At Least Bush Wants to Win

Jonah Goldberg contrasts the President's plan with the Democrats' non-plan for victory. The Democrats' strategy for Iraq is to wait until Bush announces his plan and then bash it, even when he does what they've said he should do. Here are Jonah's key passages:

...when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid come to a fork in the road, they follow Yogi Berra's advice and take it. On the one hand, they tell the president that they want this war "brought to a close." On the other, they refuse to use their power of the purse to do exactly that, opting instead for a symbolic resolution. It may be the wisest political course for them, but it does a disservice to the nation by making the Iraq debate the equivalent of boxing with fog.

Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition -- which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that -- won't say what it wants. This is flatly immoral. If you believe the war can't be won and there's nothing to be gained by staying, then, to paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, you're asking more men to die for a mistake. You should demand withdrawal. But that might cost votes, so the Dems don't. And, of course, Kerry, Pelosi and other Democrats were in favor of more troops before they were against it.

In fact Harry Reid and others were actually criticizing the President as recently as a few months ago for not having enough troops in Iraq.

Another Democratic dodge is the incessant demand for a "political solution" in Iraq. "What is absolutely clear to me is there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq, that only political solutions are going to bring about some semblance of peace," Sen. Barack Obama declared. This is either childishly naive or reprehensibly dishonest. No serious person thinks that peace can be secured without a political solution. The question is how to get one. And nobody -- and I mean nobody -- has made a credible case that the Iraqis can get from A to B without more bloodshed, with or without American support.

Saying we need a political solution is as helpful as saying "give peace a chance." Peace requires more than such pie-eyed verbiage. In the real world, peace has no chance until the people who want to give death squads another shot have been dispatched from the scene. It reminds me of the liberal obsession in the 1980s with getting inner-city gangs to settle their differences with break-dance competitions. If only Muqtada Sadr would moonwalk to peace!

Bush came up with the "surge" plan. Will it work? Nobody knows. But the one thing the American people know about George W. Bush is that he wants to win the war. What the Democrats believe is anybody's guess.

For an example of exactly what Goldberg is talking about when he talks about the demand for a "political solution" in Iraq see Jim Wallis' piece at Sojourners.

Chuck Asay weighs in with his own comparison of Bush's plan and that of his political opponents:

RLC

Double Illegals' Wages

Free Frank Warner has what is nothing short of a brilliant idea - double the minimum wage for illegal aliens:

Here's an idea that should appeal to left and right both. Double the minimum wage for all illegal immigrants in the United States.

That is, guarantee them double the minimum wage of American citizens. By setting the minimum wage for illegal immigrants at a handsome $14.50 an hour, several problems would be solved.

Read how this would solve the problems to which he refers at the link. I think he's at least half-serious.

RLC

Land of the Free

This is why people say that it requires constant vigilance to maintain our freedom. The totalitarian impulse is strong and apparently even afflicts meteorologists:

The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel's (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

Read the rest of the article at the link. One would think that people who practice meteorology, of all disciplines, would have been chastened often enough by errant forecasts that they'd be a little less dogmatic and a little more humble than Heidi Cullen appears to be.

Next thing we'll be reading that those who doubt Darwinism should lose their Ph.D.s. (although I think that's already been suggested) and anyone who voted for Bush should have their citizenship suspended (which a lot of people probably already think but haven't yet made bold enough to say).

Anyway, will somebody please mail Ms Cullen a copy of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty? It's the best antidote for what ails her that I can think of.

RLC

The Great Uncommunicator

Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt's blog gets it exactly right. President Bush's biggest failure as a president is that he is a terrible communicator. He has failed to make the case for almost anything he's done since September of 2001. When he does address the American people he tends to speak in platitudes and threadbare formulations that no longer gain anyone's attention.

This is such a shame because what he's doing is so important that the American people must be with him on it, and yet the American people have largely given up on him and his agenda. This is as much our fault, in my opinion, as it is his - just because he doesn't make the case for what he does doesn't mean that what he does isn't the right thing to do. Nevertheless, it's still his fault and his greatest shortcoming as a president.

Anyway, read Barnett's essay. He says it much better than I can.

RLC

Better to Have it

Civilian Gun Defense blog carries all sorts of stories about how average citizens everyday use guns to save their lives and the lives of others. Here's a recent example (the permalinks aren't working but this story can be accessed by going to the above link and scrolling down):

An elderly wheelchair-bound man shot and critically wounded an intruder at his Orange Mound home Friday afternoon, Memphis police said.

Officers were called about 2 p.m. to the 2300 block of Zanone, where the unidentified homeowner "apparently heard a crash as if someone was coming in through the window and saw a male subject he did not know," said Det. Monique Martin.

The homeowner fired two shots and struck the home invasion suspect at least once. The wounded intruder was transported to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis in critical condition, Martin said.

Police say 84-year-old Willie Hancox called 911 around two Friday afternoon to say that he had shot an intruder.

Hancox says he fired two shots, hitting an intruder twice in the head.

Hancox says he is sick of the crime in his community.

"He said if they come in the door, I'm not gonna let them kill me and he meant that," says neighbor, Dorothy Dickerson.

Dickerson lives across the street and looks after Hancox.

Dickerson adds, "I say God is good, cause they had no business in there, and whoever did that got what they deserved. And, I say it in front of they face, not behind they back and I mean it."

Dickerson's sentiment is shared by most neighbors.

"He did the right thing," says neighbor, Markel Dickerson. "People that's law abiding people is getting tired of being pushed around by the thugs and thieves and dope dealers."

That's why Mr. Hancox had a gun, one his sons recently tried to take from him.

"We came over here that Saturday morning he said, hey, where's my gun, I need it back. I told him dad, you dont' really need a gun in this house." says Jake Hancox.

Jake Hancox says after speaking with his brother, the two decided to give the gun back to their father.

Now, both brothers are glad they listened. Jake Hancox says that the situation could have easily ended the other way around.

"Maybe somebody looks at the situation here and they might not do it," says Hancox.

It's a message homeowners hope criminals hear as loud and clear as a gunshot.

The intruder is listed in critical condition.

Mr. Hancox's neighbors sound as feisty as he does.

Anyway, somewhere in this story there's a lesson or two for those, like Barak Obama, for instance, who would have made it illegal for Mr. Hancox to possess that weapon.

One lesson, perhaps, is that it's always better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

RLC

Church of Christ Without Christ

Damian Ference writes at First Things about the Church of Brunch. Ference tells us that The Church of Brunch is:

...a congregation of believers and atheists that leaves religion, deities, and dogma at the door and gather for a non-god-centered Sunday ceremony. Services begin an hour before noon as the community joins in song in order to stir fire into the hearts of the non-faithful. Any song will do so long as it is inspirational, nonreligious, and has the potential to invoke full, conscious, and active participation on the part of the assembly.

Here are some more excerpts:

Since this is an entirely nonreligious gathering, the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible are deemed offensive, but there is always a place for inspirational and thought-provoking readings.

Quiet contemplation comes next. After hearing the word and allowing it to be broken open within the community, silence is needed to allow the word to penetrate the hearts of the non-faithful.

Finally, the community is just about ready to approach the table of fellowship-but not until they first raise their heads and join together in a Johnny Cash number. Seeing that his most recent albums have been coated in religious imagery and metaphor, reaching back into the vault and flat-picking a hearty version of "Folsom Prison Blue" is deemed more appropriate. After the song, there is the traditional sign of peace, and then it's time to break bread.

There's nothing like singing "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die," sharing a sign of peace, and then sitting down to a vegan potluck with your brothers and sisters in Brunch.

Ference says that listening to a discussion of the Church of Brunch on NPR he thought of Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood in which the main character starts his own church called the Church of Christ Without Christ. Reading Ference's description of the Church I thought at first that he was describing a mainline protestant congregation.

