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Wednesday, March 31, 2004

The Carrot and the Stick

There is a single major flaw in the American effort against terror: an over-abundance of mercy. Mercy can be a good thing. Magnanimity towards a defeated foe can assure a lasting peace and a strong sense of charity can win you friends where you had none before. However, the prerogative of mercy can be deemed credible only when it is seen as just one of the alternatives at your disposal. When you are kind because you are afraid of being harsh, your enemies will see you as weak, and rightly so.

Take a look at what went on in Fallujah today. There four American civilians were killed by a mob who then desecrated the bodies while chanting anti-American slogans. Fallujah has been a problem all along. It is, in the words of one Daily Telegraph story, “an extremely pro-Saddam town in a staunchly pro-Saddam area.” It is, in other words, atypical of Iraq as a whole and an excellent candidate to be made an example of.

Some have suggested razing the entire city. I reject this on the simple grounds of practicality: there are 500,000 people there. No more than a few thousand are likely to be members of the active resistance and, even if extreme fighting were to occur during demolition, destroying the town is likely to saddle the Coalition with in excess of 400,000 people to house and care for. Were this a small village, such a proposal might carry more appeal, but it is not. So, what then?

The first step will be to identify some of those responsible. A group of fifty or so will do. How will these be selected? Simple: send a heavily armed convoy into the city and arrest the first fifty or so people who attack or confront the convoy. Then construct a gallows and, under the laws of war, hang them all. Place the city under full martial law and disperse any attempted gathering or demonstration with the use of live ammunition. Evacuate and demolish every structure in the area where the incident occurred.

We focus too much on the fact that Iraqis are Moslems and forget that most of them are Arabs as well and that, in many cases, the latter trumps the former. The Arabs are a practical people and one which respects strength. On the whole they value family and tribal loyalties more than they do religious or national ones. If we really want to hurt them, if we really want to make sure that they get the point, then we should strike at the things they really care about.

A few weeks of a “get tough” campaign and the Iraqis will well understand the fact that you can have no greater friend and no more dangerous enemy than the United States of America. Resistance must have a price. So long as the resistors believe that the United States will only respond within certain definable limits people will be able to observe those limits and judge for themselves the consequences of exceeding them. It is time to exceed those limits ourselves.

In the year since the beginning of the war I have not heard of a single case where an enemy irregular has been executed. Why is this? Per the fine traditions of warfare pirates, spies, and bandits (meaning terrorists and other irregular forces which do not obey the traditional rules of warfare) may be summarily executed upon capture. Certainly such actions would be contrary to both American and International Law at the moment, but I fail to see why that would be a terrible obstacle. American law can be easily changed and international “law” can simply be ignored when it is convenient to do so. After all, it isn’t like our enemies are following the letter or the spirit of the Geneva Convention themselves.

This, of course, would make for great domestic politics as well. In general the public strongly approves of the use of American force, especially against the sort of foe we are fighting. Those who do not approve are all supporters of our domestic enemies, in any case. However, actions of this sort would cause an uproar from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, thereby forcing John Kerry to implicitly defend the murderers of Americans. He should be good at this. He’s had a lot of practice, after all.

posted by Yoshi at 9:24 PM

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Polygamy Now Legal in Germany

Check this story out

Koblenz (AFP) - Die Zweitehefrau eines als Flüchtling anerkannten Irakers darf in Deutschland bleiben. Dies entschied das Oberverwaltungsgericht Rheinland-Pfalz. Die Frau, die mit ihrem Mann und dessen erster Frau in Ludwigshafen lebt, kann demnach eine Aufenthaltsbefugnis verlangen. Sie könne sich zwar nicht auf das so genannte Ehegattenprivileg berufen, da dieses nach den "hiesigen kulturellen Wertvorstellungen" nur für einen Ehepartner gelte. Es sei aber "unzumutbar", sie aus der Lebensgemeinschaft herauszulösen.

Die 1963 geborene Irakerin ist nach Angaben des Gerichts seit 1990 mit ihrem Landsmann verheiratet, der bereits 1977 seine Erstehefrau geheiratet hatte. Der Mann kam 1996 nach Deutschland, wo er als Flüchtling anerkannt ist. Seine beiden Frauen kamen 1999 gemeinsam nach Deutschland. Nachdem ein deutsches Standesamt beide Ehen nach irakischem Recht als rechtsgültig anerkannt hatte, erteilte die Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen nur der ersten Frau eine Aufenthaltserlaubnis. Dagegen klagte die Zweitehefrau.

Nachdem die Klage in erster Instanz erfolglos war, verpflichtete das Oberwaltungsgericht die Stadt Ludwigshafen nun, auch ihr eine Aufenthaltsbefugnis zu erteilen. Die Ehe sei in Deutschland in gleicher Weise als rechtsgültig anerkannt wie die Erstehe ihres Mannes, begründete das OVG seine Entscheidung. (Az. 10 A 11717/03.OVG)

Vor: Etappensieg für Mzoudi im Streit um

Here's a Babblefish translation:

Koblenz (AFP) - the secondary wife one as a refugee of recognized Iraqi may remain in Germany. This decided the higher administrative court Rhineland-Palatinate. The woman, who with its man and its first woman in Ludwigshafen lives, can therefore require a residence power. It cannot appoint itself to the spouse privilege in such a way specified, since this applies after the "local cultural value conceptions" only to a marriage partner. It is however "unreasonable" to extract it from the partnership. The 1963 born Irakerin is according to data of the court since 1990 with its compatriot married, who had already married 1977 its purchasing woman. The man came 1996 to Germany, where he is recognized as a refugee. Its two wives came 1999 together to Germany. After a German register office had recognized both marriages after Iraqi right as legal, the city administration Ludwigshafen gave only a residence permit to the first woman. On the other hand the secondary wife complained. After the complaint was unsuccessful in first instance, the Oberwaltungsgericht obligated the city Ludwigshafen now to give also her a residence power. The marriage is in Germany in the same way as legally recognition as arises their man, justified the OVG its decision

UPDATE: This also goes to my point on Gay Marriage. One reason for allowing this is the arguement that doing otherwise would "unmarry" the couple.

posted by Yoshi at 6:23 PM

Yoshida’s First Five Laws of Politics

1) If you’re going to be blamed for something, then you might as well do it.

This one is simple enough. Whenever a right-wing government comes into power and makes the slightest cut in any budget whatsoever, it will be immediately accused of “gutting” public services. This is even true if such a government merely slows the rate of increase in spending and makes no actual cut.

Accusations that you have “slashed” public services are likely to stick for the simple reason that the public is prone to believe such things about you. The same is true for a left-wing government and tax increases. A left-wing government which leaves tax rates unchanged is still going to be accused of “raising” taxes and the public is going to believe those accusations.

Given this, if your opposition is going to be able to damage you by successfully accusing you of something (regardless of whether you actually do it) then you might as well do what you’re about to be accused of in order to reap the political benefits as well as suffer the consequences.

2) There’s no point in being nice to people who aren’t going to vote for you.

Too many governments suffer because they try to please all the people all of the time. Given the polarization of American politics (and politics in general) there’s no reason to ever bother even trying to play nice with your opponents. Regardless of how nice Republicans are to blacks, they’re still going to be tarred as racists and the Democrats are still going to win 90% of the black vote. Therefore, effort expended actually tying to appeal to groups unlikely to support you is wasted.

In fact, given that pretty much every group has another equally large group that hates it, trying to pander to people who aren’t going to vote for you in any case is a vote-losing proposition since it will demoralize your own base.

This should be remembered in the fight over the Federal Marriage Amendment. To date, a disproportionate influence has been exercised in this fight by the Log Cabin Republicans and other gay conservatives (meaning: Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch). The votes we gain by pandering to these people are dwarfed by those that can be gained through demagogic denunciations of them.

3) Word games work.

In the long-term both the abortion and gay “rights” battles are going to be won and lost because of semantics. By seizing upon the term “pro-life” and inveighing against “partial-birth” abortion, anti-abortion forces have seized the verbal high ground. Similarly, the pro-gay forces are going to win their battle, because they’ve managed to cloak their agenda in the rhetoric of civil rights, thereby cloaking opponents in an aura of disreputability.

4) Win battles by shifting the ground on which they are fought.

Most politicians these days are so unprincipled that, as the environment changes, they’ll seamlessly change. A government, therefore, can win every single ideological battle by staking our positions so extreme that the opposition will have little choice but to drastically shift its own positions in order to keep in step.

For example, if you propose a 5% cut in the budget for some item, your opponents will probably (depending on ideological affiliations) either call for a 10% cut or simply holding funding even. If, however, you were to propose a 50% cut then they’d have little choice but to shift to something much closer to what you proposed. Therefore, even if they “win”, you still end up with a 30% cut or something along similar lines.

I heavily advocated this theory after September 11th. Argue for only a limited response, and people will argue for no response at all. Call for a new crusade, and your opponents (or, at least, your more pragmatic opponents) will have to propose something nearly as extreme.

5) Don’t bid when you can be outbid.

Republicans should never fight for social programs because the Democrats are always prepared to offer more. If the GOP were to propose a guaranteed income of $20,000 a year for each American the Democrats would, of course, be prepared to pay $40,000. Therefore, you must find areas where your opponent has a limited (or fixed) area of movement, and push hard in these areas.

posted by Yoshi at 5:49 PM

Sunday, March 28, 2004

What Hussam Abdo Tells us About the Terrorists

Last Wednesday Israeli forces at a checkpoint in Nablus apprehended a would-be suicide bomber. His name is Hussam Abdo, a sixteen year-old who was recruited to serve as a human bomb in exchange for one hundred Shekels and the promise of seventy-two virgins in Paradise. He is also, unsurprisingly, reported to be mildly mentally retarded. His story tells us a great deal about the nature of modern terrorism and how the strategy we have adopted will allow us to beat the terrorists.

