Ten Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

Ten Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. I did not support the invasion in 2003 because I lived in Belgium and barely knew anything about it. But I have supported since returning home, and after learning all I could about it (and while going to school I wrote a 56 page paper supporting the decision to invade; I cited more than 150 sources). In the end, here is my ten year, very quick, final analysis:

The arguments for either side can be classified as moral or strategic. The moral arguments against invading were perhaps the most widely discussed in the news and by pundits. I rarely found any of them compelling; they tended to be devoid of historic insight and scope (though they often pretended to be highly cognizant of history). Moral arguments for invading were more often compelling, yet less often heard. Strategic arguments were strong on both sides. The issues here are much more complex and when tied to US grand strategy the issues become quite vexing and difficult to clearly side with or against.

So, for my calculation, I sum up the two types of arguments and give them a score. The pro-invasion moral arguments get a score of 1, and the uncompelling anti-invasion moral arguments were zero. The pro-invasion strategic arguments are a 1; but the anti-invasion strategic arguments are also a 1. So, they cancel out, leaving me with only the positive 1 from the pro-invasion moral arguments, and so I continue to believe it was a good idea. It is too bad that in the real world decision makers cannot use my simplified system. It makes it so easy for me to pretend to analyze important events from a great distance.

From a ten year perspective, here are 2 insights I don’t think I've read in any news: The greatest intelligence failure on the US side had nothing to do with WMD. It was the failure to predict the scope of the insurgency which followed the toppling of the Baathist regime. There were really two wars: the US vs Iraq, which ended in 3 weeks of the initial invasion. Then, the US, allied with Iraq, vs the insurgents (as well as others who flooded into Iraq, such as al Qaeda). And that is the second insight: one of the main reasons al Qaeda degraded so much from 2006 to 2009 was that they all went to Iraq and then got destroyed by the US military. They came to Iraq to fight, and they lost and became a terrorist movement with franchises (AQAP, AQIM and Al Qaeda Iraq, the latter of which is now dismantled), rather than one big terrorist group. In other words, the Iraq War actually had a big part to play in defeating al Qaeda globally, putting it where it is today.

And of course, this mini-commentary of the ten year anniversary would be incomplete without mentioning that the biggest intelligence failure of Saddam was his belief that the US would not invade at all. Had he believed we were going to really invade, he might not have pushed us so far and deceived us so much, and he might still be there, destroying the lives of his people. Thank goodness he misread George W. Bush.

Tragedy and Guns

As both a teacher and a parent, tragic events such as the recent Connecticut shooting rattle me greatly. At our school there was increased security for about a week following the shooting. The national and pundit debates have followed similar courses this time as other mass murders involving guns. One broad view is that gun control must be strengthened because precious innocent lives trump the second amendment. Another is that, while what happened was a tragedy, it can't be used as a reason to destroy the constitution. My thoughts followed a different course. I believe that preventing tragic innocent deaths and upholding the constitution are not mutually exclusive. And when practicality and constitutionality go hand in hand, that's a good recipe.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine that on that day at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, every single mentally capable and emotionally stable adult had been carrying a handgun. Further imagine that they have all been trained to use the handgun! Now, imagine what the result would be under these different circumstances. The murderer, through surprise, might still have killed one or two individuals. But he certainly would not have slain 26, no matter what kind deadly assault weapon the killer had. He would have been stopped by any of those adults, whether a teacher, counselor, school nurse, or even janitor or lunch lady!

Self Defense
The only real and practical way to prevent gun crime in the moment is by having a gun yourself. Is it really practical to have every adult in a school bear a firearm? Probably not. But, I know that where I teach, at a high school, there are several teachers with concealed handgun licenses. By law, they cannot even take their guns to the parking lot, however. What if adults with CHLs had their weapons with them? How is this not a practical solution? There would almost certainly be several responsible, emotionally and mentally stable individuals at every campus in America who would be willing to step up and provide this security secretly from the students. This would incur no cost from the government, it would not be unconstitutional, and it would provide a practical solution. When I took my own CHL class for my Texas permit I found a veritable diversity of individuals - old ladies, young fashionable women, businessmen. In fact, I only saw one or two that I would have thought to myself, "that looks like a Texan good 'ol boy who hunts and loves to shoot his gun on his ranch." Average people are willing to learn how to use a handgun to protect themselves.

The Gun Control Fantasy
Estimates for how many firearms are owned by citizens range from 200 to 350 million. That number is high enough that it must be wishful thinking to believe that there could be a gun control law which effectively prevents criminals from acquiring a gun. By definition a criminal is not going to follow the law, so even if controls are tight enough to prevent them from illegally purchasing a gun, they could steal one or acquire it from the gray or black market. In the end, a person with murderous intent will eventually get a gun.

Here is my challenge: propose a thought experiment in which a particular set of gun control laws or practices could have effectively prevented the Newtown massacre.

If Nations were People

If Nations were People

The US is like an independently wealthy man who has such a variety of business and investment interests, that no single one can dominate his assets and energy. In other words, If one of his ventures fails, it does not affect him, as he has dozens of others. Thus, he has the freedom to listen to a variety of investment counselors and even crackpots who want to use his money for a business scheme. At times he is an entrepreneur for solid business models, at others, he is a failed venture capitalist. But, only rarely do multiple parts of his personal financial empire stumble at the same time. Even so, his business acuity is strong enough that even harsh times represent but small moments before he rebounds with renewed energy.

Almost every other country is very different. Some are wealthy, some are not wealthy. But even the wealthy ones have much less variety in their means, such that if their primary asset fails, so do they, at least for a significant time. No other nation is like a man who enjoys such financial freedom that they can do with their money precisely what they wish. 

For example, Russia's government receives almost 50 percent of its funding from energy exports. Russia is like the businessman who owns one large firm that represents half of his assets. He will spend much more time obsessing over that one firm than any of the myriad other sources of income he may have - perhaps disproportionately so, as his other assets may aggregate to be slightly more than his largest firm. Thus, Russia tightly controls the energy industry, much more so than the American people would ever allow the US government to meddle in a particular industry.

Germany is wealthy, but his assets are tied into a network of corporations that often suck his financial means away to fund projects that have apparently small or indirect impact on himself. At least, that's how he sees it. Those other corporations declare that he is the problem, that his businesses benefit disproportionately from the network and that the rules have been written to ensure his corporation's success, to the detriment of theirs'. And so, it is not really their fault that they constantly require his assistance. To fix this conundrum, the German businessman has recently tried to make a new deal with the Russian businessman. He wants to trade his capital for the Russian's energy. The business network that Germany is tied into does not like this new deal being made, as it will divert resources from the German's considerable assets to another corporation outside of their common network.

China is a like a man who sees his wealth very rapidly expanding, but whose business expenses rise equally as fast, such that he has very little actual profit. Thus, while people are impressed with his firm's growth (he, like the Russian man, has one primary asset), his own home and personal means have not increased proportionately. Consequently, he has recently been attempting to change his business model. His large firm has made its money for more than two decades by industrial manufacturing low on the value added chain. Now, he wants to increase the quality of his business's products. This is because he is beginning to have heavy competition from other small firms that can provide the same product, but cheaper. Unfortunately, he has primarily kept his own costs down by subsidizing his business with his personal finances. And, as mentioned, he has had few actual profits recently, so his personal finances are drying up and he can no longer afford to dip into his own pockets. Consequently, he will lose substantial business to his competitors if he can't shift his business model up the value added chain. An additional problem he has to deal with is that he has not been able to pay his employees as well as in the past. They are wanting more, and he is further hurting his own pockets by providing for them. If he can't get his model and costs under control, many of his employees may start to quit, which could force him to start from scratch, with less capital (though with his physical assets intact, and thus not at a complete loss).

The Japanese businessman went through what his nephew, the Chinese businessman is going through now. But, he went through it decades ago. He transitioned from a rapidly expanding business to a very large, but very stagnant one. It has neither grown nor lost profits in about two decades, but has sat at a plateau. Fortunately, the employees of his businesses have all enjoyed the perks and have had enough company loyalty that they have not jumped ship even in a lack of raises and additional benefits for nearly 20 years. But he is beginning to wonder if this will last. How long can his workers endure a stagnant lifestyle? 

Although these men all have considerable assets, many have liabilities. And they cannot simply shift their wealth at whim to do away with their problems. 

The US economic model is and has been driven primarily by ideas, rather than constraints beyond its control. Most other places do not have the option to let economic theory become reality. Instead, the economic realities of other nations generate their economic theories. Of course, that's a simplistic way of saying it. But there is a reason that the president of France, Francoise Hollande, has been following very similar policies concerning Germany, Libya and in dealing with the EU, as his predecessor Sarkozy. Hollande could hardly be different ideologically as Hollande. Yet, he finds that a competent leader has a fairly clear path to follow for his country. A competent businessman might innovate, but there are many things that he will do based on many outside factors that affect his business - things outside of his control. He may not always be able to do exactly what he wants.

At least, that's what I think when I read about the state of nations in the world today.

China: A Potential Superpower
This is a layman’s big picture analysis of China’s power status.

It was brought upon by a throw away comment from a friend who, in mentioning that the US and China have each been getting the most medals, noted that it is funny how "superpowers compete through the Olympics."

China, however, only has the potential to be a superpower, as do some other nations, such as Japan and India. The following explains why.

There are at least three areas in which a superpower must be globally formidable: military, economic and political.