RLC

Internecine Warfare

NewsMax e-mailed (no link) this piece of analysis by former Clinton advisor Dick Morris predicting an impending civil war in the Democratic party. It looks to Morris like the party is set to do the 1960's all over again:

Iraq is not the only place that is threatening to dissolve into the anarchy and bloodletting of a civil war. It's about to happen to the Democratic Party.

Reacting to Bush's planned "surge" in troop strength, the Democratic leaders in Congress, savoring their victory, are contemplating taking only symbolic steps to protest Bush's war policies, a timidity that will highly displease their leftist boosters.

The liberal activists who funded and impelled the Democratic victory in 2006 did not focus on winning a congressional majority so that it would take merely symbolic action. Symbolic action would have been appropriate for a minority party, but the backers of a party in the majority expect something more.

So the Democrats are about to form their customary firing squad - a circular one - and begin again the battles that ripped their party apart in the late 1960s. The battle lines are the same: The new left vs. the party establishment. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are about to squander their credibility with their supporters on the left by failing to cut back, or cut off entirely, funding for the war.

The Democratic Party's left wing is not to be trifled with. It is a massive force, fully mobilized, and led by aggressive online organizations such as Moveon.org. It has plenty of political leaders - like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry - who are more than willing to articulate fundamental differences with the party's congressional leadership and are not shy about doing so.

The congressional leaders' plan is to give Bush all the rope he needs to hang himself by increasing troop strength in Iraq. They are deeply skeptical about whether more soldiers will accomplish anything besides increasing casualties. But they are not about to take the rap in front of the American people for seeming to sell out our troops by cutting their funding and forcing the administration to retreat. Nor are they ready for a constitutional confrontation with the commander in chief over his wartime powers.

So, instead, they are going to hold hearings during which a parade of former generals will voice their misgivings and air their disagreements, past and present. It will be like one of Bob Woodward's books enacted on a congressional stage. But this theater is not going to appease the left.

They did not elect Democrats to Congress so they could hold hearings. They expect laws not shows. Their frustration will become increasingly apparent as the Cindy Sheehans of the world react to the increased troop commitment in Baghdad.

The left will launch campaigns of civil disobedience, public marches and protests, online petitions, and the like. It will be the 1960s all over again.

As long as the Democratic Party could be counted upon to represent the left on Iraq, protests against the war were channeled through the political process and were aimed at electing a Democratic Congress. But now that the Democratic leadership has, in the eyes of the leaders of the left, "betrayed" them, look for protest to overflow the bounds of partisan politics and go into the streets.

One can expect candidates in the Democratic primaries to run to the left seeking to capitalize on the frustration of peace activists at the passivity of the party's congressional leaders in the face of Bush's determination to add to troop strength committed to Iraq.

Moderate candidates like Barack Obama, John Edwards, and even Hillary Clinton may find themselves outflanked by those more willing to run to the left like Al Gore and John Kerry.

Until now, we have had a two-party system in our post 9/11 debates. Now a new entrant is in the field: the new left.

The result of the 1960's was that Democrats found themselves able to elect only two presidents (including Jimmy Carter who capitalized on the nation's ill-feeling about the Nixon years) in forty years. It will be interesting to see if the Democratic convention in Denver next year reprises the turbulence of Chicago in 1968.

RLC

Must-See TV

Yes, there are moderate Muslims. At least one accepts the theoretical possibility. But documentaries like this one which aired on British television cause one to wonder about the robustness of their numbers.

These really are disturbing videos. The sound in the first one may be out of synch, but, if so, stick with it and you'll get the gist of what's happening. This documentary is the sort of thing for which the term "must-see tv" was invented.

RLC

Jim Wallis on the Surge (Pt. II)

In this the second part of our look at Jim Wallis' response to Bush's proposal for an adjustment in our approach to Iraq, we'll examine Wallis' claim that the war in Iraq fails to meet the traditional criteria of a just war. Because the war is not just, in his reckoning, perpetuating it is therefore criminal.

Wallis writes:

There is absolutely no way that the American invasion of Iraq could be considered a "last resort" - one of the just war criteria. The inspections officers were working to find and contain any weapons of mass destruction Iraq might have had, and the Bush administration both misrepresented and manipulated the alleged threat from the weapons of mass destruction. The administration lied to start a war.

This is simply irresponsible of Wallis. The administration may have been mistaken about the WMD, but so was the entire rest of the world as well as the Clinton administration, all of whom believed Iraq had WMD. Our intelligence indicated they had them. Defectors claimed that he had them. Moreover, Saddam acted just as one would expect a man to act who was trying to hide the fact that he possessed those weapons. It's easy for arm-chair quarterbacks and people who harbor ill-will toward the president to say in hindsight that Bush lied, but it's incumbent on the one who makes that allegation to offer evidence that the president knew that Saddam didn't have WMD but deliberately led us to believe that he did. Wallis finds this simple courtesy too much to ask and offers nothing to substantiate the claim that the president deliberately deceived the American congress (who had access to the same intelligence the president did) and the American people.

Let us suppose, that a president has all the same facts at his disposal that Bush did - the testimony of defectors, the consensus of the world's intelligence community, the current and past behavior of Saddam, and so on. Suppose this president fears that Saddam is hiding his WMD program, but he lacks absolute proof. So he does not act. Subsequently, a WMD, traceable to Iraq, is unleashed on America. What would the Wallis' of the world say then? That the president did the right thing by ignoring all the evidence and refusing to assume the worst? That the president did the right thing by giving a known liar and mass murderer the benefit of the doubt? I don't think that's what they would say. I think they would demand that that president go down in history as having been criminally negligent in performing the duties of his office - and they'd be right to do so.

Wallis continues:

Over time, the brutal Saddam Hussein could have been isolated, undermined, and overthrown (a very worthy goal) from pressures internal and external, and serious proposals were on the table to do just that when Bush went to war. Instead, we bombed the children of Baghdad and then allowed the country to slide into bloody chaos.

Unfortunately, Wallis doesn't tell us what these serious proposals were or what they involved. We're just left to take his word that they existed and that they were feasible. If he wants us to grant him credibility on this he'll have to tell us what those alternatives were. I'm certainly not aware of any, and I don't think he is either.

Next he asserts that:

There was never adequate "authority" to wage this war (another criterion) - the United Nations, NATO, and the vast majority of the world's people and nations were against it. Only Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair thought this was a good idea, and their political legacies will be forever shaped by the worst foreign policy decision either country has made in decades.

Surely Wallis understands that the United States is a sovereign nation. It has the right and the authority to wage war when it feels threatened whether other nations join it in that endeavor or not. Just war theory states that war can only justly be waged by the proper authority, meaning the legitimate government of the nation. It doesn't mean that we must subordinate our sovereignty to a collection of tyrants, thugs, and corrupt nations whose foreign policy vis a vis Iraq was more profoundly shaped by the illegal profits they were making from Saddam than with any desire to do the "right" thing.

Wallis goes on to claim that:

Iraq also failed the tests of "proportionality" and "discrimination" with all the societal damage it was likely to cause (and has): the horrible number of innocents that have been lost through the tactics of "shock and awe," the resulting insurgency against American occupation, and now the civil war that has turned into ethnic cleansing.

Wallis must know that our military fought the most proportional and discriminating war in history in Iraq. If Wallis is correct that we failed to meet these criteria in Iraq then no war ever has been a just war and invoking just war criteria to criticize Operation Iraqi Freedom is disingenuous.

There was no carpet bombing. Mosques and cemetaries were safe havens. Soldiers often held their fire and put their own lives at risk rather than jeopardize civilians. As for the resulting insurgency and civil war, it is perverse to blame that on the U.S. rather than on the people responsible for it. Moreover, if, as Wallis wants, the U.S. were to pull out of Iraq now, the number of deaths would far exceed the carnage we see in that country today.

