Victoria’s Secrets in a Bunch

From Military.com:

Too Pretty to Fight? O-6 Steps Down Over Comments

Nov 25, 2013

Associated Press| by John Milburn

TOPEKA, Kan. -- Pentagon officials said Friday that an Army colonel who wrote an internal email suggesting photos of attractive women should be avoided in promotional materials has stepped down from her duties involving a gender study.

Army spokesman George Wright said Col. Lynnette Arnhart had agreed to step aside, and Gen. Robert Cone, commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Va., had accepted the gender integration study's leadership change "in order to protect the integrity of the ongoing work on gender integration in the Army."

The content of the email was first reported by Politico this week. In the email, Arnhart stated that "average-looking women" should be used in Army materials used to attract women for combat roles, Politico reported.

In addition, Wright said that Col. Christian Kubik, a public affairs officer also with the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, was suspended for his involvement in the email pending an investigation.

According to the email chain obtained by Politico, Kubik forwarded Arnhart's email to other public affairs officers, cautioning the use of photos "that glamourize women" would undermine the Army's gender integration efforts.

Lynnette’s concern here seems pretty silly.  Then again, most marketing strategies, short of Don Draper-levels of creativity sound pretty silly when you state their assumptions out loud.  And nothing is quite as silly as the entire concept of women-in-combat . . . but we pretend to take it seriously anyway, because to do otherwise is to get fired.

Minority Unionists

In addition (or rather, as part of) John Stuart Mill's moral critique of the Southern secessionists, he asks:

Before admitting the authority of any persons, as organs of the will of the people, to dispose of the whole political existence of a country, I ask to see whether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a part. And first, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Has their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the country itself [meaning the United States], it is rather cool in English writers who talk so glibly of the ten millions [of southerners]…., to pass over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of separation.

More on this theme from Seth Barrett Tillman:

First, we do not have good evidence that even a majority of the adult white males in each rebel state supported secession at the time purported state conventions issued their ordinances of secession. The secession conventions were hardly models of transparency or one-(white)-man-one-(white)-vote equality in terms of fair representation. See, e.g., Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography 354 (2005) (explaining—in model clarity—that “state-secession votes occurred in assemblies skewed by state-law variants of the federal three-fifths clause—laws that gave plantation belts undue weight in the ultimate outcome”). I am in Ireland now, and so, I do not have easy access to much American material, but (as I remember) there is good authority for the view that a majority of the adult white males in Georgia did not support secession in 1861.

Second, if secession were/is a valid political principle, even absent concrete and substantial wrongdoing by the government from which one is seceding, then it does not stop with states seceding from the federal government. Many Southern states had counties and large regions where the white population was overwhelmingly loyal to the Union. E.g., Northern Alabama and Mississippi, western Virginia (prior to recognition of West Virginia statehood as the legitimate successor to rebel Virginia). Likewise, every rebel state (South Carolina excepted) produced organized loyalist regiments, and even South Carolina sent many white men who enlisted in Union regiments. Those loyalist counties and regions also produced active pro-Union militias in their home states. At no time did any rebel assembly or governor allow these counties and regions to remain in the Union or secede from the rebel state. The rebel position was never secession pure and simple, but secession in the context of organic, fixed, immutable states—against all. Secession was something rebels could do to others (based on a whim and fear of future wrongdoing at the hands of the newly elected Lincoln administration), but not which others could do to them (to the extent that rebels murdered Unionists, exiled them, and had their homes burned to the ground merely because loyalists continued to express political sympathy for the flag their fathers and grandfathers fought and bled for).

The problem of vindicating the citizenship of minority unionists trapped behind the lines of territorial secession, and to ensure that the territory claimed by secessionists bears some proportion to the popular sentiment of its inhabitants, is perhaps the most fraught of the issues implicated in a generalized support for self-government. It certainly applies to the North Alabamans . . . as it did to the Confederates of the Allegheny Mountain region of West Virginia, the Tories after the War for Independence, the Sudenten Germans in the 1930s, and the ethnic Russians of the Baltics in the 1990s. Ideally, such issues can be resolved by negotiation, but as these examples illustrate, by the time secession has been gotten around to, idealism of any kind is in short supply. The depressing reality seems to be that the strong do as they will, the weak endure as they must.

But to the extent we look to reasoning rather than force of arms to decide the matter, I want to inspect the claims made on behalf of the Union loyalists.

The slaves didn't vote. True enough. And freedmen in the North were allowed to vote in only four states at the time of the Civil War. (I researched this, but if this or any other of the historical assertions I make in this post are shown to be in error, I will correct them.)

The votes of poor whites were diluted. Also generally true in the North. Indeed, this was established practice in may states until the Supreme Court decision in Reynolds vs. Simms in 1964; it probably wasn't much questioned at the time of the Civil War. Can the North claim in good faith to vindicate rights they themselves do not observe?

Blacks and/or poor whites did not support secession, and whose equal franchise would have blocked it. This is certainly a plausible assertion, and is probably what is got at by the first two objections above. But is there any actual evidence for it? I can think of very little that the industrial capitalism of the 1860 North offered to either blacks or poor whites that was much superior to what they had: cradle-to-grave care, however mean, for slaves, and some measure of rough independence for poor whites. I am struck by the fact that even after emancipation, many slaves chose to remain with the life they knew, even in the service of such as Alexander Stephens.

