Taliban "Offensive"

Counterterrorism Blog does the MSM's job for it and puts the recent Taliban action in Afghanistan into some perspective:

The news reports of a major Taliban offensive in southeastern Afghanistan are inaccurate, as Coalition offensives and Taliban attacks have been lumped together to give the impression of a coordinated Taliban assault in multiple provinces. A reading of the various reports indicates that while the Taliban has launched a major strike on a police station and government center in Helmand province and a small scale attack on a police patrol in Ghazni, as well as two suicide attacks against U.S. contractors in Herat and an Afghan army base in Ghazni, the fighting in Kandahar was initiated by Afghan and Coalition security forces during planned operations. Over 100 have been reported killed during the fighting, with 87 being Taliban. Well over half of those killed were killed during the Coalition offensives in Kandahar.

There were two separate major engagements in Kandahar province, and both were initiated by the Coalition. Coalition forces conducted a raid and subsequent air strikes against a Taliban safe haven in the village of Azizi. As many as 27 Taliban are believed to have been killed during the operation. A joint Canadian and Afghan security force conducted a sweep in the Panjwai district of Kandahar, and killed 18 Taliban and captured 26 in the process. One Canadian officer was killed and three Afghan police were wounded during the operation.

The fighting in Musa Qala in Helmand province is a bonafide major Taliban attack. The Associated Press reports an "estimated 300-400 militants with assault rifles and machine guns attacked a police and government headquarters" in Musa Qala. The Afghan police provided reinforcements to the beleaguered police station, fought off the Taliban force, reestablished control over the region, and killed 40 Taliban and took thirteen casualties of their own. Two police patrols were ambushed in Ghazni, and resulted in the death of two policemen. There is no evidence the attacks were coordinated. And they certainly weren't coordinated to occur in conjunction with Coalition operations.

During the fighting of the past few days, the Coalition may have scored a major victory. The BBC's Alastair Leithead reports Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's most senior commander, has been captured, however the military has yet to confirm this report. The Jamestown Foundation describes Mullah Dadullah as "The Military Mastermind of the Taliban Insurgency" as well as "a member of the 10-man leading council of Taliban insurgents." Dadullah reportedly escaped the U.S. and Northern Alliance onslaught of the Taliban regime in the winter of 2002 and surfaced in South Waziristan, Pakistan, where he raised funds and organized the Taliban insurgency. Dadullah would be a treasure trove of information on the Taliban's operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Qari Naeem, the Taliban commander of Ghazni province, was also killed.

The Taliban were expected to launch some sort of initiative this spring, but so far it seems that they lack the resources to be more than just an irritant to the Karzai government.

Post-Modern Prophet

Pat Robertson sounds more like a charlatan everytime we read about him. He professes to be hearing God speak to him about the future but he's not sure he's actually hearing God clearly. How convenient:

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year. Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded.

Robertson said the revelations about this year's weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January. "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

Perhaps God needs to enunciate more clearly or speak more loudly, Pat's hearing no longer being what it once was. Or perhaps Pat's just blowing smoke in the faces of the gullible. After all, did the Old Testament prophets preface their anathemas with "If I heard God right"? Did they use such namby-pamby constructions as bad things "may well" happen? If God is really speaking to Pat why is God speaking so ambiguously? Is God himself unsure of what he thinks is going to occur?

It strikes me as highly unlikely that God talks to Pat Robertson, or anyone else for that matter, but it's just plain impossible to imagine that, if God does talk to someone, he chooses to engage in idle chatter.

Storms on American coasts are inevitable. Why would God bother to tell Pat that they're going to happen? Why would Pat bother to tell us that they're going to happen? A Northwestern tsunami also has a certain probability. Of course one "may well" happen. Everybody already knows that. If Robertson wants us to believe that God speaks to him he needs to stop equivocating and come right out with a definite prediction.

If Pat ever relates that God has told him that a tsunami will occur at a prescribed place, date, and time, then he will have my attention and then we'll be able to discern whether God really is talking to him. Until then it seems safe to say that, at best, Pat is a victim of a hyperactive imagination coupled to a spiritually pompous ego.

Ward Churchill: Fraud

FrontPage Mag has a post mortem of the recent findings in the case of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado prof who came to national attention via a speech in which he compared 9/11 victims to nazis and who was subsequently investigated for professional malfeasance. The findings of the investigating committee are discussed at the link, but the short version is that he is guilty, inter alia, of plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication of research. The recommendation of one of the investigators is that he be fired. The others recommended a long suspension.

The most interesting part of the FrontPage article is the following:

Among the report's observations is this:

"Although many of his writings, including nearly all those discussed in this report, address historical and/or legal issues, he does not have formal training at the graduate level in those fields. Professors writing on the topics he addresses would typically have a Ph.D. in history or a law degree; Professor Churchill's graduate degree is an M.A. in Communications Theory."

