Letter to the Editor

Forgive me if I mentioned this before, but our local paper ran an editorial two weeks ago on the president's opinion on having Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. The editorial can be found here. Here's my response, only part of which was printed by the paper yesterday:

The Dispatch ran an editorial last Wednesday critical of the president's recent comments on teaching Intelligent Design about which I'd like to pose some questions. The editor wrote:

"Yet here's the president of the United States, saying schools should teach both "theories" on the creation and development of life. And global warming has no scientific basis, mercury pollution is not the threat most scientists say it is, drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge will have no effect on one of the world's last great wildernesses -- and are there really such things as endangered species?"

If sarcasm were a reason to accept an implied conclusion then the paper would have a strong case against the Bush administration's attitude toward science-related issues, but it's not, and they don't. Each of these issues is framed by the writer in a highly tendentious way. The controversy surrounding global warming, for instance, is not about whether it's happening but about its cause. No one claims that drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will have no effect. The debate is over whether the effect will be significant and permanent. Part of informing one's readers is accurately presenting the facts, but this the editorial fails to do, preferring the rhetorical appeal of snarkiness to the difficult work of thinking.

The writer then gets to the real point:

"Intelligent design is not a 'theory,' but strictly a religious concept that may have its place in Sunday school and in the home -- not in high school biology class."

Not a theory? Does the editor mean that ID is not a proposed explanation for a set of observations? Does the editor know what a theory is? Has the editor ever actually read anything written on ID by a prominent advocate?

And what about ID makes it a "strictly religious concept"? Is it religious because some wish to use it to promote a religious agenda? If so, is Darwinism fascist because some have employed Darwinian principles like survival of the fittest to justify the extermination of the less fit? Is ID religious simply because it posits a Designer? How, exactly, would that make it religious?

The Dispatch goes on to say that:

"The president's view on intelligent design would, no doubt, warm the heart of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and anti-evolution champion in the Scopes trial who saw Darwin's theory as heralding the end of western civilization. But for a man who presides over the most powerful and most scientifically advanced nation on earth to be spouting such a fundamentalist mantra in the name of 'improving' education is more than unseemly, it's irresponsible and embarrassing."

Why is it irresponsible for the president to state his personal views on this issue when asked to do so? He didn't say that ID should be legislatively mandated. He merely opined that it would be a good thing to stimulate students to think about a very important question. Why should it be embarrassing to hold a view consonant with the opinion of the majority of people one leads? Is it that the editor is embarrassed that the president lacks the same level of scientific enlightenment possessed by his/her fellow sophisticates in the news media?

Moreover, what does the Dispatch mean by calling the president's words a "fundamentalist mantra"? Does the paper intend to suggest that only creepy fundamentalists believe that it's appropriate to mention the possibility that intelligence is necessary to explain the apparent biocentricity of the cosmos and the complexity of the biosphere in a science class?

What is really "unseemly, irresponsible and embarrassing" is lazy, otiose rhetoric masquerading as informed argument. The editor of the Dispatch knows nothing of what he/she is talking about so, like a middle schooler caught in an argument over matters he does not understand, the writer just sputters insults. It may make the writer feel good, but it's not very persuasive.

Another Top Jihadi Sent to Paradise

The BBC reports that yet another top aide to Abu al Zarqawi has been dispatched to frolic with his 72 virgins:

United States officials say Iraqi forces have killed a senior aide to the militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Officials said Abu Zubair was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, in an ambush set by Iraqi forces.

He had been wanted for his alleged role in several attacks, including a attack on a police station in Mosul last month, which killed five policemen.

No other details of the operation were provided, and there is no independent confirmation of the US statement.

Maybe next time it will be the psychopath-in-chief himself who gets sent off to his reward.

The Seven Phases

Al Qaida has a twenty year plan for establishing a worldwide caliphate and The Fourth Rail has the details and commentary:

Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

The First Phase: Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."

Al Qaeda can claim some success in the First Phase, as the organization is now the preeminent terrorist organization on the planet. The attacks of September 11 were cheered throughout the Islamic world. The global media disseminates Al Qaeda commander's speeches. Each and every terrorist attack is followed by suspicious of al Qaeda involvement. And the US did indeed bring the war to the Islamic world in Afghanistan and Iraq, however not against Islam itself. But this came at a price, as Islamist Afghanistan and friendly Saddam-governed Iraq were lost.

The Second Phase: "Opening Eyes" is, according to Hussein's definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the "Islamic community." Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an "army" set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

So far, the Second Phase has been a failure. The Arab and greater Islamic Street has been essentially silent in its support of al Qaeda. The perception that al Qaeda's cause is popular as hundreds of Islamists enter Iraq monthly is overshadowed by the tens of thousands of Islamic fighters who enter Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. al Qaeda has generated new recruits, but not nearly enough to replace the experienced operators and managers that have been lost under the American onslaught in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Winning the Second Phase is important from an ideological standpoint. Defeat in Iraq would seriously harm the credibility of al Qaeda and weaken their mystique. They would possess a losing ideology that could not stand up to the Great Satan. Allah would have abandoned them to the privations of the infidel.