The South only wanted "secession in the context of organic, fixed, immutable states". This was certainly the South's strongest legal (as opposed to moral or philosophical) case under the existing political arrangements, and arguments to the contrary strike me as particularly bad. The Federal union was the creature of the state governments, not the other way around, and I see very little in American history prior to the war supporting the notion that union ought be anything other than voluntary. The same cannot be said of sub-state regions. That doesn't vitiate any claims to independence these regions might make, only to say that those claims are philosophical rather than legal.

The South did not respect loyalist regional predominance. True enough in the cases cited above. But while I would recognize the right of Northern Alabamans to self-government, it is not at all clear that they were actually seeking to be a land-locked Union micro-province in the heart of the Confederacy; rather, they supported the status quo ante: a unified republic. That is certainly respectable, but it doesn't mean that they opposition they faced was merely a matter of the South failing to live up to its principles.

Which is not to say that in its drive for independence, the South lived up to its principles. This history of the run-up to secession is chuck-full of nasty, vindictive, and even murderous behavior by . . . well, most everybody, the South included. It would be very difficult to find a legitimate claimant to self-government less sympathetic than the antebellum South. Knowing where it would eventually lead, I can't help but wonder where were the Henry Clays of 1860, the voices of moderation that might have talked everyone down from the precipice of war if not secession.

In Defense of Self-Government

Prompted by the resignation of Jack Hunter (a.k.a., the Southern Avenger) from Sen. Rand Paul’s staff, the writers at the libertarianish collaborative site The Volokh Conspiracy ran a series of posts on the Confederacy, the upshot of which was that the South had it coming.

I am neither a libertarian nor an uncritical defender of the South.  But while these posts are varied in quality – a few have barely risen above point-and-sputter regarding slavery – two in particular stood out as particularly good.  The first was by Randy Barnett

The first, by Randy Barnett, gives chapter-and-verse on how decidedly non-libertarian and indeed non-“States Rights”-affirming the antebellum South actually was.  Reading it, I was struck by the extent to which the South had given the northern states ample cause to secede from the federal Union themselves, so much so that I’m vaguely curious as to why that never actually happened.

The second post, by Ilya Somin, quotes extensively John Stuart Mill’s writings on the Confederacy and whose thoughts are especially interesting given that he wrote them while the war was still in progress.  Mill’s main point is that the defense of slavery motivated secession, subsequent revisionists notwithstanding.

But he also writes something I found troubling:

But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that the South had a right to separate; that their separation ought to have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original separation of the thirteen colonies….

I am not frightened at the word rebellion…. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act of taking arms against one’s fellow citizens was so meritorious in itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need be asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no obligation on those who do it, of showing that they have a real grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist oppression practiced upon themselves…. Secession may be laudable, and so may any other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation. And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind, it is the one professed by the South.

I need to parse the phrase “sufficient title to my sympathy”.  If by this Mill means a cause meriting the provision of material aid, then I would go even farther than he does:  the only causes meriting such aid are ones that advance the interests and well-being of the citizens of the state offering the aid, slavery or no slavery.  But Mill almost certainly doesn’t intend this.  Rather, he would evaluate claim to independence on moral grounds, and finds the South’s lacking.

As I said, I am not a libertarian, but I do believe in territorial self-government, and I advocate this with few reservations.  I have little admiration for how any nation runs its affairs (including, lately, my own) but I would not interfere in how even the obscurantists of the Taliban govern their own country – as surely they will if ever the U.S. removes its military props to the corrupt Karzai regime.  Afghanistan is for the Afghanis, and I only reserve the right to keep such people outside the borders of America.

But isolationism is out of favor, so let me put this another way:  in practice, Mill’s is an “exception” big enough to drive a truck through.  I would go so far as to say that any would-be imperialists, seeking to deny a people weaker than themselves the opportunity to live under laws of their own choosing, could find some moral fault to justify its denial.  They might even find a moral fault on libertarian grounds:  libertarian fantasists to the contrary, all the world’s nations choose a mix of tradeoffs between freedoms and restriction, trade-offs exemplified by the writers at Volokh.  Who among them can cast the first stone?

An argument for tolerance in the context of self-government also may not be sufficiently persuasive to those who, like Somin and perhaps Mill, possess sufficient confidence in the ascendance of their preferred policy mix in what may yet be the most powerful country in the world.  Why should they fear outsiders turning their own taste for imperialism against them?

Schools of War

Robin writes:

The main reason we had rules to force kids to attend primary school was to make obedient soldier citizens to support their nation in time of war.

Maybe.  But that isn’t exactly what the study says.  The study finds a correlation between “large investments in state primary education systems” and “military rival[ry] or threats.”

Aside from the usual caveat about correlation not being causation, I would add that it’s not especially clear that, were that it’s intent, the pro-war faction is getting its money’s worth.  As near as I can tell, the purpose of public education is to promote Diversity and Global Warming, and I be greatly surprised to find public schools actively encouraging support for war.  Once upon a time, subjects like, say, the history of America’s past military glories might have had second order effects encouraging support for the wars of the present, but these have now taken a back seat to Sojourner  Truth and the Tuskegee Airmen.

I suspect that, if anything, the causality runs the other way, at least in the American context:  it was precisely the experience of various wars that consolidated nationalism, making national expenditures for things like education more likely.

Elsewhere, Robin asserts a similar purpose behind nationalize health care.  My guess is that such will bankrupt us to the point where foreign war becomes unaffordable.