“Sophisticated” people the world over laugh at the futility of trying to fight terrorism with military means. “Terrorism,” they like to remind us, “is caused by poverty and oppression and, until you end those things, you’ll never be able to stop terrorism.” Many of these very same people tell us that Palestinians, suffering under ‘Zionist occupation’, are the most oppressed and impoverished people in the world.

If this is the case, why is there not a suicide bombing in Israel every single day? Why are there not several? Certainly there appears to be no physical limitation on the ability of Hamas to actually make the bombs. The Palestinian territories are not like Japan at the end of the Second World War, where the volunteers for suicide attacks far outstripped the available weapons and, as a result, legions of civilians were armed with all sorts of bizarre contraptions to attempt suicide attacks. Obviously there are no moral scruples restraining the terrorists. So, then, what is it? There is only one thing it can be: a lack of bombers.

A week has passed since the assassination of Sheik Yassin and we have yet to see any of the promised hellish retaliation. Why is this? It could well be that one of these groups is planning a major operation involving dozens of bombers, but I doubt it. In fact, if one were to look closely, I would be willing to bet that there has been no notable upswing of suicide attacks at any point in response to any single Israeli action. Suicide bombers can lose their nerve too easily, too many things can go wrong: these people are being launched off the second that they’re ready.

Within the Palestinian territories the apparatus of terror exists. Indeed through Hamas, Fatah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hezbollah, and the various other groups that exist terror in Israel has become every bit as bureaucratized as the Nazi apparatus of death. They lack not paper pushers, planners, speech-makers, or preachers: they lack for soldiers.

Take a good look at Hussam Abdo. He may be sixteen, but he looks far younger than that. In any case, he’s clearly not terribly bright. He’s the sort of recruit armies accept after they’ve already taken all of the able-bodied and marginally sane men from the jails. He’s a recruit of desperation, a gullible child lured into something by cowardly fanatics. The same goes for the recent decrees allowing the use of female suicide bombers. It’s a common practice to recruit women for military duty when the men have all already been picked through. However, for Moslems to resort to it indicates a real grasping, a real sense of urgency.

Not that this is all good. The obvious next step for Hamas and similar groups of thugs will be to break into homes in the middle of the night, grab the best available male, and simply draft him to be a martyr upon the penalty of the lives of his family. Of course, I imagine that such a tactic would not be sustainable for a very long time. In fact, its adoption would be a very good sign that the last vestige of order in the territories is about to collapse in upon itself.

The terrorist movement in this world consists of a tiny percentage of fanatics, willing to give their lives (and the lives of anyone else they find useful) for their cause. They are backed by another, much larger, contingent of followers. These are the people willing to organize terrorist attacks, but not to conduct them personally. Finally, there is an ever larger group of fair weather fellow travellers. These people are willing to shelter and cheer on the terrorists, so long as they think they can win. They also provide the pool from which new fanatics are drawn after the old ones have done away with themselves one way or another.

Victory comes by putting such military pressure on any terrorist population as to cause this structure to collapse. The fanatics will quickly burn themselves out, and cannot organize well on their own. They will eat away at their own numbers, even if they do cause some damage in the process. This group needs to be exterminated wholesale in order to expedite things. The middle group, the bureaucrats, are powerless without the fanatics to do their bidding. Without fanatics to generate the perception of victory, they will not be able to draw new terrorists from the general population, nor will they be able to create support by offering the possibility of victory. Without leadership to drive things forward, the whole endeavour consumes itself.

By forcing the terrorists into combat and reducing their numbers, Israel is exposing the true impotence of its enemies. Without a proven ability to win, the Palestinian people will not support them. If they will not support them, then they cannot draw the recruits they need to create the perception that they are winning. With the myth of the terrorists shattered, they people of the Islamic world will look to new Gods. Respecting strength as they do, it seems inevitable that they will turn towards the strength which defeated their old leaders.

Keep killing terrorists and the hollowness of their plans will be fully demonstrated to the world. Kill enough and they will become incapable of doing anything productive. Fight them and, ultimately, they will be destroyed.

posted by Yoshi at 9:27 PM

Friday, March 26, 2004

The New York Riots of 2004

I expect there to be as much (or more) violence at the Republican National Convention in New York City this September as occurred at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. At the very least, the convention will almost certainly bring the worst civil disturbances that the United States has seen since the World Trade Organization met in Seattle. This, of course, is potentially perilous: but it might well also be a magnificent opportunity.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be shocked to see real street battles. The extreme left is angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen them. And they will be made angrier still by the harsh security measures which will be required to protect the dignitaries in New York. But the right is angry too, and there will be a lot of conservatives converging in New York City for the event. If the left wants to fight, expect the right to fight back.

Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of “protestors” will flood into New York for the convention. They will be joined by various thrill-seekers, malcontents, and trouble-makers. It would be insane not to expect things to get ugly.

This, however, can all be turned to the benefit of President Bush. After all, while there might be occasional clashes between pro and anti-American demonstrators, the majority of the clashes that occur will be between the treason legion and the NYPD (or the National Guard). A few days of seeing that on television (backed by anti-Bush rhetoric) will sour many people who might have otherwise voted for John Kerry. This will be especially true given that, since the people rioting in the streets are a core component of John Kerry’s “base”, he’ll have a hard time denouncing them convincingly. He might not even denounce them at all, and instead curse out the President for being a “divider and not a uniter” while explaining that, as a result of his post-Vietnam activism, he “knows something about riots for real.”

President Bush can use the demonstrations (especially if they’ve turned violent) as a rallying point for both his base and swing voters. While, naturally, the President would have to tactfully dance around the point in his speech, there’d be plenty of Republican commentators around to transmit the meme: Democrats are violent, anti-American anarchists. Perhaps Rudy Giuliani could be brought before the convention to hammer this particular point home.

All of this could easily work to transform the Republican convention from a staid event, barely covered by the media (as opposed to the coverage which is sure to be lavished upon the Democratic Convention) into mesmerizing television with a message. After all, in any riot, the average American identifies far more strongly with those seeking to put down the riot than they do the rioters. Those who romanticism political “activism” of this sort aren’t going to be voting for George Bush in any case.

The enemy at home is as dangerous as the enemy abroad. The course which they advocate means more than the loss of this war: it means the staining of American honor and the dismemberment of American power. The people who will be on the streets hate America and will be given ample time to demonstrate the point.

A battle in the streets of New York City might well be an excellent prelude to the battle in the voting booths. It will crystallize the difference between the parties. The Republicans are the party busy fighting a global war against savages bent on murder and destruction. The Democrats are the party busy appeasing savages bent on murder and destruction both at home and abroad. A multi-day political riot by leftists would give the American people an extended demonstration of every single pathology which afflicts the diseased brains of liberals.

Some will respond to this by pointing out the detrimental effect that the Chicago riots had on Democratic fortunes in 1968. I don’t believe that the situations are comparable. The 1968 riots hurt the Democrats for two reasons: they were partially set off by events on the convention floor and they involved the sort of people who were, broadly, seen as the base of that party. If the riots had been staged by Southern segregationists wearing “Wallace” buttons, I think they would have been seen as something else altogether. That will be the case here.

The average American simply does not feel the hate towards President Bush that the far left feels. Not only do they not feel it, they don’t even understand it. Some of them (the duller, less moral, and less useful ones) might not support him, but they don’t hate him. A lengthy riot by his opponents will hammer home one major point to the average American: these people are crazy, and they support John Kerry.

posted by Yoshi at 11:35 PM

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Ripples of 9-11

People ought to read the actual preliminary reports being released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (popularly known as the “9-11 Commission”) instead of listening to the confrontational blather of Democrat partisans both on and before the commission and elsewhere. Contrary to what is being widely claimed in the media, the actual findings of the commission do not “blame Bush and Clinton equally,” rather they paint a damning picture of the failure of Democratic policies towards terrorism from the 1990’s. The present-day actions of the left give us no reason to believe that, if given another shot in power, they would correct any of the basic structural flaws in their strategy that made a 9-11 virtually inevitable.

In addressing the question of why 9-11 happened, we must understand that there are two distinct sets of issues at work here. The first is that of the event itself, why 9-11 happened on September 11th, 2001 involving four planes hijacked from two airports with nineteen hijackers onboard. These are the technical issues. The second are those of why the Islamists were in a position to attack the United States in such a way, why they thought that such a course would be successful, and how the conditions which allowed such an attack to occur could have been ameliorated. These are the strategic issues.

The Democrats want to focus on technical issues. This is because these are the ones which can be pinned on the Bush Administration and those which are more easily comprehendible. If only a memo here had been followed up upon, or if a visa check had been performed, or some other clue had been followed-up upon, then the plot might have unraveled. This is all technically true, but misses the deeper point. The primary issue at stake here isn’t (or, at least, shouldn’t be) whether, if all internal security measures worked perfectly, the attack could have been stopped. Had the 9-11 plot been unraveled on Clinton’s watch (and, in fact, several extreme terror plots were detected and stopped by various means) then al-Qaeda would have simply developed another plan, and then another plan: on until they were successful. Relying upon technical measures to stop a mega-terror attack means relying upon your internal security measures to be 100% effective 100% of the time. This is to be hoped for, of course, but to count on it (and plan based upon this assumption) is insane.