Economy

China’s economy is large and expanding rapidly. While this rate of growth cannot endure forever, it is already placing it as the second largest economy in the world. It has fingers in every continent. It has an abundance of resources, and an abundance of the three fundamental aspects of an economy: land, labor and capital (though the latter is not as guaranteed for them as some other economies, as immense capital generation has its own set of constraints).

There are some powerful differences between China and the two superpowers of the last century, however. China’s economy is dominated by exports. It cannot survive without them, because, like any export-driven economy, its own people cannot consume all of its surplus. It literally must export or shrink. This is not a problem for the US, and was not a problem for the Soviets. A superpower’s economy cannot be so constrained and limited in scope. China is currently working to alter this, but it will take time, and will be difficult under the current global economic climate.

Military

Now, combine this critical conundrum of China’s economy to the current state of the oceans. The US navy dominates the world’s oceans to a degree unseen in the history of the world. Global trade is literally contingent upon the US navy’s permission. In a war against China, the US navy could catastrophically shut down their export-dominated economy by eliminating critical sea travel. In a hypothetical WWIII with the Soviets, this would not have been possible, as they were far more self-sufficient than China currently is. For historical precedent: the real unsung heroes of the Pacific War were the US submarines which destroyed Japan’s economy and its ability to continue the war beyond a certain point. China has no counterstrike to this, or similar tactic to use on America, despite many Americans' fears that China "owns all our debt."

Any power that has this sort of disadvantage should probably not be considered a superpower yet. There is a reason China has recently focused so heavily on their navy. They know their problem and want to rectify it. But it will take time (blue water navies with significant power projection take more than a generation to produce).

Military analysts believe that the US could prevent China from invading and conquering Taiwan, a tiny island right next door. China could certainly invade and dominate adjacent, small, continental nations - but this is well within the ability of a regional power, which is what China is.

China cannot militarily dominate significant nations at significant distances. The US has consistently done this since becoming a superpower; the Soviets consistently did so as well. The bottom line is that China’s military, despite its fearsome size, simply does not have the capabilities that the military of a superpower has.

Political

China’s political clout is heavy in some areas of the world. But, its own neighborhood is fraught with nations that have the ability to constrain it. By contrast, no nation in the entire western hemisphere can ultimately constrain the determined political goals of the US – nor could the nations surrounding the USSR.

The USSR had a great many lesser powers that it had dominated militarily, and then pretended were in an alliance with them, called the Warsaw Pact. The only real comparison of this to China is its relationship with N. Korea. Though China could attempt to create its own version of a Warsaw Pact, it is far from it, and there are significant barriers to its potentiality. For example, Japan and India would move to prevent this – and their aggregate opposition would probably be enough. There were never two countries (or six or eight or twenty) in Russia’s neighborhood which could have prevented Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

China wants to, but simply doesn't have the sort of world class political clout that an actual superpower wields.

Killing citizens, 5% GDP, and hating Walmart

Obama targeting US citizens?
A friend of mine recently told me that Obama should be impeached because of the drone attack which he signed off to kill a US citizen named al-Awlaki in 2010. Al-Awlaki was a fairly senior member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). My friend’s argument was essentially that no US citizen should be deprived of due process. My retort was that the question must first be answered if this is war, or a matter of law enforcement and criminal prosecution.

A reasonable person could accept Obama's and Eric Holder's position, without feeling like it leads to a slippery slope in which the government can begin to preclude due process in a variety of cases. Obviously that's the implicit worry that a reasonable person would have about this situation - a worry that I don't share because of the following reasons:

The president, by directing the armed forces during war, is authorizing those armed forces to kill all senior al Qaeda members. If this task is successfully executed by the armed forces, this has the same result, regarding al-Awlaki, as him being specifically targeted. (Because either way this US citizen would not have the right to a trial, etc.) In other words, the fact that he was specifically selected as a target is irrelevant in practice.

This means that in order to be consistent regarding the imperative of applying due process to all US citizens in all possible situations, one must necessarily argue that the armed forces must specifically avoid killing him in any combat, since they are aware of his existence.Of course this is impractical for many reasons, not the least because they may not always be aware they are shooting at al-Awlaki during a particular firefight. And this is why it matters whether this is war or not. But even if it were not impractical and US forces could be certain to avoid killing him (a very dubious and theoretical proposition, remember), it still brings up a constitutional dilemma. The conundrum is this:

The constitution authorizes the president to direct the armed forces in war. Warfare is conducted against groups of people (whether nations or, in this case, terrorist organizations). Waging war entails killing combatants of that enemy group indiscriminately. Therefore, by waging war the president is implicitly authorized to kill individual members of that group. As stated above, it doesn't matter whether this authorization is specific or general. It happened to be specific.

On the other hand, all US citizens must also be given the right to a speedy trial and a jury by their peers, etc.

Which part of the constitution is more important?

My answer is that warfare is clearly different from criminal prosecution and therefore operates under a different set of rules. Due process is irrelevant in this situation.

But there’s another answer that meets both specifications. According to my friend, someone who does not live in the US, and actively fights against it, would be in effect giving up his citizenship. This should end the question too, since al-Awlaki absolutely meets these conditions.

5 percent GDP growth
Larry Kudlow recently said we have a post-war GDP growth average of 4.6 percent. Last year I was ridiculed by friends because I said with the right president and Congress we can have 5 percent. I said this because one of the GOP candidates (of back then, someone not in the race anymore) said that we must have 5 percent GDP growth for the next ten years. I understand that is not easy to do – but if we’ve almost averaged this for the past 60 years, why should it be hard? Because we’re in a recession? Well, that will soon change, and I think that was the point of the candidate. In any case, I wish one of our leading presidential candidates would again say, “it’s time for America to have 5 percent GDP growth!”

Economies are built upon four principle things: land, labor, capital and innovation. America has more useable land than any other nation, or nearly so. It has an extremely low relative population density, in any case. We are replete with a large labor pool and have a tradition of immigration to increase it over time – plus we have a higher birth rate than almost every other developed nation. We are consistently flush with capital, and unlike Europe and many other places, we rely less on banks to fund new enterprises, and entrepreneurs have more diverse options for getting their businesses going. And finally, not only has America driven the technological progress of the previous century, but we are by no means becoming a second rate engine of innovation. The big picture seems to show that America has the potential for high GDP growth. So, why is it so hard to believe that with the right leadership we can’t have it?

Disliking Walmart
A lot of people dislike Walmart. I don’t. A few years ago they started the whole generic prescription for 4 dollars, some for 10 dollars, making millions of person’s lives easier to get needed medication at extremely low prices. Every other major pharmacy followed suit. At the time a friend who dislikes Walmart said “they were just reacting to market forces, don’t praise them for that.” Well, no other major pharmacy did this, so even if they were merely “reacting to market forces,” they didn’t have to do this (on the other hand, all the other pharmacies clearly followed suit so they wouldn’t lose all their business to Walmart). But medication, I would imagine, is a pretty inelastic commodity relatively speaking. You either need it or you don’t, and price change isn’t going to affect demand drastically. Sure, Walmart probably make this price change to snatch up a larger share of the pharmaceutical market, but I don’t care about motives – I care about how it affects me as a consumer! No business is an exercise in altruistic philanthropy. I only care that it provides service for me that I want at a low price. And they led the way in doing this.

If you can only think of businesses as good for altruistic reasons, then what about this:
I remember five years or so when they donated an equal amount of land to the federal government for conservation to all the land of every retail and corporate real estate that Walmart owned. Essentially, they doubled the amount of land they owned, and then donated half of it for national and state parks and wilderness preserves. There’s no possible way this could give them enough tax breaks to offset this plan (otherwise wouldn’t lots of other businesses do it too?). They weren’t praised for it, even by many environmentalists as I recall at the time! I like businesses that do things like this.

So, then my friend argues that Walmart forces vendors to lower their prices (if you can sell to Walmart, you’re gold as a vendor, so it’s in their interest to give Walmart a great price). But by forcing vendors to lower their prices, it encourages lower product quality. (My friend has an uncle who owns a company which actually sells a nice quality product to Walmart – but is constantly having to lower its quality to meet Walmart’s low price demand). However, while I would feel bad for the vendor if he were my uncle too, isn’t the vendor just a business like Walmart? Why should the average consumer feel empathy for him? You see, from the consumer’s point of view, if Walmart has low quality products, then the consumer can go to another store to buy higher quality products at higher prices! That’s what I do – I don’t buy everything at Walmart because some things are lower quality there. And that’s fine. If Walmart sold things of better quality they couldn’t sell things at their low prices. This is all just economic common sense. I’m glad I have the option of going to different stores with different products. It is our competitive market which allows this freedom for the consumer. Why should Walmart get some kind of special blame for anything? They are a good store that sells products commensurate to their prices. And that’s all they are. Stop hating! It’s unamerican!

"Potential" Humans and my gut feelings on criminal cases

If an unborn child is a human, than the position that abortion is morally reprehensible is natural, logical, necessary, just, and is the only position a reasonable person should have (speaking of abortions under normal circumstances and in a general sense). So, those who generally oppose abortion must necessarily argue that unborn children are not, in fact, humans. All arguments about abortion, therefore, eventually devolve into the question of whether a fetus is a human or not.

The most coherent way of doing this for pro-choice activists is to say that fetuses are “potential humans,” rather than “actual humans.” Bupkiss. In fact, this argument creates a logical fallacy. It is not easy to identify at first, but I will try my best to illustrate it.

Start with the words “potential human.” Potentiality connotates mere possibility, it does not connotate inevitability. Potentiality expresses the idea that the outcome is yet undetermined: that something can succeed or fail. Additionally, it entails the concept that an additional element or function is required in order to arrive at the particular (potential) result.

