Gonzalez Replies

Guillermo Gonzalez responds in the Iowa State Daily to calls on campus for his professional emasculation. He also replies in the Des Moines Register to its article criticizing him for breaching the bounds of science in his book Privileged Planet. Gonzalez is a proponent of cosmic ID and for that offense against secular morality he must be punished. We discussed the matter here a week ago. Here is Gonzalez's letter to the Des Moines Register:

In her Aug. 24 commentary, "Stick to Science, ISU," Rekha Basu writes about an anti-intelligent design petition led by Hector Avalos, an associate professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and faculty adviser to the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society.

Basu noted that I'm a national leader in the ID movement who "has said publicly he wants to find a graduate student to pursue that line of study," based on an August-edition Geotimes report on comments made at a Smithsonian presentation. In answer to a question about progress in ID, I said that I hoped graduate students would take up some of the suggested research presented in the book I co-authored. I didn't say I was going to have a graduate student working on ID. In any case, I don't have funding to do so.

I am often misrepresented by the press and certain ideologues at ISU.

First, I am not a fundamentalist. I don't believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old or that a global deluge created most of the geology we see today. I am convinced that most of the mainstream theories in geology, physics and cosmology are a pretty good representation of reality.

Second, ID is not scientific creationism (or just creationism). Creationists seek evidence to prove a particular interpretation of the book of Genesis in the Bible. They start with a specific set of prior religious commitments and seek evidence that conforms to those commitments. ID theorists start with the evidence of nature and remain open to possible evidence of design. This approach is no different from the approach taken by many of the founders of modern science.

Third, scientific theories can and do have metaphysical implications, but those are distinct from the theories themselves. Richard Dawkins once said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. That implication doesn't invalidate Darwin's scientific idea. Similarly, ID research can have positive religious implications. Perhaps that explains some of the animosity toward ID.

Finally, "The Privileged Planet," which I co-authored with Dr. Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute, presents an original argument for design based on evidence drawn from the physical sciences. We do not discuss biological evolution in the book or in the documentary video based on it. Our argument is testable and should be challenged on the evidence.

The inquisition Hector Avalos is attempting to engineer isn't science. It's an attack on academic freedom.

-Guillermo Gonzalez, assistant professor of astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames.

It's important to reiterate that Gonzalez does not challenge Darwinian orthodoxy in his book. His argument is that the incredible fine-tuning of the structure of the cosmos makes it in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ways extremely well-suited for the emergence of higher life forms such as man. Were the values and properties of the forces, constants, and constituents of the universe not almost exactly what they are, life could not have arisen. None of this has anything to do with evolution nor is it denied by anyone in science, but Gonzalez thinks that such precision is more than just a flukish coincidence, he thinks it is an indication of purposefulness.

This belief, which is a philosophical inference drawn from the scientific facts and not itself a scientific matter, is held in contempt by atheistic materialists on the faculty who fear that such telic talk has about it the odor of Christian fundamentalism and who see it as a challenge to their own philosophical suppositions. Thus, lest others be persuaded by Gonzalez's arguments, they feel the need to stifle and gag him.

As Gonzalez says in his letter, this controversy is not about science, it's about religious philosophy, and there's no one so intolerant, so hostile to the free exchange of ideas, as an academic who sees his cherished anti-theistic philosophical convictions, to which he has devoted his entire professional life, come under withering assault. Gonzalez, like Richard Sternberg and others before him, is getting a taste of their despotic fury.

Sounds of Silence

Time for a rock concert or two to raise money for disaster relief in the Gulf, or do the rockers and beautiful people only raise money for relief in Africa? How much assistance will we be receiving from the rest of the world, especially the oil-besotted Arab world? Will the mucky-mucks at the U.N. be calling those who don't help relieve the human misery along the Gulf coast "stingy"? Just asking.

Here's a list of the countries which have promised economic aid in the wake of this catastrophe so far:

No doubt the list will be longer by tomorrow.

The Great Raid

Hugh Hewitt commends to us what he avers is an outstanding movie. I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard so many good things about it that I intend to do something I rarely do - go see the movie in the theater. Here's what Hewitt says:

It is time to rescue The Great Raid.

The Great Raid is in theaters now, though it may not be for long unless movie-going America quickly realizes that there is a wonderful and inspiring film in its midst, one that celebrates courage, sacrifice and endurance, and which unabashedly proclaims that hope (plus superior firepower and tactical surprise) can conquer all. It is a movie which deserves a vast and appreciative audience.

It is 1945, and Douglas MacArthur has returned to the Philippines. More than 500 American survivors of the Bataan Death March languish at the Cabanatuan prison camp, and the Japanese plan to exterminate them, rather than allow them to survive and bear witness to Japanese war crimes. The men of America's untested 6th Army Ranger Battalion set out to save these prisoners. This exceptional movie tells the stories of the warriors who went to save the captives, the prisoners who endured unspeakable cruelty, and the Filipino resistance that came to the aid of both.