One report quotes the Bush Administration, on coming to power, as being frustrated with the strategy of “swatting flies” as pursued by the Clinton Administration. That was exactly correct. It may well be, as Richard Clarke told the commission on Wednesday, that the Clinton Administration had “no higher priority” than terrorism but, if that is the case, then it seems obvious to me that this “highest priority” fell into the same trap as all of the other “high priorities” during the Clinton Administration: most of the effort expended on the issue was spent talking over reasons not to do anything. The military section of the report on the Clinton Administration and al-Qaeda is a chronicle of excuses.

In the later years of his Presidency, Clinton repeatedly had Bin Laden in his sights and refused to pull the trigger. Each time he (or someone within his Administration) was dissuaded from firing by grossly exaggerated fears of civilian dead (in one case it reports that, from a single missile strike, they feared that there would be three thousand civilian dead. Given that this number is roughly the equal of those estimated by leftists to have been killed in the entire war, these numbers are implausible, to say the least), by cries that more American “mad bombing” would enrage the world, and various other sundry concerns.

People like to point out that both the Bush and Clinton Administrations failed to retaliate for the bombing of the USS Cole. This, however, misses the point. The Clinton people failed to fight back because they felt that the death of nearly twenty US servicemen and the near-sinking of a billion dollar Destroyers was “insufficient provocation” and that there wasn’t “sufficient proof” of al-Qaeda’s involvement. The Bush Administration rejected direct retaliation for the Cole because they weren’t interested in playing a game of blow-by-blow diplomacy with a gang of sub-human murderers. They wanted to wipe them out.

There are no indications that the Democrats have since changed their approach to terror to any reasonable degree. Just as, before 9-11, they viewed terrorism as a manageable problem, one easily controlled by law enforcement and “international action”, so they still view it today.

The Democrats, in essence, want to “manage” terrorism whereas the Republicans want to destroy it. This is the critical difference between the two on this issue. In their heart of hearts the Democrats and their confederates believe their rhetoric. They see this, as they see nearly all things, through the lens of Vietnam. They don’t think that terrorism can really be beaten. Or, even if they believe it could, they believe that the price would be too high in terms of their political goals. War, they believe, will reinforce Republicanism among the people. If the people really believe that there is a War on Terrorism, then Republicans will come to dominate the White House just as they did after the Democrats blew their credibility on Cold War issues.

Forget al-Qaeda strategy, for the moment. They are already committed to this war. Had things been otherwise, they might have been dissuaded from launching it. But it is upon us. We can argue over exactly why this war began in a few decades, when it is over. Does anyone sane really not believe that we are in this war now? If we are, then we must win it.

The Democrats don’t have a strategy for fighting terror: they have a plan for managing its political consequences. A Democratic Administration will respond to any terror attack with tough rhetoric and Cruise Missiles, then they will exploit it to press their domestic agenda. I don’t believe that even a nuclear bomb in one of America’s great cities would wake them up. A basic hostility towards American strength has been weaved into their souls by decades of poisonous lies. They cannot be trusted to defend this Republic against its enemies.

posted by Yoshi at 10:17 PM

Vote for Me!

I'm playing an online game. Part of that game is an "Iowa Straw Poll". In encourage all of you to go and vote for me. I fully realize that at least as many of you will vote against me as for me but, well, such are the risks of life.

posted by Yoshi at 3:53 PM

Death is the Solution

From the reaction to the Israeli assassination of Hamas’ “Spiritual Leader”, Sheik Yasin, in some quarters you’d have thought that the Israelis had entered and defiled the Church of the Nativity. No, wait, it was the Palestinians who did that. Well, forget about that then. The primary reaction from European and Western sources was to exclaim their hatred for Yasin’s role in the mass-murder of innocent Israelis, but an equal concern for the fate of the so-called “peace process”. Frankly, I can barely speak the word without spitting it out. As Patrick Henry said, “Peace? But there is no peace. The war is actually begun.”

The only regret I have about Israel’s actions against Sheik Yasin is that they didn’t bomb his funeral procession. Anyone showing up to pay their respects to that man deserved to die. Such an action would have brought about a very great reduction in the terrorist population of the territories.

It’s time that we all face facts: there will never be peace in Israel so long as the Palestinians remain determined to wipe Israel from the map. Anyone who believes for a single second that the creation of a Palestinian microstate in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza would alleviate the problem is deluding themselves. At Camp David four years ago, Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything that the Palestinians could ever hope to get from Israel and then some. Arafat turned him down without making so much as a counter-offer and, as frightening as it sounds, whoever finally follows Arafat is likely to be much less of a “moderate” than he. Make no mistake: this is a fight to the death. It will be over only when one side destroys the other altogether.

So what is Israel to do? Should we expect it to meekly submit to its own destruction? Do we honestly think that, if we were in the same position, we would tolerate the random murder of civilians on a regular basis? Understand this: as a percentage of the population, every Israeli Jew lost is roughly the same as sixty Americans. I do not mean this in the sense of worth; I mean that in terms of how each loss is felt across the nation as a whole. Imagine if Chicago lost a dozen people in a suicide bombing about every other week. As a percentage of the population, Israel’s thousand dead is the rough equivalent of 60,000 dead. If there were 60,000 Americans killed, at random, across the country how many do you think you would have known? As percentage of the population, Israel’s seven thousand casualties would be the equivalent of 420,000. Do you think you would have known any of them? Or been any of them?

Israel is in a war. To expect them to simply make “peace” with those who have murdered scores of their people at random is an absurdity. There can be no peace with killers and savages.

In the long term, there is only a single plausible solution: the transfer of the Palestinian and potentially disloyal Israeli Arab populations. Absent this, it is inevitable that Israel will be destroyed by either military force or demographic trends. As Benny Morris, the foremost chronicler of the original displacement of the Arab population of Israel has explained, the ultimate survival of Israel depends upon the coercive relocation of the Moslems located within Israel’s borders.

Now, naturally, this will not be possible absent a major crisis. The outrage of the international community, were Israel to undertake such a policy as a bolt from the blue, would be such that it could conceivably even bring some sort of international action against Israel. Such a policy could only be implemented in the immediate aftermath of a major atrocity against the Israeli people.

So what, then, is the solution? First of all, provisions and plans must be made for the displacement of the Palestinians under emergency conditions. After all, without such plans, the aftermath of a nuclear attack would probably feature only limited attacks by localized groups against the Palestinians, versus a concerted effort to assure Israel’s long-term security.

In the interim, the Israeli Government must walk a fine line. It cannot lose international support, but it also cannot allow the development of a Palestinian state which would receive international recognition. Second, it must protect its own citizens from terrorist attacks. To me, this calls for a policy of building (and strengthening) the defensive wall around Israel, which will keep out individual suicide bombers, and for stonewalling on any negotiations (or, better yet, engaging in and then disrupting them ad naseum).

The solution called for is more death for Palestinian terrorists, their supporters, and their sympathizers.

posted by Yoshi at 1:15 AM

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

The Two-Election Strategy

(This article, of course, is about Canadian politics. Those here for my insanity on other issues will have to wait a few hours. AY)

If Prime Minister Paul Martin drops the writ in early April for a May election, as is now generally considered likely, I believe that the result will be a Conservative minority government. While the Liberals hold a lead in the polls, that lead is soft, and would almost certainly erode under campaigning. A Conservative pick-up of about forty seats nation-wide, combined with Liberal losses in Quebec and scattered New Democratic gains, would result in the next Parliament looking something like this: 115 Conservatives, 100 Liberals, 55 Bloc Québécois, and thirty-eight New Democrats. On looking at these numbers I see two things: first, barring a Liberal disaster of unanticipated proportions, this is about the best that can be expected. With a lot of luck, perhaps the Conservatives could poach another ten seats from the Liberals and NDP, but not many more than that. Moreover, I see no likely scenario where the Conservatives are going to get the 155 members needed to form a majority government. This, I believe, might just be what the Liberals have in mind.

So, it’s the day after the next election. The jubilant Conservatives, with the most seats, are invited to form the next government. Prime Minister-elect Stephen Harper prepares to move into 24 Sussex. But how on earth is this new government to govern? A coalition with the NDP is out, for obvious reasons. Ditto one with the Liberals. The only way to survive even the first day of the new Parliament will be to cut a deal with the Bloc whereby they’ll sustain the government on important votes in exchange for some sort of devolution of Federal rights to the Provinces. But such an arrangement would be unstable, at best. Moreover, it would open up the Conservatives to accusations of “consorting with separatists.”

Now, let’s stipulate (for the sake of argument) that such an arrangement will survive for a few months, at least. How does this new Conservative government get anything resembling a ‘conservative’ budget through the Commons? The short answer is this: it can’t. The Bloc (the only possible partners in the House) won’t agree to any such budget without the Conservatives making unacceptable concessions to Quebec. So then, what comes next must be obvious: there will have to be a second election. Almost certainly within a year, perhaps within a few months.

This is where the Liberals’ strategy reaches its climax. An election (and any number of other controversies having since passed) means that the party (and its surrogates) can shout, “Old News!” whenever someone tries to bring up the Sponsorship Scandal. Moreover, many ‘average’ Canadian voters will feel that the Liberals, having lost office over the scandal, have been sufficiently punished. Worse still (for the Conservatives), the Liberals will have three new lines of attack in the second campaign.