One can no more call the unborn a potential human than can children be called potential adults. There exists no option for a child but to eventually become an adult: there exists no special ingredient or event required to be added to a child’s life to turn them into an adult. It just happens with time. Likewise, the natural, inevitable course of pregnancy ends in the birth of a human. It just happens with time, requiring no additional element or function.

The irony (and logical fallacy) is that the only way a fetus can be reasonably labeled a “potential” human, is if the possibility to abort exists! And even then it is a dubious appropriation. But to see the irony and logical fallacy involved, you must do a thought experiment. Consider a place in which abortions are either impossible, inconceivable, or otherwise unable to be rendered. In such a place no one who lived there would possibly conceive of the term “potential human,” as no one would think of the possibility that the unborn would not be born as another member of humanity. As soon as abortion is invented, the possibility of considering the unborn a “potential” human emerges - by introducing the possibility of forcing death upon that unborn child and providing a different potential result to pregnancy. Thus, in the real world, basing the argument that abortions are morally acceptable upon the premise that the fetus is a “potential” rather than “actual” human is circular logic: if abortions are immoral, then there is no reason at all to label unborn people “potential” humans, and if abortions happen to be moral, then the argument that they are merely “potential” humans is unnecessary – fatuously so.

The bottom line is that a fetus must necessarily be a “real” human, simply unborn, and not some theoretical “potential” human. Everyone knows this, it is not some secret. It is quite sad that so many people seem to be fooled by clever words with such spurious meaning.

Here’s a contradiction in my own thoughts:
When a man indicted of criminal charges is put on trial, there are two outcomes: guilty and not guilty. But this doesn’t mean that the average correct verdict of those on trial is 50/50. It would be a logical fallacy to think so. And since it is not 50/50, then which is the more likely correct outcome of any given trial? Not which is the most common verdict, which should be the most common correct verdict?

I believe it is guilty (though how can anyone know this?) The reason is simple: district attorneys and law enforcement officers do not lightly indict people; they do so after investigation. Though they can make mistakes, it would be foolish to consider the vast majority of them so incompetent that more than half of the people who end up even getting to trial based on their investigations are innocent a majority of the time (this would be especially curious considering that only a fraction of the total suspects in any criminal investigation actually go to trial). Essentially, it seems quite statistically unlikely that the majority of them are innocent.

So, we have a strange situation here: as a juror under the US constitution, I would have to presume innocence of any person on trial until proven guilty. Yet, my gut feeling would be that the person on trial is more than 50% likely to be guilty, before I even hear the case! Now, district attorneys and cops certainly make mistakes (as do judges and jurors), but that would still be my gut feeling going into the trial. I guess I would make a terrible juror. Of course, the correct thing to do is just to try to determine the truth of that particular case, without any bias based upon any statistics at all. After all, I would be under a mandate to presume innocence until the defendant is proven guilty. And I would like to think I could do that. But statistics have a funny way of shaping peoples’ biases.

New Cold War?

I know I just recently posted a big blob of a blog after a long dearth of posts, I have a few quick things inspired by recent news.

The first is that I am of the opinion that we will not enter a new Cold War with China in the foreseeable future. China will simply not become as mighty vis-a-vis the US as the Soviets were. To put this in perspective, look at one giant indicator: GDP. Using 2010 numbers and a compound interest calculator, you can see that if China sustains a growth rate of 10 percent for 15 years (which is absurdly high for such a time) and the US only sustains a growth rate of a mere 2 percent, then at that time China and the US will have parity with GDP (actually it will take about 14.5 years). Both countries will have about 18.6 trillion in GDP (in 2010 dollars). The point is that the US is far mightier economically than people think. China won't have that kind of growth consistently (if ever), the US might easily not have such low growth (considering our population - largely due to immigration - rapidly increases even as our GDP per capita does not drastically go down (in other words, our economy generally grows with the growth in people). The current fiscal troubles we seem to have will disappear soon and level headed observation will hopefully resume.

Of course, while it is true that the Soviets never had a GDP of more than around 60 percent of the US economy, the Soviets also had the Warsaw Pact. China basically has North Korea. The big countries around it, Russia, S. Korea, Japan, India are not about to be as cozy in their relationship with China (let alone under the thumb of China) as the Warsaw Pact states.

Whether China becomes more hostile to the US, less hostile or remains in this pseudo-friendship of opportunity we find ourselves in, an actual Cold War won't easily emerge. The bottom line is that the US is far too powerful, and thus, far too important for the rest of the world, for China to somehow present itself as a complete alternate for a minor power to rally with.

In the war on terror:
The news that suddenly Al Qaeda is on the brink of defeat is not really news. Bin Laden had been marginalized for at least 2 years, as I recently posted. Both the ideological and tactical battlefield between the US and Islamism is far vaster in dozens of other places beyond Afghanistan and even Pakistan. Bin Laden's death, while satisfying to see justice served, does not represent an actual major shift in the war against radical terrorists and Islamists. The shift already happened following the devolution of Al Qaeda which began around 2007.

Problems around the World

Here are a few things I have gathered from reading too many articles and online intelligence sources.

US Withdrawal in Iraq and Afghanistan
Obama initially painted Afghanistan as the good war and Iraq as the wrong war, but in the near future, it is in the US interest to be in Iraq, not Afghanistan. The reason is obvious when you remember that the two real threats to the US in the Mideast continue to be Iran and radical Islamists.

There is a reason that the US keeps asking Iraq to renew the status of forces agreement: Iran has been able to insert disruptive elements inside Iraq. If the US wants to really fight Iran, it must keep a strategic reserve of forces inside Iraq. If we are serious about trying to contain Iran, we must stay in Iraq.

Iraq is also the optimum place for power projection in the region for the US. This matters because we also have to deal with the radical Islamists. The Al Qaeda core, for at least two years, has not been at the forefront of radical Islamism – they were defeated decisively by the US. Al Qaeda has moved from being the most important global jihadist organization to essentially an ideological leader with almost no tactical capabilities. It has been deprived of any patronage (from states), and its franchises (which are independent organizations, such as AQAP, AQ in the Arab Megreb, and AQ Iraq) have taken over both tactical and strategic leadership in the Islamist struggle. And none of those organizations is even remotely based in Afghanistan. They are in Iraq, the southern Arabian Peninsula (such as Yemen) and northern Africa (and there is one in Somalia). To fight the current global jihadists the US must have elements in many places, but not so much in Afghanistan.

It is therefore a strategic net loss, in my opinion, to keep substantial troops and resources in Afghanistan. We won the war against Al Qaeda core, so we should now leave the battlefield. (Although on a Wilsonian level I am in favor of keeping some non-military resources there to help build infrastructure, and a few military elements for training, etc.). As recent as a year ago, I was heavily in favor of keeping forces in both countries, but now I agree with the Afghan withdrawal.

Turkey's coming role in the Mideast:
America is drawing down its military presence in the Mideast. Iraq's traditional role as powerhouse and counterweight to Iran has been obliterated by the 2003 Iraq War (according to most intelligence analysts, Iran has extensive capabilities within Iraq). Turkey, the traditional heavyweight of the Mideast, is beginning to flex its own muscles, however.

Turkey has been in a relative shell of isolation ever since Ataturk (who never even used the Turkish military in foreign policy issues after 1922!). But Turkey's military and economy are rapidly expanding and will soon overshadow Iran's might. Meanwhile, it is mostly Sunni, and its secularism is ever so slowly fading (for example, look at the current party in charge, which is not secular). And it is becoming involved in more and more negotiations (for example between Israel and the PA, and in Libya between Europe, the rebels and Gadhafi) and it is having more to say regarding places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

All this means that it is appearing to reemerge as the Mideast's Islamic older brother. I think there's a reason Gen. Petraeus, as he leaves his post in Afghanistan, is making his first stop in Ankara before coming to the US as the CIA director. The US knows that it will be largely up to Turkey to maintain the balance in the Mideast after the US military draws down more fully. It's not quite a return of the Ottomans, but eventually it may prove to be.

Doom and Gloom from Egypt:
In Egypt, most serious intelligence analysts that I am aware of are indicating that the trend is a fracturing of the Islamists - not a weakening of their power, but they are becoming divided. This means that even if an enormous part of the Egyptian populace favors Islamism such as the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood (and it is apparently very difficult to tell, even for Egyptians, what the majority really thinks there), there is not enough consensus and uniform leadership among the MB and similar groups for the country to truly form a strong Islamic government. There will certainly be Islamic elements, but it will become a coalition based government, with parties such as the MB's Justice and Peace party (or whatever it's called, I can't remember exactly) being perhaps the largest component, but only as a plurality.

Meanwhile, the military, which has ruled for decades, is not actually ceding direct power, because there is no real way for people such as the MB and the populace to wrest direct control. What happened in Egypt is nothing like what happened to the Soviets. It is somewhere in between that and what happened in Iran two summers ago - which means that the military is still in firm control, but is simply giving concessions - not a formula for the vast and swift Islamic takeover that some fear.

Operation Odyssey Dawn, and its sequels:
In Libya, the Nato coalition is divided, as usual. They are slowly realizing what their grandparents did in WWII, that you can't win a war with air power alone, and you also can't decisively win this war by granting the rebels only air support. While France, strangely, was initially the most vocal proponent of the war, it is now not so sure. The US is consistently trying to say that it is Europe's war, not ours (which is basically true). Italy is being really scared because they have gotten more and more refugees, and if Gadhafi never ends up leaving, then they will have to deal with the fact that they betrayed him after having so many lucrative deals with him (who wants a crazy guy like Gadhafi mad at you?). And Russia and Turkey are arguing over who is will be the big mediator between it all. Essentially, both the war and the politics are at a stalemate.