This is obviously something that did not take a report to divulge. It was known by the entire Ethnic Studies department which hired him, voted him tenure, voted him a full professorship and then voted him its chairman. As one professor commented on InsideHighered.com:

"The wider implications of the Ward Churchill verdict are stunning. Given the egregious findings here by a distinguished panel of professors, the question is not merely Ward Churchill's writings alone. The question is: how was it that this charlatan was promoted three times, first to tenure and associate professor, then to full professor-and finally to CHAIR of the Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado?

"The first two promotions could ONLY have happened via the receipt of approval letters from prominent people in the Ethnic Studies field. This process must have been carried out twice, first for tenure then for full professor, and must have involved at least six and probably as many as ten prominent professors of Ethnic Studies. Yet they noticed no problems. What does that say about them as scholars? What does it say about Ethnic Studies as a valid intellectual field? In fact, the Report appears to indicate (p. 5) that Ethnic Studies is not held to the same scholarly standards as other, more traditional fields of intellectual endeavor in the humanities and social sciences. I cannot figure out whether the Report also means to imply that Ethnic Studies SHOULD not be held to those same standards. I hope that is not what the authors of the Report mean.

"Furthermore, - but this would be the most difficult thing to do - those administrators at Colorado who approved Ward Churchill's tenure and associate professorship, who then approved Ward Churchill's promotion to full professor, and who then and finally approved Ward Churchill's elevation to Departmental Chair all deserved to be disciplined. THEY are as culpable as the politically corrupt or incompetent scholars who approved Churchill's career all along the line via the writing of positive external-review letters at the time of his promotions. But these administrators will be the most protected by the system. I know someone who, when interviewing for a job at Colorado in 1997, was told that Churchill was a fraud, and that everyone knew it. The university, according to the Report, was in receipt of major complaints against Churchill as early as 1996.

"So, who DIDN'T know Churchill was a fraud? Yet he was promoted to full professor AFTER 1997, and then eventually to Chair of his Department. One needs to investigate why. Were they physically afraid of him? Were they afraid of the criticism they would receive from his supporters if they objected? Were they so supportive (or afraid) of his politics that this trumped any doubts about his worth as a scholar?"

Since the sixties most colleges and universities have instituted what might be called boutique departments. Their discipline is neither rigorous nor well-defined and caters to left-wing professors and students who wish to have their presuppositions about the wickedness of the straight Western white man (SWWM) confirmed. Gender studies, African-American studies, Ethnic studies, Queer studies, etc. are all pretty much a waste of time, unless the objective is to fuel hostility and divisiveness, but the administrations of the colleges offer them as a way to keep the militant lefties pacified. They are for many radicalized students what the basket-weaving courses used to be for the school's athletes.

Churchill is a product of a trend in which scholarship doesn't matter nearly as much as ideological correctness. Churchill could pillory the SWWM with a panache and afflatus that appealed to his callow students, and that was the only qualification he needed to gain the favor of his peers and to advance up the ladder.

PushMe-PullYou in the Senate

The Senate comes across in this news item like the PushMe-PullYou in the old Dr. Doolittle movie. The PushMe-PullYou was a horse-like animal whose rear half was just like its front half. Thus, if both halves were trying to move forward at the same time they cancelled each other out:

The Senate agreed to give millions of illegal immigrants a shot at U.S. citizenship and backed construction of 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday, but prospects for legislation clearing Congress were clouded by a withering attack against President Bush by a prominent House Republican.

The vote to build what supporters called a "real fence" _ as distinct from the virtual fence already incorporated in the legislation _ was 83-16. The fence would be built in areas "most often used by smugglers and illegal aliens," as determined by federal officials. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., estimated the cost at roughly $3.2 million per mile, more than $900 million for 300 miles.

The provision includes a call for construction of 500 miles of vehicle barriers, adding to a system currently in place. It marked the first significant victory for conservatives eager to leave their stamp on a measure that looks increasingly like it is headed toward Senate passage.

Construction would send "a signal that open-border days are over. ... Good fences make good neighbors, fences don't make bad neighbors," Sessions said. He said border areas where barriers are in place have experienced economic improvement and reduced crime.

The House legislation...would make all illegal aliens subject to prosecution as felons and [it] calls for construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border - more than twice as long as the barrier the Senate backed during the day.

Like the PushMe-PullYou the Senate is moving in the right direction, though not far enough, by approving some 370 miles of fence. But they're moving in the wrong direction by putting illegal immigrants on a track toward citizenship. This is a slap at all who have gone through the process of becoming citizens the right way.

The House has a better fence proposal but, though we are not unsympathetic with the reasoning behind it, it's probably not practical to insist upon prosecuting and deporting all illegals. In our view, current illegals should be neither sought out for prosecution nor granted citizenship. Legal sanctions should instead be directed at the employers who hire illegals. As jobs dry up and citizenship is not an option the illegals will gradually diminish in number.

Sullivan's Complaint

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The absolute demands of fundamentalist faith make the West's tradition of civil compromise impossible; and they constantly push the boundaries of what is acceptable to God, as religious purists outdo each other in proving their righteousness - whether it be keeping comatose patients alive for decades or defining a zygote as a full human person. Hence our politics has degenerated into a "culture war." Wars are what happens when politics become impossible. And that is the corrosive effect of Christianism; and why it must be resisted - for the sake of American discourse and for the sake of a vibrant, humble apolitical Christianity.