The rest of the plan can be read at the link. Roggio finishes with this:

Phases Five, Six and Seven are merely the dreams of al Qaeda, as the prospects for al Qaeda's success in phases One thru Fourth are looking grim at the moment. Despite media portrayal of defeat in Iraq, the Iraqi people are fighting the insurgency and the Anbar region is set to be reduced as an al Qaeda rear area. The jewel of al Qaeda, Afghanistan, fell almost four years ago, and al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have not come even close to retaining control. There are rumors of a serious rift between al Qaeda and the Taliban, as the Taliban believes its woes were created by closely allying themselves with Osama's cause.

However, in the event of the United State loses its political will and pursues a policy of isolation from the Muslim world, an inevitable showdown with al Qaeda would ensue. Open confrontation with the West, as well as the possibility of a nuclear armed Caliphate, would bring the full military might of the Western World (those who value their freedom). The current operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Southeast and Central Asia and within the borders of Western nations would be tame in comparison to what would come. The Japanese, Germans and Italians discovered in World War II the price of wakening the American military psyche.

The West would basically have two options: (1) blitzkrieg 21st Century style - the full mobilization of its military and an accompanying sweep of the Islamic crescent, without regards for Politically Correct warfare; (2) nuclear war. Both campaigns would be designed to fully eliminate the Islamist threat, and the Muslim infrastructure, which allowed for the rise of al Qaeda's ideology.

Whatever happens, the American people have to be prepared for a long, drawn out conflict. One of the Bush administration's real failings in the current war has been, in our opinion, its failure to keep the eye of the American people focussed on the task of defeating terrorism. They've given us the perception that they're disengaged, that the war is just a side-show to our everyday lives rather than an all-out struggle for the survival of Western civilization. As a result, they've pretty much ceded the battle for people's hearts and minds to the Cindy Sheehans and Chris Matthews of the world.

The war has to be fought not only abroad but also here at home. The administration must repeatedly remind us why we are fighting, what our soldiers are dying for, what the stakes are, and what sort of progress is being made. If they expect the American people to be patient they have to show us the goal and continually update us on our progress toward that goal, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but everywhere the war is being fought. To do less is to risk conveying the impression that what our military is doing is not all that crucial or important and that its time to disengage from a conflict which, for all the White House is telling us, we're not really winning.

Stemming the Tide

Michelle Malkin has a lot of links and other worthwhile stuff on what is probably conservatives' biggest disappointment with the Bush administration, its failure to control our borders.

If the Democrats want a winning issue in '06 and '08 there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who would vote for anyone who campaigns on stopping the flood of illegal aliens pouring into this country every day. The GOP, which has been absolutely delinquent on this issue, would find any credible candidate who promised to put a stop to it tough to beat.

Bias Against Roberts

Laer has 32 examples of media bias in their reporting on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. It's an imposing list.

The Origin of Life

This is an interesting development in the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

Maybe Liu is correct, but one difficulty his team is going to have to overcome, if they're going to show that no intelligent designer was necessary for biogenesis, is designing experiments that show how life could have originated without introducing into those experiments any trace of human intelligence. It'll be a nifty trick if they can pull it off.

The attempt, though, is quite a gamble. If they succeed, their work would be a severe and possibly fatal blow to Intelligent Design theory. If, on the other hand, they fail, their inability to explain how life could have evolved naturalistically will greatly strengthen the argument of those who say that however life came to be, it could not have happened through purely mechanistic processes.

Canaries in the Coal Mine

Dennis Prager made the claim on the Hugh Hewitt show today that throughout history those nations or institutions which hated the Jews most intensely were also the nations which were responsible for inflicting the greatest evil upon the world.

I don't know enough history to judge the accuracy of this statement before the twentieth century, but it certainly would seem to be true of the last seventy five years. Beginning with the Nazis in the 1930s and early forties, the Stalinists from the forties to the seventies, and the Islamists for the past thirty years, most of the world's most evil regimes seem to have been rabidly anti-semitic. The exceptions would be, perhaps, those regimes which had little contact with Jews either geographically as neighbors or as citizens within their boundaries.

But for those nations which have had Jewish populations in their midst or resided in proximity to Israel, the degree of evil they perpetrate does indeed seem roughly proportional to the degree of their hatred of the Jews. It is such a bizarre nexus, in fact, that one wonders if there is not some supernatural, some demonic, reason for it based on God's election of the Jews as His chosen people.

Dafydd, who is a secularist balks at this conclusion, but is nevertheless struck by the connection.

Dafydd paraphrases Prager as saying that "The curse of the Jews is to be hated by the most evil men of every generation. The Jews are a barometer of hatred, canaries in a coal mine: to find the greatest evil, find the greatest haters of Jews."

This seems to be a very important insight. As Dafydd suggests, it would be interesting to have some historian check to see if it is borne out in centuries before the twentieth.

Plan? What Plan?

Howard Dean on Face the Nation gives us a fine lesson in how to say nothing with a lot of words:

Bob Scheiffer, host: Governor Dean, polls are showing that people are losing confidence in the president's handling of the war in Iraq. A majority now believe it's left us more vulnerable, rather than less vulnerable, to the terrorists. But what do Democrats propose to do about it?