Turmoil in the Rest of the Mideast:
In general in the Mideast there is luckily not really a huge sweeping change for Islamism (but also not one for Western style democracy). The Wahhabists and Salafist Jihadists (such as the MB and Al Qaeda, etc.) have been trying to make all the secular governments into Islamists for decades and had only really succeeded in Afghanistan, and now that is tenuous for them (although the Taliban may yet make a major comeback).

In Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Syria, some of the biggest areas of current unrest (besides Egypt and Libya) there are tons of tribal factions and divisions, far too much for Islamism to takeover sweepingly. In Syria, for example, the Alawites are putting down their iron fist. In Yemen, royal family fights royal family. Bahrain has been a playground between Iran and Saudi Arabia (remember the troops sent from Saudi Arabia to help quell the unrest a few months back), and of course Saudi Arabia itself tries to appease the minority Shiite population in the east while it is on the brink of a major leadership transition.

Basically, there are a lot of problems and things going on, but there is no pending crisis in which Islamists will soon form their great Caliphate - virtually all of the current problems have to do with a combination of economic and tribal issues (that is to say, general populations feeling rightly indignant of their repressive governments and minority populations rightly feeling indignant for being so screwed). Hopefully the governments will become more liberal because of it all, but we will see. (liberal in the traditional meaning of the term, not the American political meaning). I believe that the most likely outcome is that the regimes will remain largely secular, while they will institute enough reforms to pacify the populaces, but not enough to fundamentally change their natures.

China's potential for belligerence:
China has recently been acting more openly belligerent towards its neighbors (for example, Chinese military vessels have shot live rounds at Philipino fishers on several occasions in the last six months). A friend of mine, and an astute observer, noted that between China's surplus of young males and growing economy, it could easily begin to have friction with its neighbors.

The most major caveat I have about Chinese aggression, however, is that it will be hard pressed to do much of anything if it can't handle the pressures of slowing its massive inflation without curbing its massive growth - not an easy problem, apparently. China's economic model is basically the same as all the other East Asian "tigers" which went kaput in the 90's and are still struggling to revive their growth - look at Japan, for example, which everyone thought would overtake the US in the 80s, but has now been stagnant for more than a decade.

Additionally, China suffers from major corruption at every level of the government, which is among the many reasons the people of China are restless (examples are the Jasmine gatherings and the weekly problems from strikes to local protests to individuals going postal at the local government). All this means that the government must first master itself before it can really master its neighbors. This has always been China's plight: China has suffered more civil wars and civil strife than perhaps any other nation in history (of course, it helps that it has a much longer history than almost anyone else). While it has had its share of wars with neighbors, its internal struggles have always been of critical importance, and one can only understand China by understanding its internal dynamics which force it to look inward, rather than outward (in particular the previous two centuries illustrate this).

Despite all this, the question remains: is China about to change course and look outward more and more? It did just build its first aircraft carrier (well, finally began working on one they had purchased from Russia years ago) and revealed their 6th generation fighter jet early this year. Nations don’t build aircraft carriers for defense. It is a power projection tool. I think the answer is yes, but the next question is, will they be able to effectively project power?

Russia:
Germany and Russia's entente increases as the Nord Stream Pipeline nears completion (set to be operational this November). This will allow Russia to sell natural gas directly to Germany (which really needs cheap energy now that it has announced it is doing away with all of its nuclear energy) without going through the complex web of pipelines in the East European nations.

Nations in the old Soviet area of influence are very dependent on energy from Russia, and cynical observers note that the most important advantage of the Nord Stream pipeline for Russia is that they can sell energy to Germany directly at one price, and then use price as a weapon against their neighbors that they historically (and currently) try to control. The Baltic nations, for example, get 100% (except Estonia I think) of their energy from Russia, so basically they have to do what Russia says.

More than one coalition of Eastern European states has formed a military partnership, something not seen in 50 years (since NATO) - the Nordic Battlegroup and the Visegrad 4 Battlegroup. This means two things: A) these states consider it an imperative to have some kind of collective security apparatus against a perceived threat (why else spend the vast money and vast political effort, especially between traditionally unfriendly partners such as The Czechs and the Slovaks?), and B) they don't believe NATO is functional enough to provide this for them. The only real threat all these nations have in common is a potential threat from Russia (which, after all, fought an unnecessary war with Georgia a mere three years ago).

Mexico’s Cartels
The two biggest factions of cartels - the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas are becoming so violent that they have been making car bombs (VBIEDs) and also jury-rigged armored trucks (dump trucks with massive armor added, much more than Brinks armored cars). These two cartels have smaller ones working with them, and as two sides control almost all of the cartel landscape in Mexico (though there are still a few independent ones like the newly formed Knights Templar).

The Mexican government has relieved tons of local and state police of their duties in the northeast and has inserted the army to carry on policing duties (and for fighting the cartels). A big problem with this, is that the reason they fired all those police - because so many were corrupt and on the cartels' payrolls - won't be negated by firing them. Any police who really were on the cartel payroll are probably going to be actually hired by the cartels as gunmen, ones who already have good government issued firearms! So, I believe it was a mistake to let them go, although having the army there may be good.

hurray for Obama

Hurray Hurray Hurray!

Although I was uneasy about how it would go this morning when Obama spoke with Gen. McChrystal, I am more than enthusiastic about the President's superb choice of Petraeus to replace him as the top commander in Afghanistan.

Gen. Petraeus is an excellent selection. When virtually every politician and pundit, in early 2007 thought Iraq was lost, Bush did a probably unprecedented, certainly ahistoric and abnormal thing. He changed the war strategy mid-war, when everyone said the new strategy would fail miserably. It didn't. Gen. Petraeus (and Bush's initially unpopular, but ultimately very vindicated decision) is the reason Iraq's violence virtually (in relative terms) disappeared and its government can now function at a reasonable level compared to the rest of the world.

Now that Petraeus is in charge, things will start to happen. Go Obama!

The Energy of the Future

I knew that solar energy is the most efficient source of energy (since it's powered by fusion, after all), but I wanted to know more after I talked a few days ago with a friend who believes that nuclear power and super batteries are the way of the future. I wish we had way more nuclear plants - they're super cheap (in energy production costs) and super green. But we don’t. And I’m sure batteries will become better over time, but batteries do not generate energy.

Anyway, I found the following from the US Department of Defense's 2007 study called "Space-Based Power as an Opportunity for Strategic Security" -

"The magnitude of the looming energy and environmental problems is significant enough to warrant consideration of all options, to include revisiting a concept called Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) first invented in the United States almost 40 years ago. The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m2) , collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low‐intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers. A single kilometer‐wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today. This amount of energy indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability."

I knew that orbiting solar panels would have vastly more efficient energy-gathering power, but I didn't know it was this much! Read the section I put in bold again. I don't know exactly how much energy is estimated to be contained in all known recoverable conventional oil reserves, but it's certainly more than a decade’s worth of world energy consumption (and it’s probably well more than two or three times that – 20 to 30 years). So, this sentence in bold, if accurate, is saying that a panel (or set of panels) just one kilometer wide in space would produce at least ten times more power in a year than the entire world consumes in a year!
Solar energy, gathered from orbit really is better than any alternative.

We already have the technology to launch and maintain satellites in space. We already have photovoltaic cells (solar energy gathering technology). The only thing we cannot yet do is beam energy in the form of electromagnetic waves. I have no idea how long that might take to have.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that we can beam energy to earth, but we cannot put in orbit panels effective enough to capture all of the energy that the sun is outputting. Let’s say that our kilometer wide panel can only capture a mere one percent of the sun’s energy beaming onto it. That would mean that it is capturing at least ten percent of the world’s energy consumption for one year (since the sun’s output per year is equal to at least ten years of world energy consumption). So far so good. Since the US consumes about a quarter of the world’s energy (last time I checked), then this kilometer wide panel (or set of panels) in orbit could produce each year more than one third of the energy consumed by the entire United States! The impact would be staggering – and remember, this would be for a solar panel that is only gathering one percent of the sun’s output, which I would imagine is a very inefficient, poorly designed solar panel.

However…there is an economic barrier to this project since satellites cost billions of dollars (and this was my friend’s principal argument against orbiting solar panels). But a cost-benefit analysis is obviously in favor of doing this! The entire world's energy supply being met and exceeded by only a few dozen satellites could only outweigh any conceivable cost.

To put it simply, the enterprise which can put up the first orbiting solar panel could be the world's first trillionaire! Hydrocarbons (and nuclear power plants) would become obsolete (at least as soon as we can manufacture every machine to be electrical) and we would never want for energy - and eventually, no nation on earth would want for energy, as soon as the infrastructure to procure the transmissions from space are in place in a given nation.

It sounds too good to be true, but then again, so was nuclear energy. However, orbiting solar panels won't have the whole radiation/meltdown thing, or the nuclear bomb baggage. So once orbiting solar panels begin, they probably won't ever decline like nuclear power did.

The study also says:
"NASA and DOE have collectively spent $80M over the last three decades in sporadic efforts studying this concept (by comparison, the U.S. Government has spent approximately $21B over the last 50 years continuously pursuing nuclear fusion)."

