Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, in this 2003 column, implicitly reminds Americans why hitting Tehran hard would be retaliation, not pre-emption, for the deaths of nineteen servicemen in the Khobar Towers attack.
Along the way he also reminds us why the Clinton years were so shameful.
Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.
Bill Roggio reports on the security situation in Afghanistan. Here's the first part of his report:
The latest round of fighting in southeastern Afghanistan has claimed over 82 Taliban fighters in two separate engagements in Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces. Security Watchtower provides a breakdown of the estimated casualties of Taliban and Coalition forces in southeastern Afghanistan since the beginning of April. An estimated 600 Taliban have been killed and 22 captured, with 41 Afghan and Coalition security forces killed or wounded combined. The estimated Taliban casualties do not contain the number of wounded, which is often twice the number killed in combat.
As the Coalition ramps up its forces and adds another 9,000 troops to the southeastern theater, the Taliban continues to take a pounding on the battlefield. The security situation in the region is fluid, but the Coalition is clearly gaining the upper hand as it moves forces and devotes energy into regions largely ignored by the central Afghan government. Coalition and Afghan sources estimate the Taliban strength between 2,000 to 5,000 active fighters, while the Taliban puts their strength at 12,000. Using the high Coalition estimate of 5,000 and an estimate of 1,800 Taliban killed and wounded, the Taliban has experienced a 36% attrition rate over the past three months. Using the Taliban estimate of 12,000 strong, the Taliban has experienced a 15% attrition rate. Both are frighteningly high numbers, and belie the reports of a sophisticated and powerful Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
To underscore this point, I sat in on a platoon level briefing prior to a Canadian assault earlier this month on the Dari and Panjwai districts in Kandahar province. Intelligence indicated the Taliban were massed in the hundreds, and possessed assault rifles, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), mortars and other more sophisticated weaponry (I will omit the weapons for security purposes). The grunts of Charlie Company of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, mobile assault team and the tip of the spear for Canadian forces, laughed at the intelligence reports the Taliban possessed mortars and other weapons, as they have shown little inclination to bring these weapons to bear on the battlefield. Mortars are hardly sophisticated weapons, they are a staple weapon of platoon and company sized infantry units. That the Taliban cannot effectively deploy these weapons speaks volumes of their sophistication and training.
This is all good news, of course, but the flip side is that Taliban strength is growing in western Pakistan. Read the rest of Roggio's report at the link for the details.
The DenverChannel.com News reports that:
The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill.
"Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder," CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday afternoon.
Churchill has 10 days to appeal, which entails making a request to have the university president or chancellor forward the recommendation to the faculty senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. A special panel will then conduct hearings on the matter and make a recommendation to the president on whether grounds for dismissal are supported.
Another committee found Churchill guilty of research misconduct and another panel recommended that he be fired because of "repeated and deliberate" infractions of scholarship rules.
Churchill should never have been hired in the first place, and his dismissal is a small, but welcome, rollback of the grip the hard left has on major American universities.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 the other day to uphold a Kansas death penalty law. One aspect of the case that caught our especial attention was the dissent of Justice David Souter who wrote that the Kansas law was "morally absurd," and that maintaining a system like the one in Kansas "is obtuse by any moral or social measure."
This from the man who thought it perfectly appropriate and "moral" for a local government to take property from one private citizen in order to give it to another private citizen so that the second owner could make more money from it. Souter's vote in the Kelo case makes us wonder about his ability to recognize a law that is "obtuse by any moral or social measure."
It certainly has convinced us that the last thing Justice Souter is qualified to bestow upon the nation is a lecture on morality.
If true, this report at Counterterrorism blog is major news:
A credible Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc, is affirming that Zarqawi was caught thanks to Iran and was the first gift to the US.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory? Maybe not. Citing Iranian sources and Iraqi sources close to ex PM Alawi, the paper states that Jordanian intelligence may have gotten help from Iran in pinpointing Zarqawi's location. A few weeks ago the Iranian FM met with King Abdullah in Amman to allegedly negotiate the deal. Then a few days later the Iranian FM was in Bagdad meeting with Iraki PM AL Maliki and allegedly US Ambassador Khalilzad.
Coincidence or not the US position softened around that time when for the first time Secretary of State Rice announced a possible ouverture to Iran. People close to Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's son, also believe that Zarqawi was indeed handed by Iran as part of a package.
Keep in mind that this info is really very speculative but might not be as far-fetched as one thinks.
