Rehabilitation of Karl Marx

Marx was man's most influential scholar

A new study is out and, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the most influential scholar in history is Karl Marx.

Karl who?

Karl Marx, you know the theoretical genius who thought up the classless society called socialism … and its stepchild, communism. Apparently, Marxism is “cool”.

Marx is cool

I guess Francis Fukuyama was right and history ended in 1989 … or did people just stop learning history.

Granted, I will agree, in theory the socialist doctrine sounds ever so wonderful. It would be great to live in world where everyone had their needs met and everyone contributed to society according to their ability to contribute. I mean that would be utopia … unfortunately, utopia’s really are only fantasies because they tend to forget the most important element in society: The human individual.

Now, maybe someone, somewhere has the magic wand that is going to change the basic tenets of human nature and make people want to sit together and sing songs but that is not the world I live in. I might want to live in that world, but it is not the world that I do live in.

The problem with the socialist/Marxist model is that it forgets a few things about people that you have to deal with.

First, needs are endless. Please, don’t laugh, because what I mean is that once you get past enough to survive, then everything else is a luxury and how much do you need to survive? Not much. Mankind did pretty well for tens of thousands of years with not much more than a stick and a cave to hang out in.

Unfortunately, we as people have progressed far beyond that point now. We need to have clothes, lots of food, housing that would put kings to shame a century or two ago, vehicles for personal transportation, computers, lights, the internet, health care, etc., etc.

Point two: People are not going to work to the best of their ability unless they get some reward out of it. Nope, people aren’t made that way and all your huffing and all your puffing is not going to change that reality.

Point three: Resources are limited and there always will be competition for those resources as they have to be “rationed”.  (Some people don’t like it when I use that term because they associate it with coupons, etc., but there are other ways to ration things … like by price)

So far, in the last century, various forms of Mr. Marx’s socio-economic model has been tried several times and guess what … they all seem to have failed miserably.  In fact, in a few cases it has failed with disastrous results – like with millions upon millions of people paying the ultimate price for its failure.

What was it Einstein (probably a more influential intellect, but what the heck) said about insanity: It is trying  the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I am not saying that capitalism as outlined by John Locke and Adam Smith (two other very accomplished social scientists) is all milk and cookies. It isn’t. However, I suspect that more people have seen their lives improved under their precepts than have under Mr. Marx’s precepts.

To me, the problem is that people want life to be milk and cookies … but they don’t realize that it ain’t gonna be that way. Never has been and – barring some miraculous shift in human nature and the discovering of unlimited resources – it never will be.

Sorry folks, but things like greed, jealousy, sloth, selfishness, narcissism and the like will make your perfect utopia impossible.

Now, we can accept that reality and try to work with it; or we can ignore it and face the already demonstrated consequences.

My challenge to people is not to try or even hope to change human nature (it is like fighting the tides, you always lose), but let’s design a social system that takes those negatives into account and, if possible, figures out a way to take advantage of them and use them to improve the lot of mankind.

Ironically, capitalism actually does that. You may not like the fact that not everyone gets the benefits, but life is like that: There are winners and there are losers. You may wish to live in a world where everyone is a winner, but like light and dark, good and bad, pass and fail, there really are only two options (with a lot of grey areas in between, fortunately) because without one you can’t have the other.

Lastly, you do know that the Smithsonian is an institution that was created by the US Congress (based on a bequest from an Englishman) and, although owned by the US government, is administered as a charitable trust with a board of regents, 11 of the 17 are government officials.

I guess the US government is putting its stamp of approval on the rehabilitation of Mr. Marx and his policies.

I mean it, you can’t make this stuff up.

Nuff said.

Shades of the missiles of October

Iran will strike US if Israel attacks
Iran to send warships to US coasts
Ok, this is how the Big Boys play their silly games.
Big Boy 1: If you don’t do what I want, I will bomb you.
Big Boy 2: You won’t bomb me, but if someone else you are buddy-buddy with does, then I will bomb you. Oh, and by the way, that buddy-buddy, we are arming and financing groups who hope to blow them off the map, which, come to think of it, is just a good idea. Another thing, you know your fleet, which has been sitting off our coast for years … well, we are going to send our own to sit off your coast.
If you think this is about Iran … well, you would be partly correct. It also is pretty much what happened 50 years ago that literally brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and it could have happened if the two sides didn’t blink. Scary isn’t it.
Well, in this case, Iran sees itself as the U.S. under John Kennedy and the U.S. playing the role of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, with Israel playing the role of Cuba.
In October of 1962, the world held its breath while the U.S. and the Soviet Union stared down the barrels of their nuclear-armed missiles over the Soviet Union’s installation of nuclear-tipped rockets in Cuba that could reach about a third of the United States.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Now, there are some similarities, but I really think it only is in the mind of the Iranians.
First, the U.S. has not installed its missiles in Israel. I think sometimes much to our chagrin; Israel has developed its own missiles and its own warheads (something Mr. Castro never did).
Of course, Cuba was concerned that the big, bad U.S. was going to try again to overthrow his regime (it botched the first try, which it usually does, it seems). Israel has put up with the Iranian regime trying to overthrow (actually see the entire state and its people eliminated) its government for more than three decades. Iran has spent a lot of money on the project and done a wonderful job arming its proxies with a lot of rockets and mortars and other stuff that goes bang and boom.
Second, like it or not, the U.S. (sort of by default) is like the enforcement arm of the United Nations. It is (whether the Iranians or the American people like it), unfortunately, looked to as the world’s constable. You might not agree with this assessment, but it is what the U.S. was doing in Korea, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, for many years, what we now know as the “Korean War” (1950-1953) wasn’t called a “war.” It was called a “police action” or “conflict.” Again, most of the world is waiting for the U.S. to do something, like it did with Libya last year, with Syria.
Now, the problem for the Iranians is similar to that problem that faced the regime of Saddam Hussein 10 years ago: They have a severe credibility gap. Whether you believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or not, Iraqi deceptions and actions did not really lend credence to their denials. Such is the case now for the Iranian government.
Whether or not you think the Iranians plan to build one or more nuclear devices and possibly use them on Israel, their denials do seem to lack a certain amount of credibility. In other words, they say one thing, but a lot of the available evidence indicates that they are doing something else.
Now, I don’t blame the Iranians for building nuclear weapons. It makes perfect sense in many ways, especially if you are trying to recapture a world role from 2,500 years ago. For many reasons – religious, economic, ideological – the Iranians want to be treated and looked at as THE Big Kid on their block. Their neighbors are not so sure that is what they want and a lot of the world would rather the nuclear genie stays in its bottle and not spread to any more.
So, where will all this go? Haven’t a clue. Israel may decide that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is too great to its survival and bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. The U.S. will probably try to jawbone Israel into not doing it, but in the end, that decision will be Israel’s.
Of course, the U.S. may end up playing cop and bop the Iranians itself. But that will take an awful lot of prompting from other world actors and continuation of Iranian saber-rattling. Unfortunately, the rattling of sabers to get attention is a time honored practice among humans, and it usually gets out of hand.
So, unfortunately, I suspect that the situation with Iran will get infinitely worse before it gets better. A lot of people probably will die and a lot of property will be destroyed. Why? Because competing self-interests could not be resolved any other way.

