Unspeakable Evil

Is this the sort of barbaric evil that awaits all the people of Iraq as soon as we pull out?

Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face -- the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze. It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today. No one has been arrested and the motive remains unknown.

In a war-ravaged city torn by sectarian violence and marked by acts of vengeance, this attack's apparent randomness stands out as an example of what life has become in a place where brutality -- even against young children -- is a constant.

"They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran," Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled.

As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, "I was burning." He tried to put the flames out himself. It looks as though this boy's face melted and then froze into rivers cutting through swollen hard flesh. It's hard to see the energetic outgoing child his parents describe beneath the sullen demeanor that defines Youssif today.

"He's become spiteful, I am not sure why," said his mother, Zainab. "He is jealous of everyone. If I say the slightest thing to him, he cries. He's sensitive." Even things like eating have become a chore. His face contorts when he tries to shovel rice into his mouth, carefully angling the spoon and then using his fingers to push the little grains through lips he can no longer fully open.

He has also become jealous of the baby sister he used to dote on. "I sit sometimes at night and cry," Zainab said, her voice heavy with guilt. "If only I hadn't let him go outside, if only I hadn't let him play."

It was on January 15 that masked men attacked her boy, their identities still unknown. Zainab said she was upstairs at the time.

"I heard screaming. I thought someone was fighting or something," she said.

She ran downstairs, saw her son and fainted. When she came to, she barely recognized her child. "His head was so swollen, you couldn't see his eyes, and his nose was pushed in."

"There was blood," she added, shuddering slightly. "The skin was melted off."

He spent two months in the hospital recovering from the severe burns. These days Youssif spends most of his time indoors, in front of the computer. It's only then that traces of the 5-year-old in him emerge. "He can't play outside with the other kids," Zainab said. "The other day they were playing, and he came in crying. I asked him, 'What's wrong?' and he said, 'They won't play with me because I am burned.'"

She said he once wanted to be a doctor and he loved kindergarten. "He used to be the one who would wake me up every morning, saying let's go to school," Zainab recalled. She coaxed him to tell me the few words he knows in English. "Girl, boy, window, fan," he said, his voice barely audible, the words barely intelligible. Doctors told the family there is little more they can do to help Youssif. The family can't afford care outside Iraq.

So Zainab has taken a massive risk by telling her story to the world. Her husband works as a security guard, and it's too dangerous for him to talk to the media. "I'd prefer death than seeing my son like this," Zainab said.

All she wants is for someone to help her little boy smile again.

Update: A charity has offered to pay all the costs for reconstructive surgery for Youssif. You might have thought that the charity was an Islamic organization since little Youssif is a Muslim, but you would have been mistaken. The charity is the Children's Burn Foundation. See Hot Air for the details.

RLC

Positive Review of <i>The Edge</i>

The Philadelphia Inquirer has just insured that it will be henceforth the object of much calumny and opprobrium from the Darwinian establishment. It has published a review of Michael Behe's book The Edge of Evolution that actually takes the book seriously enough to explain what Behe's argument is and, what's more, praises it.

Here's the crux of science writer Cameron Wybrow's review:

Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, provides some hard numbers, coupled with an ingenious argument. The key to determining the exact powers of Darwinian evolution, says Behe, lies with fast-reproducing microbes. Some, such as malaria, HIV, and E. coli, reproduce so quickly that within a few decades, or at most a few millennia, they generate as many mutations as a larger, slower-breeding animal would in millions of years. By observing how far these creatures have evolved in recent times, we can estimate the creative limits of random mutation.

In the case of malaria, the creative limits appear quite low. Over the last few thousand years, several thousand billion billion malarial cells have been unable to develop an evolutionary response to the sickle-cell mutation, which protects its human bearers from malaria. On the other hand, malaria has proved able to develop Darwinian resistance to the antibiotic chloroquine. This resistance is based upon two simultaneous mutations affecting a malarial protein.

Yet this rare double mutation has occurred fewer than 10 times since chloroquine was introduced 50 years ago, during which time a hundred billion billion malarial cells have been born. If this indicates the typical rate of occurrence of double mutations, then the Darwinian transformation of our pre-chimp ancestor into homo sapiens, which would have required at least some double mutations, would have taken at least a thousand trillion years, a time span greater than the age of the universe....