Cold fusion would grant unimaginable levels of energy - like one fusion plant could power the entire world's energy needs for centuries. But the technology is way more complicated than nuclear fission plants; plus it is apparently impossible to achieve (according to most physicists since the 90’s).

So what are we talking about here?

While both cold fusion and orbiting solar panels would eradicate all of our current energy problems while simultaneously destroying the global warming problem, only the orbiting solar panels are economically realistic and technologically feasible. And despite this, for every dollar spent by the US govt. on orbiting solar panels, $262.50 have been spent on a pipe dream that has no real chance of going anywhere. (Here’s the math - 21 billion is equal to 21,000 million – so we’re essentially comparing, in dollar terms, a ratio of 2100 to 8 or 262.5 to 1).

As soon as the US government starts to actually fund this effort, like it funded the nuclear power stuff in the 30's and 40's, there might be a revolution in energy! I hope so.

Democracy, Freedom and the Equal Distribution of Resources

It would take a far larger work than an essay to analyze the relationship between political and economic systems. This essay is limited to two connected theses regarding that complicated relationship. The first is that democracy is the best political system because it provides more freedom to more people than any other political system. Inherent in this proposition is that freedom is what actually matters. The second is a critique of Robert Dahl’s assessment of the relationship between democracy and free market capitalism. Dahl describes a potential problem existing between free market capitalism and democracy. He explains that the unequal distribution of resources generated by the free market can limit the democratic potential in a nation or system. While this is an important, well argued critique, it is only part of the picture. He does not contend with some inherent implications of his argument. One implication is that, by contrast, an equal distribution of resources would not limit democratic potential. But, in fact, the equal distribution of resources could also limit democratic potential by limiting freedom. In only arguing that an unequal distribution of resources can limit democratic potential, when in fact both an equal and an unequal distribution can potentially do so, Dahl paints a conceptually myopic portrait of the relationship between the free market and democracy. Dahl additionally offers no explanations as to how the unequal distribution of resources might enhance democratic potential by enhancing freedom. Dahl needs to expand his critique so that he does not seem partial about the relationship between the free market and democracy. It would be outside the scope of this essay to provide all concievable answers to these questions; several possibilities are presented.

Democracy is the most worthwhile political system for a nation state. This is because it provides more freedom to more people than any other plausible political system. Democracy and freedom are not synonyms. They are certainly related, but they are distinct concepts. The value of democracy hinges primarily on its capacity to grant freedom, not on any intrinsic virtue. If another system provided more freedom than democracy, that system would be more desirable. Such a political system is difficult to conceive, however. Democracy is likely not only the best currently available, but the best that is plausible.

Robert Dahl, in his book On Democracy asks the question, “why should we believe that democracy is a better way of governing the state than any nondemocratic alternative?” [Dahl 45]. His elegant answer comprises ten points, or “desirable consequences” of democracy -
1. Avoiding tyranny [Dahl 45]
2. Essential rights
3. General freedom
4. Self determination
5. Moral autonomy
6. Human development
7. Protecting essential personal interests
8. Political equality
9. Peace-seeking
10. Prosperity
These features have a common theme. Nearly every consequence is directly related to the concept of freedom. The following is a less specific, general way of expressing each of these same “desirable consequences.”
1. Freedom from oppression
2. Freedom from oppression
3. Freedom
4. Freedom to choose for oneself
5. Freedom of conscience
6. Human development
7. Freedom from oppression
8. Freedom from oppression
9. Freedom from wars
10. Freedom from poverty
The final two points are expressed slightly facetiously. Expressing peace and prosperity as facets of freedom is to conflate the three concepts. They are all three related and interconnected, but it is outside the scope of this paper to explore their relationship. Nevertheless, a people mired in poverty or conflict is hardly freer than a people which is not. Without exploring every qualification, in general it can be assumed that peace and prosperity are types of freedom (or can be reasonably included in a broad definition of it).

In a quick counting, 9 out of 10 of the very reasons democracy is desirable deal directly with freedom. The 6th point, human development, is expressed eloquently in terms related to freedom by Dahl. The potential for human development in a society includes “…the scope within which adults can act to protect their own interests…take responsibility for important decisions, and engage freely with others in a search for the best decision” [Dahl 56]. Apparently Dahl’s explanation for why human development is a desirable trait of democracy is because, like every other consequence of democracy, it provides freedom.

For Dahl, democracy’s capacity to grant freedom is its great virtue. It is therefore quite reasonable to argue that, in sum, the reason democracy is desirable is because it provides more freedom than any other political system.

In dealing with abstracts, rather than practical application, a qualification must be included. A political system (or non-system) which provides an individual with complete freedom to act as he or she wishes is undesirable. Indeed, this system would fail at its fundament, because such a system could only provide complete freedom to a single individual, not everyone. As soon as the first individual to exercise his “complete freedom” to steal another’s car or burn down another’s house, the system has failed by allowing one individual’s “freedom” to impinge on another’s.
What is desirable then, is not the intractible concept of complete freedom for every individual. The question is utilitarian and becomes ‘which system will provide the most freedom for the most individuals?’ Democracy is that system.

Having explained that democracy is the best political system because of its vast freedom-granting potential, Dahl notes that it “has existed only in countries with predominantly market-capitalist economies” [Dahl 166, emphasis in original]. However, he warns, there are reasons as to why free market capitalism does not “favor” democracy [Dahl 173]. He explains that “because of inequalities in political resources [generated by the free market], some citizens gain significantly more influence than others over the government’s policies, decisions and actions” [Dahl 178]. Put in a less theoretical presentation, Dahl is saying that a person or organization such as a lobby with a lot of money (or some other powerful political resources) could buy off or pressure a law-maker or could directly persuade the voters themselves.

Suppose a rich person buys all the newspapers (or some other communications media). That person will naturally have more influence over voters than everybody else who cannot decide what is said in that particular communications media. This appears to limit the democratic potential, as Dahl asserts. The implied solution seems to be that wealth and political resources be distributed evenly among all individuals so that no single person is wealthy enough to own all the newspapers.

It is not so simple. Now imagine a system where all political resources and wealth are distributed evenly. Why could not a group of individuals – with the right to associate freely – combine their personal resources to influence the other voters? What if they combine their resources to purchase all the newspapers which, in the other scenario, were owned by a single individual? This group, composed of people who are otherwise political and economic equals, now have more political resources than a random citizen of the electorate. The unequal distribution of wealth generated by the free market cannot be blamed for this particular inequality of political resources, because the individuals of the organization each have no more wealth than anyone else. Yet the result and the effect on democracy would be the same in either scenario.

For the first scenario, the solution seems to be to distribute wealth evenly so that no single person would have the means to own all the newspapers. For the second, however, how could the combined means of many people to buy all the newspapers be taken away? That is, after all, the current state of all publicly owned media, whether newspapers or otherwise. The most plausible solution is to completely socialize the communications media such that every citizen owns an equal portion. However, if all the people collectively owned the newspapers, we have only created a solution with its own new problem. The newspaper media would become essentially state-controlled (millions of owners could not participate in the functioning of the media, so the state would be the natural director and manager).

State-controlled media, even in an otherwise completely democratic society, would contradict one of the requirements for a democracy. Dahl explains that “alternative sources of information [must] actually exist that are not under the control of the government” for a large-scale democracy to function properly [Dahl 86]. It is extremely easy to find examples of why state-run (or controlled) media is detrimental to freedom and incompatible with democracy, from the former Soviet Union to modern day China.

Then, what is the solution to our problem? There can neither be an inequality of wealth, nor an equality of wealth in which the right to associate freely is protected, nor can there be state-controlled media. The solution would likely be government regulation (anti-trust laws or some other kind of protection) such that neither the rich man nor the group can control all the newspapers (provided that the law does not infringe their right to associate freely). But an analysis of the best solution is outside the scope of this essay. The salient point is that the solution does not inform us on whether we should allow for an inequality of wealth (scenario of the rich man) or an equality of wealth (scenario of the group). In other words, both the free market and a system which grants equality of wealth can experience a limit on democracy – a limit which is identical for practical purposes.

The implication of Dahl’s critique can be carried further. For example, how could it be reasonably enforced that wealth be distributed equally? Assume there exists an economic system in which every person’s income equals every other person, regardless of his or her job or position. This does not ensure an equality of wealth unless everyone spends his or her money the same. If person A chooses to save her money and person B chooses to spend all of it, then person A will end up with more wealth. If laws are enacted to ensure that all income is spent in the same fashion, then the society borders on the creepy, highly undesirable world of Big Brother. Ensuring an equality of political resources can potentially limit freedom, rather than produce freedom. Dahl is silent on this, though he would certainly oppose such laws.

Dahl is equally silent on how an inequality of resources can actually generate or preserve freedom. In contrast to some of the potential limits a full equality of wealth might have on individual freedom, there are ways in which the inequality of wealth can be a boon to freedom. For example, if wealth were distributed evenly, one would have the difficult time of finding agreement between many, many others (as described in the second scenario about the communications media) in order to disseminate knowledge and ideas. This would be a much simpler task in the free market. According to the economist Milton Friedman, “In a capitalist society, it is only necessary to convince a few wealthy people to get funds to launch any idea, however strange, and there are many such persons, many independent foci of support” [Friedman 17]. A man is therefore freer to propagate ideas and to convince others of their soundness. This greater ability to disseminate ideas is an expansion of freedom, not a restriction of it. This potential benefit to freedom, and therefore to the basis for a democratic system, is the obverse of Dahl’s critique that the free market allows some political influences to be stronger than others. Dahl is completely silent on this side of the issue.

