Doom, death, and destruction

Ok -- so there was some outrageous mistreatment of prisoners by Americans running a prison over in Iraq around a year ago. The crime was reported, and internal investigations were going on to try and punish the perputrators. There was a press release a couple of months ago that abuse had been reported and that people would be punished.

Then someone leaked photos (and what sicko TOOK these photos? I hope it was someone trying to expose the problem, not someone who wanted the photos for keepsakes!) and the press has, of course, released them.

Hey, it sells commercials and newspapers on the Western end, and it "proves" America is evil on the Islamist and Leftist ends.

So... the important question that is being posed to the public is -- why didn't the US Government (Pentagon, specifically) make a huge public deal out of this? The Anti-American lobby says its because they don't want the world to know what the US is REALLY doing there. And of course, they avoid other explanations, because they don't back their world view.

I'll propose another one... how about this? Publicizing this has a detrimental effect on the mission -- which is to leave a free and prosperous Iraq -- one that is not friendly to Al Queda et. al. Publicizing this fuels misplaced anger and hatred.

Oh it's not misplaced, you say?

When the actions of a minority cause you to paint all with the same brush, what do they call that... hmmm.... well, if it were a race you were painting with that broad brush, they'd call it racism.

If you think that most of the American Military aren't disgusted and ashamed of the actions of these people, you're guilty of that kind of prejudice.

What good, so far, has come out of making these abuses public outside of what was released to the press much earlier this year?

Let me pause so you all can reflect on that.

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Now, what bad has come out of it? It's given people an excuse to commit a grizzly murder on someone who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Is that good? Its incited more hatred and suspicion from people we want to help, and has made more determined in their hatred people whom we are trying to eliminate (Islamists and their terrorist tactics). That hasn't helped. The constant coverage and new "breaking" photos (more of the ones that were taken last year) give the impression that the abuse is still rampant and going on.

On the other hand, it has sold a lot of newscopy, and commercial time on news networks and strengthened the leftists' position. I suppose you could say that the fact that the President and Rumsfeld have both expressed disgust and shame and condemned the actions and apologized for it is positive (what Arab country or terrorist organization would do that?) -- but, since these people are eager to believe that America is Evil, they will refuse to believe the condemnation and apolgy is sincere, no matter how sincere it really is.

It has, unfortunately, delayed a free and prosperous Iraq. On top of that, it means more Iraqis and Americans will die to further the agenda of the Islamists.

Back to "one bad apple" again...

The headlines today are not good. Apparently we've had some boys (and girls) behaving badly over in Iraq. What do I think now?

The left will have a field day with this. They love it.

I think the same thing the President thinks about it....

"I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. I didn't like it one bit."
...
"That's not the way we do things in America."

Oh, Phil... you're so naive. When will you realize what's really going on?

The left will take an incident like this and use it to "prove" their long-standing foregone conclusion that it's what all the American military are really doing and of course it runs up to the top, the Evil (non)President George W. Bush, who wants to whip the Iraqis into submission so he can have all of it's oil and share the profits with his cronies. Well, that's the Leftist fantasy, anyway, because it supports the leftist myth that all wealth is gained by unfair exploitation and that all American military action is driven soley by economic interests, that there is no such thing as benevolence. And if any other motive than benevolence factors into a situation, then any benevolent motives are to be disregarded.

Bunk.

Oh, according to BBC, the footage of British soldiers participating in (I don't know if it was the same incident that the Americans were involved in) it was turned over by decent folk in the military who were just as disgusted as we are ... which fits most of them.

I'd rant on, but -- if you're a leftist, you've already stopped listening. And if you're not.... you probably agree with me.

Post-WWII Borders

I know that Britain made some huge errors at the end of WWII, and the US has made many bad mistakes in the region since then. I understand and acknowledge those issues.

However, I think that while you can hold up some glaring examples, by and large if an Iraqi citizen is going about his or her business and not doing anything wrong (looting, blowing up pipelines, shooting at them), the US military will leave them alone. It serves them no purpose to deliberately antagonize the population. The last thing they need is more enemies. It is counterproductive to the goal. They know it, and the Bush administration knows it.

Keep in mind that most of the big European countries and Russia that opposed the invasion had a hand in Saddam's checkbook in direct violation of the UN embargo Oil-For-Food policy. Many had a strong financial interest in keeping Saddam in power. When the law (International Law in this case) becomes corrupt and is wrong, it is right to buck it. If that were not true, we'd still have slavery here in the US and Apartheid would still flourish in South Africa.

I understand the US's role in Saddam's power as well. And by 1990 he was so well entrenched and guarded and wielded so much power (and not just due to US support either, but by France and Germany and Russia) it had become impossible for the Iraqis to kick him out. The US thought they could after the first Gulf war and pulled back, figuring it would be better for Iraqis to do it themselves (which would be true if it were possible) but Saddam showed that his hold on power was overwhelming. World opinion at the time was that we should back off. It did not work, and with horrifically tragic results.

The World's best intelligence agencies all believed that Saddam was a threat to the region. Not Iraq. Saddam Hussein. Saddam himself nurtured this belief. He acted as though he had something to hide (probably ego and bravado played a big part in this). So the realistic choices were to A) Wait and see if he did something, B) remove him from power or C) try to contain him economically and militarily, which worked out to be essentially equivalent to A. After 9/11, we were much less willing to do A. Long before 9/11, the Clinton administration itself called for regime change in Iraq. But at the time it was politically impossible. After 9/11, it was still politically difficult.

So, based on the intelligence it had, (faulty or not) the Bush administration decided it was imperative to remove Saddam from power and that now was the best opportunity. Sure, it played up the noble side of freeing the Iraqi people even though that wasn't reason enough before. I don't fault any country for choosing its battles -- where and when to fight and where and when not to. But I never bought that as the primary reason for doing it. It doesn't mean it was a bad reason, it just wasn't enough. Who does not play up their simple noble reasons while downplaying the less noble or comprehensible ones? The perceived threat plus that, plus the best political opportunity to try to correct the 1991 mistake was enough for Bush, Jr. So the invasion happened. The question is, with all that behind us now and unchangeable, what do we do now?

Saddam Hussein is out of power. Most Iraqis believe that is a good thing. Most Iraqis want a free and independent Iraq. George Bush wants a free and independent Iraq. I want a free and Independent Iraq. And by independent that also means "not occupied". There are 25 Million Iraqis, and out of them 1 or maybe 2 million Islamists (not Islamics, Islamists --- big difference). As long as the Islamists and other anti-American/anti-west elements continue to fight against the US mission -- which is a free and independent Iraq -- it makes it difficult for the US to pull out. Right now the US military is the closest thing to viable law enforcement Iraq has (which is admittedly not ideal -- but that's the way these things go). Many people are working hard to change that, and many other people are working hard to make sure that doesn't happen. That second group of people ain't the Americans, and it's not even most Iraqis.

The best means of causing America to fail here is by forcing it to stay for an extended period of time, making it look like Bush didn't mean he wanted to free Iraq and get out and shifting sentiment against the US. This is what the Islamists want, because it is their only real chance of gaining power. They want the US to stay too long, or get out before they've been effectively neutralized. If the US leaves before that point, the Islamists can subdue the population by terror and force. If the US stays too long, they will gain more and more support from the general population. It's obviously not an ideal situation, but -- show me one! The balance between these timeframes is very important, and is likely the cause of any heavy-handedness you see. Would I have crushed the guy's taxi? I'd like to think not, but then again, I'm not there. It's too easy for me to sit back and tell them what they should have done in one isolated incident that I was shown. In the bigger context of the general mayhem and looting, was it the right thing to do? Maybe it was. In the face of such an overwhelming scene, perhaps one example is more effective than 1,000 arrests.

Here's the Bush administration's theory in a nutshell (and this addresses the list of other countries we're not invading if our cause is so noble, as well as trying to effect change in the most peaceful and self-determined way possible):

Iraq is a pretty well educated nation, highly capable, and with the natural resources it needs to be a strong and viable free country. If it successfully becomes a free independent nation, like Turkey -- what do you think will happen in Iran? Iran is also a well educated nation, and the younger population especially is pretty well fed up with the Islamist government. That government does not have anything close to the overwhelming power that the Hussein regime had in Iraq. The theory is is that it will accelerate an internal revolution (which is what has to happen for change to occur) in Iran.