Expert opinions

Organics and nutrition

Weathermen make long term prediction

I would like to discuss human hubris. Well, not really, but it sounds good. What I really want to say is that I find humor in the propensity of people in this era of modern scientific research to place so much faith in the statistical approach.

Now, I am not saying it is bad to rely on statistics, I just rarely think that statistics actually definitively prove your point. You see, often times, people are comparing apples and oranges … or tomatoes or potatoes … and not really realizing it.

For example, it seems, according to the latest scientific study of statistical studies of case histories of a host of individuals that eating organic food does not necessarily do a lot of good, at least in a nutritional sense. Hello, does that come as a surprise to anyone? It really shouldn’t.

The body needs certain nutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc. in certain quantities to be healthy. It needs to come in certain forms, however, but how those forms are grown, per se, really doesn’t matter. Of course the food has to be from a healthy plant/animal for it to be beneficial but how that plant is made healthy really doesn’t matter in determining its nutritional value.

Now, I will agree that some foods have less trace chemicals if they are grown certain ways, and those trace chemicals, if in significant enough quantities, can have a detrimental effect on human health. Unfortunately, growing things organically does not always mean that those trace elements won’t be found in food. The point being that paying significantly higher prices for food labeled “organic” may not be the wisest use of your resources.

However, having said that, I suppose a few years from now, some other scientist will come along and “prove” that eating “organic” is the next best thing to home-made sliced bread.

The same holds for the latest position paper by the American Meteorological Society (i.e.: Mainly those guys who bring you your nightly forecasts for the weather on TV). It seems that they are certain of two things:

One: the global climate is getting warmer.

Two: it is the result of anthropomorphic causes.

Oopsie. Statistically it might seem true, but then again it might be apples and oranges, with the apples being the climate is warming and the oranges being that is caused anthropomorphically.

I will not argue that the climate may be getting warmer but I would advise you to check back in two or three centuries, or even two or three millennia, to make sure. Despite what the doomsayers tell us, we really don’t have enough data to make sweeping statements about the climate and what it is doing. As best we can tell, humans have been sentient for about 15,000 years, give or take 15,000 or 30,000 years. You take that slice of time and see what portion it makes of the overall space of geological time, or even the time that life has been on the planet, and you realize that we are talking about an extraordinary teeny tiny bit of that experience.

So, first and foremost, before you say the sky is falling, make sure it isn’t a rain drop.

So, I am not sure that we are facing a deluge here, folks, and definitely the jury is still out on whether or not we can blame it all on human activities. It might be, and I am not going to say that it can’t be, but I am saying that when you look at the scope of changes over the course of the earth’s history it is entirely possible that these little tiny creatures running around, modifying their environment (as almost every species does to one extent or another), aren’t really the cause of the massive geologic climatological changes that our best and brightest are seeing.

Please, people, remember that we really have only about 30 years of good, solid, hard data on which we are making these sweeping predictions. All the rest of the data maybe good, but it is mostly based on assumptions, suppositions and interpretations of information that we really don’t know if it is valid or not.

And the models? Well, they are models. They are mathematical formulations that we hope mimic reality. But if any weatherman/meteorologist tells you that he or she really can tell you what the weather, or climate, is going to be like at any one point at any given time on the globe more than relatively few hours from now (which on the geological scale would be totally insignificant) with 100 percent accuracy, then they know they have just trashed their own credibility, because it is impossible. There just are too many variables out there, and too many of them that we mere humans don’t even begin to understand, for such predictions to be taken as gospel.

Heck, we don’t even, for the most part it seems, take the gospel as gospel any more.

First Amendment concerns

Critiques' deletions cause censorship cries
You know, sometimes I really am impressed by how little a large proportion of the American people understand the U.S. Constitution and the “Bill of Rights” (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution).
For example: The right of free speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment, but most people don’t understand what “free speech” means.
It does not mean, for instance, that you can say anything you want about anything and anybody you want at any time you want. Sorry, but you can’t do that.
You can’t lie about other people, either verbally or in writing. You can’t damage the reputation of other people, either verbally or in writing (with some exceptions). You do that verbally, and you can successfully be sued for slander. You do it in print (or over the airwaves) and you can successfully be sued for libel.
You can’t say just anything that you want, like, maybe, yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater. That also can get you arrested.
You can’t display things, calling it “art”, or do certain things that offend local community standards (or sometimes national community standards). It is called obscenity and will get you arrested.
You can’t call for the violent overthrow of the government. That also will probably end up getting you arrested, especially if you try to garner the means to accomplish your calls. It is called treason and sedition.
You can’t demand a third party print your libelous, obscene, treasonous or seditious material, or air it on television or radio or leave it on their servers on the internet. Sorry, that does not fall under your right of free speech.
Now, if you own the server, you can put whatever you want on it. But if it is someone else’s server or web page, then you have no rights at all. Besides, they can get (and probably would be) sued for your libel and they really don’t want that to happen.
You see, that is why web sites, servers and internet service providers (almost all of which are private entities and not government entities) will “censor” your comments. They don’t want to get sued.
The First Amendment only applies to the government(s – courtesy of the 15^th Amendment) in the United States. It says CONGRESS shall make no law infringing on the right of the people to the freedom of speech, expression, etc. It does not say that your neighbor, or your newspaper, or radio station, or your television station, or some web site or internet host has to allow you to have free rein on their platform.
Nope, you want the freedom to say or whatever, then you go get your own soapbox and put it on the public square, or buy a copy machine and use it as a printing press, or crank up your own radio or TV station (unfortunately, there you will have to get an FCC licenses due to limited bandwidth on the airwaves), or set up your own web site on your own server (although there too the government can shut you down if you violate the law, sorry about that).
You see, freedom doesn’t mean you have no responsibility. Not that at all as you are responsible for what you say and do. If there are consequences, civil or criminal, then you have to be prepared to face those consequences and accept them as a result of your actions while you were exercising your vocal cords or your computer terminal.
So, when a web site deletes your comment, get over it. It is their right. You may not like it, just as they don’t like what you are saying. But they own the printing press and they get to decide what they print. You don’t like it, go create your own web site.
You see, freedom really isn’t free. It doesn’t mean that there is nothing that can be licensed or censored. Freedom comes with a cost and part of that cost usually is acting responsibility and with dignity and respect toward the rights of others.