Wallis goes on to say that:

There was never an "imminent threat" from Saddam, there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 (as we were told), and Bush's war in Iraq was not a central front in the international campaign against terrorism, but rather has turned out to be a serious distraction from it (though the war itself has now transformed Iraq into a haven and school for terrorism).

No one in the administration as, far as I'm aware, ever made a case that Iraq was an "imminent threat" so it is deceptive of Wallis to put the words in quotes as if he were quoting the administration. Nor did anyone argue that there was a connection between Saddam and the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attack. The administration did claim that there was a connection between Saddam and Islamic terrorists and this connection is beyond dispute.

The war in Iraq was unjust; to continue it now is criminal, Wallis concludes, as if fighting to keep a nation from spiralling into a bloodbath and a humanitarian crisis of perhaps unprecedented proportions is a crime.

Wallis the pacifist assumes the role of military expert by warning that Bush's efforts in Iraq have distracted us from the real war against terrorists. He knows, somehow, that we have left ourselves vulnerable by diverting resources to Iraq. He says this notwithstanding the fact that there has been no successful terrorist attack on our soil since hostilities began against Afghanistan five years ago. One might ask Wallis what metric he is employing to assess our vulnerability. What information does he have that warrants this gloomy assessment?

In pondering all the things he says about which he could well be mistaken (and probably is) one wonders: If he is in fact wrong about anything in what he writes, does that make him a liar?

RLC

We Don't Need Another Hero

Sometimes it just seems that the political left is inordinately populated with people who haven't yet grown up and who still display the childish look-at-me narcissism and crudities associated with juveniles. A good example of this arrested development is freshman Wisconsin congressman Steve Kagen who regaled his admirers recently with this account of his bold and audacious exploits in the White House. Mr. Kagen, in his telling of the tale, is quite a hero:

While meeting last month with a group of area peace activists, then Congressman-elect Steve Kagen told a story of his first visit to the White House that shows a feisty and humorous side to our new man in Congress. He told the group one of the first lessons he learned in Washington is to never pass up a rest room because you don't know when you'll see one again.

He'd already had a long day of freshman orientation when he and his wife, Gail, were expected at the White House. Upon arrival, he asks a Marine where he can find a rest room, and is sent down a long flight of stairs, to another Marine, who directs him to a rest room.

"It's a small room �- two spots on the wall, one stall one sink. I see in the mirror the door opens, and who walks in, Karl Rove (Bush's deputy chief of staff who was charged with orchestrating strategies for the 2006 general election)."

After Rove washed his hands ("At least he's a hand washer," Kagen said), he attempted to leave, but Kagen prevented his departure by holding the door closed and said, "You're in the White House and you think your safe, huh? You recognize me? My name's Dr. Multimillionaire and I kicked your ass."

Kagen expected to make Rove squirm, but said he acted like it was a tennis match and simply said, 'Oh, congratulations.'

"We're walking up these long steps, I stopped him and said, 'Look, the race is over. We're here to do the people's business. I want you to join me on something, but you can't steal it, I've got the trademark, 'No patient left behind.' He goes, 'I like the sound of that.' We get to the top of the steps and there's Vice President Cheney with a glass of white wine and a hand in his pocket. So I wasn't going to miss this opportunity. Gail wasn't there to hold me back. 'Mr. Vice President, thank you for your service to the nation, and thank you so much for coming to Green Bay and campaigning against me. I couldn't have won without your help.'

He then asked Cheney to enunciate his vision for Iraq.

" 'Well, I'd like to see a stable government that could take care of itself and its people.' I said, 'at what price?' He said, 'I don't understand your point.' I walked away. Then we had an opportunity to take a picture with the president and his wife. I was feeling real good at this point.

"I said to my wife, 'Honey, just follow my lead.' She said, 'Steven, it's the president.' I said, 'Yeah, but he's not any taller than I am.' So the cameraman's here. We're introduced by a Marine. I said, 'Mr. President , thank you for coming to Green Bay. My name is Dr. Multimillionaire. That was before the race. Now they call me Doctor Thousandaire. I couldn't have won without you coming.'"

He said Bush gave one of his smiles and said, 'I've lost a lot of money in my life, too.' Then I go to his wife, 'Hi Barbara, how are ya?' I did that because I learned on the campaign that the meanest thing you can say to another gentlemen is, 'he's a fine fellow,' and you then refer to his spouse by a different name."

Expect this side of Kagen to show up when he appears on the "Colbert Report" in February.

So, this is what passes for humor in liberal precincts. It had us in stitches as we read it. It seems that all the class in this story was exhibited by Rove, Cheney, and Bush. Apparently there was none left over for the intrepid Dr. Multimillionaire.

UPDATE: Now it's looking as if Dr. Multimillionaire made the whole thing up. What a guy. Here's our advice to Dr. Kagen: Don't go on the Colbert show in February.

RLC

DNA

Here's a great video at Telic Thoughts that gives a molecule-eye view of DNA packaging and replication. The processes are truly astonishing. Please resist the temptation to think that what you see is all a product of intentional design by an intelligent designer. We know that the appearance of design is purely an illusion and that natural forces acting blindly managed to engineer...oops..., design...oops..., evolve this apparatus completely by accident. We know this because we know there is no intelligent designer, and we know there's no intelligent designer because we can't find an example of something in the natural world that's intelligently designed. Or something like that.

RLC

I Have a Dream

There have been many great speeches given throughout our history. Washington's Farewell, Lincoln's Second Inaugural and Gettysburg Address certainly come to mind, but none surpasses Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963.

I can think of no better way to honor King's memory than to listen to that speech today.

It should be said, too, that it is a shame that we honor the man with a holiday but disregard much of what he said in this speech. His hope that one day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, seemed to have died with him, having given way to the racial politics and preferences of the next twenty five years.

At any rate, set aside some time today to listen to King's words, the eloquence with which he delivers them, and the power of their truth.

The speech can be both read and heard here.

RLC

Jimmy, We Hardly Knew Ye

Alan Dershowitz claims that Jimmy Carter has been bought and paid for by Arab money, a specially ironic allegation given that Carter has made similar allegations about the American media being heavily influenced toward pro-Israeli positions by their Jewish bosses. Here's Dershowitz's key passage:

At the bottom, Carter is saying that no objective journalist or politician could actually believe that America's support for Israel is based on moral and strategic considerations and not on their own financial self-interest. Such a charge is so insulting to every honest legislator and journalist in this country that I am amazed that Carter has been let off the hook so easily. Only the self-righteous Jimmy Carter is capable of telling the truth, because only he is free of financial pressures that might influence his positions.

It now turns out that the shoe is precisely on the other foot. Recent disclosures prove that it is Carter who has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money.

Journalist Jacob Laksin has documented the tens of millions of dollars that the Carter Center has accepted from Saudi Arabian royalty and assorted other Middle Eastern sultans, who, in return, Carter dutifully praised as peaceful and tolerant (no matter how despotic the regime). And these are only the confirmed, public donations.

Carter has also accepted half a million dollars and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, saying in 2001: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed's rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed's personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who "were the people who killed the Jews in Europe" during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11.

Another journalist, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in a thorough and devastating article on "Carter's Arab Financiers," meticulously catalogues Carter's ties to Arab moneymen, from a Saudi bailout of his peanut farm in 1976, to funding for Carter's presidential library, to continued support for all manner of Carter's post-presidential activities. For instance, it was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded in Pakistan and fronted by a Saudi billionaire, Gaith Pharaon, that helped Carter start up his beloved Carter Center.

Read the rest at the link, but be warned - it does not flatter the former president.

Meanwhile, fourteen members of the advisory board of the Carter Center resigned the other day because of what they called Carter's "malicious advocacy." In their letter they state that: "We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support. Therefore it is with sadness and regret that we hereby tender our resignation from the Board of Councilors of the Carter Center effective immediately."

Tragically, Carter, who I persist in thinking is basically a good man, may exceed Nixon and Clinton in the amount of embarrassment and disgrace he ultimately brings upon himself. The difference is that they did it while still in office.

