Who Lied?

The conventional wisdom has it that many lies have been told concerning the justifications for the war in Iraq. The wisdom is partly true. There's been much prevaricating on this question, but the dishonesty has been an exclusive property of the administration's critics.

Norman Podhoretz has an excellent essay in Commentary which lays the whole story on the table in all of its ugliness. One cannot read this column without feeling a combination of disgust and astonishment at the way the truth has been distorted and mangled in the attempt to discredit George Bush. The column is a bit too long to post here in its entirety, but it opens with these words:

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

Podhoretz's account is a "must-read" essay destined to be one of those pieces which gets quoted over and over as those who care about truth seek to undo the immense damage done by those for whom truth is only important when it happens to be on their side.

The Party of Ideas

The Democrats are the party of "no" and maintaining the status quo. The Republicans are the party of ideas and reform. If you doubt the latter part of this claim you might wish to read this article in the Weekly Standard.

<i>Contra</i> McCain

On the McCain amendment that would ban all use of torture by American forces we wrote this on the 26th of last month:

The McCain amendment to the spending bill says this: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." The amendment passed the senate 90 to 9 a couple of days ago, but it shouldn't have.

President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation and we hope he does, not because we don't think people suspected of terrorism should be given some protections from abusive treatment, but because this bill is so vaguely worded that it has the potential to severely cripple us in the fight against those who wish to destroy us.

For example, what exactly constitutes "degrading treatment"? Is it imprisonment? Solitary confinement? Ridicule? Being yelled at? Unless the word "degrading" is clearly defined almost anything done to a detainee could be interpreted, and will be interpreted by ACLU lawyers, as degrading, and our courts and military will be bogged down for years trying to get clarification on what is permitted and what isn't.

The same criticism could be levelled at the use of words like "cruel" or "inhumane." Where is the line between cruel and not-cruel? Is giving detainees institutional food cruel? What about the use of fake menstrual blood, or the use of deception in general? Does cruelty depend upon motive or is it merely a function of the act itself? If an interrogator uses methods which might be deemed cruel because he has reason to believe that the detainee has information about a terrorist attempt to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel in New York, would that be prohibited? If so, why? These and other questions need to be answered before the president should affix his signature to such a bill.

The McCain amendment is one of those pieces of legislation that politicians vote for in order to look good by appearing to be doing good. They're no doubt hoping that Bush will save them from their fecklessness and veto this charade.

Rick Lowery at NRO has similar thoughts:

On the McCain amendment, the chief problem with it I think is a lack of clarity (this entire debate has suffered from a lack of clarity, since Bush critics like to pretend that if you don't believe members of al Qaeda deserve Geneva protection, you want to let Charles Graner run wild). If McCain and Co. mean to outlaw all stress techniques--and it seems they do--they should come right out explicitly and say it. Then, after the next attack, if there are people in our custody overseas who should have been squeezed, but weren't, we will all know where to look when the finger-pointing starts.

If they don't want to outlaw all stress techniques (the wiser position in my view), then please write into the amendment which techniques are permissible and which are un-American. Then everyone will have very bright lines to follow and we will have lots of congressional buy-in.

A blanket ban on torture is a feel-good measure which allows us to bask in the glow of moral euphoria, but which is in fact morally inane. The McCain amendment should not be passed until it is made perfectly clear exactly what is meant by the word "torture." If this is not done American courts will, as we noted above, be tied in knots for decades by lawyers for detainees who will argue that mere incarceration meets the standard of torture in this amendment.

The lack of clarity doesn't bother David Batstone at Sojourners, however. Batstone says unequivocally that "There are certain acts that a follower of Jesus simply cannot accept. Here is one: A Christian cannot justify the torture of a human being." Well, yes and no. It all depends on what is meant by torture and the reasons why it is employed, but Batstone is not interested in ethical shillyshallying. He insists that "Christians must oppose torture under any circumstances." If one asks why, Batstone replies that:

[W]e can all affirm scripture when it says, "Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:17, 21). When we confront evil with its own means, those means mark our own character.

In that regard, the practice of torture so fully embraces evil it dehumanizes both the torturer and its victim. No just cause can be won if it relies on torture to succeed. Democracy and freedom cannot result from a war fueled by torture, which is why so many Americans were shocked and angered by the disturbing incidents that took place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Not only does Mr. Batstone commit the mistake of assuming that any instance of torture is evil, which is the very point in dispute, but he also cites the inexcusable behavior at Abu Ghraib as implicitly representative of all instances of torture or harsh treatment.

Yet just because some cases of causing a prisoner humiliation or pain are completely unjustifiable it doesn't follow that all cases are. The critical factor is the reasons for subjecting the prisoner to this treatment. If it is done simply out of anger, frustration, or as a sick form of entertainment then the act is surely evil. If, however, it is done for the purpose of saving lives and there is good reason to think that the detainee has information that will in fact save lives, then treatment which may be regarded by some as humiliating, degrading, or mentally or physically painful may be morally justified. Indeed, to believe that a prisoner has such information and to fail to extract it from him because of qualms about causing him discomfort is itself morally irresponsible.

