Funmurphys: the Blog

Dark Watchman Vs. The Architect of Fear

Is this the day? Is this the beginning of the end? There is no time to wonder. No time to ask why is it happening, why is it finally happening. There is time only for fear, for the piercing pain of panic. Do we pray? Or do we merely run now and pray later? Will there be a later? Or is this the day?

This is the opening narration for the original Outer Limits episode "The Architects of Fear" where a group of scientists fake an alien invasion in an attempt to forestall escalating international tensions and a potential nuclear holocaust. We took in the Dark Knight over the weekend and this quote could have opened the third act of the film where the Joker is threatening the Gotham City with widespread destruction.

The Dark Knight is a dark film about a city fighting a terrorist. it's one of the grimmest movies I have seen in a while. It's not as downbeat as "Seconds" but certainly the "Empire Strikes Back" may be the last mass market film to end on so low a note. It's very well done but definitely a movie with adult themes.

Heath Ledger's performance is chilling. His Joker reminded me of Lewis Black on a rant (who they should consider now that this will be Ledger's last role). It becomes clear that the Joker is truly an agent of chaos, his real goal is for the citizens of Gotham City to lose their faith in orderly society ("the hidden conspiracy of goodwill") and descend into anomie. I viewed It as a cautionary tale for any free society fighting terrorism.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Freidrich Nietzsche Aphorism 146

Batman is challenged to drop his own code of ethics and use whatever means necessary. But in spite of horrific provocation is able to follow his internal compass.

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Juvenal

Which is normally translated as "But who will guard the guardians?" and Alan Moore interpreted as "Who Watches the Watchmen?" (more on that in a moment). To locate the Joker Batman engages in a massive invasion of privacy, but does so in a way that he has no personal control over the information gathered or the mechanism he created, allowing it to be destroyed when it's no longer needed. This is in the face of a villain who is killing any government official who tries to stand against him, and for good measure follows through on his threat to blow up a hospital.

Although I said it was a dark film about adult themes the boys both enjoyed it and we had a long discussion about civil liberty, and the difference between the police, the National Guard, and the Army. And the difference between the way that a free society fights criminals, affording them protection under the law, and enemy combatants who are committed to the destruction of a society.

"The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour."
Kenneth Rexroth in the "Introduction to Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You"

Ultimately, when confronted with the challenge to kill complete strangers or be killed themselves, Gotham's citizens--even its criminals--refrain.

The previews included the new Watchmen movie, which looked outstanding. If you haven't read the comic graphic novel, it's an extremely dense and intricately plotted exploration justice, vigilantism, and what it means to be a hero. My personal preference would have been for a 12 episode miniseries, with each episode an hour to 90 minutes long to do Watchmen justice, but that's probably harder to fund and monetize and it's taken more than two decades to bring it to the screen as is. It will probably get redone in 30 years as a hypertext movie to do it justice.

Alan Moore was apparently not aware of the Outer Limits episode "Architects of Fear" when he wrote Watchmen, but became aware of it as he and Dave Gibbons were collaborating on it, inserting a reference to it in the last issue.

We watched the the "Architects of Fear" again tonight, and I was surprised and how scary it was and how poignant the concluding narration remains:

Scarecrows and magic and other fatal fears do not bring people closer together. There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work, for self-respect and mutual love. If we can learn this from the mistake these frightened men made, then their mistake will not have been merely grotesque, it would at least have been a lesson. A lesson, at last, to be learned.

Don't Confuse Me With The Facts, My Mind Is Made Up

Here's the post I've been wanting to write all my life, but because of the lack of time, skill, ability, and seriousness I haven't been able to: Partisan Views Interfere with Rational Thinking.

You have to let your thinking be influenced by the best evidence you can find. Unfortunately, most people are unaccustomed to that way of thinking. Because of that, some liberals refuse to let go of the idea that Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs in the run up to the invasion, and some conservatives refuse to let go of the idea that Saddam really did have WMDs. You need to let go of both ideas. It is a truly liberating experience to let the evidence guide your thinking, and I encourage you to give it a try.

It builds from there, to lay bare the central conundrum of the invasion of Iraq - who lied. The conclusion shouldn't surprise you, but for some it will.

IRA vs. Islamicists

I'm not a Nobel prize winning author, and I never will be one, but then I have a certain grasp of facts. So for instance, when a nobel laureate says that the 9/11 attack wasn't as bad as the IRA's multi-decade terror campaign, I have to point out this is an apple, that is an orange. One is a single attack carried out by a terror ogranization, the other is a totality of terror campaign. Why not compare the number killed by al-Qaida world-wide to those killed in a single IRA attack?

A better comparison would be the IRA's multi-decade terror campaign, and al-Qaida's roughly decade long terror campaign. And then you should also compare what the aims of the two groups are, and then I think it becomes pretty clear that in a real comparison, the IRA is/were pikers compared to al-Qaida, and if you throw in the Islamicist movement compared to the IRA, there is simply no comparison in terms of numbers killed, tortured, lives disrupted or ruined, international scope, or total opposition to everything Doris Lessing holds dear as a member of Western society. None.

9/11 + 6

Six years ago America was attacked. It was not the first attack. It has not been the last attack carried out by al Qaida.

Some people just wish that it would all go away. It won't go away on its own.

We have to understand the threat, not our projections, prejudices, or preconceptions.

The war has split open a major, pre-existing fault in not just America, but Western Civilization. The war did not cause the fault, and the end of the war will not eliminate the fault. But with the fault wide open, the full strength of civilization cannot be brought to bear on our enemy.

We are fighting both persons and ideology, but once a person gives up that ideology there is no need to fight them; as long as they hold on to that ideology, however, they must be opposed.

President Bush's New Way Forward Address

I didn't catch the President's address in real time (I was out grocery shopping with the funWife), so I had to read it - which quite frankly I prefer anyway. I'm sick and tired of only getting excerpts from the media on just about everything because then its only about what they think is important. In otherwords, you get a mainstream liberal view, and only that view. So here it is:

Good evening. Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror -- and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement. We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together, and that as we trained Iraqi security forces we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq -- particularly in Baghdad -- overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's elections posed for their cause, and they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra -- in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq. So my national security team, military commanders, and diplomats conducted a comprehensive review. We consulted members of Congress from both parties, our allies abroad, and distinguished outside experts. We benefitted from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In our discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq. And one message came through loud and clear: Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences: In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we'll have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: "The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace -- and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks. In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq. We will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams. These teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen the moderates, and speed the transition to Iraqi self-reliance. And Secretary Rice will soon appoint a reconstruction coordinator in Baghdad to ensure better results for economic assistance being spent in Iraq.

