Funmurphys: the Blog

The Empire Strikes Back ...

And so it begins:

French Strike Tonight to Protest Sarkozy Plan

I think it's a remake of the classic: Margaret Thatcher and the Unions.

Does representative government work? Yes, so I'm saying Sarkozy will win this one.

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

As I'm sure you already know, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is greated as big news in some quarters, or as an affirmation of the correctness of his global warming scare job. Look, if Al Gore really believed in what he's peddling, namely we all have to make significant lifestyle changes to reduce our carbon emissions or we going to face deathly consequences, he'd change his own behavior. But he doesn't - he burns through carbon based energy at a rate far beyond the average American. Maybe Al Gore is entirely correct in his predictions - but I'm not going to believe a man who doesn't practice in the slightest what he preaches.

So what does his victory really represent? Coupled with other recent Nobel Peace prize picks, it is clear that the European leftist elite, not content with rendering their own countries impotent, are trying to influence American politics to their liking. If the Nobel Peace Prize committee wants to reduce the presitge of their own award, have at it boys. If they think that a bunch of Norwegian elists sway my thinking, they are sadly mistaken.

Ahmadinejad Confronted At Another University

Hmm, are the usual busybodies going to take Iranian students to task for a lack of hospitality?

Don't they know this only helps the whackjob in his own country? Don't they know this goes against the traditions of a 7,000 year old country that values hospitality so much, it actually forces foreigners to be guests who never overstay their welcome, even if the visit lasts over a year?

Ahmadinejad Confronted at Columbia

I don't know who's more shocked, me or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Lee Bollinger was Lucy to Ahmadinejad's Charlie Brown last night at Columbia; both Mahmoud and I figured he was going to get a free kick, but President Bollinger to his credit pulled the ball away and Mahmoud took a tumble. When I read the front page article in the Post-Dispatch this morning, was I ever surprised. Not only did an American academic confront evil, the Post reported it!

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust deniers and raised questions about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University, where the school's head introduced the visitor by calling him a "petty and cruel dictator."

Ahmadinejad, appearing shaken by what he called "insults" from his host, sought to portray himself as an intellectual and argued that his regime had respect for reason and science. But the former engineering professor soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.

He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran's execution of homosexuals by saying: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. … I don't know who's told you that we have this."

That was the lead of the article, not buried after the jump. Yowsa

Man, did I ever misjudge President Bollinger:

Bollinger drew strong criticism for inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia and had promised tough questions in his introduction. But the stridency of his attack on the Iranian leader took many by surprise.

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader's Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?"

While I wasn't the only one (pleasantly) surprised, apparently I'm in the minority. I admit it, I thought Columbia was going to roll over on it's belly like a submissive dog, but instead the Hound of Cullan showed up.

It's one thing to call people names when you know that person isn't going to do a thing to you and you aren't looking evil in the eye (yes, I include all those people who compare Bush to Hitler); it's another to be on the stage with a man, President of a ruthlessly repressive government who doesn't hesitate to order the torture and death of his own people, who murders via proxy (Hezbollah, Hamas) civilians in neighboring countries, and who is currently waging a proxy war with America in Iraq, look him in the eye, and call him out. Believe me, if that happened in Iran, Bollinger would be dead now. That takes both moral and physical courage, a couple of virtues that I thought was totally lacking in today's Universities.

Lee C. Bollinger, you da man!

And no, I don't think calling out Ahmadinejad, even though he's the face, not the brains and muscle behind the current dictatorship, is disrespectful of Iran and it's rich and ancient culture. Iran and Iranians deserve better than Ahmadinejad and the mullahs behind him, but I can understand their reluctance after being burned by the 1979 revolution that brought the current religious dictatorship to power to have another go at revolution.

Letters I've Never Sent

Dear Senator Obama,

How about a foreign policy where we talk to our friends and invade our enemies? Just a thought.

Your Friend,
Kevin Murphy

PS Horse goes in front of the cart. Hope this helps.

Netanyahu On Bill Maher

I'm not a big fan of either Bill Maher or Benjamin Netanyahu, but I thought this was a very good interview by Mr. Netanyahu. I would like to thank Mr. Maher for bringing up a couple classic leftist tropes for the once and possible future Prime Minister to respond to. I also liked Mr. Maher's line: "The world just doesn't like it when Jews win." Sadly, a large part of the world (including Mr. Maher) doesn't like it when Westerners win either.

Hat tip to An Unsealed Room.

The View From The Other Side

Here's one foreigner not whooping it up over the Democrats victory:

Smart Irish policymakers - several key civil servants, a few farsighted elected pols like Mary Harney, Charlie McCreevy, Bertie and Brian Cowen, and an unofficial cadre of advisers from the private sector acting for the good of the country - realised in the late 90s that for a small open island economy to prosper it would need something more than cheap wages, Guinness and the craic.

So they focused on persuading big technology and pharmaceutical companies to move their intellectual property here. In 1998, the Irish corporate tax rate was slashed from 32% to 12.5%, still among the five lowest in the world. The US federal corporate tax rate is 35%.

In 2004, Ireland simply eliminated the 9% tax on the sale or transfer of intellectual property and launched an R&D tax credit. Microsoft was among the first takers. In 2005 the Wall Street Journal revealed that a little company called Round Island One had become Ireland's biggest taxpayer. Round Island One is a brass-plate office set up in 2001 - a subsidiary of Microsoft. It booked profits of more than $9Billion in 2004. It paid $300million in taxes to the Irish exchequer.

What happens when Charlie Rangle and company have their way and make sure "American" firms pay taxes to America? Maybe not so good for my ancestral sod.

Hat tip to Eamonn Fitzgerald

Togo with a Chemistry Set

A great article on North Korea "nuclear test" in the Times Online by Gerald Baker (emphasis added) The price of shillyshallying

Stripped of the grandiose claims by Kim’s minions, the objective scientific evidence for a nuclear explosion is sketchy. The explosive yield, according to military analysts, was something less than a kiloton. A plutonium device such as that first used by the US in 1945 produces a yield in the range of 20 kilotons. Some warheads in the US nuclear arsenal now can deliver an impact about 1,000 times that of Hiroshima. Remember too that in July, the Koreans launched an "intercontinental" ballistic missile that fell into the sea about a minute into its flight and you have a sense of the truly exiguous scale of the country’s capabilities. If the Soviet Union was memorably nicknamed Upper Volta with Rockets, it’s probably fair to think of North Korea as Togo with a Chemistry Set. So why worry? Here’s why. Unlike all previous nuclear nativities, North Korea’s efforts this week have truly propelled the world into a new and much more dangerous age. There’s no good strategic reason for Pyongyang even to claim to have a nuclear weapon, as China, Israel, Pakistan and India had.

It will be the first nuclear power to be headed by a crazed monomaniac who boasts of his commercial interest in shipping nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. The sheer unpredictability of North Korea terrifies everyone in its neighbourhood in a way that none of those other countries ever did. Its actions this week will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear arms race.

• truly exiguous scale of the country’s capabilities: I had to look tihs one up, exiguous means "scant, meagre."
• Upper Volta With Rockets: according to Wikipedia, the phrase "Upper Volta With Rockets" was used to describe the Soviet Union (in quotes, but with no attribution) in a survey on the Soviet economy in The Economist on April 9, 1988. The Economist on-line archive only goes back to 1997 so until I can figure out how to grep dead trees I will take their word for it.
• Togo With a Chemistry Set Togo is south of Burkina Faso (the modern name for Upper Volta)
• nuclear nativities is currently a GoogleWhack (I guess until this post makes it into the cache). Another great turn of phrase in an insightful article.

One On One With Kim Jong-Il

Yes, this is going around so you can find it all over, and yes, it really is unfair to Madeleine Albright, but after She Who Must Be Obeyed opened her mouth, I couldn't resist.

A less funny, more traditional rebuttal was provided by Sen. John McCain. McQ delivers a fisking. Personally, I can't fault either administration too much because North Korea under Kim Jong-il was simply going to try and develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them no matter what anyone said. It was worth giving talk a chance, but once it becomes clear that's a waste of time, why continue? Now we need to talk to the North Korea's neighbors about what we are going to do, not talk to Kim.

And another thing, why is it the same people who criticize President Bush for acting unilaterally, or for the US acting like a bully, demand that the talks with North Korea only be with the United States? It's just more dead horse beating.K

Iran Or Belarus?

A case of real hypocrisy: Iran's President Welcome in EU. Belarus's Not.

What if, as a sign of courtesy to the Austrian presidency in the EU, Ahmadinejad visits one Viennese prison cell – that of David Irving, another Holocaust-denier with much less pretentious claims about it? He would probably get away with it too. Could anybody imagine Austrians jailing the president of the nuclear-rich Iran? He is not David Irving with his books of dubious quality. He does not wear pinstriped suits. All he does is call for Israel to be whipped off the map. Or at least be moved to Europe. Not a single reason to bar him from the EU? I wish the EU was as hospitable to all Muslim guests, not just Ahmadinejad.

We don't get to pick and choose our enemies; sometimes they pick us as such. But to pick and choose based on naked self interest -- punishing those who can do nothing for you while rewarding those who can, yet pretend that you are punishing the wicked and rewarding the virtuous is not just hypocritical but wicked itself.

Cyprus

Mr. World Traveller Michael Totten recommends reading this article about a divided Cyprus while he works on his next installments. I typically heed such advice and as per usual, I'm happy I did.

I'm old enough to remember the summer morning when Turkey invaded Cyprus. I was eating breakfast before summer school and watching the whole thing on our TV in the kitchen. Paratroopers calmly landing, cutting their chutes, and forming up into their units shown live on TV. Years later my wife and I had a Greek tour guide -- Terry. Terry wasn't fond of America. He told the story of how he had been set up as a hotelier in Cyprus by the Germans as amends for their harming (tortured? killed?) his father during WWII. But in 1974 he lost everything when the Turks invaded Cyprus and the American armed forces did nothing.

My wife and I still say "Slowly, slowly" in imitation of Terry who really was a good guide because he looked out for all of us). He deliberately told us everything three times (not in succession) because as he told us on day 1, if I don't tell you three times, someone won't remember and then they'll say "you didn't tell me". Danged if some people didn't remember even after he told us everything three times.

