In the Name of Justice

Blogger Derek Melleby relates the following encounter with a friend:

Recently I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is working on his Ph.D. in religion from Temple. Currently he is working on focusing his dissertation topic and much of his reading and thinking has been around democracy and religion. What is interesting to him (and other writers in this field) is how nations become "religions." To illustrate this he asks students in his undergraduate classes if they think people should kill others, or go to war in the name of Jesus. In other words, should Christians attempt to conquer the world, by violent force, for Christ? All of the students say "no," we shouldn't kill others in the name of any religion, particularly in the name of Jesus. But then he asks, "should we kill, go to war, in the name of democracy?" Or, in the name of America? Why is it that it is easy to say "no" to killing in the name of Jesus, but harder to say no to killing in the name of a political ideal, or a country? I know the question is simplistic, and doesn't do justice to all of the angles when thinking about war from a Christian perspective, but it does raise interesting questions about how we understand our faith in Christ, and our relationship to America.

Derek raises the question but leaves it for his readers to answer. He's correct that the question is simplistic and doesn't directly relate to the conflicts in which we find ourselves engaged as a nation. Nevertheless, to the extent that there are Christians who really would find one question harder to answer than the other, it should be addressed.

The short answer to the query is that we should never go to war "in the name of" Democracy or America. We should, however, be prepared to go to war for Justice. Justice may entail defending ourselves and our families, or it may entail defending others who are threatened and oppressed and who live in fear and deprivation.

Justice is a necessary condition for going to war, but it may not be a sufficient condition. There may be times when a war is justified but not wise. If, for instance, success is doubtful then, even though there might be just cause for waging war, actually doing so may be unwise.

The Bible, which is the Christian's guide to faith and morality, does not proscribe war. It calls evil the motives for which most wars are fought: avarice and the lust for power and blood. The protests against the Iraq war often tried to focus on this point. The protestors argued that we were going to war to slake our greed for oil, a claim which is absurd on its face. If it were oil we wanted we could've invaded Saudi Arabia or Kuwait with a lot less trouble. The Bible repeatedly calls upon us to do justice in the world, and there may be circumstances in which doing justice entails the use of deadly force. In such cases war may be a Biblically and morally legitimate option.

The question posed by opponents of the Iraq war - if invading Iraq was justified why didn't we invade Iran or North Korea which are also threats to peace - is both disingenuous and foolish. Disingenuous because the critic knows that if invading Iraq was justified then whether we invade other countries has nothing to do with the rightness of invading Iraq, and foolish because it demands that we do everything all at once.

Invading Iraq was both justified and wise. It delivered 25 million people from a most brutal oppression, it eliminated a major abettor of terrorism and a future threat to peace in the region and the world. It was wise in the same way it would have been wise to have acted preemptively against Hitler before 1938, rather than waiting until he had amassed the strongest military on the continent. Moreover, by attacking Iraq and disposing of the most powerful army in the Arab Middle East in a matter of weeks other countries, such as Libya, which might be considering emulating Saddam's example of pursuing WMD were put on notice that they would do well to reconsider.

There is something of a myth circulating among people who talk about these issues that war should always be a last resort. The truth is that war must never be a last resort. The last resort is to surrender or to do nothing that is effective in relieving an injustice. Making war a last resort is code for never making war at all. Those who say, as Senator Kerry has in the current campaign, that George Bush did not make war a last resort are really saying that as long as the other side is willing to "negotiate", as long as there is a glimmer of hope that they are prepared to concede here or there, as long as they haven't actually attacked us, as long as we can't prove they're going to attack us, as long as .... but this is to keep putting off ending a threat until the other side is so powerful that he makes ending it impossible. It is precisely the lesson Neville Chamberlain learned in the 1930s, and as the Duelfer Report makes clear, it was Saddam's strategy throughout the last thirteen years.

No, we should never fight a war in the name of "Democracy" or in the name of "America", but we should be prepared to fight in the name of Justice. Pacifists argue that war is by its nature inherently unjust, but it is hard to see how this could be so. How is it unjust to rescue people from evil? If, in the course of rescuing a nation, innocent people are accidentally killed does that tragic fact make the rescue of the nation unjust? Were the passengers aboard the hijacked plane which crashed in Pennsylvania wrong to use force, perhaps even deadly force, certainly force which resulted in the deaths of innocent passengers, to save the intended victims in Washington, D.C.?

The pacifist argues that war violates the principle of loving one's enemies, since it entails the deliberate killing of those enemies, but love for one's enemies must be tempered with love for all people. With deep respect for those who consider themselves pacifists and who strive to understand the Bible's teaching on war and peace, it must be said that pacifism is not always an expression of Christian love.

It is not love to see, as in Iraq, your fellow man living in fear, having his children tortured in front of his very eyes, being forced to watch his daughters scream in horror as they are being raped and horribly abused, watching helplessly as his children starve because the oppressors won't let them have food, and ultimately finding himself being tortured and murdered - it's not love to see all this and refuse to do anything more to alleviate the awful suffering of these people after peaceful attempts to end it have met with failure. To be able to end the horror through force, but to refuse to do so because it is believed that it is wrong to kill the people who are responsible for it, is perverse. To be able to end it and to refuse is the exact opposite of love.

