joyfulchristian

Even as

One way to try to influence people's thinking indirectly involves the words, "even as." The idea is to present the activities of two different groups and use the phrase, "even as" to imply that the actions of one group should have shamed the other group out of doing whatever it is they're doing. Like so:

Even as Uday Hussein was shoving people feet first into plastic shredders, anti-war protestors chanted, "Bush is a terrorist."

Like most rhetorical devices, there's nothing wrong with this. Unless you're doing it in a news story. (You know those things that are supposed to be opinion neutral.) Tim Blair points out a pretty bizzare example.

A protest examined

David Frum has some interesting observations from yesterday's protest in London. This was probably the most disturbing:

The organizers of the protest installed a mobile jumbotron at the front of the square. On it, images of the speakers were interspersed with herky-jerky art-school style film clips. Just before the toppling of the effigy – and in order to work up the crowd into a more frenzied mood of rage and hate – the jumbotron broadcast images of George Bush, stepping out of his limousine into Buckingham Palace and standing at attention at the welcome ceremony. Now here’s the interesting thing: Whenever Bush appeared, there appeared superimposed upon him crosshairs – like those of a sniper’s rifle. I wonder what the organizers meant by that?

Yeah, I wonder.

Collateral damage

Donald Sensing makes a great point:

Al Qaeda’s war is not only against the West; in fact, I say that they are not even principally fighting against the West. Their primary war is against other Muslims. What is at stake are lives, human freedom and the very definition of Islam itself.

As I pointed out in August 2002, the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not tow their line.

As Donald points out, while al Qaeda wants to spread Wahhabism across the world, their stated current goal is to restore the caliphate. To do that, they'd have to overthrow a lot of governments and kill a lot of Muslims. The attacks on Western nations are not, currently, designed to defeat us; they're just trying to drive us out of "Muslim" lands so we won't be in they're way.

For some reason many Muslim governments seem to be oblivious to this. Their ignorance may be intentional. In many Muslim nations things are so bad that the governments have been looking for scapegoats; they've chosen America and the Jews. Al Qaeda's constant anti-American and anti-semetic ravings make it politically difficult to oppose them as thye're constantly condemning the very people that the governments have intentionally been directing their people's rage against.

Arrests made in Turkey

I thought this was worth mentioning:

Istanbul — Turkish investigators arrested an undisclosed number of suspects Friday in the deadly suicide bombings on the British consulate and a London-based bank that have been blamed on al-Qaeda. Foreign governments, meanwhile, warned more terrorist attacks could target Turkey.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul confirmed the arrests in Thursday's bombing but declined to give details.

“Some people have been arrested, but its too early to give information about them,” he told a news conference.

The daily newspaper Hurriyet said police were interrogating seven people in connection with the attack, which killed 27 people in Turkey's worst-ever terrorist bombing and stood as the highest single-day death toll from terrorism in Turkey since 1977, when gunmen opened fire on leftists and killed 37.

The paper also said police believe they had identified the suicide bombers as two Turkish men with links to the perpetrators of an attack five days earlier at two Istanbul synagogues that killed 23 people.

If the second set of bombers had known ties to the first set, this may be an indication that al Qaeda was forced to use members of the same cells for both attacks. (An indication that they don't have many cells operating effectively in Turkey.) The Turkish police appear to have responeded to this by rounding up the known associates of the second set of bombers. That action may well save a lot of lives.

If we don't see more attacks in Turkey in the next week or so, that would probably be a good indication that al Qaeda doesn't have as many resources in country as the recent bombinbs might suggest. Either that or they just have no since of operational continuity. After all, they should have had follow up attacks planned after 9/11, but they didn't.

Good for them

Congress has passed sanctions agaisnt Syria.

Curious

Joel Mowbray wonders why the media isn't more interested in Greenpeace's financial hanky-panky.

I'm all for that

Thomas Friedman argues that the Bush team needs to give Blair more cover. It's hard to argue with that.