Dr. Howard Dean (Democrat, Former Governor, Vermont; Chairman, Democratic National Committee): Well, I think, first of all, we need a plan. The saddest article, in a series of very sad articles about people losing their lives--the saddest article I saw was in The Washington Post this morning, talking about the insiders of the administration saying, `Well, now we misjudged. We really can't achieve any of the things--or many of the things we said that we were going to achieve when we went.' Eighteen hundred and fifty Americans lose their lives because the president can't figure out what he's going to do, had no plan when we got there and has not plan when we get out.

Note that Dr. Dean has stated that we need a plan to get out of Iraq and that the president is responsible for the deaths of 1,850 Americans. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of the transcript.

Dr. Dean: First thing we need to do have a plan for leaving. And the second thing we need to do is to make sure that to the best of our ability we can influence the writing of the constitution. It looks like today, and this could change--as of today, it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. That's a pretty sad commentary on this administration's ability to do anything right.

Schieffer: Well, when you say, `We need to have a plan,' you mean a plan to leave?

Dr. Dean: We do.

Schieffer: A plan to get out?

Dr. Dean: We need to have a plan to leave.

Schieffer: Should we leave now?

Dr. Dean: I think that's going to be very problematic. I mean, I think we've gotten in there, we've made a huge mess in there, we've created a terrorist danger for the United States where one did not exist before. But to pull out before they even have a chance to write their constitution I think is wrong. But I do think that time is coming very quickly. And if it turns out that this constitution really does take away the rights that women have enjoyed in Iraq before, then I can't imagine why we're there.

Schieffer: Well, I'll go back and ask you about that in a minute, but I know the president said, and I think it was just this week, giving a timetable for leaving Iraq would be the worst thing we could do because it would just tell the people who oppose us there, `Look, all we have to do is hang in till they leave, and then we're OK.'

Dr. Dean: We need to leave. We're not going to be there forever, I hope. We're not going to be there forever. So the question is: What is a reasonable way to get out? And that's--we have no answers from the president on that at all. He keeps saying--well, his administration appears to be divided. Some of the generals have said, `Well, we can withdraw some of the troops, perhaps as many as 30,000, after the elections.' We have others saying, `Well, we're not going to leave.' These people do not know what they're doing. They didn't know what they were doing when we got in, they had no plan then. They have no plan now. They do not know what they're doing.

Mr. John Harris (The Washington Post): Governor, you're the political leader of the Democratic Party. As you well know, many of your people in Congress, Democrats in Congress, voted for the war in 2002. Next year, 2006, do you expect this will be a good political issue for Democrats to run on, what you consider the president's failures on Iraq?

Dr. Dean: Well, we don't--I can't imagine using 1,850 lost American soldiers, who have died in defense of their country, using that as a political issue. I think there's a lot of--I think this is certainly going to be an issue of disagreement and it's going to question the president's credibility, the president's competence. But I--you know, using it as a political issue, I think is--I don't think the Democrats are going to do that.

Obviously, Dr. Dean wouldn't dream of using the tragic deaths of 1,850 Americans who died because Bush is an incompetent, whose deaths were unnecessary, as a political issue.

What did he say the number of dead Americans that Bush is responsible for was again?

Schieffer: Why do you suppose it is, though, Governor, that while people are losing confidence in the president's handling of the war that--and every poll suggests that--why do you suppose that people are not buying what Democrats are saying? They don't seem to be taking too much to the Democrats on that.

Dr. Dean: I think they are buying what Democrats are saying. I think people believe that we need a plan to get our troops to come home. I think that people do understand now...

People are convinced we need a plan. Bush doesn't have one. Surely the Democrats do because they're going to lead us out of Iraq. Eventually. When it's safe. When it's prudent. Sometime.

Schieffer: But if I may say so...

Dr. Dean: Sure.

Schieffer: ...I mean, saying we need a plan. I mean, sure, you need a plan, but do you have a plan? Is anybody working on a plan? What would you propose?

Dr. Dean: Well, Bob, the president of the United States is commander in chief. It is up to him to come up for a plan. You can't expect a congressman and senators who don't have the same access to intelligence as the president does to come up with a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We look--the president got us into Iraq 'cause people were willing to trust the president, even some Democrats were willing to trust the president in assuming he knew what he was doing. The problem is now that there's ample evidence to say that they didn't understand what they were getting into and they still don't know what we're doing there. They changed their goals. The troops are still not properly equipped. The constitution looks like it may take away freedom from the Iraq people, at least half of them, instead of added to them. What we need is a plan from the president of the United States. You can't expect a particular senator or particular congressman to have a plan. Only the president can do that.

So. Having run us around several laps of the track, Dr. Dean finally concludes, apparently, that the President doesn't have a plan so we should vote the Republicans out. Of course, the Democrats don't have a plan either, but we should vote them in. The Republicans should come up with a plan if they want our vote, but the Democrats should not be held to same expectation.

It must be a wild, whacky place inside Howard Dean's mind.