It certainly sounds plausible given, among other things, Zarqawi's atrocities against Shia Muslims and the fact that Iran is predominately Shiite. Add to that Zarqawi's attempts to foment war between Iran and the U.S., a war that Iran can't possibly welcome, and we have to say we wouldn't be surprised if this report were true.
What we'd like to know, though, is how Iran knew Zarqawi's whereabouts when nobody else did.
Okay. No more polite averting of our eyes at Rep. Murtha's embarrassing nuttiness. He has with this statement officially enrolled himself in the left-wing lunatic fringe:
American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to an audience of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.
Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose one, and only one, of the three countries - the U.S., Iran, or N. Korea - could, and would, have nuclear weapons and a very powerful military. Which country would anyone with even a rudimentary hold on reality want it to be? Which of the three has threatened to destroy an entire country with nuclear weapons? Which of the three is ruled by a mentally deranged tyrant who deliberately starves his people and threatens his neighbors with incineration? Which of the three has in the last five years removed two cruel and oppressive tyrannical regimes in the Middle East and moderated the behavior of several others? To which of the three do suffering people throughout the world turn for hope and relief?
Statements like Mr. Murtha's really should disqualify him from being considered a serious voice in foreign affairs.
Strategy Page has an interesting insight into the state of violence in Iraq:
June 22, 2006: The bloodshed in Iraq is getting worse, and involving U.S. troops less and less. In the last year, over 10,000 Iraqi civilians died from terrorist and internecine violence. That's about twice as many deaths as the year before. In the last year, fewer than 400 civilian deaths were the result of American military action, and some $20 million in compensation was paid out to the next-of-kin for those civilian deaths. This is four times as much as was spent in 2004, largely because the compensation program has been more energetically applied. These payments are a part of Iraqi culture. Even Saddam used them, during the war with Iran in the 1980s, and avoided a lot of ill-will because of it. Works for U.S. troops as well.
Iraqis have, over the last three years, come to accept the fact that this violence is an Iraqi problem. Until the last year, most of the killers were former Saddam enforcers. Those thugs are still around, but in the last year, most of the blood is being shed by Kurds and Shia Arabs seeking vengeance against Sunni Arabs in general, and known Sunni Arab thugs in particular. American troops are no longer feared as much as they used to be, for the Iraqi killers are more common and prolific. For Sunni Arabs, U.S. troops are often seen as protectors. Moreover, Iraqis have noted that when Americans stage a raid, there is rarely any gunfire at all. But Iraqi troops and police are much more trigger happy. The Americans like to come in quiet, and at night, with no lights (because of the night vision gear.) Iraqi security forces come in with lots of shouting, lights and gunfire.
The terrorists rarely get a shot at American troops any more. But Iraqi civilians are another matter, and the usual target these days are people who can't defend themselves.
I wonder if they even know why they kill each other anymore. It almost seems as if killing is just something Arabs do to relieve their boredom.
Ah, those greedy capitalists. First Bill Gates sets up a charitable foundation and then retires to help manage it. Then Dick Cheney makes the largest single charitable contribution of any politician in American history. Then the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, gives his fortune to Bill Gates' foundation. How does one keep one's equilibrium when the world simply refuses to conform to the popular wisdom that the wealthy are evil, tightfisted, robber barons?
It's worth noting, perhaps, that if the left had their way there'd be no Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. There'd be no private wealth and thus no private philanthropy. All charity would be at the beneficence of the government which would acquire its resources by taxing the people at levels that would remove all incentive to accumulate Gates/Buffett scale fortunes. No one would be wealthy. Everyone would be middle class at best and the government, unable to mine more silver in the exhausted ore of the middle class would be unable to keep up its support for the kinds of charitable work done by private foundations.
In other words, the poor need the rich. The rich invest. The rich create jobs, and the rich make it possible for charitable organizations to do their work. This is not to say that the rich are ipso facto virtuous. Of course they are not, but the problem is with individual morality not with wealth. Those who insist we soak the rich in taxes and confiscate their wealth are as short-sighted as the man who wanted to kill the goose that laid golden eggs in order to have a tasty dinner.
The Edge runs a letter signed by a number of Darwinian worthies which, along with a book hostile toward Intelligent Design, they sent to every member of Congress. Here are some excerpts from the letter with my remarks:
June 16, 2006
To Members of Congress:
We, the authors and editor of Intelligent Thought, are sending you a copy of the book in hopes that you will consider its message. The book is largely about Intelligent Design (ID), the latest incarnation of creationism. ID is a movement that threatens American science education and with it American economic predominance and credibility.
