deter terrorists directly. Colby writes, "as many have pointed out, terrorists are hard — and sometimes impossible — to deter directly. Clearly, people willing to kill themselves in order to conduct terrorist attacks are unlikely to be deterred by direct threats."

Consequently he argues that there is no alternative but to hold terrorism's parent societies or cultures responsible for any acts they may fail to prevent. "This posture would strongly incentivize those with the capability to act to do so, since gross negligence or complicity would incur retaliation (not necessarily, it should be emphasized, violent in nature). And our demands would be reasonable, because all we would be asking for is active assistance in preventing catastrophic attacks from those who, despite their own involvement — active or passive — in such attacks, benefit from the restraint of our current, excessively narrow posture."

Many elements of a deterrent policy against terrorists are in place already. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that, implicitly, an expanded deterrence policy already exists. It is taken as a matter of course that terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are the object of a deterrent strategy by the United States. The U.S. government’s response to al Qaeda’s attacks, while stymied by insufficient focus and resources, exhibits the marks of a latter-stage deterrent strategy: They attacked us, thus they will be destroyed. Operation Enduring Freedom and elements of the Administration’s National Security Strategy moved towards a deterrent framework. The U.S. has already expanded notions of culpability in terrorism with its campaigns against material supporters of terror, financial backers, direct action, threats against state sponsors of terror, and so forth. Among Democrats, Senator Barack Obama endorsed a deterrence approach against terrorists in his August 1, 2007 speech, threatening to strike terrorists within Pakistan to retaliate for or prevent attacks. More recently, in a little noticed speech on February 8, 2008 that represented a major step forward for U.S. counterterrorism policy, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that the U.S. had recently adopted “a new declaratory policy to help deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our friends, and allies.” This policy would threaten with retaliation “those states, organizations, or individuals who might enable or facilitate terrorists in obtaining or using weapons of mass destruction.” But the policy, while deserving of applause, remains inchoate and unpublicized. The argument presented here attempts to develop further Hadley’s commendable but incomplete proposal.

Here I should interject that Barack Obama's deterrence approach is less than categorical. The Washington Post reported this exchange between Hillary Clinton and Obama on August 3, 2007 at around the same time Obama was enunciating his policy of deterrence.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton drew another distinction between herself and Sen. Barack Obama yesterday, refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Osama bin Laden or other terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Clinton's comments came in response to Obama's remarks earlier in the day that nuclear weapons are "not on the table" in dealing with ungoverned territories in the two countries, and they continued a steady tug of war among the Democratic presidential candidates over foreign policy.

"I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance" in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Obama said. He then added that he would not use such weapons in situations "involving civilians."

"Let me scratch that," he said. "There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Obama (Ill.) was responding to a question by the Associated Press about whether there was any circumstance in which he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat terrorism and bin Laden.

"There's been no discussion of using nuclear weapons, and that's not a hypothetical that I'm going to discuss," Obama said. When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did.

By the afternoon, Clinton (N.Y.) had responded with an implicit rebuke. "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons," she said, adding that she would not answer hypothetical questions about the use of nuclear force.

But whether the Obama policy ball eventually stops on black or on red upon the spinning wheel of political fortune, Colby's point about an emerging doctrine of expanded deterrence is probably a valid one. Here is the bluntest and most direct expression of the concept. The words are from the Hoover paper, the emphasis is mine.

Reports suggest that al Qaeda is plotting WMD attacks against the West from its hideouts in the northwestern regions of Pakistan. The Pakistani Army has made halting, ineffective efforts to track them down. Many in the area are likely hiding or at least complicit in hiding members of al Qaeda. Yet, perversely, these individuals most likely either fear or sympathize more with al Qaeda than the faraway Americans and our apparently unintimidating sometime-allies in the Pakistani Army. How does it make sense that it is the American people rather than the relevant inhabitants of the frontier provinces of Pakistan who must bear the risk of an attack launched by al Qaeda elements sheltered in this very region?

Expanding deterrence would redress this imbalance. Instead of permitting individuals and entities engaged in protecting or abetting terrorists to be bystanders, this policy would force them to bear the risk of retaliation in the event of a catastrophic attack. This would strongly incentivize those potentially implicated either to take action on our behalf or at least not cooperate in hostile activities. The same logic would apply to those in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency and other elements in Pakistan who have protected and fostered al Qaeda.

In the event of a catastrophic al Qaeda attack against the U.S. homeland, the United States would, having set out this policy, therefore have the moral and strategic rationale to retaliate not only against al Qaeda members themselves, but also against those whose cooperation, material support, complicity, or gross negligence made the killing of thousands of Americans possible. Legitimate targets of American retaliation would now include supporters, facilitators, moneymen, back office workers, and onwards, as well as infrastructure, housing, food and other supplies, land, political control over territory, marks of prestige, and so forth. Depending upon need and the degree of culpability, American options would include detention, capture, confiscation, disabling, humiliation, pressuring, all the way up to (but not necessarily emphasizing or even including) military operations.

Colby argues, on classical grounds, that for such a deterrent to be effective it has to be credible. There has to be no doubt among allies (who may shelter under the American nuclear umbrella) and the enemy that America will carry out the threatened response. But leaving Obama aside, can anybody, in this politically correct world, really believe it will be carried out? Colby himself has doubts. "The credibility of a deterrent threat is vital to its success. Yet the threat to expand our retaliation beyond those directly responsible might strike our opponents and others as incredible."

The Hoover paper categorically rejects this policy as the threat of collective punishment, describing it instead as "a policy that carefully and reasonably expands the definition of guilt — it is not a policy that targets the innocent."

Readers of the Belmont Club will be familiar with posts which have dealt with the concepts discussed in the Hoover paper, such as The Ghost of AQ Khan, the Return of Danger and of course, the granddaddy of them all, the Three Conjectures. There are two problems in particular which are not closely examined by the Hoover paper. The first, which was raised by the Three Conjectures, is whether there is any stable stopping point if a WMD exchange is initiated. Implicit in the Hoover paper is the idea that terror -- and let's be frank here, Islamic terror -- can be restrained by its larger social milieu. That somehow threatening "supporters" and "marks of prestige" can put the damper on Osama Bin Laden and his ilk; or at least "incentivize" the grand muftis of whatever mosque to cool their hotheads. I hope that control exists, but I will argue that it is far from clear that it does.

The second problem is what course small, non-nuclear states should follow in a world of deniable nuclear weapons. Singapore for example, and Germany according to some, would be examples of countries which could be subjected to nuclear blackmail. If "expanded deterrence" is good for America, why should it not be good for Singapore, which the regional enemy of Islamic terrorism? And if America will have difficulty credibly threatening "expanded deterrence" in the event a US city is destroyed, how can any country credibly threaten that America would retaliate on its behalf against "supporters" and "marks of prestige" (in other words Muslim populations and Mecca) in the event Singapore or Berlin is reduced to ash? If the Vatican were destroyed, for example, who could be counted on to carry out the threat of "expanded deterrence"?

I have long argued that the advent of the terrorist nuclear weapon would present the policymakers with an unpalatable and almost noxious set of options. The menu is so unappetizing that I argued, in Three Conjectures, that it was time to pull out all the conventional stops to prevent being trapped in a dilemma where the only choices were watching one city after the other go up in nuclear car bombs or exercising "expanded deterrence". But if there is no stable stopping point; if the muftis or imams can't slam on the brakes, then "expanded deterrence" will proceed until it is maximally expanded. We don't want to go there. So while we have the chance to alter the destination, let's not go there.

But proliferation, I later realized, will change the nature of deterrence itself. If al-Qaeda can get nukes, why should it stop there? Why not Neo-Nazis? Why not small countries who are vulnerable to extortion? I have argued that once terrorists acquire the ability to engineer repeatable nuclear explosions then every country which can beg, borrow or steal a nuke will acquire them. For example, if Singapore, Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan were persuaded a terrorist could attack them, they would not rely on an American umbrella to visit "expanded retaliation" on the usual suspects. No head of state could accept a reliance on actions which an ally might not even be able to carry out on its own behalf. They would therefore get their own nukes and use them accordingly.

I don't think expanded deterrence will actually be seriously considered until after an actual nuclear attack on some country. However, Elbridge A. Colby's discussion at Hoover is a useful first step in escaping from the prison of obsolete strategic concepts and thinking through the problems of maintaining the peace in the 21st century. Even if the clarity comes after the fact, a well considered framework developed now will be useful in restraining the panicked survivors of the Washington policy establishment as they peel the charred skin from their limbs and pick the glass shards from their eyes. Maybe the act of thinking about the unthinkable now will motivate them into conventional action now rather than wait for the very uncertain later.

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Prince of Thieves

The Guardian featured an atmospheric piece on how the Prince of Marbella, Monzer al-Kassar, a man on the "Most Wanted" list of Iraq, lived. You could do worse.

The Observer tracked him down to his lavish, 15-suite residence, designed like a Renaissance palazzo overlooking Puerto Banus. Guards swing the gates open to allow guests into the estate, where there is a swimming pool built like a four-leaf clover. Three Spanish mastiffs prowl during the night to deter uninvited guests.

Inside the palace, a grand piano is showcased at the bottom of a marble staircase under a domed skylight. In the grand salon, silk flowers are arranged in a giant Chinese vase in front of a marble fireplace. Statues of servants holding lamps stand before the massive drapes, and on the wall are murals of African servants in turbans, carrying platters of fruit.

Not bad for a man associated with the Achille Laura shipjacking, whose walls are adorned with photographs of him shaking hands with Uday Hussein, members of the Somali Aideed clan, Abu Abbas, up on hashish smuggling charges in the UK, mentioned in connection with Iran-Contra, said to have sold anti-ship missiles to Teheran, and with supposed side businesses supplying terror groups in Latin America and Iran-backed militias. While some might to object to his choice of friends, Monzer al-Kassar is cheerfully broadminded.

Kassar admits that a lifetime in the arms business has led to a variety of acquaintances: 'I met interesting people: good people, bad people. How do I know who's good and who's bad? This is a matter of opinion ... The bad people for you may be the good people for me.'

Who's good and who's bad? If you weren't good to Monzer it was definitely bad for you. The PBS blog tells this droll story of what happened when mere policemen tried to put the collar on the Prince of Marbella.

In 1992, Spain arrested Al Kassar on charges of piracy and providing the arms to the Abu Abbas-led PLF terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered American Leon Klinghoffer. Western intelligence agencies concluded that Al Kassar flew Abbas to safety aboard one of his private planes after the hijackers surrendered. One prosecution witness, Ahmed Al Assadi, while spending time in Vercelli prison for participating in the hijacking, changed his story and refused to go to Spain to identify Al Kassar as the person who supplied the hijackers' weapons. After Al Kassar's arrest, another accuser, Ismail Jalid, fell to his death from a fifth-story window in Marbella, Spain, in what the coroner called "an alcoholic coma." During the 1995 trial, in a highly publicized standoff with police, a third witness's children were kidnapped by Colombian drug traffickers shortly before he testified. The witness blamed Al Kassar, who denied involvement and stated, "I have nothing to do with the kidnapping and I hope that it is over as soon as possible. Children are sacred for Arabs. No one, not even your worst enemy, deserves this." Al Kassar was later acquitted of all charges.

The really interesting thing about the underworld life is how often coincidences routinely happen. How many people do you know who will stagger up from an alcoholic coma and pitch themselves out of five story windows? Fortunately for most of us civilians, there are people who don't believe in coincidences. And a lot of them apparently work at the DEA, who asked themselves, now what kind of person would Monzer al-Kasser hang out with? The answer they came up with was 'the kind of people looking to buy uranium'.

Among the more explosive revelations from the laptops of the late FARC leader Raul Reyes is the allegation that the FARC was trafficking in radioactive materials and according to Colombia’s Vice President was planning to build a “dirty bomb.”

That meant FARC had money to burn, and Monzer was going after some of it. After all, castles in Spain don't come cheap and a man's got to make a living.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s press release, international arms-trafficker extraordinaire Victor Bout was arrested for plotting to sell weapons to the FARC – not knowing that the reputed FARC representatives were in fact working for the DEA. Only nine months ago another notorious international arms dealer, Monzer al-Kasser was arrested for conspiring to sell weapons (and trainers) to the FARC, when in fact the FARC buyers were in fact DEA operatives. For al-Kasser, who has been linked to the Palestine Liberation Front (the group responsible for the Achille Lauro hijacking) as well as leading Baathist figures from Syria and Iraq, it was more than just business. He offered to raise an army to assist the FARC. Al-Kasser seems to have had a passion for his work.

The details of Monzer's tender to FARC make interesting reading. A DEA release is a tale of ships, missiles and mercenaries.

During their consensually recorded meetings, Kassar, Ghazi, and Moreno-Godoy provided the CSs with, among other things: (1) a schematic of the vessel to be used to transport the weapons; (2) specifications for the SAMs they agreed to sell to the FARC; and (3) bank accounts in Spain and Lebanon that were ultimately used to conceal more than $400,000 from DEA undercover accounts that the CSs represented, and Kassar, Ghazi, and Moreno-Godoy believed, were FARC drug proceeds for the weapons deal. During their meetings with the CSs, Kassar, Ghazi, and Moreno-Godoy reviewed Nicaraguan end-user certificates that were used to make the weapons deal appear legitimate. Kassar also promised to provide the FARC with ton-quantities of C4 explosives, as well as expert trainers from Lebanon to teach the FARC how to effectively use C4 and improvised explosive devices (commonly referred to as "IEDs"). In addition, Kassar offered to send a thousand men to fight with the FARC against United States military officers in Colombia.

He offered to supply Strela 2M MANPADs that could be used against US helicopter assets operating in support, presumably, of the Colombian government. FARC is a major insurgency and controls or influences an area larger than some European countries. The DEA documents suggest it was planning some major fireworks. Even so, what developments pushed FARC into planning its buildup just now? Was it fantasy or a serious plan? Had they acquired major new allies internationally or in the region? When Monzer and Bout's trial opens, the public may get to find out.

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Chumchumal

Just why exactly did Barack Obama suddenly become concerned with providing security for Iraqi reconstruction in April, 2004? I look at the question at Pajamas Media. Here's Obama in April, 2004.

What exactly happened at around that time that might be of interest?

Here's what I think, and try to document in the Pajamas Media article.

The shifts in Barack Obama’s policy toward Iraq show a remarkable correlation with the rise and fall of Tony Rezko’s business prospects in the Chamchamal Power Plant. As the story of the Rezko syndicate is exposed in his Chicago trial, the subject of its Iraqi commercial interests will come under a brighter light. Barack Obama has already said of his convicted ex-fundraiser, “this is not the Tony Rezko I used to know.”

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The return of danger

A reader sends some additional thoughts on the consequences of nuclear proliferation, a subject discussed in an earlier post, especially in comments. He writes: "Mark Helprin considered the risk of a nuclear attack on Germany and how it would strain NATO in a recent article at the Claremont Review. Germany is of course a key ally of the US, but one of the few large prosperous countries that is not nuclear." Helprin described the vulnerability of rich, poorly defended European countries in these words:

Germany must fascinate the jihadists, too—not for displacing America as the prime target, but as the richest target least defended. Though it will never happen, they believe that Islam will conquer the world, and so they try. Unlike the U.S., Europe is not removed from them by an ocean, and in it are 50 million of their co-religionists among whom they can disappear and find support. ...

But more importantly, the variations in European attitudes and capabilities vis-à-vis responding to terrorism or nuclear blackmail are what make Germany such an attractive target. Unlike the U.S., France, and Britain, Germany is a major country with no independent expeditionary capability and no nuclear weapons, making it ideal for a terrorist nuclear strike or Iranian extortion if Iran is able to continue a very transparent nuclear policy to its logical conclusion. Though it is conceivable that after the shock of losing Washington or Chicago, the U.S.—or Britain after Birmingham, France after Lyons—would, even without an address certain, release a retaliatory strike, it is very unlikely that, even with an address certain, any nuclear power would launch in behalf of another nation, NATO ally or not, absent an explicit arrangement such as the dual-key structure during the Cold War.

Looking at Germany, then, Iran sees a country with nothing to counter the pressure of merely an implied nuclear threat. Jihadists see the linchpin of Europe, easy of access and inadvertently hospitable to operations, that will hardly punish those who fall into its hands, and that can neither accomplish on its own a flexible expeditionary response against a hostile base or sponsor, nor reply in kind to a nuclear strike. Thus the German government should be especially nervous about cargos trucked overland from the east.

Perhaps one of the most tragic outcomes of the soft approach towards rogue states is that it may unwittingly speed up the complete collapse of the nonproliferation regime and usher in its consequence, the re-armament of Europe. If Helperin is correct predicting that radical Islam's first targets will be the rich, undefended and politically correct societies of Europe, then one might ask how those societies will eventually respond to an existential challenge.

It is too early in the game to predict anything. But the diplomatic consequences of a breakdown in nonproliferation make an interesting subject for scholarly examination.

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The Monzer's Ball Meets the Transporter

Victor Bout and Monzer al-Kassar: household names, if not in the land of the living, then among the houses of the soon to be dead: the victims of the world's Merchants of Death. Victor Bout was a notorious Russian arms dealer, doing business all over the world, who was arrested in a DEA sting operation in Thailand, where he remains. The Americans want him tried in New York. The Russians don't. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Bout was arrested in a sting operation initiated by the US Drug Enforcement Administration a few hours after he arrived in Bangkok. The agency says he came to Thailand to negotiate the sale of Igla surface-to-air missiles to two undercover agents posing as officers from the Colombian narco-rebel movement known as FARC.