What, one wonders, would be the pacifist response to a Beslan here in the United States? Would the pacifist counsel that we negotiate endlessly while the hostage children are delirious with thirst? And when the negotiations come to naught, what then? Give the terrorists whatever they want? Refuse to yield to their demands and stand by and watch as they murder our terrified children one at a time? Do nothing because we don't want to be responsible for the deaths of the terrorists and because the use of deadly force might also inadvertently cause the deaths of some of the children?

There are times in the course of events when the demands of justice and compassion, honor and prudence, come together and make the use of force both necessary and right. God grant us the wisdom to recognize when force is justified and wise, and when it is not.

Is <i>Rap Artist </i> An Oxymoron?

A rap artist, a person named KRS-One, finds much to be satisfied about in the fall of the Twin Towers. Evidently he was once turned away by security guards there for talking and dressing like, well, like a rap artist, and now justice has been served. Three thousand people paid with their lives for the affront. Or something like that. Here's the story:

If Osama bin Laden ever buys a rap album, he'll probably start with a CD by KRS-One. The hip-hop anarchist has declared his solidarity with al-Qaida by asserting that he and other African-Americans "cheered when 9-11 happened," reports the New York Daily News.

The rapper, real name Kris Parker, defiled the memory of those who died in the terrorist attacks as he spouted off at a recent New Yorker Festival panel discussion.

"I say that proudly," the Boogie Down Productions founder went on, insisting that, before the attack, security guards kept Blacks out of the World Trade Center "because of the way we talk and dress. "So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm - justice.'"

The atrocity of 9-11 "doesn't affect us the hip-hop community," he said. "9-11 happened to them, not us," he added, explaining that by "them" he meant "the rich ... those who are oppressing us. RCA or BMG, Universal, the radio stations."

Parker also sneered at efforts by other rappers to get young people to vote. "Voting in a corrupt society adds more corruption," he added. "America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place."

Having availed himself of his first amendment right to sound like an moron as well as dress the part, KRS has evidently taken umbrage again at the way the story was reported.

He offers a resounding non-rebuttal here. The fellow claims in his reply to be a philosopher and a keen observer of social events. Viewpoint has no doubt that as a thinker he's a fine rap lyricist.

Profiles in Shamelessness

Charles Krauthammer has commentary on the utter dishonesty of the Kerry/Edwards exploitation of the stem cell issue, and John Edwards' shameless promise to heal paralysis victims if he and John Kerry are elected. Krauthammer, who has himself been confined to a wheel chair since he was a medical student, finds the Democrats' pandering on this issue completely repugnant. Some excerpts from Krauthammer's column:

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

The implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.

Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.

In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.

So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.

This is an outright lie.

Krauthammer closes his column with these words: "There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected."

Ditto that for John Kerry.

The Kerry Gaffe

Hugh Hewitt doesn't seem ready to let go of the Kerry remark about Mary Cheney's sexual orientation any time soon.

Personally, although the statement seemed to have been thoughtless and gratuitous (We wonder how Kerry would've felt had someone chosen to publically comment on his daughter's choice of a totally transparent dress at a recent soiree), we'd be willing to give the Senator the benefit of the doubt that he had no malicious intent.

We would, that is, if it weren't for the fact that Kerry no doubt knows dozens of public figures in his own party that he could have used as examples, but he choose someone who is intimately related to the opposition (Hmmm). We would be willing to give Senator Kerry the benefit of the doubt if it weren't for the fact that John Edwards pulled the same stunt in his debate with Dick Cheney, and if it weren't for the fact that Mary Beth Cahill declared Mary Cheney's sexual orientation to be "fair game" (What's next, "open season"?), and if Kerry himself had had the grace to offer a sincere apology for having precipitated such a misunderstanding.

So far from getting an apology, what we got from Mrs. Edwards was a totally graceless comment that Lynne Cheney's pique at Kerry's remark shows her to be ashamed of her daughter. This crass statement by Mrs. Edwards is, in our opinion, even worse than Kerry's original blunder, assuming that Kerry's original blunder was indeed a blunder and not a calculated and cynical attempt to discredit the Bush/Cheney ticket by announcing to the world, or that part of it that may have been unaware, that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter.

The Flu Vaccine Shortage

The Democrats have been quick to accuse the Bush administration of dropping the ball on the matter of flu vaccine supply, but this is an example of political opportunism masquerading as profound concern for human welfare.

The available supply was cut in half because that portion of it produced in England was found to be contaminated by a bacterium. This raises the question, of course, of why we have to rely on foreign manufacturers to supply our vaccine in the first place. The answer is that over-regulation by the FDA and the fear of litigation have made domestic production unprofitable. In 1988 there were twenty five companies in the United States producing vaccines. Today there are only two. The rest weren't able to make enough money to cover the cost of insurance and R & D, so they decided to get out of the vaccine business altogether, and we were forced to seek our vaccines abroad. As a result, possibly thousands of people, perhaps many of them children, will die this winter because there isn't enough medicine with which to innoculate them against the flu. It's a good illustration of how government screws everything up when it tries to control too much.