ELCA Disses Israel

One of the troubling results of the recently concluded ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Churchwide Assembly was a resolution voted upon and approved Saturday which contained rather harsh language against Israel for having constructed a wall to keep terrorists out of their communities along the West Bank. The wall has been very effective in reducing terror attacks, but it has also worked severe hardships on Palestinians who have in some cases been cut off from their farms, orchards, and health care by the barrier. Moreover, the wall in some places intrudes into land that until the 1967 Arab/Israeli war had been understood to belong to the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the language used in the supporting materials for the ELCA resolution is unclear as to whether it is criticizing Israel for building the wall or criticizing the manner in which it is built. There is a significant difference between the two criticisms. The ELCA, in wanting to take a stand for the Palestinians who are suffering because of the barrier, comes across as completely unsympathetic to the right of the Israelis to protect their children from being blown to smithereens by terrorist bombers.

Many of those who rose to support the resolution made it sound as if the wall were erected just to be cruel to the Palestinians. Rarely was there mention of the reasons or need for its existence. Indeed, the most frequent argument heard from the floor was that the speaker had been to Israel and seen the wall and it's really quite awful.

The resolution passed 71% to 29%. A motion Sunday morning to reconsider the action based on its anti-Israeli tenor was defeated. The Assembly would have done well to work toward a more precise expression of its concern, but it chose not to do so.

There was throughout the week a palpable feeling that many of the matters voted upon by the Assembly were little more than opportunities to give many in the hall a frisson of self-affirmation and a sense of their own moral goodness. They seemed to have very little additional purpose.

In the final analysis, there was little actual good accomplished by the Assembly, but it did manage to avoid doing some actual harm. It avoided passing a by-laws change that would have made the ordination of non-celibate homosexual candidates church policy and another that would have made blessing same-sex unions an accepted policy of the church.

How long the Lutheran church will hold out against the cultural tide which favors these changes and which is sweeping through mainline denominations all across the country, is an interesting, and disturbing, question.

Lost Liberty Project Moving Ahead

Here are some highlights from the most recent newsletter of the Lost Liberty Hotel Project. These people certainly appear to be serious. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what Justice Souter is thinking right now?

Logan Clements who is heading the Lost Liberty Hotel project will visit Weare, New Hampshire from August 20th to the 23rd. He will talk to local supporters who are planning to use ballot initiatives to seize the land at 34 Cilley Hill Road (Justice Souter's property) and clear away other local laws that may hinder the project. It appears that an initiative can be placed on the March 2006 Weare N.H. ballot with only 25 signatures and can win with between 1,020 and 2,777 votes. Whoever said this project "will never happen" might find themself sitting in the Just Deserts Cafe eating crow pie next to David Souter.

Freestar Media will hold an open meeting to discuss the Lost Liberty Hotel project on Monday August 22nd at the Radisson Hotel at 700 Elm Street, Manchester NH 03101. Mention "The Lost Liberty Hotel project" for $1 parking. The meeting will go from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in salon D. Logan will discuss the purpose of the project and why it is an important step in the struggle against statism. Free copies of Ayn Rand's revolutionary capitalist manifesto ATLAS SHRUGGED will be provided to the first 25 people who attend.

Over the last several weeks we have spoken with many experienced real estate developers who are considering taking over the project and leading it to completion. We invite these developers, and any others who are interested, to visit Weare, N.H. this weekend to meet with local residents and consider leading the project.

The advantages are extensive: thousands of people want to finance it, nearly every type of sub-contractor has offered free services during construction, millions of people know about it and thousands more want to support it as customers. You build it, we'll film it, and the 93% of America that was opposed to the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo vs. City of New London will thank you.

If this project is successful it will send a message to politicians and judges everywhere that the people will not endure their abuses of power forever and that they will not be exempt from the laws they impose on the rest of us. To subscribe to their newsletter go here: newsletter@freestarmedia.com.

Awash in Oil

Here's some good economic news from Iraq:

BAGHDAD (MENAFN) - Iraq's Oil Minister said that his country posted the highest level of crude sales in the country's petroleum history last July, KUNA reported. Returns of the July oil sales were the largest on record, reaching $2.5 billion, adding that the Iraqi oil production, last July, rose to 1.6 million barrels per day, from 1.440 million bpd in June and 1.380 million bpd in May.

Hike of the crude production was in line with a plan, devised by the ministry to enhance the country's exportation capacities, the minister added.

On production of oil derivatives, he said the output of liquefied gas and fuel rose by 7-10 percent, adding that the output of gasoline last May reached 9.6 million liters per day, and climbed in June to 10.25 million liters pd in June before reaching 11 million liters per day in July.

He expressed hope to hike the fuel output to 12 million liters per day in August and 14 million per day in the end of October.

Is it too much to hope that this gushing increase in output might make a teensy difference in the price Americans are paying at the pump, or is it all being sold to the Chinese?

Cindy Sheehan

The anger of any mother who has lost a son or daughter in war should be indulged, and no one wishes to criticize someone who bears that pain. Yet there is reason to believe that Cindy Sheehan, the mother who, much to the delight of the MSM, has been holding a vigil outside President Bush's Crawford ranch, is not just a grief-stricken parent. It turns out that there's more to her than meets the eye. In an article in Front Page on the terrorist advocate and legal defender Lynne Stewart, we find this item about Cindy Sheehan toward the end:

Cindy Sheehan followed this act. Wearing a sweatshirt advertising the website for United for Peace and Justice, Sheehan was interviewed outside just before the meeting by an ABC-TV news reporter. Sheehan said then that military recruiters should not be allowed on college campuses, maintaining they trick na�ve 18-year-olds with offers of money and scholarships. Tragically, Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey who was in the Army and was killed two weeks after arriving in Iraq. She claimed he was promised a job as a chaplain's assistant although once in the service was placed in a combat role and killed, certainly a moving story - one she exploits to promote venomous anti-Americanism. "George Bush and his neo-conservatives killed my son," she said tearing up a bit. "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for."