This is a common scare tactic frequently employed to "poison the well" against ID. It's noteworthy that rarely does anyone ever say precisely how ID threatens science education. Suppose a biology teacher took time to point out to her class, after teaching the lessons on evolution, that some scientists and philosophers believe that this process is purely mechanistic while others, a smaller number, believe it required intelligent input, and explained some of the reasons why. Suppose, too, that a physics or earth-space science teacher discussed with his classes the astonishing fine-tuning of the cosmos and the remarkable fitness of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system and our earth for intelligent life. Suppose further that he concludes that some scholars see in this a fortuitous accident whereas others see in it intention and purpose. How, exactly, would any of this endanger science education?
The recent federal court decision in Dover, Pennsylvania found that ID was not a scientific theory, but a form of religion in disguise. Judge John Jones III, a churchgoing Republican appointed by President Bush, concluded that teaching this doctrine in the public schools represents both bad education and an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. President Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger, has affirmed that 'evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology' and 'intelligent design is not a scientific concept.' And Newt Gingrich has stated that ID has nothing to do with science and shouldn't be taught in science courses.'
One of the three authorities cited above is a scientist. One is a judge and the other is a politician. This is a good example of a logical fallacy called an appeal to irrelevant authority. What Judge Jones or Newt Gingrich say about the nature of ID is totally beside the point. What is germane is what philosophers of science are saying about it and in that field there are a lot of top people who would argue that there is simply no good reason for banishing design arguments from science. See for example, Del Ratszch's outstanding work on this subject Nature, Design, and Science.
Reason and law triumphed in Dover. But ID and its spinoffs continue to threaten American education by ignoring the massive evidence for evolution-the central principle that unites all the biological sciences- and by substituting adherence to religious dogma for the scientific method.
It is simply false to state that ID ignores the evidence for evolution. What it opposes is the claim that evolution is a purely mechanistic process. It is also false to claim that it substitutes religious dogma for the scientific method. There's no "religious dogma" in any of the major ID sources and I challenge any of the signatories of the letter to provide an example to support their allegation.
Our country cannot afford substandard science teaching. Indeed, a national science test just administered by the Department of Education showed a decade-long erosion of scientific proficiency among American high school seniors. We won't cure this problem by questioning scientifically established facts (evolution) and theories (natural selection) and replacing them with unsupported conjectures based on faith.
Nor do we cure substandard teaching by ignoring the difficulties with exclusively physicalist explanations or by encouraging sudents to accept on faith that those difficulties will be somehow, someday resolved.
The controversy over ID vs. evolution is not a scientific controversy. Every scientific body in the US has opposed ID and affirmed the reality of evolution. The "controversy" is about whether sectarian religious views should be taught in the science classroom.
The controversy is not about whether sectarian religious views will be taught in the public school classroonm because clearly no one is pushing for that. The controversy is about whether one metaphysical view - materialism - should be immunized in our public schools against any challenge from competing metaphysical hypotheses.
A list of the signers of the letter can be found at the link. These people know that as long as they can misrepresent and distort the nature of ID they will be able to hold on to their philosophical monopoly in the public schools. They also know that if they were to portray ID accurately they would quickly lose their influence and thus their dominance. Consequently, we will continue to see ID misrepresented as a religious doctrine, a variety of creationism, a scientific fraud, and so on. It's the only way the metaphysical naturalists who dominate the scientific establishment can hold on. They know that the day the door is open to honest debate will be the day that Darwinian materialism begins its decline into scientific and philosophical obsolescence.
Here are some interesting facts about the military's M-1 tank courtesy of Strategy Page:
Of the 1,100 American M-1 tanks that have served in Iraq, about seven percent have been badly damaged, at least badly enough to get them shipped back to the factory for rebuilding. Some 70 percent of the Iraqi based M-1s have been in combat. As infantry have known since World War I, tanks draw fire. But they are well protected, and fewer than twenty of the 4,400 tank crewmen involved have been killed, two thirds of those while standing up in a turret hatch, with at least head and shoulders exposed. The main cause of lost tanks is, as it has been since World War II, is mines and bombs. A few tanks have rolled over particularly large bombs, which in some cases flipped the tank. But other times, mines blow off one of the tracks, immobilizing the tank and making it the center of a fierce fight. But the terrorists and anti-government forces have come to avoid American tanks. Yes, these 69 ton behemoths can be hurt, but only at great risk and cost to the attacker. In addition to the M-1s three machine-guns, the 120mm gun has special shells for urban warfare, shells that are particularly deadly against gunmen trying to hide in buildings.
