Credit Where Credit is Due...

And if this is true, I'm going to have to change my opinion on the usefulness of the French as anti-terror allies. Maybe Charles Martel isn't rolling in his grave after all.

But if it is true, why is it not reported in the leftist press? If the French are Gitmo+1, surely that's a provocation to further bloodshed, and even if it isn't, don't the terrorists win if we in the West become like them?

Adeimantus nails it again:

One of the subsidiary paradoxes of relativism is that each of its proponents considers himself an intellectual superior.

Read the whole thing.

A Few Changes

One of the things I hoped to do with this blog was steer away from the usual back-and-forth, minutaie-reporting. This I freely admit to being unsuccessful in doing, as much out of habit as anything else. Still, I'd like to change that, and so have set aside a seperate space for the numbered works, "The Essayist" series. Not all of them are as good as I'd like for them to be, but they're all where I'm aiming. So if you missed them, enjoy, and suggestions are welcome.

Fixed the link to the Belmont Club, too.

See!

Miracles do happen.

What does Africa Need?

One of the reasons I switched from one political point of view to another in my late teens to early 20's was the realization that humans were meant to make their own way in the world, not to depend on handouts from an all-powerful state. With that in mind, read this piece on Aid to Africa and see if you can disagree.

This is a theorem that has been spoken many times (for example, here), but it does not, of itself, produce a solution. So, to return to the title question, what does Africa need?

1. Property rights
2. Rule of Law
3. Universal Education
4. A government that does not interfere with 1, 2, and 3.

1 is the basis for any functioning market economy. 2 allows disputes to be resolved peacefully and end the cycle of putsch, civil war, and purge that is as much a drag on Africa as anything else. 3 levels the playing field for the native genius of the people. The need for 4 is obvious, and unfortunately, it's the only thing the military power of the West may be in a position to supply.

I submit that if we aren't helping Africans achieve these four things, we aren't helping them at all. It's well past time for a change in the political cultures of the poorest region on earth. It's well past time for the left to realize that Mugabe has done more to harm his nation than any white man. It's well past time for American and other G-8 businesses to consider what profits would be had by making Africans into customers instead of laborers.

It's time to stop flagellating ourselves, and start dealing with the problem.

Always and Forever on the March

The great and depressing thing about history is that nothing changes. For example, guess what Russia's doing?

If you said pestering the Baltic states, you win.

They Used to Fight Crusaders on Their Own Turf...

It appears that al Qaeda has decided to spend the summer peppering Europe in much the same way it's allies have been peppering Iraq and Israel: that is, blowing things up and killing civilians.

So far, so typical, although it gives something in the way of truth to those who would argue that the Iraq and Afghan wars haven't made us all that safer. But I wonder why they've decided to try this now. Surely, London, and many other important European cities have been pretty well infiltrated by those professing terrorist and Islamist ideologies. What made them wait?

Those that claimed credit for the bombing were quick to apply "linkage," as the saying goes, to Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that "all the Crusader governments" will face similar bombings if they do not leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

Further grist for the anti-war mill, it would seem, along the lines of the "blowback" argument. Yet still I wonder, why now? The Counter-Terrorism Blog suggests that this "Secret al-Qaeda" is so only in name, an inspired group of emigrant malcontents rather than an actual cell bearing orders from bin Laden. If so, this may well have been triggered by yesterday's announcement of the location of the 2012 Olympics as by anything in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, we ought well be prepared for anything. The tempo of attacks might increase, or not, as the summer goes. But of one thing we should be sure. The fanatics have brought this war, and intend to fight it on their terms. To respond to them, many options may feasibly be employed, excepting one. We must give them nothing. They are not reasonable men, and their terms for peace will never be ones under which we can live.

History is Too Important to be Left to Historians

One of the numerous habits that family and friends castigate me over is my habit of re-reading books. That happens to be the one I will not give on. As far as I'm concerned, he who never re-reads a book gains nothing from it, and a book that will not bear re-reading was probably not worth the first effort. Why do we keep them in shelves in our houses, if not to use them when we would, however many times?