Whither the Arabists?

Pat Buchanan quotes Bill Kristol:

“The big story in the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and I’m very happy about this,” said Kristol, is the “eclipsing” of the George H.W. Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realists, “an Arabist old-fashioned Republican Party ... very concerned about relations with Arab states that were not friendly with Israel ... .”

That Bush crowd is yesterday, said Kristol. And not only had the “Arabists” like President Bush been shoved aside by the neocons, the “Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type” of Republican has been purged.

I can’t speak to 30 years ago, but 20 years ago I distinctly remember despising the Baker-Scowcroft vision of “realism” myself.  I was thoroughly under the influence of NR at the time (although a different NR, perhaps), so I remain ready to be persuaded otherwise, but . . . remind me what were the wonderful victories for American values and interests achieved by the Arabists?

I can’t think of any, except that the damage done by their entanglements (Lebanon, Gulf War I) was smaller than that done by the entanglements of their successors.  But “We Suck Less!” is hardly inspiring.

Hindsight being 20/20, I can’t think of any involvement with the Middle East in the last 40 years that hasn’t come to a bad end.  And I will admit that we should have heeded the warnings of Paul and Buchanan.  But let’s face it:  Buchanan was a leading light of the Republican Party in the early 90s, and yet he had zero impact on our Middle East policy.  So really, what difference did purging him actually make?

The Devil You Know

Steve’s written a number of posts on Israeli influence on both American policy and American interests.  He links to a story about a false-flag operation in which Mossad agents pretended to be CIA agents while aiding Jundallah, an anti-Iranian Sunni terrorist group.  Steve comments:

Anyway, lately, I have a hard time getting too worked up over this kind of thing.  These days, Israel just kind of wants to win at the Great Game more. It's their hobby.

I was I could be as sanguine about this as Steve is.  It’s bad enough that the American government recklessly wagers America’s national honor in provocative foreign policy.  Because once (let’s say) Pearl Harbor gets bombed, it renders moot discussions about the wisdom of our oil embargo.  We can’t be America and not go to war.  But at least the American government is constitutionally empowered to make these wagers and is at least theoretically accountable to the people for the outcomes.

But the Israelis action was calibrated to provoke an Iranian attack, not on Israel, but on America.  Such is not the action of a friend.

But what are our choices?  Steve writes about the recent media attack on the Center for American Progress for alleging outsized Israeli influence:

What I do care about is the liberty and quality of debate in the U.S.

The difference between the Israel and the Cuba lobby is that the Cuba Libre Lobby is happy when you mention out loud how powerful they are, because that makes them seem even more powerful.

In contrast, the Israel Lobby, although it boasts itself about its own power (just check out the annual AIPAC conference in D.C.) tries to destroy people who mention its power, or who might even someday get around to mentioning it, as long as the Israel Lobby isn't comfortable with them. "Pay no attention to that lobby behind the curtain!" The latter has a severely chilling effect on thought in the more careerist parts of America.

I assume here that Steve wants what I want:  a free and substantive debate about how to advance American interests.  Yet is the emergency of that debate a likely outcome absent what Pat Buchannan once called the “Amen Corner”?

I doubt it.  Here is my bet for what happens:  Israel becomes . . . South Africa.

Think about it for the second.  All the things for which apartheid South Africa was criticized apply to Israel, and all the differences between them are unlikely to be especially salient to the kind of people that got worked up over apartheid South Africa, except for the ability of AIPAC to keep us from having that discussion.

I don’t want the Israelis to be compelled by the weight of American policy to commit national suicide in the manner of the Afrikaners.  I want our policy to be pro-America, not anti-Ashkenazi.  But maybe we have the best of the bad options?

Considering themselves wise . . .

Robin Hanson celebrates 9-11:

In the decade since 9/11 over half a billion people have died worldwide. A great many choices could have delayed such deaths, including personal choices to smoke less or exercise more, and collective choices like allowing more immigration. And cryonics might have saved most of them.

Yet, to show solidarity with these three thousand victims, we have pissed away three trillion dollars ($1 billion per victim), and trashed long-standing legal principles. And now we’ll waste a day remembering them, instead of thinking seriously about how to save billions of others. I would rather we just forgot 9/11.

Do I sound insensitive? If so, good — 9/11 deaths were less than one part in a hundred thousand of deaths since then, and don’t deserve to be sensed much more than that fraction. If your feelings say otherwise, that just shows how full fricking far your mind has gone.

Let’s help him out:

• Of last decade’s half-billion dead, most succumbed to natural causes and accidents.  Don’t take it personally.
• Of those that died by direct human agency, most shared no meaningful ties of blood, culture, or nation with us.  I wish them no ill, but I haven’t the energy to feign much sympathy.
• Of those that were Americans, most were killed by other Americans.  These may, in fact, deserve more attention than they receive; if so, we should start by reporting them honestly.

The attacks on 9-11 were especially salient because a sizeable number of our fellow countrymen were dramatically murdered by aliens on behalf of an alien ideological agenda.  That this commands special attention among Americans is pretty basic to an understanding of human nature, and if Robin’s feelings say otherwise, that just shows how full fricking far his mind has gone.

More foolishness:

I am a proud resident of Fairfax County, in the U.S. state of Virginia. Today, I want to warn my fine fellow Fairfax folk: we interact too promiscuously with outsiders! For example, we are allowed to buy things made outside Fairfax, and leave the county to travel or work. Fairfax firms can even choose outsiders as investors, employees, and suppliers . . . .