As with Saving Private Ryan, audiences have been lingering at the end of the film. There is spontaneous applause. And there are tears. The generation that fought to liberate the Philippines is passing away, but those who survive and the best of their children and grandchildren are appreciating the movie.

The Great Raid has received favorable reviews from esteemed and honest critics such as Michael Medved and Roger Ebert. But the bulk of the high-brow reviewers have rejected the movie. The New York Times's Stephen Holden represented the caucus of the dismissive when he wrote that "it is not the actors' fault that their characters fail to establish any emotional connection; they aren't given the words for the task." Holden damned the film as "a tedious World War II epic that slogs across the screen like a forced march in quicksand," and slammed it for "its scenes of torture and murder [which] unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend."

Holden isn't reviewing a movie; he's defending his own politics, as he's done before. In an October 2003 review of the documentary Fog of War about former Kennedy/Johnson administration Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Holden rebuked McNamara for serving during World War II under Gen. Curtis LeMay, thus being "part of the team that made the decision to firebomb 67 Japanese cities, killing large numbers of civilians. In Tokyo alone, more than 100,000 civilians died one night in March 1945." It is not difficult to conclude that any war movie that celebrates American resolve while neglecting to savage American hubris and American cruelty is going to fare very poorly at Mr. Holden's hands. This is the political agenda that The Great Raid is up against, and it is not limited to the New York Times and Stephen Holden. To praise The Great Raid is to praise America, and that's too much to ask of many film critics, especially in this era of the global war against terror.

Director John Dahl's dad served in the Philippines, and he told me that as he came to understand the story of The Great Raid, he also came to realize--again--the incredible modesty of the generation that beat back Hitler and Tojo. So modest are they that they have refused to proclaim their stories. We are lucky that directors such as Spielberg and Dahl have come along to do it for them.

The West is once again under siege, as it has been in the past and will be again in the future. Brave men have always risen up to defend the West--even when the odds were long--and to take the necessary but often harsh measures required to preserve civilization. Wars to preserve freedom can require terrible, but just, measures. Enemies of freedom can be the worst sort of human beings, and their defeat may indeed require devastating blows.

Now in the middle of another such struggle a movie has arrived which celebrates the very virtues that allow free men to survive, and many in the chattering class have dismissed it as crude and "disconnected" from their emotions.

"The secret to happiness is freedom," wrote Thucydides. "And the secret to freedom is courage." Courage is on display in The Great Raid.

Celebrate courage and thus freedom. Take everyone you know to see The Great Raid.

If any of our readers have seen this film please let us know your opinion of it via our feedback forum.

LAT to Dems: Become Hawks

The LA Times strikes a hawkish chord:

Beyond stopping the cut-and-run strategy brewing in the House, Democratic leaders must define a meaningful victory as 1) a unified, stable Iraq with 2) a non-theocratic democracy that protects minority and women's rights and 3) a functioning economy. If the constitutional process crumbles and these goals prove impossible, the U.S. will need enough troops to stop a partition from becoming a bloodbath and jihadists and radical clerics from grabbing power. The key, then, remains security.

Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and John Kerry of Massachusetts have offered proposals such as deploying Iraq's militias and introducing NATO troops. But militias are neither loyal nor answerable to government authorities. And Germany would never agree to send NATO troops with general elections scheduled for this year.

While Democrats admonish Bush to come clean about the task ahead, they have not shown the political courage to do what is necessary: call for more American troops. Although 135,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq, at most only 60,000 American and coalition troops, along with a much smaller number of Iraqi soldiers, are available for combat. Democrats should urge the U.S. to increase combat forces by up to 20,000 troops for the period necessary to elect and secure a permanent government. This would approximate the force during successful interim elections in January. More troops can stop jihadists from infiltrating Iraq and prevent enemy fighters from retaking territory, as in Fallouja.

The administration argues that newly trained Iraqis should fill this role. But only a fraction of the 107 Iraqi battalions being trained can operate independent of American support. We cannot afford to wait. Rumsfeld announced last week that he will boost troop strength temporarily to about 160,000, mostly by juggling troop rotations. But those levels will fall again after Iraqi elections in December - too soon to secure the new government.

Opponents claim that a larger U.S. presence would fuel anti-Americanism. Yet higher troop levels late last year did not spark an anti-U.S. backlash. Also, most new troops would deploy along sparsely populated borders.

Bush has said he will send more troops if U.S. military authorities ask. Widespread press reports confirm that ground commanders privately say they need more. Yet no Democratic leader currently supports increasing troops. Like the president, Democrats fear that increasing troop levels could be politically costly, even though an August CBS poll found Americans divided on the issue.