Hamas Election

I enjoy history. Any period, any culture, history simply appeals to me. One of the nice things about it is that you can learn quite a lot just by reading, which I do. And another nice thing is that it provides perspective on the events of today. So one of the lessons of history I draw is that a major problem with rule by a single person, whether by king or despot, emporer or strong-man, whether accepted by the governed or subject to constant rebellion and resistance, is that its quality depends on the quality of a single individual. The character of government depends on the character of the ruler; even where the ruler wasn't particularly able, they could recruit and rely on able subordinates if they were of a mind to. So looking at a nation under such a single person rule over time you see how the overall fortune of the nation depends on how good a ruler is curently ruling.

And its not just true of single person rule, it's just easier to see there. The exact same thing is true of any government -- it's character depends on the character of the ruler(s). And so for representative governments, the character of the government depends on the character of the people. Harsh people lead to harsh rule; tolerant people to tolerant rule, wise people to wise rule, and foolish people to foolish rule. You get the idea.

That brings us to the results in the Palestinian election where Hamas, a terror organization (or not), was voted into office. Some people tell me that Hamas doesn't reflect the Palestinian people. Oh really? Who does it represent then? The Israelis? Look, if the Palestinians wanted a less corrupt government and mutual existance with Israel, then a political party that espoused that view would have formed and been voted into office.

They'll moderate under the pressures of governance alone I'm told. Really? Why should they? When have Palestinian governments every lived up to their end of agreements?

Maybe Hamas is just the natural response to Israeli intransience? Such a view ignores the reality - Israel is ready to coexist with a Palestinian state that is not out to destroy it, the Palestinians are not. (If Israel wanted all the Palestinians dead, they'd be dead already). And as far as Israeli violating a voluntary truce on the part of Hamas, why should Israel hold back against an avowed foe just because the foe wants a break?

And of course, what to do about funds for Palestine. Should the US and the EU continue to subsidize the Palestinian government, or should they be cut off? What about the money Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian government? What will the effect be on the Palestinian people? Should the plight of the people who voted for terrorists to take over sway us? Sometimes, there are no good solutions, just muddling through as best as you can, and guess what - we have been in that situation in the middle east for a long time now.

We need to really keep in mind what the desired end state is, and work towards that with as much focus as we can -- and that is two healthy states at peace with each other. The trick is in figuring out if that requires a firm stand on principle or flexible pragmatism. I think it requires what President Bush has been doing all along - clear expectations for both Palestine and Israel, and keeping our commitments either to withold or provide based on their behavior. The previous and current goverments of Palestine have not reflected favorably on the Palestinian character. I'm hoping that that changes.

When Dictators Make The Rules ...

Hey Hitch, don't you know war never solves anything? President Bush should be commended for following the approved international process in the Sudan, unlike Iraq or Afganistan, because its more important that we follow international norms than save one single life. Since the weepy left only weeps over American soldiers killed (those that manage to survive are apparently "bad") and those they supposedly killed, there is no weeping for those dying in Sudan -- thus answering the question, if a person is killed without any relation to America, does anyone notice (or care?). Of course, the question was already answered by the reaction to the deaths inflicted on a grand scale in Afganistan and Iraq before the US intervened.

Kevin In Wonderland

There are times I swear I'm through the looking glass. This is about the nuttiest article I've read in a long time courtesy of Getting Nothing But Static From MSM. Its got Venezuala conducting an excercise simulating attack by the United States, Venezuala's President (for life) Hugo Chavez fresh off his ban of Halloween as too Gringo musing aloud that he may sneak up behind President Bush and scare him at the Americas Summit, Cuba's Speaker of Parliament Ricardo Alarcon showing up even though Cuba wasn't invited since it isn't even a pretend democracy and claiming "even if they invited us, we would not have come" (note to organizers, next time invite the Cubans so they don't show up), and ignorant 30 year old students sporting a Che shirt and spouting off stupidity: "We are going to fight against all forms of imperialism," Zamora said, voicing complaints against free-market programs some here blame for enslaving poor Latin American countries. Note to Zamora, the problem with Latin America is your lousy governments which Latin America is itself responsible for.

But there was some meat to the article, namely that President Bush will continue to push for free trade and gathering support for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez, meanwhile, is trying to bribe as many neighbors as he can with Venezualan oil money to stay out. Note to Hugo - things didn't go well for the last dictator who spread his oil wealth around in an attempt to defy the United States.

Burn Me Once

North Korea has agreed to give up its nukes,in exchange for aid. Again. Let's hope that this time, they mean it. And President Bush seems to have updated Ronald Reagans' slogan from the eighties: Trust, but verify. Now its just verify.

All Talleyrand All The Time

French President Jacques Chirac either doesn't mind Iranian nukes or is a fool (or both). He has warned the Iranians that unless they take European inducements and suspend their quest for nuclear bomb, the United Nations Security Council will have no choice but to take up the matter. More talk, that's the ticket. Boy, Wes Craven is kicking himself for not thinking up anything half as scary as that for his movies. Come on Jacques, that's the best you can do? A slap on the wrist with a wet noodle? If you really want compliance, just tell the mullahs that if they don't abandon the A-bomb, you'll have no choice but to tell George Bush "bombs away, cowboy!" Now that's a threat they'll take seriously.

With Jacques, the real message could be that for the right price, you'll put the UN in charge and then block any moves there. At least, that's what a student of history might conclude.

Over There

Lot's of good news on the international front.

CAFTA -- the Central American Free Trade Agreement -- passed very narrowly. Free trade is good for everyone in the long run, not just Illinois farmers. Forbes thinks that the closeness of the vote makes other free trade agreements harder; this would have to come under the heading of effect and not cause in my book.

The IRA has announced that they will lay down their arms. This has been a long time coming, and I'm glad to see it. They should have done it in 1998, but better late than never, and maybe the Palestinians could learn something if they pay attention. Despite the name, I'm not an IRA sympathizer - quite the contrary in fact.

The State Department is saying a resolution to North Korea's nuclear program is close at hand. And while I firmly believe you shouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched, especially given the track record of North Korea, I am hopeful.

The 6 countries responsible for 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions announced a pact to reduce them. To me, this kind of initiative sounds much more promising than Kyoto which is a failure in conception and implementation.

Ugandans went to the polls and voted for multiparty democracy over "no-party" democracy in early, unofficial returns. Will they actually get it? That's the hard part, really.

And in news I won't qualify as "good", but it is part of the international front, the Russian government objected to an interview with terrorist mass murderer Shamil Basayev, the man behind the Beslan massacre. While I think running the interview is OK, ABC news had a duty to present the context - a remind viewers of the truly awful nature of what this guy has done, deliberately targeting children for death. I didn't see the interview, so they may well have done so.

My Plea

How about that Live 8!?!

Now that the hoopla is over, if you prefer a more bottoms up than top down approach, if you don't think that G8 leaders run the world, than please check out Compassion International. It doesn't focus exclusively on Africa, but world wide poverty. It is a very well run charitable organization, earning 4 out of 4 stars from Charity Navigator. It is all about one person (or group) helping another person. Yes, it is quite explicity Christian, which is important to me; if you would prefer to work through an organization that isn't explicitly Christian that is your choice and please do so.

To those who are thinking "hey, I thought you were against aid to deveoping countries" here's my position. Economic problems will be solved by political and economic development, but in the meantime there are people who are in desperate need. So while I think a lot of the big government programs hurt more than help, until countries do develop, the right kind of aid is needed. And feeding and educating children locally is (one form of) the right kind of aid. There is more to life than politics and economics, and Compassion helps there too by spreading the Gospel which should be preached to poor and rich alike.

The Other Asian Giant

In the category of news that's really big but not much reported on because it doesn't involve a celebrity, a young white woman, injury, or jail time, the Prime Minister of India has wrapped up trip to the United States. The US agreed to help India out with nuclear power technology in return for India implementing anti-proliferation controls on all their nuclear technology. I think it very good news that the US and India are developing a better working relationship.

An Oldie But A Goodie

As a follow-up to my previous post about Africa, I saw Instapundit's post on Max Boot's column about sub-standard government being the major problem in Africa which reminded me of my earlier post on the same subject:

What are rogue nations but those with particularly wretched governments - or government of the tyrant, by the tyrant, and for the tyrant. The countries that are the worst to live in are those with the worst governments. Poor countries are poor because their governments keep them poor through (at best) mismanagement and (at worst) deliberate rule for the ruler's sake. Frankly, no government should be considered legitimate that doesn't have the consent of it's people in free and fair elections. The best way to decrease poverty, to reduce war, to reduce human suffering would be to improve government globally.

Millions For Cows, Not One Penny for Research

Eamon Fitzgerald reports on the growing respect for Tony Blair in Germany, and includes the eye opening statistic that the EU budget "allocates seven-times more for agriculture as for research and development, science, technology, education and innovation. Forty percent of spending goes into agriculture, where less than five percent of the population works." Yowza.

Great Minds Think Alike

Wretchard at The Belmont Club looks at four seemingly unconnected events and sums up with:

"This survey of events suggests (and it just my opinion) that the real strategic danger to the cause of freedom and democracy isn't from the noisemakers of the Left but from the temptation to betray principles for tactical gain. It lies on the very same path that Galloway, Martin and Newsweek, in their cunning, have taken. The Left hitched its wagon to the worst men of the 20th and 21st century and it is dragging them into the dustbin of history. Let's go the other way."

Amen, brother Wretchard.

Michael Totten, fresh back from Lebannon, looks at just Uzbekistan and instead of lamenting missing the pro-democracy changes in Syria, calls for change in our policy in Uzbekistan quoting George Bush:

"For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy."

Amen brothers George and Michael.

Thanks brother Jim for the info.

Two From Tom

The ever interesting Tom Maguire informs me that I must be Captain Archer -- or at least according to the Pew Research Center now that they've divided Americans into nine political viewpoints, one of which is:

Enterprisers are highly patriotic and strongly pro-business, oppose social welfare and overwhelmingly support an assertive foreign policy. This group is largely white, well-educated, affluent and male ­ more than three-quarters are men.

It could only be more me if they tossed in that the men were mostly middle aged, out of shape, married to a wonderful wife, volunteered with the boy scouts, and still had most of their hair.

But the esteemable Mr. Maguire, despite having a hard to spell last name (I want to make him Celtic) continues to inform, with a look at Tom Friedman's look at the problem of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, and how it isn't our fault, well, not directly anyway. I'm sure that the reflexive America bashers will pick up on how it really is our fault because we're just so darn powerful and bossy that it's our fault that China and Europe are free riding on us and shirking their responsibilities. You know what I say - polarize the armor and load the photon torpedoes cause we're taking out the garbage, with our without the Chinese and Europeans.