Another problem is that demand for flu shots fluctuates from year to year as public interest waxes and wanes. Last season brought huge demand for a flu shot; the year before saw little interest. But flu shots have to be made six to eight months in advance, so the manufacturers must rely on projections which puts them at risk of creating far more vaccine than there is demand for. Since they can't store it, whatever they can't sell is a total loss. Companies often have to discard millions of doses a year.

Yet a third problem is that the government has become the most important purchaser of vaccines and now controls the market. This is because public health agencies have stepped into the market to help the poor by providing low-cost vaccinations. While this sounds like a laudable goal, the "public customer" has come to dominate the market. This has lowered prices for these medications.

With prices low, the risks associated with vaccine manufacture have become relatively more important. Vaccine manufacturers continue to be sued in vaccine-related lawsuits. Over the past 15 years, such litigation has chased several companies out of the vaccine business altogether.

What we need is more companies making vaccines in the United States. That means it has to be more profitable with less liability risk and fewer economic restraints. These important medicines save thousands of lives each year. To burden the manufacturers with onerous pathways to regulatory approval, unrealistic standards and exorbitant and unreasonable legal judgments, and to depress profits and innovation with price controls, is to cheat the American people.

It's hard to see how the Bush administration, which advocates all of these measures, can be fairly held responsible for this year's vaccine shortage, but it's not hard to see that an administration in thrall to trial lawyers and "big government" regulation of industry will be a major part of the problem, not part of the solution. John Edwards, who, as a lawyer, has enriched himself by bringing suit against medical practitioners, and his running mate, John Kerry, have consistently opposed measures that would effect genuine tort reform and are also strong advocates of government regulation. Despite Senator Edwards' claim the other day to possess supernatural powers of healing, both his and Kerry's records give the beleaguered flu sufferer little hope of any future relief.

<i>Viewpoint's</i> Bias

A friend writes to chide us for Viewpoint's partiality to George Bush (See Get Tougher On Bush on the feedback page) and for our reluctance to be as critical of his shortcomings as we are of Senator Kerry's. His concern is well-taken, not only because he's a very bright, reasonable, and honest guy, and not only because he has written a very thoughtful piece, but also because he happens in this instance to be correct. Viewpoint has indeed been on Bush's side in the current campaign and we have withheld criticism of the President while trying to make the case that Senator Kerry lacks the most important qualities we want our president to possess.

It might be helpful to explain why we don't adopt a more neutral stance. My brother Bill and I started Viewpoint last May for several reasons. One was that we felt that our culture was becoming increasingly secularized, even to the point of being hostile toward the Christian faith. There is a widely accepted belief in the Western world to the effect that religion is outmoded and obsolete; that it is nothing but myth and superstition; that it lacks any credible epistemic basis and has nothing to say to modern man. We wanted to add our voice to those who believe that socially, culturally, and philosophically this belief is a grave mistake.

A second reason for starting our web log was that we were dismayed by the failure of the Mainstream Media (MSM) to present a balanced picture of the policy issues confronting our nation and the men who would lead us. We believe there is not only a deep-seated bias against George Bush in the MSM but, more than that, a profound antipathy, even hatred, for him.

Bill and I hoped that we could perhaps be a voice, albeit a small one, in our little corner of the world, that might offer a tiny dissent against the roar of the MSM megaphone. In order to do this we felt we had to concentrate on the positives about George Bush and his policies since his opponents in the MSM were already engaged in the business of denigrating them. We also felt that much of the criticism of the president was manifestly unfair, even dishonest, and that the only realistic alternative to Bush, John Kerry, is completely unsatisfactory.

It's not that we think President Bush is perfect. We don't, and in fact the last time we talked about it, Bill was not even prepared to vote for him. George Bush is wrong, as far as we're concerned, on spending and immigration, among other things. He can also be faulted, perhaps, for some aspects of the post-war in Iraq. Even so, there are three issues which trump everything else in this election: The war on terrorism (of which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are a subset), the appointment of federal judges and supreme court justices, and the economy. On the last, Bush's judgment on spending (and, for Bill, globalism) is questionable, but his opponent's is worse. On the first two issues there is simply no contest between the two candidates in either of our minds.

For this reason, Viewpoint has taken the position that it is imperative for the welfare of this nation and the future of our children that Bush be re-elected. Four more years of George Bush will not guarantee success in the three paramount matters mentioned in the previous paragraph, but we can't accept replacing him with a man who has spent twenty years in the Senate without having a single major accomplishment to his credit and whose votes, and the political company he keeps, are uniformly indicative of a man whose policies would be quite detrimental to the long-term good of this nation.