Good for them

While driving to work this morning, I heard something that made me happy. Apparently a bunch of "concerned citizens" tried to get the Stillwater, OK city commission to consider passing an ordinance calling for the repeal of the PATRIOT act. The quotes from commssioners that I heard were basically, "Look, we understand you're concerned, but even if we did pass such an ordinance, what difference would it make." One of the commissioners basically told the "concerned ones" that if they wanted the PATRIOT act repealed, they needed to talk to their Congressman. Exactly the right response.

Tragedy

The bombings in Turkey today claimed the life of a diplomat:

A senior British diplomat in Turkey is among the 27 killed in Thursday's bombings in Istanbul, the consulate's chaplain told several sources.

Consul-General Roger Short's body is believed still to be entombed in the rubble left by the attacks on British interests in the Turkish capital, twin bomb blasts that hit the consulate and the HSBC bank headquarters.

Either 13 or 14 of the dead were at the consulate, not all of them British, according to various sources.

The Turkish Interior Minister, Abdulkadir Aksu, told reporters that 450 had been wounded in attacks carried out by "two pick-up trucks loaded with explosives".

"Those who carried out the attacks were torn apart themselves," Mr. Aksu added.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that some of the intelligence he had heard indicated that there could have been as many as five co-ordinated explosions in the two attacks. Although he acknowledged that it was too early to know who was responsible, Mr. Straw told reporters that the attacks were similar to earlier handiwork by al-Qaeda.

I'd like to think that these attacks will prompt some people to see how dangerous the Islamists are and how vital it is that we win, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm not holding my breath

William Saletan says that Wesley Clark needs to put up or shut up.

Wrong allies

Ramesh Ponnoru has a great point: The Repbulicans have been making a big deal about the AARPs endorsement of their prescirption drug plan. That could come back to haunt them.

America: All-purpose whipping boy

The number one scapegoat of all time is, of course, THE JOOOOS!!!^TM. But, as Mark Steyn points out, America catches abuse from all sides too:

The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist. And even its imperialism is too vulgar and arriviste to appeal to real imperialists: let's face it, the ghastly Yanks never stick it to the fuzzy-wuzzy with the dash and élan of the Bengal Lancers, which appears to be the principal complaint of Sir Max Hastings and his ilk. To the mullahs, America is the Great Satan, a wily seducer; to the Gaullists, America is the Great Cretin, a culture so self-evidently moronic that only stump-toothed inbred Appalachian lardbutts could possibly fall for it. American popular culture is utterly worthless, except when one of its proponents - Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon - attacks Bush, in which case he or she is showered with European awards and sees the foreign-language rights for his latest tract sell for six figures at Frankfurt. The fact that the best-selling anti-Americans are themselves American - Moore, Chomsky - is perhaps the cruellest manifestation of the suffocating grip of the hyperpower.

Too Christian, too Godless, too isolationist, too imperialist, too seductive, too cretinous, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear, you will find it therein - for the Continentals, excessive religiosity; for the Muslims, excessive decadence; for Harold Pinter, excessively bleeding rectums.

So be it. This is a psychosis so impervious to reason that on Thursday those in the most advanced stage will pour into the streets to re-enact the toppling of Saddam's statue with Bush on the podium. The 40 per cent of Britons who merely think the President "stupid" will cheer from their sofas.

We just can't please anybody. I guess we'll just have to ignore them and do what we think is right.

Score

Robin Wallace makes a great point: Regardless of whether Michael Jackson is guilty of child molestation, what the heck is wrong with the parents?

It doesn’t matter if Jackson is a sexual predator or not. The public behavior he proudly exhibits suggests, at the very least, mental instability. The private behavior he openly admits to is, by any reasonable measure, deviant. Jacko is wacko, and I know that as a parent, someone with his peculiarities and predilections would not be my first choice for a companion for my kid — and I have a daughter. He may or may not be guilty of abuse, but any parent who would trust him with his or her child certainly is.

Read the rest.

