By Lorie Byrd
Friday, August 31, 2007
Immediately following September 11, many liberals reflexively and preemptively accused those on the right of questioning their patriotism, before anyone had even had a chance to do so. For a honeymoon period of about six months, as President Bush’s poll numbers skyrocketed in response to his successful handling of the aftermath of the attacks, most liberals held their tongues.
As those poll numbers eroded as a result of difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions on Afghanistan and particularly Iraq, opponents of the President became more vocal in their criticism. When public opinion turned against the President and the mission in Iraq, many liberals abandoned all restraint in their criticism, accusing the President and supporters of the mission in Iraq of being chicken hawks, murderers and human rights abusers, among other things.
Over the summer some good news has been trickling out of Iraq regarding the progress being made as a result of the surge counteroffensive. The leadership of General David Petraeus has been praised by many, as have the positive changes that have been made through his approach to the mission in Iraq.
Instead of the news of progress being celebrated, or even acknowledged, many of those opposed to the war have attempted to suppress that news or to deny it. While there is still news of violence to be reported from Iraq, it is no longer possible to deny the positive developments being reported from the region and still retain any credibility. Many opposed to the war, a mob of sorts, has risen up from the left to attack anyone who would claim even a modest improvement in the situation in Iraq.
Last month, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, who have in the past been critical of the President’s handling of the mission in Iraq, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in which they stated, “Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with....Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.”
The reaction to the O’Hanlon and Pollack piece from liberal bloggers was fierce. It is healthy to question opposing opinions, but many on the left did not seem interested in giving the claims of O’Hanlon and Pollack any serious consideration whatsoever.
A fellow blogger at Wizbang said of the reaction, “Forgetting for a moment the value of the assessment by the two authors, the value of the piece as a way of outing defeatist liberals remains unrivaled. The liberals in this country are so deranged that good news in Iraq is now considered bad news. Rather than being pleased that we might be making progress and hopeful for American success, the liberals in this country are actively -and near openly- hoping for defeat. But don't question their patriotism. They support the troops.”
Another example of those on the left being in denial and going into attack mode upon hearing any good news from Iraq, came this week in response to an op-ed from liberal Democrat Congressman Brian Baird.
Baird wrote, “As a Democrat who voted against the war from the outset and who has been frankly critical of the administration and the post-invasion strategy, I am convinced by the evidence that the situation has at long last begun to change substantially for the better. I believe Iraq could have a positive future. Our diplomatic and military leaders in Iraq, their current strategy, and most importantly, our troops and the Iraqi people themselves, deserve our continued support and more time to succeed…Progress is being made and there is real reason for hope. It would be a tragic waste and lasting strategic blunder to let the hard-fought and important gains slip away, leaving chaos behind to haunt us and our allies for many years to come.”
In response to his op-ed, instead of being questioned about the reasons that led to his about face, some constituents verbally assaulted Baird. In a recent townhall meeting in Van Couver. Oregonlive reported, “For more than three hours Monday night, Rep. Brian Baird was verbally flogged by hundreds of his constituents for no longer supporting the quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq…At several points, he pleaded with the crowd to let him finish his explanation. One woman told him the blood of the troops was now on his hands, and several said he was violating the wishes of his constituents. ‘We don’t care what your convictions are,’ said Jan Lustig of Vancouver. ‘You are here to represent us.’”
I don’t know what the September report from General Petraeus will say, but it is already being attacked on liberal blogs and elsewhere in the media. One recent criticism was that the White House was going to write the report, not Petraeus. Even though Public Law 110-28 specifies that "the President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the Commander of U.S. Central Command, will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress," I expect that criticism, and many others, will continue.
If the report contains any reference to progress or any glimmer of hope for the mission in Iraq, expect it to be attacked viciously by those on the anti-war Left. Good news in Iraq is bad news for those opposed to the war and there will be an all-out effort to deny or diminish any news that does not support their demands for immediate withdrawal and no consideration will be made to the consequences of ignoring the latest reports from the region. Can I question their patriotism yet?
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
France: The ethic of work has vanished
By George Will
Thursday, August 30, 2007
PARIS -- "We," the finance minister says, "have a terrible past." She also says: "In a way, we've had it too easy." Christine Lagarde is correct on both counts.