Bout claims he's an innocent man who used to be a fan of the United States. "I used to admire the Americans, I looked up to them. But today I despise the Americans, and so does the entire world. They think they can do whatever they want anywhere." But he's still politically correct kind of guy. The Herald continues: "Bout presents himself as just an ordinary, conscientious businessman. During the interview he said his only businesses were an airport maintenance company and a farm in the Caucasus, where he rears goats to make cheese for restaurants in Moscow. He was a vegetarian and concerned about the disappearance of rainforests in Africa, he said."

Bout also denied that he was ever involved in illegal arms trafficking. "I used to run an air transport company. Perhaps there were guns on board, but I was only a transporter. If I was guilty of smuggling guns, then any taxi driver in Bangkok would have to be arrested if he has had a drug trafficker or arms merchant as a passenger."

As Bout was fuming in his Thai cell, another distinguished figure from the shadow world was disembarking in New York city in the custody of -- the DEA. "from a clear blue sky, an ordinary A-Star helicopter touched down at a helipad on Pier 6. ... A white-haired man, in shackles, emerged from the cabin and was led across the tarmac to a waiting black Cadillac Escalade ... The city has its secrets, many of them openly on display, and this was one of them: an international arms dealer arriving in New York, having just been extradited by the government of Spain. His name is Monzer al-Kassar, and he had recently come off a flight from Europe, followed by a 40-minute helicopter jaunt from Westchester County Airport. He looked haggard, and was perhaps wearing the clothes that he had slept in. He did not look pleased."

The Jerusalem Post writes that Monzer al-Kassar was the man who supplied weapons to terrorists and criminals the world over:

Monzer al-Kassar is not a name most Israelis would identify as one of its terrorist enemies. He has neither planned nor participated in such attacks, nor is he a member of any of the groups that has carried them out. But Kassar has in fact played a key role in some of the worst atrocities committed against Israeli and Jewish civilians, and his links to one Arab regime in particular - that of his native country, Syria - deserve special scrutiny at a moment when Jerusalem is just about to begin potentially historic negotiations with its government.

Earlier this year, he was arrested by Spanish authorities after allegedly offering to sell weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency posing as representatives of Colombia's FARC guerrilla group. On Friday he was extradited from Madrid to New York City, where he is scheduled to face trial on charges that also include conspiracy and money-laundering.

Like Bout, Monzer al-Kasser claims he was nothing if not a nice guy. He lived so munificently in Spain that he was called the "Prince of Marbella". Maybe one day someone will write a book about how the darkest black of night sometimes lurks amidst sunny beaches, vegetarian dishes and beautiful goat's cheese.

But the gathering of these two shadowy figures in New York City raises some interesting lines of speculation. Among the questions which immediately come to mind are: why Bout and Monzer, guilty of a string of crimes as long as your arm, happened to go down in connection with a MANPAD missile sale involving Columbia's FARC? Is there a connection between Monzer's sudden loss of official protection and the mooted peace deal between Israel and Syria? Is the DEA handling this affair because other agencies might have a conflict of interest in any trial involving Bout and Monzer? What political candidate(s) may be embarassed by revelations about FARC and connections to Lebanon or Syria?

The DEA and DOJ description of charges against Monzer make interesting reading. And so does the DOJ sheet against Bout. Here's my guess. The US wants both Monzer and Bout down for offenses not limited to the FARC manpad missile sale. But making the FARC missile sale the actual offense of record means that the discovery will go to places nobody minds visiting, except certain politicians who are now frantically checking so see whether they are in any shape, way or form connected with FARC, Syria and Lebanon.

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Site Moves

The Belmont Club will be moving on Monday, June 23 to Pajamas Express, a development which I hope will have several advantages. First, readers will be a little closer, in terms of clicks, to some of the most distinguished names on the blogosphere: Victor Davis Hanson, Richard Miniter, Roger Kimball, Bill Bradley, Ron Rosenbaum, Phillis Chester, Flemming Rose, Claudia Rosett, Michael Ledeen and Ron Silver. Equally compelling for me was the chance at having more control over the site, something that is a little hard to do with Blogger, and the opportunity to use the plug-ins and features available in Wordpress.

I know some firewalls exclude Blogger sites, so access for some readers may improve. The Blogger RSS feeds have also been the subject of some complaint. With the change in platform, those difficulties may be solved.

Inevitably there will some inconvenience associated with the move. There's the hassle of moving bookmarks. I'll provide a link at the top of the old page for those who can't be bothered. It's not without its headaches for me, having grown familiar with the Blogger interface, and it's like an old shoe you don't want to put away. The little widgets, the linkroll, traffic counter, blogroll, etc all have to be recast. But ultimately the move will be worth the effort.

All the archives will remain where they are. However, on the day of the move I'll lock down this site to disable the posting of additional comments, otherwise the trolls and spammers will move into the comments section.

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You don't know me

Rezko and Odinga are important persons in their own right, but it is their connection to Barack Obama that has the press interested. First, Kenyan PM Raila Odinga is not going to meet with Obama when he visits the US. "Mr Odinga has said he is a cousin of Mr Obama’s, although the senator’s representatives deny that the two men are related. The Kenyan-American presidential candidate may wish to avoid meeting with the PM due to concerns that such contact would be used to stoke rumours intended to wound Senator Obama politically. ... Right-wing extremists have been circulating baseless claims on the Internet that Senator Obama is closely allied with Prime Minister Odinga, who is described by the Obama-haters as both an Islamist and a socialist.".

Over in Chicago, Tony Rezko says prosecutors pressured him to talk about Barack Obama. The prosecutors deny it. "In a letter to a judge publicized last week, political fund-raiser Tony Rezko said 'overzealous' prosecutors pressured him to tell them "the wrong things" about presidential hopeful Barack Obama."

The actual text of the letter, which Rezko wrote while seeking bail before his conviction is at this link. In it Rezko denies he is a criminal, portraying himself instead as the epitome of a loyal American. He said:

I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream. ... I am a die-hard Bears fan ... The White Sox are my baseball team because they are my son's team. Until recently, I was also a season ticket-holder for the Bulls.

But Rezko's apple pie had strange and persistent Middle Eastern spices. The Sun-Times wrote: "Rezko was indicted in October 2006 while on a trip to Syria, and he had returned to face the case. He remained free on bail until Jan. 28, after prosecutors raised an alarm with the judge that Rezko had received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Lebanon. [Judge] St. Eve jailed him until April, when family and friends put up $8.5 million to secure his release."

The $3.5 million was sent by Nahdmi Auchi of all people. The Sun-Times continues.

Rezko opened his letter by apologizing to St. Eve for not informing her of the $3.5 million, which had come to Rezko through Beirut from General Mediterranean Holding SA, a company led by Auchi. He said he took the money in because he was under "tremendous pressure" to pay his legal bills.

Even the $8.5 million bond raised by his Chicago friends had a connection with Iraq. It included $1.9 million put up by Rezko's old classmate and onetime fugitive Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was a former "Iraqi Electricity Minister ... who in 2006 fled from Iraqi prison. Alsammarae's $1.9 million equity in his Oak Brook home and two other properties made up more than one-third of the $8 million in properties postes to ensure Rezko's bond. Rezko was ... arrested Jan. 28 after failing to disclose an overseas wire transfer."

In the letter explaining why he did not disclose the wire transfer, Rezko said he had been told by his attorneys that since the money from Auchi was a "loan" he had no obligation to disclose it to the judge. At any rate his heart was as pure as only a Bears fan could be. "However, your Honor, the thought of making plans to leave the country never crossed my mind." Rezko portrayed himself as just an innocent immigrant who was being pressured by unscrupulous prosecutors to say bad things about honest and decent men.

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuringme to tell them the "wrong" things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru, or Winter. I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream.

The Sun-Times thinks the letter, written before Rezko's conviction, was his way of saying that he didn't want to make a deal. But now that Rezko is facing a long stretch in jail, he may regret his decision.

The letter sent a clear signal that Rezko was not interested in making a deal. But Rezko's situation changed dramatically after his June 4 conviction. He not only landed right back in jail, but faces significant prison time. Beyond that, Rezko still faces two other criminal trials. If Rezko were to have a future change of heart, the note he sent could end up backfiring on him, legal observers say.

The Chicago Sun-Times is probably right in thinking Rezko was signaling that he wasn't going to make a deal. But the Sun-Times may be wrong to assume the signal was being sent to the prosecutor. As the Sun-Times itself notes, the prosecutors claim they never approached Rezko on the subject. So who was the signal in the letter meant for? Maybe Rezko was signaling To Whom it May Concern on the Outside. The world of Tony Rezko has gotten very small. An Illinois jail is a very confined place for anyone who plans on snitching on powerful allies. Nor is there any safety in fleeing to Lebanon or Syria if he crosses Auchi. Dollars to donuts says Auchi has even more friends in those parts than Tony Rezko. So at all events Rezko has to be the stand up man. It would have been nice if the Judge hadn't found out about the money Auchi sent; the money Rezko wasn't going to use to skip. Then he could have been free and in the good graces of his friends. Maybe. All in all, given the complications of the situation maybe the best Tony Rezko can hope for is life imprisonment in jail. It's possible that there's nothing Fitzgerald can threaten Rezko with that would remotely compare with the downside of making a deal. Which is probably why the prosecutors have denied asking Rezko to turn in any associates.

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The ghost of AQ Khan

Fox has an interesting story about the state of nuclear weapons technology proliferation.

A draft report released by a former U.N. weapons inspector found that the international smuggling ring that supplied nuclear designs to Iran, Libya, and North Korea also obtained the blueprints for an advanced nuclear warhead, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

David Albright, a well-known nuclear weapons expert, said that designs for a nuclear device small enough to fit on a ballistic missile were found on computers belonging to the now-defunct smuggling ring of rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Swiss authorities, under the direction of the IAEA reportedly destroyed the computer contents, said the Post. But Albright — who is known for exposing the location of Iran's secret nuclear facilities — warns the electronic blue-prints, made up of hundreds of pages of documents, could easily be copied and shared with a number of countries, according to the newspaper.

"These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world," Albright wrote in his report, which was obtained by the newspaper.

I think any reasonable person can deduce several very probable things from this information. First, that a number of regimes, including but not limited to, Iran, Libya, and North Korea, are interested in developing nuclear weapons outside of the non-proliferation regime. Second, that nuclear weapons design information is already available to them, and possibly to any private party with the money to purchase it.

It is less probable, but certainly reasonable to conclude that because elements of the Pakistani government have been involved in AQ Khan's activity, it is by no means impossible that al-Qaeda has the weapons design information.

It is therefore possible that the only thing standing between the world and a rogue nuclear weapon or weapons are industrial and engineering difficulties. That is, the stockpiling of fissile material the development of the weapons components (such as fuses) themselves and the refinement of delivery systems. The existence of an advanced design means that a delivery system could be fairly small. A small cargo aircraft, a large executive jet or a pallet on a 747 freighter.

Since all the industrial and engineering difficulties are probably going to be solved over the course of several decades there is a real probability of a future nuclear September 11. Like the original September 11, it may feature multiple simultaneous attacks. Perhaps upon the original cities, perhaps upon a dozen or more.

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The dark frontier

Pakistan claims 11 of its paramilitary forces were killed on its border with Pakistan by US forces. US forces thought they were fighting the Taliban. There is not necessarily a contradiction between the two statements. Bill Roggio writes, "The Pakistani government maintains the US military struck a paramilitary outpost in Mohmand. A Pakistani military spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act on the post and regretted the loss of precious lives of our soldiers."

A video clip describing the Pakistani outrage over the attack on what it considers to be its soldiery is shown below.

However, the US military released a video which clearly shows a number of individuals firing upon coalition forces until they were all killed by four precision guided weapons. Any reasonable commander on the ground would assume the forces depicted in the video clip below were hostile.

Bill Roggio highlights the possibility that Pakistan has already lost or is losing control of its border and observes, "as the security situation along the border further destabilizes, US and Afghan forces will be forced to strike along the border to prevent infiltration of Pakistani Taliban forces."

The situation poses a number of strategic dilemmas for the US. US-led forces may have to assume the security responsibility for an area that Pakistan has effectively abandoned to the Taliban while simultaneously being pummeled by the "outrage" of same Pakistani politicians who abdicated it in the first place. In the worst case Pakistan will demand all the dignities of sovereignty over an area for which they will assume no meaningful control. At the same time, the US must respond to this situation without wholly alienating Pakistan through which the bulk of US supplies pass. Afghanistan will be effectively lost if the supply lines are irrevocably closed.

It's a scenario tailored-made for extortion. Efforts will probably be made to encourage Pakistan to resume control over the area through such inducements as training, largesse and foreign aid. But the internal problems of Pakistan itself will make all such efforts as effective as pushing on a rope. The strategic goal of ensuring al-Qaeda and similar organizations have no safe haven in the area is inextricably linked to the political health of Pakistan. While Pakistan remains broken it cannot effectively control its territory; and border problems will only get worse. A fractured Pakistan will ipso facto mean that radical Islamic organizations will always have a safe haven within its formal borders.

Finding a way to stabilize Pakistan is of overriding importance. Afghanistan can be lost on the Pakistani border, but Pakistan itself cannot be saved on the Northwest Frontier. That can only happen through political improvements in its heartland. If Pakistan unravels or permanently loses part of its territory it may eventually set in train a series of events that will destabilize the subcontinent, with incalculable consequences not only for the region but for Central Asia and even the UK.

The return of Benazir Bhutto was a failed attempt to find a magic bullet with which to slay Pakistan's political monsters. Whether they can still be stopped is an open question.

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Misdirection

It's been said that the most important step in problem solving is defining what the problem is. This is even more true in politics when the terms in which a problem is originally cast often determines how it is approached in the future. Martin Kramer asks, at Middle East Strategy at Harvard, why every Middle Eastern crisis is necessarily linked to Israel. Kramer argues that Israel is placed at the center of every problem in the region not because it is true; but because things have been set up that way. The result he says, is a distortion in which otherwise tractable problems are twisted out of shape and made dependent on the resolution of its "linkage".

The last time I counted papers at the Middle East Studies Association annual conference, about two years ago, there were 85 papers on Palestine-Israel, 30 on Iraq, 27 on Iran, and only 4 on Saudi Arabia ... And it isn’t just the specialists. They would be seconded by Jimmy Carter, who was recently asked: “Is the Israel-Palestine conflict still the key to peace in the whole region? Is the linkage policy right?” Carter’s answer: “I don’t think it’s about a linkage policy, but a linkage fact…. Without doubt, the path to peace in the Middle East goes through Jerusalem.” ...

But the bottom line is this ... it is obvious that conflict involving Israel is not the longest, or the bloodiest, or the most widespread of the region’s conflicts. In large part, these many conflicts are symptoms of the same malaise: the absence of a Middle Eastern order, to replace the old Islamic and European empires. But they are independent symptoms; one conflict does not cause another, and its “resolution” cannot resolve another.

Kramer may well be right; and diplomats may be missing opportunity after opportunity in the Middle East because of slavish adherence to a "linkage" model that is largely illusory. But irrational approaches seldom survive for many decades without some underlying logic. There is probably a reason for the popularity of the "linkage" theory that posits Israel as the cause of every disturbance in the region. The obvious candidate is politics. The "linkage" theory retains its currency because it is good politics and not because it has any utility in fixing the problems in the Middle East.

Political movements often need a narrative to justify acts which would otherwise plainly be seen to be driven by expediency and self interest. The "linkage" with Israel provides an admirable pretext to excuse misgovernance, terrorism and outright thievery. "God's Army to Combat Zionism and Free Al-Quds" sounds a heck of a lot more noble than Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. (With apologies to Ali Baba, who really wasn't part of the Forty Thieves, but I digress) Without "linkage" perfume to deodorize his despicable deeds, the late and unlamented Yasser Arafat would have graced the FBI Most Wanted Poster rather than the cover Time Magazine's 1993 Person of the Year issue. Tom Gross called Yasser Araft "the great con man of modern politics". Even while Araft was still alive, CBS News reported that "Jim Prince and a team of American accountants - hired by Arafat's own finance ministry" found he had probably stolen a billion dollars for his own use.

So far, Prince's team has determined that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion -- with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands.

Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And, Prince says, none of these dealings were made public.

What ultimately prevented the detection of Arafat's obvious knavery, what made it feasible for Arafat to become the "great con man of modern politics" was the "linkage" myth. As long as he could convince people that he was "struggling" against Israel, Arafat would be given a pass -- and more than a pass -- he would be accorded adulation. Today Arafat's signature keffiyeh has taken the fashion world by storm; like a kind of latter-day Mao cap or Che Guevara t-shirt.

Martin Kramer is right in saying that in most cases "linkage" doesn't make much sense as a framwork within which to view Middle Eastern problems. But the point is that it doesn't have to. It is really all about blinding us to a regional tragedy which, if we could but see clearly through the veil of misdirection, would darken our eyes with tears.

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Who can you trust?

When graduating students attend campus presentations by prospective employers, a few may find themselves at the somewhat embarrassing session where those in attendance are reluctant to look at each other; where the main briefer is a tweedy, faintly Ivy Leaguish sort of man at whose elbow is an Eastern European man in a cheap suit, horn rimmed glasses and a pocketful of calling cards with a telephone number good for two weeks only. In some Third World city the setting for the same process may be different. An extended conversation at a cocktail party with an embassy official that goes on for an extraordinarily long time. Or maybe at a private dinner following long acquaintance where the atmosphere turns somewhat muted and charged at the same time.

To be or not to be. This is the question that crosses the minds of many an adventurous person in his life. And the one reason not to be -- that is, affiliated with any official type of clandestine organization -- is the question of who you can trust. The one source of danger that no person in the field can guard against is the pentration of the agency in whom he has placed his trust. Russian agents working for the United States may never have heard the name Aldrich Ames, even till the time when they felt the cold steel muzzle of the execution pistol placed languidly against the back of their heads. They probably died still wondering how the hell they were compromised.