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to keep up the pressure on the terrorists. America's men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan -- and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We're also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence-sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

We will use America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States need to understand that an American defeat in Iraq would create a new sanctuary for extremists and a strategic threat to their survival. These nations have a stake in a successful Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors, and they must step up their support for Iraq's unity government. We endorse the Iraqi government's call to finalize an International Compact that will bring new economic assistance in exchange for greater economic reform. And on Friday, Secretary Rice will leave for the region, to build support for Iraq and continue the urgent diplomacy required to help bring peace to the Middle East.

The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life. In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy, by advancing liberty across a troubled region. It is in the interests of the United States to stand with the brave men and women who are risking their lives to claim their freedom, and to help them as they work to raise up just and hopeful societies across the Middle East.

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists, or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?

The changes I have outlined tonight are aimed at ensuring the survival of a young democracy that is fighting for its life in a part of the world of enormous importance to American security. Let me be clear: The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are without conscience, and they will make the year ahead bloody and violent. Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue -- and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties. The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will.

Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world -- a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them -- and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren.

This new approach comes after consultations with Congress about the different courses we could take in Iraq. Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States, and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq's borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America's efforts in Baghdad -- or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal. If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.

In the days ahead, my national security team will fully brief Congress on our new strategy. If members have improvements that can be made, we will make them. If circumstances change, we will adjust. Honorable people have different views, and they will voice their criticisms. It is fair to hold our views up to scrutiny. And all involved have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed.

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas, where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.

In these dangerous times, the United States is blessed to have extraordinary and selfless men and women willing to step forward and defend us. These young Americans understand that our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary -- and that the advance of freedom is the calling of our time. They serve far from their families, who make the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table. They have watched their comrades give their lives to ensure our liberty. We mourn the loss of every fallen American -- and we owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.

Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed. Now America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can, and we will, prevail.

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

Its a nice compact address that lays out quite a lot. I think what is outlined is quite good, the question is one of follow through - will all of this actually happen? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, we need more than just plans. Our success will depend on how well we can turn plans into action.

I thought the heart of the speech, and the heart of our strategy on the War on Terror was this part: "In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy, by advancing liberty across a troubled region"

And don't forget the fact sheet to go with it.

Saddam Hussein Executed

Saddam Hussein was executed following a trial for just one of his mass murders (AKA crime against humanity). I call that a good start.

Iraq Vs. Darfur

I'm told on the one had we need to get out of Iraq because it's a civil war and civilians are dying, but on the other we need to get involved in Darfar to save the civilians who are dying in that civil war. So you tell me, what's the difference?

And if the reality of Iraq truly is a civil war, then our presence isn't causing the violence (because they are fighting against each other, and not us), but it may well help end it. Just as it would in Darfur.

Runaway

Hey, I thought everything would be different after the election. Instead, we get a real life version of The Black Knight.

Spot The Quagmire

A look at some statistics you'll never read in your local newspaper or see on your TV. Maybe that's why they don't deliver eyeballs like they used to.

Pope Benedict and Islam

Isn't it amazing? The way mobs across Dar al Islam seem to hang on the Pope's every word, even scrutinizing obscure addresses that get zero press in nominally Christian countries, unless Dar al Islam expresses its displeasure and the Western Press is forced to cover it. Considering what a wonderful address it is, I suppose I should thank them for raising such a stink that I got to read it.

Before we get to the meat of the address, I'm going to tackle the so-called offensive part of the address, which is being labled as a call for inter-faith dialogue. Well, Benedict calls it a cultural dialogue, and from his remarks he's going way beyond churchman from Christianity and Islam having their own hootenanny. It's a call for everybody to dialogue within a framework of reason, and he tells the story that got the the Moslem world so riled up to make this point: "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

Now, did he have to include

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"?

Good question, and let me bounce that right back at you, since Mohammed claimed that the Bible was garbled and he was just straightening out Jews and Christians, what did Mohammed bring that was new? What is your opinion of Mohammed's changes?

I'd also like to point out that the press doesn't seem to be able to quote properly, as this article on CNN has trouble:

The pope enraged Muslims in a speech a week ago in Germany quoting 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the Prophet Mohammed brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

They seemed to have missed the whole "that was new" part. I suppose I should chalk it up to them having very little understanding of either Christianity or Islam. The emporer's point is that Mohammed didn't add anything to the Bible that wasn't inhuman and evil. A fine distinction you might claim, but an important one since it's saying not that everything Mohammed preached was evil, only those places where he made changes. And even more oddly, isn't that exactly what you would expect a Christian to believe? I do, and if I didn't, I'd be a Muslim, not a Christian.

I'm not Catholic, and I have some theological bones to pick with Catholicism, but I have to say that at least the last two popes have been extraordinary leaders, each in their own way. I'm going to have to start reading the pope more since he's the only guy out there defending Western thought, practice,and culture these days.

I've excerpted the introduction and the conclusion to Pope Benedict's address and urge you to read the whole thing:

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

...

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

What more can I say?

Fluid Dynamics Meets Finite Element Modeling

Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation to study what happens when a airplane crashes into a building for use in studying the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. The researchers had earlier developed a simulation to investigate the 9/11 Pentagon attack.

"As a result of the Pentagon research, we have a better understanding of what happens when a tremendous mass of fluid such as fuel hits a solid object at high velocity," Sozen said. "We believe most of the structural damage from such aircraft collisions is caused by the mass of the fluid on the craft, which includes the fuel.

"Damage resulting solely from the metal fuselage, engines and other aircraft parts is not as great as that resulting from the mass of fluids on board. You could think of the aircraft as a sausage skin. Its mass is tiny compared to the plane's fluid contents."

...

Santiago Pujol, an assistant professor of civil engineering, worked with the researchers to develop experimental data to test the accuracy of the simulation by using an "impact simulator" to shoot 8-ounce beverage cans at high velocity at steel and concrete targets at Purdue's Bowen Laboratory. These data enabled the researchers to fine tune and validate the theoretical model for the simulation.

"We created a mathematical model of the beverage can and its fluid contents the same way we modeled the airplane, and then we tested our assumptions used to formulate the model by comparing the output from the model with that from the experiment," Sozen said.

Who says science can't be fun and relevant? I bet shooting the coke cans into steel and concrete targets was a blast -- the Mythbuster guys are so jealous. Personally, I'd worry about scaling up from 8oz coke cans to a plane weighing over 200,000 lbs, but that's just the engineer in me, but I understand the difficulty in trying to set up a test anywhere close to full scale. Of course, if they used beer cans, I can see that researchers might decide that enough data had been collected before they were all used.

OK, in all seriousness, this is some real science and engineering, and might even help with those people who claim it wasn't planes that brought down the towers or hit the Pentagon.

Islamic Reformation

I still hear people saying Islam needs a reformation (I suppose because they think that the reformation did wonders for the Christian world's politics). Callimachus at Winds of Change wrote a wonderful post on the subject a while back, You Say You Want a Reformation. While I don't disagree with his post, I think there is still more to be covered. First off, the title implies it but Callimachus doesn't follow up that a reformation really is a revolution, and not all, probably not even a majority, turn out well. The French revolution deposed a King and created an Emperor in his place. The Iranian revolution replaced a repressive and unpopular regime with a far more repressive and unpopular regime, and no doubt has made many Iranians understandably nervous about a second one any time soon. Any revolution carries the risk that things will only get worse.