Imagine, for example, that a young woman, your daughter, has been seized by jihadis in Iraq. A video is made by her kidnappers showing her, with a knife at her throat, pleading for her life. In tears and terrified nearly to death she struggles to relate how she has already suffered awful sexual abuse at the hands of her captors. Her abductors announce that she will be decapitated in 24 hours.

An insurgent has been arrested, however, whom the authorities have good reason to believe knows the whereabouts of your daughter, but he refuses to divulge the information. Forms of pressure that may fall afoul of the lofty ideals of the Geneva Accords are applied to persuade him to talk. They work and your daughter is rescued. Would you then take time out from your joy to condemn the interrogators who applied the pressure? Would Mr. Batstone? Would the knowledge of how she was rescued prevent you from thanking God for her deliverance? Would Mr. Batstone declare that the interrogators were morally evil to do what they did? Perhaps I simply have a blind spot on this, but I contend that the interrogators would have been morally delinquent if they could have done it and refused.

Mr. Batstone argues that we should "consider this: Who would Jesus torture? I cannot imagine Jesus finding a single 'exemption' that would justify such an abuse of any individual made in God's image."

Setting aside the theological conflict this claim finds itself in with much of the New Testament which tells us that one day Christ will judge the world and that a lot of 'unexempted' people made in God's image are going to find themselves in significant torment of some kind, I'm not much impressed by the "What would Jesus do" argument. In the first place, Jesus wouldn't have needed to apply pressure to the man to get him to yield. He presumably has other resources at His disposal.

Secondly, the WWJD argument is of very little utility in many areas of our moral life. Just because we can't imagine Jesus doing something doesn't mean it's wrong for us to do it. It's difficult to imagine Jesus making passionate love, or getting involved in politics, or doing the job of a police officer who's working undercover and lying about who he is, or killing the enemy in combat. Indeed, what would Jesus do if he must either steal food or let his child starve, or if He must lie to the Gestapo to save the lives of Jews He is smuggling out of Nazi Europe? Just as it may be right in such life or death circumstances to lie or steal, so too it may be right in life or death circumstances to employ humiliation, deception, or pain.

People who argue as Mr. Batstone and Senator McCain do (I'm loath to be critical of the senator on this score given the horrible treatment he endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese) almost always confine themselves to sweeping generalities and almost never examine how the implementation of their ideas would actually work itself out in practice. Yet it's irresponsible to adopt the ideas without considering their likely consequences.

Charles Krauthammer also has some good things to say on this topic here.

Here We Go Again

Whatever the judge decides in the Dover trial it's clear that Intelligent Design won't be going away any time soon. Here's a couple of excerpts from an article on the mischief ID subversives are up to in Kansas:

TOPEKA, Kan., Nov. 8 -- The Kansas Board of Education voted Tuesday that students will be expected to study doubts about modern Darwinian theory, a move that defied the nation's scientific establishment even as it gave voice to religious conservatives and others who question the theory of evolution.

By a 6 to 4 vote that supporters cheered as a victory for free speech and opponents denounced as shabby politics and worse science, the board said high school students should be told that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial. Among other points, the standards allege a "lack of adequate natural explanations for the genetic code."

One of the more peculiar comments in the WaPo's article was this from Francisco Ayala, an evolutionary biologist:

Intelligent design "does not provide any natural explanation that can be tested," said Ayala ....He said the Kansas standards "are an insult to science, an insult to education and an insult to the American Constitution."

Well, of course ID doesn't provide a natural explanation if "natural" is defined as excluding intelligence as a causal factor. Ayala's claim that ID can't be tested is also odd since critics of ID have worked arduously to explain how complex structures like bio-machines could have emerged solely by non-purposive mechanisms. Every time they come up with such an explanation they're attempting to falsify one of the basic claims of ID, the claim that there are no plausible mechanistic pathways for such an evolution.

Moreover, Ayala's hyperventilations about the insults suffered by science, education, and the Constitution are a bit melodramatic. ID is no more an insult to science than is string theory, but it is indeed an offense against the materialistic metaphysics which is presupposed by many scientists. Nor is it an insult to education to expect students to know what some of the shortcomings of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory are, and it is certainly not an insult to the document which enshrines free speech in this country to extend that cherished principle to challenges to accepted dogmas that are otherwise insulated from criticism by our public schools.

Here's a question: If, as the defenders of the status quo insist, the evidence for their position is overwhelming, and if ID is such a weak competitor, then what on earth are the defenders of Darwinism afraid of? We would think that they would relish the thought of having ID scrutinized in the classroom so that it can be thoroughly and definitively trounced by the massive might of Darwinian orthodoxy. Yet the establishment types act as if letting a little skepticism in the door would signal the collapse of their beloved theory, so like church censors they protect the fragile flower as though it were a sacred belief that no one dare question. It's as if they fear that in the competition for survival their view would be found to be less fit in the new environment than the more vigorous and attractive interloper. There's a certain justice in that.