Democrats have a tremendous opportunity - as FDR and JFK did - to appeal to service and sacrifice to help the nation achieve long-term security. Democrats must stop following the polls and start assuming leadership on national security. Sixty percent of Democrats think that the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism against the United States, according to the CBS poll. They may be right, but losing the war will definitely hurt our security.

Unless Democrats demonstrate the political courage and resolution to win a war, rather than just criticize it, they will remain a minority party no matter what the polls show.

There is much good advice here, but it's doubtful that the Democrats will follow it since to do so would be to hand a boon to George Bush. The president is at present reluctant to do what it would take to win more quickly in Iraq because, quite simply, what it would take is more troops, and that might entail some sort of draft, and that's politically undoable as long as the Democrats are yelping and sniping at his ankles.

If the Dems, however, suddenly exhibited the same ferocity toward the insurgents in Iraq that they have shown toward Mr. Bush's judicial and U.N. appointments, then the president would have a green light to increase the size of the military with political impunity and be able to prosecute the war with much more alacrity. The Democrats, of course, find the idea of a Bush success in Iraq insufferable, and it would be made even more so by the fact that they would receive zero credit for it.

The only way the Democrats would take the advice of the Times on this one is if there were a Democrat president in the White House, and that won't happen, if it happens at all, for another three years.

Walter Reed Protests

A blog called Conservative Propaganda has an interesting report on the Walter Reed protest and counter-protest complete with photos. The Code Pink anti-war protestors are apparently completely out-matched by their antagonists in terms of numbers, wit, and knowledge about what's going on in the world.

Among the most interesting things about the report are the anecdotes about the reactions of the soldier/patients. The Code Pink group claims to be supporting the troops, but the patients want nothing to do with them and have bluntly expressed this sentiment in the universal sign language of disdain. On the other hand, several of them stopped to thank the counter-protestors.

The guys who have paid a heavy price know who's really on their side and who's merely trying to use them as a prop to promote their agenda.

A Strategy, Not a Sound Bite

One of the criticisms of the administration's approach to the current war has been that it seems to lack a grand strategy beyond training Iraqis to take over the burden of fighting it. Andrew Krepinevich, a retired West Pointer, is contemptuous of the calls to withdraw and finds the administration's "stay the course" rhetoric something less than a plan. He presses for an alternative known as the oil spot strategy. In an article in Foreign Affairs that is being widely heralded in the blogosphere he writes:

Instead of a timetable for withdrawal, the United States needs a real strategy built around the principles of counterinsurgency warfare. To date, U.S. forces in Iraq have largely concentrated their efforts on hunting down and killing insurgents. The idea of such operations is to erode the enemy's strength by killing fighters more quickly than replacements can be recruited. Although it is too early to tell for sure whether this approach will ultimately bring success, its current record is not good: even when an attack manages to inflict serious insurgent casualties, there is little or no enduring improvement in security once U.S. forces withdraw from the area.

Instead, U.S. and Iraqi forces should adopt an "oil-spot strategy" in Iraq, which is essentially the opposite approach. Rather than focusing on killing insurgents, they should concentrate on providing security and opportunity to the Iraqi people, thereby denying insurgents the popular support they need. Since the U.S. and Iraqi armies cannot guarantee security to all of Iraq simultaneously, they should start by focusing on certain key areas and then, over time, broadening the effort -- hence the image of an expanding oil spot. Such a strategy would have a good chance of success. But it would require a protracted commitment of U.S. resources, a willingness to risk more casualties in the short term, and an enduring U.S. presence in Iraq, albeit at far lower force levels than are engaged at present. If U.S. policymakers and the American public are unwilling to make such a commitment, they should be prepared to scale down their goals in Iraq significantly.

It sounds like a good concept to this untrained observer, but it also seems that it's not much different than cleaning out a rat's nest and leaving trained Iraqi troops in the nest to make sure the rats don't come back. I'm sure I was mistaken, but I had thought that this is what we had been doing as competent Iraqi forces became available.

Anyway, there's much more to Krepinevich's argument at the link.

The Inquisition is in Session

Guillermo Gonzalez is an astronomer on the faculty at Iowa State University. He also has co-authored a book entitled Privileged Planet which points out the amazing fitness of our universe for the existence of higher life forms. The book is strongly teleological and for this Gonzalez is being hounded by a group of self-appointed inquisitors of the Church of Naturalism to give an account of his heresies.

The book, as far as I know, addresses only the cosmic argument for design and makes no disparaging mention of biological evolution. Yet, when the Darwinian Torquemadas are determined to commit a victim to the flames, anything remotely close to unorthodox opinions will suffice as a justification.

Even the DesMoines Register has waded blithely into the midst of the fray with an article by Rekha Basu who evidently occupies the Karl Popper chair for the philosophy of science at the Register and who suggests that ISU "issue its definition of what constitutes science, and make sure faculty uphold it."