Secondly, the protestant reformation didn't actually do what people who call for an Islamic revolution to do for Islam, namely get religion out of politics or change the nature of the religion. The reformed Catholic church was just as involved in politics afterwards, maybe moreso. Nor did it promote religious tolerance, as for instance the Spanish Inquisition was in part a response to the religous ferment at the start of the reformation. During the middle ages the Catholic church was an important political player for two reasons - it was the only universal institution in the Christian world, and it was a feuditory in the fuedal system - i.e a bishop was just another baron, and the Pope even was like a King in the Papal States. The wars that the reformation started did have the effect of strengthening the central state and ushering out the feudal system.

The Reformation did not fundamentally change the nature of Christianity, just it's organization. We can debate the proper role and balance of faith and works in the Christian life per the various Christian denominations, but they will agree upon what the faith should be in and what the works should be. Certainly the disagreements over theology that loom large within Christianity pale to insignificance as compared to differences with other religions.

Callimachus says that we are looking at an Islamic Reformation right now, and as he observes, not al religions are the same:

For another: There already was an Islamic Reformation. It happened while we were sleeping. The result is Wahhabi dominance, and Islamic Brotherhood, and Bin Laden. This is the Islamic Reformation. We're fighting it now.

...

When Christianity reforms -- when it goes back to its roots -- it tries to foreswear the world. When Islam goes back to its roots, it tries to conquer the world.

OK, I will disagree, Christianity does not foreswear the world. Instead it tries (with mixed success) to love people. Islam at root is a rule based religion, Christianity at root is a relationship based religion. And not only are we facing a current "Islamic Reformation", Islam had a failed but similar reformation at about the same time as the Christian one. From Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeil:

Economic difficulties at home and the cessation of victory abroad had serious implications for Moslem thought and self-confidence. As long as success had continued to crown Ottoman standards, the Moslems of the empire could and did argue that the favor Allah continued to shower upon Ottoman arms attested the correctness of their faith. When successes ceased, the inference was obvious. Clearly, Allay was displeased; and the reasons were not far to seek. From almost the beginning of Islam, pious and fanatical puritans had taught that all innovation that went beyond the practices attested in the Koran was displeasing to God. This was a doctrine that demanded reformation of existing Ottoman religious practices every bit as radical as anything dreamed of by the Calvinist reform program for Christianity. The two movements coincided closely in time, for in the final decades of the sixteenth century and throughout the first half of the seventeenth, so called faki preachers inflamed popular discontents, already acute for economic reasons, by demanding uncompromising adherence to Koranic models of piety. The faki attacked the official hierarchy of Ottoman Islam for criminal laxity in condoning innovations of all sorts. They attacked the dervish orders no less vigourously for the heterodoxy of their opinions and ritual practices.

Despite their passion and popular following, the faki did not prevail and were never able to seize political power. Their cultural influence was negative, inhibiting all buth the rich and privileged from exploring novelties, whether intellectual or otherwise, for which Koranic sanction was lacking. Even long established rational science -- imported into Moslem learning in Abbasid times -- withered away as subject of instructions in public institutions of higher learning. Symbolic of this transformation was the fact that in 1580 Sheik-ul-Islam ordered the destruction of the sultan's private observatory. This institution had been as well equipped as any in Europe; but when popular preachers interpreted the outbreak of plague in Istanbul as a sign of Allah's displeasure at the sultan's impious efforts to penetrate God's secrets by astrological science, the observatory (which was, in fact, inspired by astrological curiousity) had to go.

The book goes on to say that religiously questionable pursuits, such as medicine, were abandoned to Jews and Christians, and that higher education became the memorization of sacred texts and their commentaries. Sounds similar to the problem we're facing today. And it sounds like that movement sowed the seeds of todays movement as well by setting the Islamic world up for failure in succeeding centuries, causing once again an attempt to return to the glory days of Islam.

Resistance To Change

I picked up a book at the library about Venice -- yes, inspired by my recent trip there (someday, and soon, I will actually get you there in the European Vacation series) -- and I managed to get a good one, Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeill. Since it was written in 1974, no shadow of current political controversy touches it; yet I can't help but be struck by certain passages and their application to today:

Widely diverse reactions flow from encounters with new and superior cultural traits: successful borrowing or inventive adaptation within the receiving cultural context are relatively rare but of great historical importance because it is in such circumstances that additions to human skills and capacities are most likely to arise. Far more common, but historically less important, are the instances when men draw back, reaffirm their accustomed patterns of life, and reject the attractive novelty because it seems either unattainable or else threatening and dangerous. In such cases it may become necessary to reinforce accustomed ways in order to withstand the seductions inherent in exposure to what appears to be a superior foreign product. Cultural change, sometimes very far reaching, may thus paradoxically result from especially strenuous efforts to maintain the status quo.

I have to applaud the fact that in 1974 a professor could not just mention that one culture could have traits superior to another, but write a book that looked at such cultural flows.

But more importantly, is this what we are seeing in action today on the part of Islamofascist terrorists? An excessive reinforcement of accustomed ways? Is this why poverty has no correlation to becoming an Islamofascist terrorist, but exposure to the West does? Is it possible that the actual agents of 9/11, the Mohammed Attas and Hani Hanjours, as well as the mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed all of whom spent time living in the United States, only had their murderous intent reinforced, possibly created, by such direct exposure to a different culture.

Of course, the actions of al-Qaida et al. aren't directly entirely, or even primarily, at the West. Far more Iraqi's have been killed by al-Qaida operatives than westerners. Are we seeing extra strenuous efforts to maintain a status quo, or at least the illusion of one? While al-Qaida dreams of defeating the west, they also dream of ruling the Islamic world and imposing their brand of Islam on it. And to them, their Islam is the original, pure, untainted by foreigners Islam, the idea being to return to the status quo ante pernicious western influence.

Is then what we are experiencing a fight by a part of the Islamic culture against both the rest of the Islamic culture and the West over how much Islamic culture should be influenced by the West?

Vacation Almost Collides With Terror Plot

I just returned from Europe yesterday, so thank you, Great Britain. We sure picked the right day to return home -- only turbulence to contend with.

The Murphy family spent a couple of weeks there, and we flew through Heathrow on our way over to Switzerland. We flew through Brussels on our way back. Security in Brussels was really tight -- flights to America were from one end of a terminal which was blocked off and had extra security - as I told my daughter, I've had less intrusive medical exams than that security screening. We were split into two groups, with my wife and son go through together, and my daughter and I together. My bottle of Pepto-Bismol (never leave home without it) was in my son's backpack, and boy were they interested in it. Now I know why since the terrorists were planing to use liquid explosives.