"In God We Trust" means literally that. In all other cases, you takes your chances. Recently, a number of classified computers in the US Senate containing the names of Chinese dissidents were discovered to have been hacked by the People's Republic of China.

WASHINGTON - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.

Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.

Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf said four of his computers were compromised, beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of his computers were attacked, in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.

Things were bad enough in the days when "files" meant thick Manila folders with a garish security warning sheet on the front page. One of the good things about those types of files is that to meaningfully replicate them, you needed a Minox camera with a length of chain, or latterly, a photocopying machine. But today files mean computer files and especially, databases. And databases love to replicate. To cubes, backups, mirrors, subsets, reports, charts, graphs and mashups.

Thomas Jefferson in his genius, described the promiscuous nature of information in his famous analogy of the candle. "He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine -- as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Wednesday's disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce Department computers.

The Pentagon last month acknowledged at a closed House Intelligence committee meeting that its vast computer network is scanned or attacked by outsiders more than 300 million times each day.

Amen.

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Nor iron bars a cage

Is there a fundamental definition of evil? Are there things which objectively possess this property independent of the perception of man? CS Lewis, when he was an atheist, found to his surprise that the concepts of good and evil couldn't be banished by the simple expedient of declaring the world meaningless.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. ... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.

The inescapability of having to choose a standard or axioms -- even provisionally -- is the fracture line at the base of moral relativism and multiculturalism. When Richard Dawkins claims that "better many worlds than one god" or a lesser light makes the more pedestrian, but logically equivalent argument of "who’s to judge who’s right or wrong?", they are making statements that cannot be assigned a consistent truth value. After all, Richard Dawkins undoubtedly believes that he is right; and that his argument contains more intrinsic worth than a character string composed at random by typing monkeys. He could hardly agree to the proposition that it is better to have many monkeys than one Dawkins. And if it is true that no one can judge "who's right or wrong" then who can judge the truth of that assertion itself?

It is this illusory attempt to escape from the need to believe in something -- even provisionally -- that explains why all attempts to enforce an equivalency among all ideas and cultures inevitably creates a fascistic kind of monoculture itself. Belief, denied the front entrance as principle, often smuggles itself in via the backdoor as fascism.

The investigations by the British Columbia Human Rights into the politically incorrect writings of Mark Steyn are a case in point. The idea that all cultures are to be respected transforms itself into the conclusion that the culture in which Mark Steyn can write must be suppressed. Yet ironically the attack on dissenting opinion is justified by appealing to the very culture which is to be suppressed. The Atlantic recalls that during the 1990s Salman Rushdie argued against a British ban on a Pakistani film that depicted him as an alcoholic, lecherous Rambo-like Jewish tool who is eventually hunted down by heroic international Jihadis but who is ultimately destroyed by flying, lightning-bolt spitting Korans. Excerpts from this classic film are shown below.

Rushie argued against the film's ban because it violated a fundamental taboo -- against suppressing speech -- within his own culture. Readers will notice we've arrived at a place almost as murky as the one C.S. Lewis was trying to understand. Fortunately Lewis' framework for making sense of a universe populated by both good and evil can shed light on our more limited problem of figuring out the relationship between freedom and anti-freedom within the framework of freedom itself. The key concept Lewis introduces is one of choice. Not the notion of choice as the fictional ability to do anything without paying a price or suffering the consequences: that is a counterfeit idea of choice composed of the shadows of multiculturalism. But of choice as inherent human ability to select between right and wrong and face the consequences.

It's not necessary to dwell on Lewis' idea of good and evil as a kind of broken symmetry to arrive at the counterintuitive idea that freedom is the outcome of a willingness to assume the consequences for choices. This relationship between consequence and choice is at the kernel of the commonplace expression that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". Western society is free to allow every manner of expression only for so long as it is willing to pay the price of doing so. Salman Rushdie's "freedom" to let a Pakistani Jihadi call for his death is based on his willingness to defend that freedom as a fugitive and to struggle on its behalf.

Consider for a moment why Mark Steyn is a "free" man. It is only partly because he is a citizen of Canada but mostly due to his willingness to write without fear; or perhaps more accurately, in despite of it. Anyone who has struggled against tyranny understands this relationship intuitively. Whether you are in the Warsaw Ghetto, the French underground or in safehouse in Sampaloc district in Manila, freedom is always within your reach, if you are willing to pay the price.

Any writer can be as free as Mark Steyn or Salman Rushdie. Our civilization only offers the possibility of being free; and to choose right instead of wrong. No bureaucracy can guarantee it for us. Lewis understood that if one were looking for legitimate reasons to become an atheist, a release from the burden of choice was not one of them. Good and evil, right and wrong were not things you could wholly avoid on the path of life. He wrote:

I know someone will ask me, 'Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil-hoofs and horns and all?' Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is 'Yes, I do.' I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, 'Don't worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you'll like it when you do is another question.'

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Crossroads

Michael Totten reports from Sarajevo. Sarajevo has largely recovered from the physical scars of the 1990s battles. The one thing that has changed -- ripped apart by ethnic powerplays -- is the easy sort of intercommunal tolerance of 30 years ago. In its place is a simplified map consisting of more or less homogenous ethnic groups. It's as if the ingredients in a stew suddenly agglomerated themselves together until you had lumps instead of a mix. Totten writes:

I have no idea if Bosnia will ever actually split into three. Dividing it up peacefully, equitably, and in a way that would satisfy everyone wouldn’t be possible. Partitioning unevenly mixed countries, especially those with so many mixed families like Bosnia and Iraq, is a nasty business.

Some individuals are, not surprisingly, refusing to go along with the political formula that has been foisted on them.

“We are all friends,” Delibasic said. “We don't care about ethnicity. But others, people around here…it's hard. The radish is too deep. It cannot be uprooted.” ...

“My best friend now is a Serb who married a Bosnian woman,” Delibasic said. “Jovan Divyak, the Serb defender of the city of Sarajevo.”

What is truly scary about the experience of the former Yugoslavia is how quickly a multicultural society could turn in an historical instant from harmony to savage intercommunal violence. Niall Ferguson, in his study of the conflicts of the 20th century, the War of the World describes the terrible ethnic carnage that surrounded the First and Second World Wars. Listening to what it was like before the battles of the 1990s makes sobering reading.

“When I was a kid in Sarajevo,” Delibasic said, “some visiting Montenegrin nationalists asked me, who are you? I had no idea, and I didn't care. So I made up an answer. I am Jewish! I said. My mother said no, no no. But I didn't know or care. My friends were Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. After I was told I wasn't Jewish, I said I was a Muslim. But that wasn't right either. So after that I've always just said I am a Yugoslav. If I could, I would take citizenship in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro, as well as in Bosnia and Serbia. But I can't. I still call myself a Yugoslav, but the census-takers won't accept that as an answer.”

Maybe the real threat to multiculturalism are the demagogues who see identity politics as the road to power, even if that process involves the destruction of the larger polity. Under the color of multiculturalism, the ship of separatism steams majestically on.

And yet the post-war Balkans seems to have a kind of stability of its own. It may have engendered warfare and hatred, but it was of a local kind. Imported varieties were unwelcome. It's interesting to learn that despite the vast effort expended in the Middle East to deploy Wahabi fighters and missionaries there, they were largely treated with disdain by the local Muslims themselves. Still they are trying, though without much success -- so far.

Bosnia has a bit of an Islamist problem, but they aren't its biggest cause. Saudis and others from the extremist Wahhabi school of Islam swooped in after the war ended to rebuild damaged mosques in their own severe style and to impose their rigid interpretation of religion, as much as they can, on culturally liberal Europeans. ...

“They say We have to Islamize you,” he said. “That's the notion they are using, to Islamize. They think that even the practicing Muslims – that means going to mosque, praying – they think they are not good enough, they have to be better. And also that our perception of Islam is wrong.” ...

“What is it about your version of Islam that they don’t like specifically?” I said.

“Every segment of it,” he said. “Meaning our clothes, we are dressing like Europeans, the way we look, we don’t say you have to wear a beard, or that it doesn’t have to be long. It’s also the literature we are using because mostly we are leaning on the traditional scholars of Islam while they are leaning on the so-called reformers. There are lots of things. The logical aspects of Islam, the interior and exterior of the mosques, everything. Almost everything we do is wrong. It's very hard to recognize why and from where they get this kind of attitude.”

Where do the Wahabis get this attitude? Maybe from four dollar a gallon gas.

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Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington

The LA Times describes how the heavens expressed themselves as Hillary reached the end of the road.

On Wednesday afternoon, Hillary Rodham Clinton visited her Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters and disclosed that she would finally concede her long primary fight. That same afternoon, a fierce storm system developed over northern Virginia and unleashed a tempest of high winds, driving rain and even a tornado. The heavenly outburst was a fittingly symbolic expression of the anger and frustration that defined the last days of a candidate who once seemed to have a lock on the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The scene recalls the foreboding Shakespeare described at Caesar's as the Ides of March approached:

Caesar:

Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace to-night:
Thrice hath Calpurnia in her sleep cried out,
'Help, ho! they murder Caesar!' Who's within?

Calpurnia:

Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. ...

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

 

The reason Hillary lost to Obama, the LAT article argues, is that she became absorbed by Washington. Prior to which she and her husband were hungry, young, outsiders determined to "reform the system". Lulled by years in capital, she became an 'insider' -- part of the problem.

To understand this, flash back to the early 1990s. Bill and Hillary Clinton, like Barack Obama today, first ran against Washington, promising to shake up and reform the city's insular political system. Receiving these irreverent young Arkansans with suspicion, the capital's mandarins warned them to learn the ropes quick. "Washington has its own totems and taboos," the Georgetown hostess and former Washington Post reporter Sally Quinn wrote. "You have to run against 'inside Washington' to get in, and you have to become 'inside Washington' to stay in."

And having lost the outsider status, the LAT suggests the heir to the crusading mantle has fallen on the broad shoulders of another reformer from Chicago: Barack Obama.

Obama skillfully used the Iraq war to make a larger, devastating case about how Washington does business. His core themes of hope, change and judgment all flowed from the catastrophic war the Washington establishment had initiated. And Obama turned Clinton into the living representation of that establishment and its myopic vision. This was hardly a novel approach: Indeed, Obama's campaign had many echoes of Bill Clinton's run against George H.W. Bush, making it all the more remarkable that Hillary failed to anticipate its strength.

This of course, is pure revisionist hogwash. The idea of the Arkansas or Chicago machines coming to Washington in order to reform it is about as accurate as the idea that the Vandals came to Rome to clean it up. But it's fair to say that each successive waves of "outsiders" who come to Washington promise to do something wonderful. And to keep the illusion viable the props must constantly be changed. The Clintons initially looked the part. But in the intervening years they simply got too old, coarse and threadbare to keep the show going. When the freshness faded it became necessary to audition for a new outsider. Appearances are probably more important in politics than in conjury. The spangles fix our gaze on the stage while the real magic takes place behind the curtains.

Hat tip: Macho Response.

The real magic is in the illusion which takes one ordinary politician and invests him with the public's dreams; which makes him become the dream itself while in reality preserving the ordinary flack who periodically appears and disappears, never really leaving the stage. The original impetus to limited government may have been based on the realization that a political tableau always had to be kept at distance; acceptable as entertainment and never much more than that.

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

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Sent

University of Santa Clara Law School professor Steve Diamond asks, "who sent Barack Obama". He explains the context of the word "sent".

In Chicago politics a key question has always been, who "sent" you? The classic phrase is ... from an anecdote of Abner Mikva's, the former White House Counsel (Pres. Clinton) ... As a young student ... he walked into the local committeman's office ... and was immediately asked: "Who sent you?" Mikva replied, "nobody sent me." And the retort came back from the cigar chomping pol: "Well, we don't want nobody that nobody sent."

So it is reasonable to ask, who "sent" Barack Obama? In other words, how can his meteoric rise to political prominence be explained?

Diamond's answer is speculative, but informative because it provides a look back into the youthful life and times of the man who might be the next President of the United States.

The most recent effort was by Jonathan Kaufman in the Wall Street Journal who argued that a critical connection for Obama was his links to some in the wealthy and prominent Jewish community in Chicago. This article contains some important insights and is well worth reading. But, I think Kaufman gets it wrong.

So, who did “send” Obama? The key I think is his ties not to well connected uber lawyer Newton Minow, as Kaufman suggests, but more likely to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but also Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left Chicago for Harvard Law School.

He has much, much more at the link above. I am not persuaded that this was the prime Obama connection, though it convincingly demonstrates that Bill Ayers was not just a peripheral player in the Obama saga, but probably a very pivotal one. And if the Ayers connection was the start, over time there were others. Evelyn Pringle notes that in the Byzantine labyrinth of Chicago connections Obama's relations with Daley and Blagojevich were almost institutional. "Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords."

It is the prospect of learning about who sent whom that has journalists flocking to the Rezko trial looking for scoops. Douglas Ball of Toronto Life recently ran into the well known journalist James Bone in the first quarter of 2008. Bone was convinced he was onto something big.

I ran into James Bone outside Amy St. Eve’s overflow courtroom, who filled my head with his assessment that Rezko is some sort of international (Middle East) bagman who is a much more significant figure than Chicago or other media realize. And here I thought Rezko’s significance pretty much had to do with raising money for Obama, having dinner with Obama, and helping (a bit) when Obama bought his house.

Ball detected a political connection of a different sort. "James Bone, you might remember, is the famously dogged and ferocious reporter for the Murdoch-owned London Times assigned to the Conrad Black trial. Murdoch is a supporter of Hillary Clinton. Is it merely a coincidence that one of his reporters is now digging up dirt on an Obama pal caught up in corruption charges?" So the question in this case was also, who "sent" Bone. It is depressing to realize how vulnerable ordinary citizens are to the machinations of political cabals. Perhaps the only thing that representative Democracy has to recommend it is that it sets up a system of competition between rival groups of politicans. In that way rivals are always "sending" people against each other and with any luck, tie each other up enough for ordinary life to go on.

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David and Goliath

But who's Goliath? An Australian town takes on the powerful forces of Islamic Dawa, who are trying to establish a very large Islamic academy in their locality. I describe the incident at Pajamas Media.

Few noticed that the story was far from over. After the Camden Council announced its decision, the Quranic Society announced its intention to appeal in the land and environment court. The court can reverse the Council’s decision. While the ladies in Akubra hats went home, one of the Quranic Society’s more prominent members, Imam Abdul Quddoos al-Azhari, left immediately for Malaysia to raise more money for the fight. Malaysia is a major hub for funding dawa, or Islamic missionary activities, aimed at Australia. There, funds were available not only from the Regional Islamic Council for Southeast Asia and the Pacific but also from charities funded by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Libya. They would be back and with more resources.

The Islamic missionary effort is like the Left in that it is in a state of perpetual militancy. Over long years they develop a very efficient system of mutual support and alliances which very often can overmatch any ad-hoc or spontaneous opposition to their agendas. Even when momentarily checked, they simply lie low and wait for the next opportunity.

This is perfectly legitimate behavior in a democratic society. But over time any idea which expresses itself in perpetual organization will gradually gain ground. That's just the way it is.

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Business as usual

Change. It's what you've got left after filling up the tank at the gas station. But not something that is forthcoming in Washington, where the more thing change, the more they remain the same. George Will writes about energy supply and demand, and why it is objectively important but subjectively unimportant to anyone that matters.

Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: "I rise to discuss rising energy prices." The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was rising. ...

Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today's senators -- including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain -- have voted to keep ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

The political class responds to organized pressure much faster than it does to inchoate sentiment. The environmental lobby may not represent a great many persons, but their small numbers understate the power of their influence. They're in the process, sitting on corporate boards, drafting legislation through networks of friends, setting the public relations agenda. And they are purposefully following a plan. Whenever they are checked, they simply wait, lie dormant and try again at the next opportunity.

Even as gas prices soar, the Senate was considering the 500 page Global Warming bill. But, after considering the public mood, the Senators shelved it. Not for reasons of principle, but probably for reasons of tactical timing. The Politico writes:

Apparently three days of debate was enough for what many senators called "the most important issue facing the planet."

With little chance of winning passage of a sweeping 500-page global warming bill, the Senate Democratic leadership is planning to yank the legislation after failing to achieve the 60-vote threshold needed to move the bill to the next stage. After a 48-36 vote on the climate change bill, the Senate is likely to move on to a separate energy debate next week.

The legislation collapsed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the poor timing of debating a bill predicted to increase energy costs while much of the country is focused on $4-a-gallon gas. On top of that, a number of industrial-state Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio were uncomfortable with the strong emissions caps that would have created a new regime of regulations for coal, auto and other manufacturing industries. Republicans, for the most part, held firm against a bill they said would cost billions in regulations while pushing the cost of gas higher. Seven Republicans, mostly moderates, voted for the procedural motion on the legislation while four Democrats voted against it.

The debate in many ways was about setting the stage for a more serious climate change effort under the next president. While President Bush would have vetoed any cap-and-trade bill this year, both McCain and Obama back some form of mandatory emissions reduction, so this debate will gain serious traction again next year.

"We're getting ready for the next president of the United States, who we know ... will be hospitable to this bill," Boxer said.

Whoever wins.

The hard fact is that environmental regulation has actual or opportunity costs. And any solution to so-called Global Warming costs, too. We all understand the principle. If you want that doggie in the window, pay for it. You may hanker for that lunch down at the corner and are entitled to it, if you shell out the price. Why is it so hard to accept that Environmental Good must be paid for? Probably because most people are just getting by. Not everyone can attend what Ann Schroeder calls Woodstock for Rich People. There is a world where you can both have your cake and eat it. All you need is enough money to do it.