Her first "we" refers to Europe; the second, to France. Both Europe's cataclysms and France's comforts condition the context for reforms.
Lagarde, 51, has a more informed affection for America than anyone who has ever risen so high in this country's government. She was an exchange student at a Washington prep school and a Capitol Hill intern during the Nixon impeachment proceedings. As a partner in a large law firm based in Chicago, for several years she lived in, and loved, the most American city.
Today, her challenge is defined by this fact: France's welfare state, which has enabled many to have it "too easy," is incompatible with the welfare of the state, and of society. The government, preoccupied with propitiating dependent groups that it wants to proliferate, is big but weak. And the welfare state weakens its clients. "The ethic of work," Lagarde says, "has vanished."
Recently she threw the intelligentsia into a tizzy by saying: "France is a country that thinks. ... Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." Proving her point, intellectuals here theorize about why President Nicolas Sarkozy's jogging is unprogressive: It involves "individualism," "the cult of performance" and "management of the body," whereas walking is "sensitive." Rolling up one's sleeves is, however, almost illegal because of the statutory 35-hour workweek. Lagarde's response to this "stupid" (her word) law is "a law in favor of work," one implementing a slogan that helped Sarkozy get elected in May: "Working more to earn more." What a concept.
Lagarde has undertaken to subvert the 35-hour restriction, which has been enforced by government agents snooping in companies' parking lots for evidence of antisocial industriousness. Overtime work will be exempt from taxes and social insurance charges. For this, she has been abused in parliament by socialists -- their invectives are as stale as their doctrines -- who compare her to Marie Antoinette.
Why not just repeal the law? Because, Lagarde says, the left considers this "an accrued right." Think about that -- a right to be forbidden the right to chose to do something elemental (work). French intellectuals are adept at thinking themselves into such tangles. "They," Lagarde says, "want to bring people down to solidarity." And "they regard work as alienation in the old Marxist understanding."
France's problems actually derive less from a 19th-century German than from a 17th-century Frenchman. Lagarde works in an office complex with portions named for Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, two 20th-century French pioneers of Europe's path to a single market. But another portion is named for Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83). On behalf of Louis XIV, Colbert practiced mercantilism, using subsidies, tariffs, price controls and other regulations to manage the economy. The French tradition of dirigisme -- pervasive state intervention in the economy and society -- lives.
Two years ago Le Figaro newspaper inveighed against "the American ogre" Pepsi, which was interested in buying Danone, the yogurt and bottled water (Evian) company. Practicing "patriotisme economique," Sarkozy, then a Cabinet minister, urged mobilization of Danone shareholders to block the sale.
Such "patriotism" aggravates France's social sclerosis, and is inimical to Europe's project for burying its "terrible past." In 1951, war-weary Europe, groping toward transcendence of nationality and hence the furies of nationalism, created the European Coal and Steel Community, an attempt to weaken control by nations of two primary commodities for their war machineries. This was the tentative first step toward today's European Union, which limits -- although not nearly enough -- the ways states can intervene in markets.
These limitations serve Lagarde's project of prying the fingers of politics off vast swaths of the economy. She favors slashing inheritance taxes and preventing any person from paying more than 40 percent of income in total taxation. One index of her success would be decreased emigration by young college graduates, driven abroad by the fact that French unemployment has not been below 8 percent in 25 years. Since, that is, 1982, when President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, was keeping his 1981 campaign promise to "break with the logic of profitability."
Another French citizen with deep understanding of America warned about France's "regulating, restrictive administration which seeks to anticipate everything, take charge of everything, always knowing better than those it administers what is in their interests." So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville 150 years ago, defining France's problem and Lagarde's challenge.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
PARIS -- "We," the finance minister says, "have a terrible past." She also says: "In a way, we've had it too easy." Christine Lagarde is correct on both counts.
Her first "we" refers to Europe; the second, to France. Both Europe's cataclysms and France's comforts condition the context for reforms.
Lagarde, 51, has a more informed affection for America than anyone who has ever risen so high in this country's government. She was an exchange student at a Washington prep school and a Capitol Hill intern during the Nixon impeachment proceedings. As a partner in a large law firm based in Chicago, for several years she lived in, and loved, the most American city.