RLC

Martin Luther King

It's hard, I think, to read Martin Luther King's Letter From a Birmingham City Jail without arriving at the conclusion that King was inspired by his understanding that the Christian Gospel demands that we do justice to our fellow man. His Christian faith permeated and informed his political thinking, and it would be good for those who argue that religion has no place in the public sphere to reflect on that fact as we observe Martin Luther King Day today.

RLC

What's Up With That?

Hmmm. President Bush and his associates warn Iran against meddling in Iraq and threaten to stop the flow of men and weapons from Iran and now DebkaFile is reporting unexplained explosions in Iranian cities. Could be nothing, of course.

RLC

Ten Myths About Atheism (Pt. IV)

Anti-theist Sam Harris, in an article at Edge, attempts to refute what he takes to be ten popular myths about atheism. We've been arguing that so far each of his refutations has failed. Number four does not reverse this unfortunate trend. Harris claims that the following is untrue:

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.

The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.

Harris starts out denying the "myth" and winds up confirming it by what he says about evolution. But let's begin not with living things but with the physical structure of the universe itself. Evolutionary selection pressures are irrelevant to the type of universe ours is. There are two fundamental possibilities: Either the universe is the intentional product of an intelligent creator or it is not. If it is not, then its existence is a purely chance event and its structure, as improbable as it is, is also a product of sheer happenstance.

The same is true of the origin of the first life. Darwinian selection acts only on reproducing populations of organisms and would not have been a factor in the emergence of the first "self-replicating" molecules. The chemical combinations that had to occur to create the molecules necessary for life were either intentionally orchestrated or they were completely serendipitous.

Once these molecules had been organized into reproducing protocells natural selection might have acted, but in order to rise above the level of a protocell some form of mutation had to be introduced into the replicating material. The mutation may have conferred a survival advantage and thus the evolution of the new population containing the mutation could have been "directed" by an environment which selects for survivability. But this doesn't help Harris' case. The mutation itself is a random event, indeed Harris refers to mutations as "chance" events above, and without these random, or chance, events natural selection has no genetic novelty upon which to work. In other words, evolutionary progression and diversity are contingent upon an event, genetic mutation, whose occurence is completely random.

So when Harris asserts that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world are not products of mere chance he is incorrect. What he really should say is that diversity and complexity are not solely the products of mere chance, but they are the products of chance. To the extent that genetic mutation plays a role in the Neo-Darwinian scheme, living things certainly are the product of random, serendipitous, stochastic events.

Thus, Harris misleads us when he denies that atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance. They most certainly do, unless they adopt the kind of strong deterministic position (which Harris doesn't discuss) which says that given the original conditions of the Big Bang everything in our universe had to be just the way it is. But Harris, for good reasons, doesn't mention this alternative so neither will we elaborate on it.

Check out our comments on myths 1 through 3 here, here, and here.

RLC

Prayer Warriors

Here are some passages about some guys that are almost certain to cause the Christian reader to pause and ponder their own faith and prayer life.

George Mueller
Just as God gave the apostle Paul as an example in his prayer life for Christians of all time, so he has also given George Mueller in these latter days as a proof to his church how literally and wonderfully he still always hears prayer. It is not only that he gave him in his lifetime over a million pounds sterling to support his orphanages, but Mr Mueller also stated that he believed that the Lord had given him more than thirty thousand souls in answer to prayer. And that not only from among orphans, but also many others for whom he (in some cases for fifty years) had prayed faithfully every day, in the firm faith that they would be saved. When he was asked on what ground he so firmly believed this, his answer was: 'There are five conditions which I always endeavour to fulfill, in observing which I have the assurance of answer to my prayer:

1. I have not the least doubt because I am assured that it is the Lord's will to save them, for he willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (see 1 Tim. 2.4); and we have the assurance 'that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us' (1 John 5.14).
2. I have never pleaded for their salvation in my own name, but in the blessed name of my precious Lord Jesus, and on his merits alone (see John 14.14).
3. I always firmly believed in the willingness of God to hear my prayers (see Mark 11.24).
4. I am not conscious of having yielded to any sin, for 'if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me' when I call (Ps. 66.18).
5. I have persevered in believing prayer for more than fiftytwo years for some, and shall continue till the answer comes: 'Shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him?' (Luke 18.7).

Take these thoughts into your hearts and practice prayer according to these rules. Let prayer be not only the utterance of your desires, but a fellowship with God, till we know by faith that our prayer is heard. The way George Mueller walked is the new and living way to the throne of grace, which is open for us all.

Hudson Taylor
When Hudson Taylor, as a young man, had given himself over unreservedly to the Lord, there came to him a strong conviction that God would send him to China. He had read of George Mueller and how God had answered his prayers for his own support and that of his orphans, and he began to ask the Lord to teach him also so to trust him. He felt that if he would go to China with such faith, he must first begin to live by faith in England. He asked the Lord to enable him to do this. He had a position as a doctor's dispenser, and asked God to help him not to ask for his salary, but to leave it to God to move the heart of the doctor to pay him at the right time. The doctor was a good-hearted man, but very irregular in payment. This cost Taylor much trouble and struggle in prayer because he believed, as did George Mueller, that the word, 'Owe no man any thing' (Rom. 13.8), was to be taken literally, and that debt should not be incurred.

So he learned the great lesson to move men through God - a thought of deep meaning, which later on became an unspeakably great blessing to him in his work in China. He relied on that - in the conversion of the Chinese, in the awakening of Christians to give money for the support of the work, in the finding of suitable missionaries who would hold as faith's rule of conduct that we should make our desires known to God in prayer and then rely on God to move men to do what he would have done.

After he had been for some years in China, he prayed that God would give twenty-four missionaries, two for each of the eleven provinces and Mongolia, each with millions of souls and with no missionary. God did it. But there was no society to send them out. He had indeed learned to trust God for his own support, but he dared not take upon himself the responsibility of the twentyfour, if possibly they had not sufficient faith. This cost him severe conflict, and he became very ill under it, till at last he saw that God could as easily care for the twenty-four as for himself. He undertook it in a glad faith. And so God led him, through many severe trials of faith, to trust him fully. Now these twenty-four have increased, in course of time, to a thousand missionaries who rely wholly on God for support. Other missionary societies have acknowledged how much they have learned from Hudson Taylor, as a man who stated and obeyed this law. Faith may rely on God to move men to do what his children have asked of him in prayer.

Read the book, Hudson Taylor's Early Years by Dr and Mrs Howard Taylor. There will be found in it a treasure of spiritual thought and experience concerning a close walk with God in the inner chamber and in mission work.

- The Prayer Life by Andrew Murray

Gerhard Tersteegen
Gerhard Tersteegen had from his youth sought and served the Lord. After a time the sense of God's grace was withdrawn from him, and for five long years he was as one far away on the great sea, where neither sun nor stars appear. `But my hope was in Jesus.'All at once a light broke on him that never went out, and he wrote, with blood drawn from his veins, that letter to the Lord Jesus in which he said: `From this evening to all eternity, Thy will, not mine be done. Command and rule and reign in me. I yield up myself without reserve, and I promise, with Thy help and power, rather to give up the last drop of my blood than knowingly or willingly be untrue or disobedient to Thee.'

That was his obedience unto death. Set your heart upon it, and expect it. The same God lives still. Set your hope on Him; He will do it.

- The School of Obedience by Andrew Murray

What the Iraqis Want

True or False: The Iraqis want the coalition forces out of Iraq now. For the answer go here.

True or False: Iraq's Arab neighbors want the coalition forces out of Iraq now. For the answer go here.

The genuine fears of the people whose lives are placed in jeopardy if the Democrats have their way in Washington are apparently of secondary concern to the leaders of the Democrat party and various other anti-war spokespersons around the country who insist we withdraw regardless of the consequences. It doesn't matter that our presence is the only hope the Iraqi people have of ever achieving a secure future for their children. For some reason, never very clearly or cogently articulated, that doesn't enter into the rhetoric of those who want to get out as soon as possible.