But the rest of the world has to make do with politics. Politics is the art of promising something for nothing. Or at least hiding the cost so that voters think they're getting a deal. Free health care, the goodwill of Ahmedinajad, a reduction in Greenhouse Gases, the approval of the United Nations, Change -- all of it -- has a price tag. None of it will come for free.

Only two things are inevitable in life. Death and taxes. And with advances in biological science we might even solve the first. But not the second.

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Bugging yourself

Recently a senior New South Wales police investigator in Australia was arrested for plotting to import drugs from pantyhose company in Pakistan using bags of rice as a cover. He needed money to cover his gambling debts. The cop's confederates were well known criminals and a psychic. They met in cafes; used the police fax machine to send messages. And they even communicated 'secretly' using Hotmail, through what they imagined to be the highly secure method of sharing passwords in an account and leaving messages in the "Drafts" folder. He was arrested by the Australian feds. They should charge him with stupidity, but I don't think that crime is on the books.

People have an astounding ignorance of their vulnerability to signals intelligence. How commonplace the British government's monitoring of cell phone communications has become is illustrated in by this software company's sales pitch. (Be sure to watch the video. You will never look at your cell phone the same way again.) For as long as a cell phone is turned on, even if you are not making calls, it is trying to stay connected with the network. And the network has to know where it is, in terms of its coverage, in order to route messages to it. This means a constant log of position data is being collected on it all the time. Emergency services exploit this feature to find lost or injured people. But so can anyone with access to the phone company locator database. Like parents who want to know where their children are. Or someone else who wants to sell near real-time information on your whereabouts.

We get worried about the damndest things. Whether it is ok to wiretap terrorist suspects. But maybe the biggest potential actual threats to our privacy are the most ordinary of things. Video surveillance cameras. Cell phones. Company packet sniffers. Filters the entertainment companies want put on your ISP to monitor "bootleg" software. Databases. Especially databases.

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The sixth of June

Something else happened on a June 6. General Pershing, Commander of the AEF said of it, 'the Battle of Belleau Wood was for the U.S. the biggest battle since Appomattox and the most considerable engagement American troops had ever had with a foreign enemy'". On that day on June 6, 1918:

the casualties were the highest in Marine Corps history to that point. Overall, the woods were attacked by the Marines a total of six times before they could successfully expel the Germans. ... One of the most famous quotations in Marine Corps lore came during the initial step-off for the battle when Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly prompted his men forward with the words: "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?"

Did they make a difference? Those who followed Sergeant Daly that day posed the question. What answer does posterity give?

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

-- A. E. Housman

Belleau Wood today.

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Live in Fame or Go Down in Flames

Here are two items of potential interest, the first is the sacking of the Secretary of the Airforce and its Chief of Staff, ostensibly over two very visible public failures.

Gates cited two embarrassing incidents in the past year. In one, a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown across the country without anyone realizing nuclear weapons were aboard.

In the other, four electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads were mistakenly sent to Taiwan in the place of helicopter batteries. Gates said an internal investigation found a common theme in the B-52 and Taiwan incidents: "a decline in the Air Force's nuclear mission focus and performance."

But I've received a spate of emails suggesting longer-standing institutional issues. Wired writes:

Despite reports you may be reading elsewhere, this firing was not about nukes or missiles, well-placed sources say. "Far and away the biggest issue was the budget stuff, not the nuclear stuff. The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] fight, the F-22 deal... Gates really didn't appreciate it," one of those sources tells Danger Room. Now, with the botched missile and nuke shipments, "the SecDef [Secretary of Defense] has good cover to do something that suits him bureaucratically."

Whether Gates will be remembered as "acting decisively" or taken to task for "letting things get to this point" will probably be a major theme of Washington politics in the next few days. My guess is we haven't heard the last of this.

The other item of interest is Barack Obama's foreign policy version of distancing himself, this time not from Jeremiah Wright, but from a position he had taken only days earlier. Glenn Kessler at the Trail writes that Obama was for the US Embassy's relocation to Jerusalem before the Palestinians objected to the idea.

Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged today that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that Jerusalem "must remain undivided."

Obama, during a speech Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-israel lobbying group, had called for Jerusalem to become the site of the U.S. embassy, a frequent pledge for U.S. presidential candidates. (It is now in Tel Aviv.) But his statement that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel drew a swift rebuke from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"This statement is totally rejected," Abbas told reporters in Ramallah. "The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967 and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."

So the Change Man did what he does best. He changed. The story in the Trail continues:

Obama quickly backtracked today in an interview with CNN.

"Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," Obama said when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

Obama said "as a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute" a division of the city. "And I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."

Like the Air Force issue this is either going to be spun either as evidence of Obama's creativity and openness or proof that he simply tells everyone what they want to hear. But unlike the Air Force issue we've probably heard the end of it.

Update

Oops. We haven't heard the end of it. A spokesman for Obama says that there is no contradiction between Jerusalem being the capital of Israel and the idea that it's disposition must be subject to negotiation. Jake Tapper at the Political Punch says:

"His position has been the same for the past 16 months," Wexler said. "He believes Jerusalem should be an undivided city and must be the capital of a Jewish state of Israel. He has also said -- and it's the same position as President Bush, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert -- that Jerusalem is of course a 'final status' issue," meaning it would be one of the key and final points of negotiation for a Palestinian state. "And Sen. Obama as president would not dictate final status issues. He will permit the Palestinians and Israel to negotiate, and he would respect any conclusion they reach."

Wexler concluded, "the articles are not picking up this position. They're not contradictions -- they're the same position."

In other words, Jerusalem is Israel's but Israel is free to give away Jerusalem if it wants. It's a really neat way of squaring the circle. What will he recommend to Israel? Israel Matzav has video of what Obama actually said, and what the Palestinians objected to.

Obama seems to say that "Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided." This was preceded several phrases before by the words "any agreement". A layman might be excused for thinking this means that 'any agreement should preserve Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided'. That's seems plain enough on the face of it, but as we now know it doesn't actually mean that. We are told it actually means Jerusalem "must remain the capital of Israel" subject to final disposition. If you're confused, don't be. Wexler assures us they mean the same thing. Now what does Obama actually promise Israel and Palestine? A laymen listening to the speech might imagine Obama promises Israel a secure border with no compromises and the Palestinians a contiguous and cohesive state. Listen to the video.

But according to Israel Matzav, "Abu Mazen and Abu Zuhri are upset about is not Jerusalem, but the fact that Obama said that Israel should be a Jewish state living within secure borders." So they are upset about something in that sentence. And with regards to what is promised the Palestinians, as you can hear on the video yourself, Obama promises them a "contiguous and cohesive state". Israel Matzav asks, "look at a map. How can a 'state' that includes the 'West Bank' and Gaza be 'contiguous and cohesive?' For that matter, how can a state that includes Judea and Samaria be 'contiguous and cohesive' unless we go back to the 1967 borders? How can a 'state' with no port prosper? The whole idea is ridiculous."

Not to Obama. I'm sure it all makes sense and we will learn what the words "secure" Israel and "contiguous" Palestine mean in due time.

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Sea anchoring Iraq

Almost without anyone noticing, the relationship between the US and the Government of Iraq is moving from an authorization under UN Chapter VII to a bilateral agreement between two fully sovereign countries. Chapter VII "sets out the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace. It allows the Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security".

Late last year, President Bush and Iraqi PM Maliki "signed the declaration of principles during a secure videoconference as part of an effort to move forward 4 1/2 years after a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein. The declaration calls for the current U.N. mandate to be extended one year, then replaced at the end of 2008 by a bilateral pact governing the economic, political and security aspects of the relationship," according to the Washington Post.

According to an email I received summarizing Ambassador Ryan Crocker's press conference on June 5, 2008 "the Iraqis have made clear they do not want to go beyond 2008 under a Chapter VII Security Council [mandate for MNF-I]" and "both governments … would like to get the strategic framework agreements done".

Despite the repeated characterization of the OIF as "Bush's War", and despite arguments that the war is illegal, it can claim legitimacy not only under UN Chapter VII, but an authorization from Congress, and may presently be the subject of a bilateral agreement between an elected Middle Eastern government and the United States.

Crocker said that Iran is doing all it can to scupper the strategic framework negotiations. However, some regional goverments may see it as inevitable. Crocker said that "the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates … just announced that they are returning an ambassador and reopening their embassy."

If current trends continue, there is little chance that Iran can stop the emergence of regionally recognized and stable Iraq. Their best hope is stall until possibly favorable political developments in Washington allow them to effectively raise the issue of Iraqi sovereignty in negotiations with the new administration. A direct challenge is unlikely, since sovereignty was legally returned to Iraq four years ago under UN Security Council resolution 1546.

It is far more likely for opponents to take the view that United States forces are themselves a threat to Iraqi sovereignty, insofar as they retain freedom of action. Expect Iranians to make the argument, fully seconded by the US domestic left, that in order for Iraq to be sovereign America must leave.

That effectively puts Iraqi sovereignty back on the table again, albeit surreptitiously, because Teheran will obviously have the opportunity to re-open its campaign of subversion after America leaves. They have read the history of the Vietnam War as well as anyone. Being in the region themselves, the Iranians will have no corresponding obligation to leave. Therefore, at issue in any strategic framework negotiation will be how much leeway and power Coalition Forces will continue to have in the future. But the other threat to Iraqi sovereignty are regionally sponsored forces just waiting for the US to leave in order to Iraq into another Lebanon. Any stable Iraqi configuration will have enough force to keep the regional bad guys away while being small enough to let Iraq develop independently.

What will be needed is some kind of guarantor force sized large enough to repel any attempts to undermine Iraqi sovereignty, yet unintrusive enough to permit the emergence of a confident and fully national Iraq. It's not an impossible challenge for the US, as postwar Germany, Japan and South Korea proved. But it will probably take a lot of effort and require the commitment of several future administrations, especially given the volatile characteristics of the Middle East as opposed to say, Western Europe. Alternatives such as relying on the UN to provide a guarantor force have been mooted, but the UN record in Lebanon and Kosovo are very poor comparisons to the American record in Germany, Japan and South Korea. Relying on the UN is like relying on an air umbrella to keep out the rain.

My own guess is that the US must eventually replace a direct protection of Iraq with troops by a wider set of pressure points on Iran to keep the Ayatollahs in line. Even after the US troop levels have been been reduced, Teheran should still remain wary of messing with Iraq. Once again, this presumes a long-term commitment to confronting aggressive powers within the region from future US administrations.

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RFK in Palestine

Robert F. Kennedy, the 40th anniversary of whose assasination we will mark soon, was once a 22 year old reporter for the Boston Post. In 1948 he visited Palestine. Here are his reports of the situation as he saw them. The most striking thing about RFK's accounts is how different in tone and detail they are from the remade history to which we have been accustomed. The Jewish fanaticism; the Arab hatred and suspicion; British duplicity. All are in these old, nearly forgotten dispatches which should speak for themselves.

I have no intention of summarizing the dispatches. They are best read in the original at the link. But I will remark that the events RFK describes happened in the immediate aftermath of World War 2. The shadow of those dark events spread itself over everything. Expectations among both Jews and Arabs for a reward from Britain for their support of Empire causes. The desperation of men recently escaped from the the clutches of the concentration camp. It was a tour through a cauldron of hatreds that only the aftermath of a disintegrating empire could bring. And the British empire was disintegrating. Maybe, having been disillusioned by the hatred and duplicity all around him, RFK was struck by a strange mood of wistfulness. He inserts this strange monologue into his narrative seemingly out of the blue.

Having been out of the United States for more than two months at this time of writing, I notice myself more and more conscious of the great heritage and birthright to which we as United States citizens are heirs and which we have the duty to preserve. A force motivating my writing this paper is that I believe we have failed in this duty or are in great jeopardy of doing so. The failure is due chiefly to our inability to get the true facts of the policy in which we are partners in Palestine.

It was a time before the incessant din of propaganda has since convinced Americans that evil was exclusively Made in the USA. History that is ostensibly written to enlighten is often in practice written to deceive. The most common use of history is to make us misremember the past. What we believe happened, as well as what we believed about RFK may have nothing to do with how things were. Reading his contemporaneous reports is like visiting a country we never knew existed and meeting a man who died twice; once at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan and again by the knife of popular culture. Twenty years after Kennedy left Palestine, Palestine came to him in a Los Angeles hotel.

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Hillary to quit, endorse Obama, says the NYT

Long rumored, but this time it is probably true that Hillary Clinton has thrown in the towel. The NYT reports:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her on Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.

Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, and other aides said she would express support for Mr. Obama and party unity at an event in Washington that day. One adviser said that Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory.

The unacknowledged cost of abetting the Hillary versus Barack fight, something which Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" encouraged, was the destruction of the Clinton Machine. It was in a way like supporting Fatah versus Hamas in Gaza. Neither had much to recommend them. But perhaps there was more to be gained to seeing both factions remain viable rather than forcing a showdown in which one faction is supreme winner. There was going to be a showdown anyway. But now the Clintons have been defeated, not only on points; they have been defeated utterly. Crushed.

Barack Obama will soon move to consolidate his power within the Democratic Party. Hillary underestimated him and lost her power and fortune to hubris. Yes. The unthinkable can happen.

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The land of the free

Congress bans US "military propaganda". According to the Washington Times:

Congressional Democrats want to ban Pentagon propaganda on the Iraq war ... The House passed legislation in May to prohibit the military from engaging in "any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly."

The Washington Times says enforcing the ban will be difficult.

"I think it would be difficult to implement," said Anthony Pratkanis, co-author of the book "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion," of any law attempting to prohibit the military from promoting itself. Interpretations of what constitutes propaganda can vary, and U.S. efforts to influence a foreign enemy - which is allowed under the law - often seep into American airwaves anyway, he said.

In an globalized world, what constitutes a domestic release of information? Is there any form of communication that can be directed at the enemy that lacks the potential to reach an American audience? A video on YouTube? A blog post? A telephone interview given to bloggers? A briefing given before network correspondents and cameras in Baghdad? All of those are likely to be seen by American audiences. Should they be proscribed? The days of short range radio stations and leaflet drops are over.

On the other hand, it is an open question whether enemy propaganda is restricted, even in principle from being broadcast at American audiences. Recently Senator Joseph Lieberman asked YouTube to pull al-Qaeda videos hosted on its site. Here's what happened:

YouTube LLC has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) to remove all videos sponsored by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, contending that most of them don't violate its community guidelines.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Monday called on the Google Inc. subsidiary to remove video content produced by terrorist organizations that showed assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, "incendiary" speeches and other material intended to "encourage violence against the West."

YouTube's reason for its refusal is telling. It can't ban terrorist videos because they are entitled to Free speech.

YouTube went on to say that it encourages free speech and defends the right of its users to express unpopular points of view. "We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds," the company said. "Of course, users are always free to express their disagreement with a particular video on the site, by leaving comments or their own response video. That debate is healthy."

I wish the world would make it's mind up about what constitutes modern Western enlightenment. As matters stand we seem to exist in a universe where Free Speech can held to be both a virtue and crime by equally "progressive" parties. Why, British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal, which is investigating Mark Steyn's so-called transgressions of Muslim feelings (though nobody asked Canadian Muslims if they were offended) was told by Dean Steacy the principal "anti-hate" investigator of the HRC: "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

Here's what I think. Freedom of speech means exactly this on the Left. "You are free to speak and we are free to shut you down." Now that's a clear concept.

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The Carnot Cycle of Violence

Thomas Friedman makes the case that there is not now, nor ever likely to be anyone to talk to in Palestine, so why not give the whole thing away to the Jordanians?

“If Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas does not get control over at least part of the West Bank soon, he will have no authority to sign any draft peace treaty with Israel. He will be totally discredited.

“But Israel cannot cede control over any part of the West Bank without being assured that someone credible is in charge. Rockets from Gaza land on the remote Israeli town of Sderot. Rockets from the West Bank could hit, and close, Israel’s international airport. That is an intolerable risk. Israel has got to start ceding control over at least part of the West Bank but in a way that doesn’t expose the Jewish state to closure of its airport.

“Radical pragmatism would say that the only way to balance the Palestinians’ need for sovereignty now with Israel’s need for a withdrawal now, but without creating a security vacuum, is to enlist a trusted third party—Jordan—to help the Palestinians control whatever West Bank land is ceded to them. Jordan does not want to rule the Palestinians, but it, too, has a vital interest in not seeing the West Bank fall under Hamas rule.

“Without a radically pragmatic new approach—one that gets Israel moving out of the West Bank, gets the Palestinian Authority real control and sovereignty, but one which also addresses the deep mistrust by bringing in Jordan as a Palestinian partner—any draft treaty will be dead on arrival.”

Friedman's argument makes perfect sense. It's logic is only marred by the fact that it misses the point. If Gaza were to become part of Egypt and the West Bank a part of Jordan, then the entire question of the "suffering of the Palestinian" people will be reduced to the mundane problems of providing schools, jobs, garbage collection, health service, etc. In short they will become problems of governance.

The whole strategic purpose of Palestine is to create a place where normal life has stopped but the Struggle is endless. Such a Palestine by definition is place where no one is responsible for anything. Not violence, nor hate nor love. While "Palestine" exists an entire evil political industry, with all its intellectual suppliers, apologists and flacks, can continue to prosper.

Palestine's whole point is to create a region of lawlessness from which Israel can be blamed and Israel can be attacked. From one point of view the chaos in Gaza and the disorder on the West Bank is a feature, not a bug.

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Let's make a deal

Tony Rezko has been convicted on 16 counts. "Tony Rezko — the high-flying developer and fast-food magnate who was once a major campaign fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and one of the governor’s closest advisers — is now a convicted felon."