Today, her challenge is defined by this fact: France's welfare state, which has enabled many to have it "too easy," is incompatible with the welfare of the state, and of society. The government, preoccupied with propitiating dependent groups that it wants to proliferate, is big but weak. And the welfare state weakens its clients. "The ethic of work," Lagarde says, "has vanished."
Recently she threw the intelligentsia into a tizzy by saying: "France is a country that thinks. ... Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." Proving her point, intellectuals here theorize about why President Nicolas Sarkozy's jogging is unprogressive: It involves "individualism," "the cult of performance" and "management of the body," whereas walking is "sensitive." Rolling up one's sleeves is, however, almost illegal because of the statutory 35-hour workweek. Lagarde's response to this "stupid" (her word) law is "a law in favor of work," one implementing a slogan that helped Sarkozy get elected in May: "Working more to earn more." What a concept.
Lagarde has undertaken to subvert the 35-hour restriction, which has been enforced by government agents snooping in companies' parking lots for evidence of antisocial industriousness. Overtime work will be exempt from taxes and social insurance charges. For this, she has been abused in parliament by socialists -- their invectives are as stale as their doctrines -- who compare her to Marie Antoinette.
Why not just repeal the law? Because, Lagarde says, the left considers this "an accrued right." Think about that -- a right to be forbidden the right to chose to do something elemental (work). French intellectuals are adept at thinking themselves into such tangles. "They," Lagarde says, "want to bring people down to solidarity." And "they regard work as alienation in the old Marxist understanding."
France's problems actually derive less from a 19th-century German than from a 17th-century Frenchman. Lagarde works in an office complex with portions named for Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, two 20th-century French pioneers of Europe's path to a single market. But another portion is named for Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83). On behalf of Louis XIV, Colbert practiced mercantilism, using subsidies, tariffs, price controls and other regulations to manage the economy. The French tradition of dirigisme -- pervasive state intervention in the economy and society -- lives.
Two years ago Le Figaro newspaper inveighed against "the American ogre" Pepsi, which was interested in buying Danone, the yogurt and bottled water (Evian) company. Practicing "patriotisme economique," Sarkozy, then a Cabinet minister, urged mobilization of Danone shareholders to block the sale.
Such "patriotism" aggravates France's social sclerosis, and is inimical to Europe's project for burying its "terrible past." In 1951, war-weary Europe, groping toward transcendence of nationality and hence the furies of nationalism, created the European Coal and Steel Community, an attempt to weaken control by nations of two primary commodities for their war machineries. This was the tentative first step toward today's European Union, which limits -- although not nearly enough -- the ways states can intervene in markets.
These limitations serve Lagarde's project of prying the fingers of politics off vast swaths of the economy. She favors slashing inheritance taxes and preventing any person from paying more than 40 percent of income in total taxation. One index of her success would be decreased emigration by young college graduates, driven abroad by the fact that French unemployment has not been below 8 percent in 25 years. Since, that is, 1982, when President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, was keeping his 1981 campaign promise to "break with the logic of profitability."
Another French citizen with deep understanding of America warned about France's "regulating, restrictive administration which seeks to anticipate everything, take charge of everything, always knowing better than those it administers what is in their interests." So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville 150 years ago, defining France's problem and Lagarde's challenge.
Liberal Women Struggle to Find Broad Appeal
By Lisa De Pasquale
Thursday, August 30, 2007
It was no surprise last week when GreenStone Media announced the end of its all women, all whining, all the time radio network. In the year since its inception, GreenStone only had 11 stations that carried its programming. The mainstream media was positively orgasmic when GreenStone launched in late 2006. The network was backed by investors like Gloria Steinem, Rosie O’Donnell, Billie Jean King and Jane Fonda who all ponied up $3.1 million. Carrie Lukas of Independent Women’s Forum wrote, “To thunderous acclaim from the liberal intelligentsia, a team of feminist icons -- including Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda -- last year launched a women-run radio network. The mainstream media dutifully parroted press releases describing the launch as a ‘breakthrough’ for women in the male-dominated world of talk radio.”