The demands for immediate withdrawal remind me of a letter written by the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Sirik Matak, back in the 1970s. The Democratic congress had decided to abandon Southeast Asia to the communists by cutting off funding for the war, just as Democrats are talking about doing today. The American ambassador to Cambodia offered Matik the opportunity to escape. Matik replied in words that should be engraved in a monument and placed on the floor of both houses of congress: "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular, for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty." Matik remained in Phnom Penh and was brutally murdered, along with a quarter of the country's population, by the Khmer Rouge.

This young Iraqi, photographed by Michelle Malkin in Iraq, speaks for millions of Iraqis and Arabs who know full well that if the U.S. leaves before Iraq is self-reliant it'll only result in war, pestilence, famine, mass murder and torture throughout the region:

See Michelle's blog for an explanation of this pic and more photos from her ongoing embed with the troops in Baghdad.

RLC

Wallis on the Surge (Pt. I)

Jim Wallis of Sojourners seems to be growing increasingly nastier and strident in his political rhetoric, and in this piece I think he says some things which are really quite indefensible. He writes, for example, that:

Bush stubbornly believes that military solutions are always the best answer, and consistently chooses war over politics. But without a political solution in Iraq, no escalation of the war will succeed. Whether in Iraq, or even in the larger war on terrorism, Bush believes, as he said again last night, that we are in a great "ideological struggle" between us and them, good and evil - and that only military solutions against "them" will suffice. Both wisdom and humility (two religious virtues) suggest that political and diplomatic resolutions to conflict are ultimately required. But last night, Bush again chose the primacy of military solutions.

This is such a distortion of the President's words and actions that I have to fight the temptation to think Wallis is deliberately misrepresentating the facts.

First, what has the president ever said or done that justifies Wallis' claim that he believes military solutions are "always the best answer," and how does Wallis conclude that Bush "consistently chooses war over politics"? Wallis has to ignore the entire history of our involvement with Iraq from 1990 on in order to say such things. The fact is that Bush only chose war after Iraq continued to violate one U.N. resolution after another, after they tried to assassinate an American president, after they repeatedly fired on our aircraft in violation of the terms of the cease-fire, after they committed mass murder against both Shia and the Kurds, and after they refused to give our weapons inspectors full cooperation, and gave every impression that they were trying to hide illegal weapons.

Second, when did Bush say that "only" military solutions would succeed in Iraq? He's never said that. He's spent the last three years trying to make political solutions work in Baghdad and when they came up short, and force became necessary, Wallis accuses him of only wanting to use force. Of course politics and diplomacy must be implemented, and they have been, but this is not an either/or strategy. There has to be diplomacy and there has to be force to back it up. Otherwise, diplomacy will never work. Wallis seems to think that diplomacy and military force are mutually exclusive so that if we employ one we cannot, and must not, employ the other.

Wallis then quotes an American soldier who is reluctant to go back to Iraq as if to demonstrate that even the military has given up on the war.

"I don't want to die over there; I don't think it's worth it," said one American serviceman who was interviewed this morning about the president's new plan. He and his new wife had a new baby just five days ago, but now he has been ordered back to Iraq. He named several of his friends who have new wives and babies on the way, who will now also be sent back.

Yes. Our soldiers are giving up on the war. That's why enlistments and re-enlistments are higher than ever. That's why the one segment of our population that is most supportive of what we are doing in Iraq are military personnel and their families. That's why Bush consistently gets standing ovations when he addresses military audiences. That's why the one segment of our population that least wants us to cut and run is the military. Wallis ferrets out one or two soldiers who are a little less than gung-ho and offers them up to us as if they are representative of the military as a whole. I'm sure he could have found soldiers in every war we've ever fought who felt the same way as the serviceman he quotes above, but it means nothing.

He goes on in his article to contend that the Iraq war fails to meet the traditional criteria of a just war, and, in the process, makes some very questionable, and very disappointing, assertions. In a day or two we'll consider this part of his argument.

RLC

Boxer's Blunder

It's not often that I agree with Andrew Sullivan, but I do on the stupidity of Senator Barbara Boxer's questioning of Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice the other day. I wouldn't, though, call it "vile" as Sullivan does, it was just dumb. I can't do better than one of Sullivan's readers does in explaining why:

Reasonable counter argument? Man this is easy. OK, here we go, so all of you out there put down the bong and try to follow. Your reader wrote about the "human element" of watching your child go off to war and how that is relevant to governmental policy decisions. Fair enough. Then should any elected official have a say in public education if their children go to private school? How many of these phony Democrats who are "for the little guy" actually educate their children in the public schools they purport to believe in? Hello, Kerry, Edwards, Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, Clinton, et al?

Or should any of them have a say in welfare policy? How many actually are punitively subjected to the ravages of a bunch of lazy malcontents sitting around their neighborhoods while they go to work at low paying jobs that disqualify them from receiving public entitlements (but yet have to live with the crime and nonsense that goes with the neighborhoods where such conditions exist). This is fun!!! Want some more? OK. Why should any elected official get to have a say or vote on immigration and border enforcement issues if they don't reside in the border states where the destruction of open borders have made regions of the US almost unidentifiable as America anymore. This is the kind of logic I have to debate?

Be honest Andrew. Liberalism is all about feelings and intent, not actual facts and results.

We might add that according to Ms Boxer's logic no one in the administration or congress who has children who are not in the military or not in the war zone should be permitted to make any policy that might jeopardize the lives of those who are. I'm sure that if Ms Boxer had a chance to reflect upon her words she'd want to retract them for they certainly don't reflect well on the wisdom of those who voted her into office.

RLC

Free Will

There's an article by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times on the question of free will and determinism, and Joe Carter, who tips us to the piece, has an interesting discussion of it at Evangelical Outpost. Most interesting are the exchanges with some of his critical readers in the comment section. Check it out.

The question of volitional freedom is important inasmuch as we have to at least assume we are in some sense free if we wish to hold on to a belief in personal moral accountability. If all of our decisions, particularly our moral decisions, are somehow the inevitable product of forces and influences which have acted upon us from before the time we were born then we are nothing more than machines and we bear no more responsibility for those choices than a computer bears for the "choices" it appears to make.

To say that we're free is to say that at any given moment there are at least two genuinely possible futures. If, however, our choices are the product of physical necessity then there can really only be one possible future and the sense that we have a real choice is an illusion. On the other hand, the concept of a free moral choice is difficult to formulate. A free choice cannot simply be something that happens spontaneously. It must somehow be a product of our character and our beliefs, otherwise it would not really be our choice, we would not really be the responsible agent for it. It would just be a random event.

But if the choice is the product of our character and if those virtues which comprise our character have been shaped by those forces and influences that have acted upon us throughout our lives, then how do we escape the conclusion that ultimately the choice we made was, in fact, determined?

It seems that both total freedom and total determinism are incompatible with moral responsibility. Only if there is something about us, like a mind or a soul, that is non-physical and which contributes to our choosings without itself having been programmed by nature can we escape the conclusion that we are merely flesh and bone machines.

Put differently, even though it is difficult to conceptualize the kind of freedom we must have to be morally accountable for what we do, if determinism is true there really is no such thing as morality at all. That is, there is no truth value to claims that we should behave in certain ways, that certain behaviors are right and others are wrong. Words like should and ought only have meaning if there are genuine alternatives involved. Right and wrong only have meaning if there is a genuine choice. Otherwise, a man who wantonly harms another is no more guilty of a moral breach than is a Tourette's sufferer who unwillingly but invariably blurts out obscenities.