Why It Doesn't Happen Here

Joel Kotkin puts his finger on why immigrants don't riot in the U.S. and why there is so much disaffection among immigrants in Europe. Kotkin's answer in a nutshell is that socialism and other Left-wing policies, especially heavy government regulation of business, have stifled European economies to the point where there simply aren't any jobs available for those who want work no matter how menial.

Here are some excerpts from Kotkin's essay:

Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse.

So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.

To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state--government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S.--also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, largely to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. In this system, the incentives are to take it easy, live well and then retire. The bloat of privileged aging blocks out opportunity for the young.

Luckily, better-educated young Frenchmen and other Continental Europeans can opt out of the system by emigrating to more open economies in Ireland, the U.K. and, particularly, the U.S. This is clearly true in technological fields, where Europe's best brains leave in droves. Some 400,000 European Union science graduates currently reside in the U.S. Barely one in seven, according to a recent poll, intends to return.

Driven by the ambitious young, European immigration to the U.S. jumped by 16% during the '90s. Visa applications dropped after 9/11, but then increased last year by 10%. The total number of Europe-born immigrants increased by roughly 700,000 during the last three years, with a heavy inflow from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and Romania--as well as France. These new immigrants have been particularly drawn to the metropolitan centers of California, Florida and New York.

Particularly telling, immigrant business ownership [in the U.S.] has been surging far faster than among native-born Americans. Ironically, some of the highest rates for ethnic entrepreneurship in the U.S. belong to Muslim immigrants, along with Russians, Indians, Israelis and Koreans.

Perhaps nothing confirms immigrant upward mobility more than the fact that the majority have joined the white middle class in the suburbs--a geography properly associated here mostly with upward mobility.

It is almost inconceivable to see such flowerings of ethnic entrepreneurship in Continental Europe. Economic and regulatory policy plays a central role in stifling enterprise. Heavy-handed central planning tends to make property markets expensive and difficult to penetrate. Add to this an overall regulatory regime that makes it hard for small business to start or expand, and you have a recipe for economic stagnation and social turmoil.

What would help France most now would be to stimulate economic growth and lessen onerous regulation. Most critically, this would also open up entrepreneurial and employment opportunity for those now suffering more of a nightmare of closed options than anything resembling a European dream.

We wonder if anyone is listening over at The Nation and other Lefty precincts where the sorts of nostrums that have led Europe to become an economic dead man walking are incessantly promoted in the name of social justice. The young Muslims who are setting France ablaze are evidently not much impressed with socialist versions of economic justice.

We should point out, too, that as compelling as Kotkin's economic analysis is, there's no doubt another reason we don't see in the U.S. the sort of mass vandalism against property that France is suffering. That reason is that most Americans own a firearm, and any crowd of hooligans strutting down a street threatening to burn residents' automobiles is likely to be abruptly brought to account in a most unhappy fashion by the citizens whose cars are about to be torched. The prospect of a chest full of #6 lead shot is a powerful inducement to find less obnoxious ways to air one's grievances.

Of course, taking away this ability to defend one's property is another one of those nutty Left-wing policies whose utter foolishness is being made evident by events in France.

Behe's Testimony

Michael Behe talks about his testimony in the Dover ID trial here. His take on things is considerably at variance with the impression created by some in our local print media:

The Dover trial has wrapped up for now with Judge Jones announcing that he expects to rule before the end of the year.

As far as the "ordeal" goes, despite what the LA Times article makes it seem, it was actually all rather exhilirating. I rather enjoyed myself on the witness stand, because I got to explain in very great detail the argument for intelligent design, and the other side had to sit there and listen.

The cross examination was fun too, and showed that the other side really does have only rhetoric and bluster. At one point the lawyer for the other side who was cross examining me ostentatiously piled a bunch of papers on the witness stand that putatively had to do with the evolution of the immune system. But it was obvious from a cursory examination that they were more examples of hand waving speculations, which I had earlier discussed in my direct testimony. So I was able to smile and say that they had nothing more to say than the other papers.

I then thought to myself, that here the NCSE, ACLU, and everyone in the world who is against ID had their shot to show where we were wrong, and just trotted out more speculation. It actually made me feel real good about things.

From what I read...about Scott Minnich's testimony, he seemed to have the same experience. I haven't the foggiest idea how the Judge will rule, but I think we got to show a lot of people that ID is a very serious idea.

Perhaps some day people will look back at all this and wonder how anyone could have seriously thought that biological structures were not designed. If so, it will be in large measure due to the efforts of people like Michael Behe.

Death Rate in Iraq

Andrew Sullivan notes that the KIA rate per month (53) in Iraq is the lowest of any major war we've ever fought. See the data for other wars here.

This is good news, of course, but it doesn't lessen the grief of the families who have lost a loved one fighting against terrorism and oppression in this war. Even so, it puts the media's fixation on the running tally of war dead in some perspective.