National interests

America and the ungrateful

If one wants learn a lesson from history, then reading the above article should be on your reading list.

Synopsis: When the U.S. gets involved in a conflict, regardless of intentions, efforts, justification, it will not win. It will own the conflict and the parties in it will cease to own their own roles. Everything bad that happens inside the country involved that is bad is the fault of the Americans, and no credit is given to the Americans for any good. In addition, there is anger at the Americans because they did not automatically, magically and instantly solve all the problems that besiege a country.

If you review the history basically since World War II, you will find that is the case. It is sad, in a way, but then truth always is the first casualty in wars, civil or uncivil, and to quote Winston Churchill: It must be protected and guarded by a phalanx of lies.

Currently, there is a civil war going on in Syria. We know that because the International Committee of the Red Cross has decreed it. There also is a civil war still going in Iraq. Now, the U.S. does not “own” the civil war in Syria (even though our president has decided to aid one side against the other) and despite what some people will try to tell you, it bears no responsibility for the civil war in Iraq. In both cases, it is the people in those ravaged countries who are choosing to use violence to resolve their problems.

In Syria, a basically oppressive minority regime seeks to retain power and, so far, has retained the loyalty of considerable portions of the nation’s military. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks. It doesn’t matter what people think the U.S. or the U.N. should or should not do. The result will, in the end, be a verification of Chairman Mao’s axiom: All power flowers out the barrel of a gun. We will see this in Syria. We will see it in Iraq. We will see it in Iran … and when the day is done, we will see it in Afghanistan.

The problem for the Americans is that they live in a world that no longer is comfortable with this maxim. We want to believe that force is not the ultimate decider in all conflicts. Bloodied by more than three-quarters of devastating warfare, the Europeans are hoping on hope that their experiment with the European Union will break this truth. Watching what is happening in Europe today, the likelihood of that seems to be receding. Maybe the Europeans will make it work, but history is not on their side.

In the Middle East, new reports point to the Iranians building nuclear weapons.Memri.org report 

Again, is this a problem for the Americans? What should the Americans do?

I point to the simple fact that the Americans do not have any magic wands. We can’t solve anything anywhere unless the people on the ground are willing to help solve it themselves. We should have learned, that even though we may be entirely justified, that we might be doing it with all the best of intentions, the unreal expectations of other nations will neither thank, nor probably help, the Americans.

It is something you need to think about.

Colonial connection? Give me a break.

Obama's family tree on his mother's side
This is really rich. Some genealogical researchers are really reaching with this. If you read the story, it will claim that President Barack Obama’s Caucasian mother is related in some way to a family in colonial Virginia that in some way shape or form was related (or was that involved) with the first African-American slave in what is now the U.S.
I, literally, about fell off the couch laughing when my wife read this story to me. Then, reread the story on my computer. Talk about a stretch and I mean a real stretch.
Well, at least according to the article, the case has some really serious holes in in. Granted that in 1619, some indentured Africans were brought to the colony of Virginia, but note that is not “revolutionary” Virginia by about 160 years. Second, it was the Dutch, who six years later, who introduced African slaves to what was New Netherlands (Now New York) in 1625. Slavery, at the time, was not in Virginia and Africans, at least according to the history I learned, and have recent re-researched just to refresh my memory, initially were treated just as other indentured servants brought over from England in the 17^th century and release from their bond upon completion of seven years of service.
So, there is a little problem of timing.
Second, there is the absolute chasm spanning leap from Punch to Bunch. This assumption on the part of the genealogists that it is merely a variation in the spellings of the times is not beyond credulity, but it stretches it a bit. Slaves were often given the surname of the slaveholder’s family. Granted, the researcher admits the evidence is quite circumstantial but really, I would hope that there was just a little bit more to go on.
Heck, if I wanted to, I suppose, I could claim – as is claimed in my family legend – to be related to the current King of Sweden. I mean there is a vague resemblance between my grandfather, my brother and the king and supposedly my great-great-grandmother was a lesser princess in the royal house who was disowned for following true love and marrying a common wood cutter/forester.
I think, for whatever reason, somebody really is reaching in order to link the president to someone in early colonial American history. I guess it diverts people away from the birth certificate story (which is a non-story as far as I am concerned) about whether President Obama is a native-born American. Sorry, don’t care about that story, don’t believe it is a false certificate either.
But I guess, one could make the argument that linking President Obama to having one of his ancestors being an American slave gives him a better link to today’s African-Americans – many of whom really are descendants of slaves held more than 150 years ago – than his father’s family tree being from Kenya and East Africa, where few American slaves came from as the majority came from West Africa.
Personally, as Pappy used to say, I think it is a tempest in a teapot.
But then, it is almost August … and the Washington press corps always picks up the weirdest stories in August.
Addendum: And if you really want to get technical a Spanish colony in South Carolina in the 1500s (later abandoned) and the first permanent settlement in St.Augustine in 1565 also had African slaves.

And the flag was still there!

Lunar orbiter spots flags

 

It sounds almost like a like a line out of the Star-Spangled Banner … and the flag was still there. It seems the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has peeked at all seven of the Apollo mission landing sites and at six of them, the U.S. flag put up by the visiting astronauts is still standing, still “waving.”

Having watched Apollo 11 (the only one that blew down its flag when the lander launched itself back into space) and most of the rest, it still makes the old heart swell with pride to know that the vagaries of time and space have not wiped out the souvenirs America left on the moon.

Lots of hot days and cold nights have passed, but the flag is still there. Where is Frances Scott Keys when you need him.