We're not neutral about this nor do we pretend to be. We have religious and political points of view which we believe are preferable to their opposites and we wish to use our humble little forum to advocate them. There will be time enough after the election to explain our disappointments with the president, but now is not the time. Too much is at stake.

Justice For Saddam

The BBC has an article about the discovery of another mass grave in Iraq. This one is more heart-breaking than most:

US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s. The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men.

The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face.

"The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said US investigating anthropologist P Willey.

"Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."

Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.

Iraq's human rights ministry has reportedly identified 40 possible mass graves across the country.

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

Forty mass graves! And still the squeamish Europeans don't want to get involved. Yes. By all means, the Europeans should not help to accumulate the evidence of Saddam's crimes because, why, then they'd be helping to show that he actually deserved to die and what kind of gratitude would that express to the man who filled the purses of so many of their countrymen with cash in order to keep them quiet about his crimes. The Europeans are nothing if not loyal to an ally, at least whichever ally offers them the most lucrative bribes.

Perhaps this is all one might expect from the people whose culture produced Hitler and Stalin. The Europeans have a soft spot in their hearts for murderous savages like Saddam, they tend to regard them as existential heroes, and we should be understanding of their desire not to see a Nietzschean Ubermann get what he meted out to so many others.

As for those who have not yet descended to European levels of effete decadence there still exists the concept of Justice. Saddam deserves worse than death, of course, but that should be left to God. Our only obligation, as General Norman Schwartzkopff once said, is to arrange the meeting.

More On Fallujah

The Strategy Page has some interesting reading on the war of attrition going on in Fallujah and gives us some insight into the psychological effects of the Coalition's strategy on the insurgents:

October 14, 2004: Sunni Arabs in Iraq are becoming more agitated about being caught in a war pitting an alliance of Saddam supporters and Islamic radicals, against the majority Shia Arab and Kurds who want peace and prosperity, at any price. The Sunni Arabs are increasingly desperate to do something about their situation. Despite the threats from Saddam's old enforcers (almost all of them Sunni Arads), and the al Qaeda influenced Islamic radicals; tribal and religious leaders are suggesting that the Saddam hardliners and foreign Islamic radicals leave.

Leave Sunni Areas, leave Iraq, leave this life, it doesn't really matter. The Sunni Arabs see nothing but woe from the Saddam supporters and Islamic radicals. The American smart bombs hit Fallujah daily, while American and Iraqi troops continue to tighten the noose. The Saddam and Islamic gunmen regularly use civilians for cover, believing that, even when that tactic does not work, dead civilians make good propaganda for their cause. But most Sunni Arabs want nothing to do with seeing the Baath Party back in power, or having an Islamic Republic. The Sunni Arabs have been cowed by the terror, but not completely immobilized. Deals are being cut, to be finalized when Iraqi troops and police enter Sunni Arab towns under the shadow of American firepower. Will the Sunni Arab leaders remain with the Iraqi majority. Considering the alternative, they probably will.

October 13, 2004: Although the details are secret, American and Iraqi troops are on the offensive against Sunni Arab and terrorist gangs. Over a year of effort in building up an intelligence network among the population has paid off. Even in the Sunni Arab areas, many people are fed up with the lawlessness and violence created where the gangs operate. So information comes in about who is who and is doing what. This provides more, and higher quality, targets for raids...

There's more here.

UPDATE: Fox News reports that it looks as though an assault on Fallujah is imminent. See the report here.

Francis Crick, R.I.P.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helicoid structure of the DNA molecule, has passed away at the age of 88. Mark Steyn graces us with an excellent obituary.

Crick was an atheistic Darwinian who was most interested in taking his naturalistic assumptions to their logical conclusions, though like most such thinkers, he stops well short of going all the way.

For instance, Steyn quotes him as writing in his last major work, The Astonishing Hypothesis, "that 'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.'"

In other words, the human being is for Crick nothing more than a clump of chemicals, mud and blood, a muscle and bone machine. If Crick is right about this, however, it has the most distressing and devastating consequences for our view of human existence. As Viewpoint has argued on previous occasions, every major yearning of the human heart is hopelessly unfulfillable if all we are is a pack of neurons. Life and the world are completely absurd, there's no meaning or purpose to human love, striving, or suffering. There's no ground for moral judgment, no real justice, no basis for human dignity or rights. There is only, for most people who've ever lived, the prospect of pain, conflict, alienation, and finally annihilation with perhaps a few fleeting moments of joy arising briefly like the ephemeral light of a firefly in an otherwise uniformly dark and bleak night.

The worldview of such as Francis Crick leads anyone who is serious about its logical consequences into the abyss of nihilism and despair. Anything else is just whistling past the graveyard. It is an odd thing about atheism that few people are able to live consistently with its fundamental convictions that we are an accident of blind, impersonal forces and that this life is the only life there is.

Progress in Iraq

Senator Kerry claims that Iraq is in chaos, that the president is botching it so badly that Kerry has no idea what he will find when he takes office in January. He may, he claims, find that Iraq is another Lebanon, and so on. Yet everything we read coming out of that country, except what we read in the MSM, suggests that the Senator simply doesn't know what he's talking about. This is understandable, of course, since he never attends the meetings of the Intelligence Committee he serves on, but it's not excusable.