The verdict, reached after deliberations that spanned 12 days, could give federal authorities new ammunition in their probe of the governor’s campaign and his administration. They already have subpoenaed Blagojevich’s campaign fund, scrutinized his donors, looked into his wife’s real estate dealings and questioned potential witnesses about whether they were promised anything in return for campaign contributions, sources told the Sun-Times.

Now, facing the prospect of prison time in the corruption case, as well as two additional criminal trials on unrelated charges, Rezko is under pressure to cooperate with the continuing investigations.

In other news, the Hillary-Barack Reality Show goes on. Barack Obama has promised to negotiate a nonconfrontation with the world's worst terrorists. So it should be easy for him to cut a deal with Hillary Clinton. Let's make a deal?

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The video is captioned, "Clinton supporter Harriet Christian angry after Rules & Bylaws committee meeting on Florida and Michigan." Do you laugh or do you cry?

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Never saw it coming

The Sage Corporation has developed a way to mount and fire a .50 caliber sniper rifle from a UAV. By exploiting altitude and sophisticated sensors, the system claims it can deliver fire more accurately than a human sniper out to a 1,500 meters. That's about a mile. The question that occurs is why on earth an aircraft should be used to carry around a rifle.

John Robb calls it "cloud power", in which rifle-toting UAVs become yet another of the millions of sensors out there detecting, detecting, and detecting. However that may be, the immediate impetus of airborne sniping is simpler. It reduces collateral damage.

Since the Second World War much of the cost and sophistication of weapons development has gone into making weapons less lethal but more precise. Designer nuclear weapons with variable effects. Conventional warheads that can be set to stun. Concrete bombs. Precision ordnance that can go through a window. And now a sniping system that can orbit unseen in the sky.

The beau ideal of modern warfare is to wage it without anyone noticing. To make combat disappear from the front pages. In that perfect future no body bags will home; no pictures of devastated enemy cities will be flashed onscreen. Just happy smiling faces all around. This should suit the peace lobby just fine; and this is important because combat is now largely -- though not entirely -- about politics. You "fight to the election". The modern battlefield not only includes the media, it is in the media.

The good news is that anything that tends to reduce collateral damage in warfare is objectively positive. World War 2 was the "Good War" as long as you didn't have to live through it as a civilian in London, Warsaw, Manila, Tokyo or Dresden. Then it was very bad indeed.

But the bad news, I think, is that it increases the distance between the policy decision and the deed; between acts and the moral responsibility for acts. Old time warfare had the property of seriously affecting everything. Societies approached it with an almost religious dread; a dread which endowed it with an awful solemnity because you bet the farm on it. In contrast, Bill Clinton loved cruise missiles because it provided him with a means to blow things up without actually going to war. Sort of like smoking without inhaling.

There's a dread, which some poets were alive to, of the dehumanizing quality of being absolved from consequences. Whether it was that of Daisy and Tom retreating into their "vast carelessness" while Gatsby dealt with things; or of the Love Generation putting away their protest placards and sipping their wine while the victims of the Year Zero perished out of sight. Maybe Bill didn't see a problem; but I am not persuaded there is nothing at the bottom of the abyss.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

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The night of the living dead

Here's Hillary's latest speech. After starting off by thanking Barack Obama for his contribution to raising an interest in politics, in a slow beginning that sounded like a concession, Clinton suddenly and sharply shifted to asking "who will be the strongest candidate?".

Hillary argued that most of the 18 million "record-breaking" votes cast during the primary were for her. "Even when the pundits and nay-sayers" declared her dead, the small people kept her candidacy alive. You can see why the Nashville Post commented, "that ain’t any kind of concession speech I ever heard of".

If it wasn't a concession then what the heck was it? A declaration of war? Here are some thoughts. It's in Obama's interest to stay within the framework of Democratic Party rules, but it's in Hillary's interest to change the frame altogether. The Nashville Post highlights these lines:

“I understand that a lot of people are asking, what does Hillary want? What does she want? I want what I have always fought for in this whole campaign. I want to end the war in Iraq. I want to turn this economy around. I want health care for every American. I want … the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and to no longer be invisible.”

This paragraph is interesting in what it anchors and in what it turns loose. With his official nomination nearly in the bag, Obama will be tempted to run towards the center and accept the gains of the Surge. But Hillary is under no such obligation to appeal to the general electorate. She is free to continue playing the partisan game. And if the paragraph above has any strategic political meaning, one of its purposes is to nail Obama to his Left.

But it is the last line which is most loaded with menace. "I want … the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and to no longer be invisible." This is not a declaration of war. It's a proclamation of rebellion. Hillary is not going to win within the party frame so she will threaten to win outside of it.

The Nashville Post parses Hillary's speech as an invitation to make a deal.

Was Clinton essentially saying to Obama, “Listen Hoss, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. You can either pick me as your Vice President and we can hold hands together as a ticket and I can become your defacto co-president or I can continue this campaign as “a listening tour” on how to best serve the interests of my popular vote-winning 18 million voters all the way to the convention.”

Maybe. Hillary has done some dumb things and nothing prevents her from doing more dumb things. But if she has this move properly gamed out and is raising the stakes, then why settle for second place? Rebellion is an all-or-nothing business as Jefferson Davis well knew.

The rational interpretation is that Hillary is angling for the Vice-Presidency. But to win it -- and more -- she has to play as if she wants to be the Big Kahuna. If nothing else, Hillary can threaten to become Ross Perot in a pantsuit. Obama's optimal strategy, however distasteful it may be, is to make the deal. His alternative is to be prepared to crush the threatened rebellion.

Obama's call.

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The glamor of evil

Simon Montefiore performs the invaluable service of reminding us that a love for learning, charm, great erudition, a prodigious memory, a fine singing voice, a talent for oratory and a steady nerve are not incompatible with homicidal mania. The man with all these qualities held forth with artists like Babel, Akhmatova, Eisenstein, and Shostakovich; was the patron of Maxim Gorky and was a fan of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. He had tremendous people skills; he knew when to flatter, compromise or wait. The man remembered as Josef Stalin, for whom "the solution to every human problem was death", knew how to wait.

The great monsters of the 20th Century were not, as some might imagine, always deeply hated men. That came later, when they lost or lost power. They were at the height of their careers celebrities, creatures of the crowd, idols of the youth. And if boasting of a connection to celebrity is the true measure of his brilliance, Stalin's star has little dimmed. Vladimir Putin's grandfather was chef to Josef Stalin, the man who killed more human beings than Adolf Hitler.

In a world where fame and celebrity attend those we are supposed to admire, the ultimate loser is the man who can't dance. George Bush, we are reliably informed by the media, has the IQ of a moron, though how he matriculated from Yale and Harvard or flew an F-106 will remain an unexplained mystery. Doubtless his father bribed the airplane to fly itself.

But if literateness and culture were indicators of good, then Josef Stalin had a fair claim to excellence. The NYT, reviewing Montefiore's book, is positively thunderstruck by Stalin's range of humanistic interests:

He could sentence thousands of innocent people to death with a stroke of the pen and then go to his private cinema to enjoy an American cowboy movie, yet he could also display affection and tenderness. ... Once, when Artyom Mikoyan, designer of the MIG aircraft, "suffered angina and was put to bed, he was aware of someone coming into his room and tenderly laying a blanket over him. He was amazed to see it was Stalin."

These manifestations of humanity are supplemented with evidence that Stalin had intellectual aspirations. He displayed a passionate interest in history; at the height of World War II he spent his spare time reading about ancient Greece. After the war, as he was about to leave on vacation, he ordered a library of books that included volumes of Shakespeare, Herzen, Goethe's letters, ''Poetry of the French Revolution'' and a history of the Seven Years' War.

Then the NYT incredulously asks, "how to reconcile such manifestations of humanity and intellectualism with the persistent sadism, clinical paranoia and debauchery that fill so many of the pages of this book?" It is the surprise itself that is revealing. Why should intellectualism and evil be inherently incompatible? The NYT never tells us why evil should not assume fair shape. If anyone is to blame for this assumption it is probably Hollywood, which has persuaded us that bad guys always look the part. Shane had to look like Alan Ladd and the gunslinger Wilson like Jack Palance. We can hardly imagine the roles reversed. The disconnect about Ted Bundy was that he didn't look like Charles Manson.

But the spotlight attracts more things than song. Glamor was always part of the attraction to power. It's interesting to note that after Stalin defeated Hitler, one of his regime's first artistic concerns was to re-shoot the Triumph of the Will in a Soviet context with himself in the starring role. Even if he had to have a studio actor do it. In such productions the first hint of the presence of evil is the limited cast. Despite the cast of thousands there are only two characters on a dictator's stage: the Man and the Masses; and the Masses hardly more than a collection of ants, stripped of their last vestige of individuality, helpless, lost and awaiting only the touch of greatness to save them from their insignificance.

The first solitary hero descends from the clouds.

Below second hero descends from the clouds, this time in color, over the ruins of the first.

Bad guys don't always look like Jack Palance. Hucksters usually have good production values. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O son of the morning!"

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And the winner is ...

We're not talking about the Democratic Primaries but Iraq. Andrew Sullivan thinks the Surge is working, here's what he says, courtesy of Classical Values, who has some additional thoughts. But the Sullivan quote is:

Petraeus deserves the lion's share of the credit; luck and time and the self-defeating nihilism of the Jihadists have helped. But Bush and McCain equally merit points for pursuing the surge, even though the metrics pointed to failure. Obama needs to capitalize on these gains, not dismiss them.

Sullivan forgot Odierno who is said to have contributed a great deal to the operationa. aspects of the surge. And he forgot a lot of others, who supported it when the conventional wisdom was that Iraq was lost. The Mudville Gazette, for example, exemplified the virtues of seeing a thing for what it is; based on a sound appreciation of actual events. But the important things in politics aren't the facts, but the fads. Classical Values is right on the money in predicting that when he's convinced which way the wind blows, Obama won't be far behind in "pivoting" on Iraq.

Now what about Obama? Boy, is the Good Judgement Man™ ever in trouble. He has been talking defeat in Iraq since forever. Whoops. McCain on the other hand has the distinction that, despite the unpopularity of his position, he was right. I predict a pivot - "I never knew how really vile those jihadis were. And I repudiate them for their obvious misjudgment. I have always been in favor of good relations with the Government of Iraq and no Republican is going to stand in the way of my achieving that goal. There are a number of companies in Chicago that would be excellent help in the effort to rebuild Iraq and they will have all my support." Aside to staff: " &#(*^@!~& Axelrod, where are my G-d Damn Tickets to Iraq?"

This prediction is very probably on the money. After all, if Obama can "pivot" on Jeremiah Wright, why not Iraq? Not only will victory in Iraq be underhandedly acknowledged by people like Obama, they will claim credit for it. The probably line of argument will be "Bush changed his strategy in response to our pressure", etc, etc.

Victory has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan. And history is infinitely malleable. One Bolshevik propagandist illustrated the peculiar relationship of facts to time when he replied to the question of "what happened yesterday?" with the answer that "we haven't decided yet."

I think the press has decided that al-Qaeda is not going to win in Iraq; the only question now is how to apportion the credit.

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Furuncle Joseph Stalin

Karl Marx famously wrote, "It is not men’s consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." In other words our attitudes are formed by our material condition. Modern medicine has finally proved that Marx was right. We now know that what may have impelled Marx to create his depressing and gloomy ideology was none other than skin disease. The Times Online reported late last year that:

Karl Marx suffered from a skin disease that can cause severe psychological effects such as self-loathing and alienation, according to a British dermatologist. The father of communism’s life and attitudes were shaped by hidradenitis suppurativa, said Sam Shuster in the British Journal of Dermatology. One of its symptoms is alienation – a concept that Marx, a martyr to boils and carbuncles, put into words as he wrote Das Kapital....

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a disease of the apocrine sweat glands, found in the armpits and the groins. The skin in the affected areas shows a mixture of blackheads, lumps that look like boils, spots and areas that leak pus. Doctors and Marx, who was born in Germany but lived most of his life in London, called them “furuncles, boils and carbuncles”, but Professor Shuster says that they were too persistent and recurrent for that. He searched Marx’s letters and found that he had started complaining of carbuncles in 1864, when he was 46, though it is possible that he had them earlier.

In 1867 he wrote to Friedrich Engels of the boils “on my posterior and near the penis” – areas characteristic of the condition. Marx was often unable to work because of the pain. He wrote to Ludwig Kugelmann in 1867: “I still have a carbuncle on the left loin not far from the centre of propagation, as well as numerous furuncles.”

His pain in the ass may have contributed, not in little measure, to Das Kapital. Booze, sex, human ailment and accident are the unrecognized legislators of history. They shape our world because people shape the world.

An ass, an ass. My kingdom for a carbuncle-free ass.

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The sea

We have amateur video to thank for memorializing the sight of ships at sea. After the Read More! are two videos. One of a USN destroyer doing evolutions at sea. And the other of a crab fishing boat of Iceland. I guess very few landsmen, accustomed as they are to puny little machines like cars and locomotives, can fully appreciate the power of a ship. Or the infinitely greater power of the sea.

What weighs more than a World War 2 heavy cruiser and is faster than speedboat?

Where do crabs come from?

And all I ask is a windy day
with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying.

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Punished for being right

MacLeans.CA/blogs is liveblogging the British Columiba Human Rights Tribunal Proceedings against Mark Steyn. The most striking entry in the running narrative of proceedings are these arguments from the complainant's counsel, who tells us, in legalese of course, that freedom of speech confers no protection when offending Islam:

Lead counsel for the complainants (i.e., Mohamed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress) is Faisal Joseph. ... Section 7.1 of the BC Human Rights Code is the relevant legal text, prohibiting exposure to hate. Free speech, in Joseph’s humble submission, is a “red herring.” ... Islamophobia is the real issue. Steyn’s article shows “multiple hallmarks of hate.”

As a matter of fact, Joseph may be partly right. Perhaps the fear of a certain kind of Islam is the unspoken and central subject of the proceeding; the elephant in the room. But what the counsel for the complainants will never address -- nor will the Human Rights tribunal itself -- is the factual question of whether that phobia is fully justified.

Heaven forbid history show that it is. Mark Steyn can be fully forgiven by mainstream media for being wrong. But they will never pardon him if he is proved right. And in the way of these things it is better to remain wrong with your reputation for sagacity intact than to recognize the truth about your judgments and yourself.

The sudden and precipitious drop-off in the media coverage of Iraq is largely due to the reluctance among pundits to advertise the fact that they were wrong. Iraq is unmentionable precause because things are going well. Well for Iraq means not so well for pundits who staked their reputations on failure. Abe Greenwald at Commentary Magazine writes: "After years of telling us the war on terror was creating more terrorists, the mainstream media has mysteriously woken up to the fact that Islamic extremism is on the wane. Newsweek is the latest publication to run a support-for-jihad-is-fading piece.". The Washington Post has quietly and recently done so as well. Better to concede past mistakes in judgment quietly the better to deliver more judgements of the same quality in the future. But it comes at the price of clinging to the same false premises and ignoring the most glaring lessons. Greenwald writes:

there is an important omission in the sudden coverage of moderate Muslims: No one talks about the effect of the Iraq War. The MSM can dodge the issue all they like, but the fact remains that the Coalition’s toppling of Saddam facilitated the first organized rejection of fanatical Islam in the Middle East. Back in November 2005, while everyone stateside was crying fiasco, a group of Sunnis in Anbar province joined forces with a clutch of U.S. Marines and began to wrest their country back from al-Qaeda and its sympathizers.

And that is precisely why the "human rights" proceedings against Mark Steyn and company are so wrong. It refuses to recognize what has been proved in Iraq: that it is better to stand with Muslims who are seeking their freedom than to throw in with those who would suppress any dissent. If the proceedings continue on the basis that free speech is a "red herring"; that under Section 7.1 of the relevant regulations prescribing the offense "innocent intent is not a defense, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism", then the Tribunal will continue to be wrong so that it can call itself right.

Better that Steyn and company should throw themselves upon the mercy of the complainants. Offer them restitution. Make an abject apology. In short, do all the things that the Man We Have Been Waiting For wants to do with Iraq, which is understand the price of everything and the value of nothing. And if that sounds bizzare, then so what? Logic is a "red herring" in this case.

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The long expected attack comes

A car bomb detonated outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad, killing four and injuring several others. Although nobody knows who did yet -- at least not officially -- everybody knows why. The AP reports:

Denmark has faced threats at its embassies following the reprinting in Danish newspapers of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims generally consider depicting the prophet to be sacrilegious and Islamic militants had warned of reprisals.

In April, Danish intelligence officials warned of an "aggravated" terror threat against Denmark because of the cartoon. The warning specifically singled Pakistan, along with North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

No Danes were reported killed. But several innocent Pakistanis died.

Sirens wailed as ambulances took the wounded from the scene. One group of rescuers carried away what appeared to be the upper half of a man's body. Pieces of metal and glass were scattered at least 200 yards from the blast site.

An exterior wall of the embassy collapsed and its metal gate was blown inward but the embassy building itself remained intact. The Danish flag and the EU flag were blown off their staffs and the windows of the embassy were blown out.

The office of a Pakistani development organization opposite the embassy was badly damaged, its roof partially collapsed. Anjum Masood, a field operations manager for the U.N.-funded group, Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment, said dozens of its 100 employees were wounded, mostly because of flying glass. His own left hand was bandaged.

It's virtually certain that when blame for this incident is eventually apportioned some will point a finger at the Danes who dared to publish the Mohammed cartoons. Of course this is lunacy. But the greatest triumph of radical Islam has been its ability to impose its mode of thought and its twisted illogic upon the opinion leaders of the West.

That's unfortunate because objectively speaking the entire bombing attack illustrates better than anything else how weak radical Islam has become. Making a lesson of a small European country must have been high on their list of priorities since the cartoons were published. That it has taken this long; that it needed to be mounted in a country that is practically the stronghold of al-Qaeda; and that it failed to be delivered directly into the embassy compound shows that this is the best they can do. Their arm has become very, very weak.