One reason the Iraqi military is not yet ready to fight on its own is that it lacks this kind of weaponry and the training it takes to use it. There's little doubt that eventually some of these needs will be met, but it will take time. To expect the Iraqis to fight their own fight without the armor, air power, UAV's, etc. that American forces have at their disposal is unrealistic. The need for this kind of combat support will keep at least some American troops in Iraq for a long time to come, or at least until the Last Helicopter party wins the presidency.
How will the Russian government react to this:
A group linked to al Qaeda said it has killed four Russian diplomats it had held hostage, according to a statement and video on a Web site Sunday.
The group -- the Mujahedeen Shura Council -- said it had beheaded three of the men and shot one to death. A video also posted on the Web site appeared to show one of the men being beheaded, another man already beheaded and a third man being shot in the head. The fourth man did not appear in the video.
The same group posted a statement last Monday demanding Moscow withdraw its troops from Chechnya and "release all our brothers and sisters" from prison within 48 hours. In the statement last week, the group added, "God enabled the lions of unification to capture four Russian diplomats in Iraq and kill a fifth," alluding to an attack June 3, when a car belonging to the Russian Embassy in Iraq came under fire.
Embassy official Vitaly Titov was killed in the attack, and diplomats Fyodor Zaitsev, Rinat Agliuglin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev were kidnapped.
We could not bring ourselves to watch it, but if you care to there's a video here.
Counterterrorism Blog reminds us that:
Russia has been known for dealing with terrorists with sometimes excessive force. And not only with Chechen rebels. For example, in September 1985 when four Russian diplomats were kidnapped in Beirut by Hezbollah, the then USSR responded in kind by first abducting a family member of an Hezbollah leader and then killing him very, very gruesomely. The hostages were given back right away and Russia was never targeted in Lebanon again.
Russia has no friends among the Islamic jihadis. They are hated by the Islamists for their war against the Chechens today and for what they did in Afghanistan in the 1970s. It's hard to imagine that the Russians will do nothing, but it's also hard to imagine what might be within their power to do.
The Washington Times wonders why it is that a corruption-conscious media has, with very few exceptions, ignored the record of Rep. Jack Murtha. Of course the fact that he's an antiwar Democrat may not be irrelevant to the question.
Read the Times' editorial and for exercise ask yourself whether you would only be finding this stuff out for the first time now if Murtha were a pro-administration Republican. Here's the core of it:
Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported how the ranking member on the defense appropriations subcommittee has a brother, Robert Murtha, whose lobbying firm represents 10 companies that received more than $20 million from last year's defense spending bill. "Clients of the lobbying firm KSA Consulting -- whose top officials also include former congressional aide Carmen V. Scialabba, who worked for Rep. Murtha as a congressional aide for 27 years -- received a total of $20.8 million from the bill," the L.A. Times reported.
In early 2004, according to Roll Call, Mr. Murtha "reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco." Laurence Pelosi, nephew of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, at the time was an executive of the company which owned the rights to the land. The same article also reported how Mr. Murtha has been behind millions of dollars worth of earmarks in defense appropriations bills that went to companies owned by the children of fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep. Paul Kanjorski. Meanwhile, the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog group, lists Mr. Murtha as the top recipient of defense industry dollars in the current 2006 election cycle.
As Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, has said, "If there is a potential pattern where Congressman Murtha has helped other Democrats secure appropriations that also benefited relatives of those members, I believe this would be something that merits further review by the ethics committee."
It's odd that the media, which has been fairly unbiased in going after corrupt politicians recently, has gone silent on Mr. Murtha's questionable actions. Or maybe it isn't. Since December, Mr. Murtha has become the darling of the antiwar crowd, and, as we've seen with other such darlings, scrutinizing their behavior is considered disrespectful. But as we're on the subject, few might recall that after the massive 1980 Abscam scandal, Mr. Murtha was named by the FBI as an "unindicted co-conspirator."
The LA Times broke this story a year ago, but because Murtha has become useful to the anti-war crowd in the interim neither they nor anyone else in the liberal media have shown much interest in pressing the issue.