I pretty much stopped reading right there, since I long ago outgrew a taste for comparing actual human ties and sentiments with fictitious ones.  But as long as we’re playing reductio ad absurdum, let me have a go at it:

I am a proud resident of the Hanson household.  Today, I want to warn my fine fellow Hansons:  we allow outsiders too much access to our domicile.  Non-Hansons are allowed to enter at will without so much as a by-your-leave.  They consume more of family resources than they contribute, they strain the carrying capacity of the living room sofa during “What Not to Where,” and they fail to respect household social norms like flushing the toilet and not hitting others . . . .

Once we come to see our nation as an extended family, then the sentiments of ordinary Americans become a lot more understandable, perhaps even to economists.

Hijacking American Policy

Thanks to Justin, I’ve been reading up on the Morgenthau Plan.  This was America’s 1944 – 1947 policy of German deindustrialization, created and enforced by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, his assistant (and Soviet agent) Harry Dexter White, and OMGUS officer Bernard Bernstein.  The ethnic loyalties of these gentlemen is a matter of record.

A bit of context is in order.  Germany had always been a food importer, exchanging its manufactured goods with its European neighbors to feed itself.  The early postwar limitations on manufactures meant that it would need humanitarian relief supplies to survive.  Yet under the concurrent food policy, these relief supplies were prohibited to ethnic Germans, even going so far as to instruct American occupation forces and their families to destroy excess food supplies rather than letting them fall into the hands of German civilians.  The result was as in Nazi concentration camps or Soviet Ukraine:  millions of people, mostly children and the elderly, died from malnutrition and disease, and economic recovery of the whole of Europe was retarded.

Reading about these events sickens me – but then, in 2011 I’m pretty much over WWII.  I can’t say with any honesty how I would have felt in 1945.  The Morgenthau plan was leaked to the media at the time, and I’m heartened to read that it had to be executed in the teeth of popular and Congressional opposition.  On the other hand, the humanitarian consequences, such as they are, of American policy toward our present enemies doesn’t rank very highly on my give-a-sh!t list.  I’m struck by Roosevelt’s statement on the Morgenthau Plan:

Too many people here and in England hold the view that the German people as a whole are not responsible for what has taken place – that only a few Nazis are responsible. That unfortunately is not based on fact. The German people must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization.

In recent decades, American presidents have asserted in the face of the available evidence that that hostile foreign governments could only conduct their actions by oppressing the will of their own people.  Clearly, an earlier generation of leaders had no such romantic notions.  (And neither do our present enemies.  The head terrorist in the movie Traitor justified his attacks on American civilians by quoting the Gettysburg address:  our government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, therefore we should be collectively liable for it.)

But here’s the thing:  my attitude towards this story is similar to my attitude towards our de-facto alliance with Israel.  It’s not so much that I object to the policy, it’s that I dislike the idea that the policy is a function of narrow minority ethnic grievances rather than of the interests of the American people.  In the case of the Morgenthau Plan, the answer is obvious:  the destitution of Germany and impoverishment of Europe allowed Soviet subversion to spread.  It was to counter this influence that the policy was ultimately abandoned in favor of the Marshall Plan.  I’d like to think that American policy is as self-correcting today as it was then, yet I can’t honestly see much evidence for it.

Children of War

A friend in Iraq writes of a rocket attack:

Last night I slept at another FOB. Word on the street is that it is all quiet over there, and I was looking forward to finally a night of sound sleep that comes with that sense security that one will not be bombed that night. After I had been out cold for a few hours and was happily dreaming away, I dreamt what I thought I wouldn't dream - the awful sound which warns us of an "incoming! incoming! incoming!" missile. I tried arguing with myself in my dream. It's just a dream, right? It's all quiet here, right? I'll just lay here in bed and act like nothing is happening and it'll go away...

Boom! The "Containerized Housing Unit" aka "CHU" shook. So did the bed. Then came the adrenaline and I was instantly wide awake. Turns out, the incoming alarm wasn't a dream, it was prelude to an earthquake. I quickly rolled over and thudded full-body-length onto the CHU floor, laced my fingers with hands behind my head to protect myself from the bomb blast, and wondered at how wonderfully clear and thoughtful and focused my adrenaline-fueled mind had become. I heard my boss, who had just won a prestigious award that night and will be leaving soon, the reason for our overnight to this place, hit the floor as well. Our lone civilian, a kindly older gentleman, continued the labored breathing of sound sleep. At this moment, I said something ungodly to my boss, "Holy Crap! I thought they weren't bombing over here anymore...!" plus some other stuff stating the obvious, his reply was cut short...

Boom! The CHU walls shuddered, and I felt the energy wave from the bomb blast in the cold floor of the CHU travel up and down and through my body. The soundwave was louder, indicating this one hit substantially closer. My mind raced - were they walking the ordinance in a line? This would be a change of tactics indicating more effective targeting on the part of those motortrike mini-rocket rocket launcher terrorist guys (and gals). Don't they know they should have used a Harley? If you are going to launch missiles off the back of a motortrike, it should be a modified Harley. Harley's show a bit of class and style. Maybe Monster Garage needs to get involved over here.