There are other ways the unequal distribution of resources relates to freedom, which Dahl fails to mention, or mentions them very indirectly. Three of Dahl’s ten reasons why democracy is the best system, as stated previously, are “protecting essential personal interests,” “self determination” and “human development.” In describing these points, Dahl says “you will surely want to exercise some control over the factors that determine whether and to what extent you can satisfy your wants – some freedom of choice, an opportunity to shape your life in accordance with your own goals” [Dahl 52]. Imagine a person, no matter how determined she is, no matter what lengths she goes to develop her mental capacities and her skills and natural proficiencies, finds that she can never attain an increase in wealth. She is limited by the sum total of wealth, which is distributed perfectly evenly throughout a society. She is less free than someone who, by the fruits of her perseverance, labor and talents, will actually reap the financial consequences of her actions. She is not free to act to “protect [her] own interests” and therefore to experience the “human development” and “self-determination.” that are desirable consequences of democracy [Dahl 56]. Dahl is silent on this aspect of the relationship between protecting one’s personal interests and the unequal distribution of wealth in the free market. Much (though certainly not all) of the inequality of wealth generated by the free market is the result of individual choices, made freely by individuals. Since the consequence of inequality of resources within the free market can be the result of the economic freedom that the free market grants to individuals, to deprive the system of the ability to generate an inequality of resources would be to limit freedom. And freedom is the desirable fruit of democracy.

The relationship between free market capitalism and democracy is complicated. Dahl’s critique can be summed up as ‘while democracy creates political equality, the free market can limit that political equality.’ This is an insufficient representation of the relationship between democracy and the free market, however. Democracy also creates individual freedom, and the free market can help to generate and ensure that individual freedom. The facet of the free market that Dahl specifically says can limit democratic potential – the unequal distribution of resources – is a facet of the free market that can help to preserve freedom. Yet Dahl presents only one side of this particular issue. Regarding the unequal distribution of resources, he exclusively explains that it is detrimental to democracy. If democracy really is all about freedom, as Dahl argues in the first place, then he should expand his critique of the free market to include how it can also protect that freedom.
 
Works Cited
Dahl, Robert A. On Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

2010 National Elections in Iraqi

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109613619617840.html

Again, as in the national election of 2005, more Iraqis turned out to vote than Americans ever do - and they did so again under threats of death from various terrorist and insurgent groups. One thing that struck me is that Fallujah, Fallujah had a 61% turnout! If you don't understand the significance of that you don't understand Iraq.

Whatever the myriad problems and bunglings that America and its leaders (Bush) and others introduced into Iraq, there is only one overwhelming fact:

Iraq was one of the most despotic places on earth before 2003, yet now free and fair national elections have been held twice (and provincial elections have been held a few times).

This is a huge win for the Iraqi people and for all of humanity. Yes it is fragile - but so are virtually all new democracies, from the East Europeans to Latin America, they're all fragile at first (which is why so many fail). And yes this one could easily fail. But this one is special - it is the first real democracy in the Arab world. Larry Diamond, in his book The Spirit of Democracy noted in 2008 that the only significant cultural block of the world without a single representative democracy are the Arabs.

This is significant because of Iraq's importance to the region - it's like France for Europe (Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia would be Germany and UK). This is not a tiny, non-influential nation.

No one man is more responsible for this change than George W. Bush.

Scum of the Earth

In the largest battle in the Afghan theater since 2001, this is the kind of scum of the earth our military has to deal with...

From the Associated Press, Sunday, February 21, 2010 -

"On Sunday, Marine squads in the western section of Marjah used missiles to destroy a large, abandoned school compound that had been booby-trapped with explosives in Marjah. The school had been shut down two years earlier by the Taliban, residents told Marines.

"They said they would kill the father of any child that went to school," said farmer Maman Jan, deploring that his six children were illiterate."

Why Does Beauty Matter?

There are a few atheists I have befriended at my school, the Universty of North Texas. I haven’t seen them much this fall, but last semester and the one before that I encountered them several times as they had a booth on campus with the poster “ask an atheist.” The conversations were always civil and enlightening and naturally, no one changed any fundamental beliefs of any serious nature.

However, there was one conversation I had that for some reason just came into my head today. With these thoughts out of the blue came an answer I should have given to a proposition one of them said to me.

I was speaking with Colin about evidences of a creator. I mentioned to him that if we were purely biological and merely one (or several) evolutionary steps ahead of our animal kin* then why do we have such an affinity for beauty? Animals follow their instincts to survive and procreate and do not do much else. There is no reason that a particular human’s love for a flower, or a sunset, or a poem, or a song would aid him or her in the great game of natural selection. And more to the point, there is certainly no reason a particular human’s talents to create beautiful art and anything aesthetically pleasing would help him or her survive. And furthermore, even were beauty to have survival value, this would be hard to describe in terms of instinct because the forms of beauty different people enjoy vary greatly! Why are we unique in such a distinctive way? I submitted that our love of beauty exists, at least in part, because a supreme being wants us to enjoy life. Whatever the reason, however, I challenged him to explain this human phenomenon in purely biological and evolutionary terms.

*and bear in mind I have no personal or theological disagreement with evolution; I believe in evolution, but I believe that God invented it

Colin’s answer surprised me and I remember we both had to go class so his answer was the end of the conversation. But even if we didn’t have classes to go to, I had no reply for him.

He explained that perhaps it was an advantage for men to be artistic because women find this attractive. As an evolutionary mechanism, men might have artistic inclinations that opened up greater potentials for spawning. After all, we both agreed that girls swoon over drummers (such as yours truly). We agreed that probably throughout history artistic talent has not, in fact, had a great effect on the pedigree of man, but this fact wouldn’t eliminate this biological possibility. And naturally he didn’t try to argue that artistic talent was the exclusive desirable trait in a man (just one of them). As my small brain tried to come up with an answer, he walked off to class.

But just today, months later, the answer popped into my head. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, I guess I’m kind of retarded.

My reply to Colin must be: if men are artistically inclined in order to experience greater mating possibilities, then what is the evolutionary advantage for women to be attracted to such men in the first place? If women love sunsets, and they therefore love men who paint sunsets, then we can understand why men would want to learn how to paint sunsets. However, we still have no answer for the question: what is the biologically compelling reason that the women love sunsets in the first place? And that is the rub. Colin hasn’t really answered the original question. Why are any humans inclined to love and create beauty?

Therefore, it still stands that one of the best arguments that we are not merely biological creatures is that we love beauty.

Here’s one of my favorite salient quotes. Christopher Fry said in his most famous play, “Laughter is surely the surest touch of genius in creation. Would you have ever thought of it…if you had been making man?”

No one will be convinced that because science cannot account evolutionarily for the human love of beauty and art there is a creator. This is because the creator has formed a world in which by observation and pondering alone it is difficult to determine whether he exists. Atheists use their powers of observation and critical thinking to explain to believers why he doesn’t exist. And believers also point to all sorts of observable phenomena (such as the fact that we love beauty) and convincing philosophical arguments involving the entirety of the universe such as the “first mover” argument, etc. Both believers and non-believers say that it is utterly obvious to see that there is and is not a god, respectively.

From a believer’s standpoint this makes perfect sense because this means that we must rely on faith (without which free will would be an impossibility). From an atheist’s standpoint this is merely a nuisance, which is ironically and even paradoxically another peripheral reason to actually believe in a creator.

Addendum January 25, 2010

I explained to my oldest friend, whom I visited recently, this argument of the human phenomenon of the love of beauty. He, a biologist and atheist, rebutted me by asking 'how do you know that animals don't love beauty?' I rolled my eyes. The conversation went on to other topics but here I'll add that his reply is inane. Even if animals could understand and appreciate beauty (and if they did, then why don't they create it?), then the question of 'how does the appreciation of beauty benefit them?' is still unanswered.

This seems like a big deal to me, because it is such a glaring problem for the rising militant atheist movement.

I had a strange and vivid dream last night.

We were all in a room and the man stood up to tell us we would be voting for who would be the king of Switzerland. The family of whoever won would be royalty and that would settle the matter for the small, land locked country of who would be in charge forever. I stood up and asked why there couldn’t be a president. I argued in front of everyone that a president doesn’t take everyone’s money and spend it for him and people he wants to spend it on. A president is a good steward of the people’s hard earned money.

The guy announcing our vote said there would be no president on the ballot, only kings. People started lining up to vote, ignoring me, but I shouted louder saying that we should write on the ballot that there should be a vote to decide if Switzerland should be a democracy, not a kingdom. I said that if we’re voting for a king, we’re already acting like a democracy. The guy said we must have a king, no presidents and no elections after this first one.

I spoke to a gal in line who said if there’s royalty, then there will be more trade between Switzerland and other countries and people coming would be here for vacation to buy trinkets. She was poor and wanted the economy to do better and thought that having a king would do this.

I couldn’t understand why people wanted to vote for a king and then never vote again for a president and just let the king do whatever he wants with the money and taxes. Then I woke up.

On a completely unrelated note, there is no health care crisis in America. We have extremely good health care and relatively excellent survival rates for serious diseases like cancer. We have a crisis of health care costs. Ours are too high. What can government do about this?

Government cannot generate money, it can only spend money (printing more dollars devalues all others currently in existence leaving the sum total of American wealth the same as before). It cannot magically generate the right amount of money out of thin air to pay for healthcare, although sometimes it seems like Obama and the current Congress believes it can.
Government also cannot magically reduce the cost of something. It can artificially reduce the cost of health care premiums, for example, but the same total price as before will be paid somewhere (by someone) in the economy.