Sheehan said she considered Lynne Stewart her Atticus Finch, the lawyer who defended an innocent Black man accused of rape in the book and film "To Kill A Mockingbird."

"They're not waging a War on Terror but a War of Terror," she said. "The biggest terrorist is George W. Bush." She claimed "it costs $66,000 to recruit one soldier, not including training, and $49,000 a year to house a prisoner, yet only $6,000 per year is spent to educate a child in California. (Recruiting costs are actually $15,000 per soldier, the cost of housing a prisoner in California for one year is $26,000.)

Sheehan continued, "9/11 was Pearl Harbor for the neo-conservatives' agenda" and declared the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system." Then she raged:

We have no Constitution. We're the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It's OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It's not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!

While one might dismiss some of Sheehan's hyperbole due to grief over her son's death, a little research about Casey Sheehan revealed that contrary to being tricked by military recruiters, Casey Sheehan had re-enlisted in the U.S. Army voluntarily when he was 24-years-old, after serving his first hitch successfully. Casey Sheehan was in fact a hero who received a Bronze Star. He was attached as a mechanic to the artillery division of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in Iraq. When a convoy of soldiers from Casey's unit was attacked in Sadr City by insurgents, Casey volunteered to join a rapid rescue force to get them out. His commanding sergeant told him he did not have to go into combat, because he was a mechanic and not an infantryman. Casey was quoted telling his officer, "I go where my chief goes." He was tragically killed during the rescue attempt. The source for this story? Cindy Sheehan herself.

I also visited an army recruiting office on my way home and asked about Casey being promised a job as a chaplain's assistant only to be thrust into harm's way. The recruiter explained to me that on re-enlistment, the Army's B.E.A.R. program (Bonus Extension and Retaining) guarantees everything in writing. If Casey was a mechanic during his first hitch, that was the only thing he would have been guaranteed per his re-enlistment contract. Further research showed that a chaplain's assistant is a combat infantry position, whereas Casey was deployed in a non-combat job as a mechanic. Casey Sheehan sought combat duty for his country and should be honored for it, not used as a symbol of how evil the United States is.

Ms Sheehan's son was a hero who volunteered to serve, and then to reenlist, and then to go on a rescue mission even though he was a non-combat mechanic. No one forced him to make any of those decisions. Now Ms Sheehan is blaming President Bush for the fact that her son is dead and making pronouncements about Israel's policy vis a vis the Palestinians. She seems, unfortunately, to be trying to exploit her status as a bereaved mother in order to achieve political aims quite unrelated to the war in Iraq. No one would have listened to her if her son had not been killed, but because he has she is being deferred to as someone who has gained valuable insight into world affairs and whose opinions merit public notice.

That her story has changed and that she has gotten her facts so completely wrong is worrisome but not nearly so much as the company she is now keeping.

IEDs and Asymmetrical Warfare

Wretchard at Belmont Club has an interesting discussion of the technology race we find ourselves in against the Islamists in Iraq.

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are more than physical objects, they are symbols of asymmetrical warfare, along with the suicide bomb and the sniper. They are exemplars of 'insoluble' threats against which resistance is supposedly futile and to which surrender is the only viable response. In times past, the submarine and bombing aircraft occupied the same psychological space. In the late 19th century, Alfred Thayer Mahan theorized that sea control, exercised through battlefleets, would be the arbiters of maritime power. But rival theorists believed weaker nations using motor torpedo boats and above all, the submarine, could neutralize battlefleets. The way to checkmate global superpower Britain, so the theory went, was through asymmetrical naval warfare.

In the early days of World War 1, three British armored cruisers HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy were patrolling the North Sea making no attempt to zigzag. The German U-9 fired a single torpedo into the Aboukir which promptly sank. HMS Hogue gallantly raced up to rescue survivors, believing the Aboukir was mined, and came right into the U-9's sights. She was sunk in turn. The HMS Cressy, believing both were mined, sped like a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery into another one of the U-9s torpedoes. In under an hour the asymmetrical weapon had killed 1,459 British sailors and sunk three cruisers.

In the 1930s the bomber airplane took the place of the U-boat as the unstoppable weapon in the public's imagination. Fired by the concepts of Italian airpower theorist Giulio Douhet, many interwar policymakers believed that bomber aircraft alone could bring a nation to its knees. The destructive capacity ascribed to the biplane bombers of the day approached that later attributed to nuclear weapons during the Cold War and so terrified politicians that it fueled the policy of appeasement.

Wretchard goes on to examine how the Improvised Explosive Device is being used by the jihadis in Iraq, how it is evolving, and the ongoing and increasingly successful efforts to render it relatively ineffective. It's worth a read.

Altering the Facts

Journalists traipse onto dangerous terrain when they presume to pontificate on Intelligent Design. They almost never look good in the doing of it.