In other words you can believe whatever you want but just don't base your politics on it. I wonder if Andrew would call Martin Luther King a Christianist, or William Wilberforce. I wonder if he'd castigate Jim Wallis at Sojourners for preaching that one's inner faith needs to bear outward fruit in the politics we adopt. I wonder if he condemns Jesse Jackson for basing his politics on his Christian convictions. Probably not. These Christians all support(ed) causes with which Sullivan agrees so he never really gets around to criticizing them.

It's the Christians who endorse policies with which he doesn't agree that win his opprobrium and merit the epithet Christianist. He recognizes that it is politically concerned Christians who are the greatest impediment to the homosexual agenda, of which he is a prominent advocate, and therefore the easiest way to get that agenda enacted is to delegitimize the most formidable opposition by burdening it with a silly and awkward pejorative.

Anyway, Andrew should check his history. The culture war has come about not because Christians have tried to impose laws and standards that never before existed but because secularists have tried to strip society of the laws and standards which had governed our social life for decades, or even centuries, and in the case of marriage, millenia.

The culture war exists because people like Sullivan seek to exclude anyone whose political opinions are based upon their religious beliefs from the public square. It is that attempt to win the public debate by discrediting the basis for one's opponents' opinions that generates the social and political ill-will that Sullivan laments.

UPDATE: Joe Carter reprises Sullivan's argument in Time magazine (which was titled My Problem With Christianism) with this piece titled My Problem With Sullivanism. It's great fun.

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom

The People's Republic of China is certainly no place for people to live, at least not if they yearn for basic human rights and freedoms:

A Chinese Internet writer was jailed for 12 years on Tuesday for "subversion of state power" after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.

Yang Tianshui, 45, who has been in custody since last December, did not plan to appeal, a protest against a trial he felt was illegal, his lawyer, Li Jianqiang, said. Yang is one of several Internet writers and journalists being tried this month, amid what analysts say is a tightening of controls on media and freedom of expression.

Yang was charged after posting essays on the Internet in support of the "Velvet Action of China", a movement named for the "Velvet Revolution" that peacefully overthrew communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.

He previously served 10 years on "counter-revolution" charges for condemning the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators on Tiananmen Square, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. He was released in 2000.

The tough sentence comes a day after the lawyer for New York Times researcher Zhao Yan said the case against him had been revived, dashing hopes for his imminent release. He has been held since September 2004.

Of course, the People's Republic is a communist state, and despite the gushings of apologists like Noam Chomsky and others on the left, communists take a very attenuated view of things like human dignity and individual liberty. Communist political philosophy expresses little concern for such trifles. They do make up for the lack, though, in their fondness for cruelty.

The Clash of Civilizations

Dennis Prager disabuses anyone who believes that the war on terror is going to be like a slightly longer version of the invasion of Grenada. His column is important reading for anyone interested in the Islamic mindset, but it's absolutely crucial for anyone who thinks that the GWOT should be handled as if it were a police matter. The heart of his piece is this:

Nevertheless, one can say that from its inception, Islam has been imperialist. My working definition of imperialism is that of University of London professor Efraim Karsh, whose recent book, "Islamic Imperialism" (Yale University Press), is one of the few indispensable books on Islam.

Karsh defines imperialism as "conquering foreign lands and subjugating their populations." Whenever possible, Muslims from the time of Muhammad have done that. Now, the Church also subjugated peoples to Christianity, and Europe suffered from prolonged religious wars. But as Karsh notes, from its inception, Christianity acknowledged a separation of the religious and the political, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

No such division was allowed for in Islam. That is why the nation-state developed in the Christian world but not in the Muslim world. The Muslim states of the Middle East, for example, are creations of Western (secular) imperialism or pre-date Islam (Egypt, for example); and they are foreign concepts to most Middle Eastern Muslims, who recognize themselves much more as part of the ummah, the Muslim community, than as Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians, etc.

Nor is Islamic imperialism only a function of Muslim behavior rather than Muslim theology. Karsh opens his book citing the statements of four Muslim figures.

The Prophet Muhammad in his farewell address: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.'"

Saladin (great 12th-century founder of the Ayyubid dynasty that included Ayyubid Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and much of present-day Saudi Arabia): "I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah."

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (father of the Islamic revolution in Iran): "We will export our revolution throughout the world . . . until the calls 'There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah' are echoed all over the world."

Osama bin Laden in November 2001: "I was ordered to fight the people until they say 'there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.'"

No one should have a problem with Muslims wanting the whole world Muslim. After all, Christians would like the whole world to come to Christ. What should matter to all people is the answer to one question: What are you prepared to do to bring the world to your religion? For virtually every living Christian, the answer is through modeling and verbal persuasion (and Jews never believed the world needs to be Jewish).