First, they will (if a Conservative government has been sustained by the Bloc) accusing the party of coddling the separatists and thereby endangering the future of the Canadian federation. They will point to how the Mulroney-era effort to bring “soft nationalists” into that Tory government led to the 1995 referendum and the near-termination of Canada. This argument will not fly in Conservative strongholds in the West, but it might well work in newly-won Conservative ridings in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

Second, they will argue that the Conservatives are simply incapable of forming a majority government and that, therefore, a vote for them is effectively a vote for a third election sometime in the not-too-distant future. This can be played up both in financial terms and in an effort to win over the politically-weary.

Third, they will seek to paint the Conservatives as the, “enemy of mainstream Canadians.” It is natural that a new Conservative government (with a usually-large number of rookie MP’s) would make any number of mistakes, especially ones of the sort which could be portrayed as “politically incorrect” and therefore used to paint all Conservatives as extremists.

Paul Martin, of course, could add to all of this by continuing to campaign against the corruption of the Chrétien Government as though he were the Leader of the Opposition and not the former Finance Minister. While the media might remind us of his role during the upcoming election, they’ll be tired of the story by the next one and eager to beat up on the Conservatives. He’ll also be able to take credit to the revelation of any new Liberal-related scandals by claiming that their revelation is the result of his anti-corruption drive during his time as Prime Minister.

As well, if faced with a spell of political instability and the possibility of a Conservative government, a great number of nominal Liberal supporters who will vote New Democrat as a protest in a May vote will revert to their Liberal pedigree in a second election.

Of course, this might all be totally off-the-wall speculation. Only time will tell as to that. But, as we head towards an election, we all ought to keep in mind that no one has ever suggested that the Liberals are not devious and politically clever. Eleven years of corruption have dug them a real hole, one they’ll have to fight to get out of.

posted by Yoshi at 10:15 PM

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Boycott Alias!

Jennifer Garner gave $5000 to Democrats last year. In fact, she gave it to four different Democratic Presidential candidates. All on the same day- December 15, 2003. It sounds to me like, the day after Saddam was captured, she was so despondent that she gave money to four leaders of the party of treason.

posted by Yoshi at 12:10 AM

Monday, March 22, 2004

Would the Democrats Have Stopped the Terrorists?

Over the last few days the media has gone into overdrive pushing the latest Democratic talking points which hold that the Bush Administration is responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks because they “failed to act” against al-Qaeda in the eight and a half months that elapsed between when they took office and the attacks. Some versions of this story hold that the Bush Administration was “handed a plan” to destroy the terrorists when they took office and failed to act upon it because they were obsessed with Missile Defense and Iraq. To say that, given the sources, they accusations lack credibility is a lot like saying that Britney Spears is just a little slutty.

Richard Clarke’s new book Against All Enemies is soaking up a lot more coverage than it deserves. Clarke, it appears, is a partisan Democrat. Records suggest that he’s made donations to two Democratic Congressional candidates, and his best friend is Rand Beers, who is John Kerry’s leading foreign policy advisor. This is a man who was, within the Bush Administration, denied the high office he thought he deserved (presumably that of Secretary of Homeland Security) so he turned hostile.

There’s a common myth these days (typically repeated by Iraq War opponents) that “everyone” supported the post 9-11 invasion of Afghanistan. This is simply untrue. A poll taken in November of 2001 showed that 26% of respondents opposed sending American troops to Afghanistan and other polls showed broadly similar numbers. And, in any case, a fair number of the supporters of the invasion played the whole thing passive-aggressively. If you were paying attention, you’ll remember the type. Mostly liberals (and people who would go on to oppose the invasion of Iraq), these people would affirm their support of action in Afghanistan, and then would state all sorts of reasons why it was a bad idea, likely to fail, etc. “We must respond to terror, but the Administration is failing to consider (the Arab Street/the Fierce Afghan Winter/the armies swallowed up by Afghanistan’s harsh terrain/whatever),” they would say.

Now, by many accounts, the Bush Administration was already making plans for military action in Afghanistan before September 11th. This fact has, indeed, been citied by the conspiratorially-minded opponents of the President as “proof” that the 9-11 was launched to provide an excuse for the seizure of Central Asian oil (it’s always the oil with those people). However, it is absurd for the critics of the President to pretend that they’d have been all for a preemptive war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

I can hear their complaints now. They’d have been the same as those used before the Iraq War, but multiplied because the advocates would not have had September 11th to help them make their point. We’d have been treated to lengthy discussions of all the difficulty of the task, how it would provoke terrorism, how it would cause the collapse of “moderate” Moslem governments, how it would result in a humanitarian disaster, and how the Europeans opposed it.

When was this invasion going to be launched, anyways? It took a few months for the Administration to simply take charge and it would have taken another several months (more even, given that this was pre 9-11) to secure the necessary backing in the region. Recall, the invasion of Afghanistan managed to come off so quickly because of the impetus provided by the attacks. Looking at the length of the Gulf War build-up, and all of the necessary diplomatic wrangling, six months of planning, deployment, and diplomacy does not seem to be an unrealistic figure. Add two months to that for the Administration merely to take charge and get its bearings and that makes the projected D-Day September 20th, 2001.

In any case, I have a hard time believing that the Clinton Administration proposed anything that would have really helped to stop the terrorists. After all, just a few months before Bush took office, Clinton’s national security team declined to retaliate for the attack on the USS Cole because they did not, in the words of Defense Secretary William Cohen, consider it to be a “sufficient provocation.” Yeah, those were the sort of people busy planning a preemptive war.

Oh, and does anyone think for a second that the Europeans would have been for this war? If so, what gives you that idea? After all, a lot of people in Europe opposed the invasion of Afghanistan after 9-11. Is it not the case that keeping our European “friends” happy ought to be the core goal of American foreign policy?

Clinton was in office for eight years. He did nothing to stop the terrorists. In fact, by retreating under fire from Somalia he emboldened them. Osama Bin Laden himself has explained this fact (which ought to have been self-evident in any case). Clinton’s weakness led directly to September 11th, this should be obvious to any fair observer.

When Clinton ordered the withdrawal from Somalia after the “Blackhawk Down” incident (which could have been prevented if his Defense Secretary had allowed the commander on the ground there to have the equipment he asked for) it convinced Bin Laden and his comrades that the United States was weak and cowardly: that it would run from a real fight.

So Bin Laden set out to drive Americans from the Islamic world by killing enough to them to scare them away. Murder enough Americans, he calculated, and they will decided to wash their hands of the Middle East (and Israel as well), opting for dishonor rather than death. When his initial attacks failed to cause a withdrawal (but also failed to bring a serious response) he concluded that the problem was that the attacks had been too small to be seriously felt by the American people. So he launched a bigger attack. And here we are.

All these attacks on the Administration are little more than an effort to deflect attention from this fact and the additional salient fact that Democrats have no real plan for fighting terrorism beyond sarcasm. Not to say that they don’t have a plan for dealing with terrorism in terms of politics: that they do have.

The obvious thing to me is that, especially from a the perspective of a Democratic President, the best way to respond to terrorism politically is to talk tough, launch some strikes that look good on TV, and then to use the attacks to bolster partisan political projects.

When I think upon it, the response of a Gore Administration to September 11th would have gone something like this. There would have been a military response, probably a combination of air strikes on al-Qaeda targets and perhaps a few Special Forces strikes. I doubt if there would have been any serious effort to overthrow the Taliban. Certainly there would have been no invasion of Iraq. No intense effort like those seen in the last two and a half years. They probably would have pushed for the ratification of the Kyoto Treaty (as a way of winning international support). Oh, and they would have pushed Israel to do a deal with the killer Yassir Arafat. They’d have also pushed for the International Criminal Court: the better to help cooperation against terror, don’t you know. No one can imagine a President Al Gore waging a war like President Bush has, can they? Can you imagine a President John Kerry doing so?

This whole dispute smacks of Democratic desperation. They understand that, John Kerry’s immature taunts aside, if this election is fought on issues of terrorism and national security they will lose. So they’re trying to play their trump card: to blame Bush for 9-11. That they’re doing this so early seemingly suggests to me that they’ve determined that they must do something to arrest Kerry’s sudden loss of momentum. It is especially notable that the release of Clarke’s book was suddenly brought up a full month: don’t think that to be simply a coincidence.

The real question here is this: which Presidential candidate will best be able to kill the terrorists? I don’t think that any sane person questions that the answer to that is simple: George Walker Bush. There’s no “nuance” to be had here. We are in a fight against a monstrous foe, one which means to destroy our civilization. This is a fight that we must win. It is the battle of all decent and moral humans.

posted by Yoshi at 11:43 PM

More on Why Kerry Will Lose

I think that this has the potential to be a big deal. The story is simple, but telling. While Snowboarding in Idaho the other day (and leaving aside the absurdity of having a nearly sixty year old man Snowboarding), a Secret Service agent accidentally ran into John Kerry and knocked him over.

Now, bear in mind, this is a Federal Law Enforcement officer- one who could take a bullet for John Kerry. He accidentally bumped into him only in the course of seeking to protect him from possible harm.

Asked about the fall sometime thereafter, Kerry said ("sharply," according to the conservative New York Times) that, "I don't fall down," the "son of a bitch knocked me over." Now, I don't know about you, but calling a Secret Service agent (who was merely trying to do his job) a "son of a bitch" sounds rather unprecedented to me. Extremely so, in fact. Can you imagine the storm that would be set off if President Bush said such a thing?