It would be my dearest wish to be able to see a return of manned flight to the moon. Of course, it won’t be by the U.S., but maybe the Chinese will do it next. Maybe, being that the Chinese traditionally take a much longer view on things that the Americans, the Chinese will go to stay and set up camp on the moon.

As I said, it is what humans do. We explore and, yes, we conquer. I would hope that there would have been more of an effort from my fellow Americans about pursuing manned spaceflight, but alas, unlike other things, the pace of history of exploration has not sped up like other human developments.

If you look at history, especially of the European exploration of the planet that basically opened the world up to all the advances we have seen in the last two centuries, you would see that that exploration, that began in the 15^th Century under Henry the Navigator, the king of Portugal, would extend almost five centuries before our small domain was pretty much explored out. We have been only going into space for less than half a century. Essentially, we are about where Henry and his explorers were at the same time, barely halfway down the west coast of Africa.

Like most Americans, I guess, I lack the patience to look at the long term and realize that we actually have come a long way in conquering a very hostile environment that is just low earth orbit. It is a bit like sailing out into the Atlantic Ocean in 90-ton caravel. It would be almost 200 years before ships displacing nearly 1000 tons would be sailing the oceans and more than 500 years later, we are finally putting ships 500-times that size to sea.

If we persevere, we will get there. I just wish we would go faster.

Bush v. Gore redux

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/18/justice-antonin-scalia-on-2000s-bush-v-gore-that-comes-up-all-the-time-and-my-usual-response-is-get-over-it/?hpt=hp_t2
I see where the progressives’ favorite whipping boy justice is telling them to get over the 2000 election.
Justice Anatonin Scalia is not necessarily one of my favorite justices but he is articulate and has definite views on how the U.S. Constitution is to be interpreted. I can respect that.
However, on the 2000 election: Yes, it is high time for people to get over it.
I would point out as he did that even if the lawsuit that the Gore campaign filed to circumvent the legal process in Florida to challenge election results and the secure ballot recounts had gone forward, and the wishes of the Gore campaign had been granted, http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/ Gore would have lost.
So, the court really did not decide the election. It only stopped what, in my humble opinion, was a very crude effort to hijack the election using the judicial system and give the loser the victory.
Of course, don’t tell Democrats that. They have spent the last 12 years throwing mud and doubt on the electoral process.
I suspect, although I hope my expectations are incorrect, similar mud and doubt will be thrown on this November’s ballot, especially if it is close.
Having spent many a night in local election offices, I know how hard these people work to get it right, for the most part.
However, I also know that stealing elections are a long American tradition (Particularly among Democrats: Can anyone say Pendergast and Dailey. IF you have never heard of them, then look them up.)
Let us hope that this year, it is different.

Short memories

Suggested reading:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/16/us/us-drought/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

http://weather.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/07/16/2012-drought-one-of-the-worst-in-history/

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48202640/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/us-drought-2012-widest-since-1956_n_1676936.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/midwest-drought-2012-us-worse_n_1676967.html?ref=topbar

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/ag-sec-vilsack-wishes-rain-prayer-combat-painful-191255266.html

Ok, every one, the sky IS falling. Run out, run around, jump and shout. The world obviously is coming to an end and it is all the fault of the stupid Americans and their dumb gas-guzzling car lifestyle. I mean if it wasn’t for anthropomorphic-caused climate change, the breadbasket of the America (and as well as for much of the world) wouldn’t be baking in the heat this summer.

Granted, much of the US is suffering under the worst drought in 25 years and probably in the last 56 years (but not in the last 75 years and before that, who the heck really knows).

But droughts are nothing unheard of. If one chooses, one can look back through several millennia of recorded human existence and droughts seem to be a rather routine occurrence. Some have been worse, others not so worse, but they keep on happening with astonishing frequency regardless of what us humans do or do not do. What do us people want? Do we think we can control the weather? I mean I know we can do a lot of things, but I don’t think we have mastered the climate just yet, nor do we really have all that much influence on it.

The problem, it seems, that – at least in America – we constantly living under what I call “a condition of historical amnesia.” If it didn’t happen yesterday, or if I haven’t seen it on television via CNN/FOX/NBC/ABC./CBS, then it never happened and what is happening today is unlike anything that has gone before.

What a bunch of equine fecal material. I find it sad that history seems to be such a neglected subject in American schools today; because without knowing, and having some understanding, of history, then you have no context with which to evaluate and understand anything that is happening today. You won’t know what terms really mean when people start bandying them around, oftentimes misusing or misrepresenting these terms to the point you almost have to believe the sky IS falling.

Now, I am not trying to be Pollyannaish (probably an obscure reference to anyone under the age of 40), but the sky is NOT falling. The skies, the weather, the climate, the world, people, all are doing what they have done for millennia: They are changing.

The world is not static. It is dynamic and things are always happening AND changing. Often, these things seem to run in cycles and because of the cyclical nature of our planet and its orbit around the sun, there probably is some validity to that.

This does mean that if we know what has gone before, and hopefully gain some understanding of that, then we can do something different than before with hopefully a better outcome.

Panic is not an option. It is a waste of time, energy and usually resources like money, which we have scarce enough as it is.

However, we have to realize that certain things happen when things like droughts happen.

First: the price of food WILL go up. This is so simple it hardly bears mentioning, but you will see a lot of panic stories coming on the rising price of food. Drought=Poorer Crops=Less Food in the Supply Chain. When supply goes down, price goes up – basic law of economics.

Second: The price of other things depending on those crops will go up for the same reason.

Third: Water will be valuable and be in short supply. Its price may also go up.

Fourth: Energy, especially those blended fuels with biomaterial, will be more expensive. It also will be in more demand, so what supplies we have will have to be stretched.

So, if we know a) droughts happen (and will happen, over and over again) and b) that there really isn’t anything we REALLY can do to alter the weather, then anybody proposing drastic solutions to protect the climate really is blowing smoke.

We also know that times are going to be tough and money tight. Plan for it. History tells you it is going to happen, now and again, and again, and again. It is kinda silly not to learn from the past, isn’t it.

Now this is a twist

Reference/Background reading material

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/07/03/Allen-West-Every-American-should-be-mandated-to-buy-a-Glock-9mm-Pistol

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100512145456AAwD7bs

http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm

http://deadguyquotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/milita-act-of-1903-transcribed.pdf

Ok, he is not serious, but the concept is. What if everyone was mandated to own a firearm? Would that be any different than mandating everyone has healthcare insurance? I hate to think what some “liberals”/”progressives” would think of that (Note: My old progressive classmate, well he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, so he can shoot the far right conservatives and religious conservatives when they come over the hill to convert him.)