Oh those annoying specifics

Ben Domenech has a great point about polls:

Poll-watching is one of the press' favorite activities in Presidential election years - so it's amazing how badly they are at it. For months, media folks have been hyping the stats that show the President statistically even with an unnamed Democratic candidate. But the President isn't going to be running against an "unnamed Democrat" - a candidate assumed by the polled voters to be flawless, above-board, charming, and in total agreement with their every position. The same thing happened with Clinton in 1996, but the GOP (unfortunately) had to nominate someone, and that someone was Bob Dole. When you actually stack Bush up against named Democrats, the President wins every time. Perhaps the party should nominate "unnamed," and just have a drawing out of a hat after the election to determine the winner.

Well, that's at least a plan.

The Prague Connection

Edward Epstien has a very interesting piece about the possibility that Mohhamed Atta met with Iraqi Intelligence before 9/11. This isn't news, of course, but it is something that has been repeatedly ignored. Personally, I get the feeling that someone in our own intelligence community is playing CYA. I can't prove it, but that's the explanation that feels right.

Stupidity

Via Josh Claybourn, I found this little gem:

DENVER - High school without seniors? Colorado lawmakers have asked education officials to study the possibility of eliminating the 12th grade and establishing a year of preschool instead. They said it would better prepare students for college by giving them an early start and possibly save money.

That seems pretty radical. Why would they want to do that?

"I'd really like to see if we might change the model," Republican state Sen. Ron Teck said Monday. "We've been operating under the same education model for the last 100 years."

I have no idea whether this is a good idea. I doubt it is, but that's not really relevant at the moment. What I want to talk about is the reason Sen. Teck gives for making the change; Basically he says that we've been doing things the same way for 100 years so it's time to change.

This is stupid. He's not the only one to say things like this, but it's still stupid. For some reason people have come to believe that newer is better. That's not always true. In fact, when it comes to processes (as opposed to products), I'm not even sure it's usually true. Something is not inherently better just because it is new.

Let me just say

... that China is delusional when it comes to Taiwan.

China has issued another strong warning that it is prepared to go to war, if necessary, to stop what it calls Taiwan's drive for independence. A senior Taiwan affairs official in Beijing, Vice Minister Wang Zaixi, said Wednesday that the communist government's main goal is to curb Taiwan's independence efforts. Mr. Wang said the use of force might be unavoidable if separatists on the island challenge Beijing's one-China policy. But he stressed that the government hopes to settle the question of Taiwan peacefully.

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian has launched an aggressive re-election campaign based on the assertion that Taiwan and China are two sovereign countries. He also has vowed to push for a new constitution for the island in 2006.

In an interview earlier this year with the Washington Post, Mr. Chen called Beijing's one-China principle abnormal thinking that should be corrected. China condemned those remarks as proof of the Taiwanese leader's desire for independence.

OK, here's the deal: Taiwan already is independent. They have their own (non-communist) government, their own military, and their own economy. All of that is completely seperated from the Chinese government on the mainland.

Despite all that, China continues with it's absolutely ludicrous "one China" policy. "One China" is just a legal fiction that has nothing whatsoever to do with fact. Everyone continues to pretend "one China" is the truth for the simple reasons that a) the Chinese government has insisted repeatedly that if Taiwan actually "declared independence" that war would follow, and b) China's continued insistence on "one China" doesn't seem to be hurting Taiwan very much. Consequently, every one seems to think that the best course of action is to just let them have their fantasy.j

Of course it says a lot about the Chinese government that they'd be willing to go to war just because someone punctured their fantasy world.

The long nightmare is approaching it's end

Hopefully.

Apparently a warrant has been issued for Michael Jackson's arrest.

Pop star Michael Jackson is again at the centre of a police investigation. About 20 officers searched his California ranch on Tuesday as part of an ongoing but undisclosed criminal investigation. Jackson was not home.

Cable channel Court TV said the investigation stems from allegations of sexual abuse brought by a 12-year-old boy against the 45-year-old Jackson.

Up to 70 investigators from the Santa Barbara County sheriff's and district attorney's offices entered Jackson's sprawling Neverland Ranch outside of Santa Barbara on Tuesday morning. No immediate arrests were made.

Court TV reporter Diane Dimond, who is on the scene, says a source told her that police not only had a search warrant, but an arrest warrant. Dimond told CNN's Larry King that had Jackson been at the ranch, the warrant would have been executed.