And BTW, was this the image they wanted to prevent people from seeing?

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Map of the virtual world

I've constructed a little map utility at my portal to help people locate bloggers around the world. There's a menu item called "blogmap". The locations are approximate, because most bloggers want a certain degree of anonymity. It's a work in progress, but eventually I hope to construct a fairly comprehensive locater.

Trying to construct a physical map of the blogosphere created some challenges. For example some blogs specialize in places they do not actually inhabit. For example, it turns out that one of the better known blogs about Russia is physically edited and written out of Texas. But sometimes bloggers absolutely, positively want people to know where they are. Professor Bainbridge and Eugene Volokh both advertise themselves as being in UCLA.

The question is why would I build such a map? One reason is the belief that eventually the information will come in handy. If there's an accident or incident somewhere it pays to have some sense of whose site I should log onto; maybe even send an email to. One never knows when it will come in handy.

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Jaunt

Other people ask "why telecommute?", but Glenn Reynolds asks, "why not?"

DIGITAL NOMADS: High gas prices promote telecommuting. "One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that's accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it's OK once a week, why isn't it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with 'casual Friday' -- its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, 'extreme telecommuting' -- working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback -- becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you're out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are, does it?"

All is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen. Related thoughts here.

Someone was even more prescient than Glenn. When Alfred Bester wrote his science fiction classic, The Stars My Destination back in the 1950s, fans probably wondered, "what if I could Jaunt" "Jaunting", for those who have never read the book, is a way of teleporting oneself from place to other. The initial problem in Gully Foyle's world -- he's the protagonist -- is that Jaunting is limited by connectivity. People need to know where they are going to go in order to Jaunt there. That fact prevented people from Jaunting into stranger's living rooms. Never having been there, they could never visualize it exactly.

If Jaunting sounds a little like telecommuting, well it is. And despite appearances, the mainstream workplace really has nothing against it. What they expect you to do, however, is telecommute to other places from the office. Once you get to a physical office then it's OK to Jaunt anywhere in the world. IT guys are allowed to take control of hundreds, possibly thousands of remote PCs. Managers sit down to phone and video conferences. The VOIP lines buzz continuously. The fax machines -- if any still exist -- spew out their anachronistic paper. Jaunting is OK. Just do it from the office.

Glenn Reynolds was right when he argued at Tech Central Station that people are required to come to the office not primarily to work, but to be controlled. Union bosses and managers will therefore oppose telecommuting to the bitter end. "Managers because they like to have workers in plain sight (which also makes managers look more important), and unions because it's harder to organize workers who aren't all in one place."

Clearly some managers are against Jaunting simply because it's new-fangled. During a trip last year to Southeast Asia, I met an old classmate who was the personal portfolio manager of one of the richest men in Asia. The old Chinese man had made his fortune in a very traditional line of retail trading. He was very forward looking in some ways, but in others he was positively medieval. Apart from his shares in the corporation, his family had a portfolio of securities traded in every major financial market in the world. My old classmate made trades worth millions of dollars every day on their behalf. But with one handicap. He was not allowed his own direct dial telephone line. Every time he needed to use the telephone he had to walk into the adjoining office and use the bosses' secretary's telephone.

But despite the odd eccentrics, most rational businessmen realize the potential of telecommuting. The first is it's potential to save time. By eliminating the three or four hours of commute time an employer can potentially liberate a large part of the day from the tyranny of sitting in a car and acquire a vastly larger pool of potential talent. There's no reason why companies have to limit their selection of employees to people who live within 80 miles of a building. Finally, telecommuting forces one to concentrate -- I find -- on attending real meetings and doing real work rather than on the task of merely showing up.

High gas prices are now literally pushing the marginal workers out of the market. The buses and trains in Sydney are unusually crowded with people who've given up their cars in favor of mass transportation because they can no longer afford the deadly combination of car registration fees, vehicle tolls, parking charges, installment payments and gas charges that are the running cost of a car. People are actually looking to carpool in a country where one's private automobile is the hallmark of adulthood and independence.

I think Glenn Reynolds is right in asserting that greed will now vie with the urge for control and loosen the manager's grip on workers at the margin. It may encourage them to look for ways to monitor and manage telecommuting more reliably. Or they may allow certain categories of workers to do their business from home.

Of course there will be categories of activity that will have to be performed in person. But for many types of work, telcommuting makes perfect sense. It can save time and heck of a lot of gas. Thirty years from today we'll laugh when we think of how back in 2008 most employers required workers to physically commute to work so that they could sit down at their computers. No longer will they say, as generations once did:

Gully Foyle is my name
I work for a corporation
The freeway is my dwelling place
The office my destination.

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Who can you trust?

Two news articles related to Pakistan are in the news. The first describes how Pakistan's AQ Khan recanted a "confession" that he participated in an underground nuclear arms market. The second is an NYT report on suspicions that Pakistan's Frontier Corps is refusing to fight the Taliban and may in fact be aiding them.

Here's the ABC article about AQ Khan's recantation.

The Pakistani scientist blamed for running a rogue network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya has recanted his confession, telling ABC News the Pakistani government and President Perez Musharraf forced him to be a "scapegoat" for the "national interest."

"I don't stand by that," Dr. A.Q. Khan told ABC News in a 35-minute phone interview from his home in Islamabad, where he has been detained since "confessing" that he ran the nuclear network on his own, without the knowledge of the Pakistani government.

Interestingly, Khan doesn't deny his actions so much as the allegation that they were unauthorized by the Pakistani government. That raises the question of exactly how reliable Pakistan is as an "ally" in the nonproliferation effort.

"Those people who were supposed to know knew it," Khan said about his activities. If true, it would mean Pakistan lied to the U.S. and the international community about its role in providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

"Those people who were suppose to know" would certainly include the very top of Pakistan's leadership. In particular, Khan cited a trip to North Korea. "Khan said the North Korean nuclear weapons program was 'well-advanced' before he arrived, as part of an officially sanctioned trip by his government."

In another news article, the NYT describes how a Pakistani counterterror group may be double-crossing the US. The NYT's source is "Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the U.S. Senate's committee on armed forces."

"If that's our intelligence assessment, then there's a real question as to whether or not we should be putting money into strengthening the Frontier Corps on the Pakistan side because if anything there's some evidence that the Pakistan army is providing support to the Taliban," Levin told reporters after visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan this week.

But why just the Frontier Corps? Is the problem limited to that unit? Both stories underscore the limits and difficulties inherent in containing nuclear proliferation and terrorism using proxies in general and Pakistan in particular. Treachery among allies has a long and sordid pedigree. Some years ago Bill Gertz wrote a book called Treachery, which essentially argued that terror groups are connected, in one way or the other, to America's "friends".

Nor is betrayal a recent phenomenon. At Yalta, near the end of the "Good War", the Allies, perhaps with the aid of sympathetic foreign office officials in the Churchill and Roosevelt governments, condemned Eastern Europe to Stalin's tyranny. Normally it is the powerless who are apt to be left holding the bag.

That is because the long term disincentive to betray is the prospect of eventual payback. In the classic case of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" the incentives to betrayal are eliminated if the game is played continuously. This is because the betrayed can get back at the betrayer. Judas gets his and that prospect, rather than conscience, makes cowards of double-crossers. This is why the powerless, as was the case of the Eastern Europeans, are most commonly sold down the river. They are incapable of imposing payback.

In the iterated prisoner's dilemma the game is played repeatedly. Thus each player has an opportunity to "punish" the other player for previous non-cooperative play. Cooperation may then arise as an equilibrium outcome. The incentive to defect is overcome by the threat of punishment, leading to the possibility of a cooperative outcome. So if the game is infinitely repeated, cooperation may be a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium although both players defecting always remains an equilibrium and there are many other equilibrium outcomes.

Great powers, like the United States, derive power from maintaining a consistent policy because consistency guarantees the eventual punishment of traitors. It would have been difficult to successfully prosecute the Cold War without a common policy among successive American Presidents.

One of the unintended consequences of a Barack Obama's avowed intention to repudiate his predecessor's policy is that it sends a signal to America's betrayers that there may be no consequences for their actions. And while there may be good reasons to change policy when it isn't working, one of the implicit costs of doing so is that it weakens the disincentives to betrayal.

Will Pakistan fear the wrath of Barack Obama? Maybe they already know.

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Cracks in the ground

Spengler at the Asia Times asked a year ago: what do you give someone who has everthing -- "cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney failure, and so forth. Iran's economy is so damaged that it is impossible to tell how bad things are. Except perhaps for the oilfields of southern Iraq, and perhaps also northern Saudi Arabia, there is nothing the West can give Iran to forestall an internal breakdown."

That degree of dysfunction was underscored by a recent Pajamas Media article describing the biggest case of corruption in Iran. Or possibly the Middle East. The chief auditor of the Iranian parliament has reported that $35 B of the country's oil revenues has just gone missing. Not that there's a heck of a lot to be stolen anyway. Despite record oil prices, the regime in Teheran has mismanaged its economy so badly that it is bankrupt. Losing the $35 billion is like a struggling retiree looking in the sugar jar and finding that the next six month's rent money is missing. Spengler writes:

Iranian dissidents put overall unemployment at 30% and youth unemployment at 50%. Government subsidies sustain a very large portion of the population; 42% of the non-agricultural population is employed by the Iranian state, compared with 17% in Pakistan.

Within fewer than 10 years, Iran will become a net importer, at which point the government no longer will be able to provide subsidies. Iran's economic implosion is a source of imminent strategic risk.

Risk to whom? one might ask. More on this later. But the huge corruption scandal in Iran may actually understate the extent of its mismanagement. The Pajamas Media article continues: "This is a serious allegation, as this amount constitutes almost half of Iran’s total oil income for that year. ... To make matters worse, this is not the first time since the start of the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that money has been used without the Majlis’ knowledge. One other famous case took place during the 2007-08 financial year. It was revealed later that $2 billion was used to import gasoline, without any consultation or approval of the members of the Iranian parliament."

Spengler argues that Iran is treating its economic malaise with the equivalent of Dr. Morell's famous little pills. Morell was Hitler's personal physician and kept the flagging dictator going with short-term stimulants to the detriment of his long-term health.

The fact that Iran cannot stabilize its currency suggests a breakdown of political consensus within the regime, and a scramble by different elements in the regime to lay hands on whatever resources it can. ... That is the background to Ahmadinejad's decree last week reducing private and state bank lending rates to 12% from 14%, that is, 5-10 percentage points below the rate of inflation. If Ahmadinejad were in the pay of a hostile intelligence service, he could not have found a more effective way to sabotage Iran's economy. If the price of goods rises faster than the cost of money, everyone who can will borrow money to purchase and hoard goods. The result will be higher prices and reduced economic activity, and the eventual prospect of hyperinflation, which no government ever has survived.

Even after discounting the gloom-and-doom talk, there's a reasonable case for arguing that Iran is on the ropes. Spengler argues that one of the motives for Iran's foreign adventures in Lebanon and Southern Iraq -- what he calls Ahmedinajad's "pocket Persian empire" -- is to export Iran's domestic pressures. If so, we are probably not far from hearing the argument that we ought to let Iran continue its expansion in order to forestall an internal meltdown.

Right now Nancy Pelosi maintains that Iran is distributing political largesse, according to Abe Greenwald who listened to her audio interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, advancing the view that Teheran is not only in definite control of the situation at home, but the situation in Iraq. Pelosi said after her May 17 trip to Iraq:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Manifest evidence that Iran is in difficulty will decisively undermine the assumptions underpinning Pelosi's strategy. Developments in the next few months will clarify the situation for all to see. If Iran begins to break down then it will be abundantly clear that Pelosi's -- and indeed Obama's -- diplomatic strategy in the region is fundamentally flawed. There is no point to going, hat in hand, to a regime that is itself on the way out. It would be like dealing with a corpse. Moreover, if Spengler's prediction that Iran has no way out but to continue it's "imperial adventure" -- "In fact, Iran is engaged in such an adventure, funding and arming Shi'ite allies from Basra to Beirut, and creating clients selectively among such Sunnis as Hamas in Palestine," then the Pelosi-Obama strategy of rapidly abandoning Iraq before an imploding, yet expanding radical Islamic state will be the worst of all possible worlds.

But there is a silver lining to Teheran's mismanagement of affairs. It creates the possibility that regime change will occur without any direct military intervention in Iran. It may simply be sufficient to hold the line and keep up the pressure against Iranian proxies in Southern Iraq and Lebanon to make Teheran blow a gasket. I've argued before that the greatest danger that the relatively liberal, Shi'ite democracy in Iraq poses to Teheran is that it creates an alternative political model within the Shi'ite Crescent.

I'd like to think that if events in the next months show Iran starting to crack, then the Democratic Party will see the see the strategic opportunity and reverse its position on abandoning Iraq. But then again in politics what's good for the faction isn't always good for the nation. Ahmedinajad proved that.

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Behind the scenes

The Telegraph reports that someone's quest to acquire WMDs still goes on.

Equipment bound for Syria which could be used to test ballistic missile components was intercepted during a previously undisclosed mission, the United States has announced.

Four member states of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a group of 90 countries who seek to prevent the shipment of weapons of mass destruction, were involved in the operation in February, 2007.

US national security adviser Stephen Hadley described the incident in a speech to members of the PSI, which the Bush administration has sought to portray as a significant success in its drive to prevent biological, chemical or nuclear terrorism.

Analysts say it is hard to judge the PSI's effectiveness because members are reluctant to disclose successes to avoid betraying sources that provide intelligence needed to stop shipments.

That delivery platform was going to be matched to something. Nobody acquires ballistic missiles to put popsicles on them. Maybe the something planned as a payload vanished in a desert raid on September, 2007.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New commercial satellite images show a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site has been wiped clean since it was bombed September 6 by Israeli aircraft. Analysts say the cleanup will hinder a proposed investigation by international nuclear inspectors and suggests Syria is trying to conceal evidence.

"It took down this facility so quickly it looks like they are trying to hide something," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which analyzed the images.

The danger isn't over, and it won't be over for a long time. But we can make it through as long as we remember that the danger is there.

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Everything old is new

Since I did one Michael Kamen soundtrack, I'll do another. "Tell Marion I died a free Englishman."

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The revolt against al-Qaeda

Lawrence Wright, author of the Looming Tower, a best-selling account of the beginnings of al-Qaeda, may now be chronicling its end. In a 14-page article in the New Yorker, Wright describes the revolt of al-Qaeda's theological pillars against its version of the Jihad.

The most prominent Jihadi intellectual to turn against al-Qaeda is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (AKA Dr. Fadl), an Egyptian surgeon and Islamic scholar, who among other things mentored Ayman al-Zawahiri and was the spiritual mentor of fighters in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Dr. Fadl's 'Guide' "begins with the premise that jihad is the natural state of Islam. Muslims must always be in conflict with nonbelievers, Fadl asserts, resorting to peace only in moments of abject weakness." Subsequently Fald went on to author a monumental tome, "The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge", in which Dr. Fadl says:

salvation is available only to the perfect Muslim. Even an exemplary believer can wander off the path to Paradise with a single misstep. Fadl contends that the rulers of Egypt and other Arab countries are apostates of Islam. “The infidel’s rule, his prayers, and the prayers of those who pray behind him are invalid,” Fadl decrees. “His blood is legal.” He declares that Muslims have a duty to wage jihad against such leaders; those who submit to an infidel ruler are themselves infidels, and doomed to damnation.” Anyone who believes otherwise is a heretic and deserves to be slaughtered.

Dr. Fadl was as bloodthirsty as they came and could quote from the Sacred Texts to prove it, a fact which recommended him highly to the fighters in the field and made him an authority within the movement. He was so gruesomely brilliant that he threatened to put Zawahiri in the shade, a condition which Zawahiri plotted to reverse by subtly putting Dr. Fadl down and issuing distorted versions of the master's magnum opus. This set the stage for Lawrence Wright's major narrative: the "revisions" of Dr. Fadl, who now asserts that al-Qaeda's brand of bloodshed has no legitimate place in Muslim theology.

Fadl's eventual about-face had several roots. The first was his resentment of Zawahiri. The second was the outrage over al-Qaeda's many murders of Muslims in in different countries. The third, sad to say, was regret over how it had all turned out. The triumphal march Dr. Fadl had envisioned had gone wrong. After 9/11 Dr. Fadl was arrested in Yemen and extradited to Egypt, and may never be released. While in prison, he wrote a series of "revisions" to the Jihadi doctrine. This is the primary intellectual basis for the "revolt against al-Qaeda".

One senior Egyptian cleric regarded as the model of Islamic moderation by Westerners told Wright that he understood Fadl's change of heart because one had to adapt to the times. "We accept the revisions conditionally, not as the true teachings of Islam but with the understanding that this process is like medicine for a particular time". Dr. Fadl located the roots of his newfound pacifism much more directly:

"People hate America, and the Islamist movements feel their hatred and their impotence. Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours? . . . That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11."

In short, Dr. Fadl's critique of Bin Laden's leadership and doctrine is driven by two assessments. The first is that it has resulted in provoking an unmanageable response; the second is that Bin Laden has inflicted too much collateral damage on Muslims. But it did not occur from some newly discovered revulsion to taking innocent human life. Regarding terrorism, Fadl writes:

Fadl acknowledges that “terrorizing the enemy is a legitimate duty”; however, he points out, “legitimate terror” has many constraints. Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks in America, London, and Madrid were wrong, because they were based on nationality, a form of indiscriminate slaughter forbidden by Islam. In his Al Hayat interview, Fadl labels 9/11 “a catastrophe for Muslims,” because Al Qaeda’s actions “caused the death of tens of thousands of Muslims—Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis and others.”