Diplomacy?

I have to like the diplomatic style of tinpot dictatorships even as I loathe the dictatorships themselves. No "nice doggy" while you pick up a rock for them. It's mainly in your face personal invective.North Korea insulted President Bush in language considered tame in MoveOn.org circles,calling him Hitler, Jr. So what brought on this tired tirade? Why, we said that we would hold direct talks as part of 6 party talks. What would their response have been if President bush had wrapped a tie around his head, pumped up, oiled down, and slurred into the camera Little Kimmie ... I'm coming for you"?

Vive La Difference

Another scandal, another politician resigns in disgrace. OK, it happened in the Czech Republic, but it's something that happens everywhere. And it's the sort of thing that may lead you to believe that democracies are more corrupt than dictatorships. But the true difference is that in functioning democracies corruption is found out and punished, while in dictatorships even if the corruption is found out it is rarely punished.

Now is When

A (OK, The) commentor in my post below China vs. Japan made the remark that "I don't know anyone who lives in China who seriously believes that the Chinese are ready for democracy." That got me to thinking - when are a people "ready for democracy"? Is there something that can be done to get them ready?

Was Japan or South Korea ready for democracy when they became democracies? How about Taiwan? They aren't so bad as democracies after some initial growing pains.

Now a successful country isn't built just on democracy (I prefer representative government) - the rule of law, private property, and free markets are probably even more important. But the four do seem to go hand in hand, and all four can be, let's face it, somewhat difficult. The US is fortunate because we started with all four from our British heritage, but other countries that were once ruled by the British show that it's a matter of culture, not race.

And I think, just from looking around at the history of nations, the best way to get ready for democracy (and the rule of law, free markets, and private property) is to experience it. Most nations start out shaky but improve over time. They indulge in trial and error and sometimes (like the Wiemar Republic giving way to Nazi Germany) things don't work out so well.

If you compare South Korea to North Korea, they were essentially identical in 1945. They were split based on a line of occupation, one side under the US and the other under the USSR. 60 years later, one is a basket case in every way, and the other has become a representative democracy. Not perfect by any means, but then there isn't a perfect country. Taiwan and Japan have both come become much better at democracy in recent years.

Just like so much in life, democracy is a process that requires practice to get any better at it. Now that may mean it's best to phase it in stages, but ultimately "not ready yet" is a copout. If not now, then when? Because the sooner a nation starts the process of democracy, the sooner it will have a well functioning one.

China Vs. Japan

The semi-confrontation between China and Japan is interesting (though at root very sad) for a number of reasons. One is the reversal in roles - where once China was an ally and Japan an enemy, now Japan is an ally and China a rival. So there is a temptation to dismiss China's concerns. But the flashpoint - the sanitization of Japanese history in WW2 - is a real one. The Japanese did dispicable things, killed and enslaved on an epic scale, and are still disliked and mistrusted by other asians for it still. While it rankles national pride, the truth should be taught so it can be learned from. But nobody likes to be reminded of their mistakes, and such dislike is only compounded by traditional Japanese (and Chinese) views on honor, respect, etc. (normally rolled into "face").

On the other hand, one wonders if Chinese history books teach the reality of Mao - the untold misery and death he and his cohorts brought to the Chinese people. He did far more harm to the Chinese than the Japanese ever did. Is that included in Chinese textbooks? Or how about Tibet? But that leads to another observation - people are far more forgiving of who they consider "the same" than those they consider "other". (You can see this at work in Democratic and Republican partisans in this country who routinely howl and gnash their teeth at actions by the other they ignore in themselves). And both societies historically have been very nationalistic and xenophobic.

And that leads to the idea that you can't look to who's hands are the dirtiest - you have to look at the particular instance and facts. Are Chinese right to be upset about Japanese rewriting history doesn't really depend on how well China writes history, how well they've behave towards other nations, nor even how they currently treat their own citizens (which can be pretty awful). It depends on whether the Japanese can rewrite history to feel better about themselves.

The Chinese response also raises questions as to what is going on in China. First you have a regime that has no legitimacy beyond the fact they are already in power. It's communist in name but while it's politics are communist it's economics are more capitalist (and mercantilist). It's fearful of internal enemies, which is the only thing that can account for it's dread and suppression of Falun Gong. And it's fearful of it's neighbors - none of whom are friends and allies (with the possible exception of Pakistan). India's rise and increasing warmth with the US only ads to the to the fear. Given that, you wonder why the ruling elite has embarked upon policies of confrontation - with Japan, with Taiwan, and to a lesser extent the US.

Syria, Lebanon, and US

I keep asking myself about the Syrian response to Lebanese demonstrations and demands why they don't carry out the same policies they did in the past -- suppression, torture, murder -- especially since those methods were effective in the past and are what are still used within Syria. There is a real risk to a strong man regime like Assad's when it appears weak, and being chased out of Lebanon by a bunch of ordinary people is weak. Perhaps the younger Assad isn't as sensative to possible danger as his father was, but it would be very interesting to know the calculus he is using to decide its better to leave than stay. Somehow, I don't think the babeness of the protesters enters into it.

Wretchard has a great post about Lebanon, Syria, and wider American policy. To wit: "If this analysis is correct, the world crisis should accelerate rather than diminish in the coming years and months, not in the least because the United States seems to have no plan to fill the power vacuum with anything. The promotion of democracy is at heart an act of faith in the self-organizing ability of nations; it means getting rid of one dictator without necessarily having another waiting in the wings. It is so counterintuitive to disciples of realpolitik as to resemble madness. Or put more cynically, the promotion of democracy is a gamble only a country with a missile defense system, control of space, homeland defense and a global reach can afford to take. If you have your six-gun drawn, you can overturn the poker table. In retrospect, the real mistake the September 11 planners made to underestimate how radical the US could be. This does not necessarily mean America will win the hand; but it does indicate how high it is willing to raise the stakes."

How high? Well, the Pentagon just ordered 30,000 more JDAMs to go with the over 112,000 they've already ordered. That's a pretty high raise, but we're not even close to going all in.

Right Here, Right Now

I remember the Reagan years quite well. He was mocked as an amiable but bumbling moron who was leading the US to disaster by confronting the USSR. The left admonished him to just get along with the USSR, don't confront them, don't apply pressure, and quit calling them names. The evil empire speech caused far more frothing and conniptions on this side of the Iron Curtain than the other. When Reagan responded to Soviet medium range nuclear missiles in Europe with nukes of our own atop Pershing and cruise missiles, we were warned by left and the realists that we were playing chicken with the future of mankind. The Nuclear Freeze movement sprang into being, and amazingly it existed only on one side of the Iron Curtain -- the side that was only starting to deploy nukes. But that was the refrain on the left - accomidate, pull back, never criticise, don't antagonize them because you'll only make it worse. As it turns out, they were dead wrong. Theirs was the losing strategy.

So excuse me if I find a certain similarity in the response to Bush II -- except where Reagan's critics thought him amiable, Bush's find him evil. And we're beginning to discover that maybe, just maybe Bush's strategy of confrontation, speaking the truth, using force if necessary is having the same effect in the Middle East that Reagan's same strategy had on Eastern Europe and the USSR. Now there are clearly differences between the two -- e.g. Bush has used far more direct force than Reagan, and where Reagan confronted a powerful elite in one powerful nation propping up powerful elites in lesser nations, Bush confronts a diverse stew of tyrannies, factions and groups. So while the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe was abrupt -- once it became clear that the USSR couldn't stop one, they all fell, I don't expect the overthrow of tyrannies in the Middle East to be as abrupt - each will have to fall on its own, although clearly people in one country will be emboldened by success (or chastened by failure) in other countries.

The doom sayers have been warning us of the wrath of the Arab street, and it finally made an appearance. Not against the US though, but against Syria. The Lebanese looked at what happened in Iraq and decided they wanted some. Now every tyrant worries that their own people will make the same decision. What did they see happen? They saw the brutal suppression by a dictator, they saw him slaughter over 500,00 of his own people during different revolts against him. Then they saw him toppled by America, and they saw the first tentative steps of the Iraqi's to live free. They see that America is serious about dealing with tyrants - as witnessed by the continuing committment to Iraq despite the combat deaths. They see America's committment to free elections - as witnessed by the loss of America's handpicked man in the Iraqi elections without any response from America. But most importantly, they see the people of Iraq standing up for themselves -- still dying at the hands of the remnants of their old tyrants regime, but now not being ruled by their fear.

The Vision Thing

By now everybody has reacted to the President's inaugural speech and the reaction has been fairly predictable -- most on the right liked it and most on the left disliked it. What struck me about the speech is that it represents a bottom up approach to world peace.

Often we get confused by methods and goals and think that people who advocate a different method are advocating a different goal. Most Americans want our nation's foreign policy to ultimately advance the goal of world peace. The disagreements are typically over methods. The method that has been favored by the left and enjoyed the ascendancy in the past century was the top down solution of world government. The League of Nations. The United Nations. They were (are) both miserable failures, and resulted instead in a ravaged century.

President Bush offers a different solution -- empowering every individual to construct representative governments that respect the rights of all individual. This is a pretty radical concept for some.

In the top down, you have a collection of governments, ranging from the virtuous (Canada) to the self-centered (France) to the downright evil (North Korea, working at cross purposes in the UN, and achieving little more than frenzied feeding at the public trough. You could argue that if all governments were as virtuous as Canada, then the UN would be a smashing success. The problem is, as recent history has demonstrated, all governments aren't as virtuous, and the UN itself can't solve that problem. In fact, by it's nature it acts as a brake on attempts to reform countries.

So President Bush advocates a different approach - improve the individual nations, one by one, until something like the UN could actually work, instead of it counting bribe money while millions are murdered. Work on the virtue bubbling up from the bottom instead of trying to impose it from the top.

I think it's a noble vision, and a workable method, but like so may other things that are worth doing, it takes time, effort, and perserverence.

The Palestinians Need an Orchestra

(Whew! After singing in three Messiah concerts in 27 hours, it's time for some non-vocal communication.)

I want to go back to something Kevin said on May 5, 2004 (post: "The State of Diplomacy"):

It means that the palestinians won't get a state until they get serious about being a nation and not just an odd cross between victims and terrorists.

This statement is insightful, profound, and (best of all) true.