But by the most conservative estimates, 10 percent of Muslims are in sympathy with the bin Laden way. That means at least 100 million people are prepared to murder (and apparently torture) in Allah's name. And given the history of Islamic imperialism and its roots in Muslim theology, hundreds of millions more are probably fellow travelers. Hence the almost unanimous Muslim governments' support for the genocidal Islamic regime in Sudan.

Millions of Muslims are determined to force us and our children to choose between the Koran and the sword. Those who deny we're in a war in which our survival as a nation, a culture, and individual persons is at stake are deluding themselves.

Impulse Shopping

Evidently Iran is not much concerned with customer service:

Venezuela is considering selling its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to another country, perhaps Iran, in response to a U.S. ban on arms sales to President Hugo Chavez's government, a military official said Tuesday.

Gen. Alberto Muller, a senior adviser to Chavez, told The Associated Press he had recommended to the defense minister that Venezuela consider selling the 21 jets to another country. Muller said he thought it was worthwhile to consider "the feasibility of a negotiation with Iran for the sale of those planes."

Even before the U.S. announced the ban on arms sales Monday, Washington had stopped selling Venezuela sensitive upgrades for the F- 16s.

Chavez has previously warned he could share the U.S. jets with Cuba if Washington does not supply parts for the planes. He also has said he may look into buying fighter jets from Russia or China instead.

We can understand why Chavez wants to unload them since they're useless without spare parts, but we can't figure out why Iran, without access to parts, would want to buy them.

Besides, what does Iran expect to use them for? Oil exploration? Surely, the Iranians don't think those planes would be in any way a counter to American air power. The Iranian pilots who fly those F-16s against American fighters, assuming they'd even be able to get the planes off the ground, would be either very brave or very stupid.

There's Lots Going Right in Iraq

Bill Crawford has his latest summary of good news from Iraq up at National Review Online. The military stuff is especially interesting but even more important is the list of highlights from the Brooking's Institute study that he closes his report with:

1. Per Capita GDP (USD) for 2005 is forecast to increase from the previous year to $1,051. In 2002 it was $802.

2. Increases in GDP for the next five years: 16.8, 13.6, 12.5, 7.8, and 7.2.

3. Actionable tips from Iraqis have increased every month this year. In January, 4,025 tips were received; February, 4,235; and March, 4,578.

4. On an index of political freedom for countries in the Middle East, Iraq now ranks fourth, just below Israel, Lebanon, and Morocco.

5. Crude oil production reached 2.14 million barrels a day (MBD) in April of this year. It had dropped to 0.3 MBD in May of 2003.

6. Revenues from oil export have only slightly increased from prewar levels of $0.2 billion, to $0.62 billion in April.

7. Electrical output is almost at the pre-war level of 3,958 megawatts. April's production was 3,600 megawatts. In May of 2003, production was only 500 megawatts. The goal is to reach 6,000 megawatts, and was originally expected to be met in 2004.

8. The unemployment rate in June of 2003 was 50-60 percent, and in April of this year it had dropped to 25-40 percent.

9. The number of U.S. military wounded has declined significantly from a high of 1,397 in November 2004 to 430 in April of this year.

10. Iraqi military casualties were 201 in April of 2006, after peaking at 304 in July of 2005.

11. As of December 2005, countries other than the U.S., plus the World Bank and IMF, have pledged almost $14 billion in reconstruction aid to Iraq.

12. Significant progress has also been made towards the rule of law. In May 2003 there were no trained judges, but as of October 2005 there were 351.

13. As of January 2006, 64 percent of Iraqis polled said that the country was headed in the right direction.

14. Also as of January 2006, 77 percent said that removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.

15. In May of 2003, Iraqi security forces were estimated at between 7,000-9,000. They numbered 250,500 in March of this year.

16. The breakdown of foreign terrorists by country of origin is interesting. The largest number come from Algeria, at 20 percent. The next two countries are Syria and Yemen, at 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

17. The number of foreign terrorists fighting in Iraq was estimated at between 300 and 500 in January 2004. That number increased in April of this year, to between 700 and 2,000.

18. From May 2003 and April 2006, between 1,000 and 3,000 anti-Iraqi forces have been killed each month.

You won't hear any of that on the evening news, and one wonders why that is. It seems as if the institutional media just can't bring themselves to report anything positive about Iraq for fear that Bush will get the credit, the Republicans will do well in November, and the temptation to use force in Iran will be reinforced. Of course, their job is to report the news and to let us decide what it means, but they don't see it that way. They evidently see their role as shaping public opinion to conform to the Democratic party's ideology. It's one reason why so few people trust them as a reliable source of news anymore.

Sam Harris' Trilemma

Sam Harris, atheist and author of The End of Faith, is a very bright guy, but he seems to have allowed himself to wander into a dilemma, or more correctly, a trilemma. How he does this is explained below. Meanwhile, BeliefNet's Laura Sheahen has an interview with him in which he scores some direct hits against Islam, raises several tough questions for Christians, and, as we suggested, also reveals some deep shortcomings in his atheism.