If there are three strong, independent, and free Arab nations in the middle east, other Arab populations in nations Saudi Arabia and Syria are going to have to seriously question their leadership. And the middle east will change itself, no other invasions necessary. If it works, a LOT of people will be much better off.

As for Israel and the Palestinians… that goes back to the big mistakes Great Britain made at the end (well, actually during) WWII. But, those decisions were made, and now we have what we have 60 years later. The only thing I have to say is that had the Palestinians gone the way of Ghandi instead of Arafat, they'd have won their cause long ago. The west has a very difficult time siding with people who blow up random innocent people as their primary tactic for affecting change. You do understand that allowing that tactic to work logically leads to dire consequences for civilization everywhere. The world will be ruled by those who are willing to prey on innocents and control people with mankind's natural sympathy for others and fear for their own lives.

That pretty much sums up my point of view on the subject. I understand that it's possible to present a well-articulated argument against what was done and what is being done. Most of the people I know who agree with those arguments, however, don't seem to believe there can be any such articulation of a counter-argument. They blame it all on flag-waving and bible thumping, neither of which do I particularly associate myself with. I positively hate it when someone comes out with a stupid argument for the invasion. It doesn't help. I want to slap a lot of Fox News people upside the head.

I consider myself largely a Libertarian. Idealistically, Libertarians believe in practically no foreign policy -- live and let live. However, I also know that like most ideals, it is realistically impractical to try to adhere to 100% -- we don't live in a vaccuum.

Here's an Iraqi blog I like to read:

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com

I think the guy has a pretty good handle on the situation. Of course, that's just my opinion ;-)

...after a reply bringing up the US's mistakes in the Middle East

And after a reply bringing up the US's mistakes in the region and world opposition to the Iraq invasion.... I had the (preceding) to say...

Looting and US Troops' policing (tank crushing taxi video)

So this man had no problems taking other people's livlihoods from them by looting, but complains when his livlihood is taken from him. I understand that the punishment seems, and probably is, disproportionate; but….

One can't, on one hand, criticize the US forces for not doing enough to stop looting while at the same time criticizing them doing what they can to deter it. There are 25,000,000 Iraqis, and what, 140,000 soldiers -- mostly kids -- some, who, unfortunately can be brash in their decision-making. In a situation like this one can't excactly set up a court of law. I can easily imagine Saddam crushing the taxi with the man in it. Islamic law would have his hand cut off. This man walked away with life and limb intact.

I'm no cart blanc Bush supporter (I did not vote for him, nor did I vote for Gore), but I do not believe he is an evil man in any way. I don't belive the US is completely off base in what it's doing. There is certainly a lot of tragedy that I'm very glad is not my own, but then again there was a lot of tragedy before as well. The US certainly makes mistakes, but it's very easy for the rest of the world to sit back and criticize what the US is doing while they would do nothing. As a matter of fact, the US even gets criticized when it does nothing. It was roundly criticized for not removing Saddam in 1991, just as it would have been roundly criticized for doing just that, even then. Now that it has done just that, it's getting criticized anyway. We're pretty much damned if we do and damned if we don't.

In general, you won't find me siding exclusively with the left or with the right on most issues. I do recognize propaganda from both sides when I see it. The right would have us belive that we know what's going on and everything's under control. The left would have us believe that there is an evil conspiriacy whose goals range from genocide or war on a particular religion to lust for the control of oil. I don't believe either one of them. I do believe that the real situation is much more complicated than either side is willing to make it. Liberals call me conservative. Conservatives call me liberal. That's probably because I refuse to be polarized. I see where the administration is going with this (it's not what most uneducated Bush supporters think -- it has very little directy to do with Bin Laden), and I also recognize the dangers and the pitfalls. I think people who believe Bush administration does not also understand the dangers and pitfalls generally have more of an axe to grind with its party than its policy. Ultimately, I believe more in the good side of human nature than the bad side, and I hope that the plan works because really, there's no going back now.

Because if the US pulled out of Iraq tomorrow (or even on July 1), it would be roundly criticized.

A Year Later

It's been a year now. No WMD have been found. Things stand somwhere between the optimistic goals of the Bush administration and the pessimistic doom of war opponents. No surprise there.

I went to lunch with some friends yesterday -- people I like a lot and hold in high regard as human beings... however, politically we're pretty divergent when it comes to this. One of them sent me a clip of an army tank crushing the vehicle of an apparent looter -- his taxi, his livlihood as an example of the "heavy handedness" of the American forces.

As the Jackson 5 put it... "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, baby..."

And on top of that, I had a few other problems with that assertion... so I replied. I'll post my ramblings next: (of course, this is a blog, so you'll have to go "up" to the next post)

Arab Press Strikes Again

I try to find Arab perspectives where I can find them. One place I go (because I can read it) is http://www.arabnews.com. Yesterday's top two headlines:

• Editorial: Against the Occupation
  
• Exclusive: US Occupies Baghdad
  

The editorial was certainly presumptive and unfair. The article with the more inflammatory headline was actually pretty fair.

But they still chose those words. Why? Arab intellectuals have for years been feeding their populations a line that all their problems are caused by Israel and America. They now believe it to the point that they are unwilling (and practically unable) to entertain the possibility that Bush is telling the truth when he says "Iraq will be governed by the Iraqi people", and "This is a liberation, not an occupation." And there's the other reason the headlines and verbage is slanted that way -- because it sells copy. Because that's what the population wants to believe.

Why do they want so badly to believe that the U.S. is evil and imperialistic? I'll get to that in a minute, but let's talk about how it doesn't help matters. Suppose they are wrong and that America truly intends to help the Iraqis set up a democratic system of self-government, free from puppet strings. Suppose they somehow chose to believe that America really is there to help. It would be much easier, then, for America to actually help if America is not constantly having to fight the perception that they're really there to take over the oil or destroy Islam or kill the Iraqi people.

Let's put it this way. Nobody else has done anything to help the Iraqi people. Certainly no Arab nation. Some have actually sent nationals from their country to go fight to support the regime that was so obviously one of the worst to its own people in the history of civilization. Sad thing that it happens to occupy the territory of is commonly accepted as the birthplace of civilization. I think it can be safely argued that fighting in support of the Hussein regime is not helping the Iraqi people -- although the Arab press has certainly made it look that way by skewing their reporting in that direction. And why would they skew their reporting in that direction? I'll give you three possibilities, some of and probably all of which may be true. 1) they believe the story that America is evil 2) they want to believe it because it deflects responsibility for their own problems away from themselves, and 3) Their governments may actually want them to believe it to deflect criticism away from themselves.

If the Arabs (ok, not all of them, but it's safe to say most of them) have made up their minds that Bush is lying about Iraqi freedom and non-occupation, then nothing can be done to convince them. They scour the facts for anything that can be used as evidence to support that view, and either ignore any evidence to the contrary, or do whatever they can to discredit evidence to the contrary.

Because that is what they want to believe.

Statues falling down

One of the biggest things since the Berlin Wall. Mind you, the Berlin Wall falling was a bigger event than the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein on Baghdad's Firdos Square today... unless perhaps you happen to be an Iraqi. I cringed for us when the Marines put an American Flag over Saddam's face briefly before taking it off.... I knew how that would play in the Arab press. Apparently so did the Pentagon. Not sure if the soldier planned to take it off that fast or if the order came to do so, but an Iraqi flag would have been much better. Fortunately, an Iraqi standing on the tank did have a pre-gulf-war Iraqi flag, although not as big -- which the Marine put up there. Unfortunately he didn't spread it out so you could see it prominently, and it was too small to cover the face and stay there... so it was put on as more of a "scarf". Still, the crowd cheered that. So did I.