The media insisted that GreenStone was finally giving women a voice and the content they’ve been craving. Women already control content on TV, magazines and books, so I suppose it’s only natural that they try to fit talk radio in their overstuffed handbag. The notion that women don’t have a voice in today’s media is totally bizarre. I can’t even watch a NFL game without seeing a feature story about a linebacker that reads Goodnight, Moon to preschoolers in his spare time. Yet, the media went on and on about GreenStone breaking the barrier of talk radio and bringing a new concept to talk radio.
Todd Fisher, who helped launch a small women’s station in Minneapolis, told The Houston Chronicle, “Going in, we knew the girlfriend approach, the communicating in a very real and honest way, was how we were going to gain traction.” Like many women, I’m not looking for a bosom buddy, I’m looking for entertainment to pass the time during a commute. Fisher smartly cautioned GreenStone that they should focus on content, not on advocating an agenda that would fragment their listeners. And they say men are bad listeners. GreenStone quickly fell into the predictable pattern of celebrity over substance, turning to men like Ralph Nader and Alec Baldwin to rescue them. As Air America did before them, GreenStone quickly fell into a caricature of itself.
Meanwhile, achievements by conservative women in talk radio were completely ignored in the hype over GreenStone. It’s disingenuous to say that women haven’t succeeded in this “men’s market.” In addition to their radio programs, hosts including Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Monica Crowley, Laura Ingraham, Melanie Morgan, Martha Zoller and Tammy Bruce have also found success as authors and TV pundits. Yet, GreenStone CEO and former Federal Communications Commissioner Susan Hess insisted that there was “a huge hole in the market.” After GreenStone sunk, the question isn’t why do women fail in talk radio, but why do liberals continue to fail in talk radio?
The Left and their cohorts in the media are obsessed with identity entertainment and identity politics. They assumed women would flock to their W-PMS experiment the same way they expect women to flock to the polls for Hillary Clinton. To the contrary, recent polling shows that Hillary isn’t gaining the expected support from women, particularly those most like her – white, college educated and upper middle class. Polling shows that it’s mostly blue-collar, “women with needs” that will vote for Clinton in 2008. In other words, women who believe her promises of free health care, free daycare and free tours of the Lincoln Bedroom. Actually, that last one is Bill’s campaign promise.
In a recent poll commissioned by the Susan B. Anthony List and the polling company ™ only 40% of women said they could conceivably vote for Hillary Clinton. Lest the media characterize the remainder as victims of the patriarchy, an additional 46% said they would vote for a woman (just not that woman) in 2008 or in a future presidential election. Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List, said, “Considering how miserably Clinton does among male voters, she should be concerned that the ‘sisterhood’ is not rallying to her side either.”
At least the Clinton campaign did receive some good news this week – they’ve got the Cuban dictator voted locked!
Absent of substance and an agenda that appeals to all kinds of Americans, the Left consistently appeals to one’s race or gender for cheap and easy votes and listeners. It didn’t work for GreenStone Media and it’s not working for Hillary Clinton. As Myrna Blyth wrote in Spin Sisters, “Remember, more women listen to [Dr. Laura] each night than have seen all of the performances of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues everywhere in the world.” Now that’s broad appeal.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
It was no surprise last week when GreenStone Media announced the end of its all women, all whining, all the time radio network. In the year since its inception, GreenStone only had 11 stations that carried its programming. The mainstream media was positively orgasmic when GreenStone launched in late 2006. The network was backed by investors like Gloria Steinem, Rosie O’Donnell, Billie Jean King and Jane Fonda who all ponied up $3.1 million. Carrie Lukas of Independent Women’s Forum wrote, “To thunderous acclaim from the liberal intelligentsia, a team of feminist icons -- including Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda -- last year launched a women-run radio network. The mainstream media dutifully parroted press releases describing the launch as a ‘breakthrough’ for women in the male-dominated world of talk radio.”
The media insisted that GreenStone was finally giving women a voice and the content they’ve been craving. Women already control content on TV, magazines and books, so I suppose it’s only natural that they try to fit talk radio in their overstuffed handbag. The notion that women don’t have a voice in today’s media is totally bizarre. I can’t even watch a NFL game without seeing a feature story about a linebacker that reads Goodnight, Moon to preschoolers in his spare time. Yet, the media went on and on about GreenStone breaking the barrier of talk radio and bringing a new concept to talk radio.