So, either morality really exists and we are indeed accountable for what we do, or there is no moral right and wrong and what we do has no moral significance. The only reason we could have for believing the former is a prior belief that there exists a personal God who has woven right and wrong into the fabric of the cosmos and who confers upon us the ability to make genuine moral choices. Even if we cannot explain how we are free, we can, based on our belief in God, maintain that we must, in some sense, be free.

On the other hand, if we are atheistic materialists who hold that there is no personal deity, that there's only matter and energy, then we have no reason whatsoever to persist in the belief that morality is any less illusory than a mirage or a hallucination. Our choices are merely chemical reactions occuring in the brain and those reactions were ineluctably foreordained by the conditions existing at the instant of the Big Bang. For the materialist right and wrong are purely arbitrary conventions based upon subjective preferences and no obligation to observe those conventions can possibly bind us. This is the theme that Dostoyevsky comes back to over and over again in his novels - "if God is dead, then everything is permitted."

If one believes in morality, moral responsibility, and free will then one should be a theist, and if one is not a theist one should, it seems to me, be a determinist and, consequently, a moral nihilist. It is a peculiarity of the contemporary theism/atheism debate that atheists, who should logically be determinists who believe that no one freely chooses what they do and that no one is therefore truly responsible for their choices, actually fault theists for choosing to believe in God.

Our conviction that we are free only makes sense, it can only be an accurate belief about the way things really are, if there is a God. To quote the rock group Rush - I will choose free will.

RLC

Iraqi Army Goes on Offense

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail updates us on the new offensive by Iraqi forces seeking to secure Baghdad:

As the United States prepares to 'surge' more troops in Iraq, about 20,000 to 30,000 American soldiers and Marines according to most press accounts, the Iraqi government announced over the weekend it was conducting its own operation to secure the city. The targets of the Iraqi led operation are said to be both Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. "Military commanders said operations against the al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in its Sadr City stronghold would be left largely to a joint force made up of U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi Special Operations Command division under Brig. Gen. Fadhil Birwari, a Kurd," the Associated Press reported. "Soldiers in the division are a mixture of Kurds and Arabs from both the Sunni and Shiite sects." Over 20,000 Iraqi Army soldiers are said to be participating in the operation.

The Iraqi Army then immediately launched a major operation in the Sunni-dominated Haifa neighborhood, where Sunni insurgents have a safe haven. Thirty insurgents were killed in the operation, including five Sudanese. These were very likely al-Qaeda. Iraqi police have begun to operate in Haifa just recently and are conducting operations with the Iraqi Army.

Today, major fighting again broke out in the Haifa neighborhood after insurgents struck Iraqi Army checkpoints. "Iraqi soldiers appealed to the U.S. military for help," reports the Associated Press. "American forces sealed off roads and joined Iraqi troops in raiding houses in pursuit of the gunmen." U.S. aircraft and helicopters were circling the neighborhood in support of the fighting on the ground. Fifty insurgents were killed in the fighting and 21 captured, Those captured included 7 foreigners, including three Syrians - and one Sudanese. Again these are al-Qaeda. An al-Qaeda cell leader was also captured in southern Baghdad over the weekend.

Read the rest at the link.

RLC

Bad News

Those of you who have been enjoying the mild winter we've been having are evidently in for a major disappointment:

The unseasonably warm winter experienced by much of the country is likely to "turn on a dime," in the words of AccuWeather.com Chief Long-Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi.

Bastardi said that the weather pattern from mid-January through mid-February has a chance to mimic the winters of 1965-66 and 1957-58, each of which ended cold and stormy after a warm start. A worst-case scenario would be if this winter plays out as did the winter of 1977-1978.

Similar to this year, 1977-1978 was a winter with a waning El Nino. After a tepid start, the second half of the winter was noted for its cold and remarkable storminess, including back-to-back-to-back blizzards in the Northeast.

"Those who think that winter 2006-2007 is going to remain mild are in for a shock," said Bastardi. "Winter is likely to come with a vengeance. A week from now, we'll start seeing truly cold air across much of the country, and we expect this change to last."

It was nice while it lasted.

RLC

In Denial

Robert Samuelson summarizes the ugly facts about the future of social security:

It's no secret that the 65-and-over population will double by 2030 (to almost 72 million, or 20 percent of total), but hardly anyone wants to face the realistic implications:

-- By comparison, other budget issues, including the notorious "earmarks,'' are trivial. In 2005, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (the main programs for the elderly) cost $1.034 trillion, twice the amount of defense spending and more than two-fifths of the total federal budget. By 2030, these programs are projected to equal about three-quarters of the present budget, if it remains constant as a share of national income.

-- Preserving present retirement benefits automatically imposes huge costs on the young -- costs that are economically unsound and socially unjust. The tax increases required by 2030 could hit 50 percent, if other spending is maintained as a share of national income. Or much of the rest of government would have to be shut or crippled. Or budget deficits would balloon to quadruple today's level.

-- Social Security and Medicare benefits must be cut to keep down overall costs. Yes, some taxes will be raised and some other spending cut. But much of the adjustment should come from increasing eligibility ages (ultimately to 70) and curbing payments to wealthier retirees. Americans live longer and are healthier. They can work longer and save more for retirement.

There's more at the link. It is a shame that when Bush proposed a solution to the looming crisis a couple of years back, the Democrats fought him hard on it and the Republicans simply waffled. Bush shrugged, and nothing got accomplished, but the day of reckoning continues to draw closer.

Now that the Democrats control both houses of congress we can be sure they'll come up with a plan to avert the crisis.

RLC

The Speech

The only problem, in my opinion, with the President's speech last night was that it came last night and not last year. Better late than never, I guess. It seems hard to argue with what he said and what proposed, but I'm sure some will carp at it anyway. The President is right. The consequences of an American failure would be catastrophic for the world and an American success in Iraq would be an enormous benefit for the entire world. Here are some key passages from the speech in case you missed it:

Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents - but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods - and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people - and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend 10 billion dollars of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity - and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States - and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq's borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America's efforts in Baghdad - or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale.

A couple of things jump out at the reader. First, "Mookie" al-Sadr and his merry band of thugs is no longer off-limits. This is wonderful news for everyone except the Shia death squads. Second, Iran and Syria can expect regular visits from the U.S. military. This is also heart-warming news. If we're going to send our young men and women abroad to risk their lives we have a moral obligation to do everything we can to see that they make it home in one piece. To treat Iran and Syria as insurgent sanctuaries is to fail in that obligation. It also guarantees that we'll never succeed in Iraq.

Like a football coach who makes halftime adjustments to unexpected tactics employed by his opponent, Bush is making some much needed changes to meet the challenges we're facing in Iraq. It's too bad he waited as long as he did, but now that he's making them, all Americans should join together in hoping and praying that he succeeds.

RLC

Majestic

Each of these pillars of dust and hydrogen gas are so vast that they would dwarf our sun. It is in the interiors of such enormous concentrations of hydrogen that astronomers believe stars are formed:

The photo was taken by the Hubble Space telescope.

RLC

Amazing Behavior

Dave Scot at Uncommon Descent introduces us to the Emerald Cockroach Wasp and tells us how it gets on in life. As you read this, which you really must, just for laughs try to imagine someone trying to convince you that there is a perfectly plausible, purely mechanistic explanation for how the wasp's behavior came to be:

The emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa, also known as the jewel wasp) is a parasitoid wasp of the family Ampulicidae. It is known for its reproductive behavior, which involves using a live cockroach (specificially a Periplaneta americana) as a host for its larva. A number of other venomous animals which use live food for their larvae paralyze their prey. Unlike them, Ampulex compressa initially leaves the cockroach mobile, but modifies its behaviour in a unique way.

As early as the 1940s it was published that wasps of this species sting a roach twice, which modifies the behavior of the prey. A recent study using radioactive labeling proved that the wasp stings precisely into specific ganglia. Ampulex compressa delivers an initial sting to a thoracic ganglion of a cockroach to mildly paralyze the front legs of the insect. This facilitates the second sting at a carefully chosen spot in the cockroach's head ganglia (brain), in the section that controls the escape reflex. As a result of this sting, the cockroach will now fail to produce normal escape responses.