I can understand a young marine putting our flag up there. Marines are fiercely proud of their country, and these boys (and gals, too) just went through hell to get to the point this moment symbolized -- the mission of toppling the regime. And this wasn't planned out. Apparently a crowd of Iraqis were trying to topple the statue with a large rope which wasn't getting the job done, and the Marines came in with cables and a tank to help them out. Still, it would have been better to give the moment to the Iraqi crowd. Oh well. They're young, proud Marines, not diplomats, and probably didn't understand what it might look like to have the flag of another country displayed prominently after a successful invasion, no matter what the motives were.

Meantime, only blocks away at Bagdhad University, a firefight was going on with another group of Marines.... the war is not over. But resistance is becoming increasingly irrelavent as the people of Iraq lose their fear of reprisals from the government which obviously no longer has control of the country. Still, after 34 years I can understand that that fact might take a while to sink in.

I hope Saddam is dead, but even if he isn't, it doesn't matter. The game is up as far as he's concerned.

My response to an editorial in yesterday's paper

The author said this war doesn't make him feel safer -- that he was never afraid of Saddam's tin-pot dictatorship, and pointed out that Saddam had no missiles that would go over 200 miles and he couldn't even fly over 2/3 of his country. He was concerned as well that his teenage son may have to go fight someday because of this action.

Perhaps you have zoomed in too close and you're not seeing the bigger picture. You say you've never been afraid of tin-pot Saddam, and cite the fact that he didn't have missiles that could go over 200 miles and he couldn't even fly over 2/3 of his country. Both true, but it is part of the bigger context of why we went to war in the first place. Saddam has proven that he will do what he thinks he can get away with, and he's up to no good. The reason Saddam doesn't have missiles that can go over 200 miles and can't fly over 2/3's of his country is not because the Sacred U.N. passed resolutions drawing magic lines in the sky and forbidding him to have such missiles. Rather it is because the U.S. has been there enforcing those resolutions with real planes and real missiles and real guns. This is the main reason for a fairly permanent and substantial U.S. military presence in the middle east since the Gulf War. It unfortunately gives the appearance to the Arab street that we are occupiers. This was at the core Bin Laden's anger at the U.S. There is something to the saying "fish or cut bait". Before we leave, we have to get rid of the reason we stayed there in the first place; and that is to contain Saddam Hussein's regime. Leaving him there would be a grave mistake. The no-fly zones would be gone, and there'd be no chance for even farcical inspections. Saddam would be once again free to test the waters -- at which point you should definitely be afraid.

I have a step-son in the Marine Reserves who will likely go active when he graduates in a year. I fear for him, too, but I also see what's going on in the world. If the bad guys are the only ones allowed to act with force, the bad guys will soon rule the world. I'm proud he's willing to step up and face them.

Except for ending slavery and stopping Nazism, Communism, and Facism, war has never sovled anything.

Under Three Weeks

So, here we are, just under three weeks into this conflict. We've had lots of shift in press opinion (negative, positive, extremely negative, now positive again) and little shift in public opinion, at least here in the States. We're seeing some bizarre things especially on the Iraqi side of the propaganda war -- except that all along I've said that the Iraqi strategy would have to be all propaganda -- and the longer they can stretch the war out (more deaths, more support from Arab nations viewing them as courageous), the better propaganda they'll have. Clearly their military is rag-tag and disorganized. So they'll say anything to keep the people fighting, knowing full well those fighters are very likely signing their own death warrants by fighting.

One thing I find odd is war critics out of one side of their mouths condemning the fact that we didn't go past the UN objective in 1991 of liberating Kuwait and left Iraq's internal affairs to Iraq once that was accomplished (resulting in the mass slaughter of Shiites and Kurds) and out of the other side of their mouths condemning the fact that this time we're going in despite the U.N.'s ... we should say "non-approval" instead of "dis-approval" and doing what we think is right. Many around the world who mistake resolve for arrogance.

The farther we get into this, it appears more and more that the Bush administration was basically right about this. Of course, the Bush administration isn't the first to talk about the necessity of regime change in Iraq. Bill Clinton addressed the nation saying the same thing in December, 1998.

For those of you who still don't understand why we needed to do this, let's review:

• In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait with the intention of annexing it to Iraq.
  
• The UN ordered Iraq out, but of course, Iraq refused.
  
• Forces, mostly US forces, went in to expel him and did so.
  
• Saddam signed a cease-fire agreement to keep himself in power, agreeing to get rid of long range missiles and Chem/Bio/Nuclear weapons.
  
• The US encouraged but did not get involved in an uprising to topple the regime, letting the Iraqi people decide their future for themselves. They failed tragically. The US has been criticized for not assisting, largely by the same folks who don't want us assisting now.
  
• Following mass Iraqi extermination in the north and south, the UN imposed (largely by use of US and UK forces) two "no-fly" zones to inhibit the regime from the kind of mass murder it committed.
  
• In order to enforce these zones and keep Iraq in check and keep any teeth behind UN Weapons Inspections, US and UK troops remained stationed in the middle east, particularly in Saudi Arabia.
  
• The fact that Western Infidels had military bases in the sacred land of Saudi Arabia incensed many Muslim Arabs. One of them was Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi himself.
  
• Saddam meanwhile practiced a game of denial and deception, threatening the lives of UN Weapons Inspectors, harassing them, and leading them around by the nose
  
• Saddam Hussein continues pushing his limits and only backing down when the threat of military action (again, by way of the US) is eminent.
  
• When Saddam felt enough military pressure was off, he kicked the weapons inspectors out altogether.
  
• Clinton followed with a limited military response
  
• In a few military police actions around the world involving the UN (Somalia), the US pulled out after suffering a few casualties. This further emboldened Osama Bin Laden's Al Quaida
  
• Al Quaida continued attacking US interests around the world. It tried bombing the World Trade Center from the parking garage below. That attempt failed. The US tried to treat it as a criminal action rather than an act of war with limited short-term success, but without much of an eye to the long-term Al Quaida strategy.
  
• The world does not peruse Bin Laden in any kind of organized, committed fashion. He finds refuge in Afghanistan, sheltered by a brutal fanatical religious regime sympathetic to his cause. Like mold in a dark, warm, wet spot, Al Quaida thrives, permanently entwining itself with the Afghan government.
  
• Continued US military presence in Saudi Arabia & Iraq fuels the Arab point of view that the US is an imperialist country bent on taking over the middle east... the abundant conspiracy theorists continue to tie this to the belief that Israel intends to take over the middle east and the US intends to back it. Widespread public hatred for the US continues to build.
  
• 9/11 Al Quaida finally succeeds in blowing up the World Trade Center in New York, intentionally targeting and killing over 3,000 civilians -- also kills a couple hundred at the Pentagon with another airplane. But for the heroic struggles of passengers aboard another plane, the White House would likely have been hit as well.
  
• Like Dec 8, 1941 -- the Sleeping Giant of the United States awakens. It realizes it can no longer afford to let enemies like Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein fester until they can hatch whatever plans they will. Afghanistan is sanitized. Al Quaida's roots there are obliterated. A largely grateful Afghan population rejoices -- right in the face of Arab opinion that they were in fact not oppressed and the US was simply waging a war on Islam.
  
• A main source of Arab anger (besides Israeli support) is the US's strong presence in the region. The main reason for that prolonged presence was to contain Saddam Hussein. Before we pull out of the middle east, it needs to be stabilized so there's no reason for us to be there in the first place. Step number 1, regime change in Iraq.
  

So those reasons are, in summary

• Remove the current main regional threat in the Middle East -- Saddam Hussein's regime
  
• Remove the means of that threat (WMD) -- mostly to help prove to the world how much of a threat he was
  
• This gets rid of the main reason we have so much presence in the region in the first place, and we can pull out, helping calm Arab opinion, and showing them that they were wrong about imperialist motives
  
• Help the people of Iraq establish a free, democratic government to help improve their lives, and to show the rest of the middle east what can be when your people are free
  
• Show other bad guys in the world that we will come kick their butts -- they can't just kill with impunity.
  

That's all for now.

They came here to kill us

They came here to kill us Heard a quote from an Iraqi woman who is obviously against the war. I just have one question for her... If the coalition is there to kill Iraqis, is there really any doubt in your mind that millions of Iraqis would be dead? The U.S. certainly has the means and access.