In the interview he asserts that if religion were to disappear we'd be a step closer to universal harmony:

L.S. : You're saying we should be part of the human race, not part of any particular religious or national group?

S.H. : Yeah. It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.

This reminds me of Francis Fukuyama's claim that the collapse of communism had brought us to the "end of history". Fukuyama didn't foresee, apparently, the rise of global Islam, nor did he consider that it's human nature to order the world along the lines of us vs. them. If no one held to religious beliefs walls between people would be erected with the bricks of political ideology, or race, or nationalism, but there would still be walls and there would still be group conflict.

Harris urges us to be rational, to base our judgments and beliefs on evidence, and to get over our archaic belief in God and an afterlife. These beliefs, he argues, are the source of many of our conflicts and problems, but what is the evidence that man's problems stem mainly from belief in God? After all, it wasn't theism that made the twentieth century the bloodiest in history. It was state atheism, the pinnacle of the rational approach to human affairs that Harris touts.

Harris criticizes Islam for its violence and fundamentalist Christianity for its irrationality, but his real target is belief in God. Yet he cannot really argue against theism, so he tries to get at it by attacking the more outlandish expressions of that belief. He says, for instance, that:

"We need to lift the taboos that currently prevent us from criticizing religious irrationality."

What taboos are these? Where in the Western world are there any restrictions placed upon those who wish to criticize Christianity? He's correct that Islamic countries have a real problem with open criticism, but that's a complaint against Islam, not against religion in general, and certainly not against belief in God.

L.S. : What is the alternative? If there's no God who orders things, some people would say there's chaos, it's all random, their life is meaningless. There really is despair out there--especially about evolution.

S.H. : You don't have to believe in God to have the most extraordinary, mystical experience. Personally, I've spent two years on meditation retreats just meditating in silence for 12-18 hours a day.

You can try to be a mystic, like Meister Eckhart in the Christian tradition, without believing Jesus was born of a virgin. You can realize the value of community and compassion and love of your neighbor without ever presupposing anything on insufficient evidence.

Well, yes, but what is the evidence that valuing community and loving one's neighbor are morally right? Harris accepts these principles as obligatory, but where do they come from? Not the Bible, he asserts:

S.H. : There are many ironies here. The [sacred texts] themselves are very poor guides to morality. The only way you find goodness in good books is because you recognize it. They're based on your own ethical intuitions. In the New Testament, Jesus is talking about the Golden Rule--a great, wise, compassionate distillation of ethics. You're doing that based on your intuition.

Harris is now digging himself into the trilemma we mentioned earlier. We know, he insists, that it is right to love our neighbor through intuition, but what if someone has nastier intuitions than does Sam Harris? Why are Harris' intuitions right and Saddam Hussein's intuitions, for example, wrong? How do we judge between them except by holding both sets of intuitions up to a higher standard for comparison?

Yet for Harris there is no higher standard, so all we're left with is a social consensus - the intuitions of the majority are to be imposed upon the rest of us. Whatever the majority decides to be right, is right. This has bizarre consequences. It means, for example, that if a man is in the minority on some matter then he is ab defino wrong. He cannot be right because right is whatever the majority intuits.

Hopefully, also, you recognize that stoning someone to death for not being a virgin on her wedding night, or beating your child with a rod, as it recommends in Proverbs, and which millions of Christians do in our country, that's not a good thing. You know that based on your own intuitions and the evolving human conversation about what is ethical and most conducive to human happiness.

And if one doesn't recognize this, as many Muslims obviously don't, what reason can Harris give us for concluding that they are wrong? All he can say is that he doesn't like this sort of behavior. He can't say it's wrong in any meaningful sense. Indeed, he can't say that anything at all is wrong.

Moreover, as we noted above, if he were in the minority on this issue then he would have to accept that he is the one who is in error, not the Muslims.

We can agree that famine in Africa is intolerable to us for perfectly compassionate and rational and modern reasons that have nothing to do with [religious] beliefs. We just have to believe that it is unethical that people are starving to death while we are throwing out half of our meals.

Harris simply assumes that people will agree with him that it's wrong to let people starve, and most people, without thinking about it much, would agree with him, but they do so because they've inherited the moral capital of Christianity. It's this moral capital that has informed their intuitions and which they draw upon to make their judgments.

Nevertheless, if there is no transcendent moral authority, no God, then there simply is no right or wrong and Harris' assumption that there is, is not only an irrational leap of faith, but it is quite simply incorrect. There is no reason whatsoever why it would be morally wrong for me to waste all the food I please, even if the starving children were crouched at my table. It might be repugnant to Mr. Harris' intuitions, but that hardly makes it wrong.

Now we see the trilemma Mr. Harris and other non-theists must confront. If they're going to enjoin us to abandon the irrationality of religion and embrace the "rational" life they exemplify, then they should themselves forego the irrationality of moral judgment in a godless world and embrace moral nihilism. That is the logical endpoint of their atheism.