There is much news from Iraq which indicates that things are going much better there than the Senator would have us believe. One such story at National Review Online concerns the quality of Iraqi troops which are daily growing more competent, more effective and more numerous. Consider these excerpts:

The enthusiasm of U.S. Marine captains Thomas "Tad" Douglas and David Nevers can hardly be contained. Their voices, alternately crackling over a weak satellite-phone connection, are heartening as they describe the successes they are witnessing in Iraq. The insurgency is losing ground. Iraqi civilians, feeling less afraid than in previous months, are increasingly coming forward with solid information about the bad guys. And a new Iraqi special-operations force is taking the lead in wiping out guerilla strongholds, south of Baghdad.

From their operating base in Kalsu...Douglas tells National Review Online, "The Iraqis are performing well-above my expectations. Their strengths are their aggressiveness and mobility, and we are enhancing those strengths."

"This is an emerging force, and yet they are taking the lead in our operations against the insurgents," says Nevers. "We conducted an operation a month ago in which this force did most of the planning and then physically led the way. The operation was very successful, and it consequently set the stage for what we are doing right now."

Asked if those on the team are more-formidable fighters than the best Iraqi troops faced by U.S. forces during the spring 2003 invasion, Nevers is quick to respond, "Yes, and they are far better than the Iraqis we were contending with in April 2004 [during the brutal fighting in and around Fallujah and Ramadi]."

Speaking of Iraq, there is another helpful article on the conditions in Fallujah in the Washington Post (free registration may be required). Evidently, the American tactic of wearing down the insurgents in that city is paying dividends by setting the various groups against each other, and the foreigners are feeling both the heat and the fear.

Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

"He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near," Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.

One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi's group. Suri's body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.

One way or another Fallujah will be pacified by the end of November as will be Ramadi and Sadr City. Elections will be held and foreign corporations, eager to get a chunk of Iraq's oil wealth, will stream into the country to further hasten reconstruction. This will drive the left in this country to near hysteria, not only because George Bush will be largely vindicated and given the credit, and the judgment and motives of the left will be indicted, but also because once Iraq is stabilized, the attention of the world, i.e. the U.S., will perforce turn toward Iran's nuclear program. If Iraq begins to settle as November draws to a close, look for the left to employ every play in their playbook in a desperate attempt to preempt military action against Iran should it be deemed necessary.

Moreover, if Bush is re-elected in a couple of weeks look for the French, Germans, and Russians to join the coalition against Iran. They will seek to redeem themselves after their disgraceful behavior in Iraq, where they accepted bribes from Saddam in exchange for thwarting the American demarche. Unless, of course, they're also accepting bribes from the mullahs in Tehran.

Swift Vets Are Back

Transcripts of two new Swift Boat Veterans ads, set to run during Monday Night Football, can be found here. The second of the two sounds like it will be very powerful. Thanks to Kerry Spot for the tip.

Mr. Bush's Liabilities

Many people have wondered why President Bush doesn't defend his record more vigorously in the debates and attack Kerry's record, which is eminently vulnerable, more incisively. The answer, perhaps, is that Mr. Bush suffers from three rhetorical liabilities. First, he seems to assume that everybody already knows all the facts. He himself is immersed in matters of policy all day long, and it's easy for such a man to think that what's obvious to him is obvious to everybody. Perhaps he doesn't realize the depth of political ignorance and indifference that resides just outside the beltway. When, for example, he accuses John Kerry of being a "liberal", probably three quarters of citizens of voting age have no idea what he means.

Second, he's just not a quick thinker on his feet. His mind doesn't seem to work well when he's under the pressure of having to come up with gaffe-free answers in front of the whole nation. He no doubt works much better in intimate, relaxed settings where he can be himself, has time to consider options and think through problems.

Third, he's not particularly eloquent so that when he does know what he wants to say he has trouble putting it into words and using the appropriate inflections and gestures to drive the words home.

All of these liabilities work to his detriment in a debate setting, and it's quite surprising that his team didn't insist on the same sort of format that was used in the Cheney/Edwards debate which would have put him more at ease. It's also surprising that they didn't insist that he be allowed to use notes which would've made his task much less onerous.

None of this, mind you, should be taken as in any way a reflection upon his intelligence. Brilliant men have suffered the same sorts of disabilities, and absolute dolts can appear eloquent and articulate in public. Everyone is different in this respect. One reason why Viewpoint opposes Presidential debates is that they give the impression that the skills needed to do well in such events are somehow necessary qualifications for the presidency. That is not the case and never has been, and we do our nation a disservice by placing so much emphasis on the minutiae of these events.

Left-Wing Loopiness

Among the many reasons why the nation seems so divided this election season is the fact that the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic party (about 90% of politically active Democrats) seems to have taken leave of their senses. Their febrile minds conjure up all manner of nightmarish fantasies that they are quite certain are accurate accounts of Bush administration plots and machinations, and out of their paranoia and hallucinogenic condition arises the most spiteful and vile rhetoric. Or they express their distaste so ineptly that it just sounds dumb. Either way most sane folk are put off by it and wish to have nothing to do with them.