No, we came to Iraq to separate an evil man who had too much power from that power. He's had it for a long time -- but when it became clear what his motives were and that he had the will to carry out hideous atrocities on people he didn't like, he was diagnosed as a cancer on the world that cannot be allowed to grow in strength and spread. He is as evil a man as you can find. He has built up a power-base and has a will to remain in power that requires force to remove him. Without war, he will remain in power. When he dies, his sons who are just as bad will inherit the power structure.

So why, if all you anti-war people outside of Iraq are willing to ignore the brutality of this man's regime, the death, torture, and suffering it causes, are you not willing to accept, if grudgingly, the unfortunate death and suffering it takes to remove him from power? Why do you gloss over the fact that this man's war plan is designed to require the targeting of military operations in civilian areas in order for the coalition's efforts to remove him from power to be successful? He is using our desire to protect the innocent against us. He makes it so that to protect them from us is to protect him, which in the end doesn't protect them at all. You act as if all would be well if we didn't undertake this effort. At least when it is over, the Iraqi people will no longer have to live in fear of expressing the wrong opinion and watch their family members be raped and tortured and killed before the same happens to them.

Make no mistake, we are there because he represents a threat to our security first, and to benefit the Iraqi people second. That doesn't mean we're not doing it to benefit the Iraqi people.

If we were there to kill them they'd be dying in numbers orders of magnitude larger than they are dying. Right now the best estimates are hundreds of Iraqis (and it is unclear which side killed many of them) -- as opposed to millions.

Over-Covered

The play-by-play coverage of the war; the instantaneous analysis of every detail -- provides a myopic view of the war. At first, it was "Gee whizz, look how fast we're moving!" Then about a week ago, it was "Oh my God, the resistance is fierce!" when we suffered a few casualties and mishaps. It quickly went from that to "hey, it was a bad plan, we are ill-prepared". Now with a rescue and the destruction of the Baghdad Republican Guard division and a quick stab toward Baghdad, it's all "Gee whizz" again.

Under-Covered We haven't seen what's been going on on the other side except for some pictures of distant explosions and the close-up pictures of death and destruction that the Iraqi regime and Arab press want people to see.

If we heard up front the damage being inflicted on the opposition with half the scrutiny we're seeng on the coalition side, maybe this roller-coaster would be a bit more balanced.

Hope

A good friend just sent me this link Saudi Foriegn Minister: Saddam should step down

Indeed, as Saddam asks all of his people to die for him, he is hiding far below the earth in bunkers designed to keep him alive. While he waits it out like a coward, he orders the killing of his people, taking their lives for them if they refuse to give them up voluntarily.

Terrorism & Civilian Deaths

I've alluded to my position on terrorism -- I think we should be careful and define it so that everybody agrees on what we're talking about. Here's a dictionary definition:

ter·ror·ism /ter'-or-iz-um/ n : the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

That's too vague for me. Here's my definition:

ter·ror·ism /ter'-or-iz-um/ n : the systematic practice of intentionally threatening, maiming, or killing civilians as a means of coercion

To wit, I've often heard it stated:

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Wrong.

It is one thing for military forces to battle other military forces or directly target command and control personnel in a conflict. It is quite another to go out and blow up random civilians to frighten a population into buckling to your demands. It is one of the most callous forms of evil that humans perpetrate on other humans.

Don't get me wrong. Killing people is, in general, bad. It should only be done in the most dire circumstances. But leaving non-combatants out of it is one of the most basic rules of engagement if you want to claim any moral high ground.

In war, civilian casualties are unavoidable. There has never been a war where non-combatants -- civilians, have not died. The fundamental difference is intent. A terrorist directly intends civilians as his primary target. It holds government institutions and police and the general population hostage to the will to protect non-combatants.

That being said, let's take a look at why military uniforms and markings are important to the rules of engagement. Mainly, it is a way of protecting civilians. It makes it easier to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

And now let's take a look at what happened in Iraq yesterday where 7 civilians were killed by coalition forces (in this case U.S. forces). Iraqi combatants have made it a practice to blur the lines between them and their civilian counterparts, trying their best to look like people coalition forces do not want to target (civilians... non combatants) to stage attacks on coalition forces. Why? To use the coalition's good will against the coalition itself. It directly takes good intentions and exploits them for evil. This is what the worst villains in the movies do.

At that point, what choice does a group of coalition soldiers have when a car load of people who appear to be civilians approaches, ignoring all signals and even warning shots to stop their vehicle but to fire into the vehicle? These soldiers are not about to harm someone who appears to be a civilian and appears to be cooperating with them.

This blurring of the lines between combatants and civilians has the effect of civilians in danger. It gives our forces the choice between fighting and removing the evil dictator, or killing people who may or may not be combatants. The line has been intentionally blurred by the Iraqi regime to maximize both civilian and coalition casualties. The only sure way to avoid such civilian casualties is not to ever fire on such a vehicle or group of individuals who by any outward appearance might seem to be a civilan. This leaves Saddam Hussein in power, free to continue using rape as a coercion tool, cutting people's tongues out, dropping them in acid and plastic shredders, spraying whole populations with poison gas -- and developing the means to extend this kind of brutality beyond its current borders. Which is the worse evil? One has to choose. Allow a great evil to continue, or cause your own albeit unintentional evil while trying to remove the greater evil. (He may be 67, but remember he has two sons cut from the same cloth and a massive support structure designed to preserve their power. Left alone, this evil will go on indefinitely).

Every decent human being abhors civilian casualties, including decent human beings put in a position of having to inflict them. And this is and always has been Saddam Hussein's entire war strategy. Make sure enough innocent people die (ok, part of it is to kill coalition forces when possible, too but...) to cause a massive world-wide cry for it to stop. If he can cause them himself and blame it on the coalition, he'll do it -- and I believe he already has and intends to keep doing so. I'm not saying the coalition hasn't inflicted civilian casualties, I'm just saying that when they have, it has been devoid of that intent and with remorse. You can't say that about Saddam. And as I've said in a previous article, civilian casualties help the Iraqi regime and immensely harm the coalition effort, so the coalition (besides not wanting to anyway because they're good people with good intentions) has a HUGE disincentive for killing civilians.

The Arab Street

Riled up. Hot boiling mad about something that is not excactly the truth. From what I'm seeing there is actually NOTHING the United States can do that would be right, including doing nothing. The problem is we have been "deamonized". What that basically means is what I said in the previous sentence -- we are just wrong, evil, bad no matter what we do or don't do. Saddam is our fault, but removing him by force is genocide or religicide. Applying diplomatic pressure with sanctions kills Iraqi children. Doing nothing allows the beast who (as it's already been established by the Arab street) is our problem to remain in power and keep his thumb squarely on his people and develop WMD to make the Arab hero he thinks he is (and apparently much of the Arab street does too) by perhaps wiping out most of the Israeli population or sicking Chem/Bio or at least dirty bombs on the U.S. via his own folks or convenient proxies like Al Quiada.

Ah, and that whole Israeli thing.... the West doesn't put it's point of view forward very well. I also kind of find it odd that the U.S. is expected to "solve" the Israel/Palestine problem, but of course everything we do is interference. I imagine anything short of saying that Israel no longer exists and it's all Palestine will be viewed as more "proof" that the U.S. is merely Zionism nationalized and empowered and we're all for our Jewish buddies in the Middle East taking over the entire middle east "From the Nile to the Euphrates" (apparently some Zionist version of "the 'Promised Land'"). Well, I can assure any open-minded person in the Middle East that the United States wants no part of any such thing, never has, and never will.

The way we do see it, though, is like this: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon... and the rest of the countries that most recently made up the Ottoman Empire (there were several empires before) were created in much the same way Israel was created. Some lines were drawn, admittedly arbitrarily and those lines are the source of much of the consternation in the mideast.... but none so much as the Palestine/Israel lines. At any rate, since they were created in the same manner, every middle eastern country had as much right to exist after WWI as any other, including Israel. But what happened the day after Israel became a soveriegn state? It was attacked by surrounding Arab countries.