If, on the other hand, they wish to hold onto moral categories and language then they need to acknowledge that either they're guilty of a gross inconsistency by accepting the existence of right and wrong by blind faith, or they should grant that their conviction that right and wrong do in fact exist is prima facie evidence for the existence of a transcendent moral lawgiver.

In short, their atheism leads to either 1) moral nihilism, or 2) an irrational acceptance of an arbitrary, purely subjective moral standard, or 3) a recognition that there is indeed evidence that the God of theism exists. As far as I can see there are no other options available to him. It's a tough spot to be in, to be sure, but that's where atheism takes those who accept it.

Pin the Tail on the Honky

In a column titled "Pin the Tail on the Honky" Mike Adams, professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington) lists the top ten most bizarre (and moronic) claims that he's heard uttered by faculty and students. Here's his list:

10. "911 was a conspiracy planned between the Bush administration and the Jews. They wanted an excuse to attack Arabs and the ignorant public bought into it." (from a now-deceased college professor).

9. "I don't want any teacher who supports George W. Bush. If Bush is elected he's planning - along with the rest of the Republicans - to bring back slavery. I don't want to work picking cotton in the cotton fields like my ancestors." (college student).

8. "It is a known fact that the Reagan administration invented crack to destroy the black community." (college professor).

7. "The Reagan administration hired Jewish doctors to develop the AIDS virus to destroy Africa." (college professor).

6. "The Mona Lisa was painted by an African artist and stolen from a museum in Ethiopia. Most of the great works of art are African in origin and stolen by white people. This is done to promote the myth of white cultural superiority." (graduate student).

5. "The voting machines in Florida were built by white supremacists. They may well be able to distinguish between black and white voters. Who knows what they are capable of making those machines do?" (college professor).

4. "Newt Gingrich's election as Speaker of the House, limiting affirmative action, limiting welfare, the Republican tax cuts, and the balanced budget are all part of the same idea. Everything the Republicans do or discuss is about racism. Everything is a well-orchestrated effort to keep the black man down." (college professor).

3. "The ABC news doesn't tell you. The CBS news doesn't tell you. The NBC news doesn't tell you. Even CNN doesn't tell you. Nobody tells the truth that almost all serial killers are white. The news outlets all work together to make folks think that all killers are black." (college professor and diversity director).

2. "The death penalty is a genocidal mechanism that seeks to control black people through extermination or, more importantly, the threat of extermination." (college professor).

1. "It is a proven fact that U.S. Coast Guard ships - on orders from President Bush - were seen crashing into the New Orleans levees during Hurricane Katrina. Bush did it to kill black people living in government housing projects." (college student).

It's a bit unnerving to think that these beliefs are held by supposedly well-educated people. It's also disconcerting to think that every one of them no doubt votes.

Hmmm. Who do you think they voted for in 2004?

Summer Reading

Looking to better understand the controversy between those who endorse materialist explanations of the cosmos and those, like the Intelligent Design people, who embrace more teleological views? If so, here are some recommendations for summer reading that might be helpful. Most of these books are accessible to the non-specialist who has a moderate interest in philosophy and/or science although parts of some of them may be a little difficult for some readers.

All of the books in the list reinforce the notion that our universe and life are imbued with purpose although not all of the authors are theists. Indeed, there are deists, agnostics, and, in at least one case, an atheist on the list. Even so, reading them leaves the impression that the cosmos and life must surely have been intentionally engineered.

The following four books provide a philosophical background or overview of the debate between materialist explanations of the universe and non-materialist explanations:

1. The Soul of Science: Nancy Pearcey

2. Total Truth: Nancy Pearcey

3. Science and Its Limits: Del Ratzsch

4. Battle of Beginnings: Del Ratzsch

These works focus on the fine-tuning of the universe:

5. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith: Stephen Barr

6. Rare Earth: Peter Ward and David Brownlee

This book addresses both the fine-tuning of the universe and the incredible engineering of living things:

7. Nature's Destiny: Michael Denton

Paul Davies discusses the difficulties associated with any purely mechanistic or materialistic explanation of the origin of life:

8. The Fifth Miracle: Paul Davies

The following three books are critical of the ability of standard Darwinian theory to explain the structure of living things:

9. Evolution a Theory in Crisis: Michael Denton

10. Icons of Evolution: Jonathon Wells

11. Darwin on Trial: Phillip Johnson

These books explicitly make the case for Intelligent Design:

12. Darwin's Black Box: Michael Behe

13. Intelligent Design: William Dembski

14. The Design Revolution: William Dembski

Any of these can be ordered from Hearts and Minds Bookstore by going here.

Dear Mahmoud

Christopher Hitchens lays out how George Bush should respond to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent 18 page diatribe here.