Todd Fisher, who helped launch a small women’s station in Minneapolis, told The Houston Chronicle, “Going in, we knew the girlfriend approach, the communicating in a very real and honest way, was how we were going to gain traction.” Like many women, I’m not looking for a bosom buddy, I’m looking for entertainment to pass the time during a commute. Fisher smartly cautioned GreenStone that they should focus on content, not on advocating an agenda that would fragment their listeners. And they say men are bad listeners. GreenStone quickly fell into the predictable pattern of celebrity over substance, turning to men like Ralph Nader and Alec Baldwin to rescue them. As Air America did before them, GreenStone quickly fell into a caricature of itself.
Meanwhile, achievements by conservative women in talk radio were completely ignored in the hype over GreenStone. It’s disingenuous to say that women haven’t succeeded in this “men’s market.” In addition to their radio programs, hosts including Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Monica Crowley, Laura Ingraham, Melanie Morgan, Martha Zoller and Tammy Bruce have also found success as authors and TV pundits. Yet, GreenStone CEO and former Federal Communications Commissioner Susan Hess insisted that there was “a huge hole in the market.” After GreenStone sunk, the question isn’t why do women fail in talk radio, but why do liberals continue to fail in talk radio?
The Left and their cohorts in the media are obsessed with identity entertainment and identity politics. They assumed women would flock to their W-PMS experiment the same way they expect women to flock to the polls for Hillary Clinton. To the contrary, recent polling shows that Hillary isn’t gaining the expected support from women, particularly those most like her – white, college educated and upper middle class. Polling shows that it’s mostly blue-collar, “women with needs” that will vote for Clinton in 2008. In other words, women who believe her promises of free health care, free daycare and free tours of the Lincoln Bedroom. Actually, that last one is Bill’s campaign promise.
In a recent poll commissioned by the Susan B. Anthony List and the polling company ™ only 40% of women said they could conceivably vote for Hillary Clinton. Lest the media characterize the remainder as victims of the patriarchy, an additional 46% said they would vote for a woman (just not that woman) in 2008 or in a future presidential election. Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List, said, “Considering how miserably Clinton does among male voters, she should be concerned that the ‘sisterhood’ is not rallying to her side either.”
At least the Clinton campaign did receive some good news this week – they’ve got the Cuban dictator voted locked!
Absent of substance and an agenda that appeals to all kinds of Americans, the Left consistently appeals to one’s race or gender for cheap and easy votes and listeners. It didn’t work for GreenStone Media and it’s not working for Hillary Clinton. As Myrna Blyth wrote in Spin Sisters, “Remember, more women listen to [Dr. Laura] each night than have seen all of the performances of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues everywhere in the world.” Now that’s broad appeal.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sarko Steps Up
The French President's Un-Chirac foreign policy.
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this week by telling his diplomatic corps that "an Iran with nuclear weapons is for me unacceptable." But the French President did more in his speech than name the gravest current threat to global security, itself a feat of clear thinking. He also signaled that France means to be something more on the international scene than an anti-American nuisance player.
That's worth applauding at a time when the conventional wisdom says the next U.S. President will have to burnish America's supposedly tarnished reputation by making various policy amends. In Germany, under the conservative leadership of Angela Merkel, foreign policy views have been moving closer to the Bush Administration's, not further away, while new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made clear he will not depart significantly from the pro-American course set by Tony Blair.
But it is Mr. Sarkozy who, true to his reputation, has been the boldest in stepping up to his global responsibilities. On Afghanistan, he told the assembled diplomats, "the duty of the Atlantic Alliance as well as that of France," is to "increase efforts." He then announced he would be sending additional trainers to assist the Afghan Army. On Israel, he said he "would never budge" on its security. He warned about Russia, which "imposes its return on the world scene by playing its assets with a certain brutality," and he cautioned against China, which pursues "its insatiable search for raw materials as a strategy of control, particularly in Africa."
It's hard to imagine Jacques Chirac, Mr. Sarkozy's predecessor, speaking this way. (Mr. Sarkozy has also reportedly described French diplomats as "cowards" and proposed "[getting] rid of the Quai d'Orsay." Imagine the media uproar if President Bush mused about doing the same to Foggy Bottom?) No less a departure from past practices at the Élysée Palace is his stance on Iran. In January, Mr. Chirac had mused that an Iranian bomb would "not be very dangerous." Mr. Sarkozy, by contrast, has previously insisted on the need to "leave all options open" when dealing with Iran's nuclear programs.