Now let's review what would had happened if the Arabs had won. They would fully have expected that what was Israel would be the spoils of war, they would then control the area. They'd've re-drawn lines, and Israel would no longer exist... right? Anybody disagree with that?

But that's not what happened. Instead, Israel won, and took large chunks of territory from surrounding states that attacked it. Now remember what we just said: that had the Arab states that attacked Israel in the first place won that war, they would have expected to control what was once Israel and draw it right off the map as quickly and easily as the lines defining Iraq were drawn after WWI. The opposite happened. Israel expanded it's territory to include territory that was "won" from the attacking nations. But, they were expected to give it back. Can anyone say "double-standard"? I know the Arab street is fond of that term, but I'll bet it doesn't apply to them in their minds.

Don't get my wrong. I have sympathy for the Palestinians. Oddly, the very attack by various Arab states in support of them actually put the Palestinians in the terrible plight they're in now. They had a state, and they lost it. Now there's this sort of Quasi-State administered by Israel, and not adminstered very well at that. If Israel truly wanted peace, they'd stop "settling" the West Bank & Gaza and if they wanted to be really manganamous, they'd pull back all the settlements altogether. I understand there's reasons -- perhaps even Zionist reasons they don't want to, but there's a couple other reasons why they can't, and it has to do with legitimizing the tactics the Palestinians have used to apply pressure on Israel to "give it back". And that's Terrorism. I have a whole 'nother rant on terrorism, and what the moral differences are between that and "freedom fighting". That'll come later.

But suffice it to say, Palestine would have a lot more friends in the west had it chosen to take what moral high ground it could and not blow civillians up on purpose to get attention.

Let's take a look at the oft-cited UN Resolution 242, in which Israel is supposed to pull out of all areas occupied (notice that it just says "armed forces"... hmmmm) -- having been taken by force in the wars that followed Israel's creation:

[...] Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

While the first part is what the Palestinians and Arabs demand, the second part is ignored by them. The Palestinans have steadfastly refused to acknowledge the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area ... which includes Israel. Again, look who's talking about double-standards.

So yes, the United States does often (but not all the time, we also put lots of pressure on them) back Israel. But it has nothing to do with being cohorts in Zionism. Perhaps if the Arab street could at least acknowledge the merits U.S.'s point of view and divorce itself from the idea that we somehow want to help the radical Zionists in their goals... there'd be more trust when we go into a place like Iraq to get rid of someone who everyone agrees is a bad guy and nobody else will lift a finger to get him and his just-as-dangerous sons ousted as well.

Flawed

Critics are now asserting that the Pentagon's war plan is "flawed". Well, surprise, surprise. EVERY plan has flaws. The idea of some sort of "perfect" plan for anything is an illusion. It's easy to sit back and try to shoot down arguments based on this detail or that detail. This is why philsophical arguments typically never get anywhere. The person asserting the philosophy is constantly assailed by little pot-shots at this or that and ends up bogging the argument down in the details of explanation instead of the overall context the philosopher is trying to paint.

Guess what? Saddam's plan is flawed, too.

The left is quite eager to paint this as some sort of morality play where the Bush administration is somehow punished for it's "rush" to an "illegal" war without the sanctity of U.N. approval. They refuse to even consider the possibility that the U.N. can be wrong, and the US acting anyway might be the Right Thing To Do.

Remember, if you tell your kid 17 times to clean up his room and he consistently finds ways to keep not doing it, an 18th time appears no different to the child. If you see him pick up a toy or two and continues to dawdle and delay until you lose interest and go make him lunch or something, it's time to move in for a little spanking.

The fact of the matter is, I HOPE the press doesn't know the war plan, because if they do, you can be sure Saddam knows it as they've been blathering about it constantly for at least a month. Which, of course, would introduce intentional flaw making from Saddam's side. So here's an idea... if you know the war plan, shut up. If you don't know the war plan.... shut up. Let the professionals do what they've studied and trained to do.

The Press

Wow. Listening to the questions from the Press at press corp. briefings is quite revealing. They basically want someone in the military or the white house to say "Man, we really miscalculated the resistance." and "the enemy is stronger than we thought." I mean, they are hammering relentlessly to get some sort of "admission" that the US was somehow ill-prepared, even cocky. The reason they aren't going to get one probably has less to do with any sort of cover-up than it has to do with what the white house KNOWS will be the spin put on any comment that even suggests that they weren't 100% prepared. Just look at most of the headlines around the world. To read them, you'd think the coalition forces were retreating to Kuwait, firing up the engines on the boats and getting the hell out of Dodge because everything is going wrong! -- when the truth is, everything isn't going right, but most things pretty much are. And who in their right mind expected everything to go right?

There are two reasons for this, in my view. Probably the most important one is that the press by and large, despite their rantings to the contrary, has a definite liberal bias. And part of the liberal creed is an anti-war stance in general. They want to be able to say "hey, if you were wrong about what you thought you were getting into, that means you were wrong about ...." 1) being justified without the UN, 2) going in in the first place, 3) the desire of the Iraqi people to be liberated, 4) the existence of WMD, 5) the threat of Saddam in the first place... 6) insert whatever else you want the administration to be wrong about, right on down to dragging up the question of whether or not Bush "really" won the election. It's almost an ideologue that says, "if you're wrong about one thing, then I don't have to believe anything you say. Ever." Which, of course, is bunk.

Another reason which probably shouldn't be trivialized because it is so deeply a part of human nature is - the Underdog doing better than expected is in fact one of the most compelling underlying stories anywhere there is humanity, doubly so where there is oppressed or impoverished humanity. Who doesn't root for underdogs (except for their favorite teams) in say, the NCAA tournament, or any sports for that matter? And who is more oppressed and impoverished than --- well, most of the Middle East save the ruling classes? Gives you a little insight into SOME of what's behind the Anti-Americanism in that part of the world, especially when it is one of their neighbors that is the underdog.

But, sorry, no matter how underdogged these bad guys ever were, I always rooted for Superman over Luther, Batman over the Joker, He Man over Skeletor.... you see where I'm going. Might doesn't make right, but when right has might, it certainly is a Very Good Thing. And for those of you out there who say "Saddam is Bad, but...", "there are other ways besides war...", I ask "what other ways?" Give Peace a Chance? Give me a good argument that there is another way to get rid of Saddam Hussein without going off on tangents about sanctions killing millions of Iraqi children (which ironically argues against one non-war solution) or the School of the Americas or Noriega and cover-ups at Area 51. And don't try to use the argument that "We put him there", either. Number one, if that's true then certainly it is our moral responsibility to take him out.... and number 2) were we really supposed to somehow divine what horrors this man would eventually perpetrate?

All about oil

Of course. Naturally. The United States is an evil imperialist nation. Actually, it looks more like we've been put in the position of responsibility for cleaning up a mess in the mideast leftover from past European imperialism. It really blows me away that we are expected to "solve" the Israel/Palestine problem. True, we have been consistent supporters of Israel over the years, but I will tell you a lot of it has to do with the tactics used against Israel. Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians to incite terror in the population in the hope that the ones who live will pressure their governments into giving the groups using terrorism what they want. This is something that western sensibilities just won't tolerate. I would argue that the west, especially here in America and probably even in Israel -- would be much more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause if they used more Ghandiesque tactics.

Of course, if we wanted the oil in the middle east and we were actually the imperialist, genocidal, immoral nation the world seems to think we are, there's certainly nothing to stop us. A few nuclear bombs in the right spots, then we go in with radiation suits and put our wells where they need to be-- it's freakin' desert anyway... and put pipelines in place to carry it to safe port areas.... lots of oil, all ours. Mwwahahhahahahah! But we're not like that. We aren't perfect -- but we aren't like that.

If you still think it's about oil, and you've never second-guessed yourself or whoever told you it was... I'd suggest you read this to maybe help balance your opinion.... Blood for Oil? -- Jerry Taylor

What's on my mind?