Andrew McCarthy over at NRO has an excellent column on the "Media's War Against the War." He writes specifically about the boneheaded outing by the New York Times and the LA Times of the government's tracking of financial transactions made by terror suspects. The process appears to have been completely legal but may have been rendered ineffective by the Times' stories:
For the second time in seven months, the Times has exposed classified information about a program aimed at protecting the American people against a repeat of the September 11 attacks. On this occasion, it has company in the effort: The Los Angeles Times runs a similar, sensational story. Together, the newspapers disclose the fact that the United States has covertly developed a capability to monitor the nerve center of the international financial network in order to track the movement of funds between terrorists and their facilitators.
The effort, which the government calls the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" (TFTP), is entirely legal. There are no conceivable constitutional violations involved. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Miller (1976) that there is no right to privacy in financial-transaction information maintained by third parties. Here, moreover, the focus is narrowed to suspected international terrorists, not Americans, and the financial transactions implicated are international, not domestic. This is not data mining, and it does not involve fishing expeditions into the financial affairs of American citizens. Indeed, few Americans even have information that is captured by the program - though there would be nothing legally offensive even if they did.
There is much more in McCarthy's piece which merits a careful read. Here are two more graphs from the column:
...the most salient thing we learn from today's compromise ... is that the program has been highly effective at keeping us safe. According to the government, it has helped identify and locate terrorists and their financial backers; it has been instrumental in charting terrorist networks; and it has been essential in starving these savage organizations of their lifeblood: funding.
It was in view of the [program's] palpable value in protecting American lives, its obvious legal propriety, and the plain fact that it was being responsibly conducted that the administration pleaded with the newspapers not to reveal it after government officials despicably leaked it. Exposing the program would tell the public nothing about official misconduct. It would accomplish only the educating of al Qaeda - the nation's enemy in an ongoing war; an enemy well-known to be feverishly plotting new, massive attacks - about how better to evade our defenses. About how better to kill us.
PowerLine notes that:
In its editorial on the subject today, the New York Times offers no shred of an argument concerning the possible illegality or overbreadth of the program. It cites no instance of abuse. Rather, the Times argues "these efforts need to be done under a clear and coherent set of rules, with the oversight of Congress and the courts." The Times purports to invoke the rule of law where no law has been broken, and where the Times itself has both broken the law and damaged American national security.
And, we might add, they've compromised our safety for a single reason: They espied an opportunity to make life more difficult for George Bush. Had Bill Clinton been president and asked them not to run the story as the Bush people did, it is hard to imagine either paper refusing the request.
Michelle Malkin is receiving photoshop entries from around the country in response to the papers' despicable decision to publicize one of the tools we use to protect ourselves from the savages. Here's a sample:
Intelligent Design theorists believe that the designer's activity in the universe can be detected. Many Christian scholars, although they believe God to be the creator, reject ID because they hold that there is no way to detect God's activity, at least not in nature. This poses for them a very serious problem which Denyse O'Leary highlights here.
Here is what I think drives that sort of behavior: Some Christians in science are into emotional meltdown re ID because they have suddenly realized what is at stake:
The only way to rule out ID is to deny that God acts in the universe, period. If he acts at all, his action may in fact be detected.
If one insists as an article of faith that God's actions cannot be detected in principle or that it is wrong to attempt to detect them, that is a new article of faith, and one that is at odds with traditional Christian religion and conventional interpretations of the Bible.
but more generally,
For a long time, many fine Christian scholars got along well with materialists, more or less, because no one put the issue squarely, as the ID guys have done. So Christianity in the intellectual world has been dying the death of deniability: What can you deny and still be a Christian? But now the issue is so basic that it can't just be sophistically manipulated out of existence. Gradually realizing their dilemma, in an intuitive way, some sincere Christians retreat into meaningless abuse of ID hypotheses.
It gets better. Read the whole thing.
The main problem, though, for Christians who hold that God's work is undetectable in nature is that they have to deny the possibility of ever recognizing a genuine miracle. If miracles are indeed unrecognizable then no one could have known the miracles that Jesus performed to really be miracles, and thus the Biblical testimony about miracles must be unreliable. This conclusion seems a high price to pay in order to try to seem reasonable to one's secularist colleagues.
I may have been remiss by not providing sufficient background about my latest post on Democracy (Screwtape Proposes a Toast) that might have facilitated the readers understanding of the article by C. S. Lewis.