Slate.com provides us with a fine illustration of the mental state of the contemporary left. They interviewed thirty one novelists to see who these writers will be voting for in November. As one might expect from such a group, twenty four responded that they will be voting for Kerry and four favor the President (three chose other options). More interesting than who they support, however, are their reasons for their selection. Here's a sample from the twenty four Kerry supporters:

Dan Chaon

He [Bush] seems truly, frighteningly dangerous and completely without scruples. I'm alarmed by his administration's attacks on civil liberties, by the deliberate lies that brought us into a poorly planned war, by the gleeful disregard for the environment, by the social policies - the tax cuts, which so nakedly benefit the very few to the detriment of almost everybody else; the ugly, merciless No Child Left Behind educational policy; the reckless budget deficit .... I have found myself recoiling from the newspaper, and I dread where another four years of his administration would lead us. I find myself particularly repelled by Bush's professed "Christianity," even as his administration repudiates every value that Christ represents. He's probably not the Antichrist, but he comes as close as I've seen in my lifetime.

Amy Tan

I'm voting for Kerry, because I have a brain and so does he.

Rick Moody

The Bush presidency is the most corrupt in modern history. Under the cynical disguise of evangelical Christian moralizing (and don't even get me started on Bush's moronic theology), Bush conducted (and continues to conduct) a fire sale, in which he auctioned off the entire nation to the highest corporate bidder, piece by piece.

Jonathan Franzen

He's [Bush] the candidate whose defeat Osama Bin Laden (if he's alive) is praying for. I trust him not to pour additional gasoline on the fires that Bush has set overseas. Also, since he's [Kerry] a Democrat, I trust him to exercise a modicum of fiscal sanity and to show a little compassion for the unlucky. Also, his wife is hot hot hot.

Jane Smiley

Would George Bush steal the election if he thought he could get away with it? The evidence is that he has (disenfranchising black voters in Florida in 2000) and wants to again (attempting the same trick already this year). That such a man, an amoral prevaricator and ruthless opportunist, actually has supporters in his bid to wreck American democracy appalls me. I think that the coming election will result in a constitutional crisis of unprecedented danger. I consider a vote for Bush a vote for tyranny.

David Amsden

A cousin of mine spent a year fighting with the Army in Iraq. He was a harder man when he returned, tweaked, difficult to relate to. His stories were crushing - did you know that there are giant spiders that creep up on sleeping soliders at night? That this is the sort of thing that causes nightmares....For all his swaggering bravado, the guy has no real backbone, no confidence in anything but his squinty little grin, which is frightening.

Well, we could go on, but why bother. After all, the level of ignorance, falsehood, anti-Christian bigotry, and plain stupidity in this brief sample of responses is just too depressing to warrant prolonging the exercise.

Despite the intellectual perversities, eccentricities, and loopiness on display here, there are a few bright lights of rationality shining amidst the liberal gloom. These are mostly provided, however, by those novelists who are supporting Bush. Click on the link above to read their statements.

George Bush Should Receive a Nobel Prize

Scott Norvell has a fine piece here on the election in Afghanistan. He writes from Kabul:

It was a regrettably typical comment from an American reporter in this part of the world. "At least it's news," he said of the Afghan election scuffle over the weekend. "Otherwise, this is just a success story."

God forbid it be a success story.

But that's what it was here, no matter how hard the international media tried to spin it. There were no car bombs raining body parts all over the polling stations. There were no last-minute assassinations. There were no drive-by shootings. The best they could come up with for "news" was grumbling from hopelessly trailing opposition candidates about washable ink and threats of a boycott. The media's disappointment was palpable.

When Kabul came out of its election-time shell on Monday, the picture was instead one of a city reveling in the chaos of commerce. Real estate prices are rising, and the din of new construction is pervasive. Foreign investment is up. There are three times as many private cars on the streets as five years ago, and women can go shopping without getting whipped by thugs from the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue for baring sockless ankles beneath their burqas. It is a chaos to which Afghans have been accustomed for centuries, one they are happy to have back.

This is a Nobel prize caliber accomplishment. In fact, it surpasses in magnitude virtually anything any previous recipients of that award have achieved. What other world leader has done so much for so many of the world's oppressed in just four years? Maybe FDR in WWII (although it's questionable), surely Reagan, but it took him eight years, and even then it wasn't until after his presidency that his policies toward the communists brought about the collapse of their tyranny.

What other world leader has done as much for women's rights in such a brief period of time as has George Bush? Twenty five million women in Afghanistan and Iraq can vote for the first time ever. In Afghanistan they can go to school and hold elective office for the first time. This is monumental, but it leaves our feminists unimpressed. After all, Bush still opposes the right of a woman to kill her unborn child.