Hamdan Vs. Rumsfeld Decision

The Supreme Court has ruled that the United States can't try al-Qaida prisoners with the planned special military tribunals because as constituted certain provisions of those tribunals conflict with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and with treaty provisions of the Geneva Convention.

You can read the full text of the decision here, along with commentary here.

What the decision doesn't mean is that the detainies are about to be released, nor does it mean that they can't be tried - they just can't be tried by the special military tribunals that were set up. As to what effect this has in the overall war on Terror, I guess that depends on how many people this effects. Are there many new prisoners transferred to Gitmo? Will instead they be kept in Iraq and Afganistan instead, and will this cause fewer prisoners to be taken as soldiers wonder "what's the point"?

So at this point the court ruling looks like we can hold these people as ordinary POWs until the end of the war -- which technically will never end since the odds of us ever signing a peace treaty with al-Qaeda are practically nil (from both sides, I might add). So we have the odd outcome that we can impose a sentance of life imprisonment without parole (the highest penalty in may countries) without any trial whatsoever, yet we can't impose any lesser penalty without going through courts neither designed nor equipped to handle their special cases.

Was the case wrongly decided? Well, that all depends, doesn't it. There are times, like these, when law and policy become so intermixed that it's hard to separate one from the other. So let's just examine what we want out of trials: The guilty punished, the innocent freed, both accomplished in the minimum time required. Would that have been accomplished with the special tribunals? Would Federal or Courts Martia do a better or worse job?

So what's the real problem with the ruling? Like all matters of the law, it doesn't take into account reality. The problem is, we are dealing with an enemy like no other in the sense that we are not fighting a war against another nation, another government. It has the organization of a crime syndicate with the aims of a government or national movement. We are fighting against a different kind of organization, but we are trying to apply the rules set up to fight old style enemies. Now I don't think we need to throw everything out the window and start over, because our aims haven't changed, just the circumstances. And so I think the special tribunals represented a good faith effort to deliver justice under new circumstances, circumstances that older courts probably will have a hard time with.

The problem is what standard of proof, what rules of evidence are we going to use. In war time, we empower young men to make snap decisions about life and death with oversight that takes into account the difficult nature of such decisions. We provide them with ROE - Rules of Engagement- that they are to be guided by in making such decisions. Those ROE vary depending on the exact circumstances of any deployment. The ROE that normal courts operate under never vary. And for good reason - which is why it's better to set up something new that can make a change to a new reality, than have existing courts try to deal with cases they are ill equipped to handle.

That Would Be A Good Thing

I suppose it was a fitting end for a mass murderer who used, among other techniques, car bombs and IEDs to kill: blown up by a bomb. A pair of them actually (JDAMs, I assume). Yes, Abu Musab al Zarqawi is dead, killed by a pair of 500 pound bombs dropped by an F-16 in a little town called Hib Hib near Baqubah, Iraq. His death was the result of a tip or tips as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malik announced that the 25 million dollar bounty would be paid. Apparently Jordan intellegence was able to provide the rough location and locals provided the exact location.

The Prime Minister also completed his cabinet, as three ministers were approved by parliament and sworn in: ministers of Defense, National Security, and Interior.

Another step in the long road to victory.

A Metric For Victory?

Now that's what I call a provocative headline: Al Qaida Admits Defeat:

Many Moslems still support terrorism, just not in their neighborhood. But after watching what happened in Iraq and Saudi Arabia since 2003, Moslems can no longer be assured that, once unleashed, Islamic terrorism will only be carried out somewhere else. Moreover, years of al Qaeda boasting have failed the reality check. No amount of hot air and spin will change the fact that al Qaeda has accomplished none of its goals, and has gotten lots of Moslems killed in the process.

What Strategy Page is talking about is that the Islamic world as a whole no longer supports terrorism as a solution to their problems, even though some individual Moslems do.

As far as admitting defeat, that doesn't mean the fightings over though. And looking at WWII, the casualties went up as the war went on. Both the US and Japan took far more casualties after Midway than before, but at that point the handwriting was on the wall for the Japanese.

Unity Takes Time

Cori doesn't seem to think that it's right for a columnist at the paper to break news while the reporters sit on their hands. Don't read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch then, where columnists routinely break news that their reporters show little interest or ability to cover.

But what's more important is what's actually reported -- the progress in the talks between the political parties in Iraq to forge a government:

The political agreements are fragile, and they will be blown away if the factions can't form a government soon to put them in practice. Meanwhile, beyond the Green Zone, Iraqis are still being slaughtered every day in the streets. But given where Iraq was six months ago -- when Sunni and Shiite leaders were barely talking -- their agreement on the framework for a unity government is important. These negotiations may not succeed, but they are not a fairy-tale fantasy, as some critics argue.

We Americans are an impatient lot. From my meagre experiences abroad, time takes on a different meaning once you leave the country.

I'm wondering if that chick at the AP will take Mr. Ignatius to task for the "as some critics argue" line. OK, that was a rhetorical device because I'm not wondering at all, since she didn't note that President Bush was following the lead of the reporting about him which is routinely larded up with "some critics claim" constructions without ever naming the critics.

Are All Creeds Created Equal?

You just have to love a title like "Jesus and the Duke", and the post itself doesn't disappoint after such a strong lead. Andrew Klavan looks at creeds, honor killings, and how they relate to Elizabeth Smart. Yes, there is a difference in creeds, and what make the United States a rare country is that it a nation built on a creed and not ethnicity. Mr. Klavan writes:

I couldn’t help reflecting that if Elizabeth had been the child of Islamic hardliners, her welcome home might not have been quite as loving as it was.

Now the Mormons and every other group have their extremists, but they’re not accepted by our society as they are virtually throughout the Muslim world. To the vast majority of Americans, the idea of punishing, let alone murdering, a raped child is so appalling that language fails. And there can be no multicultural dithering about it: our way is better than their way, as civilization is better than savagery, as love is better than hate. But, of course, our superiority isn’t a matter of individuals, it’s a matter of ideas. The Islamofascist’s creed is a bad one; the American creed is not.

Which brings me at last to the films of John Wayne and the ministry of Jesus Christ. I mean, if these are not the twin pillars our nation rests on, man, I don’t know what those pillars would be. Thus my texts for today’s sermon, brothers and sisters, are John 8: 3-11 and John Ford’s The Searchers.

Not just anybody who can weave the Bible and John Wayne together. I might have gone with Romans 12:19 myself.

I wonder what text Mr. Klavan would choose to go with True Grit?

Dude, Where's My End?

The Shield of Achilles posits that the story of the 20th century was the struggle between fascism, communism, and parliamentarianism in a an epochal war that lasted from 1914 to 1990. [Full disclosure - I haven't made it all the way through the book yet, but what I've read so far is quite interesting if overlong.] It was the vanquishing of fascism and communism during this war that led to the famous claim by Francis Fukuyama that we had arrived at "The End of History". And yet, here we are, locked in another war that looks to be both long and epochal with fascists.