Great idea. Perhaps Ms Basu has a definition in mind because philosophers of science sure don't. One can picture the science faculty at ISU rushing to clasp their hands metaphorically over Ms Basu's mouth to shut her up, knowing that any definition the university comes up with will either include almost everything or exclude somebody's pet discipline. Science, someone should whisper to Ms Basu, is whatever scientists do. There is no definition for science so clear-cut and universally accepted that the university could force their faculty to "uphold it".

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts composes an amusing and condign skewering of Ms Basu and Professor Gonzalez's other adversaries at ISU. His chief antagonist, it turns out, is an atheistic Bible scholar and professor of religion named Hector Avalos. One wonders where a Bible scholar gets the expertise to criticize an astronomer. That aside, you'll have to read Gene's essay to apprehend the dogmatic intolerance fueling Professor Avalos' crusade against Gonzalez and to appreciate the full measure of his inanity.

Dispel the Myths

Jonah Cohen is not a supporter of Intelligent Design, but he does think it ought to be taught in public schools. He argues that there is so much confusion about what ID is that it should be taught just to dispel the misunderstandings, if for no other reason. In an essay in the American Thinker he sets out four "myths" about ID and proceeds to explain why those myths are, in his opinion, wrong.

The myths, he claims, are these:

1. The theory of intelligent design is a modern version of Creationism.

2. The theory of intelligent design claims that the designer is the God described in the Bible.

3. Conservatives and Christians necessarily accept the intelligent design argument.

4. The theory of evolution and monotheism are logically at odds or, at least, inimical.

You can read Cohen's response to each of these at the link.

Parenthetically, I'd like to call special attention to one of his concluding paragraphs:

The dispute between intelligent design versus a randomly ordered cosmos is age-old and fascinating and still unresolved. That smart and honest writers are now busy promulgating sheer fictions about this debate suggests that we are indeed in need of education on this topic. And that is a sufficient reason, in my opinion, for it to be taught in our schools, perhaps not in biology classes, but at least in mandatory philosophy classes, something our school systems do not demand to our national shame.

As one who taught a full year philosophy course in a public high school for almost twenty five years, the last two phrases were pleasant to read. I don't know that philosophy should be mandatory, but it should certainly be offered as an elective to secondary students. The benefits of studying philosophy are substantial, and it is indeed a shame that more high school students are denied the opportunity to share in those benefits.

How to Play Offense

On Saturday Viewpoint urged the White House go on offense in making its case for its policy in Iraq. Today we direct you to a marvelous example of precisely what they should be doing. If the White House needs advice on how to make the case for seeing the Iraqi project through to its conclusion they could hardly do better than to read this essay by Christopher Hitchens in The Weekly Standard.

Well, maybe they could do better if they hired Hitchens as a speech writer.

His column is must reading for anyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq, whether pro or con. Indeed, anyone who opposes the war should be refused a hearing unless they first agree to read it.

Hitchens opens with this:

Let me begin with a simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad." I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?

After a page or two of journalistic virtuosity Hitchens concludes his article with this paragraph:

The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.

In between those two passages is perhaps one of the most compelling defenses of what America is trying to accomplish in Iraq that has been written in the past twelve months. Give it a read.

The Basic Principle of Political Philosophy

My friend Byron Borger passes along a link to an article that will be of interest to anyone who has done any reading in political philosophy. The essay is written by David Koyzis, and in it he considers four main approaches to politics in the contemporary west, pointing out the weaknesses of each.

He concludes with what he believes must be the essential elements of any political philosophy that seeks to maximize human welfare. His crucial sentences are the ones he closes with. He says this:

Finally, a solid political theory - one that adequately accounts for reality and bears fruit as it is practiced - must recognize that ultimate authority belongs not to the state or any mere human institution, but to God who has called the state to its task of doing justice in the midst of societal pluriformity. In the words of an ancient, political authority, "The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all" (Psalm 103:19) (Italics his).

Koyzis is certainly correct about this. Almost everyone would agree that the task of the state is to do justice, but why do we think that? And how do we know what justice is anyway? Where does our modern notion of justice come from if not from a transcendent lawgiver?

Let us suppose there is no such Being. If such were the case the word "ought" would be emptied of any moral meaning. There would be no content to the assertion that the state "ought" to be just. Why should it? Nor is there any basis for grounding the concept of justice in our notion of equality. If there is no God then Thrasymachus was right when Plato has him declaim in The Republic that justice is merely "the interest of the stronger."

Marx was incensed that the state catered to the interest of the bourgoisie, but as an atheist Marx couldn't rationally say that this was morally wrong (although he tried). He couldn't protest that it was unjust or unfair, he could only resent it because it offended his own subjective predilections. Much of the bloodshed and oppression of the twentieth century, sadly enough, arose ultimately out of Marx's personal pique.