Bush's accomplishment of freeing fifty million people in Afghanistan and Iraq is probably unique in world history, but the odds that Bush will be awarded the Nobel are probably about the same as they were for Ronald Reagan. Doubtless the enlightened eminences who decide upon the recipients, if they don't select some mentally unstable virago who rants about white scientists developing AIDs in order to wipe out the black race, will choose someone who campaigned hard to prevent what Bush has achieved. Maybe Jacques Chirac, now that he's no longer receiving bribes from Saddam, can use the cash.

If You Don't Like it...

The Democrats are in a massive snit over the decision by Sinclair Broadcasting Corp. to preempt regular programming to air a film based on the book Stolen Valor which takes a very close look at the character of the Senator who would be president. The film is seen by the left, who ought to know one when they see it, as an attack piece.They're outraged that a broadcasting conglomerate would use the public airwaves to promote a partisan assault on their candidate.

One wonders where all this anger and indignation from the left were when CBS and Dan Rather were using 60 Minutes to slander George Bush with fraudulent memos.

One commentator on MSNBC said that this new film is not like Fahrenheit 9/11 because people had to buy a ticket to see that and this is coming into homes free courtesy of the public airwaves. Of course, Fahrenheit 9/11 was shown for free to students in taxpayer subsidized universities all across the country, but that's different. That was a hit piece on George Bush. Those should be subsidized. Unlike Michael Moore's movie, this film is factually accurate, however, and may seriously hurt John Kerry, so it's an obvious abuse of the public trust that must be stopped.

Anyway, what is it that the liberals always tell people who complain about the sleaze and junk network television serves up on a daily basis? "Hey, if you don't like it, don't watch it."

The <i>Leap of Faith</i>Ticket

John Kerry has evidently made a last minute switch of running mates exchanging John Edwards for faith-healer Benny Hinn. At least that's the word out of the midwest today where the Democratic vice-presidential candidate had these promises for an Iowa audience:

"We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases... When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

If the race stays close look for the vice-presidential candidate, whoever he is, to be promising voters eternal life if Kerry's elected.

No word from Iowa yet as to how many listeners were "slain in the Spirit" at the event.

Spiking Steyn

Mark Steyn is always worth reading. He's bright, funny, and an outstanding writer. He recently wrote a column for his paper, The Telegraph in England, which the editors declined to run. They evidently felt that Steyn was a little too insensitive in discussing the reaction of some British government officials and the family of Ken Bigley in the wake of his abduction and murder by Islamic terrorists in Iraq. Viewpoint wonders, however, if the refusal to publish the column doesn't say more about The Telegraph's editors than it does about Steyn. Be that as it may, he subsequently posted his column online with a brief explanation. Go here to read it. It's very good.

The World Kerry Would Create

Senator Kerry has been receiving a drubbing in the New Media for his gaffe in yesterday's New York Times to the effect that he wants to see terrorism reduced to the level of a nuisance. The statement was at best stupid and Power Line does a fine job of explaining why it is so egregious. Even so, I don't think that that is the worst thing he says in the interview. Elsewhere in the article he's quoted as saying that:

September 11 "didn't change me much at all," rather it "sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing....We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days. And that's all about your diplomacy....A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly."

This statement reveals a shocking lack of understanding of our enemy. Kerry sees terrorism as a problem of diplomacy, of economics. This is incredibly naive and almost guarantees worse strikes against our country than we experienced on 9/11. The jihadis are not trying to kill us because we have inept diplomats. Nor are they trying to destroy us because they resent our exploitation of their oil. They are trying to murder us because they see us as enemies of God who must be converted or exterminated. In their eyes we are infidels who are guilty of two major crimes.

The first is that we serve as a guarantor of Israel's continued existence. The only diplomatic strategy we could adopt which would (temporarily) appease the Islamists would be to pull out of the Middle East completely. Not only would we have to abandon Iraq and our bases elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, but we would also have to abandon any and all commitments to Israel's security. Nothing short of this will mollify the terrorists, and this will only assuage their hatred in the short term.

The second crime of which we are guilty is that we are, in their eyes, spreading a corrupt, decadent culture throughout the Muslim world. It's not just our sexual permissiveness that upsets them, it's the freedom we have to believe and say what we wish, it's the equality we give to women, it's the idea that church and state should not be entangled. Each of these is abhorrent to Muslims and their religion, or their interpretation of it, calls upon them to wage tireless, unceasing jihad against the corrupting influences of the West which threaten to undermine the Faith.

As long as we're strong, however, their efforts are unlikely to prosper so they must defeat us by destroying our economic power base. They must conquer us by wearing us down, by striking at our homeland in order to dispirit us. As long as we're a politico-cultural presence in the world they will strive relentlessly to bring us low, and terror is the only means they have at their disposal to accomplish this. They certainly are not prepared to wage a war of ideas nor can they persuade us through diplomacy to commit cultural suicide. Thus for Kerry to suggest that better diplomacy will reduce or eliminate terrorism reveals an alarming naivete on his part. The Islamic hatred for the West does not lend itself to diplomatic ameliorations.