Task Force 145

Bill Roggio assumes that Task Force 145 has struck again near Ramadi:

Task Force 145, the mix of special operations forces assigned to hunt Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq leaderships and cells, appears to have struck again, this time in Julaybah, an area "identified as a terrorist safe haven" which is located about 8 miles east of Ramadi. Three terrorists were killed and four captured during the fight. The Multinational Forces - Iraq press release provides an overview of the engagement:

"Upon arrival... the Coalition troops began receiving rifle and machine gun fire. The terrorists then began to launch ineffective mortar fire from across a nearby river. Coalition Forces neutralized both the direct and indirect fire with small arms fire and close air support and simultaneously raided five structures, associated hide outs and vehicles. After killing three terrorists and detaining four others, the troops conducted a thorough search of the area. They found six affiliated vehicles, three of which were loaded with various weapons and explosives to include rifles, mortars and improvised explosive device material. The troops also uncovered numerous weapons caches with AK-47's, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds and IED material... Five safe houses, six cars, and all lethal material were destroyed on target."

Again, the tell-tale signs of a Task Force 145 operation are contained within the Multinational Forces - Iraq press release: vague details of the strike, an unidentified Coalition unit and unnamed air support, the targeting of an al-Qaeda cell, a suspected "wanted terrorist" on the target list (it is unknown if he was killed or captured during the raid), and the swift raids on multiple targets.

The raid in Julaybah is the latest in a series of TF-145 operations over the past month, which included Yusifayah, Balad, Baghdad, Samarra and Karbala. The targeting indicates al-Qaeda is concentrating in and around Baghdad, which squares with the recently seized al-Qaeda gameplan for the battle of Baghdad.These raids have netted the unedited Zarqawi tapes and internal al-Qaeda communications, as well as senior Ansar al-Islam commander and veteran jihadi Ali Wali, along with senior al-Qaeda commander Abu Aisha. Scores of al-Qaeda terrorists have been killed or captured over the past month.

The average American may not be aware of what TF-145 is, but I'll bet the average jihadi is. See also here

Darth Vader's Tax Returns

This is the man the left loathes with all their heart and soul:

Let Vice President Cheney unload a hail of buckshot - and it makes mainstream media headlines as a defining moment in his failed vice presidency.

Let him file his federal tax return and it is reported by CBS News that "Cheney tops Bush in the battle of the bucks."

Let him donate what was the largest amount of bucks in history to charity by any public servant, and you guessed it - nary a headline.

But then again it was a paltry $6.87 million, more than three-quarters of the reported income of the Cheneys. Read this again: The Cheneys gave $6.87 million to charity in 2005.

Note well: This was the largest charitable donation by a public servant in history! And who in the MSM uttered a peep about it? They couldn't utter a word, actually, because they are flummoxed by the generosity of the man they believe to be the incarnation of evil. It just doesn't fit their paradigm of Republicans in general and Cheney in particular, and they lack either the intellectual resources to comprehend their error or the honesty to admit it, or both.

To read how the media did handle this story, or rather, how they tried to hide it, go to the link.

Another Harriet Miers Moment

Michelle is completely unimpressed. Hugh is disappointed. Ed is lukewarm. John believes that Bush has blown his last chance to rescue his second term. They're shaking their heads at NRO's The Corner. One observer says we need Jack Bauer and we're getting Mr. Rogers.

I agree with all of them. The President clearly had a chance to lay out a credible plan to solve the problem of illegal immigration, and all he did was recommend a band aid for a hemorrhage. Troops are a short term fix and building more detention centers so that captured border-crossers don't have to be released in this country is insulting, as is offering illegals a pathway to citizenship. This was another Harriet Miers moment for the President, unfortunately.

Any solution that does not include a state of the art fence along the length of the border with Mexico is simply a waste of money and effort. We have in the past thought George Bush had the chance to be a historic president. Tonight the only people who will think that are illegal immigrants and those who aspire to be.

We look for the President's job approval numbers to continue bobbing up and down in the mid-thirties. They would go lower except, like scoring 200 on the SATs, they can't get any lower.

Blog War

A blogger war appears to be brewing with Andrew Sullivan on one side and Hugh Hewitt, most prominently, on the other. Sullivan has taken to using the pejorative "Christianist" a lot on his blog and has introduced the term into the cultural mainstream with an article in Time magazine. By "Christianist" Sullivan means someone who believes that one's politics should be informed by one's faith commitment. Since he differentiates between Christians and "Christianists", presumably Christians are those who know their place at the back of the political bus:

But [the "Christianist"] agenda, whatever else it is, cannot be described as mainstream Christianity. Its extremism, its enmeshment with partisan political power, its contempt for individual liberty, its certainty and arrogance and intolerance, demand that some other name be given to it.

So what is it that the "Christianists" oppose? Abortion on demand, gay marriage, giving the benefit of the doubt to life in the case of comatose people whose preferences are not known, but whose family wants the person to be kept alive, and so on.

This is not to deny that there are people out on the fringe who would support banning contraception and sexual behavior between consenting adults, and Sullivan is right to challenge them. What he is not right to do, though, is to suggest that people who hold to traditional Christian morality are extremist, intolerant, and arrogant, and this he does. In the process he manages to conflate in peoples' minds any Christian who seeks to exert influence in the public square with the nefarious "Christianists" who he believes seek to establish a totalitarian theocracy.