The response to Behe has been predictable. The editors of the major print media have assigned known enemies of ID to trash the book - Richard Dawkins for the New York Times; Coyne for the New Republic; Miller for Nature; Ruse for Toronto's Globe & Mail. A large part of each review is ad hominem, concerned with Behe's alleged religious agenda, his minority status among biologists, and other irrelevant matters. In Dawkins' review, the science is barely touched, and it's not clear from Ruse's review that he has even opened the cover of the book. Behe deserves better. The Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.

Read the rest of Wybrow's review here.

RLC

An Atheist's Plea to Atheists

Well-known skeptic writer Michael Shermer has penned an open letter to the more militant of his atheist brethren imploring them to adopt a less strident, more tolerant tone. The letter is interesting although I'm not suure what it's doing in Scientific American.

RLC

Israeli Missile Defense

According to Strategy Page,

Israel is going ahead with installing the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. This is a defensive system with a unique twist. Iron Dome radars (there are two of them) quickly calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket (Palestinian Kassams from Gaza, or Russian and Iranian designs favored by Hizbollah in Lebanon) and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. But if the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area, a $40,000 guided missile is fired to intercept the rocket. This makes the system cost-effective. That's because Hizbollah fired 4,000 rockets last year, and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired over six thousand Kassam rockets in the past six years. But over 90 percent of these rockets landed in uninhabited areas.

Very clever, those Israelis.

RLC

Pressing His Luck

I don't know how this made it onto YouTube, but it's a slow-motion video clip of a jihadi paying the ultimate price for trying to kill people with a mortar.

There's no explanation of what happens, but I suspect that his initial round was tracked by computerized artillery and the return fire was deadly accurate. He should have taken off after he shot the first round, but he evidently wanted to increase the chances that he maimed or killed someone.

RLC

Academic Re-education Camps

Science welcomes eccentrics and heretics, those whose opinions and theories shake established orthodoxies. Well, at least it used to. That was until the orthodoxies concerning women, homosexuality and transgenderedness, race, religion and evolution all came under the aegis of secular leftism. Now one challenges those orthodoxies at considerable peril to one's professional and personal well-being.

Ask, for example, Lawrence Summers about what happens when one transgresses the leftist dogmas about gender. Ask Charles Murray about what happens when one flouts the dogmas concerning race. Ask Richard Sternberg what happens when one violates the dogmas concerning Darwin or Guillermo Gonzalez about what happens when metaphysical materialism is called into question.

Now J. Michael Bailey is feeling the force of academic intimidation and character assassination that accompanies any hypothesis that wanders too close to the barbed wire perimeters of the leftist gulag:

In his book, Bailey argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake - in essence, women trapped in men's bodies. Dr. Bailey described the alternate theory, which is based on Canadian studies done in the 1980s and 1990s, in part by telling the stories of several transgender women he met through a mutual acquaintance. In the book, he gave them pseudonyms, like "Alma" and "Juanita."

Other scientists praised the book as a compelling explanation of the science. The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay, bisexual and transgender literature, nominated the book for an award.

But then the roof caved in. Read the story for the details of the ordeal to which Bailey is being forced to undergo.

The left-wing python is slowly squeezing the life out of academic research. By insisting that all findings conform to what is ideologically acceptable and punishing those who dissent our universities have undergone a sex change of their own, so to speak. They have exchanged their traditional role as marketplaces of ideas for more "progressive" roles as institutions of indoctrination for our young and re-education camps for those unfortunate souls so foolish as to deviate from the party line.

RLC

For What It's Worth

Breitbart has the story of an AP-Ipsos poll which found that 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives:

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.

I wonder if the disparity between liberals and conservatives has something to do with the fact that liberals are often academics and conservatives are often businessmen. The former might be expected to read more than the latter.

In any event, I don't think we can draw any significance from these numbers without knowing what sorts of books are being read by the two groups. If one group reads a lot of novels and another reads a lot of history chances are the former is going to read more books in a year than the latter.

What is troubling, though, is that:

One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year - half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.

Twenty-five percent of us don't read at all, and those who do - assuming that by "religious works" is meant stuff like the Left Behind series - read mostly to be entertained. Sadly it appears that Americans do not hold the gifts of language, literacy, and learning in very high esteem.