Marcia Mercer, for example, inanely criticizes President Bush for answering a question about his opinion on teaching ID. His answer was honest and straight forward, but that's not good enough for the censorious Ms Mercer. She protests, oddly enough, that the president should've followed the example of Calvin Coolidge who, even during the provocative days of the Scopes' trial, said nothing about the subject of evolution.

It apparently hasn't occured to Ms. Mercer that President Coolidge may not have had an opinion on the matter that he deemed worth sharing, but never mind. Her suggestion is too weird to spend any time contemplating. After all, if all occupants of the White House should observe presidential precedents what should a future president do when he finds himself alone in the Oval Office with a young intern and a cigar?

As silly as Mercer's advice to the president was, an essay by Newsweek's resident philosopher Jonathan Alter wins this week's prize for polemical ineptitude. Alter writes:

A teacher in Kansas, where war over Darwin in the schools is still raging, calls the theory of intelligent design "creationism in a cheap tuxedo." Great line, but unfair to the elegant tailoring of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based think tank that has almost singlehandedly put intelligent design on the map. Eighty years after the Scopes "monkey trial," the threat to science and reason comes less from fundamentalists who believe the earth was created in six days than from sophisticated branding experts and polemical Ph.D.s who are clever enough to refrain from referring to God or even the Creator, and have now found a willing tool in the president of the United States.

Lest you think this is merely of academic interest, consider the stakes: the Pentagon last week revealed that it is spending money to train certain scientists how to write screenplays for thrillers related to their specialties. Why? Because the status of science has sunk so low that the government needs these disciplines to become sexy again among students or the brain drain will threaten national security. One of the reasons we have fewer science majors is the pernicious right-wing notion that conventional biology is vaguely atheistic (emphasis added).

One wonders where Alter dug up this interesting little factoid. He doesn't tell us and gives us no reason to accept his assertion that we have fewer science majors today than, say, twenty years ago. Even if it were true however, it is much more likely to be a consequence of the reality that science is hard and the marketplace may be offering higher rewards for less difficult pursuits. Alter's assumption that the (unsubstantiated) dearth of science majors is due to right-wing suspicions seems dubious on its face. The "pernicious right-wing notion" that biology is vaguely atheistic, after all, is no more widely held now than it's been since the end of the 19th century.

Moreover, even if the suspicion that conventional biology is hostile to faith is more widely held today, there would be good reason for it since scientists and Darwinian philosophers, especially those who popularize science for a wide audience, keep telling us it is. Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others insist that Darwinism is a universal acid, to use Dennett's phrase, that is corrosive to religious belief. Dawkins is adamant that an anti-religious stance, to borrow from an article on him in the September issue of Discover, is a natural outgrowth of evolutionary thought. The article quotes Dawkins as saying that "It is very clear that much of the opposition to evolution in this country...is fed by the suspicion, which I happen to think is justified, that evolution really is antireligious." Little wonder that people have absorbed the "pernicious right-wing notion."

Alter continues:

Now President Bush has given that view a boost. When Bush was asked about intelligent design last week, he answered, "Both sides ought to be properly taught... so people can understand what the debate is about." This sounds reasonable until you realize that, as the president's own science adviser, John H. Marburger III, admits, there is no real debate. "Intelligent design is not a scientific concept," Marburger told The New York Times, committing a bit of candor that will presumably earn him a trip to the White House woodshed.

Mr. Alter has concluded from his no doubt copious reading of the literature on the subject, and his attendence at the numerous conferences where the matter is on the agenda, that the idea that a debate exists out here in the hinterlands between Darwinians and Intelligent Design theorists is just an illusion. The matter has been settled and we can all just go home. That's a relief.

After proclaiming victory and an end to hostilities, Alter stumbles by irrelevantly citing Mr. Marburger. The question is not so much whether ID is science as it is whether Darwinian naturalism is science. If ID and Darwinian naturalism are philosophical mirror images, which they are, then whatever perquisites one enjoys in science education should also be available to the other. Alter unwittingly confirms this point in his next paragraph:

Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute claims ID uses a scientifically valid "inference to the best explanation" to back up its theories. That might be good enough for a graduate course in the philosophy of science (and the ACLU should not prevent it from being discussed in high-school humanities and philosophy classes), but the idea of its being offered as an alternative to evolution in ninth-grade biology is a cruel joke. Its basic claim-that the human cell is too complex to be explained by natural selection-is unproven and probably unprovable (emphasis added). ID walks like science and talks like science but, so far, performs in the lab worse than medieval alchemy.

What Alter fails to tell us is that the Darwinian claim that specified and irreducible complexity can self-organize and/or result from chance, energy, and physical law alone is also unproven and definitely unprovable. It walks like science and talks like science, but it's a purely metaphysical assumption. So why should it be allowed to be taught in public schools?

Alter presses on:

It's not God who's the problem but ID's assault on Darwin. Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller (who attends mass every week) says the "unspoken message" peddled by the Discovery Institute is that evolution is the single shakiest theory in science. In fact, despite its flaws, it remains among the most durable theories in all of science.

Of course, though perhaps one despairs by this point of Alter's willingness to grasp this, it's not evolution that's under assault by ID theorists. It's the Darwinian version of evolution which denies any role in the process of the differentiation of life to intelligent agency that ID theorists are challenging.