Heck, it - mandating firearm ownership - could even be justified under the Second Amendment and the various acts of Congress enabling the Militia Clause of the Constitution. Come to think of it, if the 1795 law is still in effect and just supplemented by the 1903 act (which some allege replaced/repealed the earlier law, but I have not found anything to document that contention), then all males 18 to 45 who are U.S. Citizens or desiring to be are REQUIRED to have a military grade weapon, ammunition and a knapsack or backpack. Take that gun control advocates. Note that the requirement applies to the organized as well as the reserve (unorganized) militia under the law. The “organized” militia is explicitly defined as consisting of the federal military Reserves and the state National Guard formations and the reserve militia is everybody else, except for those who have a religious objection.

Ok, I am not advocating that everyone get a weapon courtesy of the federal government, nor am I advocating that everyone run out and get one. I know a lot of people who do not want one and wouldn’t know what to do with one if they had one … that is prescription for an accident waiting to happen. However, in order to be consistent (which I try to be, probably unsuccessfully in some eyes), I do think that every adult does have a right, if not an obligation under this nation’s social contract, to do just that: Go out, get a firearm and learn how to use it.

It will be interesting to see how the gentleman above who made the suggestion (I suspect somewhat tongue-in-cheek) will be responded to by his opponents.

Remember: Guns kill people

(no. actually: People kill people, guns are merely an instrument to that end.)

Oh, and my preference? Well, all things being equal I guess I would take the Glock 9mm or the Beretta M92, but I also would want a Mil-Spec M-1911A1 (,45 Caliber, because that is the pistol I carried during the Gulf War), an M-1903 Springfield (chambered for a Winchester .308 caliber) or possibly another Winchester .309 bolt action weapon (I just like them, and .308 Winchester is the civilian version of the military’s 7.62mm round), Ruger M-14 (chambered for the Remington .223 caliber round – the civilian version of the military’s 5.56mm round) and some solid 12-gauge pump-action shotgun (the preference being an M-97 model, but that is only because I am familiar with it from the Navy days),

Blame game?

http://geoimpulse.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-iraq-disintegrating.html?showComment=1334933795169#c7736188547415859602

I have an old high school acquaintance who I have relatively recently (via facebook) have renewed some of the debates with which we enlivened one of our classes our senior year. Debating with him was such fun, even if he had difficulty defending his progressive opinions back then. Come to think of it, he still does, in my humble opinion.

His current jag is that the war in Iraq was a failure and Bush was wrong and so it all was a waste … to the point that a) we should have left Saddam in power and b) the Iranians now are going to control Iraq (as well as Syria and Lebanon, I suppose). Well, with all due respect to the Don, once again I think he is wrong.

First, what were the reasons we and about 40 other nations went into Iraq in 2003 to enforce a host of U.N. resolutions?

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Partly … and yes, despite the conventional wisdom of today: a) the Iraqis did have some WMDs, did have the capability of producing more and did have plans to produce more, if and when the then-in-force sanctions regimen collapsed and was no longer in effect and b) that Saddam’s regime already had demonstrated against the Iranians in the 1980-1988 war that it was willing to use them against external enemies and against the Kurds and the Shi’a that it was willing to use such weapons against internal enemies as well.

The fact that he was a genocidal tyrant who was killing thousands of his people annually as well as torturing thousand upon thousands more.

The fact that he was blatant violation of something like 19 U.N. Security Council resolutions, many of which authorized the use of force to compel compliance.

The fact that he was fostering terrorist actions against not only Israel but other “enemies” (including the United States), including but not limited to training, financing and giving the families of anti-Semitic homicide bombers $25,000 USD if they bomber was successful.

It already was costing the US (and other countries involved, including the Brits), billions of bucks to maintain the U.N.-ordered “No Fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq to protect the indigenous people there (both basically unrepresented in Bathist regime) from military reprisals against them.

In addition, the Coalition had moved thousands of troops, billions of dollars worth of military supplies into the deserts of Kuwait and to a lesser extent eastern Turkey, in an effort to convince the Saddam regime that cooperating with the U.N. mandated inspections for weapons of mass destruction was in its best interest. An effort that was only marginally successful, as the U.N. inspectors complained that the Iraqis were not be cooperative, and were, in fact, being disingenuous.

All those are well documented reasons and really can’t be debated, unless you want just to deny reality.

Still, one has to be a realist and point out that however good the reasons 40-plus nations (for whatever reason you want to attribute) felt compelled to be involved, while the initial operation was a resounding success from a purely military point of view, its implementation and the subsequent efforts to help the Iraqis form a more perfect union definitely screwed the pooch as they say.

First, let me say that Gen. Shinseki was right … and Don Rumsfeld was wrong.  Let me say that the Bush Administration (including POTUS and VPOTUS) made a host of atrocious decisions and assumptions that merely illustrated the American propensity to be extremely ignorant of things non-American.

But let me point out that one cannot just use the American presence as a scapegoat for what has happened over the last 10 years in Iraq. It is not from lack of effort by the Americans that bombs still are going off in Iraq and that much of Iraq’s infrastructure remains damaged. No, most (a vast majority and now all) of that is the result of Iraqi v. Iraqi violence and depredations.

It is, as it always has, been the choice of the Iraqis themselves to choose violence over coexistence and compromise.

Now, as for the point that the U.S. has handed Iraq to the suzerainty of Tehran: Ain’t happening, and ain’t gonna happen.

Why do I say that? How about a little reality check here:

First, Iraq is Arab and Kurdish; Iran is Persian and Kurdish (but dominated by the Persians). There is a reason why that stretch of water between the Arabian peninsula and the coast of Southwest Asia has two names, depending on which side you are on – The Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf.

Simply put, Arabs and Persians do not get along and haven’t for about 3,000 years. There is a very, very long history of conflict and conquest here in cultures that have very long memories. So, to expect Baghdad just to march in step with Tehran is to ignore reality.

Secondly, not only is their the Shi’a-Sunni divide (which is another source of conflict that stretches back about 1,700 years) but there is a Shi’a-Shi’a divide between the ayatollahs in Qum and the ayatollahs in Karbala. Needless to say that does not bode all that well for Iranian dominance there.