I was reminded by this survey that both Karl Rove and George Bush read a book or two a week, and Bush's reading is not just light entertainment (see the link for a sample). His reading evinces an intellectual curiosity far above that of most Americans and probably beyond that of most of those who criticize him for being mentally obtuse.

RLC

Artificial Life

So, according to this AP story scientists are within a couple of years of producing a living cell from the chemical constituents of life:

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways-in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step-creating a cell membrane-is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step-getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

This is a very odd statement. Szostak is saying that blind, random chance is more ingenious than human intelligence. He'd have us believe that unguided, unintelligent accident is a better engineer than human minds.

Anyway, they may be successful in manufacturing a functional cell - who knows - but if so, then the only observed case of life having appeared from non-living precursors will be one in which the development was guided by an intelligent agent. We will then have actual experience of life being produced by intelligent designers, but we will still have had no experience of life being formed by purely unintelligent processes. We will, in other words, have empirical reason to believe that biogenesis can be effected by minds but no empirical reason to believe that it can be effected apart from minds.

What, then, will be the most reasonable inference - that life probably appeared through physical processes alone or that it is at least partly the result of intelligent action?What scientific, as opposed to philosophical, grounds will anyone have for insisting upon a purely physicalist explanation for the origin of life?

RLC

Why Did They Have to Die?

The refusal to treat illegal immigrants like they are illegal is putting all Americans at risk says Mark Steyn in this very good column about the Newark murders.

RLC

Limits of Atheism

Suppose a controversy erupted among scientists and philosophers over, say, the ability of the Big Bang to account for certain cosmological facts about the world, or suppose the controversy swirled around whether the theory of quantum mechanics was correct. How many people outside the relevant disciplines would take much of an interest? Probably very few. Why then do so many non-scientists react so vigorously to challenges to traditional Darwinism?

This is the question that David Warren asks in a column in the Ottawa Citizen titled The Limits of Atheism. He concludes that the reason is because it's not the scientific convictions of the non-scientists that are under assault by the skeptics of Darwinism, it's their religious beliefs.

Most non-scientists who hold fervently to the Darwinian view of life do so not because they're convinced by the evidence, indeed, they often know little about the evidence. Rather they cling tenaciously to the theory because it's a necessary prop for their atheism. Atheism demands a naturalistic explanation of life and the cosmos, and if Darwinism is cast into doubt then so are the religious convictions it undergirds.

It should be pointed out that many non-scientists are hostile to Darwinism for the same reason. Darwinism, many of its opponents realize, is antagonistic to belief in a creator God, and so they reject it reflexively quite apart from the evidence for or against it. The difference is this latter group freely acknowledges their motive for doubting Darwin whereas the former group does not.

RLC

Slipping Toward Revolution?

All is not well in Ahmadinejad's Iran. This article provides the details.

RLC

The Chinese and the Taliban

Strategy Page has a somewhat surprising piece on growing hostilities between the Taliban and the communist Chinese in Pakistan:

Currently, 7,000 Pakistani military and police personnel protect Chinese working inside Pakistan. In addition, there are a small, but growing, number of Chinese security personnel. The Chinese security detachment works with the Chinese community in Pakistan, to make sure there are no misunderstandings about the need for tight security. The Chinese security personnel also advise the Pakistanis on Chinese security needs, and help get needed technical equipment brought in from China. The major danger to Chinese in Pakistan is Islamic terrorists. Most of these are al Qaeda, and local Islamic radicals (mostly Taliban) who want Pakistan run by a religious dictatorship.

Since China has come down hard on real, or perceived, Islamic radicalism at home, China is seen by Pakistani Islamic radicals as "foreign devils" and "enemies of Islam." The Islamic radicals recognize that China is crucial to maintaining Pakistani military and police power, and keeping the current government in power. So there are more attacks on Chinese by Pakistani Islamic radicals....

....All this Chinese counter-terror work is done very quietly, and covertly. That may keep it out of the Western press, but the Chinese are increasingly tagged as major bad guys by the Islamic media, especially the outlets that are pro-radical.