Well, of course war is on my mind -- I've thought about it a lot, the wherefores and the why's, and here we are in the middle of it. And what side do I come down on? Well, the pro-war side. Not that I'm a big fan of killing people, especially innocents, but more because the good reasons to go to war in this case out-weigh the good reasons not to (and there are always good reasons not to). I'm sure I'll do a lot more talking about that in the future... but today's rant is going to be on the bombing in the Shaab district where unfortunately somewhere between 14 and 20 people apparently died. I won't dispute that the fact that they died is a Very Bad Thing -- regardless of who caused it, but I have a couple of things to point out.

The US-led coalition has a huge incentive NOT to cause civilian casualties. We know it, and the Iraqi regime knows it. No decent person in the world wants to see it, and that includes George W. . Hussein's (if he is still alive) biggest weapon in this war is propaganda -- the propaganda of dead people. The more dead people on either side, the more anti-war pressure there will be. Everybody knows that all the way up to George W. And the regime leaders know that.

Therefore, if this tragedy was caused by a coalition bomb, it was indeed by some huge accident. Nobody is saying that a coalition bomb DIDN'T cause it, but to accept this as the most likely cause outright is highly unreasonable. The Iraqi regime has shown over the last 34 years a ruthlessness toward it's own people that has certainly been equaled in history but probably not surpassed. Is it so tough to believe that this regime might stage such an explosion during an air-raid as a huge propaganda tool? Or is it such a stretch to believe that it was Iraqi weapons that went awry? If it were a propaganda tool, it certainly could only have worked better if more people died.

Not only do civilian deaths not gain the coalition anything, they have a huge negative impact on the coalition war effort and the necessary good-will after the war is over that it will need. Why, then, would anyone be so eager to believe and accept the Iraqi explanation? Could it be because they are pre-disposed to blame America for all that is wrong in the world? It certainly isn't out of a spirit of fair-mindedness.

Freedom - Bill Whittle

This is a back dated post, back dated to Bill's original post date. I post this here because it is the single most powerful defense of the second amendment I have ever read (but it is much more than that), and Bill's a busy guy and hasn't gotten this all re-indexed yet since he moved his blog to Pajamas Media & started doing videos on PJTV. Some of the essays didn't transfer in their entirety, and this was one of them.

It is in his book, "Silent America", essays from a Democracy at War, which I highly reccomend as a coffee table book. There are no pretty pictures. But Bill, a TV editor in Hollywood, had a talent for words, and a passion for America as America was designed.

Here it is:

December 22, 2002

FREEDOM - Bill Whittle

When I was a little kid, I asked my dad about an image I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution in a forest clearing, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being led off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, what did they have to lose?

I was six. My dad looked at me. He had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. No parachuting onto the decks of enemy U-Boats at night to steal Enigma machines --- just newly-minted, 2nd Lieutenant grunt work. He'd been to the camps though, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or contempt or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."

Now before the combined military might of the European Union responds with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, Americans like the ones he knew. Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!)

I don’t believe for an instant in any genetic nonsense about slave races or nations of pure-bred heroes. That’s a deadly trap, and the end result of such thinking is a place on the watchtower machine-gunning starving prisoners. But humans are the most successful species this planet has seen not for being ferocious or fast or strong or even intelligent, but for their malleability. Humans can, and do, adapt to anything. It is their culture that determines what is in their hearts.

Consider the case of Jews in Germany, during the 1930’s: Here was a people who had been so tormented and prosecuted and psychologically beaten down that they came to believe the outrageous slander that they were guests in their own county. Behind their shuttered doors at night, they created cocoons of astonishing culture and beauty, a symphony of violins and cellos and poetry and literature. They were far over-represented in occupations we rightly esteem as among the most noble of our species: surgeons, musicians, teachers and scientists.

By any measure of human decency, these were the people that should have been helping to lead a ravaged Germany back to respect and prosperity. Yet they were massacred in their millions by brutes and sadists who could barely write their own names.

If it is possible to write a clearer lesson on human nature, then I cannot imagine it, nor can I imagine the amount of blood it will take to convince people unwilling to look reality in the face; that reality being that compassion, culture, law and philosophy are precious, rare and acquired habits that must be defended with force against people who understand nothing but force. The great failure and staggering tragedy of European Jews is that they could not accept that some of their neighbors were not as decent, humane and educated as they were. A culture that learned to survive by turning inward simply never was willing to face the reality of what they were up against; namely, that hoping for compassion and humanity from the likes of the Nazis was akin to reading poetry to a hurricane. This denial --- and that is the only word for it --- is, in the final horrible analysis, a form of unconscious arrogance, a refusal to see things for what they are. A people of astonishing internal beauty simply could not look into the face of such ugliness without turning away. And now they are dead.

And there are many intelligent, enlightened, gentle and good-hearted people today who believe exactly the same thing. If we let this moral blindness continue to gain ground, then they will get us all killed, too. And then who will put their boot on humanity’s neck for the next thousand years?

I recently visited a website that featured a picture of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, with the caption: My hero! Someone who thinks his way out of trouble! The implication, of course, is that force and violence are universally to be rejected and despised as unworthy of thinking people (or Vulcans).

Well bucko, Spock carried a phaser as well as a tricorder, and he used it when he had to. If the Star Trek future represents a hope for our species at its most reasonable and open-minded best, it would be well to remember that the Enterprise carries a hell of a lot of photon torpedoes because the cause of human decency cannot be advanced if all the decent humans lie dead.

Freedom is preserved by free people. Our 40th President wrote that “no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back again for a moment to a culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.

That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.

I believe gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than Hollywood celebrities, precisely because a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

To the many thoughtful and intelligent Europeans and Canadians who scorn the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution as the dangerous plaything of illiterate, mindless oafs who enjoy loud noises, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased and incorruptible teacher: History.

Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed and dependant sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam, and the horrors they have inflicted at will on their own people. And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.

Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in the heart of European culture and civilization. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

Try and understand this about Americans like myself and others who can look such horrors in the eye: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, because the day may come when you once again need the help of a free and determined people, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.

Great Britain, the philosophical home and mother to this nation, has responded to a horrible shooting tragedy by essentially disarming their entire population. That is their decision alone to make, and history will record whether it was a wise one or not. But consider this:

A Marine Corps officer wondered to himself whether such an order would be carried out in the United States. He was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force.

This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE.

It would take an army --- not an army of celebrities or trial lawyers, an actual SHOOTING ARMY --- to forcibly disarm this nation. Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own.

See, we don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, Special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Praetorian elites, Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that ideologically inculcated poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens fighting to preserve the Constitution, when they themselves have taken the same oath? Think again.

Unlike the those poor, unarmed, psychologically battered Jews, Poles, homosexuals and uncounted other souls lost in the mid 1940s, NO ONE is pulling ANY kids out of this crowd's house at night and going home fully staffed, ready to try again tomorrow. Understand? THAT is the point.

Here is a sociological experiment that might have something to teach us:

Kick down 100 doors of self-proclaimed French pacifists, grab the women and kids, and haul them away. Then try again in Texas, with 100 NRA members. Collate, or rather, have a surviving relative collate the results. Extrapolate the abductors' rates of casualties to determine the total number of murdering swine needed. See what percentage of jackbooted thugs have a suicide wish and then determine the number of men you will need to disarm, kidnap and murder 50 million armed people.

You will need a lot of men. More than you can raise.

These trust the people freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be almost hereditary, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized they were being marched to their deaths and decided to do something about it. Not for themselves, because by taking that action they knew they were doomed. They did it for us. Not only to save the lives of those on the ground for whom their aircraft was headed, but to remind us of who we are as a people, to add to the list of ordinary Americans who can gather extraordinary courage and resolve because they have been trusted all their lives by their government and their fellow citizens.

We are a nation of unruly immigrants, self-selecting people who placed bold action above endless suffering, sold what little they had and bought passage to take a chance on a place they had never seen except in their quiet hopes, a land our 40th President, Ronald Reagan, described as “a beacon, a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Intellectuals have called Ronald Reagan a moron, but that is to be expected from people incapable of being moved by anything other than the sound of their own bitter and small voices in a world too full of hope for them to grasp.

We are, and remain, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic fops and unelected, intellectual sadists. When Europeans call us simplisme, they show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table revolution and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.