About a year ago I was reading the book: "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East", by Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press, 2002. On page 3 Oren is talking about the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine:

"By the 1940s, the Yishuv was a powerhouse in the making: dynamic, inventive, ideologically and politically pluralistic. Drawing on Western and Eastern European models, the Jews of Palestine created new vehicles for agrarian settlement (the communal kibbutz and cooperative moshav), a viable socialist economy with systems for national health, reforestation, and infrastructure development, a respectable university, and a symphony orchestra - and to defend them all, an underground citizen's army, the Haganah."

When I read that paragraph I thought, "What? An orchestra??!!!" I had thought of the early Jewish community in Palestine as a bunch of huddled refugees, hunkering down in the basement shelter and trying desperately to avoid being annihilated!

Well, I was wrong. The Yishuv did have somewhat of a siege mentality, but they also found time and enough violins to create a symphony orchestra and give concerts. That's very interesting.

Victims don't have orchestras. Terrorists don't give concerts.

Nations do both of these things. And that's a big difference.

I also remember reading sometime in the 1990s about the newly established Palestinian Authority. If I remember correctly, the article in Time magazine stated that the P.A. managed to collect even less money in taxes from the Palestinian areas than the Israelis had during their authority. If true, that's pathetic!

Victims don't pay taxes. Terrorists don't pay taxes. Nations do pay taxes, and that's partly how they build themselves into a functioning society and respectable member of the family of nations.

The Palestinians' fate is not in their own hands. Their unhappy situation is partly a consequence of their own actions. That is reality. Behaving like a nation would go a long way toward changing their perception in the eyes of the rest of the world, where it really matters. Having an orchestra, and paying taxes, would also change their own self-image.

(I'm aware that the P.A. was corrupt, and perhaps Palestinian individuals avoided paying taxes that would just go to line some official's pocket. If true, this would be a profound betrayal of a people's hopes and dreams by Yasser Arafat. 'Nuff said.)

So if you Palestinians want a state, you should start an orchestra and pay your taxes. Continue in that theme, and renounce your destructive intifada and the Hamas terrorists. After two generations of failure, it's time to try doing something different.

If you search on Google for "Palestinian orchestra", you will get some hits. Some of those links appear to refer to the early Jewish orchestra mentioned in the "Six Days of War" book. But there are also some references to an orchestra in Ramallah. It appears that some musicians had this idea before I did, and a few Palestinians aspire to play in the orchestra or to conduct it!

I wish them the best of success. Perhaps they could start with the opening Tenor aria from Messiah:

Comfort ye.

Comfort ye, my people, saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,

And cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished [over],

That her iniquity is pardoned,

That her iniquity is pardoned.

More Lessons From History

The most horrible story in the Bible is told in Judges 19-21. Here we read the tragic tale of a reluctant young bride who is assaulted, raped, and murdered by criminals from the tribe of Benjamin. The unfeeling husband dismembers her body and sends the pieces throughout Israel in witness to the foul deed. The other tribes unite to punish the guilty, and demand that Benjamin hand over the criminals. For reasons that are not recorded, "the Benjaminites would not listen to their fellow Israelites." (Judges 20:13b) They gird for war instead.

In the course of that war tens of thousands of Israelites are killed. The tribe of Benjamin is wiped out, except for a small remnant of 600 men who flee to the Rock of Rimmon. Israel mourns the destruction of their brother tribe, and eventually uses more war and trickery to arrange wives for the remnant, so that the tribe of Benjamin will not die out completely.

This happened in roughly 1,100 BC. Perhaps the Benjaminites were unaware that a similar fate had befallen another city about 100 years earlier - a city that had also refused to correct its own wrongdoing, but had armed themselves defiantly for war instead. The name of that city was Troy.

As recounted in Homer's Illiad and brought again to life by Brad Pitt and Eric Bana in the movie Troy, a few Trojans had committed a grave sin against their neighbors. Prince Paris of Troy had stolen away Queen Helen of Sparta from her lawful husband Menelaus. Instead of returning Helen with apologies as by all rights he should have done, King Priam resolved to fight the Greeks instead. Nobody claimed that stealing another man's wife was right, but they held their nationalism above what was right and wrong.

And for that sin, they died.

I find this stuff fascinating even if nobody else does. This thought is still under development, but what I see here is a pattern in history. Here's how it works:

1. A small band of people commit a crime, a deed that everybody agrees is wrong. The victims are members of another ethnic or nationalist group.
2. The offended group (Israelites, Greeks) demands punishment of the guilty persons.
3. The offending group (Benjaminites, Trojans) refuses these demands. They turn the problem into an ethnic/nationalist conflict instead. In doing so, they bring the guilt for the original crime upon themselves.
4. The offended group prevails in war. After great loss of life on both sides, the offending group is utterly destroyed.

The Book of Judges and the Trojan War are relevant today. In Darfur the Janjaweed militia commit atrocities against Sudanese villagers. The U.S. and U.N. demand that Khartoum disarm the militia. In response, the Sudanese government attempts to whip up nationalist feeling and portray the conflict as the nation of Sudan against those nasty Western imperialists.

In April in Fallujah, Iraq, terrorists murder four American contractors and hang their mutilated bodies from a bridge. No rational person claims this is right, but when coalition forces demand the murderers be turned over for justice, the leaders in Fallujah beat the drums of ethnic/nationalistic/religious war instead. They portray the crime in terms of Islamic jihad, instead of some out-of-control terrorists committing crimes that Islam forbids. The original guilt was confined to a small group of people, but by offering sanctuary to terrorists and not fixing their own problem, the Fallujans have taken the guilt upon all themselves.

We saw the consequences of the same history pattern this week: The city of Fallujah depopulated and severely damaged by the coalition assault. Thousands of terrorists killed (no regret there). Many civilians wounded and killed.

I saw this same pattern occur in Serbia during the 1990s. Ethnic and nationalistic pride were held higher than what was right and wrong. Muslim civilians were massacred at Srebrenica. Serbia later paid the price. Unfortunately, so did lots of innocent people. If the Taliban had turned over bin Laden they would probably still be in power.

The moral lesson here is that if you don't fix your own moral problem, somebody else will. And you probably won't like the way they go about fixing it.

The Soup Is Hot, The Soup Is Cold

From the movie Cleopatra (1963) :

Messenger: Antony is dead.

Octavius: [Quietly, stunned] Is that how one says it? As simply as that? Antony is dead. Lord Antony is dead! The soup is hot, the soup is cold, Antony is living, Antony is dead.

[He suddenly turns and begins to shout.]

Shake with terror when such words pass your lips, for fear they be untrue! And Antony cut out your tongue for the lie, if not true! For your lifetime boast that you were honored to speak his name even in death! The dying of such a man must be shouted, screamed...it must echo back from the corners of the universe. Antony is dead! Marc Antony of Rome lives no more!

Yasser Arafat lives no more! An old era has passed, a new one has begun.

Proposition: Never before has a leader ruled for so long and accomplished so little for his people.

I think the modern competitors might be Fidel Castro, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Robert Mugabe. Arafat definitely has a shot at the title. At least Castro delivered his people from Fulgencio Batista, and then gave them some kind of stability for 40 years afterwards. Arafat presided over a slow erosion of Palestinian status, repeatedly rejecting deal after deal only to see the next offer be worse than the previous. I'll bet he would have liked to return to the pre-1967 borders, the same borders he rejected before 1967 because he wanted more. Now he and his people have gotten far less. How could a leader consistently make the wrong choices and yet stay in power?

But Yasser Arafat stood at the center stage of Palestinian politics for decades. His passing marks the end of an era. Arafat's death is momentous just as Marc Antony's was.

Just Wondering

I suppose it was seeing the Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on a Hyundai that got me wondering - what's the difference when a company "outsources" jobs overseas and when someone buys a product made overseas. I ask this as an ardent free trader. Really, what's the difference when a company looks at the options, and decides it is in their best interest to buy the time of a worker overseas, and when a person looks at the options, and decides it is in their best interest to but the product of a worker overseas. Same difference really, isn't it?

At Least We Agree On Something

The following story on CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/16/iraq.main/index.html

included the interesting quotation below. This person represents the insurgents in Fallujah.

A representative involved in talks to bring peace to Falluja said Saturday that the group won't continue discussions with the interim government until the arrested head of the delegation is freed and U.S. warplanes stop bombing the city.

Sheikh Khalid al-Jumaily, speaking on behalf of the Falluja group, made the remarks.

Stated another way, Sheikh Khalid al-Jumaily is promising that if the U.S. Air Force continues to bomb Fallujah, his terrorists will not try to worm their way out of the predicament they're in through "negotiations".

"Is there a downside to this?" -Hades, in the Disney movie Hercules.

It sounds like a perfectly acceptable arrangement to me. And I'll bet the Marines agree.

I hope the Sheikh doesn't change his mind.

Lucky or Smart?

I have never understood why the left has obsessed over "stockpiles of WMD" in Iraq. Now we know that Saddam didn't have had any when we invaded. While the left seems to think this somehow invalidates the decision to go to war, despite the fact that WMD "stockpiles" were not the reason we went to war, I think it shows good fortune on our part. I mean, the other possibilities are that Saddam would have unleashed WMD during the invasion when it was clear that we would depose him, resulting in at best horrific civilian casualties amongst the unprotected Iraqi people, or that he would have resumed making WMD when the crumbling sanctions soon fell.

It's Coldest Before the Dawn

I just handed in a research paper on the sandstorm that hit Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom last year. You'll all get to read this paper when I post it on the web after the professor grades it. The dust storm was most intense on March 25, 2003, so I looked up some old news accounts of what was going on then. Basically, the U.S. Army and Marines were approaching Baghdad, and the Iraqi Republican Guard were getting into position to defend the city. What was most interesting to find were the opinions expressed by correspondents and bloggers on both sides of the conflict.

There was a lot of pessimism on the coalition side. Many observers thought the siege of Baghdad would be long and brutal. The media worried that a lot of Iraqi civilians would get killed, that every block of the city would be defended.

There was also a lot of bravado from the Iraqi government, and not just from Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf. Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed had this to say (posted on March 28):

Asked what kind of battle he expected, Defense Minister Ahmed said: "Baghdad is the cradle of civilization. Iraqis inherited this history from their forefathers. They will defend this inheritance in a way that will satisfy God."

"God willing, Baghdad will be impregnable. We will fight to the end and everywhere. History will record how well Iraqis performed in defense of their capital," Ahmed said.

Ahmed said that the U.S. supply lines were overstretched and reached as far as 300 miles and called a sandstorm that slowed the U.S. push northwards toward Baghdad in recent days "a gift from God."