The Fate of the ROK

The World Tribune.com relays the bleak assessment of American military officers concerning the future of the Republic of South Korea:

[I]n the next one to five years the Combined Forces Command, responsible for U.S.-ROK operations and training, will be dissolved while the United Nations command, set up in 1950 at the outset of the Korean War, will move to Hawaii.

The implications are dire for South Korea's ability to cope with a crumbling, heavily-armed communist North Korea with powerful anti-U.S. allies in the neighborhood [according to a memo released by the officers].

The forecasts in the communication lead a list of major shifts that...officers view as the logical result of pressure on U.S. forces to leave this now prosperous nation, as well as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's program for downsizing and realigning U.S. forces in Korea.

The good news is that "the U.S. will maintain the so-called 'nuclear umbrella' and will meet its treaty obligations with a promised commitment of air and sea power if the ROK is attacked" - an arrangement that seems strikingly similar, however, to that made in the first half of 1950 when about 500 U.S. advisers remained in Korea to bear the brunt of the North Korean invasion that June.

However, "[t]he question will have to be asked," said the memo, "can the ROK deal with a collapsing NK regime unilaterally without international support." The officer responded in the next sentence: "It is highly unlikely that it can but it is not doing anything to prepare for it now."

The memo concluded with a downbeat history lesson in regional geopolitics.

"Korea will again be the shrimp among whales as the balance of power will be China/Russia on one side and U.S./Japan on the other. Will Korea be able to be the 'balancer' as envisioned by President Roh?"

"I think not," [the memo stated]. "It will have to cast its lot with one side or the other. Unfortunately economics and geography (as well as the Japanese colonial legacy) may rule and...Korea will be pushed into the China camp. The geo-political strategic implications for this...are obvious."

If North Korea is allowed to continue to develop its nuclear arsenal South Korea will be faced with three unpleasant options: 1) develop its own nukes, 2) rely on America for protection, or 3) capitulate. 1) is unlikely and 2) looks increasingly doubtful. If South Korea does yield to the North's bullies, Japan will have a much more difficult time resisting Sino-Korean pressure and intimidation. Much depends on South Korea's resolve, and America's. The key is getting nukes out of the North's hands. The world simply cannot allow them to continue to possess these weapaons.

Sudden Death

Bill Roggio relates how the coalition forces are handling IEDs in Ramadi:

The Coalition is constantly working to use technology to disrupt and neutralize the insurgency's ability to detonate their bombs remotely, the enemy adapts their tactics as well. This is the nature of war. But there is one area where the insurgency's innovations hit the wall: the physical deployment of IEDs. Depending on the size, nature and the deployment of the explosive, it can take quite a bit of time to "plant" a roadside bomb.

Marines in Ramadi are taking advantage of this limitation and are deploying sniper teams to observe and engage insurgents while they deploy their deadly cargo. Over the period of one day, sniper teams killed eight insurgents planting IEDs and wounded the ninth in four separate engagements. Multinational Forces West provides the blow by blow:

"In the first incident, a sniper team observed an insurgent digging a hole along a street that historically contained a high number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The sniper team engaged the insurgent with one round and was able to confirm one enemy killed in action.

"Shortly afterwards, a taxi pulled up and stopped between the body of the insurgent and the sniper team. Three insurgents exited the vehicle and began firing sporadically in all directions with AK-47s. The sniper team engaged all the three individuals and was able to confirm three additional enemy killed in action. At this point, a fourth insurgent got out of the taxi and began firing at the sniper team. The insurgent was engaged as well, but was able to escape in the taxi after being injured.

"In the second incident, a sniper team observed as a vehicle pulled up to a historical IED hole and two insurgents got out to inspect the hole. When the insurgents began pulling out ordnance from the trunk of their vehicle to place in the hole, the sniper team determined hostile intent and engaged both insurgents. The snipers were able to confirm two enemies killed in action.

"In the two other incidents, sniper teams observed two masked men observing their positions at two separate times during the day. Both insurgents were engaged and confirmed killed."

The day's events in Ramadi highlight the fact that while technological solutions are force multipliers, they cannot replace the need for boots on the ground and well-placed trigger-pullers. The solution to the IED threat is, in the end, not better armor or more sophisticated signals disruption, but a permanent presence of security forces and well policed neighborhoods. The dramatic decrease in IED attacks along "Route Irish", the road running from Baghdad International Airport to the city proper, is a prime example of this.

As the Euphrates rat-lines grow more and more difficult for insurgents to transit from Syria to Baghdad, and as more Iraqi police and military come on-line, the frequency of car bombings and IED blasts will steadily diminish. The question at this point may well be not whether the war is being won, because it certainly appears to be, but whether it will stay won after the Americans withdraw.

Timetables, Apologies, and Scalps

This Jonah Goldberg column is worth posting in its entirety:

Just how big a threat was Saddam Hussein? Let's reprise what our leaders had to say on the subject. First, here's the president:

"If he refuses or continues to evade his obligations through more tactics of delay and deception, he and he alone will be to blame for the consequences. ... Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction...? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who's really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too."