Hugh Hewitt, a "Christianist" himself perhaps, writes a response at World Magazine.

The Faith of a Darwinian

Bill Dembski directs us to an article in Physics Today in which the authors say this:

Molecular machines are the basis of life. DNA, a long molecule that encodes the blueprints to create an organism, may be life's information storage medium, but it needs a bevy of machines to read and translate that information into action. The cell's nanometer-scale machines are mostly protein molecules, although a few are made from RNA, and they are capable of surprisingly complex manipulations. They perform almost all the important active tasks in the cell: metabolism, reproduction, response to changes in the environment, and so forth. They are incredibly sophisticated, and they, not their manmade counterparts, represent the pinnacle of nanotechnology. Yet scientists have no general theory for their assembly or operation.

How much can one molecule do? Consider, for example, ATP (adenosine triphosphate) synthase. This macromolecular assembly, only about 10 nanometers on a side, is an essential part of the cellular factory that produces ATP, the universal energy currency of life. We will not get into the details of the biological role of ATP synthase in the cell, but consider merely what it is capable of doing in isolation: It is a rotary motor. In the presence of a proton gradient, this remarkable machine turns a spindle as it adds phosphate groups to molecules of adenosine diphosphate to produce ATP. And every day the cells in your body perform this phosphate-addition reaction to produce roughly your body weight in ATP molecules.

But that is not all: ATP synthase can run in reverse. It can consume ATP, and with each ATP molecule that is hydrolyzed, the central shaft of ATP synthase turns by 120 degrees, directly converting chemical to mechanical energy. That reverse operation was explicitly demonstrated through a series of elegant experiments in which a molecular propeller was attached to the shaft and then imaged with optical microscopy.The propeller rotated in the presence of ATP, with absolute thermodynamic efficiencies of up to 90%. Despite the tremendous strides made in nanotechnology, no device of similar functionality can yet be fabricated with inorganic materials. Furthermore, many questions remain about the basic principles by which molecular machines such as ATP synthase convert chemical energy to mechanical forces.

After going on at some length in this vein the authors observe, in a masterful piece of understatement, that:

It is surely one of the triumphs of evolution that Nature discovered how to make highly accurate machines....

Note the difficulty of describing biological machines and information without using terms that are redolent of purpose:

One of the key hallmarks of biological function is ordering in space and time, and at least two great classes of biological orchestration should serve as a call to action for physicists: the coordination of physical structures and processes and the orchestration of information.

The whole article is worth reading but one passage in particular struck us. The authors write that:

Understanding collective effects in the cell will require merging two philosophical viewpoints. The first is that life is like a computer program: An infrastructure of machines carries out arbitrary instructions that are encoded into DNA software. The second viewpoint is purely physical: Life arises from a mixing together of chemicals that follow basic physical principles to self-assemble into an organism. Presumably, the repertoire of available behaviors is more limited in the latter. The two viewpoints are complementary, not incompatible: Either one could best describe cell behavior, depending on the particular situation.

Life is like a computer program, they tell us. If this is a legitimate analogy then we might ask if there has ever been a computer program which has come about through blind, purposeless forces and processes such as mutation and natural selection. It takes an enormous amount of blind faith in materialism to believe that something like a computer program could emerge purely by happenstance and physical forces, without any intelligent input, but no one should ever doubt the prodigious capacity for faith among Darwinians.

Cost Comparison

President Bush is going to address the nation tonight on the immigration issue, an issue which has probably cost him ten points or more in his job approval ratings, mostly due to an erosion of conservative support.

President Bush, trying to build momentum for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, is considering plans to shore up the Mexican border with National Guard troops paid for by the federal government, according to senior administration officials.

One defense official said military leaders believe the number of troops required could range from 3,500 to 10,000, depending on the final plan. Another administration official cautioned that the 10,000 figure was too high.

The president was expected to reveal his plans in an address Monday at 8 p.m. EDT. It will be the first time he has used the Oval Office for a domestic policy speech - a gesture intended to underscore the importance he places on the divisive immigration issue.

The question we wish to ask is what's the cost comparison between building a secure fence and placing 4000 to 10,000 Guardsmen on the border for the next twenty five to a hundred years or until an equal number of border policemen can be hired and trained? It seems to us that paying for all those Guardsmen/border police is an inefficient way to stop illegal immigration, but we haven't seen the numbers. Perhaps the president will tell us tonight what the cost will be.

Saddam's Mobile Labs

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters is very skeptical that those Iraqi mobile laboratories were being used to make hydrogen gas for weather balloons. Recently translated documents suggest a much more sinister purpose, but since that purpose is pretty much what the administration said before the war, the MSM has pretty much ignored the documents and their implications.

You can read Morrissey's take here.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that every captured document that has been translated has so far been consonant with, or actually supports, the White House's justification for going to war (WMD and Saddam's association with terrorists), and none of them have, as yet, been incompatible with it. We're waiting for the "Bush lied" crowd to at least acknowledge that he may have had good reason for believing what he was telling the American people in early 2003.