Even as the president helps pit faith against science in the classroom, popes and other clerics have long known that religion and evolution are not truly at odds. Evolution does not, for instance, challenge the idea that the universe began with a spark of divinity. Darwin himself wrote movingly of God. Only the scientific process-not the scientist-must be agnostic. Long before Darwin, enlightened Christians understood that religion and science are best kept in separate realms. In the fifth century, for instance, Saint Augustine criticized other Christians who "talk nonsense" about the laws of nature.

Alter slyly perpetuates in this passage the error that ID is religion. This appears to be a tactic consistently employed by opponents of ID to discredit it among the public by constant repetition of the libel. There is nothing about ID that is religious. It has religious implications, certainly, but then so does Darwinism.

The most clever thing about intelligent design is that it doesn't sound like nonsense. It conjures up Cambridge, not Kansas. The name evokes Apple software, the MoMA gift shop or a Frank Gehry chair. The scholarly articles are often well written and provocative. But the science within these papers has been demolished over and over by other scientists. As Miller explains, science is perhaps the last true marketplace of ideas. After a decade in circulation, intelligent design has failed the market test. So now its backers are seeking the equivalent of a government bailout, by going around their scientific peers to Red State politicians trying to slip religious dogma into the classroom.

This claim is simply false. The science (More correctly, the philosophical conclusions drawn from the facts of empirical science) has not been demolished. It's been challenged, it's been attacked, it's been derided, misrepresented, slandered, and maligned, but very little of what ID theorists have written has ever been refuted. Alter seems to think that if someone responds to an opponent's argument in strong cadences with an overlay of dogmatic certainty that he has thereby "demolished" his opponent's case.

Alter says that the most clever thing about ID is that it doesn't sound like nonsense. It could be, somebody might tell him, that that's because it's not.

While the Discovery Institute calls God the "designer," to appear less creationist, some of its biggest funders are serious fundamentalists. An internal fund-raising memo leaked in 1999 laid out its theological agenda and intention to use ID as a "wedge" to triumph in the culture wars. Last week Fox News lent a hand. Bill O'Reilly says that the National Academy of Science is guilty of "fascism" for arguing that ID should not take up valuable class time in high-school biology. (Not to be outdone, Dr. James Dobson compared embryonic-stem-cell research to "Nazi experiments.") These are the same modest gents who decry relativism and curricular inclusiveness in the humanities, where it is far more justifiable than in the sciences.

Ah. The old guilt by association chestnut. Rather than use his space to consider what the ID theorists themselves are saying and doing, Alter just trots out some of right-wing boogeymen with which to frighten the children. It's ironic that evolutionists get upset when people concerned about the philosophical implications of evolution quote Richard Dawkins' screeds against religion, but Alter thinks it perfectly reasonable to cite the opinions of Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson as if they were somehow relevant to the question of the merits of ID.

Undaunted by his embarrassing lack of understanding of the topic upon which he professes to instruct us, Alter turns oracular:

Bush's policy of politicizing science-retreating from the field of facts and evidence on everything from evolution to global warming to the number of cell lines available to justify his 2001 stem-cell compromise-will eventually wreak havoc with his legacy. Until then, like his masquerade-ball friends, the president will get more clever at harming science while pretending to promote it. Monkey see, monkey do.

"Wreak havoc with his legacy"? Alter adds the office of prophet to his already distinguished roles of in-house scientist and philosopher. That he knows the future with such assurance is breathtaking for those of us limited by the constraints of space and time.

"Harming science"? How, exactly, have Bush's policies harmed science? Alter needs no justification for these simple-minded asseverations, of course. His readers can be expected to understand that Bush is a dolt so whatever Alter says about the catastrophic nature of anything he does just has to be true.

One is left wondering how many books by any prominent ID thinker Alter has ever read. My guess is that the answer is zero, since he understands so little about the matter. Too bad that doesn't stop him from writing about it. It makes you wonder who the real dolt is.

Wealthier Than You Think

Worried that you just don't have enough to make ends meet? Feeling badly that you can't afford all that you'd like to have? Go here and see how your income stacks up to that of the rest of the world's inhabitants.

More On the ELCA Assembly

The day that Lutherans had been looking toward for two years with a mixture of dread and anticipation has now passed. Three critical recommendations were taken up today by the Churchwide Assembly in Orlando for adoption or rejection.

The day saw much spirited discussion, offered an incredible lesson in parliamentary procedure and, in my opinion, brought out the best in almost everyone present. Even the demonstrators who engaged in civil disobedience by standing in front of the dias facing the Assembly for several hours this afternoon, refusing to honor the Bishop's request that they return to the visitors' gallery, were at least quiet and not disruptive.

The Assembly considered three recommendations amid numerous amendments and parliamentary maneuvers.

The first called upon Lutherans of differing views on the cluster of issues associated with sexuality to find ways to be united. It passed.

The second recommendation would have allowed pastors of local churches to bless same-sex unions. An amendment (which won by just two votes out of almost 1000) got the wording changed so that the reference to same-sex unions was struck. The recommendation then carried by a 67% to 33% vote. This was probably a win for both sides since although the recommendation doesn't endorse same sex blessings in any way, neither does it explicitly prohibit them.