Here is the vice president:

"If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people. So this is a way to save lives and to save the stability and peace of a region of the world that is important to the peace and security of the entire world."

Here's the hitch: That was Clinton and Gore in 1998, not Bush and Dick Cheney in 2002.

President Clinton offered his assessment in February 1998. Gore made his observations the following December, defending the military strikes Clinton had ordered against Iraq. These were not off-the-cuff remarks but vetted statements by the two highest officials of the United States.

Clinton and Gore were not alone in their conviction that Saddam had WMDs. France thought so, too, as did Israel, China, Russia, Britain, the United Nations, the CIA and the entire national security team of the Democratic administration. The Germans believed Saddam would have a nuclear weapon within 36 months.

Robert Einhorn, Clinton's deputy assistant secretary of state, told the Senate Governmental Affairs committee in March 2002 that Saddam could have nukes and the missiles capable of striking Europe "within four to five years" and would be able to deliver nukes in America via "non-conventional means." "If Iraq managed to get its hands on sufficient quantities of already produced fissile material," he said, "these threats could arrive much earlier."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller - the ranking Democratic on the Senate intelligence committee and now a full member of the "Bush lied" chorus - echoed Einhorn's assessment, adding, "I do believe that Iraq is an immediate threat" and "we can no longer afford to wait for a smoking gun."

Sens. Evan Bayh, Joseph Biden, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards all voted for the war.

Most of these Democrats had access to the same intelligence as the president. But now, in one of the most repugnant and craven partisan ploys in modern American history, Democrats have decided that they cannot accept their own responsibility in what they clearly consider to be a mistake. They cannot even criticize the CIA for yet another horribly botched job or stick to the ample areas where constructive criticism is warranted. Instead, the same CIA that liberals derided for years is now heroic, and Senate Minority Leader Reid has decided - now that the Fitzgerald investigation has fizzled - to dedicate his party to slandering the president.

Meanwhile, the Democrats cannot even admit they made a mistake supporting the war - except in that they believed Bush's "lies." But how could Bush have lied? How was he to know the intelligence was wrong? Without knowing that, he could not have lied. But the Democrats will not allow for the possibility that the very same intelligence that prompted Clinton to bomb Iraq also informed Bush's decision to topple Saddam. And they will not even concede that, after 9/11, the argument over WMDs wasn't the best - never mind the sole - argument for toppling Saddam but the easiest one.

"Never again" was the new rule after 9/11, and - after ousting the Taliban - Saddam was the next obvious target. He applauded the attack, funded suicide bombers, defied the international community and, we now know, pretended he had WMDs. Remember: "Regime change" became the official policy of the U.S. in 1998, not 2002. Post-9/11, where would you start?

But the Democrats don't care. They don't care about all the previous investigations or that the planet is watching this spectacle. Or that their shabby accusations feed the very worst theories about America's role in the world. Heck, Howard Dean is recycling the charges in fundraising letters. They don't care that Iraq is poised to become either one of America's greatest achievements or its worst debacles. They want timetables, apologies, and scalps.

But does anyone doubt that if there were no insurgency, with Iraq as far along in the democratic process as it is now, the Democrats would be boasting about their bipartisan support for the war and cackling about how Democrats were right about "nation-building" all along?

But they don't care. In their America, partisanship begins at the water's edge.

Indeed, and in their America integrity is subordinated to political success.

Racism on the Left

It may be hard to imagine outdoing the racism of the KKK, but the Democrats in Maryland where Republican Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele is running for the U.S. Senate are ebulliently doing their best. The Washington Times writes:

When Michael Steele, a Republican, announced that he would seek the Senate seat long held by the popular liberal Democrat Paul Sarbanes, Marylanders should have welcomed his candidacy. He has shattered a considerable number of color barriers on the southern side of the Mason-Dixon line -- and he accomplished as much in a state where voters warm to Democrats and assail anyone attempting to whistle Dixie. But instead of encouraging a conservative-liberal, Democrat-Republican debate on the issues, Maryland Democrats have embarrassed themselves again.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has obtained Mr. Steele's personal credit report, without his consent, and other liberals have tossed mean racial slurs at him, characterizing him as a minstrel clown. We thought the gutter bigotry that first played itself out in the gubernatorial race had lost its glamour in Maryland. Alas, it has not. During that campaign, the white president of the Maryland Senate, Thomas Miller, called Mr. Steele "Uncle Tom." In a debate at the historically black college, Morgan State, Oreo cookies were thrown at Mr. Steele. The Baltimore Sun, Maryland's largest daily newspaper, indulged in a little race-baiting as well, declaring that Mr. Steele brought little to the governor-lieutenant governor team "but the color of his skin."

Imagine, if you can, that these slurs and insults were levelled against a black candidate by conservatives or Republicans. The outrage would occupy every inch of column space in all the major papers and cable news shows in the country. But the bigots are Democrats, black ones at that, directed at a conservative, so there is relative silence. Racist slurs are acceptable to liberals, evidently, as long as they are made in the service of the proper cause.