What is happening in Iraq today is little different that what we saw happen in North Ireland for 20-plus years, Lebanon for at least as long, or Bosnia or Kosovo, or Somalia, or Sudan/Dafur, or Uganda, or Namibia, or host of other places that could be named. It is a civil war between two ethnic/religious groups vying for political power and to dominate the economic pie.

Rather than share either, both sides continue to use whatever means possible to advance their own agenda.

Question: Is that that fault of the Americans? Hell, no. Do the Americans necessarily a responsibility to try to intervene? Well, we tried that with mixed results in various places, but in the end, the responsibility for whatever violence and chaos an area maybe enduring, whether it Afghanistan or Iraq or the Philippines or Sri Lanka or Nigeria or Norway, really is the responsibility of the people who live there. They have to make the decision whether it is better to live under a rule of law where they are essentially equal before the law or to live under some other system.

So, to fault the Americans for failing to create more perfect unions in Iraq and Afghanistan is to ignore reality. The Iraqis and the Afghans are choosing their own fates.

Amazing

It seems that President Obama has called the U.S. Supreme Court a body of “unelected” officials who have no business saying whether a law passed by the elected Congress exceeds the powers granted the legislature by the Constitution or not.

Hello, Mister President, I understood that you were at one time a professor of constitutional law and that statement seems to be like ignoring more than 200 years of U.S. judicial history, law and tradition.

Things are getting really weird in the U.S. and this old journalist/soldier isn’t sure what to make of it all.

It has been accepted since about 1803, that one – and probably the most important – of the roles of U.S. Supreme Court is to decide whether or not specific laws and actions by the other two branches of the federal government meet the test of being within their constitutional powers. It is, to put it bluntly, part of the checks and balances designed into the U.S. Constitution in order to protect the people from government excesses.

In this case, the law being challenged is the president’s signature health care reform act, and – if indications from the questioning of several members (a majority) bear any validity – will be struck down by the court as exceeding the congressional powers as designated in the constitution.

What blows me away is not that President Obama hopes that the court will uphold the law, but his denigrating the court as unelected and therefore should not invalidate a law that has been passed by the majority in any of  our several political divisions and subdivisions.

Hello, were that the case then the “separate but equal doctrine” and all the “Jim Crow” laws that were passed to implement that doctrine would still be in effect and it is very unlikely that the president would even have  been allowed to serve or run.

Be that as it may, what is distressing me more than anything is the absolutely devolution of anything resembling respect for the law, the courts, the system and tradition. We seem to have decided that we would rather not be a nation governed by a set of laws that is – or at least should be and is the goal we strive for – applied equally to all comers, where people are judged not by their status, color of their skin, their sex, their religion, their ancestors or their ideology, but by the fact that they are individual humans, with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

Without respect, even for those viewpoints that disagree with our own, then how can we expect others to respect each of us as individuals.

It is with sadness and regret that I point 0ut that such rhetoric as President Obama’s does little to engender any respect for any decision coming from the U.S. Supreme Court whether it is 9-0 or 5-4 in either upholding or striking down any law or government action.

Without that respect, then there are no limits on what Congress and the Executive Branch are able to do. There will be no checks or balances against their excesses. We will, in reality, then be governed by the whims of men (and women) and not by law which really does so much to bind our society together.

Question: Is that truly the path we want to follow?

Random Thoughts 17

Revisiting History

Was the Iraq War necessary? Given the context of the time, it probably was.

Was the Iraq War executed well? Obviously not, or the U.S. would not still have so many troops there.

Why was the Iraq War necessary?

To answer this question we have to slip back in time and review the complex set of circumstances that led up to the invasion.

First, what was it about the regime of Saddam Hussein that made U.S. leaders think it was time for him to leave the world scene?

Well, Saddam was a so-so educated megalomaniac who pictured himself as the savior of the Arab world.

The Arab world at this point in its history is nearing its nadir. Gone are the fabulous centers of learning of 700 to 1,000 years ago. Gone are the great thinkers of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. In their place, like a society caught in a time warp, is a cluster of nations that have fallen behind socially and economically, surpassed by the civilization that grew out of the Hellenic traditions and blossomed across Europe. It was the Europeans who underwent a religious Reformation and philosophical period of Enlightenment that leading to a Renaissance that developed into the Industrial Revolution, which literally changed the world and man’s relationship to it.

To the Arab world, to see all this progress and to not be its leader, much less not even to participate in it, not participate in it, much less be its leader, is and was a crushing humiliation. And in the Arab culture, as with most of the non-Occidental societies, humiliation is the worst that can happen to an individual, a village, a tribe, or a nation.

So, here the United States was presented with a megalomaniac, who embodiesd the Arab feeling of humiliation and had , with delusions of grandeur that under his aegis he will be the new Saladin to rule the known world, or at least the Middle East. (Granted that Saladin was a Kurd, but he was the Islamic leader that most modern Middle Eastern Islamic leaders want to emulate – his was the time of the great libraries and the great intellectuals and philosophers). This dictator’s country also had the technical capability to create weapons of mass destructions. He already had developed and actually used various chemical weapons. He had been playing around with various biological weapons, but probably was a tad short of the research needed to weaponize them. And then there were the nuclear weapons. Back in 1990, he got awfully close to making one, but the first Persian Gulf War knocked his plans a kilter.

However, by the end of 2002, he had pretty circumvented most the sanctions for his and his sons’ own personal benefit. And the whole sanctions regime would probably implode and collapse within the next 12 months. Such was the greed of people wanting something that Iraq could give them: money or oil. So, by 2003, we had this idiot just champing at the bit to have the sanctions imposed withdrawn that were to keeping him from developing these weapons on a mass scale. If only the United Nations and its pesky inspectors would go away and drop the Security Council demands that he pledge to be a good boy, and not go building WMDs, and definitely stop using any of his weapons against his neighbors.

The choice then became whether the U.S. would allow the sanctions regime to collapse and the Iraq situation revert to status quo ante the Persian Gulf War. Well, the U.S. still harbored some hopes that the U.N. could become a viable arbiter for the peaceful resolution of the world’s problems. Only, as with all behavior problems, its efforts to change them have to be backed by a credible “or else” option.