Jackson appears to think it's part of a plot to wreck his career:

"I've seen lawyers who don't represent me and spokespeople who do not know me speaking for me. These characters always seem to surface with dreadful allegations just as another project, an album, a video is being released," the Jackson statement said.

Please tell me this means someone is going to take those kids away from him.

Repeat after me

Questioning someone's judgement on national security is not the same as questioning their patriotism. John Hawkins explains the problem.

There's a strange little hiccup in the thinking of the left when it comes to Democrats who've served in the military. Their theory, while seldom explicitly spelled out, goes like so....A Democrat who has served in the military is automatically presumed to be competent when it comes to matters of national defense no matter what their positions on national defense ACTUALLY ARE. If a Republican actually questions that competence, then that's an attack on the patriotism of the candidate whose views are being questioned. So for example, if a Democratic veteran who won medals in Vietnam suggested that we replace the entire air force with solar-powered toy planes that fired foamy, Nerf rockets covered with peace symbols and flowers, any Republican who complained would be making a dastardly attack on their patriotism.

Read the rest.

Some days

.... the world can be surprisingly boring.

Irony alert

Frank J points out a cruel piece of irony:

As I showed earlier, anti-Semitism is completely out of control since it's now ever targeting Irish Catholics. What is it with those who hate Bush and hate liberating Iraq also hate Jews? I just love the irony of how they're basically saying, "Bush is turning America into Nazi Germany... and it's all because of the Joooos!"

Also, help Frank get rich and famous!

Gotta love Rumsfeld

He finds way to both say what needs to be said while hacking off the left:

SEOUL — The United States is committed to defending South Korea from an attack by the North and would use nuclear forces if needed, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the government here yesterday.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who finishes his first official visit to Asia today, said the U.S. commitment to South Korea includes "the continued provision of a nuclear umbrella" for South Korea, according to a statement issued after joint security talks.

"We understand that weakness can be provocative, that weakness can invite people into doing things that they otherwise might not even consider," Mr. Rumsfeld told a joint news conference with South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil.

Of course, no one wants a nuclear war with the North, but to rule out the use of nuclear weapons would be to show weakness before a potential enemy. Showing weakness before meglomaniacs like those in Pyonyang is a pretty good way to start a war.

Buchanan's becoming more like California all the time

... he's full of fruits and nuts.

Pat Buchanan's political ideology long ago stopped having much connection to reality. Now, as Robert Tagofda points out, his critical thinking skills are degrading. He's actually denouncing George Bush as a rampant free trader.

Joshua Claybourn may now commence his mockery of that absurdity. Just in case Josh doesn't have time, let me just say, "Mock, Mock."

For perspective

For some more on the absurd faux controversy regarding Mark Byron, read this post by John Cole.

Public Service Announcement

Showing Christmas movies before Thanksgiving is just too much.

Yeah, this has always bothered me

Jane Galt offers a word of caution:

Every day, you'll see a report on the markets that says something like "the Dow rose 173 points today on a good crop report from the Midwest and strong payroll numbers released Friday by the Department of Labor". Sounds so knowing, doesn't it? And often it's correct. If three big tech companies come out with bad numbers, the tech sector's going into a tailspin, and if there's a multi-billion dollar hurricane in Florida, the market for insurance stocks is going to look a little thin. But remember this: the guy who writes the piece telling you what happened in the market today has to present his editor with an explanation, whether or not he has a good one to offer. That guy can't run around and poll every investor who's buying or selling stocks to find out what they were thinking. He has to guess. And often, your guess is as good as his.

Read the rest.

John Muhammad

Guilty as charged. May many more convictions follow.

Peaceful transition

Yes Martin, it is.

Apt analogy?

Jack Cullinan compares the State Department to a pompous, overconfident husband at a bazaar. I don't know what I think of the analogy, but he's got some good points.