Here’s the atypical thing:  my friend grew up on the Dhahran Compound in Saudi Arabia (fictionally portrayed as the scene of a terrorist attack in the movie The Kingdom):

My mind raced back to when I was 15 years old, laying in my bed, listening to the incoming missiles from Iraq during the Gulf War, feeling the house shake and shudder, and listening to the window glass rattling in the frame. Being bombed is much the same experience at 35 years old as at 15. One day after church I talked briefly with a woman who had experienced being attacked by mortars as an MK in Vietnam, and my mother experienced this as well during two wars - II and Gulf. I find it's an experience us bombees can connect on. If the gentlemen (gentleterrorists?) launching the missiles are indeed walking the ordinance, the next one would be either very close or right on top of us, and I pray "Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me" ...

Some of us have been in what is essentially the same war for our entire lives.

Pleasantly SurprisedUPDATE: Expectations Met

In all honesty, after yesterday’s events in Mazar-e-Sharif, I had this post already written in my head.  It was going to be titled “Profiles in Cowardice” or “Be-TRAY-us Redux”, which tells you most of what you need to know about where my baseline expectations have fallen.

So you can imagine my gratification when I heard this during the COMISAF standup:

Well, obviously what took place in Mazar is tragic, horrific, reprehensible and beyond any comprehension by any religion and it was good to see President Karzai put out a condemnation statement last night, along with of course the NATO secretary general and many others.  The fact is that this event in the United States, which drew all of about twelve people, never would have drawn interest out here had it not been for the way it was echoed and highlighted, and that is a tragedy in and of itself frankly.  We’re going to have to watch very very carefully to see if this escalates elsewhere in the country now, keep our finger on the pulse of various events . . . .

Again, this is a very worrisome development.  I’m not sure what repercussions it will have for the international community.  I think we need to ensure that it is the first topic on the senior security shura today, so for DCOS STRAT  Engagement, please make sure that we would like an explanation from the Minister of Interior what is being done, what has been done, what will be done.  We need to contact the religious leadership we have established relationships with.  Tell them that they need to do some serious soul searching because it is my impression that elements of the religious establishment are the ones that fanned the flames on this and poured gasoline on it, and frankly, they probably have to do, again, a bit of internal examination to ask themselves if this was something they want to be associated [with], is this something their religion stands for in Afghanistan and so forth.  There is a fine line between a peaceful demonstration and violence in this country.  And they obviously – their actions at the end of the day – got out of control.  It’s interesting, because President Karzai has cautioned once or twice, he’s noted that peaceful demonstrations don’t always stay that way in Afghanistan, and yet this is how this came about . . . .

But indeed, there’s got to be some serious soul searching here by people who are supposed to be giving moral guidance to citizens of this country.

Now, while the boss of course put some thought into this – he’s nothing if not careful – keep in mind he was speaking extemporaneously without a prepared text.  Obviously, this was not the speech I would have given; I was over my illusions about the true essence of Islam by September 12, 2001.  But note what he did not do:  he did not attack Terry Jones for exercising his constitutional rights, he did not try to play both sides by calling for “mutual tolerance” or any of the multi-cult phrases of national suicide.  He instead put the blame squarely where it belonged, no equivocation.

Well done, sir.

UPDATE: I noticed P4 giving a press conference Sunday. Here he is "protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States." Pathetic. (H.T.: månesteiner in the comments.)

All my instincts are wrong.

When an IED disables a vehicle in the convoy, I jump out to assist.  This is wrong.  Unless my help is needed, an up-armored humvee is the best place for a fire team leader.

When I jump out, I’m in a hurry and forget to close the door behind me.  This is wrong, as it leaves the other occupants exposed.

When I take fire, I fire back.  This is wrong, as it is the turret gunners’ job. (Those bits in generation kill that show the humvee crews firing M4s from the windows is, evidently, teevee creativity.)   If I leave the humvee, my job is to get on the “cold” side of the vehicle and assist with the crossload.  I should only use my M4 to engage anybody who makes it too close for the turret gunners to shoot safely.

It’s very difficult for a vehicle commander to assess anything happening behind him.  He has no rear visibility.  He relies entirely on information passed over the radio and from the turret gunner.  These are hard to hear at best and incoherent at worst.

All advantage lies with OPFOR.  The determine the location of an attack and control the pace.  They have surprise.  They are impossible to see unless they fire, and difficult even then.  Depending on the terrain, they can pop up one place, fire a burst, then duck down and appear somewhere else.  Like wack-a-mole.  Depending on the terrain, they face lots of easy targets, especially if they attack from both sides of the convoy.

All advantage lies with the blue force.  Our up-armored humvees  are (mostly) impervious to small arms fire.  The .50cal in the turret can clear a forest in seconds.  Depending on the terrain, a disabled humvee can be surrounded by the other convoy vehicles, protecting everyone during the crossload.

Tell me again who won the war? (CONTENT WARNING: Language)

A friend writes:

I went to visit a project site, traveling with a Personal Security Detail (PSD). On the return trip, we approached the Entry Control Point (ECP) to get into the International Zone (IZ) where I live.

Although the ECP for my Forward Operating Base (FOB) is controlled by the US military, the ECP into the IZ is controlled by the Iraqi Police (IP). Notice how I'm indoctrinating you into military jargon? Very subtle, no?

The IP allowed two vehicles to pass through the vehicle barrier (which is a metal trap that gets raised or lowered), then wouldn't put down the vehicle barrier to pass through the other two vehicles in our team. We were effectively detained by the IP, our travel team of four vehicles was split into two halves, and we were in the kill zone and unable to go anywhere. Advantage, Iraqis.