Where do we get our notion of justice from, and from whence do we derive the idea that we are obligated to do it if not ultimately from God mediated through both special revelation and the natural law? Again, if there is no god then our ideas about justice are at most products of our evolutionary past. As such they can be seen as vestiges of a blind process that suited us for life in the stone age, but there is no reason why we should feel compelled to heed them today. They have no moral value or heft. We do not offend heaven if we disregard them. We might offend our fellow man if we discard the popular notions of justice, but so what? To maintain that the state in a godless world has an obligation to provide justice for its citizens is as nonsensical as maintaining that the wolf has an obligation to provide justice for the sheep.

The history of the political philosophy of the last two hundred years is littered with the corpses of attempts to build a just society on an atheistic premise. Such philosophies always have and always will revert, sooner or later, to a might makes right ethic where justice is whatever the ruling power says it is. And, inevitably, the ruling authority will decide that justice is whatever promotes its own self-interest, its own survival, its own hold on power. This was Machiavelli's view, it was Nietzsche's view, it was the view of the heirs of Marx, and it was the view of the Nazis. It will invariably be the view of any state that denies the existence and sovereignty of God.

It is one of the ironies of modernity that a logically rigorous embrace of atheism, which seems to so many to be so philosophically and morally seductive, leads individuals and states ineluctably to nihilism. Modern man can't live without God and won't live with Him. Therein lies the tragic source of most of his troubles.

Premature Celebrations

The Daily Kos had John Thune already autopsied and embalmed on Tuesday. It was a foregone conclusion that the man who staked his political career on saving Ellsworth AFB from being mothballed was a dead man walking. Unfortunately for Kos his judgment on Thune's demise was as dependable as his judgment on just about everything else:

Daschle would've likely saved Ellisworth (like he had done in the past), just like ND's two Dems did their part to protect their local economy (whether BRAC is truly justified or not). But Thune argued in 2004 that he would be best positioned to save Ellsworth as a Republican in a GOP-trifecta-led D.C.

Now, he's been made a fool by his own president, has proven his impotence to the SD voters, and has likely lost 6,000 mostly GOP-leaning jobs in western South Dakota. Not bad for a first-year Senator.

As it all turns out, Ellsworth was given a reprieve, Thune is walking tall in South Dakota, and Kos and the lefties who were gleefully salivating at the pending burial of the man who did Tom Daschle in are now grinding their teeth in frustration. They must feel like Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the road runner.

Read the comments at Kos' site. They're a hoot.

Time For the White House to Play Offense

Tony Blankley says what a lot of the president's supporters are thinking:

In a major USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll from three weeks ago, 32 percent of the public said we can't win the war in Iraq. Another 43 percent predict victory, while -- critically -- 21 percent say "the United States could win the war, but they don't think it will."

If one adds that "could win, but don't think we will win" 21 percent to the 43 percent who predict victory -- one has a very solid 64 percent supporting the war. But if that 21 percent become convinced that our government has given up trying to win, then they could form a 53 percent defeatist majority in the public. It is worth noting that despite the doubts expressed by the public in that Gallup Poll 53 percent of those surveyed still said it was not a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

But although President Bush suffers from a biased, defeatist mainstream media, he still holds his (and our nation's) fate largely in his own hands. The president and his advisors should puzzle long and hard over what is in the minds of that critical 21 percent of the public who think we can -- but won't -- win the war in Iraq. Let me hazard a guess. Many of the strongest supporters of the president's Iraq war aims are coming to suspect that the president has placed a limit on troop strength in Iraq for reasons extraneous to calculations of victory.

It is hard to argue that the war is going optimally, and the administration argument that more troops wouldn't help is, at the least, counterintuitive. The president says he is sending as many troops as the generals ask for -- which is true. But recently, retired generals, and others, are saying that they are afraid to ask for more. If that is true, it is rather unheroic of the generals not to give the president the unvarnished truth of what is needed. Moreover, it is the president's job not just to listen to the generals but to fire those generals who do not deliver credible plans for victory -- as Lincoln and FDR routinely did.

That aside, Sec. Rumsfeld argues that more troops would merely be a larger footprint, creating more targets for the enemy. But by that analysis any troop level above zero would only increase the targets. Surely there must be an optimum level of fighting troops -- irrespective of how many total troops it takes to support the actual fighters. I have been told that there aren't enough highways in Iraq to support higher useful levels of troops. But that is an argument for the Corp of Engineers to build more temporary roads. As the president rightly says, we must bring the battle to the enemy. After all, on D-Day at Normandy, a shortage of docking facilities led us to invent and bring with us our own manmade docks.