The third recommendation would have permitted the church to ordain non-celibate gay and lesbian ministers. A number of amendments which would have made this very easy to do and some which would have made it more difficult were defeated. The recommendation itself then came to the floor for a vote, and it failed. The tally was close, 51% to 49%, which is no doubt heartening to advocates of gay ordination, but it was actually not close in terms of passage since it needed a 2/3 margin to be adopted.

This result will be national news tomorrow, I'm sure, since a lot of people thought that the Lutheran church would just follow the zeitgeist and elect to ordain gays and lesbians. It didn't happen this time, but the Assembly convenes again in 2007.

One Day in the LIfe of a Soldier

So much coverage of the war in Iraq is merely skeletal. We hear only of the number of casualties and nothing of circumstances, tactics, and details of the engagements. This story of a military unit on patrol in Mosul, however, is Pulitzer prize-caliber reporting. It begins wih a discussion of the nature of the ordnance being employed against our troops and segues into a riveting tale of everyday life for soldiers and Marines in Iraq.

Sowing Confusion

Lots of people are confused about the relationship of religion and science. Michael Shermer adds to the confusion:

Intelligent Design creationism resurfaced in the news last week after President Bush's remarks were (mis)taken by IDers to be a solid endorsement for the teaching of ID in public school science classrooms. (Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger III, said that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept.")

One magazine reporter asked for my opinion about whether one can believe in God and the theory of evolution. I replied that, empirically speaking, yes, you can - the proof being that 40% of American scientists profess a belief in God and also accept the theory of evolution, not to mention that most of the world's 1 billion Catholics believe in God and accept the theory of evolution.

But then this reporter wanted to know if it is logically consistent to believe in God and the theory of evolution. That is, does the theory of evolution - if carried out to its logical conclusion - preclude belief in God? This is a different question. Here is my answer.

You can believe in God and evolution as long as you keep the two in separate, logic-tight compartments. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence.

This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity because for any question about nature - the origins of the universe, life, humans, whatever - if your answer is "God did it," a scientist will ask: "How did God do it? What forces did God use? What forms of matter and energy were employed in the creation process?" and so forth. The end result of this inquiry can only be natural explanations for all natural phenomena. What place, then, for God?

One could argue that God is the laws and forces of nature, which is logically acceptable, but this is pantheism and not the type of personal God to which most people profess belief.

One could also argue that God created the universe and life using the laws and forces of nature as his tools, which is also logically fine, but it leaves us with additional scientific questions: Which laws and forces were used to create specific natural phenomena? How did God create the laws and forces of nature? A scientist would be curious to know God's recipe for, say, gravity or for a universe or a cell. For that matter, it is a legitimate scientific question to ask what made God, and how was God created? How do you make an omniscient being?

Finally, one could argue that God is outside of nature and therefore needs no explanation. This is also logically consistent, but by definition it means that the God question is outside of science, and therefore religion and science are separate and incompatible.

Bottom line: Teach science in science classes and religion in religion classes.

Shermer has just finished arguing that a consistent evolutionism leads to atheism and then turns around and argues that the God question is not answerable by science. That's a most peculiar juxtaposition of arguments.

He closes the article by urging us to teach science in science class and religion in religion classes, but having told us that science logically entails a religious conclusion, i.e. that there is no God, a school would be violating his advice by following it. Very odd and not very helpful.

All's Fair On the Left

Judge Roberts must be stopped by any means necessary. Even if it means twisting logic and inventing slanders to smear him with. Here's the latest:

CNN has reviewed and agreed to run a controversial ad produced by a pro-abortion group that falsely accuses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers supporting a convicted clinic bomber!

The news network has agreed to a $125,000 ad buy from NARAL, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, for a commercial which depicts a bombed out 1998 Birmingham, AL abortion clinic. The Birmingham clinic was bombed seven years after Roberts signed the legal briefing. The linking of Roberts to "violent fringe groups" is the sharpest attack against the nominee thus far.

However, the non-partisan University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Factcheck.org reviewed the NARAL ad and found it to be "false." Factcheck.org found "in words and images, the ad conveys the idea that Roberts took a legal position excusing bombing of abortion clinics, which is false."

The Republican National Committee is preparing to send a letter to television stations asking them to pull the spot, according to sources. The RNC's letter claims: "NARAL's ad is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts that has no purpose but to mislead the American people."

No doubt NARAL's response is "So?"

This ad is so unfair that even many of NARAL's allies are uneasy about it, but, hey, you have to do what you have to do. Any organization that defends partial birth abortion can hardly be expected to suddenly scruple over distorting the truth to discredit a foe.

Another One Goes Over the Edge

Another liberal is driven over the brink by Bush's re-election. They're unable to stop themselves, apparently, from indulging in their hate-inspired weirdness, even at this late date.

Speaking of left-wing weirdness inspired by George Bush, Mick Jagger has weighed in with a new song with which to demonstrate to his fans his political astuteness by insulting the president and his secretary of state. The very clever lyrics go:

"You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/ You call yourself a patriot. Well, I think your are full of sh*t!... How come you're so wrong, my sweet neo-con."

Insightful, no?

Mick has sympathy for the devil, but only contempt for George Bush and Condi Rice. Pretty weird.