To those who doubt our mental sophistication, I would remind you that our grandparents walked upon the moon. And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about them than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.

We as a nation suffer an appalling number of handgun-related deaths each year --- perhaps 11,000 of them. The number is not important; each is a personal tragedy and those lives can never be replaced.

If we attempt to reduce this horrible number by banning handguns, we are taking away the property of a person who has broken no laws by a government whose legitimacy is determined by a document that specifically allows that property, namely guns.

Destroy that trust by punishing the innocent, by pulling a plank from the Bill of Rights, and the contract between the government and the people falls apart. Once the Second Amendment goes, the First will soon follow, because if some unelected elite determines that the people can't be trusted with dangerous guns then it's just a matter of time until they decide they can't be trusted with dangerous ideas, either. Dangerous ideas have killed many millions more people than dangerous handguns - listen to the voices from the Gulag, the death camps, and all the blood-soaked killing fields through history.

The Framers, in their wisdom, put the 2nd Amendment there to give teeth to the revolutionary, unheard-of idea that the power rests with We The People. They did not depend on good will or promises. They made sure that when push came to shove we'd be the ones doing the pushing and shoving, not the folks in Washington. And by the way, gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? Exactly. It's unthinkable. Good. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.

But back to the undeniable domestic cost: When confronted with the idea of banning handguns to reduce this horrible toll, many handgun defenders are tempted to point to the numbers killed on the highways each year --- perhaps four times that number --- and ask why we don’t ban cars as well.

The logical response is that bans on travel - cars, airplanes, etc. - are a false analogy compared to banning guns because cars have a clear benefit while guns don't do anything other than kill what they are aimed at.

While that is exactly true, I think it misses the point, which to me is simply this: We'd never ban car travel to avoid thousands of highway deaths. It's clearly not worth it in both economic and personal freedom terms. We chose, reluctantly, and with many a lost loved one in mind, to keep on driving.

Here is my dry-eyed, cold-hearted, sad conclusion: I believe that the freedom, convenience and economic viability provided by the automobile is worth the 40,000 lives we lose to automotive deaths each year --- a number made more horrible by the fact that perhaps 40% are related to drunk driving and therefore preventable.

By the same calculation, I accept that the freedoms entrusted to the people of the United States is worth the 11,000 lives we lose to gun violence each year.

I wish I could make both those numbers go away. I will support any reasonable campaign to make them as low as possible.

But understand this: 11,000 handgun deaths a year, over four years is very roughly 50,000 killed. In Nazi Germany, an unarmed population was unable to resist the abduction and murder of 6,000,000 people in a similar period: a number 120 times higher. Throw in the midnight murders of the Soviets, the Chinese, the various and sundry African and South American genocides and purges and political assassinations and that number grows to many hundreds, if not several thousand times more killings in unarmed populations.

Visualize this to fully appreciate the point. Imagine the Superbowl. Every player on the field is a handgun victim. All the people in the stands are the victims who were unable to resist with handguns. Those are historical facts.

I, myself, am willing to pay that price as a society – knowing full well that I or a loved one may be part of that terrible invoice. I wish it was lower. Obviously, I wish it didn’t exist at all. But any rational look into the world shows us places where the numbers of innocents murdered by their own governments in unarmed nations are far, far higher.

Of course, many societies have far lower numbers. Japan is a fine example. I'm sure if the United States had 2000 years of a culture whose prize assets are conformity and submission then our numbers would be a lot lower. Alas, we are not that society. Thank God, we are not that society.

It is abundantly clear that the rate of handgun murders in the United States is not uniform. Very large murder rates can be observed in small, exceedingly violent populations of every race in this country, and these rates seem to be more related to issues of income, education and living conditions. Certainly guns are freely available in areas where our murder rates are appallingly high. They are also found in very large numbers in communities where handgun crime is virtually nonexistent.

Doesn’t that tell us that there something deeper at work here? Could it be, perhaps, that the problem is not with the number of guns in this country but rather in the hearts of those who we allow to wield them, repeatedly? Could it really be as simple as apprehending, and punishing, those that would do harm to innocents and to civilization? Rather than banning guns, should we not attack the moral rot that infests these small, violent populations of every color who put such horrible numbers at our feet?

Assume for a moment you could vaporize every gun on the planet. Would crime go away? Or would ruthless, physically strong gangs of young men be essentially able to roam free and predate at will?

The history of civilization shows time and time again how decent, sophisticated city dwellers amass wealth through cooperation and the division of labor - only to be victimized by ruthless gangs of raping, looting cutthroats who couldn't make a fruit basket, sweeping down on them, murdering them and carting away the loot, to return a few years later, forever, ad infinitum. Vikings, Mongols, desperadoes of every stripe - they are a cancer on humanity but there they are and there they have always been.

If civilization is worth having (and I believe it is) then it has to be defended, because the restraining virtues of justice, compassion and respect for laws are products of that civilizing force and completely unknown to those who would do it harm.

Therefore, since I believe in this civilization, in its laws, science, art and medicine, I believe we must be prepared to defend it against what I feel no embarrassment for calling the Forces of Darkness. Those forces could be raiders on horseback, jackbooted Nazi murderers, ecstatic human bombs or some kid blowing away a shopkeeper.

For the gun-ban argument to be convincing, you'd have to show me a time before shopkeepers were blown away, hacked away, pelted away or whatever the case may be. You would have to show me a time in history before the invention of the firearm, when crime and raiding and looting did not exist, when murders and rapes did not exist. We may lose 11,000 people to handguns a year. How many would we lose without any handguns, if murderers and rapists roamed free of fear, ignoring reprisal from citizens or police? I don't know. You don't know either. Maybe it's a lot fewer people, and maybe, in a world where strength and ruthlessness trump all, it would be a far higher one.

You may argue that only the police should be allowed to carry guns. Consider this carefully. Do we really want to create an unelected subculture that views itself as so elite and virtuous as to be the only ones worthy of such power, trust and authority? Have we not clearly seen the type of people drawn to such exclusive positions of authority, and the attitudes and arrogance it promotes?

Furthermore, I can't see any moral distinction between a policeman and a law-abiding citizen. Policemen are drawn from the ranks of law-abiding citizens. They are not bred in hydroponics tanks. They are expected to show restraint and use their weapon as a last resort. Millions upon millions of citizens, a crowd more vast than entire armies of police, do exactly this every day.

If all of these horrors had sprung up as a result of the invention of the handgun I'd be right there beside those calling for their destruction.

But clearly, this is not the case. In our cowboy past we used to say that "God created Man, but Sam Colt made them equal." This is simple enough to understand. It means that a villager, let's say a schoolteacher, can defeat a human predator who may have spent his entire life practicing the art of war. Firearms are what tipped the balance toward civilization by eliminating a lifetime spent studying swordplay or spear play or pointed-stick play. The bad guys have always used weapons and they always will. The simple truth about guns is that they are damn effective and even easier to operate. They level the playing field to the point where a woman has a chance against a gang of thugs or a police officer can control a brawl.

I don't see how vaporizing all the guns in the world would remove crime or violence - history shows these have always been with us and show no signs of responding favorably to well-reasoned arguments or harsh language. I wish it were not true. I wish the IRS did not exist either, but there it is.

Criminals, and criminal regimes ranging from The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains all the way through history to the Nazis and the Soviets, have and will conspire to take by force what they cannot produce on their own. These people must be stopped. The genius of the 2nd Amendment is that it realizes that these people could be anybody - including the U.S. Army. That is why this power, like the other powers, is vested in the people. Nowhere else in the world is this the case. You can make a solid argument that the United States is, by almost any measure, the most prosperous, successful nation in history. I'm not claiming this is because every American sleeps with a gun under the pillow - the vast majority do not. I do claim it is the result of a document that puts faith and trust in the people - trusts them with government, with freedom, and with the means of self-defense. You cannot remove that lynchpin of trust without collapsing the entire structure. Many observers of America never fully understand what we believe in our bones, namely, that the government doesn't tell us what we can do - WE tell THOSE bastards just how far they can go.