Christian nation

John Derbyshire argues that America is the only remaining Christian nation in The West. (As well as, possibly, the only remaining patriotic nation of said countries.) Based on his definition of "Christian nation" this may be true. Derbyshire's reasoning about the "Christian" nature of our nation is:

Since the overwhelming majority of Americans in 1940 were Christians, we were in that sense a Christian nation. Even people who did not go to church were inclined to believe in a Deity who imposes moral order on the universe; to believe, in other words, that there is a certain way we are meant to live, and to that if we do not live that way, or at least give it our very best shot, we will suffer, in this world or the next. That moral order, most Americans further believed, was described in the Christian Bible.

Though there are many more Americans who do not go to church now, this is still a Christian nation in that same sense.

He seems to call America a "Christian" nation because the majority call themselves Christians or at least ascribe to the idea that the moral order comes from the Bible. This is probably too broad a stroke. A large number of people who call themselves Christians are completely ignorant of even the basic tenents of Christianity and people who acknowledge that the moral order is defined in the Bible but do nothing about it can hardly be said to be contributing toward the "Christian" nature of our nation.

I don't deny that there is a huge chasm between the religious nature of the US and the rest of the West and I think Derbyshire's article is well worth reading, but I believe his characterization of us as a "Christian" nation is overly optimistic.

(This may be the first time the words "overly optimistic" and "Derbyshire" have ever been combined in the same sentence.)

This better not be true

Javier Solana, EU's foreign policy chief claims:

The United States accepts that to avoid humiliating failure in Iraq it needs to bring its forces quickly under international control and speed the handover of power, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, has said. Decisions along these lines will be made in the "coming days", Mr Solana told The Independent.

I doubt the validity of this statement. Bush and Blair are about to meet for major policie discussions. A typical ploy of people trying to influence decisions is to present them to the media as a fait accompli. I suspect that's all this is.

If I'm wrong, then we've got a serious problem on our hands. Turning control over to the UN or any other international body would be a disaster. If the Bush adminstration decided to do that, I'd probably have to start finding someone else to vote for.

(I don't know who that might be. Most of the other choices currently available are actually worse.)

I've been looking for what to say

... but haven't been able to construct a very good response. I've finally decided to just lay a few thoughts out, even though I haven't been able to order my thoughts very well.

Last week Mark Byron was exploring the dangers of civil disobedience. In one post he tried to point out the dangers of carrying some views to their logical extreme. He laid out a scenario in which political extremists, claiming to be Christians, raided Washington DC and killed Senators and Supreme Court Justices. Byron concludes that this would be wrong because:

However, as much as I don't like them, Justice Ginsberg and Senator Clinton aren't Hitlers. We have a flawed but functional democracy and a legal system that generally protects our rights. Were we to advocate the creation of the CLF, we'd start down the road to anarchy, with militant liberals looking to kill off George Allen so that Mark Warner can name a replacement. It might be a short-term victory for judicial conservatism, but a long term loss for our society and the cause of Christ.

When I start thinking of that Nuremberg imperative, I do have to remember that we're not in Nazi Germany. We do have a duty to not cooperate in evil, but we also have to remember that we're not to perpetrate a greater evil in order to stop a smaller one. Most civil disobedience causes more harm than it solves, and civil wars generally cause more evil than they alleviate.

It's usually better to work within the system than to declare "war" on the system, whether you fight with guns or with sit-ins.

Clearly Byron was trying to show that civic disobedience, when taken to its logical extreme (If you really believed Hillary Clinton was a moral monster on the level of Hitler, deciding to kill her wouldn't be much of a stretch.) can be extremely dangerous. He concludes that civic disobedience, even in its milder forms, is generally ill-advised. I'm not sure I agree with his argument, but it's certainly worth thinking about.

The reason why I bring this up though is that even though this post has been plastered all over the internet, almost no one has actually talked about the argument made at the conclusion at his post. Instead, all of the attention has been centered on the scenario he paints. (This has probably been partially due to Byron's unfortunate labelling of the scenario as a "fantasy.") All over the internet, on the right and left, I've seen people accusing Byron of endorsing the very behavior he explictly denounces. (I'm not going to bother linking to any sites for or against. This post doesn't really have that much to do with the specific accusations and defenses that have been made.)