So yes, I'm now on the fourth or fifth re-reading of Shelby Foote's three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative, and have been since the summer began. The thrill of the story does not abate. The pagentry of ambition was never so rythmically rendered, as Mclernand and Meade and Rosecrans and Hooker and Buell and Burnside and McClellan and Pope and Fremont rose and fell, each one a bit better suited to the war they were fighting than their predecessor, yet not good enough, until leadership fell into the hands of Grant and Sherman, who, like Ulysses, understood the nature of the conflict. And that's just the Northern side. Watching to the gamecocks of the South preen, ruffle, and charge is likewise a mystifying experience. Proud as Roland they sound to us, and proud as Roland they stood, against the waves of history, and now they sound truly ancient, truly dead.

And yes, I know my politico-socio-encomic arithmetic 'bout the U.S. of the 1860's as well as the cynics would like, and I am confident in the truth of the assertion that no man, however grand, arises from nowhere. Yet cannot we take our Marx with a grain of Virgil? If Foote's epic teaches us nothing, it teaches us that different men drive the same chariot at different speeds to different ends. Would it kill us to again make our history larger than broken pottery, to find in it something other than a hair-shirt for the modern world, to make it human rather than a vast cosmic cog?

Because I prophesy thusly: until we learn to love our history again, we shall never learn it, much less learn from it.

Fair is Fair...

And if I'm gonna fling poo at the lefties on the high court for okaying corporate feudalism with Kelo, then it's only just that I lay a few choice ones for our good President, who used eminent domain to get land for the new stadium for the Texas Rangers back in the day.

It appears that, just as both lefties and righties can find common ground on this issue, so can they find common shame. Thuis, the New York Times, who broke the Bush story with appropriate condemnation, gets to savor the taste of their own words, as they recently had New York City condemn a whole neighborhood next to the Port Authority Terminal so they could build a snazzy new high-rise.

Reason has the scoop, for both.

Zimbabwe is now in the Forefront of Gun Control

That should end the violence. No problem.

To Hell with China...

India is the future. And we just got on board.

News Flash:

Government Agency Wastes Taxpayer Money!

And all the people who insisted that airport security workers being turned into federal employees would improve their performance will now...call for the agency to be given more money. And the band played on...

In Case You're Wondering...

...when I talk about city machines, I mean this:

voter fraud

prostitution rings

attempted murder of federal witnesses

And you thought Bill the Butcher was dead, dint'cha? Alas, no. He's changed colors, but not methods, and not parties, either.

The Essayist #7: The Meaning of Candor

As I've said before, whatever the flaws of the Washington Post, it's no New York Times, and its editors are to be commended for the (albeit occiasionally skittish) support they've given to at least the theory of the War in Iraq. Today's editorial, in response to last night's press conference, is a perfect example of their love-hate relationship with the Iraq War: they're serious enough to see that we need to win, but they won't stop kicking the man whose job it it to win it.

Frankly, I find some of their barbs bizarre:

Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants

Why does he need to explain that? The Iraqi army melted on the field, and the losers resorted to insurgency, because they didn't want to lose, and were sure we'd run away as soon as they killed enough of us. Ask the average John Q. Voter why the war in Iraq is still going on after two years, and I'll bet you'll get either that or "Because Our Evil President doesn't WANT it to, man!". Does the WaPo believe that anyone who thinks the latter will be convinced by having the former explained to them?

Or this:

When he did turn to Iraq's reconstruction Mr. Bush mostly described the bright side of a very mixed picture. While acknowledging that "our progress has been uneven," his dominant theme was success: in training Iraqi security forces, holding elections and promoting political accord. The progress he described is genuine, as is the reality that the United States has no reasonable alternative to continuing to support the construction of a representative Iraqi government. Mr. Bush rightly argued that a deadline for withdrawal would be a "serious mistake."

Followed by the rest of the piece, which chides Bush for not saying what commanders and senior aides and every newspaper from Sea to Shining Sea has been saying for months: that the insurgency doesn't appear to be going away just yet, and indeed, has remained roughly at the same level of efficiency for the last year. Again, why does the President need to explain this? We see it every day: Bomb kills 40, Three soldiers killed in ambush, and a partridge in a pear tree. WE KNOW the problems. The purpose of the President's conference was to argue why we should continue to stay the course.

Fortunately, most Americans appear to have a hardheaded appreciation of the problems and stakes in Iraq. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.

No, it's going to require Mr. Bush to continue to point out the "bright side of a very mixed picture." Let me offer a few examples:


In 1941, the two-year mark for World War II, the allied side was in very bad shape. Winston Churchill, more or less the only Western leader still resisting, did not rally his people by pointing out that France had fallen, that half of European Russia was overrun, that Rommel was running rampant in North Africa. The people already knew that. What he told them was that the enemy was monstrous, and that the British people would never surrender to a monster. He didn't tell them about the fact that we were going to start day-and-night bombing of Germany but let the Russians do the heavy lifting until we felt like starting a second front, or about the recent success against the enemy's Enigma code, because, although it might have cheered the Pommies, it would also have told Hitler exactly what he needed to do to win.