The wasp, which is too small to carry the cockroach, then drives the victim to the wasp's den, by pulling one of the cockroach's antennae in a manner similar to a leash. Once they reach the den, the wasp lays an egg on the cockroach's abdomen and proceeds to fill in the den's entrance with pebbles, more to keep other predators out than to keep the cockroach in.

The stung cockroach, its escape reflex disabled, will simply rest in the den as the wasp's egg hatches. A hatched larva chews its way into the abdomen of the cockroach and proceeds to live as an endoparasitoid. Over a period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the cockroach's internal organs in an order which guarantees that the cockroach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage and forms a cocoon inside the cockroach's body. After about four weeks, the fully-grown wasp will emerge from the cockroach's body to begin its adult life.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the preceding account.

We are confronted here with two alternatives: Either every step of this behaviour was solely the product of perhaps dozens of chance mutations at just the right place in the genome and in just the right order - and that the individuals that had those mutations bestowed upon them fortuitously survived to reproduce - or we can believe that whether mutations and natural selection were involved or not, there must have been some intentionality behind the development of this sequence of behaviors. In other words, whatever the physical processes at work in generating such an astonishing program in the brain of an insect, they were not, by themselves, sufficient to produce that program. The wasp's behavior also requires a mind to account for how it could have arisen in the first place.

Those are the two choices. And the Darwinians, who opt for the first alternative, scoff at those who think a mind must be behind this insect's behavior. Belief in a Designer, they say, is based on a fairy tale. Believing in an Architect of insect behavior is too incredible, they aver. As if the option they embrace were not.

RLC

Ten Myths About Atheism (Pt. III)

The third alleged myth in our series (See pt. I and pt. II) on Sam Harris' Ten Myths About Atheism is, he writes, the incorrect belief that Atheism is dogmatic. He goes on to explain:

Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

It's not clear to me what Harris' explanation has to do with the assertion that atheism is dogmatic, but if the reason an atheist rejects the existence of God is because he rejects the doctrine of Divine inspiration of the Bible (or Koran) then the poor fellow seems to have gotten things backwards. Believers don't base their belief in God upon their belief that the Bible is God's word, rather their belief that it's God's word is based on their belief that God exists. Belief in God's existence is prior to belief in the trustworthiness of the Bible. Even were the Bible proven to be a completely human artifact that would demonstrate nothing with regard to whether God exists.

If Harris is going to deny the existence of God he has to show that the classical reasons for believing in God are all false and this arduous feat he wisely does not attempt. The most that Harris can say, it seems to me, is that, for him, the arguments for God's existence are not compelling, and thus, although such a being as God may exist, he personally is not convinced of it.

For New Atheists like Harris, however, this is simply too tepid. What they believe is not just that God may not exist, they assert that, in fact, He does not exist, and they hold anyone who believes He does to be intellectually defective. That seems pretty dogmatic to me.

RLC

Lost Script

"The average words heard per hour are 2,150 for a professor's children and 1,250 for working-class children in homes with parents. But children of single mothers on welfare hear their mother use only 620 words per hour, according to Ms. Hymowitz. These children find it particularly difficult to thrive in a knowledge-based society. They rarely learn the art of conversation. And conversation, Thomas Aquinas once wrote, is what constitutes civilization. If the church recovers the four-chapter "script" she might once again connect marriage to child rearing; along with playing a part in shaping society."

Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute talking about the tragedy of young American parents who have lost the connection between child-rearing and marriage.

RLC

Civil Debate

No wonder it's taking so long to get things right in Iraq. This exchange on al-Jazeera is probably being duplicated everyday in the halls of the Iraqi parliament.

HT: Allahpundit

RLC

Fighting al-Qaeda in Somalia

An AC-130 gunship was called in to put an end (hopefully) to the terrors inflicted on Americans and Africans by some very bad men. CBS News has the story. Here's part of it:

The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa.... Those terror attacks killed more than 200 people.

The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no confirmation of the identities.

The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia ... where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.

Once they started moving, the al Qaeda operatives became easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command.

If the attack got the operatives it was aimed at ... it would deal a major blow to al Qaeda in East Africa.

Michelle Malkin has background on the Americans and others killed in the attacks perpetrated by the terrorists targeted of the gunship.

RLC

Wallis on Saddam's Execution

Jim Wallis of Sojourners regrets the execution of Saddam Hussein and argues that it is wrong to resort to capital punishment. He states a number of objections which are pretty much summarized in his last two paragraphs. The first is contained in a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury:

"I think he deserves punishment, and sharp and unequivocal punishment; I don't think that he should be at liberty, but I would say of him what I have to say about anyone who's committed even the most appalling crimes in this country; that I believe the death penalty effectively says 'there is no room for change or repentance'."

How much horror must a man inflict upon people before the Archbishop and Mr. Wallis conclude that whatever change the man undergoes is insignificant by comparison? Saddam had plenty of "room for repentance." He has been feeding people into wood chippers for decades, gassing children and cutting out tongues and torturing people to death for decades. How much time is enough?

The argument that if we only give him time enough he might repent and be saved is a peculiar one. By extension it essentially calls God unjust because He allows people to perish for eternity, and sometimes even causes their deaths, before they've accepted the gospel. It's even more peculiar when offered by someone of Calvinist proclivities who holds that God foreordains who will be lost and who will be saved before they're even born. If Saddam was elected for salvation then he will be saved no matter what the Iraqi government did to him, and if he is to be lost then he will be lost no matter hjow long he lives.

Wallis concludes his piece with this paragraph:

Saddam Hussein, like other murderers before him, was a violent and remorseless man. But by taking his life, we sink to his level. If we truly believe that all human life is created in God's image, then no matter how distorted that life may become, we do not have the right to take it. We simply should not kill to show we are against killing. It is indeed to prefer revenge over justice.

Let's take this a couple of sentences at a time. The second sentence is, to put it politely, inadequate. To put those who support the legal execution of a mass murderer on the same level as the murderer is morally ludicrous. We do not sink to his level by endorsing his execution but rather we make a profound moral statement, i.e. we tell the world that to take the life of innocent people is the very worst crime one can commit and merits the most severe penalty. It is to tell the world that we value innocent life so much that one who wantonly destroys it will be required to pay the highest price that he can pay, the forfeiture of his own life. Conversely, to refuse to exact the highest penalty from one who has butchered and terrorized innocent people is to implicitly say that the lives of his victims are not so precious that their loss justifies the death of their killer.

The third sentence is a logical confusion. How does Wallis get from being made in God's image to being insulated from ever having to forfeit one's own life? What's the connection between the two? Being made in God's image means having rationality, personality, and a sense of justice, etc. It does not mean that one's life is absolutely inviolate.

The fourth sentence simply asserts a moral preference that hangs unsupported by any reasons. By Wallis' logic we should not incarcerate kidnappers nor fine embezzlers, since we simply should not deprive persons of their freedom in order to show that we are against depriving people of their freedom, nor take money from people to show that we are against taking money from people.

In the final sentence he states that an execution is to prefer revenge over justice. This is perhaps the most incredible claim of the lot. What is it about executing a man who has murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that is unjust? How is it unjust to mete out to someone the same as they have done to others? The Christian obligation to be merciful dictates that we don't torture Saddam but it would certainly not be unjust to do so.

Moreover, even if Wallis is right that the Iraqis were motivated by revenge what is it about revenge that is unjust? There is nothing wrong with revenge, i.e. the desire to see someone who is responsible for an evil be made to pay for that crime. Indeed, revenge is an essential component of justice. Without it there is no motivation to punish criminals at all. The only problem with revenge, and why it is generally disapprobated, is that it is sometimes arrogated by individuals. Revenge is a perfectly acceptable motive, however, for the state and indeed Paul says as much in Romans where he tells us that vengeance is the prerogative of God who employs the state as His agent in the world.