You can read the rest of the story at rense.com:
http://www.rense.com/general36/bbe.htm

Remember that? It was only last year. I was kind of discouraged myself at that point, wondering how we would go about capturing Baghdad. I even discussed some options with a former tank commander friend of mine.

As it turned out, Ahmed was exactly right. History did record how well the Republican Guard performed in defense of their capital. I saw pictures of Republican Guard soldiers stripping off their uniforms and running away in their underwear.

If the sandstorm was "a gift from God," then Ahmed's expression of theistic meteorology did not work out the way he expected. General Tommy Franks and his staff made a military move during the sandstorm that drastically altered the war in our favor. That's a teaser - you'll have to read about it in my paper. The historical facts show that U.S. forces soon captured Baghdad after a series of armed incursions. The statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square was toppled on April 9.

The point is this: On March 25, 2003, things looked pretty bleak in Iraq. But a major military turning point came during those few days, and Saddam Hussein in bronze fell to the ground just two weeks later. Sometimes when things look the worst, there comes a turning point that nobody realizes until later.

The news from Iraq was depressing until about a week ago. It seemed that our side was losing cities to the insurgents, as more and more "no-go zones" developed. I think we were actually losing progress, as defined by the measures discussed here several months ago.

Take courage, my friends! Najaf is peaceful once again, even though too many of the al-Sadr militants got away. The shrine's okay. Samarra has been re-liberated from anti-Iraq forces. By now many Iraqis have had it up to ^here with militants turning their neighborhoods into battlegrounds. I expect Iraqis have also realized that people who sabotage pipelines aren't doing squat to defend Islam or fight for Iraq or improve anyone's lives. Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi is holding tough. And most people who make the decisions have recognized that Kevin was right back in April when he said that the right thing to do in Fallujah is to take back the city from the terrorists, not withdraw.

If John Kerry is elected president he will follow basically the same plan in Iraq as Bush is following now. Kerry says he will execute the plan better, and any voter can decide if they believe him or not. The Democrats made the choice of Kerry over Howard Dean in the primaries, and with that choice they rejected the option to withdraw from Iraq. Tony Karon at TIME Magazine can complain that Kerry doesn't offer a choice on Iraq, but that choice is off the table now because it was already rejected. No matter what happens in November, America plans to finish the job that we started in Iraq. And finish it right.

Thank you, Tony Blair and the United Kingdom and Australia for being there with us all the way! Thank you also to the other coalition countries.

By my count progress in Iraq is at about 85%. Progress is at 50% automatically because Allawi is in charge and Iraq is sovereign. When I look at the map of Iraq I see about 30% of the population and land as "no-go zones", meaning 70% is relatively stable and functional. So 50% + 70%*50% = 85%. You do the math.

Meteorologically Speaking:
The old saying that "it's darkest before the dawn" is incorrect. Night is relatively constant in darkness, except for the hour after sundown and before sunrise when blue photons are scattering over the horizon and lighting up things a bit. Surface temperature pretty much follows a sinusoidal curve during the day, with the peak temperature at about 2pm. Surface temperatures are coldest before the dawn because the earth's surface undergoes radiative cooling all night, at pretty much a constant rate.

So it really is coldest just before the dawn.

Warm, Cuddly, Deadly

I'd like to live in Teresa Heinz Kerry's world. No, I'm not talking about being a pampered billionaire, I'm talking about her world where everybody is a rational actor.

She said the United States needs a different approach in the world. "The way we live in peace in a family, in a marriage, in the world, is not by threatening people, is not by showing off your muscles. It's by listening, by giving a hand sometimes, by being intelligent, by being open and by setting high standards," she said at the CSU rally.

That may work for most people in their family lives, but it simply doesn't work for everybody nor does it work all the time in the world. They're are plenty of people in prison for whom all those non-forceful methods simply don't work. And does she honestly think we can sit down with Osama and work this whole 'infidels-must-die' thing out with listening and setting high standards?

This sort of thinking gets people killed. But it doesn't stop there.

"There are about 50 countries in the world that have the capability to build nuclear weapons. Are we going to attack them all?" she said.

Are all countries equal? Does Canada follow the same foreign policy as North Korea? Of course not. So why should different countries, with different political systems, be treated the same? It's egalitarianism run amok. Homicidal dictators who feel no compunction in killing people should be treated differently than representative governments that take great care of foreigners and citizens alike.

I realize that she is the wife of the candidate, not the candidate, but I get tired of trite moralizing and an inability to face up to reality.

Cat Stevens in the News Again

Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, formerly Stephen Georgiou, was denied entry to the United States and returned to London:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/23/stevens.back.britain/index.html

Here's some more background on the creator of "Tea for the Tillerman":
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/cat.stevens.resurfaces.ap/index.html

CNN.com reports:

"He [Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam] was widely reported to have endorsed the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni's 1989 decree calling for the death of British novelist Salman Rushdie after Khomeni said Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," was blasphemous.

But Islam has said his comments were taken out of context by a reporter, and that he opposed anyone "taking the law into their own hands."

Here's what I remember of the Salman Rushdie "Satanic Verses" incident (15 years after the fact): After Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie and ordered Muslims to kill him, some reporters asked Stevens about the death sentence. Yusuf Islam's response was something like this: "Well, blasphemy against the Koran is a very serious matter. I acknowledge the authority of Muslim religious leaders, and in principle I support their decrees." The headlines the next day read:

Cat Stevens Says Rushdie Must Die

Of course Stevens hit the roof when he read the newspaper, and he angrily called a press conference. He said his comments had been taken out of context, that his position had been exaggerated, and so on.

I think he deserved it. One does not equivocate and give vague statements of implicit support when death sentences are issued publicly against authors of books. Either Khomeini is an out-of-control theocratic idiot or he's a revered Imam of the true Islamic faith. Khomeni didn't leave us with many choices in the middle.

Yusuf Islam seems to have learned his lesson: "He also condemned the recent attack on a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan that killed more than 300 people, many of them children." Good for him. Maybe he'll donate money or blood to help them.

By the way, nobody claims that Cat Stevens is a terrorist, despite the disingenuous remarks by him and some American Muslims like Ibrahim Hooper (spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations). The complaint is that some of the charities he supports may be funneling money toward non-charitable causes that support terrorism.

Not Good

Putin appears to be actually doing what Bush's critics accuse him of: becoming a dictator. My feeling is that this is what Putin has wanted to do and now feels that he can do. Will taking full control of the goverment help in the fight against terrorism? I don't think so, and it may cause more division than unity. The problem Russia has had in fighting terrorism seems to have more to do with petty corruption than lack of central control. But what do I know, I'm just a guy on the other side of the world from Russia.

Global Moral Renaissance

(This is a blog. I'm supposed to be provocative, right?) Humanity's march toward righteousness continues. From CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/08/30/war.peace.ap/index.html

Despite headlines, global war casualties decline

Monday, August 30, 2004 Posted: 12:13 PM EDT (1613 GMT)
(AP) -- The chilling sights and sounds of war fill newspapers and television screens worldwide, but war itself is in decline, peace researchers report.

In fact, the number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meantime, are growing in number.

"International engagement is blossoming," said American scholar Monty G. Marshall. "There's been an enormous amount of activity to try to end these conflicts.

. . .

A collaboration with Sweden's Uppsala University, that report will conservatively estimate battle-related deaths worldwide at 15,000 in 2002 and, because of the Iraq war, rising to 20,000 in 2003. Those estimates are sharply down from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990's, a time of major costly conflicts in such places as the former Zaire and southern Sudan, and from a post-World War II peak of 700,000 in 1951.

The article cites studies by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Canadian organization Project Ploughshare, and the Human Security Report from the University of British Columbia. Okay, I'm kidding about the "march toward righteousness", but I thought that story ought to be received as good news.

Monty Marshall and others attribute the cause of the decline to the end of the Cold War's aftermath, and to peacemaking and peacekeeping missions, often under U.N. auspices. And you thought Kofi Annan was just some annoying guy who runs onto the battlefield just as American armies are lined up ready to give the bad guy what he deserves! You may still be correct about that, but these researchers think that some good is being accomplished by peace missions that embody what the U.N. is supposed to be.

The fly in the ointment here is that humans have thought up other ways to be nasty to each other that do not involve armed conflict. "The Canadian center's director, Andrew Mack, said the figures don't include deaths from war-induced starvation and disease, deaths from ethnic conflicts not involving states, or unopposed massacres, such as in Rwanda in 1994." So North Korean leader Kim Jong Il can still allow 2-3 million people to starve to death during 1994-1998, and it won't get added to the number of combat deaths.

Probably the encouraging statistics from 2003 will not comfort any parents who lost a child in the Beslan terrorist attack on a school this past week. Still, the statistics suggest that for every Beslan school there are two or more schools where children coming running out to their waiting parents, hug them, and travel happily homeward with nary a terrorist in sight. Is Vladimir Putin our friend? I suppose not. However, Christian theology includes the idea of treating your adversary kindly in his hour of need, and possibly making him your friend. See the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 for details. God can make good come out of evil (Genesis 50:20).

As George Bush said shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: "Hug your children!" Take them on whitewater rafting trips. And love their mother with all your heart.

Europe, Again

Orin Judd links to a long piece by Bruce Bowers in the Hudson review about European/American relations based upon experiences in Europe. It's well worth the time to read.

One of the crucial differences between Europe and America is that Europe is full of people who decided to stay and America is full of people (and their descendents) who decided to leave. You can almost imagine a diffusion process where on one side of the Atlantic you have the least volitile people and on the other the most. I suppose it isn't a surprise then that Europe has increasingly looked to comfort and security while American continues to look to opportunity and success. In a sense on of the problems with Europe really is America -- it's attracted the strivers and the boat rockers that Europe needs. That outflow of people has been interrupted for sixty years from the old Eastern bloc countries -- another difference between our old allies and our new ones.

Clarity In The Murk

David Cohen at the Brothers Judd (I offered to rechristen this place the Brothers Murphy when Sean asked about posting here, but he declined) does a nice job of summing up my view on Israel and the Palestinians:

The point, of course, is that this sort of "context" is infinately reductive, with each side able to point to one earlier step of which they were the victim and which, had it not occurred, would have averted all the succeeding violence. In the west we still distinguish, perhaps naively, between people strapping bombs to themselves and seeking out civilians to murder, on the one hand, and military action, on the other. We also have noticed that, if the Palestinians simply wanted a state, they could have had one years ago. Unfortunately, they don't simply want a state, they want a particular state and that state has different ideas.