He laments the fact that, in a globalized world, it is no longer so easy to distinguish between infidel and Muslim, observing that Western converts may look un-Muslim, and thereby killed by mistake; while contract workers in the Middle East are protected from violence by an implied Islamic treaty and may inconveniently get the way. In short, he has no regrets for the Jihad, only reservations about the way things are going within the framework of an unchanged strategic perspective.

But Zawahiri could not of course take Dr. Fadl's denunciations lying down. Al-Qaeda had been called a name, and moreover, a loser, to its face. He responded by casting aspersions on Dr. Fadl, hinting he was being used by Egyptian intelligence. Zawahiri sarcastically wondered how prisoners in Egyptian jails could so easily spread their messages abroad. He tellingly disparaged Dr. Fadl's own competence, comparing the beaten men in jail with the Jihadis on the outside who were shaking the world. And Zawahiri rejected the notion that 9/11 was a gratuitous attack, claiming that it was merely a reprisal for an earlier American outrage. Readers will be surprised to learn what that outrage was.

He compares 9/11 to the 1998 American bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s destruction of two American embassies in East Africa. (The U.S. mistakenly believed that the plant was producing chemical weapons.) “I see no difference between the two operations, except that the money used to build the factory was Muslim money and the workers who died in the factory’s rubble”—actually, a single night watchman—“were Muslims, while the money that was spent on the buildings that those hijackers destroyed was infidel money and the people who died in the explosion were infidels.” ... "The majority of scholars say that it is permissible to strike at infidels, even if Muslims are among them,” Zawahiri contends. He cites a well-known verse in the Koran to support, among other things, the practice of kidnapping: “When the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolators wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.”

In the words of Frank Sinatra, Zawahiri said, "regrets I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention." Nor did the "fair" treatment enjoyed by Muslims in other countries deserve any reciprocity. Zawahiri wrote sadly about the inconveniences of living in the West:

To dispute Fadl’s assertion that Muslims living in non-Islamic countries are treated fairly, Zawahiri points out that in some Western countries Muslim girls are forbidden to wear hijab to school. Muslim men are prevented from marrying more than one wife, and from beating their wives, as allowed by some interpretations of Sharia.

It makes for depressing reading. The Jihadi revolt against al-Qaeda is predominantly based on the fact that it is losing the military struggle. It is not, insofar as I can glean from Dr. Fadl's writings, the result of some upsurge of pity, some inclination to mercy or anything like a qualm of conscience. The intellectual foundations of the jihad remain undisturbed; as adamant as ever.

At the psychological root of this mental intransigence lie two things. First the conviction that the West is to blame for the backwardness, poverty and violence of Muslim countries; and second, that the West itself is an abomination to Allah. The former perception has been cemented by centuries of resentment; the second springs from the immutable word of Allah. And while al-Qaeda has been kicked to pieces by the US, Wright observes that these psychological foundations remain. Therefore while al-Qaeda itself may be finished or dying, it may regenerate. The King of the Jihad may be wobbling on his throne. But all around him, the pretenders, eager for the scepter, close in from the shadows on every side. Wright concludes:

According to a recent National Intelligence Estimate, Al Qaeda has been regenerating, and remains the greatest terror threat to America. Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, says that although Fadl’s denunciation has weakened Al Qaeda’s intellectual standing, “from the worm’s-eye view Al Qaeda fighters have on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, things are going more their way than they have in a long time.” He went on, “The Pakistani government is more accommodating. The number of suicide bombers in both countries is way up, which indicates a steady supply of fighters. Even in Iraq, the flow is slower but continues.”

Still, the core of Al Qaeda is much reduced from what it was before 9/11. An Egyptian intelligence official told me that the current membership totals less than two hundred men; American intelligence estimates range from under three hundred to more than five hundred. Meanwhile, new Al Qaeda-inspired groups, which may be only tangentially connected to the leaders, have spread, and older, more established terrorist organizations are now flying the Al Qaeda banner, outside the control of bin Laden and Zawahiri. Hoffman thinks this is the reason that bin Laden and Zawahiri have been emphasizing Israel and Palestine in their latest statements. “I see the pressure building on Al Qaeda to do something enormous this year,” Hoffman said. “The biggest damage that Dr. Fadl has done to Al Qaeda is to bring into question its relevance.”

Yet if all the "revolt against al-Qaeda" achieves is to renew the quest for a more effect way of waging the Jihad then it is hardly a strategic achievement for the West at all. What is required, and what multiculturalism specifically refuses to do, is engage its foundations. The Western world must win the intellectual equivalent of Israel's basic demand: the right to exist. Somehow and in some way, the zero-sum game set up by Mohammed must be replaced by a non-zero sum version in which all humanity can peacefully share the planet.

Nor is the goal as fanciful as it seems. One of the most striking things about Wright's New Yorker article is the importance of doctrine to the Jihad. It is a discourse dominated by bearded academics in Cairo and Muslim intellectuals in London. American JDAMs may strike anywhere in the world, but here, in the intellectual heart of the Jihad the West is only silence.

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"See you in court"

Here's the opening of Mark Steyn's speech at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver on the subject of the hate speech charges brought against him by British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for criticizing Islam. It's a Gangbusters type curtain raiser, but the longer we read the more apparent it is that the speech is less about radical Islam than something else.

I’m honoured to be here. The only other invitation I’ve had from Vancouver is from the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal which begins its case against my “hate speech” next Monday. I confess until this case came about I’d always assumed Canada had freedom of speech. I was south of the border, and you may remember that business from last year when Senator Larry Craig had his unfortunate run-in with the undercover cop in the Minneapolis Airport men’s room. I was amazed to read this story in the newspaper a few months ago, announcing that his lawyer had filed a brief arguing that the hand gestures Senator Craig supposedly made under the bathroom stall divider were constitutionally protected free speech under the First Amendment. What a great country. In Canada, according to the Canadian Islamic Congress, “freedom of speech” doesn’t extend to my books and newspaper columns. But in America Senator Craig’s men’s room semaphore is covered by the First Amendment. From now on, instead of writing about radical Islam, I’m only going to hit on imams in bathrooms.

This is my first ever speech in Vancouver. And, amazingly enough, it’s also my last ever speech in Vancouver. So it’s kind of a two-for-one night. It’s like when they say “Direct from Broadway. Limited engagement.” This is a very limited engagement. The reason for that is, next Monday, the excerpt from my bestselling hate crime, America Alone, that Maclean’s made the mistake of publishing, next Monday that book excerpt goes on trial at the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. As some of you know, the Canadian Islamic Congress has accused me and Maclean’s of “flagrant Islamophobia”. And the trial begins Monday morning at the Robson Square courthouse – 9 o’clock Monday morning. Go to Robson Square and look for the old lady by the guillotine doing her knitting, you can’t miss it. She’s knitting a nice “The World Needs More Canada” sweater out of discarded copies of Magna Carta. It’s a very moving sight. It would have, of course, be wholly improper of me to comment on a case before the courts, but hey, that’s the kinda guy I am.

But what "kinda guy" is modern Western multiculturalism, that proud creation of "progressive" thought? It is, in the last analysis, the principal ally of every fascist unicultural force there is. Steyn soon warms to the point that what is at issue isn't what Islam is; because Islam will be what it will be. What is at issue in the hate speech proceedings is what the West wants to be.

What we’re up against is not primarily defined by what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are still essentially military campaigns and we’re good at those. ... it might be truer to say that this is a Cold Civil War – by which I mean a war within the west. The real war is a domestic war: the key terrain is not the Sunni Triangle but every major city within the western world. ...

Even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York, even if no one were blowing up trains and buses and nightclubs in Madrid and London and Bali, even without all that, we would still be in danger of losing this thing – without a shot being fired.

Steyn's insight -- that the War on Terror is essentially the consequence of a Western disease that manifests itself in the newly found power of medieval madmen -- is the key point. All September 11, Iraq, Afghanistan have done is focus attention on a silent struggle that has been going on within Western culture for last hundred years. It is the ideational counterpart of violent struggles of the 20th century. The men who we remember on Memorial Day only buried the physical corpus of totalitarianism. It remains for us, in the twenty first century, to lay its ghost to rest.

Can we do it without restarting the violence of the last hundred years? Perhaps. But can we do it without a mental and legal struggle. Definitely not. And so Mark Steyn continues in defiance of the thought police. Because that's the kind of guy he is.

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Retro science fact

A two million ton aircraft carrier -- made of ice and concrete. Proposed by kooks? No. Supported by Winston Churchill. (Hat tip: Al Fin)

Pykrete was made famous by wealthy industrialist and financier, Geoffrey Pike, Sir Winston Churchill was one of the earliest promoters of using Pykrete for building large ships in WWII. The hull for a giant Pykrete aircraft carrier would have been 40 feet thick or more, and almost impossible to penetrate with the torpedoes of the day....

What we are talking about, is a custom-built, reinforced iceberg, of incredible strength and toughness. In a polar environment, the structure should last almost indefinitely, with minimal loss to melting and sublimation. In a temperate environment, a large Pykrete structure could last for decades or more, with minimal shading, insulation, and interior refrigeration.

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Sui generis

The Claremont Institute reviews Brian McAllister Linn's The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War. And a complex way of war it is indeed. The campaign in Iraq, for example, was not one conflict but several, one form succeeding the other in rapid succession.

That has been the pattern from the beginning in Iraq, where our fighting men and women conquered a conventional force in the dizzyingly successful initial campaign, then were surprised by the part-criminal, part-ideological insurgency that followed. They adjusted and crushed the large-unit insurgents, faced a new threat from small-unit insurgents using booby traps, and adjusted again to limit the effectiveness of such attacks. Seeing the hostile elements turn toward localized attacks on civilian populations to try to foment civil war they adjusted once again with the surge to provide localized security for Iraqi civilians. And all this was done while training Iraqis to do the job themselves.

The "way" is not a fixed method but a mental attitude. That would be how an academic might describe it at a distance. Up close it was probably closer to "oh hell, what do we do next?".

But that mental attitude was not wholly unfettered; it was never completely up to the professional military to think as creatively as the situation demanded. The American Way of War is inextricably linked to politics. It is that way by design. And the reviewer points out that this sort of politics operated on two levels. The first existed at the level of the national mood. The other consisted of what went on in Washington and in the power centers of the country. The Home Front was always a key theater of any war America has fought.

American political and military leaders have long understood that they must contend with the inescapable and unique reality of the American democratic polity, a population that is collectively quick to anger though individually hesitant to go to war. Americans as a group have a way of life that they jealously defend, so much so that they cannot stand to see it diminished by real or imagined losses. That same way of life that is so worth defending makes the peacetime homefront an enormously attractive place. Americans have from the beginning distrusted standing armies because of the inherent threat such armies present to republican government, but even more so because standing armies require soldiers, and Americans are too caught up in their own lives to be soldiers. If Americans must take up arms to defend what they hold dear, they demand victory, and that it come soon. That consideration, more than any other, is at the core of the American mind for war. ...

The current war is disconcerting in its own ways, because the precipitating incident on 9/11 did draw the civilian population into the war. Then the initial rhetoric from just about everyone about the Global War on Terrorism linked the conflict to great citizen wars of the past, and the American public became engaged emotionally. Yet the country did not mobilize in any meaningful way. Whatever their feelings about Afghanistan and Iraq, the citizenry never felt the pain of separating from their peacetime lives. The military has fought the war with the professional force that has kept the brutality to a minimum—probably even to the extent that it has hampered their fighting effectiveness. This feels like citizen war, but it is being fought like a professional war, which drives the American mind for war half-mad.

I suspect that America has mobilized to a greater extent than is evident. The Homeland Security hassles; the relatively extensive use of contractors; even the battles on the Internet are forms of nontraditional mobilization. But despite this, I think the Claremont reviewer is fundamentally right. A global, low-intensity conflict is at odds with the traditional American way of conflict. What is less evident is whether today's experience will create a new tradition in its own right.

Just as the armed forces learned to cope with the ever changing nature of the conflict in Iraq so too may broader attitudes adjust themselves to twists and turns of history.

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Losing my timing

Weekend reading from the NYT. With the Mahdi Army in full flight, the lessons of Basra are being examined: was there too little British involvement? Or too much? Which view is correct?

During those years, many resentful Basrawis say, the British were involved in a war that was deeply unpopular back home, and therefore had no stomach for sustaining the casualties necessary to restore order.

“I have been very frustrated at the British,” said Brig. Gen. Edan Jaber, a police commander in Basra. He said the British “gave a high priority to their own security” and “were not forceful with the cases they faced in the street.”

The viewpoint for the other side is:

“There’s no doubt that for some parts of the community, we are as much part of the problem as the solution,” Lt. Col. Patrick Sanders, the British commander of the Fourth Battalion of the Rifles Regiment said last July. “We need to leave. There is no question about it. The only way that you can solve the problems of Basra is with an Iraqi solution.”

Only minutes before, a Mahdi Army mortar attack had forced him and his men to drop to the ground at the riverside Basra Palace headquarters, a site they would soon evacuate.

He added: “As long as we are here the Iraqi security forces are far less inclined to confront the militias,” because “the militias will then see them in the same way that people might have seen the Vichy government in France.”

There are a number of analysts who will argue that for Iraq to succeed, America must remove its presence. Whichever side of the issue one takes, there remains the matter of timing. It is said that every defeated general utters two words: "too late". It is also possible for them them to lament, "too early".

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And the last

The late Michael Kamen wrote a number of musical scores for television and film, including his famous overture overture from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. This other piece, though less used, seems appropriate for Memorial Day.

Retrospective

Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank at the New Republic describe The jihadist revolt against bin Laden. It begins, as most of these stories do, with rich men at a lavish party who sit down after dinner to plot how to take over the world. In this case it begins with a millionaire Libyan Jihadi and Osama Bin Laden in Kandahar. A participant describes the scene in 2000, when most of the West was celebrating the End of History and worrying about the Millenium Bug.

Bin Laden was trying to win over other militant groups to the global jihad he had announced against the United States in 1998. Over the next five days, bin Laden and his top aides, including Ayman Al Zawahiri, met with a dozen or so jihadist leaders. They sat on the floor in a circle with large cushions arrayed around them to discuss the future of their movement. "This was a big strategy meeting," Benotman told one of us late last year, in his first account of the meeting to a reporter. "We talked about everything, where are we going, what are the lessons of the past twenty years."

The story ends in the present, with many in the cast of characters blaming Bin Laden for turning the world -- including the Muslim masses -- against the Jihad The scene shifts from the opulent parties of the warrior princes to the morose Muslim enclaves of East London. But as these stories go, even at the outset there were those at Osama's party who had their doubts.

Benotman recalls, "but they laughed when I told them that America would attack the whole region if they launched another attack against it." Benotman says that bin Laden tried to placate him with a promise: "I have one more operation, and after that I will quit"--an apparent reference to September 11. "I can't call this one back because that would demoralize the whole organization," Benotman remembers bin Laden saying.

Bin Laden might have been right and Benotman wrong if only Osama had been more patient. Timing is everything. They should have waited for the people we've been waiting for. As it is, their retrospective regrets, coming on the heels of their battlefield thrashing after attacking America leaves one question unaswered. Would they have been so contrite if they had not been pursued by all the furies of hell? Victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

Every warrior prince, even Osama should remember the old stage adage: laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.

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The heart of darkness

If you're so inclined, it is possible to live in a brand-new condo built just a few meters from the walls and barbed wire of the Dachau Concentration Camp. ... Dachau is huge. It would take about an hour just to walk around all of the grounds. Approximately 30,000 prisoners (1,173 of them German) were living there upon liberation in 1945. The site is thoroughly reminiscent of a huge public high school, assuming your public school had an original Arbeit Macht Frei gate, a gas chamber (never used), or a Krematorium..

The medieval town of Dachau is now a suburb of Munich and the S-Bahn will whisk you there in a few minutes. I went straight from the Munich airport. At 170 kph, my Turkish cab driver simply followed the signs to Stuttgart and then turned off at the Dachau exit. As we approached the town of Dachau, there were signs directing us to the camp (a huge McDonald's sign is also a good landmark).

The camp seems to be open from 9-5 every day except Mondays.

-- Philip Greenspun.

Some amateur video of the camp taken by someone else.

And some words -- just words -- spoken at a French beach nearly a quarter of a century ago. The deeds had come forty years before.

Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. ... The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers--the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent.

The drama is easy to follow. The hard thing to accept is that both the crime and the rescue were acts in the same play. Anyone who reads Niall Ferguson's The War of the World, the chronicle of the Long War; the First and Second World Wars -- which were essentially one conflict within Western Civilization -- can glut himself on the origins of the crime. Auden observed that:

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:

But how do we account for the redemption? Do we calculate the actions of the boys of Pointe du Hoc in the same coin of sadism and cruelty that were the wages of the SS guards at Dachau? Surely they were both the same human flesh. And yet they they were different in some invisible way. And if Auden believes that we live in an endless cycle of revenge, "I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn, those to whom evil is done do evil in return," then the springs of sacrifice and charity that keep evil in check and maintain the world on its axis stand as the greatest unsolved mystery of all. My thoughts on reading Ferguson's War of the World were why did it stop?

It is the occasional flower -- the existence of the anomaly -- that stands between the mind and the theory that world is as evil as it seems. At Pointe du Hoc, and even within Dachau itself there were hints that something else was at work. Just a glimpse; a mere glimmer. The only light unto our times.

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For the honor of the regimented

Barbara Hans of Der Spiegel describe the national debate in Germany over the "honor killing" of an Afghan immigrant teenager who was stabbled 20 times by her brother for going out on a date.

Who in general, is one's brother? And why is Germany engaged in a "national debate"? The girl's relatives were interviewed after she was killed.