I certainly don't wish to see innocent Chinese civilians suffer the outrages of terrorism, but part of me wonders if it wouldn't at least be interesting to see what China would do if the Taliban began targeting them in earnest.

RLC

Don't Confuse Him with the Facts

"Regardless of what they say, we need a change in direction." So says Sen. Bob Casey (D, PA) while talking about the upcoming Petraeus-Crocker report.

The Senator is telling us that even if the September report is unsullied good news - even if Gen. Petraeus informs us that the surge is minimizing the killing and chaos, that the Maliki government is getting its house in order, that al Qaida is on the run and the Sunnis and Shia are cooperating to end the insurgency - the Senator will still call for a "change in direction." He makes it difficult to take him seriously.

Which direction would the Senator suggest we move in? He doesn't say, of course, because this would require serious thought about the consequences of whatever proposal he comes up with, and I suspect that he realizes that if he engages in that thinking any resulting proposal would look very much like what Bush is already doing.

His insistence that we'll need a change in direction in Iraq regardless of what Gen. Petraeus has to say makes one wonder about the depth of his concern for the people of Iraq, not to mention his ability to see beyond the next couple of months.

RLC

And the Point Is?

There is perhaps in this photo a serious and profound symbolism - something that most of us simply cannot be expected to comprehend but that those with the requisite wisdom will discern. It has something to do, I suppose, with removing one's clothes to more effectively demonstrate one's committment to a cause. I confess, however, that I lack the necessary powers to see what lying en masse on a glacier in the altogether has to do with anything except perhaps one's emotional development.

It seems to me that people who think they must be nude in order to make some political point are not far removed from the people who walk down the street exposing themselves to passersby. They're both trying to say something by flashing their privates at people, and they're both in need, no doubt, of the services of a psychologist.

RLC

No Dhimmitude for This Man

Pat Condell is antagonistic to all religion, a position about which I think he's just plain wrong, but in this short YouTube presentation he says many things which need to be said, particularly regarding European appeasement of Muslims.

It is this spirit of submission to which Condell takes such acerbic exception and which spawns such loopy proposals as that of Bishop Tiny Muskins of Netherlands who has urged Christians to begin referring to God as Allah so that Muslims won't be so hostile toward us (See, however, Byron's reply in our Feedback section for a different view of the Bishop's proposal).

Under Sharia Law non-Muslims, if they're permitted to live at all, must accept the authority of the Koran, the dominance of Islamic rule and live in abject servility as second or third class citizens. Such people are called dhimmis by Muslims, and it is to this status that many Europeans seem to aspire. Not, however, Pat Condell.

Too bad he doesn't understand Christianity as well as he understands the threat posed by contemporary Islam.

RLC

Iraq Update and Questions

Bill Roggio updates us on operations Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike. Here are some excerpts:

In today's press briefing from Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Commanding General of Multinational Corps - Iraq, provided an operational update on Operation Phantom Thunder and its successor, Phantom Strike.

Since Phantom Thunder began in mid-June, US and Iraqi security forces have killed 1,196 extremists, wounded 419, and detained 6,702 suspected insurgents, Odierno said. Of those killed or captured, 382 are considered high-value targets. Over the past two months, US and Iraqi security forces have found 1,113 weapons caches, 2,299 IEDs and disabled 52 car bombs. "The number of found-and-cleared IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs and caches are approximately 50 percent higher than the same period last year, due in large part to effective tips provided by concerned Iraqi citizens," Odierno said.

Phantom Thunder has had a noticeable effect on the security situation in Baghdad and beyond. "Total attacks are on a month-long decline and are at their lowest levels since August of 2006," Odierno said. "Attacks against civilians are at a six-month low, IED attacks are a two-month decline and have a 45 percent found and cleared rate." Inside Baghdad, civilian deaths are at the lowest levels since February 2006, when al Qaeda in Iraq destroyed the dome of the Golden Mosque in Samarra...

Since the "surge" of five additional US combat brigades was completed at the beginning of June, US and Iraqi forces have persistently remained on the offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian-backed Shia terror groups. Al Qaeda in Iraq has not had time to regroup and reestablish itself as US and Iraqi forces maintain the pressure with rolling operations. Just as the push to clear Baghdad began to ramp up with the "surge," Phantom Thunder was launched in the major population centers in the Belts. Just as al Qaeda looks to move its operations into the less patrolled rural regions, Phantom Strike and Lightning Hammer were launched to tackle these regions.