This inability of government to reduce the cost of something goes with a caveat, of course. The government can reduce the actual cost of health care by forcing a reduction in its quality. Health care will cost less if it is mandated to be worse in some ways. For example, if there is some kind of rationing in some way (which would be any type of restricted access to any part of health care) then there will obviously be less costs incurred. Naturally the difficult part is determining how much and what parts of health care must be restricted and whether that will reduce the costs enough.

There are options besides “rationing.” Though my understanding is that this is not currently a part of either the House or Senate bill, tort reform could reduce costs by having doctors perform less tests and less “defensive medicine.” These tests are often called superfluous, but doubtless there have been times they have saved lives. Not all, perhaps not even most malpractice suits are frivolous (I wouldn’t pretend to know what percentage). But reducing these tests will necessarily be a reduction in quality.

Five Sundry Bloglettes

Why, in the long run, America will legalize Gay marriage.

Let’s pretend that ½ of the general populace supports it. This seems likely since there’s about an equal number of those who consider themselves conservative as those who consider themselves liberal, and independents will likewise probably be split evenly on this issue. So, let’s just pretend. This ½ of the populace will vote to legalize gay marriage. The other ½ will oppose it.

However, among the ½ who oppose gay marriage, there is a much more difficult set of decisions that must be made, ones that aren’t in the equation for those who support it. Those who oppose it don’t have a harder decision because ‘they know in their hearts gay marriage is a good thing and they know in their hearts that they are just bigots deep down.’ Nothing like that. Those who oppose it have a harder decision because even though they feel it is wrong, they may feel that it is not the government’s job to determine morality, or to decide this particular issue of morality. I personally know some people who consider homosexuality a sin, but who support legalizing gay marriage.

There won’t be anyone in the ½ of America who thinks homosexuality is ok that will vote against gay marriage. But there will be some in the ½ of America who thinks homosexuality is a sin that will still vote to legalize gay marriage, considering it a trampling of rights – that’s what America is all about. Of course, so far, I’m wrong. In 31 states traditional marriage has prevailed, recently most notably and surprisingly in Maine.

Moral Relativists are mean people.

People tell me that evil doesn’t exist. Next time someone tells me that I’ll ask them if they believe that hatred exists. I’m sure they’ll agree.

Evil may best be described as actions motivated by hatred. I don’t think you can do an evil act and not feel hatred in some way, on some level. You can cause harm without out right angry hatred, such as allowing someone to be hurt and you don’t try to help them and that is evil too, derived from apathy. But even if it is out of apathy, there has to be some kind of hatred on some level. This is demonstrated by the fact that you cannot love someone and allow them to be hurt. Obviously this is different from allowing someone to be harmed so they can learn. This could be out of love. The obvious example is letting a kid get (slightly) burned on the stove so that the kid will learn to listen to her mother next time to not touch the stove. But imagine a parent that allowed her child to run into a busy street so that the child can ‘learn’ that cars hurt you. That’s evil (or insanity). Such a parent does not love the kid. The parent must loathe the child on some level. That is evil.

This argument is entirely semantic of course. But aren’t all discussions of evil? When people tell me that evil doesn’t exist, they are saying so because they are trying to argue that morality is a false notion. If you cut it down to evil = hatred, and they must agree that the concept of hatred exists, they will then be forced to argue that hatred isn’t wrong. What a lovely idea.

Glad to have Obama as my president – no sarcasm.

People always talk about how Obama is a bad president, he’s a socialist, he’s inept, etc. Maybe he’s a bad president. But I would much rather have Obama than Putin or the guys who run the West Bank or the guys who run Lebanon or China or virtually any nation in Africa, or the vast majority of nations throughout history. Or for that matter, I’d rather have him than the majority of nations throughout the 20th century. It’s all in the comparison, like poverty, it doesn’t truly exist in America. We just think it does.

Sarah Palin, it’s simple.

Sarah Palin is always big news on the political scene. But I never read anything about her ever. I always skip anything involving Sarah Palin no matter what it is. I only learned two things about her last year and it’s enough for me. These two things are all I need to know to forever vote for her.

1) she fought against her own party who were corrupt and won the governorship in Alaska.

2) her voter approval rating was always astronomically high.

No one fights your own party and wins, and no one has such insanely high approval ratings. That’s a president I’d want to have. I trust someone who fights the corruption of their own party and who everyone on both sides of the aisle support overwhelmingly. People talk about how we’re too polarized as a nation, too partisan. Sarah Palin seems to be a bridge builder of far more acuity than Obama, and she did so by actually doing it, not by saying she would.

The Berlin Wall did not Fall

You read correctly. It did not fall. It was torn down. It was not an inevitable event. It had to be physically broken apart by people, not by time or its own weight. There was no fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The distinction is highly relevant.

Just as Martin Luther King jr. said – “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.”

The wall was built by evil decisions and torn down by good ones. There was nothing inevitable about either event.

Comparisons

I know I’m such a hard critic of the UN. I mean, should I really expect them to have enough time to take care of the problems of the world when such critical work as the dissolving of Switzerland and the re-drawing of the borders of Italy, France and Germany are at stake?

Anyways…

When people often spoke of Iraq as a second Vietnam, there were typically two points, or dimensions, they were trying to show. The first is to say that both wars were misguided and wrong in design. The second is to say that we will lose in Iraq like we did in Vietnam (the moral being that we’d better pull out, because we’re gonna lose anyway).

In addressing only the latter dimension, I say phooey. Anyone who has read anything on the military aspect of Vietnam will tell you that the result was unexpected and very unlikely to have happened. The chances were extremely remote that the NVA, even with the Vietcong, would win. It was a great upset in the course of history. As my dad once mentioned to me, the South Vietnamese were a match militarily all by themselves for the North, before ever adding the US Army into the equation. Additionally, the US won every single battle, yet lost the war. Who could possibly account for that, on a military level? The answer is, no one because we didn’t lose the war on a military level.

Now, back to the Iraq war. The US had a much better trained, funded, equipped and prepared military in 2003 than in 1965. Comparing the two wars for the purpose of arguing that we will also lose the Iraq War is like saying ‘well, I got struck by lightning on a clear day on October 5th in 2008, and now it is another clear day on October 5th 2009, so I better not go outside because I imagine I’ll be struck by lightning.’ Who would say that?

One problem with comparing the two wars in order to show we will lose in Iraq is the fact that the casualty rates are extremely different. In six years of war we have lost about 4000 soldiers in Iraq. In the eight years of direct involvement of US troops in Vietnam fifteen times more soldiers died (about 60,000). Wounded rates show a similar disparity with Vietnam involving ten times more than the Iraq war (about 300,000 to 30,000).

I find it difficult to believe we’re going to militarily lose the Iraq war with such low casualty rates. As far as I understand, this is an unprecedentedly low death rate for any conflict of similar scale.

After all this, let me change my mind and state that the comparison arguments are correct: if we lose the post 2003 counter-insurgent portion of the Iraq War,* it will not be because our military failed, it will be because our politics and policies fail. And that is an accurate comparison to Vietnam.

*[because we must acknowledge that technically the US already won the Iraq War by demolishing the old Iraq army and regime in three weeks in 2003].

Now, if we are so awesome, how come we can’t just win these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is because we aren’t fighting a war with either Afghanistan or Iraq anymore. Both of these countries are great allies with us, since late 2001 and mid 2003 respectively. We are trying to a) stabilize their infant democracies, b) inoculate their governments against corruption, 3) eliminate the extremely evil and violent insurgents and jihadists who blow up schools, mosques and weddings, and 4) train armed forces and police to be self-sufficient in fighting these terrorists without the US.

In case you didn’t know, only the last half of those goals are what the US military does. In fact, only number 3 is what the military really does.
Not only is the military doing jobs it is not meant to do, but it is doing them under conditions that did not exist in other similar scenarios. Let me explain this by comparing the development of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to that in Japan and the US.

Japan: after World War II it took seven years for the US to export democracy to Japan.

US: declared independence in 1776, but it wasn’t until 1791, fifteen years later, that both the Constitution and Bill of Rights had been created and ratified. However you interpret when the real birth of the US democratic republic was, it was necessarily several years after 1776.

So, as a first comparison, it takes time
Don't expect the current 'wars' which are actually counter-insurgencies coupled with nation building do do wonders instantly.

But there are also some differences to be appreciated:

• Neither Japan nor the US had severe poverty (both peoples at the two times actually being among the richest on earth (although Japan had been devastated by war)). Afghanistan nevertheless had far severer poverty and Iraq wasn’t exactly swimming in wealth, having been bankrupted by Saddam.
• Neither Japan nor the US had intense drug problems like Afghanistan.
• And most stunningly of all, neither Japan nor the US had violently radical factions who are willing to kill their own people in order to kick out the foreigners who are seeking to help their people (which in a word, is insanity).

I’d have to say that these are significant differences. Be patient. Don’t give up. Let the military have all the resources it needs. Let our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan) have all the resources they need. We need more stable democracies in the Middle East.* Heck, we need more stable democracies in the world. We must succeed in Afghanistan because if we do not, then necessarily, yes necessarily, it will revert to the ultra-oppressive, international terrorist-sponsoring, major drug-producing cesspool it was.

*[it would be great to have more than one (Israel), wouldn’t it?]