And the parliamentarian nations that triumphed have been thoroughly infected by communism - which is why it's perfectly acceptable to proclaim yourself as a communist at almost any university in the Western world (for instance, I was taught Econ 101 by prof Gurley who made no bones about being a communist), but not proclaim yourself a fascist. It is considered rude to mention the fact that communists are as deadly and inimical to individual liberty as fascists (the communists were able to kill more -- 100 million -- in the last century mainly because they lasted longer in power because the fascists attacked the parliamentarians first) in elite circles.

Rather than an end, we got a brief pause before once again the struggle between divergent societal organizational models resumed; but at least by winning the last war, parliamentarianism is in a far stronger position than the last time and can obtain victory mainly by summoning the will to win backed by the confidence in its own rightness. But our elites, wedded to communism, lack that will and confidence and are hurting, not helping, the war effort -- not by taking an active role against, but by sitting out -- pretending that there isn't a war on, or at least not a real one.

The View from Kurdistan

Michael Totten is writing about his trip to Northern Iraq. His first installment covers his arrival in Irbil via a direct flight from Beirut.

Better him than me.

File Under Just Plain Stupid

I know that there are those who think the title sums up this entire blog, but for a change I'm not being self-depreciating. Actually, the title could just have been only the truth can be this bizarre or something similar and been just as accurate.

Michael Yon [full disclosure, I've hit his tip jar once] is a freelance reporter who as ex-special forces actually understands what he's reporting about in a war zone. And he's unabashedly pro-soldier. He took one of the most famous pictures of the war so far, an American soldier cradling a dying Iraqi child following a terrorist attack. You'd think the Army would play nice with him, but you'd be wrong. The trouble is that the Army distributed his photo as if it were theirs, which cost him a chunk of change and respect. When he complained to the army about it and asks for recompense, they told him, I kid you not, that the liability waver he signed in order to be imbedded -- which basically said if anything happened to him, he knew the risks going in and it wasn't the Army's fault -- covered any harm he suffered from the Army distributing his photo, and that furthermore by uploading it to a government server he had an implied license agreement that the Army could do whatever they wanted with it. There's no call to insult the man after you rip him off.

Now if that weren't weird enough, Yon has asked Senator Ted Kennedy to help him with the matter (Yon's current home base is Massachusetts). Talk about the odd couple.

UPDATE: The Army comes to it's senses -- OK, the dispute got the attention of General Brooks (the ultra smooth briefer of CENTCOM in the high tech media center in Qatar back during the invasion phase of OIF) who had a competent lawyer examine the dispute. So now everybody's happy, and Senator Kennedy can leave his pants off for another night of carousing instead of working late on Mr. Yon's complaint. Thanks to Kevin at Pundit Review for the heads up.

You Go George

I've already explained my thoughts on the whole "domestic spying" controversy - it isn't domestic, and why my phone/email communications can't be searched by a US government agent without a warrant while crossing a border yet I and my property can be is beyond me.

But Tom Maguire does his usual treatment of subjects that fascinate him (he's still even posting on the Plame kerfuffle, bless his heart) which means he's thorough (but gentle, as a blogger should be). So we have not just one post, not just two posts, but three whole posts about it. He gives a hypothetical situation on why even the 72 hour retroactive warrent may not be good enough - and frankly why the whole framework of FISA may simply be OBT (Overtaken By Technology) and rendered obsolete. He takes us through the thoughts of the Democrats who were briefed (including the New York Times - you know, the media wing of the Mediacratic party of which the Democrats are the political wing (kind of like the IRA and Sinn Fein, but different because we don't know which side of the media/democrats is calling the shots and we know the IRA is calling the shots (pun not intended and regretted)) and concludes:

Possible unifying answer - Harman, Rockefeller, and the editors of the Times are all dupes. Uh huh. Another possible answer is, they know enough about this program to know that there might still be some secrets there.

Folks who think that the catalog of Atrios's ignorance and the limits of his imagination define the boundaries of human endeavor will remain bemused by his question. For myself, I am convinced that I don't know enough about this program to have any solid idea what security issues might be involved, so I am relying on the good, if unsteady, judgments of elected representatives such as Harman and Rockefeller.

It's clear from the Brit Hume interview with Rep. Harman that Tom links to that she thinks that there are still secrets there:

HUME: You say it's basically foreign. Were you not made aware individuals within the United States' conversations with the suspected terrorists overseas were part of the program?

HARMAN: It's a classified program, so I can't discuss what I was made aware of. But let me say...

HUME: Well, I know, but the...

HARMAN: No.

HUME: ... toothpaste is out of the tube...

HARMAN: ... it was made clear to me -- no...

HUME: ... when it's known that that's the case.

HARMAN: But it was made clear to me that conversations between Americans in America were not part of the program and require -- and I think they do -- a court warrant in order to eavesdrop on them.

And that's been a point of confusion, because some of the press articles allege that this is a so-called, as you said, domestic surveillance program. That's not what I believe it is.

HUME: Well, all right. So in other words, your belief is that this was indeed a case of Americans being picked up, perhaps within the United States, in discussions with people overseas.

HARMAN: Well, let's just leave your comment there. I really don't want to confirm what...

HUME: All right.

No Brit, the toothpaste isn't all out of the tube, and even if it were, the information hasn't been declassified yet. The New York Times may rule the Mediacrats, but they don't have the power to declassify (something that Joe Wilson forgot when he blew the cover off his wife being a covert operative).

And it's nice to know that Rep. Harman and I agree that this isn't domestic surveillance, but foreign and international if need be.

The same papers that demand we search every cargo container entering the US and fault the administration for moving too slowly here are the very ones who are attacking them for listening in on foreign and international calls without a judge's approval. Again, what gives phone calls such privileges? What makes a judge so special? Is a judge more sober than members of Congress?

Frankly, it's nice to know the Bush administration was on the ball with this one. And I hope they catch the SOB who leaked and comprimised an ongoing and effective covert intellegence operation in wartime - a war that is has been and continues to be fought partly on American soil. Sometimes I think some people forget that.

Nobody Here But An NSA Agent

Back in the day when phone companies ruled (you know, when a hip movie like The President's Analyst could cast "The Phone Company" as the ultimate villain) there was a clear division in phone calls - domestic (between two phones in the same United States), and international (between a phone in the US and a phone in a different country). Yet I keep reading in the news about how the NSA is conducting domestic spying on international calls -- you know, between a phone in the US and a phone in a different country. I wonder if they use a TARDIS to accomplish that trick? While I can't read minds, I'm inclined to think such a mischaracterization is a deliberate attempt to sway your opinion.

Now if you're not a legal expert (just like me) there are a lot of competing claims - generally along partisan lines with the left claiming malfeasence and the right claiming prudence. The legal experts have shown more heat than light on the issue, and it seems to me you can pick your answer by picking your legal beagle.