In my college days, various forums would address Israel and peace in the Middle East where the same few antagonists would repetitively engage that the infinitely reductive discourse about who started it first. That experience soured me on both participants, but more recent events have brought me the same clarity as Mr. Cohen. I suppose that makes me the stereotypical religious conservative who supports Israel, but so be it. What's right is what's right.

All Hail The UN

When I look at the UN, I see a completey corrupt embodiment of an important ideal. Others apparently see something different, they see a universal savior that is able to handle every need. They constantly sign the UN's praises. I'm surprised I haven't seen any green yard signs emblazoned with "UN Saves" in certain neighborhoods, although I have heard many a person claim that if a nation would just let the UN in, it would be saved. Religion comes in many flavors, some more tasty than others.

The State of Diplomacy

If insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results, a lot of the world goes crazy over Israel. A bunch of diplomats who were unsuccessful in the past in getting the Palestinians to stop killing Israelis in return for their own country are upset that President Bush wants to do something different - namely recognizing reality. So the old boundaries, which do not take into account "facts on the ground" are out; negotiations over the right of palestinian return are out since Israel could never agree; and bargaining with the current power structure of the palestinians which has only the legitimicy of force, is composed of terrorists, and has never bargained in good faith, and which has never renounced the destruction of Israel as the ultimate goal is also out. What does this mean?

Well, it means that the illusion of progress is over, and illusions die hard for those who believe them. It means that the palestinians won't get a state until they get serious about being a nation and not just an odd cross between victims and terrorists.

As for our state department, well, I'm not impressed. Someone I know worked at the state department. I noticed that they were reading Howard Zinn's history of the US and was told that it was very popular there. I asked if they had heard of Walter Mead's Special Providence. Nope. Never heard of it. On the one hand, you have a truly miserable book that's all about how bad America is; on the other you have a book that offers a great deal of insight about America and diplomacy. Which is the popular book in the State Department? You got it, the miserable one.

French Sophisticate

Nidra Poller is thinking about moving. As a Jew in France, she's considering leaving her once beloved adopted country and returning home:

That is what it boils down to. Things have gone from shouting "death to the Jews" to firebombing schools and synagogues, to persecution, attacks, even murder. We have Muslim rage in schools, hospitals, and courtrooms. Police headquarters are attacked, hospital personnel beaten, judges threatened. The Republic is under siege, and what are the French doing about it? They are trashing America.

This, it seems, is their new Maginot line: the sneer of hatred. Hand in hand with the government and the intellectual classes, the French media are channeling the national dismay over lost grandeur into contempt for America. Watch these suave Europeans, snickering to themselves because American soldiers are getting killed in Iraq. Is that (they sneer) any way to risk your life? Go on a crusade to fight incurable disease, cross in front of a moving car, smoke a cigarette. But fight to defend your own country? It’s indecent!

For me, the monuments are crumbling. The glistening golden dome of Les Invalides. The châteaux and the triumphal arches, the obelisks, the bux om fountains, the wrought-iron balconies, the slightly tipsy 18th-century apartment buildings, the rivers winding through those darling towns and cities. How can so much beauty cover such deep cowardice? I lash myself to the mast and close my senses to the sirens, while my heart rings with pride for "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

We are not free in France. I know the difference. I come from a free country. A rough and ready, clumsy, slapped together, tacky country where people say wow and gosh and shop at Costco. A country so vast I haven’t the faintest idea where I would put myself. A homeland I would have liked to keep at a distance, visit with pleasure, and leave with relief. A native land I walked out on with belated adolescent insouciance. A foreign land where I was born because Europe vomited up my grandparents as it is now coughing up me and mine.

Gosh. Wow. You're always welcome here, Nidra.

Come to Saint Louis. We have only two monuments -- the Arch and Stan Musual's Statue -- and a past that, like France's, was once pretty glorious, but it sure can feel like home.

Link via J Bowen at No Watermelons Allowed

Spanish Surprise

Western Europe's recent history is not kind to Western Europe. Western Europe fiddled while Bosnia burned, and when they belatedly sent "peacekeepers" under the UN, their main accomplishment was to concentrate Bosnian-Muslim victims for the Bosnian-Serbs in "safe havens" where the Muslims were anything but safe. And why not? When European peacekeepers made any threatening moves, the Bosnian-Serbs would round a bunch up as hostages and UNPROFOR would give in. The might of Europe assembled under the banner of the UN was impotent in the face of a few thousand thugs. Innocents paid with their lives. There was no lack of justice in or favorable opinon of Europe's efforts, just a lack of will. When the US supplied the will, the fighting soon stopped.

World opinion, European opinion was in favor of the end of the Taliban and imposition of representative government in Afganistan. Western Europe made financial committments and through NATO troop committments for what was near univerally agreed to be "the good war" in the War on Terror. Despite the early promise, the will again has been missing from Afganistan. The money didn't flow; nor did the troops. There are more non-US and non-UK troops in Iraq (even if the Spanish pull out) than there are in Afganistan, where NATO only secures Kabul. While Western Europe claims to have found the secret to living in peace, they won't send but a tiny fraction of their armies to help Afganistan.

Now we turn to Spain. Al Qaida attacked Spain and Spain threw up its hands in a familiar "no mas, no mas" gesture. It may have been that the Socialists would have won anyway or that it was the governments handling of the investigation that lost the election, but the perception is that the attack put the Socialists in power. Make no mistake - terrorism won a round. And the message that terrorism works isn't good for anyone but terrorists. Lone wackos and established terror groups like ETA and the IRA may be tempted to go for a spectacular attack. The problem isn't so much the loss of Spain's token force in Iraq, but Spain's cooperation in all the other aspects on the war on terror.

I don't want to paint too bleak a picture - Italy withstood a major attack on their soldiers in Iraq without backing down. Europe really is a great place in many ways - the best urban living in the world. But Western Europe seems to be facing its problems like a hospice patient -- just trying to stay comfortable while waiting for death. And palliating your problems doesn't make them go away.

And if anybody there is listening - you're not dead yet. Get out of your comfort zone, the world needs you and all you have to offer. And if you want the US to listen when you tell us "now isn't the time to fight", that can't be the only advice you ever give. We'll listen to a comrade-in-arms, not a nagging scold.

What the World Needs Now, Is Good Government

Imagine me at the Miss America pageant (it's easy if you try), and after making it through the swimsuit competition, we come to the question: "What is the biggest problem facing the world today?" I'd have my answer ready: bad government. Poverty, war, environmental destruction, most real suffering can be traced back to poor government. The sad thing is, good government isn't a big mystery. It's hard because it means overthrowing entrenched interests, and it requires practice, but it's well worth it.

The United States became the sole superpower in large part because of our government. Representation and consent of the governed (AKA democracy), the rule of law and not men, private property, contract rights, and free markets, essential liberties (such as freedom of speech and religion) -- these are all known and understood. The government that governs least governs best is a good rule of thumb toward regulation and regimentation, not the core functions of government.

What are rogue nations but those with particularly wretched governments - or government of the tyrant, by the tyrant, and for the tyrant. The countries that are the worst to live in are those with the worst governments. Poor countries are poor because their governments keep them poor through (at best) mismanagement and (at worst) deliberate rule for the ruler's sake. Frankly, no government should be considered legitimate that doesn't have the consent of it's people in free and fair elections. The best way to decrease poverty, to reduce war, to reduce human suffering would be to improve government globally.

I Think It Needs A Better Name

Hoystory linked to Charles Krauthammer's foreign policy speech to the American Enterprise Institute. I just love the sound of Krauthammer - the th is not pronounced as in "the", but separately. The name sounds like it should have been the soubriquet of a French king (as in Louis the Krauthammer) or even Cardinal Richelieu.

In his speech, Krauthammer breaks foriegn policy into four "schools" - not the same ones as Walter Russell Mead, but more conventional ones. But where some would name Neoconservative, Charles has "Democratic Globalism."

"Yet they are the principal proponents today of what might be called democratic globalism, a foreign policy that defines the national interest not as power but as values, and that identifies one supreme value, what John Kennedy called “the success of liberty.” As President Bush put it in his speech at Whitehall last November: “The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings.”

Beyond power. Beyond interest. Beyond interest defined as power. That is the credo of democratic globalism. Which explains its political appeal: America is a nation uniquely built not on blood, race or consanguinity, but on a proposition--to which its sacred honor has been pledged for two centuries. This American exceptionalism explains why non-Americans find this foreign policy so difficult to credit; why Blair has had more difficulty garnering support for it in his country; and why Europe, in particular, finds this kind of value-driven foreign policy hopelessly and irritatingly moralistic.

Democratic globalism sees as the engine of history not the will to power but the will to freedom. And while it has been attacked as a dreamy, idealistic innovation, its inspiration comes from the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Kennedy inaugural of 1961, and Reagan’s “evil empire” speech of 1983. They all sought to recast a struggle for power between two geopolitical titans into a struggle between freedom and unfreedom, and yes, good and evil."

It's left as an excercise for the reader to determine which school Charles le Kraut Martel belongs to, but I'll tell you that according to his formulation, I'll stand up and be counted with the Democratic Globalists. Very good stuff from Mr. Krauthammer.

As long as I'm on foreign policy, it's always struck me that it generally plays a small roll in Presidential elections when it is an area where the President has the most freedom. In domestic matters, Congress (and the courts) can easily stalemate the President's programs, but not so in foreign affairs.

Real Crushing Of Dissent

Here's how the Iranian government is handling dissent: Threaten force against protestors, and when the protest leaders back down, abduct them. But remember, it's only in America that dissent is crushed, and only by John Ashcroft.

Are Dictators Cracking Down?

Robert Musil wonders how you can tell whether or not dictators have taken the opportunity of the campaign against Saddam to crack down on their dissidents. Don't dictators do it all the time? Do dictators care whether we notice or not? Good questions.

Bush Apologized To Karzai for US Senate Treatment

The Washington Post is reporting that George Bush called Afgan President Karzai to apologize for the way the Senate treated him. Apparently Karzai was miffed that instead of a private get together, the Senate Foreign Relations committee gave him the full hearing treatment. While I somehow managed to miss Karzai's appearance, I have seen other hearings and generally I wish the person in the dock with give the Senators what for. The Senators resort to the Potter trick - they sit way up high behind a big impressive desk, and the interrogated get a little chair behind a table. The Senators like to thunder and fulminate, bully and intimidate, ask questions that are really speaches, and what ticks me off the most, they don't bother to listen when it's another Senator's turn. So the person has to answer the same stupid stuff over and over, in a display of uncommon discourtesy.