The IP slowly began to escalate threat against us. They started out with re-inspecting our vehicles. Then they inspected all of our paperwork, which was in order. After that, the IP boss man got on his cell phone and spent time talking, laughing, and yelling about something to someone. After a half hour had passed, the IP boss man ordered a three-member firing team to draw on our vehicles. There were two shooters behind us, but I couldn't see where they put themselves.

The third shooter positioned himself on top of a 6' tall concrete barrier to the front and left of our lead vehicle.  We had a clear view of his helmeted head and weapon, and he had the elevated protected position over us. He aimed his long gun directly at the vehicle windshield I was riding in, at which point my mind started thinking "international incident." I knew if he chose to shoot an entire focused-fire volley of 7.62mm rounds from an AK-47 on full auto through the windshield, it would likely give way between rounds 3 and 6, which left me on the order of 24-27 to deal with personally. So for the next half hour, I watched this guy watch me and thought, "Holy smokes, batman!" After that, we were alternatively threatened with arrest, confiscation of our vehicles, of both. Iraqis, advantage again.

I knew the name of this game was patience. I figured IP boss man was willing to have but didn't really want a firefight, and eventually offer us an option out as a way to save face. It's strange to play chicken with your own neck. I kept calm and kept talking to our well-armed PSD members in order to keep them calm - they were a little jumpy, go figure.  After being detained a little over an hour in our vehicles, the IP boss man told us we could either turn around and away from the IZ or get arrested. I wasn't sure if the Iraqi detention center food or bed were going to be any good, so I told our PSD team we should exercise the option to leave and go to another FOB where we could have a nice dinner and sleep in a semi-comfortable warm bed.

So we went to the other FOB. International incident averted.

It looks like DADT has become a moot point.  It’s policy now:  we’re all c0cksuckers.

For Aslan and Narnia!

My employer (and really, who am I still kidding at this point) has a long-term contract in Southwest Asia. I have been sent to fulfill the terms of that contract for the next 4 1/2 months, give or take.

I had a week's notice.

I have two weeks of training before heading off to the mountains. Steve says it’ll be like Colorado.

No promises about internet access. My employer blocks my blog, but not blogger.com, so I may be able to post but not respond to comments. (My employer blocks most of your blogs as well, but not Google Reader, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with your posts even if I can't comment.)

Mrs. Φ bought me a digital camera for my trip, so if I can post I’ll try to post pictures. But posting will probably be light.

The odds are pretty good that I will come back safely, but in the event, I’ll try to write a farewell post set to publish a year from now or so.

It’s Not a MAD World Anymore.

Regarding the administration’s announcement that it forswears the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation for non-nuclear WMD attacks:

Other than to serve as yet another example of Obama’s moral preening, I’m not sure what this policy is supposed to accomplish.  It is one thing to tell another nuclear power, in the interests of stability, “No matter what happens, we don’t want you to be afraid that the U.S. will launch a preemptive first strike that destroys your retaliatory capability.  We will therefore renounce the use of nuclear weapons under circumstance X.”

But Obama is telling non-nuclear states (in compliance with the NPT, yada yada) that the U. S. won’t use nuclear weapons against them no matter what they do.

How is this supposed to encourage good behavior?  How does it make America safer?

UPDATE: Ace argues this doesn't make any difference because after 9/11 nobody took our deterrent threat seriously anyway.

My Dinner with UNHCR

My advisor had another house party last week, during which I fell into conversation with a young woman who, early on, announced her affiliation with the United Nations High Council on Refugees. (Note: I was celebrating the recent announcement of my coming publications, so the details of this conversation may get a little hazy through the blood-alcohol level.)

Φ: Wow, the U.N. has offices out here in [flyover country]?

UNHCR Babe: Well, actually, I work directly for Catholic Social Services, but we do contract work for UNHCR.

Φ: Oh. So, what work is that?

UNHCR CSS Babe: We resettle refugees.

Φ: Where do you resettle them?

CSSB: Here in the U.S.

Φ: For how long?

CSSB: Oh, permanently. They get green cards and can apply for citizenship.

Φ: Where do the refugees come from?

CSSB: Iraq, mostly.

Φ: Iraq. So, help me out here: last I heard, there were American soldiers in Iraq making Iraq, you know, safe for Iraqis.

CSSB: Yup. My husband is in the armed services, and has been deployed to Iraq several times. We have a private joke: he breaks countries, I clean up the pieces.

Φ: Yeah, there's something to be said for just staying home. How does an Iraqi qualify for refugee status?

CSSB: Well, as long as they can make a claim to having a fear of persecution, then they become eligible for resettlement.

Φ: So . . . are they part of Iraq's Christian minority?

CSSB: Actually, no. We get a handful of Chaldeans, but mostly, they're Muslims.

Φ: Muslims. Now, you're going to have to help me out here again, 'cause the TV said that Iraq is, you know, a Muslim country. So how do Muslims get to claim persecution?

CSSB: It doesn't have to be because of religion. They can claim persecution for having been friendly to Americans.

Φ: How many Muslims are we talking about?

CSSB: Last year, it was 20,000.

Φ: Twenty thousand. I didn't know we had that many friends in Iraq. So, just out of curiosity, how do we keep Muslims that aren't our friends from being in that 20,000?