There's something lacking in the character of John Kerry. He seems to fancy himself a nobleman or something. How else can one explain such an awful reaction?

We'll hear more about this, I'm sure.

posted by Yoshi at 4:23 PM

Andrew Sullivan's Distortions

In what sounds to me like a grasping attempt to induce Republican apostasy, Andrew Sullivan speculates that a President Kerry would be forced to be tougher on terror as President because, as a Democrat, he'd suffer a credibility gap in this area. This is patent nonsense.

What this problem would mean, in practice, is that President Kerry would talk really, really, tough on the terrorists, and then try to bolster his record with a laundry list of useless (but nice-sounding) micro-accomplishments. ("We've secured an accord with Bolivia, Kenya, and Burma for mutual cooperation against terror. By fighting in a multilateral fashion...")

The difference between the two is stark and obvious. John Kerry will be tough on terror: as tough as he minimally has to be to build his credibility on the issue. George W. Bush has shown, again and again, that he will be as tough on terror as he can get away with. These are, to put it mildly, very different things.

On a related note: I've yet to hear anything from Andrew on the bet I've offered him. He claims that the Full Faith and Credit clause will not be used to force recognition of Massachusetts gay marriages in other states. I'm willing to bet him $250 that, within one year of the first gay marriages being performed there, the Full Faith and Credit clause will be legally used to support recognition of these marriages by another state.

Drop him a line and encourage him to take the bet. After all, if he's right (and he seems awfully sure of it), I'd have to send him two day's pay (and, given the value of the Canadian dollar, closer to three).

posted by Yoshi at 11:44 AM

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Kerry Will Lose

I’m going to make a prediction. It might sound foolish at this stage and it’s certainly true that I’ve made predictions in the past that have turned out to be wildly long, but I’m going to make it anyways: John Kerry is going to lose this election, and lose it badly.

The first truly ominous sign for Kerry since his sudden rise after Iowa is the surprisingly strong candidacy of Ralph Nader. Given the widespread perception that Nader cost Gore the last election, and the supposed fact that Democrats are united and energized because of their “anger” towards President Bush, I would have expected Nader to poll no more than 1-2%: all hardcore leftists who weren’t going to vote for a “corporate” Democrat anyways. Yet recent polls have consistently shown Nader with five or six percent support. In other words, at the present time, he’s polling double his final score in 2000. A recent CBS/New York Times poll showed Bush beating Kerry by eight points with Nader claiming a full 7% of registered voters. And, of course, the New York Times is hardly an outfit known for generating polling data which is favourable to the GOP.

People will tell me that I’m foolish to put much stock in polls at this stage in the game. I agree in that polls at this time are useless for judging final election results. But they are strong indicators of attitudes. Many mocked me when, in November and December of last year, I said that Howard Dean’s standing in national polls of Democrats showed that he was too weak to win the nomination. Despite all of the free publicity he got, all the accolades, Dean could never climb much over 25% in national preference polls for the nomination. This, in my opinion, indicated that there was some sort of innate resistance to Dean among a majority of Democrats and that, as soon as the field of candidates shrunk, Dean would be easily defeated.

Now what I see in the polls is this: Democrats are unenthusiastic about John Kerry, are willing to bolt to a third party in potentially dangerous numbers, and are unsure as to why they ought to support him. The man looks like someone who could be President. That’s about the sum of it. He was the safe choice.

Very partisan Democrats are very angry with this President and this Administration, there’s no denying that. But those people would vote for any Democrat for President, regardless of any other factors. Kerry has their votes locked up: but where else is he going to pick up votes?

Anyone who thinks that John Kerry is going to pick up more than a handful of votes from Republicans is suffering from a severe case of Pauline Kael syndrome. “My life-long Republican aunt is voting for Kerry,” does not, in my opinion, constitute evidence of widespread support. Not a single prominent Republican is behind John Kerry. Democrats like Georgia Senator Zell Miller and former New York Mayor Ed Koch are for Bush. There are no indications of a great love for Kerry among independents. Indeed, in open primaries, John Kerry attracted far less support from independents than John Edwards.

Additionally, the presence of Nader in the race makes it much harder for Kerry to shift his positions on national security issues: something he will need to do in order to compete with Bush in the fall campaign. If Kerry moves to a more hawkish position on defense, not only will he suffer attacks for flip-flopping, but he’ll also probably lose votes to Nader. And, I might add, Howard Dean’s hard-core constituency is still floating about. While these people weren’t enough to win him any primaries, they were a sizable percentage of Democratic primary voters.

I can easily see a situation arising where, with Kerry falling in the polls under the weight of Bush’s attacks on his defense record, a shift to the right by him is met with a call by former Dean supporters to “send the Democratic Party a message” in the fall. Given that, by most accounts, Howard Dean himself feels that he was done in largely by malfeasance on the part of the party, it is easy to see him, with a wink, only tepidly denouncing such actions.

The rushed primary season has resulted in a situation where the Democratic nominee has not been properly tested under the stresses of a campaign. In retrospect, the nomination was pretty much sewn up when Howard Dean lost Iowa. Gephardt was out, Dean’s dream had been shattered, Clark’s campaign suddenly stripped of its rationale, and Joe Lieberman was a lost cause. That left just John Edwards and John Kerry. John Edwards had nothing but a smile and a demagogic stump speech which, for all the new ideas it contained, could have been stolen from Huey Long. In the end it was John Forbes Kerry by what Homer Simpson once called the, “two sweetest words in the English language”: de-fault.

One thing which has been quickly exposed by the heat of a real campaign is that Kerry is dangerously gaffe-prone. Now some Democrats will, I’m sure, quickly throw in my face examples of the President’s occasionally mangled syntax. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Democrats, for whatever reason, believe the fact that George Bush occasionally mispronounces words to be extremely damning. I don’t think that the American people agree. Frankly, I think it makes the Democrats look petty, pedantic, and irrelevant.

What I’m talking about is the fact that John Kerry seems given to saying things which are stupid in their substance, rather than their form. No experienced politician ought to call his opponents crooks and liars: that’s what surrogates are for. Kerry’s claim that foreign leaders support him, given his negatives, was simply insane. His follow-up to it was even more baffling. First he claimed that it was no one’s business which foreign leaders supported him. Then he, in essence, told a voter who asked him about it to shut up. Now his campaign has issued a statement explaining that it considers the endorsement of Kerry by foreign leaders to be undesirable. Given the attacks on him for flip-flopping, his remark the other day that, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion (for Iraqi Reconstruction) before I voted against it” was colossally stupid.

Frankly, I think that Kerry is about to be torn to shreds. Everyone has already heard every negative thing about George W. Bush that’s going to manage to stick. There’s still lots to learn about John Kerry. His treasonous behavior while he was a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (where he apparently participated in private negotiations with communist leaders and voted upon a resolution calling for the assassination of a number of US Senators) is not yet widely known. Nor, for that matter, are his positions on any number of issues. His defense votes, his position on the death penalty, his position on gay marriage: all of these are not yet widely known. Yet, if he tries to shift to the right on any of them, he’ll suffer both attacks for flip-flopping and he’ll suffer defections to Nader.

It now seems clear that having the Bush campaign lead with the charge that Kerry is prone to flip-flops (as opposed to attacking his liberalism) was a truly inspired strategy. It’s worked and the media has picked up on it. Just as it was a common theme in 2000 that Al Gore often concocted bizarre lies about himself (“I’m the basis for Love Story”, “I invented the internet”, “I discovered Love Canal”, “my mother-in-law is taking a dog’s prescription drugs”), it seems clear to me that a common theme in this campaign will be that John Kerry says anything for support. Because of this, every time he tries to shift his positions on the issues, we’ll get a little media tempest about the latest “flip-flop.” Now the attacks on Kerry’s liberalism will have a much greater effect because his range of options has narrowed.

If Kerry falls in the polls before the convention, do not be shocked to see someone try to get back into the race. I could see Howard Dean giving it a shot (“we can’t win without the new voters I brought into this race”), I can see Hillary Clinton giving it a shot, and I could see Al Gore doing it as well. There might, indeed, be others.

Even beyond that, it doesn’t strike me as inconceivable that the Democrats might, even in October, try and pull the same stunt they did in New Jersey in 2002. Imagine this. It’s the first of October and tracking polls show Bush/Cheney with 53% support, Kerry/Edwards with 37% support, and Ralph Nader with 8% of the vote. However, polls show that in a Bush versus Edwards match-up, the results are Bush 47%, Edwards 42%, and Nader 7%. This works for any Democratic running-mate who gets a wave of positive publicity. Would you put it beyond the Democrats to, with a few weeks to go, force a lagging Kerry from the top of the ticket in favor of a better-polling running mate? I sure wouldn’t.

I may turn out to be totally wrong. We’ll see. I’ve got a fair record in these things. I called the correct number of Republican Senate wins in 2002 (I got two races wrong: I thought that the GOP would win South Dakota and lose Georgia). I said that the Passion of the Christ would gross hundreds of millions ages ago, and was mocked for it. I said that Dean was going to flame out, and people laughed. I said that the Beltway Sniper was a Moslem, and people said I was crazy- everyone knew it was a white militia member. I said that the 3/11 bombing in Madrid was al-Qaeda, and people said I was crazy. Not to say I’ve always been right: but I think I’ve got a fair track record in these things.