Surely we could use an extra Army division to secure the Syrian and Iranian border, across which the administration asserts enemy terrorists are regularly crossing. A recent hard-fought assault "in force" by our troops in the Sunni triangle that took several casualties was a mere thousand troops -- a mere battalion-level strength -- not even a brigade. If, as many presidential supporters suspect, the president is making do with current in-country troop levels because we don't have enough troops worldwide at our current force levels to properly fight the war in Iraq and also fulfill all our other responsibilities, the president should say so.

We are country of 300 million citizens with an annual GDP of $12 trillion and the lead in virtually all human technologies. Within a couple of years we can marshal whatever level of resources -- men and material -- that are needed to win on this front of the war. The president rightly says that Iraq is currently the central front on the war on terror. We don't need to win this month or this year. We can hold on at current levels until more resources are brought on line.

But what we need -- and what the president's potential and actual war supporters need -- is not only his call for victory (which is gratifying), but a persuasive explanation for why we are doing everything necessary for victory. That will win over the doubting (and growing) 21 percent. Defeat being unacceptable, victory must be seen as inevitable.

Why the president will not lay out in convincing terms his rationale for the way in which the insurgency in Iraq is being fought, why he will not explain, for example, why terrorists are allowed safe havens in Syria and Iran, if, indeed, they are, and why he won't address the nation more frequently without merely repeating a bunch of talking points, is hard to understand. If support for the war continues to erode, the reason for it is not that people are tired of the sacrifice our young soldiers and Marines are making in a far off land, it will be because they no longer see the point of it. As long as the defeatism of the MSM is left uncountered by the White House, doubts and misgivings are going to fester, even among the president's supporters.

As long as the sacrifice our military people are making is left unexplained, a sizable portion of the population of this nation will forget, if they ever knew, why we're fighting. We need constant reminding of what's at stake. We need to be educated about the goals and progress of the war, and that's not happening because the task is being left to an inept and tendentious media. In a sense, the administration is letting our military down by allowing support for their effort to be worn away by the steady, unanswered drip of anti-war negativism and defeatism that we read every morning in the papers and hear every night on the evening news.

We need more relentlessness on offense from the White House and a lot less rope-a-dope.

Silver Lining

The silver lining of Pat Robertson's unfortunate call to assassinate Hugo Chavez is that it gives Christians opportunity to write wonderful pieces like this one by Marvin Olasky highlighting the beauty of Christian belief:

With liberal reporters since 9/11 frequently equating conservative Christians with Quran-thumping Muslims, WORLD has tried to delineate the real differences (see "Osama bin Ashcroft," April 27, 2002). For example, Islam initially expanded through the slaughter of opponents, but Christianity grew through the martyrdom of believers. Muslim extremists issued fatwas against their enemies, but the apostle Paul taught Christians in Rome, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."

Pat Robertson last week, on his long-running TV show The 700 Club, seemed more Muslim than Christian when he suggested that U.S. operatives assassinate Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez: "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability....I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but...I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." Two days later he apologized, stating, "Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration ...."

It's good that Mr. Robertson recognized his fault, but the original ad lib already had provided ammunition for enemies of Christ such as Venezuelan VP Jose Vicente Rangel, who sarcastically said that assassination advocacy was "very Christian" and went on to argue that "religious fundamentalism is one of the great problems facing humanity." National and international journalists had also played up the story, often treating Mr. Robertson as if he were the Protestant pope.

Mr. Robertson's comments also had made the day of some Islamic groups. Under the press release heading "PAT ROBERTSON'S FATWA," the Muslim American Society went on offense, screaming that "someone should remind the darling of the Christian Right about the Ten Commandments. About the one that says 'thou shall not kill.' If that had been a Muslim cleric talking about killing a head of state, you would have never heard the end of it."

(Muslim clerics, of course, have done more than talk about killing lots of people, with fatwa followers murdering intellectuals such as Faraj Foda, Hussein Muruwwa, Mahmoud Taha, and Al-Sadeq Al-Nayhoum-and most Americans have never heard their names.)

None of these prudential concerns would matter much if Pat Robertson had been biblically correct in calling for assassination-but it's hard to see either general or specific biblical warrant for his original fatwa. In general, as Paul wrote to Timothy, Christians are to pray "for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions." Hugo Chavez is an evil tyrant but so were many Roman emperors. Paul told Romans to "bless those who persecute you....Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all." Last time I looked, "assassin" was not on the general list of honorable callings. Wartime is different, but last time I looked we weren't at war with Venezuela.

Applying Old Testament history to current politics is sometimes exegetically tricky, but the assassinations of those who fought Israel in Judges 3 and 4-Jael hammering a tent peg into Sisera's brain, Ehud the left-handed man thrusting his sword into the fat belly of the king of Moab-also do not provide warrant for taking out Hugo Chavez. Nor do any of Christ's words or deeds suggest a WWJA-Who Would Jesus Assassinate?-list.