Of course, all of this is completely whimsical, because, like nuclear weapons, guns are HERE and they are not going to go away. You cannot just vaporize them. Honest people might be compelled to turn in their weapons; criminals clearly will not. So what do you propose? Forget the moral high ground of gun ownership. Again a simple truth, often maligned but demonstrably dead-on accurate: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

The American Revolution surely is unique in the sense that the ringleaders - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, etc - were men of property, wealth and prestige; in other words, men with something to lose. Compare this to any other revolution in history, where the ringleaders were outsiders; plotters staring in the windows of prosperity, powerless. The Russian Revolution, French Revolution, etc - these were joined by desperate people fighting mind-numbing poverty and severe political repression.

And yet the Founding Fathers were men who were as well-off as any men on earth at the time, and furthermore, any of them could have been (and were) political leaders under His Majesty's government. The average colonial farmer likewise led a life far more comfortable than those of his cousins in Europe, to say nothing of Asia or Africa.

For all practical intents and purposes, these people had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything in the world to lose, by taking on the greatest military force the world had ever known. Why would they do this? What possible motivation could well-off, comfortable people have? Militarily, they seemed certain to lose, and they knew before they started - and Patrick Henry made the abundantly clear - that they would be hanged as common criminals if they failed.

Of course, the answer is, they did it to be free. And they did it to make the rest of their nation - the poor, the disenfranchised - free as well. And it is clear as crystal from their collective writings that they took that risk to make Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore and the rest of us in their unseen posterity free, too. They could look down the dim, moonlit riverbanks of the future and see a society worthy of their sacrifice and determination. They knew that God, (or for me, chance perhaps) had put them together in a time and place where bold, courageous action followed by much suffering, doubt, blood and fear could, perhaps, unleash in mankind an energy source the likes of which they could not imagine.

So for me, a child of that bet - that guess, that commitment, that roll of the dice - for ME, I owe them the defense of that freedom, and I will do my poor mite to pass it on as best I can. These men pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor. They pledged that to ME. I owe them. I do not have the right to take away someone else's freedom and property - it is offensive to me to even contemplate it. Of course, if someone breaks the freedom/responsibility covenant by committing a crime, then all bets are off. To that extent, I view handgun murderers not just as criminals but as traitors as well.

I hate seeing our kids get shot on the street, I hate it, I hate it. But that is the cost of freedom. People get horribly killed on Spring Break road trips to Florida at age 18. They're driving drunk. We could prevent them from going. We would save lives. Enron and MCI steal like the worst characters from Dickens, taking people's Christmas dinners so they can have gold plated faucets. We could regulate more, make things harder for the millions of honest businesses that build and trade honorably each day. The day may come when someone flies a Cessna into a stadium. We can ban the airplanes. Ditto for pleasure boats. We can ban and confiscate and regulate to our hearts content, and we will undoubtedly save many, many innocent lives by doing so. All for the price of a little freedom.

I believe we should punish the perpetrators. I will not agree to restrict the freedoms of the vast numbers of people who abide by the concomitant responsibility and live lives of honesty and decency. And there is more than the physical restriction of freedoms: There is the slow erosion of self-reliance, self-confidence and self-determination among a nation. The more your government restricts your options, the more you psychologically look to government to keep you safe, fed, clothed, housed and sustained.

There is a word for people who are fed, clothed, housed and sustained fully by others, and that word is SLAVES.

If Congress were occupied by angels and Michael sat in a throne of glory in the Oval Office, I would listen to what they said for my own greater good. But no government is made of angels, not even the Canadian government in all its decency and compassion. So who determines how much freedom we trade for how much security? People do. People are not unknown to place their own interests above those of others. There is even a vanishing remote chance that Jean Cretien has at some point perhaps put personal interest above those of his constituents.

The real genius of the Founding Fathers was that these great and good men had the foresight and the courage to look into their own darker motives, and construct a system that prevents the accumulation of power.

The Constitution they created could only be torn up by force of arms. And that is why the Founders left that power in the hands of the people, who together can never be cowed by relatively small numbers of thugs holding the only guns.

As PJ O'Rourke points out, the U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate people safe, prosperous and free. Smarter people than me may disagree with that document - I'm for not touching a comma.

So as a proud son of those brave men, I'll take freedom - all of it - and because I accept the benefits of those freedoms, I'll solemnly take the responsibilities as well. I may someday lose a child on a trip to Spring Break, but I'll never lock them in the basement to keep them safe. And I'll accept the fact that living in Los Angeles puts me at risk for being shot to death because I feel the freedom is worth it. I breathe that freedom every day, and hey, we all gotta go sometime. I'll continue to fly experimental airplanes because I am careful, meticulous, precise and responsible, and yet the day may come when I am out of altitude, out of airspeed and out of ideas all at the same time. Oh well. I have seen and done things up there that you cannot imagine and I cannot describe. Freedom.

I respect and admire Canada. Although we have chosen certain diverging paths since the days of the Revolution, we have been, and always will be, the best of friends despite our differences. Canada is unquestionably as decent, modest and good a society as exists on Earth today. And yet while Canadians frequently point out that they are free of our vices, I perceive that they are free of our greatness as well. You can't have it both ways.

Me, personally, I'll take the spirit, ingenuity and passion that can plant the American flag on the moon over pre-paid health care. I can buy health care. Thirty three years after watching the event as a ten year old boy, I’m still trying to go to the moon. (Some of us in the Mojave desert may still have few tricks up our sleeve on this one. We're still free to build airplanes and spacecraft from our garages and fly the goddamn things. Try and keep up with a nation that builds working spacecraft in the garage. As a hobby. Out of pocket. For FUN.)

And everyone who has taken America's disdain for intellectualism as a lack of intelligence has woken up looking at our dust trail as we speed ever faster beyond them. We're not just a smart country - we're THE smart country. Behold the list of inventions and Nobel Prize winning scientists. Einstein was an American. Of course he emigrated here --- we all did. Germany threw him away - he's ours now, by his choice, not ours. Ditto Von Braun and numerous others, not to mention the legion of homegrown geniuses like the Wright Brothers and Robert Goddard, just to draw two names from the narrow field I know best. Staggeringly brilliant men and women, the best, most active minds on the planet pulling for the same team.

Canada is free of many of the foreign policy disasters and failures of vision that the United States has been correctly charged with, but they are free too of the satisfaction and pride of being history’s singular bulwark of freedom and prosperity, and the eternal, unintimidated scourge of tyrants and murderers from the Barbary pirates, through the armed might of the 20th Century’s parade of totalitarians and right up to Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and the criminal lunatics that run North Korea.

Our failures and disgraces cruelly remind us that we, like every other government, are composed of fallible men and women with no divine ability to read the future or foresee all outcomes. But these failures are failures of action, action borne of confidence and a belief in our way of life, and come all the more painful for their contrast to the everyday standards to which we hold ourselves as a people and a nation. For it is an undeniable fact that no great nation in history has held a shadow of our measure of power, and yet exercised it with such restraint, nor does any time in the bloody history of warfare reflect a people so magnanimous in victory against enemies sworn to our murder and destruction. From our first hour, we have been, and remain, the beacon of hope and freedom for a world desperate and longing for such an example, and we can measure our success in building such a place by the numbers of those who are literally dying in an attempt to come and be part of it.

So take your pick: Freedom or security? Greatness or goodness? Passion or decency?

Our respective ancestors made their choice and here we are. I respect anyone’s right to chose differently. I only speak up to defend the choice we Americans made as a deeply spiritual one, borne of reflection and danger and a spectacular triumph against all odds. I cannot stand idly by to hear people denounce our freedoms as the dimwitted macho posturing of a mob of illiterate uncultured idiots who are so vulgar and uncouth as to still believe in Hollywood myths manufactured for our simple, complacent, unsophisticated nature.

From the Revolution until today, the choice for full freedom with all its accompanying excesses and failures is a profoundly well-reasoned, moral and ethical choice, and the result has been national and personal success unparalleled in the history of this world.

I am deeply proud to be a member of such a magnificent group of people. I hope to God I can give back as much as I owe.