CSSB: Oh, we're very careful! Refugees from Iraq have to go through four times the number of interviews we normally require.

Φ: Wow. Four times the, um, interviews. So, what's your angle? What part of the resettlement process do you handle?

CSSB: Employment.

Φ: How's that working out?

CSSB: Frankly, it's very difficult. The refugees we get were typically professionals back in Iraq, but their degrees are from, say, U. of Baghdad.

Φ: Their credentials don't transfer?

CSSB: No. And they don't want to do unskilled labor, and the economy is bad right now, so they tend to be bitter.

Φ: I thought you said they were our friends.

CSSB: Well, their attitude is, hey, you Americans invaded our country and created this mess, so now you should take care of us.

Φ: Okay . . . my brain is a little foggy, so let me run through all of this again. Basically, your job is to help bring 20,000 angry, entitled, unemployable Muslims, from a country we just invaded, into the United States in the middle of a recession. Is there anything I'm missing here?

CSSB: Well, it was only 20,000 last year. Obama just signed an agreement to bring in 80,000 this year.

Φ: Eighty-thousand Iraqis!

CSSB: Well, no, they're not all from Iraq. We also get a lot of Rwandans and Burudis.

Φ: Rwandans and Burundis. Let's see, that would be the Hutus and the Tutsis, right? So, which are we taking, the Hutus or the Tutsis?

CSSB: We take both.

Φ: Both! That's mighty damn multiculturalist of us. Any place else?

CSSB: We also get refugees from Vietnam.

Φ: Vietnam still. Wow, that's a war that keeps on giving. Hey, that's a cool looking cell phone you have.

CSSB: It's a Palm Pre.

Φ: Who's your carrier?

CSSB: Sprint. I get a big discount for banking with BigBank.

Φ: Really? I bank with BigBank. I wonder if I can get that discount . . . .

Scott on War

I've been reading Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake to my nine-year-old daughter over the last couple of weeks. I didn't know the first thing about Scott, but I recently read somewhere that Mark Twain hated him. Since I hate Mark Twain, that was all the recommendation I needed.

Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of the story. Last night, we reached the point where Roderick Dhu calls the highland Scots to war. The message reaches a young man in the middle of his own wedding procession:

Yet slow he laid his plaid aside,
And, lingering, eyed his lovely bride,
Until he saw the starting tear
Speak woe he might not stop to cheer;
Then, trusting not a second look,
In haste he sped him up the brook,
Nor backward glanced, till on the heath
Where Lubnaig's lake supplies the Teith
-- What in the racer's bosom stirr'd?
The sickening pang of hope deferr'd,
And memory, with a torturing train,
Of all his morning visions vain,
Mingled with love's impatience, came
The manly thirst for martial fame;
The stormy joy of mountaineers,
Ere yet they rush upon the spears;
And zeal for Clan and Chieftain bring,
And hope, from well-fought field returning,
With war's red honors on his crest,
To clasp his Mary to his breast.
Stung by such thoughts, o'er bank and brae,
Like fire from flint he glanced away,
While high resolve, and feeling strong,
Burst into voluntary song.

"The heath this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head,
My lullaby the warder's tread,
Far, far from love and thee, Mary:

"To-morrow eve, more stilly laid,
My couch may be my bloody plaid,
My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid!
It will not waken me, Mary!

"I may not, dare not, fancy now
The grief that clouds thy lovely brow,
I dare not think upon thy vow,
And all it promised me, Mary.

"No fond regret must Norman know;
When bursts Clan-Alpine on the foe,
His heart must be like bended bow,
His foot like arrow free, Mary.

"A time will come with feeling fraught,
For, if I fall in battle fought,
Thy hapless lover's dying thought
Shall be a thought on the, Mary.

"And if return'd from conquer'd foes,
How blithely will the evening close,
How sweet the linnet sing repose,
To my young bride and me, Mary!

Φ: "So, what does this passage say?"

Γ: "Mmmm . . . ."

Φ: "What does the young man think about being called away to war?"

Γ: "He's sad."

Φ: "What else does he think?"

Γ: "He wants fame. He wants to get famous by fighting."

Φ: "Wow, good! You're all over it."

Γ: "But why does he want to fight?"

Φ: "Mmmm . . . . It's something boys do, I guess. If you ever marry a soldier, and he's called away to war, this will probably be his attitude. He'll miss you terribly, but he will hunger for the thrill of combat."

Γ: "But, why would he be called away?"

Φ: "Because his clan calls him! His country calls him."

Γ: "So . . . why are we fighting in Afghanistan?"

Φ: [WTF?!?]

Φ: "Mmmm . . . . That's a good question. I suppose if the president were here, he'd say that we have to civilize the Pashtuns. He'd say we have to teach them democracy and human rights."

Γ: "Well . . . that sounds like a really dumb reason!"

Φ: "Okay, well, let's not ask anymore questions and just listen to the poem."

Sudden Jihad Syndrome?UPDATE: Nope, a Section Eight

Tragic news from Iraq:

A U.S. soldier opened fire on coalition forces attending a stress clinic at a military base outside of Baghdad International Airport Monday, and at least five were killed, the Pentagon and U.S. Command said. It was unclear how many U.S. soldiers were killed in the shooting at Camp Liberty, but a defense official said the shooter is alive and in custody. Three were wounded, but it was not immediately clear if the shooter was one of them.