The people most affected by last week's tempest, of course, are Venezuelans, one of whom wrote on WORLD's blog site worldmagblog.com of Mr. Chavez's demagoguery and election-rigging but noted that "after decades of corruption and ignoring the needs of the poor, our country may deserve a leader like Chavez. The fact is that Venezuela needs revival; corruption...is a way of life there. All potential leaders are corrupt, and we could end up with someone worse than Chavez. Pray for my people!" Yes, and pray also for missionaries who now face greater danger.

God is the God of history. He raises up leaders and strikes them down. The Christian goal is to follow biblical principles, including "just war" ones, and not to invent our own. If we are careless, we bring dishonor to God's name by making many believe there is no difference between the preeminent religion of peace and the many religions of violence.

Such columns are a lovely witness to a post-Christian society whose understanding of what Christians believe is often based upon caricature and misinformation. It almost makes one thankful that Robertson said what he said.

Weakened Bush Bad For Hillary?

Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles argues that Bush's sagging poll numbers actually hurt Hillary. Here's why:

The same press drumbeat of defeatism about Iraq that has helped bring down Bush's numbers has also emboldened the party's mainstream left base (i.e., not just MoveOn or the DailyKos crowd). They hardly care whether Hillary is a member of the DLC. But they do not want to support someone who voted for the war, as Hillary did. Worse, they want a Democrat who is willing to break from the respectable Beltway Tough-It-Out Consensus now, publicly, in a way Hillary has been unable to do. They're so desperate for a champion they're even temporarily captivated by Sen. Hagel's mere mention of "Vietnam." Hagel/Dean for America! Or maybe Hagel/Gingrich.

The anti-war left may well tear the Democratic party apart, just as it did in 1968, if it can't get its way on the next presidential nominee. This would not necessarily be good for conservatives, though it should be. The reason it might not is that if the left succeeds in nominating a Gene McCarthy or George McGovern, it will tend to draw the Republicans leftward to compete for independent moderates. A Rudy Guiliani might, under such circumstances, look very attractive to the GOP, but his social liberalism would be anathema to conservatives.

If the left does not get its way, and causes a fracture in the party, an impotent Democratic opposition could induce complacency in the Republicans and lead them to nominate someone who lacks the principles to be a wise and good leader. This, some would say, is precisely what happened when Richard Nixon won the nomination and presidency in 1968.

Of course, the other possibility is that the left will lead the Democratic party, one way or the other, over the cliff, and the Republicans will by default establish a political hegemony that'll last for a generation. We'll see.

Savagery in Seattle

Michelle Malkin has a lot of information and links on the Seattle soldier beatings here. With due respect to Sean Hannity, it's pretty silly to jump to the conclusion, as he does, that this brutality was perpetrated by anti-war protestors taking out their anger on soldiers just home from Iraq. The whole thing sounds much more like an example of just plain thuggery carried out by imbecilic savages who couldn't even spell Iraq.

Parenthetically, reading the material at Michelle's blog one gets the impression that there is no police force in the United States more incompetent and more gutless than that which patrols the streets of Seattle. It'll be a long time before this family goes back there.

Optimistic About Iraq's Constitution

The New York Times' David Brooks finds cause for optimism in the new Iraqi constitution:

President Bush doesn't lack for critics when it comes to his Iraq policies, but the smartest and most devastating of these is Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia.

Yesterday, after reading gloomy press accounts about the proposed Iraqi constitution, I thought it might be interesting to hear what Galbraith himself had to say. I finally tracked him down in Baghdad (at God knows what hour there) and found that far from lambasting Bush, Galbraith was more complimentary about what the administration has just achieved than anybody else I spoke to all day.

"The Bush administration finally did something right in brokering this constitution," Galbraith exclaimed, then added: "This is the only possible deal that can bring stability. ... I do believe it might save the country."

Read the rest of Brooks' article here.

Who's Shaping Conservatism?

Gideon Strauss wonders who's keeping the fires burning in contemporary conservativism. Who, he asks, is producing the ideas that infuse energy and vigor into conservative political philosophy.

Strauss suggests a few answers. Here are three more: The conservative blogosphere, the neo-con Weekly Standard and, surprisingly, perhaps, the Discovery Institute.

Pat Stephanopolous

Well, well. Look who else has endorsed assassination as a political tool:

Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson prompted a firestorm of media outrage on Tuesday after he suggested that the Bush administration should assassinate a foreign leader who posed a threat to the U.S. - in this case, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But when senior Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos publicly argued for the same kind of assassination policy in 1997, the press voiced no objection at all.

Fresh from his influential White House post, Stephanopoulos devoted an entire column in Newsweek to the topic of whether the U.S. should take out Saddam Hussein. His headline? "Why We Should Kill Saddam."