What diplomacy would accomplish, however, is an illusory lessening of conflict. The jihadis would doubtless give the impression that they were succumbing to whatever inducements or bribes a Kerry administration held out to them. They would attempt to lull us to sleep with assurances that now that the cowboy Bush is out of office it is possible to discuss our differences reasonably. Tensions would ease. Americans, always willing to delude ourselves, would become complacent.

To show our good faith, and to keep negotiations moving along, a Kerry administration would likely relax our prosecution of the war against Muslim terrorists abroad. With the reduction of military operations would come a simultaneous relaxation of vigilance which would almost surely result in making our borders even less secure than they are now. It would be just a matter of time before a WMD was smuggled into the U.S. and detonated in one of our cities. The resulting death and chaos would be unprecedented.

The terrorists would then announce through their media outlets to a stunned nation that there are similar weapons planted in other cities throughout the United States and that unless we meet their demands, i.e. get out of the Middle East and abandon Israel, they will begin to set the others off as well. They don't have to really have the weapons, they only have to have had the first one, and have used it, and the ensuing panic would be seismic in scale. No administration which refused to accede to these demands would survive. The result would be a paralyzed, panic-stricken America, and this would be catastrophic for the entire globe.

With a United States helpless to impose its will, war would almost certainly break out between Arabs and Jews, between China and Taiwan, and on the Korean peninsula. It would probably also erupt between India and Pakistan and Iran and Iraq. In each of these cases it would no doubt be nuclear. Tribal warfare in Africa would rage unnoticed against the global conflagration that would result from a United States crippled by a terror strike such as we've envisioned. Civil strife would plague our cities as well, especially in locales with Muslim populations.

This is the world John Kerry's thinking and approach could very likely create. It is the most plausible consequence of believing that the war on Islamic terror can be fought by diplomats and deal-making.

Paladins of Pessimism

Below the media radar screen the struggle in Iraq continues and is clearly moving in the coalition's favor. Heretofore, there were two main groups of resistance, Muqtada al Sadr's Mehdi Army in Najaf and Sadr City, and al Zarqawi's thugs in Samarra, Fallujah, and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle. As Strategy Page reports, however, al Sadr is just about finished, Samarra has been pacified, and time is running out for the insurgents in Fallujah.

Elections are on track for Iraq just as they were in Afghanistan, the Iraqi economy is taking off, schools and businesses are bustling, and all the Democrats can say is that the liberation of 25 million Iraqis is a disaster, a colossal mistake. Even as the Democrats sing their woeful dirges the insurgents find themselves caught in the coils of a python, and as more Iraqi troops and police come on line the squeeze is only going to get tighter.

In light of all this, the real colossal mistake would be to elect the twin paladins of pessimism, John Kerry and John Edwards, to determine the direction of the war on terror for the next four years.

Senator Kerry on the Supreme Court

In the debate in St. Louis last Friday evening John Kerry said, "Now, here's what I believe. I don't believe we need a good conservative judge, and I don't believe we need a good liberal judge. I don't believe we need a good judge of that kind of definition on either side."

He then followed his claim to be uninterested in whether a judge is liberal or conservative by conjuring an image of a liberal jurist: "The future of things that matter to you - in terms of civil rights, what kind of Justice Department you'll have, whether we'll enforce the law. Will we have equal opportunity? Will women's rights be protected? Will we have equal pay for women, which is going backwards? Will a woman's right to choose be protected? These are constitutional rights, and I want to make sure we have judges who interpret the Constitution of the United States according to the law."

Last May the Senator spoke these words: "I believe that a woman's right to choose is a constitutional right, I will not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who will undo that right."

In other words, Kerry will not, contrary to what he said Friday night, appoint a conservative justice to the Supreme Court who disagrees with him on whether there is anything in the constitution guaranteeing a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy. If this is Senator Kerry's position, so be it, but it is simply disingenuous of him to suggest that ideology doesn't matter, as if he were only interested in finding the best qualified person for the job. He isn't. By his own admission, if the best qualified person has a strict constructionist view of the constitution he would have no chance of serving on a Kerry court.

Whichever man is elected president on November 2nd will probably have the opportunity to profoundly restructure our highest judicial Court. Justice John Paul Stevens, a liberal appointed by President Ford, is 84. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a conservative first appointed by President Nixon and then elevated to chief justice by President Reagan, just turned 80. Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee who often votes with the liberals, is 74. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee who anchors the court's left, is 71. At 56, Clarence Thomas, a conservative, is the only justice under 65.

It's possible that the next president will have the opportunity to make four appointments to the Bench. That's why this election is so important in the eyes of so many. The next president will not only decide the future of the war on terror but the direction of law in this country for the next fifty to a hundred years. The choice is between a man who would appoint people to the Court who believe that we should interpret the constitution in light of what its authors intended (Bush), and a man who believes that the constitution should be interpreted to conform to current political and social fashion (Kerry). Senator Kerry's claim that a judge's ideology doesn't matter to him is nonsense.

Thanks to Captain's Quarters for some of the above.