In his speech this week to the diplomats, Mr. Sarkozy warned of the need for tough diplomacy, including "growing sanctions," to avoid the "catastrophic alternative: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." That doesn't sound far from Senator John McCain's useful formulation that "There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option; that is a nuclear-armed Iran." The important point is that Mr. Sarkozy has put on record that he won't let Iran develop a bomb under cover of feckless Western diplomacy.
One test of his resolve will be how much France assists the Bush Administration as it seeks to round up votes in the U.N. Security Council for a third round of sanctions on Iran next month. The Administration has had a hard time moving the diplomacy beyond symbolism in part because of the economic ties that other permanent members of the Council, including France, have with the Islamic Republic. The French say they've already pulled out some of their investments in the country, and in recent months France, Germany and other European countries have in fact cut back their export credits to Iran.
Mr. Sarkozy could now demonstrate real seriousness by forcing French energy giant Total from its $2 billion investment in the huge South Pars natural gas project. A corruption probe into the decade-old project could give him the leverage to do so, as could rising pressure in the U.S. Congress to start enforcing sanctions against companies that do business with rogue regimes.
Whatever Mr. Sarkozy does, however, he has plainly set a new tone for French foreign policy. That's not to say we agree with him on every point: He reiterated France's opposition to the war in Iraq and called for a "horizon" for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Yet even that puts him well to the right of every U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate. And he warned against the "risks of an antagonistic multipolar world," the very world Mr. Chirac seemed to strive for by opposing the U.S. at every turn.
In a speech last year in New York, Mr. Sarkozy noted that "I've always favored modest effectiveness over sterile grandiloquence. And I don't want to see an arrogant France with a diminished presence." With his remarks Monday, Mr. Sarkozy has given the best evidence to date that his presidency will attempt to enhance French influence not by opposing the U.S. but by working with it.
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this week by telling his diplomatic corps that "an Iran with nuclear weapons is for me unacceptable." But the French President did more in his speech than name the gravest current threat to global security, itself a feat of clear thinking. He also signaled that France means to be something more on the international scene than an anti-American nuisance player.
That's worth applauding at a time when the conventional wisdom says the next U.S. President will have to burnish America's supposedly tarnished reputation by making various policy amends. In Germany, under the conservative leadership of Angela Merkel, foreign policy views have been moving closer to the Bush Administration's, not further away, while new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made clear he will not depart significantly from the pro-American course set by Tony Blair.
But it is Mr. Sarkozy who, true to his reputation, has been the boldest in stepping up to his global responsibilities. On Afghanistan, he told the assembled diplomats, "the duty of the Atlantic Alliance as well as that of France," is to "increase efforts." He then announced he would be sending additional trainers to assist the Afghan Army. On Israel, he said he "would never budge" on its security. He warned about Russia, which "imposes its return on the world scene by playing its assets with a certain brutality," and he cautioned against China, which pursues "its insatiable search for raw materials as a strategy of control, particularly in Africa."
It's hard to imagine Jacques Chirac, Mr. Sarkozy's predecessor, speaking this way. (Mr. Sarkozy has also reportedly described French diplomats as "cowards" and proposed "[getting] rid of the Quai d'Orsay." Imagine the media uproar if President Bush mused about doing the same to Foggy Bottom?) No less a departure from past practices at the Élysée Palace is his stance on Iran. In January, Mr. Chirac had mused that an Iranian bomb would "not be very dangerous." Mr. Sarkozy, by contrast, has previously insisted on the need to "leave all options open" when dealing with Iran's nuclear programs.
In his speech this week to the diplomats, Mr. Sarkozy warned of the need for tough diplomacy, including "growing sanctions," to avoid the "catastrophic alternative: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." That doesn't sound far from Senator John McCain's useful formulation that "There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option; that is a nuclear-armed Iran." The important point is that Mr. Sarkozy has put on record that he won't let Iran develop a bomb under cover of feckless Western diplomacy.