But I'm a scientist masquarading as an Engineer, so I asked my self, what would Albert do? Why, a thought experiment of course! But in place of a phone call between two countries, I place myself, a US citizen, on a trip between two countries. And since I have indeed traveled internationally (before the War on Terror), between a variety of countries, it's a well grounded thought experiment. On the outbound leg, I leave the United States, and the only check is by the airlines to make sure I have a passport and if required in the destination country a valid visa. They do this because if I arrive without such necessities, they have to send me back at their own expense. When I arrive at my destination, however, I am subject to not just questioning, but search of not just my belongings, but my person. Even local military escort, which was able to take us to the head of the line in Pakistan, was unable to circumvent the searching of our luggage. In Europe, I received the most scrutiny in England (because of my name), and the least in Switzerland. The return, however, is different than the departure, as despite the fact I'm a US citizen on US soil, I am once again subject to questions, and to the search, not only of my property, but of my person, at the discression of a US government employee, and without a warrant. I got the most thorough going over upon my returns from Pakistan and the most perfunctory from Canada.

So I'm supposed to get excited because the NSA is listening into international phone calls without a warrant, but there is no excitement over my warrentless search when I physically travel internationally? So why are my phone calls more priveleged than me? Well, we have a pretty good understanding how helpful such border control can be when it comes to the physical, but some people don't seem to see that when it comes to communications.

Look, I'm not happy about such searches (especially when I'm going through them, and I'll never forget the asshole agent in Hawaii) but I understand they occur simply because it's the only way to enforce the law. It's not because of the badness of government, but the badness of people.

Non Verbal Communication

What's the best way to declare you're not an Islamofascist? Wafah Doufar, Osama Bin Laden's American niece thinks that showing a lot of skin says it best. Maybe there is something to that whole protest babe thing after all.

Some Things Will Never Change

Why is the media doing such a bad job in Iraq? Don't take my word for it, don't take our soldier's word for it, take a journalist's word for it:

Think about everything you’ve heard about the conditions in Iraq, the role of U.S. forces, the multi-layered complexities of the war.

Then think again.

I’m a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers don’t always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming.

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head.

The spirit of Baghdad Bob lives on.

Via Small Dead Animals.

And Don't It Feel Good

Yesterday was another great day for Iraq -- an estimated 70% of registered voters braved long lines and possible violence to vote. One vote (or even increasing participation over three votes as has been seen) isn't the final step of the march to democracy. But it is a significant milestone of that march. The hardest test of all isn't coming out to vote, but the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another as a result of an election. The United States didn't face this test until 1800 and the election of Thomas Jefferson - 24 years after he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

It is often said that you can't impose democracy by force which seems to me a total misread of the typical situtation. Normally, you have to use force to stop those who seek to suppress democracy - the British in 1776, Hitler & Tojo in 1941, Saddam in 2003. And force can be required to keep a country democratic, from opponents both internal and external. But truly representative government is popular enough that you don't have to impose it by force, even in cases like the United States where people nearly universally are willing to abide by results of elections they don't even bother to vote in. Is anybody forcing the Iraqi's to vote? Or are they voting because they see representative government as a solution to some of their most pressing problems?

I've maintained all along that the war in Iraq will be won or lost (from the American point of view) by the Iraqi's themselves. Our job was to provide enough security, aid, advice, and yes, encouragement so that the people of Iraq could set up their own democratic government and security forces that they could defeat the insurgents themselves. We could not, nor should we try, to obliterate the insurgancy, set up a fully functioning democratic country in Iraq, and then turn all this over to Iraqi's who had had not part up until then. There is no such thing as a turnkey country. If we had, it would have collapsed like a house of cards as soon as we left.

Curse Missed Opportunities

Thank a soldier week is coming next week -- don't miss it.

What's Wrong With This Picture

You're a bloody dictator finally deposed and in the dock for your horrific crimes. So what do you do? Why, you naturally go for the insanity defense: You retain Ramsey Clark as one of your attorneys, you rant and rave in court at every opportunity, and make claims like you won't show up in court because you think the trial is unfair."

Yes its a circus, but at the end of it we have the certainty that Saddam will hang, unlike the circus that surrounds Milosevic.

You Can't Handle The Truth

So, President Bush has finally decided to go after those Democrats who are smearing him by claming he lied or mislead about the intellegence on Iraq in order to drum up support for the war. It will be an uphill battle because not only will he have to contend with the Democrats, but the news media as well. The Democrats aren't that formidable a foe, but the news media is much, much smoother at lies and misrepresentations. Good luck Mr. President, you'll need it.

Slimeball Is More Like It

Last night when my wife and I were watching the news, Larry Connors reported the story I highlighted yesterday of the bombmaker killed in Indonesia. Thankfully he left out the speculation about maybe he was planning more attacks, but Larry did call Bin Husen "the mastermind" of the Bali nightclub attacks. My wife had a similar reaction to Jason's: "Mastermind? What kind of mastermind does it take to put some bombs in a nightclub and blow the place up and kill a bunch of people?"

The Best Darn Talking Points Period

Speaking of policy disputes versus morality plays, Brent Scowcroft criticized Bush administration policy and the Bush administration responded. If you believe Joe Klein, and I don't, the Bush administration responded by sending out "talking points about how to attack Brent Scowcroft" based on a claim by a source who deleted the email before he read it. Well, as Jim Taranto points out: "He [Klein] "reports" that the White House is trying to "destroy" Scowcroft, based on an anonymous source's description of an e-mail that not only Klein but the source himself hasn't read! It's such a hilariously inept bit of journalism..." The sad thing is that as we've seen, this is isn't inept journalism, this is SOP for journalism, and the main reason I don't get excited over claims of malfeasance reported by the media until I can see the primary documents with my own two eyes.

Like a lot of people who have read the talking points, I find them both civil and cogent, and frankly the right way to approach a policy dispute. I reprint them here from Elephants in Academia:

1. Bernard Lewis is perhaps our greatest living historian on the Middle East.

2. Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" was accurate, courageous, and important, as we learned from (among others) Soviet dissidents.

3. The assertion that we have had "fifty years of peace" in the Middle East is an odd one, if you consider (a) America's 1991 war against Iraq (which General Scowcroft favored); (b) the Iraq-Iran war (in which there were a million casualties; (c) the conflict in the early 1970s between Jordan and the Palestinians; (d) the civil war in Lebanon; (e) the four wars between Israel and Arab nations; and (f) the attacks of September 11, 2001 (which was carried out by Islamic radicals who emerged from the broader Middle East).

In some ways this point underscores the enormous difference between the worldview of Mr. Scowcroft and those in the Bush Administration. Mr. Scowcroft seems to believe that the status quo in the Middle East is tolerable, maybe even preferable; we do not. The President believes that if the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and anger and violence for export. In the words of President Bush, "In the past, [we] have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold."