This is a major difference from 2006, when Multinational Forces Iraq failed to conduct a cohesive battle plan to address al Qaeda and Sunni insurgency, while ceding large sections of Baghdad and portions of southern Iraq to the Mahdi Army. The attempt to secure Baghdad in 2006 failed as there was little effort to dislodge the terror groups from the Belts surrounding Baghdad.

Now all this raises a couple of questions. Here's one for Democrats in general: If this trend looks like it's continuing next month will you still be calling for withdrawal of American forces?

And here's one for Sen. Harry Reid and Congressman John Murtha in particular: Do you still maintain that the war in Iraq is a lost cause?

And finally, here's one for the MSM: What are the chances you guys will ask either of these questions?

RLC

Our Guy

Jim Geraghty at NRO has a piece on our guy Mike Huckabee. There are a lot of good horses in the Republican stable but Huck's beginning to look like a contender.

If Newt Gingrich were running he'd be another strong candidate, notwithstanding the personal baggage he's carrying (Who in this race isn't carrying baggage?). This brief clip of Newt gives the viewer a sense of why he'd be such an attractive candidate for conservatives.

RLC

Road to Dhimmiville

Here's a wonderful idea proposed by a Catholic bishop in the Netherlands: He suggests that in the interest of religious harmony Christians should call God Allah. This will please (and appease) Muslims, the bishop avers, and they'll be so much more agreeably disposed toward Christians because of it.

We here at Viewpoint think the prelate is on to something, so why stop at calling God Allah? There's much more Christians can do to mollify their Muslim neighbors and to persuade them of our good will. For instance, why not begin calling Mohammed the Messiah and start celebrating Ramadan? Think of the good feelings those two simple acts would engender among the faithful minions of Islam.

We also think it's high time Christian women got serious about modesty and started wearing the hijab, if not the burka, and what would be wrong with bowing five times a day toward Mecca? God, er, Allah, doesn't care which direction we face when we pray, so it may as well be toward Mecca as any other direction.

We are indebted to the good bishop for coming up with such a fertile idea, an idea certain to put us firmly on the road to universal religious peace and harmony. After all, why should Christians be all persnickety about holding on to their theological principles and traditions when peace can be so easily had by just giving them up?

RLC

Moral Darwinism

Byron passes along this piece by Ben Wiker on what evolution has to teach us about morality. The closing paragraphs, in particular, caught my eye:

While he didn't call for direct extermination of the weak, Darwin did believe that the unfit shouldn't be allowed to breed at all. As for the fit, "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring."

What does this mean? Forced sterilization? The end of monogamy? Breeding camps for the hyper-fit and concentration camps for the unfit? Darwin was purposely vague, but ended with the ominous remark: "All do good service who aid toward this end." Well, that's morality according to Darwin. Again, it ain't pretty, but all must agree on one thing. Darwin correctly drew the logical moral implications from his evolutionary theory. It's hard for the most adamant advocates of Darwin to recall the horrors of the 20th century-to bring to mind all those who thought they were doing "good service" by the eugenic elimination of the unfit-and not squirm a bit.

In his book, From Darwin to Hitler, Richard Weikart fleshes out the connections between the Nazi holocaust and the 19th century eugenics movement which was, as Weikert demonstrates, largely inspired by Darwin. Ideas have consequences and the consequences of Darwinism have not been particularly lovely.

RLC

Kirk on Conservatism

I came across a link recently to an essay by Russell Kirk in which he outlines ten key principles of philosophical conservativism. It's an excellent primer on what it means to be conservative in the tradition of Edmund Burke.

One of the best paragraphs in the essay is the conclusion wherein Kirk observes that:

The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals [i.e. classical liberals] on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.

In other words, the great divide in modern politics, at least in the West, is between secular materialism which holds that man is nothing but a flesh and bone machine, and Judeo-Christian theism which holds that man has an inherent dignity and worth because he has been created by God in His image and is loved by Him. The implications of each of those views are immeasurable. The first leads to tyranny and totalitarianism while the second leads to freedom and human achievement.

RLC