One test of his resolve will be how much France assists the Bush Administration as it seeks to round up votes in the U.N. Security Council for a third round of sanctions on Iran next month. The Administration has had a hard time moving the diplomacy beyond symbolism in part because of the economic ties that other permanent members of the Council, including France, have with the Islamic Republic. The French say they've already pulled out some of their investments in the country, and in recent months France, Germany and other European countries have in fact cut back their export credits to Iran.
Mr. Sarkozy could now demonstrate real seriousness by forcing French energy giant Total from its $2 billion investment in the huge South Pars natural gas project. A corruption probe into the decade-old project could give him the leverage to do so, as could rising pressure in the U.S. Congress to start enforcing sanctions against companies that do business with rogue regimes.
Whatever Mr. Sarkozy does, however, he has plainly set a new tone for French foreign policy. That's not to say we agree with him on every point: He reiterated France's opposition to the war in Iraq and called for a "horizon" for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Yet even that puts him well to the right of every U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate. And he warned against the "risks of an antagonistic multipolar world," the very world Mr. Chirac seemed to strive for by opposing the U.S. at every turn.
In a speech last year in New York, Mr. Sarkozy noted that "I've always favored modest effectiveness over sterile grandiloquence. And I don't want to see an arrogant France with a diminished presence." With his remarks Monday, Mr. Sarkozy has given the best evidence to date that his presidency will attempt to enhance French influence not by opposing the U.S. but by working with it.
Keeping Romania impoverished
By Paul Driessen
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
For decades, Nazi and Communist regimes ruled Romania, kept her people impoverished and exploited her resources – tearing vast mineral wealth from her mountains, with little regard for worker safety, people’s health or the environment. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, Romania eagerly embraced a more hopeful future and embarked on a course to join the European Union.
Life has improved for many, especially in cities like Bucharest. But Romania remains one of the EU’s poorest nations, and valleys that once echoed with the shouts of workers and roar of heavy equipment are now silent. Over 300,000 miners are jobless. Their villages have descended into squalor, misery and despondency that have no historic parallel.
Rosia Montana is one such place. This Transylvanian town hosts a massive open-pit mine, enormous waste dumps and, beneath them, hundreds of tunnels. The legacy of 2000 years of mining – the most damaging of which occurred under Ceaucescu – they leach toxic chemicals into local streams that now are red-orange from cadmium and contain 110 times the EU’s legal limit of zinc, 64 times its iron limit, and three times the limit for arsenic, the most dangerous chemical on the US government’s toxic substances list.
Homes and buildings are crumbling, two-thirds of them lack indoor toilets and running water, and 70% of the workers are unemployed. Families survive on wild berries, subsistence farming in rocky, acidic soil, welfare, and often less than US$2 a day. Few own a car. Frigid winters are warmed only by wood stoves. Malnutrition and ill health are constant problems. The dentist serves as the area’s only doctor.
Unlike most former mining towns, however, Rosia has one last chance. Gabriel Resources wants to reopen the mine, to tease out nearly 2,000 tons of gold and silver that the antiquated methods of bygone eras could not extract.
In the process, the Canadian company would spend millions to erase the horrific environmental legacy, restore the land to forests, pastures and grasslands, and leave the alpine waters sparkling. All at no cost to the Romanian government, which cannot afford to clean up the mess itself.
Gabriel would also create high-paying jobs, revitalize the community, protect and restore Rosia’s most valuable churches and buildings in a special historic zone, build a modern village with homes in traditional Romanian styles, save Roman and other archeological treasures in a museum – and provide precious metals for jewelry, computers and other marvels. (The company has already spent over US$200 million; its US$10-million expenditure thus far on archeology is 40 times the Romanian Culture Ministry’s annual budget between 1990 and 2003.)
Over a 29-year period, the project would create 1,200 construction jobs, more than 600 mining jobs, and 6,000 indirect jobs in service sectors. It would inject US$2.5 billion into the local and Romanian economy, and leave Rosia Montana with a modern infrastructure: roads, electricity, internet, safe running water, a new school and clinic, and dozens of new businesses that will sustain a strong economy long after the mine is gone. Of course, other ore bodies might be discovered, prolonging the area’s mining economy for decades.
The museum, clean environment, and new hotels and restaurants will attract tourists who have never before had a reason to visit this cold, polluted, inhospitable region.