In 1863, the two-year mark for the American Civil War, the Lincoln administration had a very mixed picture of its own to deal with. In the Western theater, the Mississippi had been cleared of rebel forces, cutting the Confederacy in half, and the pressure soon to be brought to bear agains the remaining Confederate forces west of the Appalachians was deemed to be inexorable. But in the East, the Rebels had held out, and held out, and held out, embarrassing every Yankee general that could be summoned against them. Sure, they'd won at Gettysburg, but the cost of that battle was horrendous, and that a battle was being fought in Pennsylvania in the first place indicated that all was not well. How was Lincoln to keep the people with him? What could he say?

You know what he said. Read the Gettysburg Address and see if you can find a description of the new strategies to be employed, or candor about the problems faced. Read it with a critic's eye, and it's a masterpiece of vagueness (and more than a few did read it with such an eye. One snark referred to the speech as "the dishwater utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States"). Lincoln did not mention that most of the Union Army's three-year enlistments would be up the next spring, or that Confederate cavalry raiders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest were growing "increasingly sophisticated" in their assaults on union railroads, or that the most recent amphibious expedition against Charleston had failed. He also didn't say that his plan for the future was going to involve appointing his hardest-fighting general, a man alternately accused of being a drunken incompetent and a pitiless butcher, to the head of all Union forces, and direct him to cut down Lee's army, whatever the cost.

Instead, he told them that the were engaged in a war for the survival of their nation, that to lose would be the end of our forefather's beliefs, and that they must steel themselves for the coming struggle, must resolve that the sacrifice of their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers has not been in vain. Thus, Lincoln's candor, not in the tiny decisions that amount to policy, but in the broad meanings that the people, who care not for wonkery, will hear.


Look, if most of the anti-war crowd was as level-headed as the WaPo editorial staff, I'd be a lot less strident on this issue, which I know I said I would stay away from. But if they're so worried about the people not holding fast to a war they know we need to win, mayhaps they could get on board and get their front page to tell both sides of the very mixed picture. If they're stuck for how to get news on the progress they admit to be genuine, they can start here.

Start Kissing the CIA bye-bye...

FBI is getting it's own intel service. Add this to the fact that the DCI is no longer the chief intelligence officer in our goverment, the NSA does all the ELINT, the Homeland Security Department handles the domestic policing, and the fact that the boys at Langely have been farming out HUMINT jobs to the Brits since the 70's, and one has to wonder how long before we start asking our most unpopular government service the Bob question ("What would...you say that...you do here?").

And yes, I know that sentence got away with me.

See, This is Why People Believe in God...

Who will be the next victim of Kelo vs. New London? One of the Justices who wrote the decision. Winds of Change has the goods (Hat tip: Boxing Alicibiades).

Well, It's More Interesting Than the Usual Movie Plug...

I normally avoid celebrity comment, but Cruise's little slapfight with Matt Lauer over Scientology and Ritalin caught my fancy. Note the statements with which Cruise argues:

-"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."
-"Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?"
-"If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done."

My curiosity stems from the fact that at no point do we seem to see any actual facts brought out of this. Cruise claims to know, but does not elucidate. Either he's full of it, or he determined that going into the details would be too boring and dry for TV. Inasmuch as he should know that Scientology itself is too boring for TV, I am inclined to think the former.

Seriously, does anyone know anything about Scientology? It's routinely called a cult, but so's every religion until it becomes mainstream.


UPDATE: Never mind.

For Some Reason...

Pirates just never get old. Observe.

I never did like PETA

If this is true, PETA got some 'splainin' to do (Hat tip: Boxing Alcibiades).

It is as if PETA prefers the idea of animals to animals themselves

You know, come to think of it, that sounds familiar, too.

Billy Bong Thornton Rides Again

Only the Washington Post would conclude that the trendiness of hookah bars is "counterintuitive". People want to smoke. Smoking around non-smokers makes them pissy and lawyery. So people who want to smoke go to places where smoking is the very point of being there.

I've been to one, in Manhattan. The Jasmine tobacco was Dee-lish.