Let’s wait and see. Or, in the words of another fellow: bring – it – on.

posted by Yoshi at 6:16 PM

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Election 2004: Bush v. Bin Laden

I have said it many times before: the War on Terrorism cannot be won in a day, but it can be lost in one. There can be no more effective demonstration of this dictum than the recent election results in Spain. For all that we fear it; al-Qaeda’s actual forces are so small that, if they were to attempt to fight a traditional open battle, they would probably be destroyed by a single Spanish brigade. Yet it was al-Qaeda that beat Spain. Already their propagandists are crowing about the “conquest of Madrid” and proclaiming a truce to allow Spain to bend to its will. The cowardly reaction of a plurality of the Spanish people will bring a hundred times as many recruits to the ranks of our enemies as the Iraq War did. Only a very small percentage of people are willing to volunteer to die in a doomed cause. A much larger percentage is willing to fight in a victorious one. The spin-offs of the defeat of Spain will provide more evidence to prove one of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous rules: weakness is provocative.

In one of his post 9-11 missives, Osama Bin Laden explained that, “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, naturally they will like the strong horse.” This is a comment that has never received the attention it truly deserves. It is, in my opinion, the key to answering the question of why 9-11 happened.

September 11th didn’t happen because America was too strong, or because it supported Israel, or because it placed sanctions on Iraq, or because it had troops in Saudi Arabia: it happened because al-Qaeda thought that America was weak. While it is true that all the things I have listed helped to motivate the attackers, they have very little to do with why the attack was planned and took place. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the leaders of Islamism are not insane or irrational. They are, in fact, working towards a very obvious goal: the restoration of Islam to the first rank of powers in the world (and eventually to absolute power) and they are going about that goal in a very specific way.

Step into the mind of Osama Bin Laden for a moment and look at the history of relations between Islam and the West during the 1980’s and 1990’s. When Iranian radicals took the personnel of the US embassy hostage, the United States did not respond with any sort of real force. When Hezbollah bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, the Americans launched a few ineffectual attacks and then withdrew. When they bombed the World Trade Centre, the Khobar Towers, the Embassies in Nairobi and Dars-e-Salaam, and the USS Cole the American response was tepid, at best. When they killed eighteen US servicemen in Somalia, the forces were pulled out.

In fact, only twice in that period did the United States respond seriously to acts of Moslem aggression against the West: in 1986 President Reagan authorized the bombing of Libya and in 1991 President Bush launched Operation Desert Storm. However, both of these actions were incomplete, at best. Qadaffi and Saddam remained in power and the United States failed to support anti-Saddam uprisings. After 1991, with the exception of a few wasted Cruise Missiles in 1998, the United States didn’t respond to terrorism at all, except to run from it in Somalia. The one major war of the Clinton years was waged in such an obsessively casualty-adverse way that it became something of a pathetic spectacle.

Now, if you were Bin Laden, what would you conclude from this? I’d conclude that the United States was weak, unwilling to spill blood. They’d fight if pushed hard enough, but they’d run away after a few deaths. The series of al-Qaeda attacks through the last decade of the 20th century had an obvious purpose: to push America had enough to cause them to cut and run like the Spaniards have. That was the concept of operations on September 11th. Prior attacks, al-Qaeda reasoned, had not made the Americans run because they were so small as to go generally unnoticed by the public at large. So they decided to hit the United States hard, believing that it would respond with vicious rhetoric backed up by a Nerf bat, just as it did during the Clinton years.

The plan is obvious: hit the decadent “Crusaders” enough and they’ll decide that you aren’t worth the trouble of bothering. Once they are gone, you can overthrow all of their puppets in the region and restore the Caliphate. When that is done, Islam can recover its “lost lands” (notably the Kingdom of Andalusia in Spain) and resume its historic march into Europe which was checked at Tours by Charles Martel in 732 and at Vienna by Jan Sobieski in 1683.

Now, this plan may sound a little bit insane, but I’m not so sure. Obviously it sounds foreign but, so far as grand designs go, it seems to be rather simple and well, accomplishable. Certainly, there’s little that would, after a US abandonment of the region, prevent the establishment of a number of Islamist regimes in Middle East. Rising Moslem immigration to Europe would assist in the second part of such a plan. Is it unlikely to be successful? Sure. Impossible? Not particularly. No more impossible than any number of other things which actually happened such as, for example, the original spread of Islam.

The election this November is not between George Bush and John Kerry. Rather, it is between George Walker Bush and Osama Bin Laden. It is blatantly obvious that the major goal of all the enemies of America is the removal of George W. Bush from the White House.

I fully expect to see terror attacks launched, either in the Untied States or aboard, in an effort to unseat the President. I also expect the Democrats to shamelessly seek to capitalize on those attacks as they have already, in the form of Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III, attempted to on the attacks in Spain (“it’s all Bush’s fault.”).

But we ought to think back to Rumsfeld’s rules. Weakness is provocative. How could the world take the election of John Forbes Kerry but as a sign of American weakness? How would al-Qaeda take it?

And how did they respond to earlier signs of American weakness? The election of John Kerry would be a boon to terrorist recruiting as Islamists, knowing that they are far less likely to die with that man as President, rush to join what appears to be a victorious cause.

Given this, we must make something clear to the people: a vote for the Democrats this November is a vote for al-Qaeda and all the other enemies of America. By electing a Democrat, you would be sending a signal to the world, “Americans are weak and frightened. Kill us and we will do what you say.” Anyone who votes for, gives money to, or in some other way supports or assists John Kerry will have blood on their hands if he is elected: American blood.

posted by Yoshi at 4:53 PM

Is There a Revolution in Iran?

I keep seeing these reports being sent out by Iranian dissidents reporting real civil strife in that country. I don't know if these reports are exaggerated or what, but I'd like to know why I'm not hearing about this on CNN.

Check these out:

posted by Yoshi at 4:20 PM

A Challenge and a Question for Andrew Sullivan

In a post today Andrew Sullivan argues that, on the issue of gay marriage, we should "let the states decide" and links to a New York Times article which claims that, because the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution was not used to legalize interracial marriage, gay marriage will not be nationalized as a result of gay marriages in Massachusetts.

Nonsense, I say. Just because the Full Faith and Credit clause was not used that way in the past gives no real indication that it won't be used that way today by activist judges. Certainly, there's very little stopping them from doing so.

This leaves me with a question and a challenge for Mr. Sullivan:

Question: If, as you claim, marriage for homosexuals is a "human right", then how could it possibly be right for some states to deny that right? Is it not true that the sudden enthusiasm for Federalism on the part of most gay marriage advocates is, in fact, a result of the realization that if gay marriage is legalized in one state, it will be imposed upon all the others? Is it not the case that you're merely trying to "run out the clock" with every nonsense argument you can find until gay marriage becomes a fait accompli, at which point you will shout for people opposed to gay marriage to "move on" and cry over the possibility of gay couples being "forcibly divorced"?

Second, as to the Full Faith and Credit clause, I offer a challenge to Mr. Sullivan:

I will bet you $250 USD that, within one year of the first legal gay marriages being performed in Massachusetts, a court (or other legal authority, such as an Attorney General) will cite the Full Faith and Credit clause in legally recognizing Massachusetts gay marriages in their own state. I know for a fact that Mr. Sullivan is far richer than I. How about it? Are you willing to back up your claims with dollars?

posted by Yoshi at 2:26 PM

Hail Czar Vladimir!

Lost amid the clamor over the disastrous result of the Spanish elections on March 14th have been the results of the perhaps equally important Russian Presidential election of the same day. Frankly I suspect that, over the long term, these might be even more consequential. While it is far too early to proclaim the death of freedom in Russia, it would not be an exaggeration to say that, at the very least, liberal democracy has perished in that great land.

I still don’t know what to make of Vladimir Putin: is he a future tyrant that we shall have to confront? Or is he a strongman who will drag Russia into the modern era, a modernizer like Peter the Great? During the crisis of the late 1990’s, I took to referring to “Weimar Russia”. Frankly, as much as I’d like President Putin to be successful, I sometimes wonder if I was correct.

After all, when you think about it, the rise of Putin looks a great deal like the rise of Hitler. Russia did fairly well in the first years after the fall of the old regime, but then fell into economic chaos. Finally, the people democratically chose a strong leader to make order out of the chaos. While that election was broadly democratic, it was not without questions (the Apartment bombings in Russia prior to the last Presidential election, for example). Since then the nation has made a rather dramatic recovery and has begun to look towards a lost Empire.

I don’t believe this to be true. I very much don’t want it to be true. I view a strong Russia as a valuable ally in our coming conflict with China and hope that it would be useful against Europe. But I don’t think that it would be wise to altogether disregard the possibility of the worst-case scenario being true. We don’t know enough about the character of President Putin to rule out the possibility that, beneath the surface, he harbors some sort of mad ambition of rape and conquest.

The system of government that presently exists in Russia cannot be fairly called a dictatorship. While President Putin wields more power than a typical democratic leader, those powers he doesn’t have anything close to the control enjoyed by the old Soviet leaders. In fact, I suspect that he could be removed from office if he behaved in a way which did not truly enjoy the broad support of the Russian people. One of the great things about modern technology is the extent to which its spread has effectively undermined the capacity in any nation for a true totalitarianism. Those nations were old fashioned totalitarianism still exists mostly share a single common quality: isolation from the modern world.

What Russia has today is what I like to call an Authoritarian Democracy, one broadly similar in character to those that exist in some Asian nations, such as Singapore and Malaysia. The nation maintains something of a democratic character, but it is subordinated beneath a primary belief in the state and a leader who is accountable to only a certain degree. To put it another way, the present Putin regime could, for most practical purposes, be characterized as a Constitutional Monarchy. While Czar Vladimir holds less power than the terrible absolute rulers who presided over Russia in the past, he holds powers which can be seen as broadly comparable to those of the German Kaiser before the First World War.