4. The "bad guys" -- the most ruthless among us -- do not "always" rise to the top. In fact in many elections - in Spain and Portugal, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the Czech Republic and Romania, South Africa and the Philippines, Indonesia and Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq, and many more - we have seen enormous strides toward freedom. For example, the Western Hemisphere has transformed itself over the last two decades from a region dominated by repressive, authoritarian regimes to one in which the overwhelming number of countries there have democratically-elected governments and growing civil societies.

It's also worth bearing in mind that some pretty bad guys (like Saddam Hussein) "win elections" in authoritarian and totalitarian societies. Indeed, non-democracies make it far easier for the "bad guys" to prevail than is the case with democracies. Is it the supposition of Mr. Scowcroft that from a historical point of view dictatorships have a better record than democracies? Or that because democratic elections don't always turn out well they can never turn out well? Or that because democratic elections don't always turn out well we should prefer authoritarian and totalitarian regimes? The habit of mind that sees all the weaknesses in democracy and all the "strengths" in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is, well, curious.

5. Mr. Scowcroft insists we will not "democratize" Iraq and that "in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful." Except that in the last two-and-a-half years Iraq has moved from tyranny, to liberation, to national elections, to the writing of a constitution, to the passage of a constitution. By any standard or precedent of history, Iraq has made incredible political progress. Iraq still faces challenges, including a ruthless insurgency -- but there is no question that the people of Iraq long for democracy and for victory over the insurgency.

The charge that the way we have sought to bring democracy to Iraq is "you invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize" is itself deeply misleading. Mr. Scowcroft's invasion was in fact a liberation -- and overthrowing one of the worst tyrannies in modern times and replacing it with free elections is a good start on the pathway to liberty. And of course this year we have also seen political progress -- not perfection, but progress -- in Kuwait, Egypt, and among the Palestinians.

6. The notion that democratic progress in Lebanon is "unrelated" to the war in Iraq is undermined by what the Lebanese themselves have told us. To take just one example, here are the words of Walid Jumblatt, who was once a harsh critic of American policy: "'It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

7. Mr. Scowcroft seems to wish that Syria were still ruling Lebanon with an iron fist. Brutal repression may be;wicked -- but (Scowcroft seems to believe) it does keep a lid on "sectarian emotions."

8. Sometimes when given a chance, we humans don't screw up. Sometimes ;human beings reach for, and (even if imperfectly) attain, nobility and the advancement of freedom and human dignity.Which seems to me to be an argument against cynicism and despair -- to say nothing of repression and tyranny. Let the debate proceed.

I suppose too many people don't know who to have a civil debate, so they have to resort to name calling and lying.

Policy Dispute or Morality Play?

There are two things I find very offensive about the claim that the Bush administration lied about WMD just so that we could go to war - it insults my intellegence as it is so obviously wrong to anyone who has the slightest ability to remember, or absent that, to anyone who takes the slightest time to investigate; and it takes a straightforward policy dispute (whether or not to to to war) and turns it into a morality play (Bush lied and people died!).

And in this fantasy, it's Joe Wilson who exposed the administration. Let's examine the circumstances around Joe Wilson's trip and the claim that, for instance, the administration either made stuff up out of whole cloth or at least leaned on intellegence agencies to provide intel like the White House wanted. The VP and his staff (i.e. Scooter Libby) took a strong interest in intellegence and even visited CIA headquarters a few times. Thus the claims that the VP pressured the CIA to tell him stories he wanted to hear.

Wilson's trip starts, according to the CIA, when Vice President Cheney indicated an interest during his daily CIA brief in more information about a report that Saddam tried to buy Uranium from Niger. So the CIA sends former Ambassador Wilson at the recommendation of his wife to check the story out. He spends some time in Niger talking to old friends, briefs our Ambassador there about his findings, returns home and briefs the CIA about his findings. What did he find in Niger? He found that indeed, the Iraqi's in 1999 had gone to Niger and made overtures that the Nigerians interpreted as a desire to buy uranium, but that the Nigerians didn't sell any, and couldn't anyway because of monitoring. Did the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, immediately alert the Vice President that in fact they had confirmed the Iraqi's tried to buy uranium from Niger? No, the CIA concluded that the report was inconclusive because all Wilson did was talk to contacts who knew he was reporting to the US government (which they knew he did before he left) and handled the report routinely without informing the White House of it's contents. Later on Ambassador Wilson would go on to lie or mislead about almost every aspect of his trip, his findings especially, in a successful attempt to make people believe that the White House lied about WMD, when the only liar was Joe Wilson.

So what does the uncontested part of Wilson's trip tell us? If the CIA felt any pressure to say what the White House wanted, they sure as hell didn't act like it. Here we have the Vice President show an interest in a report about WMD, and the CIA went out of their way to investigate in such a way as to generate a report they could ignore while telling the White House if asked that they had indeed investigated but the results were inconclusive even if, as it happened, they turned up evidence that Iraq did try to obtain uranium from Africa.

Real Journalism

Imagine my surprise to read this article in my paper on Sunday which completely bebunks the stories told by an OIF veteran named Jimmy Massey.

Among his claims:

Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.

Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.

A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.
...
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

Gateway Pundit is all over this and thinks Mr Massey should be behind bars; I think he should be in a mental institution getting the help he obviously needs (along with his partner in madness, Cindy Sheehan.)

And not content with that, Mr. Ron Harris then goes on to ask "Why did the press swallow Massey's stories?" The quotes Mr. Harris presents do not paint a pretty picture of the press:

Media outlets throughout the world have reported Jimmy Massey's claims of war crimes, frequently without ever seeking to verify them.

For instance, no one ever called any of the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's battalion to ask him or her about his claims.

The Associated Press, which serves more than 8,500 newspaper, radio and television stations worldwide, wrote three stories about Massey, including an interview with him in October about his new book.

But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey's unit. Nessman wrote more than 30 stories about the unit from the beginning of the war until April 15, after Baghdad had fallen.

Jack Stokes, a spokesman for the AP, said he didn't know why the reporters didn't talk to Nessman, nor could he explain why the AP ran stories without seeking a response from the Marine Corps. The organization also refused to allow Nessman to be interviewed for this story.

How typical -- stonewall when called on shoddy journalism.

While the story never comes to a conclusion about why didn't the press checkout his stories, I'll give you my answer - in some cases they wanted to believe them, and in other cases they just never bother. I don't know which is worse, but check out more quotes from the story:

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.
"I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today," he said.

Mr. Holwerk, please don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining. What steps have you specifically taken so this doesn't happen again? Yes, no doubt today, after having been alerted, you wouldn't run Mr. Massey's ravings without the slightest scrutiny like you did the last time, but what about other stories?

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper's story about Massey could have "benefited from some additional reporting." But he didn't necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

The paper printed a story in which Massey reportedly told an audience how he and other Marines killed peaceful demonstrators. There was no response from the Marine Corps or any other evidence to back Massey's claims.

Smith said that, unfortunately, that is the nature of the newspaper business.