Michelle Malkin has much more on the story and the sheer hypocrisy of the left/liberals when it comes to race and racism.

Metaphysical Ruminations

Today is All Saints' Sunday in the Lutheran Church, a day when, among other things, we pause to remember those who have "gone home" during the past year. In his sermon today our pastor remarked that if we understood what our departed loved ones' life was now like we wouldn't wish that they were back with us.

We might add that if we understood what it means to pass from this world of space-time into "divine time" we might be even less inclined to wish them back.

Imagine the "cosmic" time line as a string draped across a sphere. The string represents all of our time past, present, and future. The sphere represents "divine" time which is in contact with every point on the string so that every moment of our past, present and future are in the present of one who resides in divine time.

That would mean that every event that has happened, or will happen, may well be in the present of those who have passed on. It would follow from this that, as difficult as it may be to conceptualize, our own death, which is future for us, is present to the loved one who has already died. Thus the reunion to which we look forward in our cosmic time is already occuring in divine time. We, in some sense, exist both here and there simultaneously.

More than that. If when one dies all of cosmic time becomes their present, then every death which occurs in cosmic time occurs simultaneously with the one who dies. It is for the dying person not as if they were going on ahead of everyone else but rather as if everyone is leaving this life and being born into this new existence together.

For us here on the string of cosmic time the reunion is still future. For those who depart and enter the sphere of divine time, the reunion we anticipate is in their now. For ages Christians have wondered when Christ is going to return for His Church. If cosmic time stands in relation to divine time somewhat as we've sketched it here then the answer may well be that Christ's coming will be at the moment of our death when all of the cosmic future becomes our present. The eschaton will occur at the moment of our passing and it has occurred at the moment of every death which has ever occurred.

Strange stuff, perhaps, but no stranger than what physicists are telling us about the structure of cosmic space/time and the world of the quantum. Perhaps truth, to borrow from a title of a book by Brian Walsh on a different topic altogether, is stranger than it used to be.

Michael Behe

The L.A. Times has a very good article by Josh Getlin on Lehigh University biochemist and author of Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe.

The entire article is both fair and interesting, but here are a couple items worthy of special note:

"Behe does not convince me in the slightest," said Michael Ruse, a Florida State University philosophy professor who wrote "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" and is in the Darwinian camp. "But he's a genial, personable guy, and he comes across as a very serious man. I don't think you can dismiss him as a crank. He is a real scientist."

Although most scientists dismiss Behe, they make a big mistake if they try to demonize him, Ruse added: "We tend to think these people favoring intelligent design are all evil people, and they're not. That's the trouble on my side. Our opponents come in different shapes and sizes, and Michael is proof of that."

Some in the media consistently do what Ruse warns against. They seek to portray anyone as a nut who thinks the Intelligent Design people are on to something important. In order to do that successfully, though, they have to mine quotations from laymen and fundamentalist pastors. When people like Behe and Scott Minnich are questioned about ID the media folk are flummoxed. The leaders of the ID movement just don't fit the stereotype of hicks and yokels that the media wants us to believe comprise the movement.

Evolutionary theory, which gained prominence in the 19th century, is based on scientific evidence that life on Earth has evolved through a process of natural selection and random mutations, with no supernatural plan or purpose.

Note the last prepositional phrase. This is precisely why people like the Dover school board members wanted a little balance in the classroom. Those six words are pure religion. There's absolutely no scientific evidence anywhere that life on Earth has no supernatural plan or purpose, nor can there be. Yet statements like this are perfectly acceptable in high school classrooms, but the contrary of such claims is not. The reader will be forgiven if he or she is beginning to think that the battle in Dover is not over the respective roles of science and religion but rather over whether atheism (or agnosticism) will be permitted to remain the official religious view in our kids' classrooms.

Behe has written one of the few books on intelligent design to reach a mass audience, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," and is finishing a sequel.

That a sequel is on the way is great news. Not only will a follow-up volume enrich Behe, it'll much more importantly, both to him and to us, also enrich the public discourse on a very important issue. We look forward to its release.

It's a Quagmire For Sure

This bit of satire was posted at IMAO.

I've been looking at the news and I have to say that the casualties are really starting to get to me. Victim after hapless victim has fallen to this administration in a conflict that makes no sense. So we have to ask the very important question:

Has the Democrats' War on President Bush turned into a quagmire? Maybe it's time for them to look at reality of the Senate and, if appropriate, start formulating a comprehensive plan for withdrawal.

Since 2000, how many Democratic Senators have been lost to the RNC re-election war machine? Has it been worth it? How many reporters? Mr. Rather? Ms. Mapes? I don't have the Fake But Accurate data on hand, but I'm sure it's a lot.