I'm truly amazed that people can take a post specifically denouncing an action and conclude that the author was actually endorsing that action. I won't deny that the post was extremely confusing, but it was by no means a call for political assasinations. That people construed it as such is evidence of something deeply wrong with the political discourse in this country. Ironically, I think that was part of the point Byron was trying to make.

Al-Qaeda's way of thinking

Donald Sensing has another post about al-Qaeda's plans and goals. In it he comments on a recent Steve Den Beste post. My gut feeling is that Sensing is more right than Den Beste, but they both make great points that really need to be considered.

I do have one quibble with Sensing's post though:

So the Islamists’ reliance on miraculous, divine intervention is not quite the way Steven describes. The point of their faithfulness to Islam is not to lead to supernatural displays of divine power, but to put them on the right side of history, to borrow a Marxist term. They understand that one way or another, the dar al Islam will ultimately triumph over the dar al harb: Islam will reign supreme over infidels. They seek, first, to be true Muslims and second, to help history move toward that triumph.

Their willingness to wage jihad against the infidels, especially giving their lives to do so, is how they cement their place as keepers and defenders of the faith. This faithfulness is not intended to make Allah suddenly, personally strike his enemies dead, but to make Islamist victory inevitable. Why? Because when they order their lives according to Islamic dicta (as they propound it), the flow of human affairs will naturally lead to Islamic triumph. That’s the way Allah has ordered the world.

This seems like a bit of projection to me. The idea that God has designed the world in such a way that those who order their lives will be succeed is, I believe quite true. (Although I don't define success the way most of the world does.) Further, it's a way of thinking that most Christians, and for all I know most Muslims, would find quite sensible. However, I'm not at all sure that's what al-Qaeda is thinking. I certainly seem to remember quite a few prayers that God will strike us down and they way they were phrased seems a bit more direct than Donald is describing.

Even with that objection, I think the post is well worth reading.

Misplaced Priority

For the third time in two years, Serbia has failed to elect a President. The reason: Low voter turnout. Under the Serbian constitution, 50% voter turnout is required to validate a Presidential election.

I see this as a case of misplaced priorities. While high voter turnout is nice, I see no reason to mandate it in order to have an accepted election.

One of the problems with this mandate is that it can be abused. Apparently some political parties, knowing that they can't win, are encouraging people not to vote; knowing they can't win, they've decided to make sure they don't lose. While this may be a legitimate course of action regarding particular policies, (for instance US Senate filibusters which are necessary to enable minorities to protect themselves from the tyranny of the majority) I find this a dangerous approach to Presidential elections.

For over a year now Serbia has been governed by an acting President. That is a stop-gap measure. They can't expect to move forward until they've chosen an executive to lead them. A misguided emphasis on voter turnout appears to be paralyzing the government. Serbia's recent past shows us that they need reforms which minority parties have been able to prevent by the simple act of not voting. That isn't good.

Update - By way of comparison, here is a breakdown of voter turnout in the US 2000 election. By my count, 20 states had a turnout of less than 50% of the voting age population. Should we have invalidated those elections and made those states revote? I think not.

Not terribly surprising

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the car bombings in Turkey. They even give a reason: They say they were trying to kill Mossad agents. That doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it; bombs are terribly efficient assasination devices. If you're trying to kill specific people the best option is going to be something a little more direct. However, if you're trying to scare people, demonstrate your ability to execute dramatic attacks, and there happen to be some people around that you wouldn't mind killing then bombs make more sense. I guess what I'm saying is that it's possible that the timing of the attacks may have been the result of al-Qaeda's belief there were Mossad agents present, but it wasn't the reason.

Drug using Guardsman

Sgt. Stryker links to a story about Guardsman and Reservists who have tested positive for drugs, but are being deployed anyway. What makes this more problematic is that some of them seemed to use drugs with the inteniton of being caught. Still, as Stryker points out, it is very troubling that people are breaking military discipline and that fact is being ignored. There has got to be a better solution.

World without racism

I wish.