RLC

Lefty Laugh-fest

Don Imus and Mike Barnicle yuk it up speculating about the courage/cowardice of Bush administration figures. Unfortunately, their banter is no more funny than it is tasteful.

There's something sad about people who find this sort of exchange humorous. Perhaps it lies in the fact that the attempt to get cheap laughs by viciousness and mean-spiritedness is a mark of very little people who are insecure in their own virtues. If I can be permitted an amateurish psychological speculation, I suspect that most men who mock their betters do so in order to enhance their own self-importance and worth which they subliminally hold in low esteem.

RLC

Nancy Pearcey

Byron links us to this excellent interview with Nancy Pearcey, author of Total Truth and other books. The interviewer questions her on her support for intelligent design and related matters and she gives some of the most concise and clear corrections to common misunderstandings of the topic that I've seen anywhere.

If you're at all interested in this controversy you'll want to check it out.

RLC

Should They or Shouldn't They?

This stunner was in the Times Online:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.

The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. "As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad's assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.

There's much more on this rumored strike at the link. The question I'd like to pose to our readers is, should Israel go ahead with the attack if the rest of the world is content to let Iran continue to produce nuclear weapons? If not, why not?

RLC

Minimum Wage and Moral Grandstanding

There will be much talk on the news in the weeks ahead on raising the minimum wage. George Will instructs us as to why raising the minimum wage makes no sense, and why it will be raised anyway:

...raising the federal minimum wage is a bad idea whose time has come, for two reasons, the first of which is that some Democrats have a chronic and evidently incurable disease -- New Deal Nostalgia. Witness Nancy Pelosi's "100 hours'' agenda, a genuflection to FDR's 100 Days. Perhaps this nostalgia resonates with the 5 percent of Americans who remember the 1930s.

Second, the president has endorsed raising the hourly minimum from $5.15 to $7.25 by the spring of 2009. The Democratic Congress will favor that, and he may reason that vetoing this minor episode of moral grandstanding would not be worth the predictable uproar -- Washington uproar often is inversely proportional to the importance of occasion for it. Besides, there would be something disproportionate about the president vetoing this feel-good bit of legislative fluff after not vetoing the absurdly expensive 2002 farm bill, or the 2005 highway bill larded with 6,371 earmarks, or the anti-constitutional McCain-Feingold speech-rationing bill.

Democrats consider the minimum wage increase a signature issue. So, consider what it says about them:

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum live in families with household earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part-time and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326 respectively.)

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and are earning tips -- often untaxed, perhaps -- in addition to their wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers, and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow persons to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent.

The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, so 29 states with 70 percent of the nation's work force have set minimum wages of between $6.15 and $7.93 an hour. Because aging liberals, clinging to the moral clarities of their youth, also have Sixties Nostalgia, they are suspicious of states' rights. But regarding minimum wages, many have become Brandeisians, invoking Justice Louis Brandeis' thought about states being laboratories of democracy.

But wait. Ronald Blackwell, the AFL-CIO's chief economist, tells The New York Times that state minimum wage differences entice companies to shift jobs to lower-wage states. So: states' rights are bad, after all, at least concerning -- let's use liberalism's highest encomium -- diversity of economic policies.

The problem is that demand for almost everything is elastic: When the price of something goes up, demand for it goes down. Obviously were the minimum wage to jump to, say, $15 an hour, that would cause significant unemployment among persons just reaching for the bottom rung of the ladder of upward mobility. But suppose those scholars are correct who say that when the minimum wage is low and is increased slowly -- proposed legislation would take it to $7.25 in three steps -- the negative impact on employment is negligible. Still, because there are large differences among states' costs of living, and the nature of their economies, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., sensibly suggests that each state should be allowed to set a lower minimum.

But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly. But that is a good idea whose time will never come again.

Moral grandstanding is a good description of what we can expect to be subjected to from our political leaders over the coming weeks on this issue.

RLC

Ronald Numbers

Steve Paulson has a very interesting interview with Ronald Numbers at Salon Books. Numbers is a historian of science who has written extensively on the rise of creationism. Among historians not involved with either group he is probably the foremost authority on the history of creationism and intelligent design.

Numbers grew up in a strict Seventh Day Adventist family and attended Adventist schools until he went to Berkely to do his graduate work. At Berkely his faith crumbled and he describes himself today as a man with no religious belief, either theistic or atheistic. He himself is an evolutionist, but he is often trashed by other evolutionists because he treats creationists and IDers with respect in his professional writings.

His story is sad on several levels but especially when he talks about the effect his work had on his relationship with his father. While discussing Numbers' book titled The Creationists there is this exchange between Paulson and Numbers:

Paulson: That [the book] must have created trouble for you in your own family of Adventists.

Numbers: It did. And it created trouble for my father, who was a minister. Some church ministers were very harsh with him. Here I was, about 30 or so. They were telling him he had no right being a minister if he couldn't control his son. So he took early retirement.

Paulson: Because of your book?

Numbers: Yes. He was thoroughly humiliated by this.

Paulson: Did he try to talk you out of the book?

Numbers: Oh yes. We had hours and hours of argument. He had a limited number of explanations for why I would be saying this about the prophetess [Ellen White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventists]. One was that I was lying. But he knew me too well, so the only explanation left for him was that somehow Satan had gained control of my mind. And what I was writing reflected the power of Satan. For a number of years, he could not bear to be seen in public with me.

Very sad. Read the rest of the interview at the link.

RLC

Future Tech

For a fascinating glimpse into what military combat might look like in the not too distant future go to Hot Air and watch the top video. It's actually a promotional video produced by Future Combat Systems which, I surmise, is a technology firm working on weapons, communications, and reconnaissance systems.

RLC

The Argument From Fine-Tuning

Joe Carter gives a fine summary of the argument for God's existence based on the fine-tuning of the cosmos. I agree with Carter that this is one of the most powerful of teh arguments for God's existence, even if it doesn't constitute a proof, sensu strictu.

I would caution, though, that the argument does not lead to the conclusion that the architect of the universe is the God of the Bible. Nevertheless, despite this technical shortcoming, the argument goes a long way in clearing away the brush that stands in the way of people accepting that the God of the Bible exists.

If we agree that the design of the universe suggests an intelligence behind the creation we might also conclude that it's reasonable to assume that that intelligence is personal, powerful, and knowledgeable since it has created personal beings and since a great deal of power and mathematical knowledge were required to create the universe. This brings us very close to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What we cannot infer, however, is that the architect of the space-time cosmos is unqualifiedly good. The existence of suffering prevents us from making that move.

Thus the finely-tuned universe is a compelling reason to believe that there's a creator, but the question whether the creator is identical to the God that Christians have traditionally believed in cannot be settled by reference to the physical creation alone.

Even so, the argument is very powerful. Check out Carter's discussion of it at the link.

RLC

Time Has Come

Michael Ledeen believes that confrontation with Iran can no longer be avoided and, as Machiavelli instructed his Prince, that to delay only works to the advantage of our adversary:

There is no escape from the war Iran is waging against us, the war that started in 1979 and is intensifying with every passing hour. We will shortly learn more about the documents we found accompanying the high-level Iranian terrorist leader we briefly arrested in Hakim's compound in Baghdad some days ago, and what we will learn-what many key American officials have already learned-is stunning. At least to those who thought that Iran was "meddling" in Iraq, but refused to believe that it was total war, on a vast scale.

I have little sympathy for those who have avoided the obvious necessity of confronting Iran, however I do understand the concerns of military leaders, such as General Abizaid, who are doing everything in their considerable power to avoid a two-front war. But I do not think we need massive military power to bring down the mullahs, and in any event we now have a three-front war: within Iraq, and with both Iran and Syria. So General Abizaid's objection is beside the point. We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq.

You can read the whole piece at the link.

RLC