Gaddafi: the visionary

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1926053,00.html

From Time Magazine:

“A few weeks ago, Gaddafi [dictator of Libya] submitted a proposal to the U.N. to abolish Switzerland and divide it up along linguistic lines, giving parts of the country to Germany, France and Italy. Although the motion was thrown out because it violates the U.N. Charter stating that no member country can threaten the existence of another, some Swiss leaders are still concerned that Libya could use its year-long presidency of the U.N. General Assembly, which began on Sept. 15, to keep up his vitriolic attacks on their country.”

What can I say? I laughed really hard when I read this. I love how the author specifies exactly why the motion was thrown out. Yes, tell us the reason! We must know!

But the real rub is found in the final thought. Why exactly would an organization composed of more than 99 percent of the sovereign nations of planet earth allow a crackpot like Gaddafi be the president of its general assembly?

If you ever wonder why the UN is so impotent at solving the big problems facing the world, here is a clue.

Seven Sundry Bloglettes

If you read this blog, you’re probably one of very few people. Nevertheless, sorry I haven’t been posting regularly. I’ve had an eventful summer with these events (not in the order they occurred):

A) We discovered a tiny parasite in my wife’s belly that I’m sure will one day rise to overthrow me and my wicked ways. Or just become my firstborn. Either one.

B) A short story of mine was published. It is included in an anthology you can purchase from amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Worlds-Undead-Stories-Anthology/dp/1935458213/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252523984&sr=8-3

C) My CD, Big Rig, which I have very slowly begun to advertise on the net, has been made available, which can also be bought on Amazon (among other places, but that’s the cheapest)
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Rig/dp/B002A6O2TC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1252524441&sr=8-3

So anyway,

Here’s just a few bloglettes, numbered from 1 to 6

1) The Film of 2009
If you only see one film this year, it should be “The boy in the Striped Pajamas.” Just go rent it.

2) Health Care
I don’t feel I read enough to generally comment on domestic politics, but I’ll say a word or two this time.

Thomas Sowell, the economist said yesterday:

“One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?
If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?
If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?”

3) Chicago Politics

My friend Ken Begg, of Chicago told me that in the summer of 2008 Chicago had the highest gas prices of anywhere in the US, and people complained at the pump. So gas stations began posting how much of the exorbitant price went directly to the state of Illinois and how much were taxes for Chicago (they had ten levels of taxation on the gas), and finally how much went to the actually gas station or gas company. It was the taxes that made the prices so high, gaining the majority of the money from the price. So the city of Chicago passed a law stating that you cannot post, as part of the price of gas, how much of that price was taxes! Hurray for Chicago politics!

4) Super Brains and their problem solving skills

On an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force I recently saw, Meatwad developed a gigantic brain. He devoted his brainpower to hilarious hijinks such as telekinesis. Master Fry chided him and asked why he isn’t devoting his unprecedented brainpower to solving the world’s problems such as war, poverty and starvation. The episode was funny, as usual, but, as almost all tv, displays only platitudes and empty morals.

It is not for lack of some unborn super-genius who can show us the solution we have been blind to that the world has problems such as poverty, starvation and war.
There is enough actual food produced in the world to feed all of its inhabitants. Therefore, the solution is not some as yet unfathomable puzzle.
How about poverty? This is almost philosophical as by definition, unless the entire world is egalitarian (which will never happen even in Marx’s wildest dreams) there will be stratification of all societies and the lowest will be labeled “the poor.” For the real reason this is partially meaningless has to do with the fact that much of the societies of the world today contain virtually zero people who are as poor as those a mere two hundred years ago…i.e. the entire world has been rapidly gaining wealth in the previous century. For my detailed explanation on this point, see the blog entitled “The Greatest Political Issue” on September 22, 2008 (Wow, almost a year ago!)
Could Einstein, instead of fleeing for America, have used a superior logical argument to dissuade Hitler from going forth with the Final Solution? How about the insanity of modern anti-Western Islamic Jihadism? If you read even a little bit of their retarded religious rhetoric you will understand why a sound mind could never convince them of their wicked ways.
Let me rephrase all this. These three issues are complicated problems. However, they are not mathematical or scientifics ones. And it will not be through superior intellectual arguments and revelations that will provide the sorely needed solutions. In short, these problems don’t exist because people are stupid, it is because people are evil.
Wherever there is more goodness, there is naturally less of these kinds of problems.

5) Co-workers

My coworker Terence is from Zimbabwe. Mugabe has always been his president since he was born. He grew up thinking, just like many Zimbabwens, that Mugabe is great. He didn’t know until recently that Mugabe, part of the Shona tribe of Zimbabwe (which represents 90% of the nation), attempted to exterminate the 10% Ndebele tribe. His brother was almost shot by the Zimbabwen army when he and his friends found diamonds and were sifting through them. His brother’s friend was shot in the back.
Another co-worker of mine is named Florian. He is from Romania. He fled in the 80’s to come to America because Romania was a horrible communist dictatorship. He told me he fears we are giving too much power to the government and we might become too socialist before it’s too late, when the government will have so much power on so many issues we can do little about it.

Another co-worker of mine is named Miralem. He is awesome because he named his son Alem and then his daughter Alema. He is a Muslim Croat. He grew up in communist Yugoslavia. He came here for the money, but does not like communism (it seems no one who lives under it does).

Another co-worker of mine is Waqar. He is a Muslim from Pakistan. His wife works for the government issuing visas and other immigration and visiting papers. They tell her that she cannot work overtime (not enough money in their coffers), but she does not have enough time (like all those in her position) to give a full background check on people red-flagged because of their name or background (such as Muslims from the Middle East). She wants to quit because she - and her husband, the Muslim from Pakistan - feel that the government isn’t doing enough on this front to keep out possible terrorists. They are tying the hands of those who issue visas by forcing them to meet quotas even when proper research has not been done for a particular individual.

6) Causes vs Behavior

Both the Israels and Palestinians can make certain convincing cases that their cause is just, or more just than the other. It has ever been tricky to determine who is "right." At least for me, though I devote a good amount of time to reading on the subject.

There are two parts to the issue: The causes being fought for; and the behaviors of the two participants.

Disregarding the rightness of either side's cause, the two have not behaved similarly. Anyone without blinders on their eyes who has studied the history of Israel and Palestine for the past entire century and especially into the new millennium will note that the Palestinians, on the whole, have behaved far worse. They are they who have been far more guilty of breaking the cease fires and the treaties, have engaged in the kidnappings, terror tactics, hateful indoctrination of their children and so forth. They are also the ones who have treated their own people horribly. In other words, this is an attack on the Palestinian leadership, not its people per se.

And because the Palestinians have behaved so poorly over the decades, the people in the world who most agree with their ideology and agenda (i.e. the rest of the middle eastern Muslim world) have begun to stop sending so much money and support. The Muslim world is beginning to see that the Palestinian leadership does not keep their word but that the Israelis do. The Muslim world is beginning to see that the Palestinians break cease fires and rig elections and mismanage the economy terribly and that the Israelis do not. This behavior is starting to matter for those people who agree with the Palestinian cause.

And I would argue that even if the Palestinian's cause is the more just (which I'm not saying it necessarily is), the Palestinians are still in the wrong because of their past and current behavior.

To put it simply in a bad analogy, it would be like a man stole your bike and so you chase him down. But instead of just taking back the bike you killed him. Then you went and killed his wife and kids. Then you even threatened people in his neighborhood and perhaps killed a few of them just so that none of them would even consider stealing your bike. Before you killed anyone your cause was just. The theft of your bike was wrong. But what you did as a consequence put you very much in the wrong.

That analogy is not to be taken literally, obviously the bike should not be considered to be analogous to the actual land of Palestine for example. It is just to illustrate the dichotomy between the rightness of one's cause (such as seeking to get back your bike which was stolen) and your behavior in attempting to accomplish your goals regarding your cause (such as extreme vindication and revenge).

And I'm not letting any ill behavior on the part of Israel be let off the hook either. The Israelis have sins upon their heads too. But theirs are not coterminous to the Palestinians, especially not with the leadership of Gaza - Hamas is blatantly evil to the Palestinians they govern. They use schools and hospitals as headquarters, they steal money and supplies meant for starving and needy citizens for their soldiers and they have created a police state in the Gaza strip.

7) Crime and Punishment determines the value of Human Life

Waiting for my dental checkup today, I read in People magazine about the horrible tragedy of Jaycee Dugard. The article briefly informed about how Phillip Garrido was originally convicted of rape and sentenced to 50 years in prison. He was released 11 years later. After that he kidnapped and raped the very young Jaycee, then held her for 18 years. The article didn’t mention (and I’m sure the author didn’t know) anything about those who made the decision to let the slime-shit Phillip Garrido out after serving a fifth of his sentence. I hope they are filled with horrendous shame and that they modify how they adjudicate over such matters in the future, based upon lessons they learn this time.

It reminds me of the Libyan who murdered over 189 Americans and 81 others in 1988 and was recently released by the UK (a Scottish official) government to die in Libya. He is old and probably won’t commit any other terrorist acts. So?

If a society gives a murderer the maximum penalty (execution), then society is making the statement that human life is so valuable we must deliver the maximum penalty for anyone who willfully takes another’s life. By giving a murderer a lesser punishment, society is ironically making the statement that it does not value human life very highly. It is cheapening the value of life for everybody.

On a side note, the prevalence of abortion in modern civilization is another indication that life is little valued. The supply of those who wish to adopt will always exceed the number of children who need to be adopted. Therefore, if we valued human life we would push for the adoption of children, not their abortion in the womb.