"You could take any day's newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test," he said.

"Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I'm saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television."

Mr Smith, I have to credit you with telling it like it is, and in the immortal words of Latigo Smith, "the Truth hurts", but how do you look at yourself in the mirror every morning while willingly and knowingly participating in a gigantic fraud on the American people. Yes, fraud. We pay newspapars to tell us the facts and provide all sides to a story, and here you are telling us that what we get for our money is a collection of fairy tales that on a good day might concievably have some ever so slight basis in fact, but you don't really have any idea.

Michael Parks sees it differently. He is the director of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism and formerly the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Parks also reviewed stories written about Massey.

"A reporter's obligation is to check the allegation, to seek comment from the organization that's accused," said Parks, a Pulitzer Prize winner who covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "They can't let allegations lie on the table, unchecked or unchallenged. When they don't do that, it's a clear disservice to the reader."

Dear Mr. Parks, it isn't a disservice to the reader, its fraud. When the press claims one to fact check but doesn't, it's fraud. And this happens over, and over, and over.

"We're not stenographers, we're journalists," Dixon [former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and currently chairman of the Howard University Department of Journalism] said. "What separates journalism from other forms of writing is that we practice the craft of verification. By not doing that, that's saying they're abdicating any responsibility from exercising news judgment. ... As a journalist, you want to put accurate information before the public so they can make opinions and decisions based on accurate information. When something like this happens, harm is done, the truth suffers."

Amen Brother Dixon, Amen. Now if you can make that teaching stick with your students, I'll be much obliged to you.

My own theory on why Mr. Harris wrote two such take-no-prisoners articles: His sense of truth was offended by what happened. He was one of the imbedded reporters with the marine unit that Mr. Massey was maligning and as such he was a witness to the truth. And so he wrote two articles, one that looked at the liar, and the other that looked at those who uncritically spread the lies, and he discharged his duty to the truth.

Mr Harris and the Post delivered real journalism, powerfully delivered in two short articles. And Mr. Arnie Robbins, new editor in chief of the Post, that's something that I, and plenty others who also want real journalism, are willing to pay for, whatever the format.

Misplaced Concern

There are times when I read the papers and I think I must be insane. It seems that a lot of people are worried about the fairness of Saddam's trial. Fairness? Is there really some question of his guilt? This is a guy who started out as a leg breaker for the Baathists, graduated to assassin, took over by killing his rivals and associates, and never hesitated to kill, torture, or maim anyone. He stayed in power not through the ballot box, but throught the overwhelming application of terror and death. He's ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands people, enough I suppose that for some it's no longer a crime but a statistic. Having a trial at all is all the fairness this guy deserves. I guess I've come to expect delusional arabs quoted in the papers, but when Saddam's fellow dictators publish self-serving editorials indistinguishable from an editorial run by what was once considered the top newspaper in the US, you have to wonder about your sanity.

Some people haven't lost it though, as this commentary in al-Adalah shows:

Imagine if justice tried Saddam with the same laws he enacted, such as executing him and asking his family to pay for the bullets, burying him alive in a single or mass grave with a number of his henchmen, cutting off his ear or tongue, throwing him in an acid bath or poisoning him with thallium or poisonous gas. The main lesson of this trial is not a brief show that will end up with the most severe punishment meted out to Saddam. Rather, it will be a trial of a whole black era revealing all the tragedies and disasters perpetrated by the dictatorship.

Exactly, the point of this isn't Saddam's long awaited and richly deserved death, but the exposure, exposition, and condemnation of his and his minions evil.

Some of our elite media, like Ted Koppel, have showed their concern for our fighting men by reading the names of the fallen or showing their flag draped coffins. I wish these same organizations, which were mute when Saddam was fertilizing the soil with Iraqi bodies, would starting reading the names of all the Iraqi's killed by Saddam, and showing their mass graves.

Congratulations Iraq

I have a ballcap I love for two reasons: (1) even though it only cost me five bucks it's a very nice cap -- bought it at Kohls BTW, and (2) the logo is a flag with "established 1776" underneath. The whole "established 1776" works as the simple story, but America (OK, the United States for my international readers) didn't spring fully formed from Washington's head in 1776.

1776 is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which after a stirring introduction is a laundry list of grievances and concludes by declaring that each state is independent and a nation in its own right. And 1776 was a couple of years after the First Continental Congress. So was 1776 the birth of nation? The Articles of Confederation were approved by Congress in 1777, ratified by the states in 1781 and are the original constitution of the United States. Dissatisfaction set in almost immediately however, and so the current US Constitution was created in 1787 over period of almost four months. It wasn't until 1789 that it was ratified by enough states and took effect (with Rhode Island and North Carolina ratifiing after it took effect).

The Bill of Rights, or the first 10 amendments, was the result of the complaints about the Constitution during the ratification process, and were proposed in 1789 almost immediate after it took effect were ratified by 1791. It has been amended 17 more times since, with the 27th amendment originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in, yes, 1789, and ratified in 1992. Some people dislike the messy amendment process, where they have to persuade a majority of the American public across the land, so instead now we have the Supreme Court simply amend the constitution on their own say so.

All this is a long preamble to noting that two years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq voted on and may have ratified a new constitution this past weekend. If so, the next rendezvous with history will be the parliamentary elections to be held December 15 this year. The path has not without winding and stones, since a lot of Iraqi's have not had a chance to read the document for themselves, and some issues were kicked down the road to be settled at a later date. Kind of like slavery in the US constitution, but hopefully more like the Bill of Rights, which was added as a result of pressure and politics following the ratification of the constitution. Even if this Iraq constitution was voted down, they are still way ahead of the US, which took 13 years from the Declaration of Independence to ratify our Constitution.

Part of the dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq is historical amnesia - we who live in a time tested democracy under the rule of law simply have forgotten the time required and difficulty in forging a new nation when there wasn't even the need to create a political culture of law and democracy as well as since it was already bequeathed to us by Great Britain. We forget that the early trials and tribulations strengthed our political institutions, not weakened them. And so we Americans demand perfection when we have no right ot expect it nor should we want it.

We can only do so much in Iraq; the rest is up to the Iraqi's. And so far, they are taking ahold of their own future. Congratulations, Iraq, and good luck.

Keep On Keeping On

It's a big day in Iraq today, with the people voting on a new constitution. Pass or fail, it's democracy in action, and I'm hoping that the Iraqi people vote and the terorrists don't disrupt the vote. As has been observed, democracy is a process, not a one time event.

Four Years Later

Today is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. I cannot think of anything witty, wise, touching, or insightful, in part because as I type one child is practicing the viola and the other is practicing the piano. But I suppose that is a good sign -- instead of apocalypse, there is normalcy at home. When the news came that New Orleans was flooded, I knew it was a natural, not al-Qaida disaster. I don't worry when I watch a ball game that the stadium will go up in a gout of fire; I don't worry