For 12 years, a U.S.-led coalition had been giving the “or else” to U.N.’s ultimata to change credibility by flying and responding to attacks and provocations over areas of sky in Iraq that the U.N. had decided were areas that Iraq aircraft were not allowed to fly. These flights were part of an effort to protect not only the inhabitants of those regions from Iraqi military air attacks but also to keep the Iraqi military from threatening its northern and southern neighbors. These flights by American, British, and, for awhile, French warplanes were flying under the U.N. flag to enforce not only the ceasefire resolution at the end of the first Gulf War, but also to protect minorities in Iraqi who were being brutally suppressed by Hussein’s goons.

The atrocities committed by Hussein, his sons, and their henchmen on their own people have been well documented over the last five years and the related deaths numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of those deaths occurred annually during the Butcher of Baghdad’s nearly 30-year reign.

However, maintaining these forces that essentially are flying potential combat missions on a daily basis was not a cheap proposition and it was the U.S. who bore the lion’s share of the financial burden. It especially was not those people who were its primary benefactors.

This, of course, is where the ugly and evil word “oil” enters the equation.

Unfortunately for the world, the largest deposits of petroleum seem to lie beneath the sands of Arabia and the old Persian and Mesopotamian homelands. Yes, there are substantial deposits in the North Sea, the South China Sea, in Siberia and the nations of the Caspian Sea, in Africa, in North and South America, but the sweetest oil seems to come from the area surrounding the Arabian Gulf. It is the most accessible, because there is not much to disturb but except a few itinerant tribesmen passing through with their camels and their tents. There are no gleaming metropolises here, nor any hubs of great industry churning out products that raise the standard of living not only for the rich but for the common man as well. Not much in the way of people or development, just a lot of sand.

Unfortunately, as the world progresses from the industrial age to the information age and the 21st Century, much of what powers those the world economies is fueled by gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel. Some economies are more dependent on oil from this particular region than others. Most of Europe becomes dependent on Middle East crude, as do the Tigers of Asia, to which now can be added China and India. As the world continues to develop, its economies become increasingly intertwined and the supply of oil becomes increasingly inadequate.

Any threat to the smooth and peaceful extraction of oil is going to be deemed a life-threatening event to any nation whose economic umbilical is tied to it.

As in the Cold War, Europe, Japan, and other nations look expectantly to the United States, which came out of the Second World War relatively unscathed from the scars of that horrific conflict and with its seemingly huge economic power that seems to be the engine that drives the world economy intact, to shoulder – with its parallel huge military power – the burdens of being the protector of the peace and the protector of the smooth flow of this commodity to the rest of the world.

Only Hussein tended to make things jump off the track.

First, he invaded Iran and after eight years of a bloody stalemate, decided that wasn’t such a good idea after all. Yes, the U.S. and other Arab nations favored the Iraqis in this dispute, mainly because Iran, ruled by the mullahs and ayatollahs, had become a theocratic nightmare that felt the U.S. was the Great Satan and should be destroyed. Besides, there was the minor humiliation of Iran violating years of diplomatic tradition and seizing the American Embassy and holding its occupants as hostages. (Note: This technically is an act of war, but the U.S. ignored that little part of international law.)

We won’t go through the disastrous and muddled attempt to rescue the hostages that so mesmerized the Americans’ attention for the 444 days of their captivity. The U.S. was looking for a little pay back, and so what if Saddam was an evil person, he was fighting the right enemy. In that respect, sort of, it was similar to the U.S.’s alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union in World War II. Stalin may have been a totally reprehensible person and despot, but he was fighting the right enemy and it was better let him use his millions to grind down the Nazi war machine than to have young Americans pay that price.

It is the old credo: that the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment.

So, not only did Saddam’s megalomania pose a threat his neighbors in the Gulf, all of whom maintained tiny militaries in comparison to the Iraqis (except for Iran, Syria and Turkey) and looked for protection under the American umbrella, but also his religion seemed to compel him to want to wipe out Jews - no matter where they are found. Now after Hitler’s nearly successful attempt to wipe out European Jewry, the Europeans – who have never been partial to the Jews because they were the enablers of European hypocrisy for almost two millennia – agreed to a plan to settle the remainder of the survivors in their ancient homeland in Palestine. Even though the Jews have been in Palestine for at least three millennia, the Arabs – who themselves are relative newcomers to area – were upset with the Europeans pawning off their Jews in what the Arabs perceive as “their” territory. However, the nation of Israel was formed, however, and the Arabs have spent the better part of the last 60 years thinking of ways to destroy Israel and push all of the Jews into the Mediterranean., where presumably they will all drown.

Unfortunately, for the Arabs, the United States – partly because it has the largest number population of Jews in the world living in it and partly because we really believe that the Jews should have some place they can safely call home, without being the local scapegoats for everything and occasionally having murderous riots launched to beat up on them – decided that it would be the big brother protector of this small nation of less than four millions. The Americans are just not going to sit by and watch another Holocaust. ... We did that once and it left us still kicking ourselves for letting it happen the first time. Besides, in many ways the Israelis are like us and, unlike most of their neighbors, at least their government is a functioning (or is that disfunctioning, it is hard to tell some times) democracy, unlike most of its neighbors.

But Hussein, mostly for his own domestic consumption (known as creating an outside devil – something we in the West are not immune to doing) but also for his own aggrandizement thinks thought it would really go a long way to wipe out the humiliation the Arabs have suffered over the years (especially in the four wars where the Israelis basically kicked butt on them) if he could figure out a way to wipe out the Israelis.

Well, the first thing he did, after the Iraqis and other Arab nations had their collective butt handed to them by the Israelis in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, was to go for the asymmetrical option and funds Palestinian groups who are were taking the fight daily to the Israelis in low intensity combat (suicide bombers, random rocket and mortar attacks, kidnappings and assassinations, sniper attacks and drive-by shootings). Lurking in his mind, however, was a plan to use that the ultimate weapon those dastardly Americans invented. Even if he died in the process, he would go down in history as a great Muslim martyr who died in a war to crush the infidel.

Besides, if he got his hands on a nuclear bomb, then he could have held hold it over the heads of the Arab tribal leaders in the neighborhood as a great big club and make them dance to his tune. That would have impact on the flow of oil from the Gulf, which would have impacted the big, bumbling U.S.’s economic partners. Then, the U.S. would be called upon to drag out the old military force option and wave its big stick around.