Unfortunately a lot of racism that happens today is institutionalized and misguidedly aimed at "fixing" racism. Melanie Philips is concerned that this way of thinking is having very detrimental effects in the British police system.

The fallacy at its core is the belief that one can eradicate racial prejudice by abandoning the 'colour-blind' approach and viewing people instead as intrinsic victims simply on account of the colour of their skin. All that does is institutionalise gross unfairness and injustice, introduce a climate of manipulation and ferocious intimidation, and build into the system an inverted racism.

Once a society abandons the only fair way to conduct its affairs, which is to judge people solely by their conduct and not by their ethnic background, it has compromised its liberal values. The police are the means by which a society upholds the rules which determine its character. Their wholesale capitulation to this kind of threat is frighteningly symbolic.

Yes, it is.

More light-heartedness

Help! Help! Frank's being oppressed!

It figures

Scrappleface "reports" that the Defense Department has been hired to generate publicity. Like most of Scott Ott's posts, the depressing part is how close to the truth it is.

I'm home

I just got home. I had a good trip. I was able to get some CPE, spend time with my parents, and catch Master and Commander at a $4 matinee.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to blog much tonight, but if I don't regular blogging should resume tomorrow.

Master and Commander

I went and saw Master and Commander this afternoon. Overall, I thought it was very well done.

-The battle scenes are remarkable and striking. - The agony of decisions made in war was drawn out superbly. - Levity was generally well placed. If it wasn't, the film would be exhausting.

There was one plot line that I didn't think was adequately set up, but it was resolved well.

I thought the movie did a very good job of stressing the importance of duty, honor, and belonging.

Yeah, I know this is pretty disjointed, but it's late and I'm tired. Regardless, I suspect most people would enjoy this movie at one level or another.

Open Post

I'm out of town. I have a continuing education class that I was able to schedule in way that let me spend some time at my parent's house. I'll be back home Saturday evening. In the meantime posting will be limited.

Do to a lack of proper planning, I won't be able to receive e-mail while I'm on the road. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, leave me a comment on this thread.

Interesting

Fox News has an interesting story:

Saddam Hussein (search) moved around incessantly, even before the U.S. toppled him from power, his personal translator told Fox News.

In his first interview with an American television network, Saddam's translator Saman Abdul Majid (search) told Fox that before the war, no one knew where the Iraqi dictator was sleeping on any given night.

This is hardly news. I've been hearing about Hussein's no-consecutive-nights-in-the-same-bed policy for years.

"Now, I would say he is not staying in any one place for more than two or three nights," Majid, 57, told Fox. "I would say you would find him where you would not expect to, so I do not believe he is in Tikrit."

Of course he doesn't offer any ideas on where Saddam actually is, but it is interesting that someone who spent a lot of time with him doesn't think he ran home to Tikrit as many in our government apparently believe.

Majid, a Kurd who spent 15 years as Saddam's French and English interpreter, just published his memoirs in French, titled "Saddam Years." He currently lives in Qatar.

In the days leading up to the U.S.-led war, according to Majid, Saddam was resigned to accepting whatever happened, saying if war began it would be the will of God.

The former Iraqi president also believed the American effort to oust him would fail because of internal resistance, according to Majid. The translator said Saddam expected there to be so many bodies that the U.S. would be forced to ask for a cease-fire or negotiate an end to the fighting.

I've heard lots of speculation that Saddam was either delusional and/or being lied to about how much his people loved him and wanted to fight for him. This would tend to back up those speculations.

In his book, Majid writes that early in his first term, former President Clinton sent a clergyman to Iraq who said the U.S. was "ready to open a new chapter" in American-Iraqi relations and "wanted to start friendship on a new basis," but there were no concrete offers on the table. Saddam rejected the gesture.

I have no idea if this is true and as far as I know no one in the Clinton administration has ever spoken about such an offer. (If Clinton did deny it, I'd probably believe him. Yes, I know that Clinton is a pathological liar, but that doesn't mean that I'd take the word of a former Saddamite over a former POTUS without some evidence.) If it is true, then Clinton was an even bigger fool on foreign policy than I thought.