Pentagon officials first indicated that an Army soldier shot the others and then turned the gun on himself.

Do you have a name? A photograph?

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive and details unclear.

Uh huh. Okay, this might turn out to be a "Section 8" off his meds. But I'll offer a wager to any commenter willing to accept it that he turns out to be either a Muslim or a racial minority or both.

Rules: comment must be postmarked before the Pentagon "clarifies" the story. Stakes: loser must post a photograph of himself.

UPDATE: Well, according to the AP photo and story, he's a stressed out white guy. I guess it's a good thing nobody took my bet!

Lessons of Iraq

David Frum has written a four-part summary of a report by the "Special Inspector General of Iraqi Reconstruction". David Frum:

Six years, four thousand lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later, we seem at last to have stabilized Iraq. This weekend’s elections occurred peacefully, and the US goal of an Iraq that does not threaten its neighbors or its people now looks within reach. Yet we all have to be haunted by the question: Did it have to take so long and cost so much?

Inspector General Stuart Bowen’s damning study strongly suggests the answer: No.

Oh dear. I already fear where this is going: now that we know what mistakes not to make, next time we can avoid them!

This is not the lesson I was hoping for. When it comes to the Middle East, the lesson I was hoping for was: don't get any of it on you.

Megan on the Israeli Lobby

An excellent, thoughtful post:

I share the discomfort with noting the obvious fact that Jewish Americans, like every other hyphenated-american, actively seek the benefit of their ethnic compatriots by influencing US policy. Other hyphenated Americans don't have the same history of accusations that they are engaged in a virulent conspiracy to run the world for their benefit, and thus we have no need to pretend that all the Turks just happen to take a different position on the Armenian genocide than all the Armenians do--nay, not even the Turks and Armenians themselves bother to claim this . . . .

But though I understand why statements like this have to be made very carefully, if at all, the strenuous efforts to avoid making them have become cancerous. The reluctance to state the obvious allows Israel's partisans to duck the undeniable fact that AIPAC and so forth do actively attempt to influence American policy, and frequently succeed. Questions about whether this is really best for America, or the world, can be countered with more-or-less sly insinuations of anti-semitism. In part because almost the only people who will state the obvious are looney-tunes anti-semites who think that there's a Jewish conspiracy, rather than . . . Jews acting boringly just like every other ethnic group to ever hit our shores. Or Arabs with tin ears who come off as mostly mad because they're way behind in the ethnic lobbying sweepstakes.

It will not do my career much good to say it, but here goes. America has an influential Israel lobby in large part because of ethnic affinity. Not just Jewish ethnic affinity, I hasten to point out. Yes, we have a large number of Jewish people--many more than we have Arabs. And those Jewish people mostly strongly identify with Israel in the conflict . . . .

But America also has an influential Israel lobby because it has a much larger group of people who identify, quasi-ethnically, with Israel: evangelical Christians who think of themselves as in some way descended from the ten tribes of Israel. [As noted in the comments, these are Mormons, not evangelicals. - Φ] (Not to mention the lunatic fringe who hopes that the Israelis can in some way hasten the End Times. [These are the evangelicals, sadly. - Φ] As if God could be influenced by a sufficiently robust foreign policy.)

And then most of the rest of us, because almost all Americans see Israelis as sharing a common European cultural heritage that the Palestinians do not. (I believe Al-Qaeda agrees.)

Such identifications are, I'd wager, rooted deeply in our genes--our selfish alleles want to advance alleles more similar to them, which is why we tend to side with our family against our nation, our nation against foreigners, and foreigners against sabre-toothed tigers. Those ties are not all-powerful, of course, which is why mothers don't let their children kill all the other children on the block. But they are often decisive in complicated situations like the one in Gaza.

So we are the Israel lobby, to a greater or a lesser extent--all Americans who think of themselves as more like the Israelis than the Palestinians.

Read the whole thing. Megan, unfortunately, is pretty sanguine about how multicultural immigration has turned our foreign policy into little more than special interest pork. But still and all the most balanced treatment I've read on this subject.

UPDATE: For the record, and in the context of the Walt thought experiment she quotes, I should acknowledge that there is more than just affinity -- the Jews are like us, their adversaries not like us -- at work here. Israel benefits from the widespread perception that we share the same enemies, going back to at least the Beirut barracks bombing if not before, and including at a minimum Achille Lauro, Berlin, Lockerbie, Aden, and 9/11. Yes, I know: different groups with different grievences, perhaps, but all Moslems. Meanwhile, it very difficult to imagine circumstances in which Jews would murder my family and me for being Christians.

On the Costs of National Honor

I had lunch with the guys yesterday. Granted, it wasn't a representative sample, but I was surprised at the extent of the pro-Israel sympathy with regards to its conflict in Gaza.

I took the opportunity try out some of Steve Sailer's arguments and received a respectful hearing. But one of them asked me this:

Suppose that a group of Mexicans, with some nudging and winking from their government, started hurling rockets over the border into El Paso, in an quixotic effort to recover the Southwest. What do you think would be our reaction?

A fair question! In the long run, I suspect that we would pursue some combination of defensive measures and accomodation, and in this respect I would anticipate that our political parties would play to type.

In the short run, however, even our president-elect would recognize that in the suffering of the people of El Paso our national honor was on the line. And the measures by which we would vindicate that honor would be unlike those by which Israel is now vindicating its honor in Gaza.