In 1990, he had tried direct action to gain control of more of the Gulf Oil, but again his military had its collective butt handed to them in Kuwait in 1991 by the overwhelming force of a U.N.-sponsored coalition led by the United States. In a funny way, he was able to portray this humiliating defeat of his troops as a victory, because had the situation been reversed, he surely would be putting the head of GHW Bush on a pike and parading it around the square. Since that didn’t happen to his head, then obviously Allah, peace be upon him, was protecting him.

The Gulf War also got him saddled him with a series of UN resolutions designed to de-fang the Mesopotamian viper. To all of which, he did what he could to defy and skirt his way around them.

In December 1998, he essentially told the UN inspectors to take a hike and leave, which resulted in President Bill Clinton ordering four days of aerial bombing and missiles strikes in an exercise called Operation Desert Fox. All that accomplished was to get the UN inspectors permanently banned from Iraq.

At the same time, at the urging of President Clinton, Congress passed a bicameral and bipartisan resolution for it to be the stated policy of the United States government to seek out and pursue a way to terminate the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Come the fall of 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed its 19th resolution advising Saddam to come clean about all his various WMD programs or face the consequences. In December 2002, we saw aee this huge document dump by the Iraqis. After review of those documents, the chief of the UN inspectors, Hans Blix, said they proved nothing and did not begin to meet the requirements laid out in the UN resolution. In short, Blix said the Iraqis were lying again and trying to be evasive.

Why did the Iraqis let the inspectors back and do the document dump? It wasn’t out the goodness of their hearts that is for sure. What had changed from January 1999 and January 2003?

Well, the big change was that in January 2003, there were increasing numbers of U.S. troops sitting in camps in the Kuwait desert. We are not talking a small group; we are talking 170,000 American Soldiers, along with about 30,000 British Tommies and a smattering of forces from some 44 other nations ranging from Italy to Lithuania. Notably absent from the ranks are the French, Germans, Russians, and the Chinese, as well as most of the other Arab nations. The thing about this coalition, whether you want to believe it or not, was that it was hoping to put some spine into the UN and prove that its “or else” threats were not just empty air.

Now, the question came: Do you use this force or not?

While the French, the Russians, and the Chinese had signed off on the previous resolutions that threatened “or else”, this the trio was had cold feet on No. 20 because it might upset their new contracts they had negotiated in violation of previous sanctions resolutions and that would never do. Besides, in a few months all support for the sanctions would collapse and the Russians, Chinese, and French could go back into the very lucrative weapons trade with the Iraqis.

And if the Iraqis did come up with a device to vaporize Tel Aviv, they could always blame the Americans for failing to take any action.

To cover Tony Blair’s butt, GW Bush agrees that is a good idea to try to get a 20th UN Security Council resolution authorizing military force. It was not that the previous 19 resolutions had not either authorized military force or at least threatened it, it was just another ‘i’ to dot and a ‘t’ to cross, to make sure that if anything went wrong, then the blame would not fall on just the Americans and the British. However, since the Chinese, the French, and the Russians all hold vetoes on the Security Council, the resolution stands stood no chance of passing.

With summer approaching, Turkey balking at letting the Americans launch a second front through its territory with the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division and with some 200,000 troops sitting in the Kuwaiti desert, Bush and Rumsfeld grew impatient, or realized that the French, the Russians, and the Chinese had no intention of letting the UN become a truly effective organization that could impose its vision on recalcitrant nations. Bush and Co. looked back at the previous 19 UNSCRs and discovered they held all the authorization for the Coalition to strike. Besides, it would be awfully expensive and degrade the combat readiness if the juggernaut was forced to sit and wait until summer passed.

So, given the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regime was starving his own people, murdering tens of thousands annually, oppressing millions, merely waiting to reopen his weapons labs and rebuild his WMD facilities, funding terrorist operations against the United States through the Palestinians, flirting with the people who had pulled off the 9/11 attack on US interests (see documentation from the Iraq Perspectives Project), had already attempted to assassinate the sitting president’s father, defied the UN by basically giving it the finger, and last but not least, its leader was basically a despicable person, George Bush and Company decided that indeed Hussein posed a clear and present danger to the health and wealth of the world and it was time to depose him.

Deposing Saddam him was the easy part. It was the aftermath that Donald Rumsfeld totally dropped the ball. To him, the Iraq war was just a testing ground for his new lighter, faster, more mobile, interconnected military force that substituted firepower for manpower. Despite the fact that the U.S. State Department actually had a plan for implementation post-bellum; it was ignored, in fact, disdained. In a bureaucratic feudal turf war, Donald Rumsefeld’s DoD told those stuffed shirts at State to take a hike and the DoD’s program of military shock and awe would sort things out. He disregarded the Pottery Shop rule and had illusions about being able to replace a vacuum with a non-existent laissezze-faire anything-goes solution.

In fumbling in the aftermath of the offensive phase of the war, Rumsfeld gave those who, for whatever reason, are predisposed to dislike, nay hate, GW Bush, ample ammunition to attack the former governor of Texas. It is ironic that the first president who has had the courage and resolution to stand up to the relentless attacks against Americans, their businesses, and their overseas representatives and say “Enough. It stops here. Beyond this we will respond with more than the niceties of our legal system. The gloves are coming off and we will strike back and hit hard,” gets such harsh treatment.

It is as if, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto observed almost 70 years ago, the terrorists had awoken a terrible sleeping dragon and had made it angry. The dragon was awake now and tired of the pinprick attacks. It had stared down the Bear without much thanks and now was going to look out for itself.

In retrospect, the WMDs were there, especially the capability to bring production facilities rapidly on line as well as resume the pursuit of the Golden Fleece of a nuclear device. If you don’t believe that, I beg that you read the Duelfer Report in its entirety and not just the news stories summarizing inaccurately its findings.

In addition, Saddam Hussein was indeed proven to be a very malevolent despot who deserved to hang at the hands of his people.

The threat of his regime is now gone, but the threat from Iran has never gone away and if the U.S. can be run out of Iraq by asymmetrical warfare, financed in good part by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, then it will be the mullahs who have driven the Great Satan from the region and it is their time to rise, as the Xerxes of old and restore the Persian empire to is rightful place as the leader of the world, but especially the Islamic world.

If the bumbling bums of the U.S. cannot pull a rabbit out of their hat, as they seem to be doing today, then who will challenge other despots and threats to the economic stability of the world?

What it really comes down to the end of the day is all the Americans want to do is trade with other countries and sell them stuff – at a profit, of course.

PS: We seem to be winning.