"Maybe he did it out of love," Moral's cousin Mujda said, when asked why Ahmad stabbed his sister that night. Mudja O. gave an extensive interview to SPIEGEL TV following the crime, discussing the stabbing and her cousin's possible motives for the killing. "We spoke to him and he told us, 'My sisters are my life. She should be put away before anything happens to her. The last sentence that we heard from him was that he loved his sister."

Mujda's comments are enough to wring blood from a stone and the phrase "he did it out of love" will doubtless figure prominently in the brother's trial, where he will be accused of the crime of simply being a Muslim. After all, rivers belong where they can ramble. Eagles belong where they can fly. Some have got to be where the stabbing is for free. Gotta have my corner of the sky. But before we give the brother a pass, Der Spiegel informs us that:

It was not the first time Ahmad, who worked in an auto parts store, had come to the attention of the police for violent acts, either. In police circles, he was known as a serial offender, constantly in trouble for beatings and even stabbings. Morsal had even tried to get charges pressed against her brother with the police after he repeatedly attacked her, but she later withdrew them.

Who then, was Morsal's brother, apart from Ahmad? The hoary old story of the Good Samaritan implies that there was no one who fit the bill.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn in Jericho and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

"The one who had mercy on him." What justice is there in a world, Dostoevsky asked, when a child can be left in a freezing outhouse by a cruel, sadistic father while the child beats his little fists against the icy, stinking door, crying "Jesus! Jesus"? Or where a donkey can be flogged by a drover until he staggers sideways to his death?

In all of Germany who was listening to that teenage girl's cries? There was 'honor' in the house that night. And not a bit of love, whatever Ahmad says.

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In the footsteps of John Kennedy

Those who have grown up believing that John Kennedy's finest moment was the Cuban Missile crisis will be disappointed to learn that he may have contributed to the face off: widely considered the moment the world came closest to Central Nuclear War, by telegraphing weakness by his eagerness to "talk" to his adversaries. A NYT op-ed co-authored by Nathan Thrall and James Wilkins recounts:

Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

The meeting was a disaster. Kennedy was prepared to be conciliatory. Khruschev was prepared to take the ball Kennedy wanted to hand him and run with it to the goal line.

Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.”

If that were all, Kennedy could have chalked it up to experience. But JFK had repeated Chamberlain's key mistake at Munich. He sent a signal of abject weakness to an aggressor held back only by fear. He walked into shark-infested water bleeding and ringing the dinner bell. And although the US was overwhelmingly stronger than Khruschev's Soviet Union, the wily old Bolshevik judged it safe to hustle the "very inexperienced, even immature" Leader of the Free World. The Soviet strongman struck while the going seemed good.

A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.

Yet the John Kennedy who faced off against Nikita Khruschev was a combat veteran of the Second World War, and presumably tougher than the veteran of combats with the Rev Jeremiah Wright. But why is it so important for the American President to have manifest the qualities of coolness, discipline and steadfastness? Why can't America simply elect a man who will greet every foreign dictator he meets with a pre-emptive apology at the door?

Because the US President is, as Winston Churchill once described Grand Fleet Commander Admiral John Jellicoe, 'the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon'. He is the one person who can manufacture a world crisis by manner alone. The question is what impression The People We've Been Waiting For will convey to America's enemies may be put to a test. And this time we may not be as lucky as Kennedy was during the Days of October.

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The valley of tears

Here are a couple of full-length comments on Half The Battle, which discussed the new fashion of arguing that the Allies and Hitler were morally equivalent in World War 2, or that World War 2 wasn't worth fighting. The first is from a well known blogger, who writes:

I'm surprised this article didn't mention Niall Ferguson's "let the Kaiser have Europe" argument concerning WWI...certainly the Germans were far more successful in terms of actually making local alliances in Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Ukraine in WWI than in WWII, when their genocidal (and kleptocratic) policies immediately led to resistance.

True, (lest we forget) Germany invaded Russia in 1941 with nearly a million allies - Bulgarians, Romanians, Italians, etc. But their generals in WWI, for all their tactical limitations, were far smarter, and far less cowed by their leadership to be so stupid as to repeat Napoleon's march. OKW even had a timetable showing them exactly when the Russian roads would turn to mud, and despaired when Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia which set back The Plan by six weeks - long enough to insure they would come up short right at the gates of Moscow, right where the German staff said they would, based on the same horse drawn logistics, panzers aside, that limited Napoleon's march...

Ferguson is correct to argue that a German dominated Mitteleuropa would have been far more benign than the racial thousand year reich...in any case, I'm of the school of thought that Buchanan is naive - without British and ultimately American "meddling", Europe post-1918 was destined to be dominated by either a totalitarian Germany or Russia....the trenches poisoned the well, and there was no going back.

While I'm not sure I buy the "Germans would have beaten Russia without any British-American involvement" - the proponderence of Land Lease didn't really kick in until after the decisive battle at Kursk, though Lend Lease certainlly made it possible for the Red Army to go on the offensive. Certainly the Germans would have ended up with a lot more territory in the East before a combination of guerilla warfare and a major arms race with the Anglo-American powers exhausted the Reich. For all the German engineering prowess, Nazi economic policies were a total train wreck - Hitler really could not have delayed war for another few years without the country running into the ground, he almost had to go to war when he did to steal enough to sustain the drive. When they occupied the East, the Germans did little more than steal from the same peasants who had hidden their grain during the resistance to Stalin's collectivization, with equally dismal results.

FYI, when I was in Moscow, I was very glad to see the Lend Lease section in the Memorial museum in Moscow - my fiancee couldn't believe that the Red Army rolled into Berlin on 300,000 American trucks...they didn't teach that in the Soviet history books.

My own comment is that the Russians may well have beaten Hitler on their own. But the only power which was certain to win, given unlimited ruthlessness, was the United States. Why? Because it would have the Atomic Bomb in 1945. Of course no one would have known this for sure in 1942. But in retrospect, Hitler was certainly doomed.

The other comment is from a US officer, who writes:

Caught your post on WWII revisionist histories. Interestingly, I read it while taking a break from a movie I was watching. I use TiVo to find old movies that fall under the categories of "Thriller" or "Alfred Hitchcock" for example. 1940's "The Mortal Storm" stars Jimmy Stewart, and chronicles -- in a 1940 Hollywood sort of way -- the change in civil society in a small university town in Germany in 1933. I think you are right, that there are so many people now who see war as the ultimate wrong. Thus, anyone who participates in it is to be condemned. Taken to its extreme, this leads to a funny sort of fascism: "pacifiscism" would perhaps be a name for it. It begs the question: would the "pacifiscists" ever get so worked up that they'd be willing to physically punish someone for participating in war? I think yes, though they would fell horrible afterwards. On another note: Since we've discussed books in the past, I should tell you: I'm 35 pages shy of finishing War and Peace. And last week I read Allen Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind." It was awesome.

The problem is living itself entails the burden of guilt. The debate over whether to "invade Burma" to force them to accept relief is an interesting example of how one is damned if one does and damned if one doesn't. It is impossible to simultaneously have saved the Jews from the ovens and to have kept one's hands unsullied by war.

The fact is that life is full of choose-the-lesser-evil situations. A person with advanced diabetes might be told by the doctor that either the leg comes off or he dies. Nobody wants the leg off. Not the doctor, nor the patient, nor anyone at all. But the choice remains. Limp or die.

History puts people in absurd positions. If war can create bizarre situations so can pacifism. We live in a world of mystery, suffering and death. The only consolation is that it is also a world of life, generosity and love. They are mixed together to form our existence. However ardently we wish to have just one and not the other there is no escape from human reality on this side of the river.

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Half the battle

Richard Bernstein reviews a spate of books arguing that World War, rather than being the "Good War", was in fact unnecessary. Or worse, that the Allies were as bad as Hitler. What Bernstein calls a "morally relativistic" position.

The two principle arguments which these books bring forward are a) war is hell, ergo every one who wages it is a devil; and there is no distinction between devils. The second argument against fighting World War 2 is more subtle. Things would have taken care of themselves if they had been left alone; or that it was so badly fought the outcome was worse than if it had never been fought at all. Bernstein is not convinced that World War 2 was an unnecessary trip, but he manfully describes the new revisionism dispassionately so that the reader may judge for himself.

"Baker shows, step by step, how an alliance dominated by leaders who were bigoted, far more opposed to Communism than to fascism, obsessed with arms sales and itching for a fight coerced the world into war," Mark Kurlansky, whose own books include cultural histories of codfish and salt, wrote in a review of "Human Smoke" that appeared in the entirely mainstream Los Angeles Times Book Review.

Similarly, another novelist, Colm Toibin, writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, highly praised Baker's work, calling it "a serious and conscientious contribution to the debate on pacifism."

More is coming along the anti-Churchillian lines. Patrick Buchanan, the conservative commentator and two-time presidential candidate, launches a sustained attack on Churchill in a new, lengthy book, "Churchill, Hitler, and 'The Unnecessary War': How Britain Lost the Empire and the West Lost the World," which will be out later this month.

Caroline Glick, in a recent Jerusalem Post article described the strange lure of the argument that unless something can be done perfectly, or at least cleverly, it ought not to be done at all, as epitomized by the views of H.L. Mencken, who maintained until the last that going up against Hitler was a big mistake.

In many ways, Obama and his allies call to mind the influential American newspaperman H.L. Mencken. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Mencken was the most influential writer in the US. He was an anti-Christian and anti-Semitic agnostic, a supporter of Germany during World War I, and a fierce opponent of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. He also opposed American participation in World War II.

In his biography of Mencken, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, Terry Teachout argues that the reason Mencken did not think it was worth fighting Hitler's Germany was because Mencken simply couldn't accept the existence of evil. He could see no moral distinction between Roosevelt, who he despised, and Adolf Hitler who he considered "a boob."

That's not to say that criticism of our received view of World War 2 is not without merit. It was the most brutal conflict in history and it was replete with blunders and incompetence. Taffy 3's crew being left to die in the water after fighting off Kurita's Central Force; the catastrophe at Slapton Sands; the tragic farce at Dieppe; the Army's irrational attachment to the Sherman tank; Peleilu; the surprise of the Battle of the Bulge. More men died at Iwo Jima than ... well, never mind.

These failures are very little in evidence in Steven Speilberg's productions, where World War 2 is raised in nobility (if it were possible to do so) in order to denigrate Vietnam and Iraq. The popular memory of the Second World War is a distorted one. The world yearly hangs its head in commemoration of Hiroshima. But it has forgotten Dresden or Manila, where civilians died in numbers almost as great or greater than in that doomed Japanese city.

But in the end, as Bernstein understands, that when the Best becomes the enemy of the Good it objectively becomes the ally of the Worst. Whatever Churchill and Roosevelt's shortcomings -- and they were many -- the alternatives were Hitler, Tojo and Stalin. History is always setting the world on fire and nailing our peckers to the floor. It always confronts us with hard decisions. It is an unfortunate fact that survival is purchased at a price. Everyone walks out the worse for wear.

Let's, in light of this trend, examine for a moment the idea that the United States should have stayed out of the European war. If that had happened, the Hitlerites surely would have conquered all of Europe, minus Britain. There would have been more mass murder of "inferior" peoples. There would also have been no morally tainted alliance with Stalin, no 40-year Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, no firebombings of German cities like Hamburg and Dresden, and no deaths among American soldiers.

Wellington expressed the idea forcefully in his dispatch from Waterloo. "Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."

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J'accuse!

Israel Matzav and Richard Landes have the first word on a story that is still only in the French papers. "Israel Radio's Paris correspondent Gil Michaeli has just reported that the French Court of Appeals has overturned the libel judgment against Phillipe Karsenty and has determined that Karsenty did not libel France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin when he reported that the 'death' of 12-year old Mohamed Al-Dura at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip in September 2000 may have been staged, and that it was unlikely that the death was caused by IDF soldiers."

Richard Landes writes, "More details to follow. But word from Paris is that the court dismissed charges against Philippe Karsenty today. Now we get to see how the French (and Western) MSM handle this. It’s a stunning victory for Karsenty and loss for Enderlin and France2 who initiated this case when they didn’t have to. In order for an appeals court to reverse a decision, they must have strong evidence to the contrary. The fact that they did indicates that their written decision will be very critical of France2. The implications of this decision are immense. We’ll be following up in the days, weeks and months to come."

For those who haven't been following the case, here is the Wikipedia summary of the events and the controversy that followed.

Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah (1988–2000 (aged 11–12); Arabic: محمد جمال الدرة‎), was a Palestinian boy who became an icon of the Second Intifada when he was filmed crouched behind his father during a violent clash between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip. The two were sheltering during a crossfire between troops at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outpost and Palestinian police and gunmen shooting from a number of locations.[1] After a burst of gunfire, the two slumped into prone positions. Al-Durrah was reported to have been killed and his father severely injured by Israeli gunfire. The footage, which was filmed by the French television station France 2, was re-broadcast around the world and produced international outrage against the Israeli army and the government.[2] Images from the footage became an iconic symbol of the Palestinian cause and al-Durrah himself was portrayed as an emblem of martyrdom; the footage was shown repeatedly on Arabic television channels and al-Durrah was publicly commemorated in a number of Arab countries.[3]

Although the Israeli army initially accepted responsibility for the shooting, a number of commentators later sought alternative explanations. They disputed the authenticity of the tape and questioned the honesty of the France 2 cameraman and reporter, the source of the fatal bullets,[1] whether Palestinian gunmen had shot him rather than the Israelis and the identity of the boy in the footage. Some speculated that the entire incident had been faked with no actual casualties.[4][5][6][1] Campaigners sought the reopening of the case but did not attract public support from the Israeli government or army. Instead, unofficial investigations were carried out that disputed the official account of the shooting; these conclusions were not publicly endorsed by the Israeli state.

In 2004 the affair became the subject of legal proceedings in France. The France 2 channel sued the commentator Philippe Karsenty, who alleged that the channel had faked the footage and demanded the firing of Charles Enderlin, the journalist who had produced the original September 30, 2000 report on the al-Durrah shooting. A French court ruled in favour of France 2 in 2006 and convicted Karsenty of libel, though he subsequently took the case to an appeal that is still ongoing. In February 2008 a report presented to the French court of appeal by an independent ballistics expert maintains that the death of Mohammed al-Dura could not have been the result of Israeli gunfire, corroborating claims that the shocking footage was doctored.

The al-Durrah trial and the obstinate effort efforts by Karsenty and Landes to get at the truth may with justice be compared to the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused and imprisoned for treason, following the Franco-German war, ultimately for being a Jew and therefore a scapegoat.

The writer Émile Zola can be credited to have exposed the affair to the general public in a famously incendiary open letter to President Félix Faure to which the French journalist and politician Georges Clemenceau had affixed the headline "J'accuse!" (I accuse!); it was published January 13, 1898 in the maiden issue of the newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn). It had the effect of a bomb—in the words of historian Barbara Tuchman, "it was one of the great commotions of history" . Émile Zola's intent was to force his own prosecution for libel so that the emerging facts of the Dreyfus case could be thoroughly aired. In this he succeeded. He was convicted, appealed, was retried, and, before hearing the result, fled to England on the advice of his counsel and friends, returning to Paris in June 1899 when he heard that Dreyfus's trial was to be reviewed.

It will be interesting to see what transpires next. If Karsenty's allegation that France 2 doctored the film to frame the IDF for a murder it did not commit are supported by any more forthcoming revelations then the subsequent riots and vengeance killings visited upon the Jews may be sheeted home to them.

Update

Philippe Karsenty makes his first statement, at Pajamas Media.

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The long count

Repeat after me. Moqtada al-Sadr is the uncrowned king of Iraq. Well, maybe not. The NYT reports: "Iraqi Troops Take Charge of Sadr City in Swift Push".

The long-awaited military operation, which took place without the involvement of American ground forces, was the first determined effort by the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to assert control over the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood, which has been a bastion of support for Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric. ...

No American ground forces accompanied the Iraqi troops, not even military advisers. But the Americans shared intelligence, coached the Iraqis during the planning and provided overhead reconnaissance throughout the operation. Still, the operation was very much an Iraqi plan.

Earlier efforts in Basra were marred by a failure to "shape" the battlefield; that is, clear it of civilians. Political considerations are uppermost in operations of this kind which means that inconvenience to the public is to be avoided when possible. This time, the Iraqis crept up on Sadr. The US military corralled the JAM forces with huge concrete fences to permit defeat in detail. Then the Iraqis pushed through.

The timing of Tuesday’s operation was kept secret. Late Monday night, the Americans removed slabs in the concrete wall they had erected to cordon the neighborhood, in order that Iraqi forces could pass through. American M-1 tanks guarded the gaps throughout the rest of the night until the offensive began. ...

All told, six Iraqi battalions advanced north on six parallel routes. At full strength, an Iraqi battalion consists of about 700 troops. Two Iraqi companies ventured even farther north to secure the Iman Ali Hospital and two other sites.

It's getting harder and harder to maintain the fiction that the Surge has succeeded only because Moqtada al-Sadr has magnanimously allowed it to flourish. Sadr earlier threatened all out war on US forces. Bill Roggio writes:

On April 20, Sadr threatened to conduct a third uprising, but later backed down from his threat, claiming it was directed only at US forces. The Maliki government has stood firm and said operations would continue until the Mahdi Army and other militias disarm and disband. On May 1, the Iraqi government sent a delegation to confront Iran on its involvement with the insurgency, but Sadr, who is currently in Iran, refused to meet with the Iraqi government representatives. On May 10, the Sadrist movement signed an agreement with the Iraqi government that would allow the Army and police to move into Sadr City unopposed.

While Sadr's day may be ending, he and his backers can still be saved by the bell. Moribund insurgencies have been given new life by political developments before.

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