It has to weigh on Karzai, and Afganistan as a whole, that they are clients of the United States. For the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to put him through the ringer like that only reinforces the notion. Should Karzai be accountable? Sure, but would the Senate treat Jacques Chirac in the same manner? No, they'd be respectful, and polite, face-to-face anyway, as it should be. Once again, foreign affairs takes a back seat to domestic politics.

Lest We Forget

Most people seem to have forgotten what happened during the last UN - European attempt to contain a tyrant. In a word, failure and mass murder. In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence (with encouragement from France) from Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia tried to keep both regions from leaving, and war broke out. After ten days of fighting against Slovenia with little success, Yugoslavia gave up on Slovenia and concentrated on Croatia.

Croatia had a significant Serb minority who felt if Croatia could leave Yugoslavia, why couldn't the serbs leave Croatia? The UN imposed an arms embargo on the region to try to end the war, and not surprisingly it had no effect other than preserving Yugoslavia's military advantage, and led to President Clinton aiding gun runners in violation of the UN resolution. In 1992 Bosnia also declared its independence, and it too was engulfed in ethnic war. The Serb minority, backed by Yugoslavia (which was now pretty much Serbia) was successful against the Bosnian army and began what is now called ethnic cleansing. UN peacekeepers from European countries were dispatched to Croatia and Bosnia to try and enforce the many ceasefire agreements.

In 1993 "safe areas" or safe havens were declared (ultimately six towns) by the UN and peacekeepers assigned to them. The serbs made preparations to take Srebrenica, and the Bosnian army complied with the UN resolution and turned over their heavy weapons near the city. The military commander on the scene, British General Rupert Smith, wanted more men, more airstrikes - more backbone. The military commander at the UN, French General Benoit Jeanvier, wanted to limit the risk to the peacekeepers. As the serbs probed the UN willingness to fight around Srebrenica, they finally provoked an airstrike when they actually attacked UN peacekeepers. The Serbs responded to the airstrike by taking peacekeepers as hostages throughout the region and then chained them as human shields at military installations. General Smith was ordered to get approval from the UN Secretary General before ordering more airstrikes, and General Jeanvier himself began negotiations with the Serbs. Reportedly, the two side reached an understanding - the peacekeepers would be released in return for no more airstrikes. After that, the Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica stood by while the Serbs entered the city, separated the men from the women, and then massacred over 7,000 men and boys.

The massacres took place in July of 1995, after four years of UN handwringing and resolutions over the wars. Over 200,000 people were killed in Bosnia alone, thousands more in Croatia (I'm probably understating the real death toll). Starting on August 30, 1995, the United States led a bombing campaign against Serb forces, and on November 1 the leaders of Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia travelled to the United States to negotiate the Dayton Accord. In just over two months, the United states put an end to the war that had dragged on with no end in sight. The United States sent in peacekeepers who have kept the peace, unlike the unending string of ceasefires prior to their arrival.

The UN coupled with the Europeans compiled a dismal record of toothless resolutions, appeasement of mass murderers, and utter failure. So spare me any claims of the importance of Europe or the UN. On their own, they couldn't stop a two-bit tyrant like Milosevich on their doorstep. In Iraq, they've decided to get in bed with a tyrant - selling arms to a murderous despot and selling his oil to pay for them. What tyrant have they ever felled without US support? Those may be unpalatable facts, but facts they are.

Chirac and the French

There's a lot of French bashing going on these days. Roy Blunt made jokes about France at the Missouri GOP convention. Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys is a common description. Well, count me out on the French bashing, for a couple of reasons. On the military side, let me say just one word - Verdun. The joke about French rifle -- never fired and dropped only once -- not funny. Yes, the French capitulated in WWII - after the Brits were driven from the field (without their weapons, BTW) and the Germans thoroughly whupped them with the blitzkrieg. In some ways, its not clear that the French have ever recovered from WWI with its devastating loss of people or WWII with its humbling blow to their pride. And on the personal side, I have to say my own limited experience with the French runs counter to the stereotype of the aloof snob. I found them as warm and friendly as any other group. So while I think their political classes these days are deplorable, I don't think that warrants a general attack on the people themselves.

Jacques Chirac, however, has slimed himself:

"These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position."

"It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."

"I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others," Chirac said.

Chirac called the letters "infantile" and "dangerous," adding: "They missed a great opportunity to shut up."

"Romania and Bulgaria were particularly irresponsible. If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining Europe they could not have found a better way," Chirac said.

When asked why he wasn't similarly critical of the EU nations that signed the letter, Chirac said: "When you are in the family ... you have more rights than when you are asking to join and knocking on the door."

After that temper tantrum, Chirac has shown himself to be far worse than Bush. He clearly told the "junior" members to shut up and do as they are told by the senior, ie France and Germany, members. And it isn't just Chirac, European Commission President Romano Prodi said he was saddened rather than angry with the candidates because their pro-Americanism was a signal they had failed to understand that the EU is more than a mere economic union.

"I would be lying it I said I was happy," he told reporters. "I have been very, very sad, but I am also patient by nature, so I hope they will understand that sharing the future means sharing the future."

When all the new members join European Union, the influence of France and Germany within it is going to be diluted. And for now, anyway, all the Central and Eastern European countries that are joining still look to the US for leadership and don't feel the need to be a counterweight to US power and influence, which seems to be the overriding foreign policy principle of France and Germany these days. Given their much different recent political history, that attitude may last awhile.

Existential Questions At The UN

I suppose we're all pondering the same simple question: if the UN won't vote that a resolution has been violated, has it been violated? The diplomats there seem to agree with Captain Collins of the USS San Pablo (from the movie The Sand Pebbles) that what matters isn't the events of the day, but how we record those events.

Iraq is in violation of numerous binding UN resolutions, most of which date to the end of the Gulf War. The latest, Resolution 1441, makes it clear that Iraq's failure to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction will result in "serious consequences". It isn't the job of the inspectors to disarm Iraq, or contain Iraq, or do anything but verify that Iraq has disarmed itself. Iraq clearly hasn't done that. The UN response so far has been to ignore its own resolution as to what constitutes a material breach and make up the rules as it goes along.

The UN is in the position of a nice parent with a bratty child. As long as the child knows that no matter how much mom and/or dad blusters and threatens no real punishment will be forthcoming, the child will continue in his bratty ways. He knows "I'm not going to tell you again" in fact means all I'll ever do is tell you, over and over, and hope you grow weary of the sound of my voice. In the UN case, not only is mom unwilling to follow through, she's trying to keep dad from doing anything either.

I happened to catch Saturday Night Live the other night. They had a skit where Bush announces that the US is no longer interested in Iraq anymore - they can do whatever they want, we don't care. I'm not sure what the joke was supposed to be (a feeling I typically get while watching SNL which is why I do it so rarely now), but it got me to thinking, what would happen if Bush really would make that declaration. How long do you think inspectors would be in Iraq - hours or days?

Axis of Weasel's Punishment

After France, Germany, and Belgium have blocked NATO aid to defend Turkey, there have been calls for some sort of response. Not that I favor anything beyond a better understanding of what the word "ally" means for Americans -- for instance England, Australia, and yes, Canada should spring to mind when hearing that word -- my thought would be the most appropriate thing to do (not that I want to do anything) would be to simplly kick all three out of NATO. The Germans would be free to attack France through Belgium again, only this time nobody would come to France's aid. Anybody else, and all the rest of a united Europe would rise up to defend itself. That's fair, I think. Besides, now that the Germans are such pacifists, it wouldn't be a big deal. And if these three countries want to help out in war, then by all means NATO can accept the aid with open arms. They just wouldn't get a veto is all.

This Isn't Arrogance?

I keep hearing how arrogant America and Americans are. Well, Belgium unilaterally claims a right to universal jurisdiction in human rights allowing Belgium's courts to try crimes against humanity and genocide, no matter where they were committed. And the Belgium Supreme Court just ruled that Ariel Sharon can be tried for war crimes dating back to the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps after he leaves office. All I can say is, you and what army are going to make the arrest?

Belgium Joins the Axis of Weasels

The Washington Post reports that Belgium in solidarity with France and Germany will block a request of the US to provide military aid to Turkey in the event of war with Iraq. And Germany is working with France on a proposal that would include a deployment of UN troops to Iraq coupled with tripling the number of weapons inspectors - which immediately reminds me of the saying why should you expect different results if you keep doing the same thing. I guess one positive note out of all this is that France and Germany have apparently finally buried the hatchet after fighting war after war with each other and trading Alsace and Lorraine back and forth like a cheap baseball card. Maybe now that Iraq has rejected Blix's latest requests, Germany will bother to tell Powell what they've got cooking, instead of letting him read about it in the paper. Do you sometimes wonder if we ever get beyond high school?

Do American's Care What Other Nations Think?

Random Observations answers the BBC, that hey, we American's DO care about other countries. He also points out that those sophisticated Europeans are geographically challanged, just like Americans. Maybe Jay could have an international version of Jaywalking.

Europe Is With Us

Sine Qua Non Pundit points out that many European countries do support war in Iraq - Spain, Portugal, Italy , United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark. So why do we keep hearing about France and Germany only?

A little History

The Midwest Conservative Journal is smoking on Iraq today. The only thing I have to add takes off from the remarks of John Howard" (Australia's Prime Minister for those of us who aren't Al Gore):

"Mr Howard said NATO's attack on Serbian troops in Kosovo showed that UN approval was not a necessity for Allied troops to begin a military attack.

"Look at Kosovo. There was no UN resolution on Kosovo," he said. "I don't remember too many people at the time saying that's outrageous. I don't remember it.

"I'm not saying Kosovo is a model for what might happen here. I'm not suggesting that. I'm using that as illustration that people who look for a black and white outcome from the UN could be mistaken.

"In the end we could have a grey outcome from the UN and you then have to make a judgment on merits."

Let me go a little bit further. On Kosovo, not only was there no U.N. resolution, there was no congressional authorization. The short history was there was a cold civil war in Kosovo, with atrocities being committed by both Albanians and Serbians - in fact it was the Albanians in Kosovo who originated the use of rape as a means of war in the modern Balkans, and you were more likely to be victimized as a Serb than an Albanian in Kosovo. President Clinton demanded that Yugoslavia sign the Rambouillet Accord or else, with a deadline after which force would be used. This is typically known as issuing an ultimatum. We knew Yugoslavia wouldn't, couldn't accept this Accord -- Kosovo was not only going to be autonomous, it was going to be under NATO control and occupation, and under appendix B Yugoslavia itself could be occupied by NATO. Didn't anybody remember that WWI started with an ultimatum issued to Serbia - again one that couldn't be accepted? So when the deadline passed, NATO ministers voted for war, and President Clinton ordered bombing to commence, without any congressional debate or vote. That's right the United States of America went to war, not on a U.N. resolution, not on a Congressional Declartion of War, but on the vote of NATO. Where were the cries of give diplomacy a chance?