Prior to his writing of Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis wrote a book titled The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction. But only fiction in the sense that the characters and the dialogue sprang from the imagination of one of the greatest modern Christian writers. Yet in our terrestrial reality the issues confronted in this book play out in our lives every day.
The book contains thirty-one letters from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, who is Screwtape's underling in fiendishness. Screwtape is an upper-level functionary in the complex bureaucracy of the underworld. The "Screwtape Letters" are friendly advice from this elder statesman to a front-line tempter on how to procure the soul of his "patient", a young Christian man just trying to live out his everyday life.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast is a short story that Lewis wrote after the "letters" as kind of a finale. In both works, Lewis placed himself inside the head of Screwtape and communicates things as they would be seen by the Screwtape character. As a result, that which is morally bad is good and what is morally good is bad.
Sorry for any confusion.
Author and professor Tony Campolo speaks on the topic of God's omnipotence:
All the sin and suffering that have marked human history since Eden are the result of God relinquishing control over what we do. People like you and me abuse our God-given freedom and thus increase the hurt and destruction that is in the world.
To all of this, most readers will say, "We agree!" Yet, when I dare to say that God is no longer in total control over this world, so many of my fellow Christians go ballistic. They refuse to stop and think. If they did, they would realize that God must be self-limited if we are to come of age and become fully human. Without God choosing to be limited, we could not love God, because love is something that must be freely chosen-nor could we freely choose to love each other. And love is what is ultimately important.
I'm not sure what Campolo means by "no longer in total control." If he means that God has granted man a measure of autonomy to run things as he will then I think he's right. God doesn't directly cause every event or every decision that is made on earth.
If, however, he means that God could not change things even if He wanted to then I think he's wrong. In any case, there's more at the link.
I have been against the concept of a Democratic form of government ever since I realized that a democracy is simply two wolves and a sheep deciding what they will have for dinner. Remember that this country was founded as a Constitutional Republic because our founding fathers realized that a democracy was inherently destined to fail and only lately has our government morphed into a democratic form of government.
Recently I read Screwtape Proposes a Toast by C. S. Lewis and realized that I found an ally for my position from an altogether different perspective. It's fascinating to realize that C. S. Lewis wrote this almost 50 years ago and, to me, it's prophetic.
The entire story makes for an interesting read but you can scroll down to the following paragraph:
But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector (where I saw most of my front-line service) a horrible thing had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalizing movement and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of its old anti-Christianity remained. The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant. Factory owners of the good old type who grew rich on sweated labor, instead of being assassinated by their workpeople -- we could have used that -- were being frowned upon by their own class. The rich were increasingly giving up their powers, not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences. As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties -- as we reasonably hoped and expected -- for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous. Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious.
Calvin Seerveld offers some good advice for Christian students attending a secular university. Actually, I think it's good advice for any kind of student in any kind of university. Here are three of his six suggestions:
Major in the best profs, who make you think self-critically and who give solid course content in a field-area that you have gifts for or can be busy with, without noticing the passage of time.
Take a double major, if possible, to promote the ability to do interdisciplinary thinking, a kind of informal philosophy major (if the philosophy available is sophistic, skeptical or "undeep").
Get in-depth knowledge of a certain period: 5th to 4th century B.C. Athens, Renaissance England, Europe around the time of the French Revolution, or America during the 1920s. That is, rather than staying with survey knowledge, get close to a slice of cultural life somewhere, once upon a time, in many of its facets-a form of encyclopedia-historical study. Maybe work for a couple summers or part of a year in an African village, do volunteer work in Central America, or take a job on the south side of Chicago or in Toronto's Regent Park.
Check out the link for the rest of his recommendations.
Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, former Clinton assistant secretary of defense and secretary of defense, respectively, call for the United States to blow up on the launch pad the North Korean missile that has recently been fueled and made ready for launch:
[I]f North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.
Read their whole argument here.
Former Vice-President Walter Mondale has endorsed similar action. Charles Pritchard in the WaPo argues against a pre-emptive strike.
PowerLine has come across this quote from a 2003 transcript of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations:
I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election.
I have called for the administration to transfer sovereignty, and they must transfer it to the Iraqi people as quickly as circumstances permit. But it would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops. That could risk the hijacking of Iraq by terrorist groups and former Ba'athists.
The speaker was presidential candidate John Kerry. PowerLine observes that the shameless Senator Flipper was apparently against cutting and running before he was for it.