While we must be wary of President Putin, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of our working with him. In fact, we’re likely to be a lot better off if we do. A strong Russia allied with the United States would be a vital pillar of any system of global security. While such a Russia would, of course, maintain its own interests, careful American diplomacy might successfully channel those interests.

A good positive first signal would be giving the Russians a free hand in Chechnya. Criticism of Russian actions there is silly and ineffectual. We aren’t actually going to do anything to stop human rights abuses there and, in any case, given the al-Qaedaization of that conflict, I see little reason why we not find better uses of our time.

Russia might also wish to march into Central Asia. This could be more problematic. Some nations in that region have been helpful to the United States and, for that, they must be rewarded. But, as for the rest, they can be left to their fate. If, that is, it would help bring Russia closer to the American position.

While the pro-US democracies in the Baltic region and other US allies in the former Warsaw Pact must be guarded, I see little reason why the United States would trouble itself about the fate of anti-American Belarus and the Ukraine.

Naturally, such deliberate neglect by the United States would have a price: full Russian assistance in the War on Terrorism. This would include, but not be limited to, diplomatic support, military assistance, and favorable deals on Oil to make up for any cut-off of supplies in the Middle East. Overall, I think that this would be hardly a bad deal for either side. Russia gets to get back some of the lost territory it desires most and the United States gets possible Russian assistance for action against our common Islamist foe. Perhaps even such a deal could be used to bring Russia’s nuclear arsenal more firmly under control.

We run a great risk in doing this. I understand that. But wars are not won by the timid. We must survey and facts and respond.

posted by Yoshi at 1:34 AM

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

The Peace Martyr: What Rachel Corrie Means to the Left

It was a year ago today (March 16, 2003) that Rachel Corrie, traitor and terrorist supporter, was dispatched to Hell while attempting to defend the home of a terrorist from an Israeli bulldozer. Since that time she’s becoming something of a martyr to those on the left, a sort of symbol for their cause. Rachel, some of them will tearfully tell you, gave her life for peace. And so she did. The question is what sort of a peace they mean.

“Peace,” the Soviets used to say, “ultimately means communist world rule.” This is something close to the attitude of those who cry for “peace” today. The International Solidarity Movement, the group to which Rachel Corrie belongs, cries for peace while it shelters suicide bombers. It promotes the principles of non-violence by using its members to guard tunnels that smuggle explosives used by suicide bombers and cutting holes in fences designed to stop terrorists from murdering Israeli children on their way to school. If the ISM, and their ilk, gets their way there will be “peace” in Israel: in that brief interval between the death of the last Jew and when the Arabs start killing eachother.

Let’s tell the truth: the majority of “peace” activists aren’t for peace at all, they’re for victory by the other side. They want us to lay down our arms, not our enemies to lay down theirs as well. These are the same people who, during the Cold War, thought we could end the whole thing if only the West got rid of their nuclear weapons while the Soviets kept all theirs. And it would have ended it too, I suppose.

It’s time to tell the truth about our dear friend Rachel: she was nothing less than a solider of the enemy. She was impeding fully legitimate Israeli military operations and acting in support of the enemies of Israel. She had been ordered to move, but refused. Israel had every lawful right to simply shoot her, if it wished to do so. There’s no right to protest in a war zone. To postulate that one exists is an absurdity.

Rachel Corrie is regarded as a martyr by the left not because she died for “peace”, but because she died fighting their Zionist enemies. She simply did what most of them were too frightened to do: she stood up against Israel on a battlefield. If peace activists were truly interested in “peace”, they’d be riding on Israeli buses to attempt to deter homicide bombings, or at least doing something to try and protect the Israeli people from the murderous assault of a savage people.

There’s a strange spirit afoot in this world. This struggle against the terrorists is to be a difficult one, and there are only two sides in it. Those self described advocates of “peace” have chosen their side, it would seem.

It seems harsh to say it, but Rachel Corrie deserved to die. An enemy of our civilization and, indeed of all decent human beings, not a day before her death she was busy burning the American flag amid a crowd of America’s enemies. She was a solider of our enemies, we should feel no compunction over dispatching her to a well-earned final reward then we do over the destruction of garden-variety al-Qaeda members.

The activists and our enemies are one and the same. Whatever distinctions which once existed between them are disappearing. The terrorist and the activist work towards the very same goal: the destruction of American power and of the State of Israel.

This is what “peace” means to them: an end to American strength. While they may have different end goals (for example, I don’t imagine that most of the homosexuals among the activists look forward to being stoned to death by Islamists. Perhaps a few do, but not most), however, their short-term goals are exactly the same. The activists cannot build their post-modern paradise with the Americans and Israel about and the Islamist can’t institute worldwide Shairah law.

We need to understand what these activists, such as Rachel Corrie, are fighting for. There’s a widespread misapprehension about that we ought to respect these people because they’re “idealistic”. Nonsense. They’re agents of the enemy.

Look at the recent arrest of a former Democratic Congressional aide who passed information on to the Iraqi intelligence services. I doubt if any more than a fraction of self-described activists would do differently if given the chance. They’re out to undermine and destroy America’s power in the world.

Frankly, I think it’s time that we begin to purge some of these people from positions where they can endanger America’s future. Given all the tears shed for Rachel Corrie, I cannot help but conclude that her confederates are strewn throughout the government and other vital sectors.

This is a democratic society and people are, of course, free to hold whatever opinions they like. We ought not be throwing people in jail simply for thoughts. But that doesn’t mean we ought to employ them in our public services or let them teach in our schools. The advent of loyalty oaths would, in and of itself, weed out some of the more annoying and ardent activists.

Burn in Hell, Rachel Corrie and all like you.

posted by Yoshi at 12:34 AM

Monday, March 15, 2004

Odd Times

Here's a New York Times story that has some really, really bad news for John Kerry. Naturally, the story buries this information.

The Times/CBS News poll offered the latest evidence that the race for president was as tight as has long been predicted. Even after two weeks in which Mr. Bush has run televised advertisements promoting himself and attacking Mr. Kerry, and in which Mr. Kerry has enjoyed the glow of favorable coverage that greeted his near-sweep of Democratic primaries, the two men are effectively tied, with 46 percent of voters saying they supported Mr. Bush and 43 percent backing Mr. Kerry.

Get that? Bush is beating Kerry by three points among all adults. Given all the negatives, that's pretty damned good. But that's not really all that important. It's far too soon to tell anything about that. Here's the important part:

The candidacy of Ralph Nader looms as a potentially lethal threat to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House: With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry by 46 percent to 38 percent, with Mr. Nader drawing 7 percent of the votes. In a sign of the polarized electorate Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are facing, three-quarters of supporters of each candidate asserted they would not change their mind before the election.

Get that? Given all of the talk about how Democrats are:
1) United.
2) Energized.
3) "Anybody but Bush"

Don't you think that Nader should be getting about 1-2% in the poll, especially at this early point in the campaign. John Kerry really hasn't had time yet to piss anyone off. This is seriously bad news for the Kerry campaign. This means that some percentage of the left is really, really, resistant to John Kerry.

As well, the same CBS/NYT poll shows that Kerry's favorable/unfavorable has slipped to 28/29 in two weeks (it was previously at 37/28). That's a pretty strong southward movement in his favorables.

Other oddities in the poll:
By 59 percent to 35 percent, respondents said they supported a constitutional amendment that would "allow marriage only between a man and a woman." But 56 percent said that they did not view the issue as important enough to merit changing the nation's constitution.

Ummm... Yeah. I never get these people, the ones who support a Constitutional Amendment, but don't think the issue is important enough for a Constitutional Amendment. That's a position worthy of John Kerry, come to think of it. Still, polls are now showing support for the Amendment consistently near 60%, and I don't think it'll be going down anytime soon.

"It seems like a waste of time and energy when we should be thinking more about figuring out how we're going to have Social Security," said Ronald Sharp, 44, a Republican and retired mental health care aide from Detroit.

What's odd about this picture? I wonder how many "mental health care aides" get to retire at 44, in any case. He must be the one Republican in Detroit.

posted by Yoshi at 10:59 PM

Sunday, March 14, 2004

The Treason of the Spaniards

What happened in Spain’s election was almost enough to make one feel nostalgic for General Franco (who is, unfortunately, still dead). Whatever other flaws he had (and they were both serious and numerous) at least he’d have made sure that Spain dealt harshly with Islamic terrorists and their allies. There is no inherent legitimacy in democratic decisions. A bad decision remains one even if it is taken in such a fashion. The choice of the Spanish people to, in response to the Madrid bombings, opt for the road of cowardice and of the appeasement of terror is such a decision.

The victory of the Socialists over the Popular Party in the Spanish general election is a victory for the terrorists and, indeed, for all the enemies of civilization. It is hard to understate the significance of what has happened here: al-Qaeda has, with the assistance of its confederates within Spain, defeated one of our staunchest allies in the war and created a template for the defeat of other allies. Every Spaniard who cast a Socialist ballot has blood on their hands. Not only the blood of their own countrymen, whose memory they have spit upon and dishonoured, but also those of their fellow Europeans who are now almost certain to die in follow-on assaults.