Sure, there has been a glimmer of light. A two year investigation about outing a CIA operative turned into an indictment. Because of it, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of staff, was forced to resign. This set back the Vice President's office for two hours until somebody found the Staples Office Supply Catalog. Then all was well. But shouldn't a two year investigation yield a conviction into the actual real charges?

Sure, the Democrats can try to come up with false numbers of hope:like MOST of the Democratic voters were dead AFTER they voted, but the reality looks them in their grim, non-photoshopped faces. The elections numbers tell the story. The Dems are losing this war and it's only getting worse. They are the Ding Dongs on the Michael Moore Plate Of Life.

Can they beat these brave RNC insurgents? Republicans are people who fight with unconventional tactics. They'll remember Democrat's speeches and quote them when it contradicts the current, and opposite Democrat position. They'll ignore polls and do what they believe. And most importantly, they'll never be convinced that either Communism or Barbra Streisand can be a force for good.

The RNC has a lot of religious zealots. People who won't think twice about storming a clinic and carrying out the unthinkable - letting an innocent fetus suffer a cruel and torturous life - never to die again - except when they're old and gray maybe. How do you fight that enemy? Without using bullets of course because gun control is very important. The answer is : they can't.

Sure the Democrats have their own suicide bombers like Howard Dean - but what they really need is leadership. Hillary Clinton (Motto: I don't have an official opinion yet - but I'm sure I'll denounce it.) is a good candidate but she's trying too hard to look Republican.

Harry Reid? This is a war of subtlety and ideas. He has neither. The Clintons do their dirty deeds in the dark. Not Harry. If Harry had Monica Lewinsky, he would have had her right there at the podium, with a big giant Tip Jar front and center for all his Democratic supporters. Even when he calls a private, closed session, he's determined to tell the whole world about it.

Let's face it. The Dems' battle with George Bush has turned into another Vietnam. It's time to give them our support by helping them go home.

We concur. Show your support for the Democrats. Bring them home.

Mistaking Wishes For Evidence

Check The Fourth Rail for a roundup of news on military operations in Iraq. Among the reports was news of a single airstrike on a safehouse at which there was a meeting of a number of leaders of al Qaida in Iraq. The strike killed five of them. The dead are named and their roles are described at the link. The coalition must be getting very good intelligence to be able to hit a meeting like this.

Also in the post was this account of the fate of several Libyan terrorists who came to Iraq to be martyred for Allah:

In Sadah, a Libyan terrorist and five others are killed after being trapped in the rubble of a not-so-safe house. He stated he had a suicide vest on and would detonate it, so the MArines of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment obliged and detonated it for him. The Army Times reports others trapped in the house were Libyans as well: "At least two other men remained trapped in the rubble, shouting religious slogans. Like the apparent suicide bomber, he told the interpreter and Iraqi soldiers they were Libyan and had infiltrated through the Syrian border, which lies less than 10 miles west of Sadah." Three Marines were injured in the combat in Sadah.

Also noteworthy is this:

Elsewhere in Baghdad, two insurgents die in a "work accident" as their car bomb suffered from premature detonation. "Route Irish", the notorious road from Baghdad Airport to the city, has seen a marked decrease in attacks; "Between April and June, 14 car bombs went off along the airport road, called Route Irish by the military. There were 48 roadside bombs, officially known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and 80 small-arms attacks. Sixteen people were killed. In the past two months, there have been no car bombs and nine IEDs. One Iraqi soldier has been killed." The success is chalked up to improving tactics and altering the operations along the route.

In Buhriz, insurgents attacked a Iraqi police checkpoint en masse, and are repelled. Six Iraqi police are killed and ten are wounded, but the insurgents failed to overrun their position. Long gone are the days when Iraqi forces flee the battle; today they stand and fight.

As long as the insurgents had only to worry about fighting Americans they could always hope that we would tire of the conflict and eventually leave. Their thinking probably was that all they had to do was outlast us and Iraq would be theirs. The emergence of effective Iraqi military and police, however, has changed the picture dramatically. Now the insurgents are in a race to get us out before the Iraqis become so proficient that they can no longer see a light at the end of the tunnel. As we have said before, Bush's policy may be too slow, and it may yet fail, but to proclaim that it actually is failing, as many of his critics do, is to mistake wishes for evidence.

Praising Evil

The next time some MoveOn.org type praises the enemy in Iraq as "freedom fighters", as Cindy Sheehan and others have done, they might be directed to this post by Bill Roggio.

The people described in Roggio's piece are not freedom fighters, they're savages, and anyone who attempts to ennoble them by referring to them otherwise is morally complicit in their despicable crimes.

If the al Qaida "freedom fighters" ever prevailed and imposed their Islamist tyranny on the people of Iraq would the Left still praise them? As long as they were still at war with the West, I'm afraid they would. Some on the Left will praise anyone, no matter how evil, who is seeking to kill Americans and destroy America. It's been that way ever since 1917.