And did we confine ourselves to military targets? No. Not only did we bomb civilian infrastructure - power plants, bridges, car factories, that could be argued were valid because of their use to the military, we bombed a Serbian TV studio because we didn't like what they were saying on it. We targeted and killed civilians not because of their possible military value, but because we didn't like their version of events. Where was the outcry? What would have happened if in the Gulf War we would have targeted Peter Arnett (like blowing up his hotel room at night) because we didn't like how the Iraqi's were using him for propaganda purposes? Don't think too hard about that, instead, wonder why when the litany of why America is considered an arrogant cowboy country, we hear about Kyoto and not Kosovo.

So please, don't tell me that Bush is a warmongerer, or that an attack on Iraq without UN apporval is illegal unless you said the same thing about Clinton and Kosovo.

North Korea Diplomacy

I'm sure you've seen this article by Orson Scott Card on Korea - it's all over the blogospere, although I found it via Glenn Reynolds. I think it's a pretty good analysis, although I don't think China is going to publically put North Korea under its nuclear umbrella. I'm not sure what form the gaurantee will take, but I think it will more likely be a treaty or agreement that includes China. The important thing to remember, as this article points out, not everything that happens happens in public, and not everything that can be said should be (or is) said in public.

I thought this article (in the NYT of all places) makes a fine companion piece. North Korea is a drain on China -- it exports refuges and imports food, money, and resources. South Korea is an asset to China - both as a market (third largest trading partner)and as a source of investment (fifth largest foreign investor), and I'm sure that comes with some technology transfer. In a sense, both South Korea and China would just as soon North Korea disappeared from the map, or failing that, the status quo is just fine, thank you very much. I doubt South Korea wants to try to unify with the North after the example of German reunification, and China is stuck for reasons of history and status with being its protector. So for the Chinese, any problems North Korea causes the US is OK with them; to the extent North Korea causes them problems, well, now something has to be done.

Where's the UN?

North Korea has removed the seals and disabled the monitoring cameras the IAEA placed upon nuclear facilities as part of the 1994 agreement to abandon its nuclear weapon program (which North Korea now admits it secretly violated). The only point in doing so is to reprocess the spent fuel into plutonium based nuclear bombs. What's the UN response? It deplores the action. No word on what it's going to do about it. Of course, all eyes are on Washington DC to find out what George Bush is going to do about it, not on Kofi Annan. Why would they be - without a real military to back it up, the UN is limited to making tut-tut noises and issuing bland statements. Heck, the new President of South Korea said that his country might remain neutral in a conflict between the US and North Korea - which I guess means he'd be happy for the US to eliminate the crazy dictator to the North, he just prefer that North Korea not kill any of South Koreans in the process.

We're assured by many people reluctant or opposed to attacking Iraq that what we need there is clear evidence that Iraq is intending to build weapons of mass destruction in violation of agreements and binding UN resolutions, and then they would support a war. Will they support war as an option against North Korea, which we believe to already possess two nuclear bombs and is trying to build more in violation of UN monitored agreements?

Roh Wins in South Korea

Roh Moo-hyun won South Korea's presidential election today. Roh's platform was to do something about the huge industrial conglomerates in South Korea as well as continuing a reconciliation policy with North Korea. It appears the economic issues were the more important factor for the voters, who are accustomed to an erratic, belligerant North Korea. And let's face it, nationalism is generally popular within any country; typically only elites ever adopt the odd anti-nationalist stance.

North Korea - Hub of Axis of Evil?

Both North Korea and Bill Clinton are at it again. North Korea has decided that as long as they aren't going to abide by some of their agreement with us, they aren't going to abide by any of it, and so have restarted their plutonium based nuclear program and are telling the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to take a hike. They also are telling the world that their army is ready to fight a death defying battle and deliver bitter defeat and death to the United States. One thing you have two admire about communist countries is their colorful language. Democratically elected politicians try to speak in the blandest of terms; repressive regimes get to let it all hang out, rhetorically speaking. But that's the only thing I can admire about the government of North Korea (or any other communist government), which has provided a stark contrast in the importance of political systems with South Korea. Whatever else you want to say about the Korean War, (or the Vietnam War, for that matter), history has clearly shown we were on theright side.

And Bill Clinton continues his Cliff Clavin routine by claiming that he had a plan to destroy North Korea's nuclear reactor. Just like he left behind a detailed plan to deal with al Qaeda in the oval office that George Bush somehow misplaced. The contents of that memo can now be revealed: "Do as I will say, not as I did. PS Whatever you do, don't send Jimmy!" The really interesting part of this is that Clinton is saying he would have gone to war with North Korea over their nuclear program - which is what George Bush is saying in regards to Iraq. Maybe it isn't the oil, maybe it's the mushroom cloud, stupid.

Iran, not wanting to be left out of the axis of evil, is building their own nuclear facilities. Strictly for power generation according to Iran, but they did forget to mention it to the IAEA, and they have postponed inspections after the IAEA asked them what they were doing. But who am I to doubt the official Iranian statements when North Korea seems downright proud of its double dealing?

So many lying, conniving, murdering regimes, so few Marines.

World Opinion

I'm a little late coming to the party about the Pew Research Center's Global Attitude Survey. My feeling, expressed by many others, is who cares what other countries think? We should do what we think is right, not give into peer pressure. However, plenty of people think this means we are too rich and powerful. To which I respond, this means we're not rich and powerful enough. The big complaint seems to be that

"Many people around the world, especially in Europe and the Middle East/Conflict Area, believe the U.S. does not take into account the interests of their country when making international policies. Majorities in most countries also see U.S. policies as contributing to the growing gap between rich and poor nations and believe the United States does not do the right amount to solve global problems."

If the United States was rich and powerful enough, we could give up any worries about our own well being, share the wealth with everybody else, and never bother to advance our own interests. As it is, we act like other countries and take care of number one first. I think we do look out for the common good more than most other countries (I'm in the American majority here). Let's face it, the problem with the world isn't that America isn't liked enough, the problem is the rest of the world isn't enough like America.

Barbarians Within The Gates

City Journal has a depressing and scary article about the failure of immigrants to assimilate in France. From what little I know, this same article could be written about most European countries, which took in immigrants in the 60's and 70's at a time of low unemployment but are now stuck with a lump of locally born yet unassimilated foreigners who have by and large never known work. They form a sort of Islamic Horse. Europe has very high unemployment due to "enlightened" work policies, unassimilated immigrants due to "enlightened" multiculturalism, and the breakdown of society within these immigrant communities due to an "enlightened" welfare state. After reading the article, I have to wonder if America won't be called upon again to fight in Europe if these communities become centers of terrorism or even go to war against their hosts.

North Korea: Still Not Pardoned

AP reports that the five kidnapped Japanese will stay in Japan and not return to North Korea as originally planned. A member of the Japanese Government announced that they wouldn't be returning, and went on to say that it was indispensable and urgent that North Korea return the children of those kidnapped as well. The North Korean Foreign Ministry is apparently a bit miffed that the Japanese are taking them at their word (don't they know it's no good?) that the abductees and their children can return permanently to Japan if they choose. I hope Japan holds onto their outrage over the kidnapping long enough to reunite the families, and that Jimmy Carter doesn't butt his nose in.

North Korea, Newest Member Of The Nuclear Club

North Korea made the front page today with its admission that they ignored the 1994 agreement brokered by Jimmy Carter not to try to build a nuclear bomb in return for nuclear power and other aid. And they also let slip that they don't feel bound by the agreement anymore -- although they don't seem to ever have felt bound by it -- and they have a more powerful weapons, some exotic yet extra potent form of kimchi I suppose.

Telling us now is no accident. They're letting us know before we invade, or even threaten them - we can't be deterred if we don't know as pointed out in Dr. Strangelove - that they have nuclear and biological weapons. Either they have these weapons of mass destruction, or they're close to having them or they are simply bluffing. What country is willing to find out the hard way? The Carter legacy just continues to give and give.

North Korea, Unpardonable Country

I'm surprised this story hasn't gotten more play in the US. In 1978, North Korea decided that they needed Japanese tutors for their spies, so they kidnapped Japanese off beaches in Japan and took them to North Korea. North Korea denied the kidnappings until Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi visited North Korea, whereupon Kim Jong Il admitted that they had kidnapped 13 Japanese, but 8 of them died. Officially, Japan says 15 people were kidnapped, but some relatives claim the number is more like 50 to 60. Five of the survivors are visiting Japan, but not with their children who remained in North Korea. North Korea says the children aren't hostages, oh my of course not, they just didn't want to leave their beloved homeland.

Prime Minister Koizumi said on national television "Certainly North Korea is an unpardonable country. It abducts, takes away and kills." Well, why should the North Korean government act any differently towards the Japanese people than its own? President Bush was right to call this regime evil - there's no other description that fits. Jimmy Carter, who didn't like President Bush's characterization, said of Kim Jong Il's daddy, Kim Il Sung, and the perpetrator of the abductions and murders, "I find him to be vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well informed about the technical issues, and in charge of the decisions about this country” and “I don’t see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation.” Like a certain news channel, we report, you decide which president is right.

Jimmy Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Jimmy Carter won the Nobel peace prize today. His accomplishments are legendary: he brought Peace to the Middle East, brought democracy to Haiti, and brought North Korea back into the fold of enlighted rule.

The awards committee said giving the award to Carter was a criticism of current U.S. policy and "a kick in the leg" to those following the same line. Or it could be a shot in their own foot, as they continue to pick people who haven't done a thing for peace. At least Carter isn't a promoter of violence like Arafat or Le Duc Tho, a couple of Peace Prize winners. Instead, he helps evil flourish because he is unwilling to acknowledge and confront the evil (what they call an enabler in therapeutic circles).

I did note the article contains one error - it says he narrowly averted an invasion of Haiti in 1994; actually he was the bagman on a payoff to the thugs who then ran Haiti and ran from Haiti with millions of US dollars when they learned the 82nd airborne was on the way to remove them from power. The US still invaded Haiti, but it was unopposed.