Ultimately, in this great fight against the terrorists and their allies, America stands alone. Even our staunchest allies can be removed from this fight not by the arms of our enemies buy by the cowardice and immorality of their own people. The terrorists, it would seem, have found the great Achilles’ heel of the West: the waning will of the people. Even if they were to deploy nuclear weapons, al-Qaeda and its ilk lack the force necessary to openly defeat the West on the battlefield. They can win only by breaking the will of the people, by using the threat of death to force them to submit.

From the point of view of al-Qaeda and other groups the point must seem obvious. In nations where the War on Terrorism is already unpopular, the people are far more likely to blame their own government for any attack than they are to blame the terrorists. This, in my opinion, makes it virtually certain that both Britain and Italy will soon be attacked.

Perhaps Britain is still the county it was in 1940 and it would come through an attack today as splendidly as it did then. But I’m not quite so sure. Frankly I think that the energy of that once-great Island race may have been sapped by generations of socialism and the cancer of moral Leftism. For all the good that Thatcherism did, it seems to have failed to arrest the Europeanization of Britain: a fact which makes it likely that, sooner or later, that nation too will head down the road of European cowardice and defeatism. In the event of a major terrorist attack, such as the one we saw in Madrid, I believe that Prime Minister Blair might be forced to resign. Similarly, the position of the present Italian government would also be seriously endangered by an attack. The moral courage of Europeans has evaporated along with the morality of their societies. Their will to resist has been worn away by decades of socialism, nihilism, pacifism, atheism, and sexual perversion. While they are useful to have along when available, relying upon them to remain solid in the long term would be idiotic.

More than anything else what this demonstrates is the folly of relying upon “allies” to wage the war on terrorism. Any war effort which relied entirely upon a “Coalition” could be shattered by just one bomb followed by one election (or vote in Parliament). A “multilateral” war effort requires the consent of everyone. Instead of tailoring a conflict to meet with the approval of one electorate, it would be necessary to seek it of twenty or so.

There is a certain sentiment out there, and it is the one which triumphed in Spain, that holds that if we leave the terrorists alone, then they will leave us alone. Just give us our Gay Weddings, our MTV, and the rest, some say, and we’ll be happy to leave the Islamist to do as he likes elsewhere. The war, in this view, is the fault of those in the West who have been foolish enough to stand up to our enemies. It treats the Islamist as a force of nature, an unstoppable fact. It is the mentality of defeatism.

This is the sort of mentality which underlies all the arguments against the war. After all, if we were simply to throw up our arms and let the terrorists have their way in the Middle East, what would happen to us? The Islamists would be so busy conquering and subduing people overseas that it would be a very long time. Sure, some hot heads would attack us anyways, but most of the terror-masters would be busy for decades. A few thousand would probably die, but such is something that will simply have to be accepted. This, I believe, is their attitude.

Appeasement merely trades the dangers of today for a greater danger tomorrow. Those who believe that Islamists could be satisfied by, for example, a Spanish withdrawal from Iraq, are utterly deluded. Perhaps in the short-term it might buy some time, but in the long term it merely promises a confrontation between Spain and a rising Islam. Islamist propaganda is often riddled with references to Andalusia and Granada, the lost lands of the Moors in Spain. This isn’t idle chatter. They Islamists really want them back: it’s not on the top of the agenda, but it will be as soon as other, more pressing, items are dispensed with.

Opposition to our war against the terrorists is treason against God and all of the decent and moral humans who have ever lived. It is an egregious insult to our forbearers and, indeed, to our civilization as a whole. Support for the policies of appeasement is a morally criminal act.

By responding to this act with cowardice, many Spaniards have done nothing less than commit treason against Western Civilization as a whole. They are making a Devil’s bargain, one where they’ve traded the lives and security of their children (and those of other Westerner’s children) for a little happiness today. They’d rather go about their everyday lives, lay about, and ignore the gathering storm.

We need to remember this. Our war against the terrorists cannot be won in a single day, but it can be lost in one. If John Kerry were to be elected President this November then the terrorists will have won or, at the very least, set us back a decade or more. A vote for John Kerry is an act of moral cowardice, of unbridled stupidity, of wanton immorality, and, indeed, of treason against all that is good and decent in the world.

Spain has fallen to the terrorists. We cannot let it happen here, no matter the cost.

posted by Yoshi at 7:30 PM

Friday, March 12, 2004

The Case Against Abortion

I want to discuss abortion. I realize that this is a sensitive topic so, contrary to form, I mean to discuss it respectfully. It is an issue which, I feel, must be addressed and discussed. I don’t plan on making religious arguments: those arguments speak to none but the already converted. Instead I want to talk facts, numbers and, most of all: losses.

I consider myself pro-life, with a few exceptions. I’m willing to permit abortion in cases where the life or the health of the mother is seriously endangered (I add “seriously” because any pregnancy carries with it, to some degree, danger. I refer to dangers beyond the normal). I’m also willing to accept the necessity of the practice in cases of rape or incest. Some argue against this (making the very good point that a child cannot choose their father), but I would argue that to force a rape victim to carry a child against their will is nothing less than a further perpetuation of the rape. The unborn child is made a victim in this case, but it is a victim of the father. More controversially, I’d also be willing to see an exception placed into law in cases where the unborn child is clearly damaged. Many are unwilling to make this statement, because it makes one sound like a Eugenicist. I don’t believe that to be true at all: I believe it to be common sense that women ought not be required, by law, to bear children who have no chance of ever contributing usefully to society.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s discuss why I’m opposed to abortion in general. What I’m opposed to are that great majority of abortions that do occur: elective abortions. Specifically those that occur for no reason other than that the woman does not wish to have a child at that very moment, as she would find it inconvenient to do so. This is a practice which has claimed, at the very minimum, tens of millions of potential humans in the United States since Roe v. Wade was decided. Think about that for a moment. Tens of millions of potential persons lost and, given that many of the first ones killed would now be old enough to have children themselves.

I am not foolish enough to pretend that, absent the legalization of abortion, all of those unborn children would have been successfully brought to term. Some, I’m sure, would never have been conceived. Others would have been aborted illegally. Others would have simply offset children who were eventually born in our time and would not have been otherwise (for example, a woman who had an abortion at twenty and had a child at thirty might have never had that second child if the original had been born). Still, let us (for the sake of argument) suppose that twenty million of the roughly forty million children aborted in the United States since Roe would have been carried to term and that those would, by this point, have had another five million children of their own.

Think about that for a moment. Think of the costs. Another twenty five million people would, in all probability, mean another trillion dollars in Gross Domestic Product. It would mean a bigger American market and, therefore, more jobs. It would mean more men of military age. It would mean more scientists, more teachers, more cops: more of everything. Certainly it would, to some degree, also mean more of all the things we find less desirable. But, in the end, the good would (as in almost all groups of humans) outweigh the bad.

In the last thirty years more potential Americans have been claimed at the hands of abortionists than the total of people who were killed by Hitler and Stalin combined. This is not an emotionalist ranting: this is a fact. Now, some might be comfortable with simply accepting that toll as the price of the sexual revolution: but I am not.

Abortion weakens the nation. It deprives it of its most valuable resource: human beings. An America without abortion would be a stronger nation; I can see no questioning this. Those who promote the practice are promoting a peculiar vision of individual “freedom” at the expense of the well-being of the Republic as a whole.

And what argument is there in support of abortion-on-demand? The only which is seriously put forward is that of a “right” to “control one’s body.” One of course, ordinarily possesses this right. Few are seeking to force women to bear children that they do not consent to bear. Certainly, I do not wish to do so.

But what is a woman doing when she consents to a sexual act if she is not consenting to, potentially, bear children? Certainly there are many measures which can be taken to reduce this risk (and, in fact, reduce it to essentially zero), but some degree of risk remains in any case.

What the advocates of abortion-on-demand seek is personal freedom without responsibility. They seek to forge a sort of strange androgyny by giving women the “freedom” to behave sexually as men do. The advocates of this practice seek to evade the consequences of their own actions.

Abortion is proving to be a method of slow suicide for the West. We are reducing our numbers at times when more are demanded. I have essentially zero doubt that, if abortion were generally unavailable in Europe, their birth rates would be much closer to the replacement rate. Certainly, the United States would be much healthier with a population of native-born Americans swelled by as much as 10%.

I’m optimistic on this front. The widespread availability of conventional birth control, combined with a passing of the fevered days of the Sexual Revolution, has certainly greatly reduced pro-abortion extremism. Polls consistently show that a large majority of the American people hold, to some degree, anti-abortion attitudes.

I don’t expect to see all abortion ruled illegal, nor would I quite wish it so. But I do expect it to be increasingly heavily restricted. Additionally, I think, the odds are rather high that sooner or later (so long as Republicans hold the White House), Roe v. Wade (and other pro-abortion rulings such as Casey v. Planned Parenthood) will be overturned, and we will see the nation move to a sort of patchwork solutions, with almost all abortions being illegal in some states and legal in others. This, I think, is about the best we can hope for in the end.

posted by Yoshi at 11:46 PM

Thursday, March 11, 2004

The Dead of Spain

We’re still not sure exactly who was responsible for the recent atrocity in Madrid. Initial speculation focused on the ETA, a violent Basque separatist group. Now, after a claim of responsibility by an affiliated group, most people are looking towards al-Qaeda. Frankly, on reflection, I believe that this was probably a joint operation, given evidence linking both the ETA and al-Qaeda to the attack.

The fact that the sort of explosives used match up with those that the ETA has been caught with in the past points directly at them. The operational methods (which are inconsistent with those of the ETA in