"Assassination may be Clinton's best option," the future "This Week" host urged. "If we can kill Saddam, we should." Though Iraq war critics now argue that by 1997, the Iraqi dictator was "in a box" and posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., Stephanopoulos contended that Saddam deserved swift and lethal justice.

"We've exhausted other efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate in its effect than massive bombing raids that will inevitably kill innocent civilians," the diminutive former aide contended.

Stephanopoulos even offered a way to get around the presidential ban on foreign assassinations: "If Clinton decides we can and should assassinate Saddam, he could call in national-security adviser Sandy Berger and sign a secret National Security Decision Directive authorizing it."

The Stephanopoulos plan: "First, we could offer to provide money and materiel to Iraqi exiles willing to lead an effort to overthrow Saddam. . . . The second option is a targeted airstrike against the homes or bunkers where Saddam is most likely to be hiding."

The one-time top Clinton aide said that, far from violating international principles, assassinating Saddam would be the moral thing to do, arguing, "What's unlawful - and unpopular with the allies - is not necessarily immoral."

Stephanopoulos also noted that killing Saddam could pay big political dividends at home, saying the mission would make Clinton "a huge winner if it succeeded."

Watch for the media feeding frenzy over Pat Robertson's remarks to suddenly evaporate once it comes to be widely known that Stephanopolis had advocated pretty much the same thing as Robertson has. The media cares more about using Robertson's words as a cudgel with which to pound a prominent conservative than they do about the actual suggestion itself. If it becomes widely bruited that a high status liberal held similar views to those of Robertson, they'll reluctantly lay aside that weapon rather than have to club Stephanopolous with it as well.

POST SCRIPT: As it happens, I agree with Stephanopolis and disagree with Robertson, but the differences in their positions require the sort of analysis that does not lend itself to sound-bite journalism. It also would sound very much like special pleading were the liberal media to try to justify Stephanopolous' advice after roundly condemning Robertson. It's more likely that they'll just drop it rather than put themselves in that position.

More From Cindy Sheehan

Of all the absurd things Cindy Sheehan has said in the last couple of months this is perhaps the most ridiculous:

"You know Iraq was no threat to the United States of America until we invaded. I mean they're not even a threat to the United States of America. Iraq was not involved in 9-11, Iraq was not a terrorist state. But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and they [American troops] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country, devastating the country and killing innocent people in that country. The terrorism is growing and people who never thought of being car bombers or suicide bombers are now doing it because they want the United States of America out of their country."

As Ms Sheehan herself suggests, the jihadis are not trying to get Americans out of their country. Many, if not most of them, are not Iraqis. They're trying to get Americans out of Iraq because our presence there is a knife pointed at the heart of Islamo-fascist aspirations of a world-wide caliphate and the destruction of Israel.

Nor have Americans either "decimated" the country or "devastated" it. The claim of decimation is so astonishingly ludicrous that one can only conclude that Ms Sheehan is either ignorant of the word's meaning or that she is a fantasist. Deaths of civilians due to American action in Iraq comes nowhere close to .1% of the population let alone the 10% that Ms Sheehan claims.

The claim of devastation can only be made by someone completely oblivious to what is really happening in Iraq. That country today has more and better infrastructure than before the invasion. They have more schools, better hospitals, more newspapers, more freedom, more rights than they ever dreamed of under Saddam. The Iraqi people would be enjoying even greater benefits of American beneficence were it not for Ms Sheehan's freedom fighters who keep sabotaging electrical grids and oil pipelines.

Nor are the insurgents fighting for freedom as she implies; rather precisely the opposite. They're fighting to return Iraqis to a Baathist tyranny or a Talibanic slavery such as prevailed in Afghanistan before George Bush liberated that country from the despots who crushed those poor people under their perverse vision of Islamic law. To suggest that the terrorists are fighting for the freedom of Iraqis, even as they repeatedly blow Iraqi women and children to smithereens, is absolute nonsense and naivete.

The kind thing would be for someone to take this poor woman by the elbow and gently lead her off the public stage. To let her go on making an utter fool of herself is shameful. To use her as she is no doubt being used by the anti-war left is cruel. To publicize her pronouncements in order to score political points against Bush, as the media is doing, is disgusting.

To claim, moreover, that she should be above criticism because of the loss of her son, as Paul Begala asserts, is ludicrous. It's like pleading that a boxer should allow his opponent to pummel him because the opponent has suffered personal tragedy. The compassionate thing would be to ignore her, but since neither she nor the liberal media will allow us to do that then she must be responded to and her invective and fatuities need to be clearly identified as being what they are.

American Heroes

Readers interested in the details of combat in Iraq will not want to miss the latest posting from Michael Yon, a writer who travels with Deuce Four in Mosul. Yon has the gripping account of the combat heroics of LTC Erik Kurilla and CSM Robert Prosser. Amazing stuff.