Majid writes that Saddam was a tyrant who instilled a climate of fear during his rule, but he was a complex man who also could be generous, according to Times of London.

No surprises there.

The interpreter also says in his book that Saddam cooked up elaborate schemes to keep foreign dignitaries in the dark about where they were meeting with him, but contrary to popular belief, the dictator didn't use body doubles, the Times reported. It was Saddam himself who appeared in the streets of Baghdad early in the war, according to Majid's memoirs.

If that's true, a lot of people wasted a lot of time and money (including our government) trying to differentiate Saddam from non-existent doubles.

Majid told Fox that he considered French President Jacques Chirac (search) a personal friend, saying he believes he and Chirac understand each other. He said Saddam was disappointed that Chirac didn't defend him to a greater extent in the days before the war and the Iraqi dictator felt caught in the middle of a conflict between two superpowers.

If true, this explains a lot. For one, Saddam's obstinence makes more sense if it's true that he views France as a superpower. If France was a superpower, they might actually have had a chance to stop us. (That also explains why he's disappointed in Chirac's performance: he was expecting Chirac to acheive results which France never had the ability to accomplish.) It also means that as far as Hussein was concerned, the war had nothing to do with him If this interpreter is to be believed, Hussein viewed the entire conflict as France vs. the US and poor little Saddam just happened to be caught in the middle.

I wonder, how many other petty despots view France as a superpower locked in a monumental struggle against the US? How many of them believe France will save them when we come demanding they stop supporting terrorists? And why, exactly, does anyone still believe that France is our friend?

Ain't much happening

I've looked and looked and can't find anything to talk about. Maybe later tonight. Maybe not. If not, have a great night!

Unfortunately, this is almost real

John Kerry wins hypothetical debate. Scrappleface has the story.

What are they thinking?

David Frum thinks that the President's upcoming trip to England is a really bad idea. Among other things, he wonders if some rebels at the State Department might be intentionally trying to damage him.

The president has committed himself, the Administration, and the nation to a set of policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the larger Middle East. Whether you approve of those policies or not (and I of course support them wholeheartedly), they are in place and they cannot safely be abandoned now without catastrophic harm to American security – and the president’s re-election hopes. Those officials who are trying to subvert those polices need to feel the firm hand of presidential authority – now. And yet, that hand is evidently not being applied. Why not?

It's a very good question.

I almost feel guilty

People keep coming to this post looking for help with tooth pain. Unfortunately that was probably a once in a lifetime cure.

I've decided on my dream job

I've always been amazed at governments' abilities to come up with new and stupid names for agencies:

Plans were unveiled yesterday for a pan-European border agency to help to seal the European Union's new frontier after expansion next year.

The fledgling agency is scheduled to start work in January 2005 with a £4 million budget and a staff of 30.

The Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders will serve as a headquarters for air, sea, and land surveillance, keeping watch on Poland, Slovakia, and the Baltic states that will soon have the task of patrolling the EU's eastern borders.

The Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders? Where does this stuff come from? Although they apparently didn't try to come up with a catchy acronym for this one.

All this has convinced me that a great job would have to be on the Committee for the Procreation of Bloated Names and Silly Acronyms.

Actually

... I'd never heard the word "McJob" before, but I think it's funny McDonald's is so upset.

It's about time

The Senate has voted for sanctions against Syria:

The upper house of the US Congress has overwhelmingly backed a bill to slap sanctions on Syria if it fails to address long-standing security issues. Senators backed the bill after a similar show of support in the House of Representatives in October.

The bill allows President George W Bush to impose sanctions if Syria is found to be backing terror groups or acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

The Senate amended the bill, meaning it must now go back to the House.

Under the amended bill - passed by 89 votes to four - President George W Bush will have more power to waive the economic and diplomatic sanctions if he deems it in the national interest.

This is how we start the process of making the invasion of Iraq pay dividends. We told Saddam, "Don't make us come over there." He didn't believe us, so we had to go over there. The real question is whether our actions in Iraq will influence other renegades enough so that they'll believe us. (I think the "Don't make us come over there," line came from Den Beste.)