What Democrats Believe in

I suppose it's not fair of us to accuse the Democrats of being the party of negativity. It's not, after all, as if they don't support anything. It's not that they lack convictions or a positive plan for America. It's just that they don't want voters to know what it is. Here's a partial list:

Big government, minority entitlements, higher taxes, socialized medicine, gun control, welfare, criminal rights, partial birth abortion, less oil and higher costs for fuel, a weaker military, gay marriage, and abandoning Iraq.

It's no wonder they prefer to just attack Bush rather than talk about what they have planned for America.

The Eurabian Future

Francis Fukyama uses the current riots in France as a springboard for comments on the state of Muslim discontent in Europe in general. Here are some excerpts from his essay:

We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going "over there" and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.

There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.

....the Dutch, Germans, French and others all retain a strong sense of their national identity, and, to differing degrees, it is one that is not accessible to people coming from Turkey, Morocco or Pakistan. Integration is further inhibited by the fact that rigid European labor laws have made low-skill jobs hard to find for recent immigrants or their children. A significant proportion of immigrants are on welfare, meaning that they do not have the dignity of contributing through their labor to the surrounding society. They and their children understand themselves as outsiders.

It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions.

Two things need to happen: First, countries like Holland and Britain need to reverse the counterproductive multiculturalist policies that sheltered radicalism, and crack down on extremists. But second, they also need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds.

Fukyama's article suggests rather obliquely that in order to avoid future ethnic conflagrations either the Europeans must abandon their national distinctives and allow the Muslims to form semi-autonomous Islamic enclaves or the Muslim immigrant communities must abandon their Islamic distinctives and dissolve into the larger European culture.

Fukyama doesn't say this but the former seems a lot more likely than the latter. Muslims have no wish to assimilate into the larger culture. Their goal is to turn Europe, through immigration, into North Africa. The riots are ostensibly the result of disaffected Arabs feeling like they're second class citizens, but that feeling is a natural consequence of rejecting the culture of the land in which they find themselves. If they truly do want to be accepted by the French, Dutch, and German people they have to act as if they wish to belong. As long as they keep themselves culturally isolated they have no one to blame for their alienation but themselves.

The problem is that the harder Europe tries to accommodate Muslim sensibilities the more untenable Muslim demands will become and the more fractious will be the relationships between ethnic Europeans and the Islamic immigrants in their midst. The only satisfactory long term solution is assimilation, and it's very doubtful that that will happen. Unless it does, however, it seems almost inevitable that there will be, before too many years have passed, a low grade civil war in at least a couple of European countries.

Winning Through Weakness

Among the long list of faults the critics of the President find in him are two that seem especially odd. On the one hand, Bush is periodically rebuked for never acknowledging that he's made a mistake, and, on the other, he has been castigated for having dumped Harriet Miers and capitulated to his conservative base in the appointment of Sam Alito.

That he doesn't explicitly admit to having made a mistake is nothing other than prudent. The Democrats who urge him to such confessions do not do so because they wish to offer him consolation and forgiveness. They obviously want to hang the admission around his neck like a millstone and they resent the fact that Bush denies them this little pleasure.

They are wrong, however, to think he doesn't recognize a mistake when he's made one, and the Miers' withdrawal is an example. If it's true that the administration orchestrated her gracious exit, then it is proof that they do indeed recognize their errors and hasten to correct them. Why this should earn them criticism from opponents who demand that the Bushies admit their missteps is unclear.

In any event, they also attack Mr. Bush for recovering from his initial lapse of judgment by doing exactly what he promised his voters he would do during the campaign - pick Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. After stumbling with Miers, Bush recovered his stride, kept his promise, and was quickly blasted for caving to the radical right, as if the Alito nomination were an unexpected surprise, hastily contrived to appease The Weekly Standard and National Review Online, and not at all what the President has been promising to do all along.

We're told by David Broder and others that this nomination arises from the president's weakness rather than his strength. What nonsense.

Sam Alito is precisely the sort of justice President Bush promised us he'd appoint. If he hadn't wanted to reward Harriet Miers for her faithfulness, Alito would probably have been nominated in her stead. To aver that the President was grudgingly forced to go with Alito in order to placate the right-wingers is to once again misunderestimate the man in the Oval Office.

The Democrats, it may be concluded, view any politician who keeps his word as one operating from a position of manifest weakness.

Singing Out of Harmony

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts posts the following set of quotes:

"Evolutionary theory says nothing about the existence or the non-existence of god." - Hunter R. Rawlings III, Interim President of Cornell University.

"In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and indeed all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism." - William Provine, Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University.

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist" - William Provine, Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University.

The Darwinians all need to turn to the same page in their hymnals. Evolution is not necessarily incompatible with theistic belief, but not many Darwinians seem interested in stressing the point.

Some, like Provine, Dennett, and Dawkins, adamantly insist that a true Darwinian must be an atheist. We wonder how long it will be before the ACLU begins suing schools for teaching Darwinian versions of evolution in science classes. It is, after all, a "Trojan Horse" for smuggling atheism into schools, and it certainly seems obvious from quotes like the above that there's a religious, or anti-religious, motivation for teaching it.