No wonder the mayor strongly supports the new mine and was re-elected with over 80% of the vote. If the project moves forward, miracles will happen. If it dies, the land and water will remain polluted, because Romania cannot afford to clean it up. More young people will leave, the elderly will be abandoned, and investors will think twice about coming to Romania.
But none of this matters to the international anti-mining movement. Almost the moment the plan was announced, foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) launched a local opposition group (Alburnus Maior) and well-financed campaign to stop the project – using techniques they had refined in countless actions across North and South America, Asia and Africa.
The region is idyllic, they say – perfect for farming and tourism. The people love their quaint homes and prefer horse-drawn carts over automobiles. Gabriel would uproot families, destroy Rosia’s churches and landmarks, and pollute the pristine environment. The people don’t want these temporary jobs. They’d rather pick mushrooms and carve wood figurines.
These and other absurd lies are chronicled in the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business." Residents can hardly imagine anyone would believe them. But websites, awards from celebrities and like-minded pressure groups, and a constant flow of spurious allegations have generated opposition all over Europe. A recent PBS television pseudo-documentary (funded by Greenpeace) is carrying their anti-mining battle to US audiences.
The latest fabrication attacks the proposed use of cyanide to recover the precious metals. The NGOs claim the method is dangerous and used only in destitute Third World countries. They have persuaded Romanian legislators to introduce laws banning the chemical – and thus scuttling the project and future mining prospects.
Actually, cyanide is produced by bacteria and fungi, and found in almonds, coffee and other foods. Over 400 modern mines in the US, EU, Canada, Australia and many other nations use it to extract gold and silver. Because it degrades quickly and naturally, and does not involve acids or heavy metals, it is safer for workers and the environment than alternative methods. Indeed, it is far less toxic than automobile exhaust or the arsenic and other chemicals that now foul Rosia Montana’s water.
Gabriel Resources – the only EU-licensed company to sign the International Cyanide Management Code – plans to use it in a state-of-the-art system that will safely recycle the chemical repeatedly and send nearly cyanide-free water into a lined waste facility. The system is designed so that even major storms will not release dangerous chemicals into the environment – a huge difference from the risky, antiquated system that caused the Baia Mare overflow.
The radical NGOs simply hate mining, don’t live in the village, have no compassion for these families, and are under no legal obligation to be honest, transparent or accountable for the consequences of their actions. As one foreign activist said in an email:
"Why should any NGO come forward with alternative projects? That is not the job of civil society. We are not a humanitarian organization, but a militant environmental NGO. If the whole community is in favor of the project, we simply put it on the list of our enemies."
They will spend millions to stop development, but not one cent on poor people or the environment. They destroy thousands of jobs, but create no new ones. When someone asked the Alburnus Maior president where his money comes from, he said "It’s not your business!"
George Soros and his Soros Foundation Romania appear to be the principal money behind this campaign. Not only is this support anti-poor, anti-environment and anti-Romania. It's also hypocritical, because Soros has made millions from mining operations that use cyanide – and a silver mine that relocated an entire village. But stopping Gabriel and other Western corporations could certainly benefit his political agenda and provide opportunities to profit from fluctuations in metals prices caused by restrictions on mining in the face of surging demand to meet the needs of new technologies and developing economies.
It also promotes Hungary's desire to assert influence over lands that once were part of its empire, or at least prevent those regions from becoming economic competitors. That desire may explain why its government issued a press release condemning the project, almost immediately after it had submitted 122 questions about the project, but before it had received a single answer.
Twenty-one Romanian NGOs visited Rosia Montana and met with the people and company. Eighteen of them changed their minds and now support the project. The radical activists refuse to have any dialogue.
Draped in gold, actress Vanessa Redgrave used a Cluj-Napoca film festival to proclaim her opposition to the mine. When the people of Rosia Montana wrote her a letter – asking "Where will be go? How will we live?" – she responded with stony, callous silence.
Wealthy San Francisco insurance magnate Richard Goldman gave Swiss-British Stephanie Roth US$125,000 for leading the project's opposition. He has also given nearly US$1-million to radical anti-insecticide groups that help perpetuate malaria, misery and childhood death in Africa.
But what possible reason can the Royal Society, Catholic Church, news media and Royal Family of Romania have for opposing this project? Why do they want to ensure that thousands of their own people remain unemployed, living in squalid homes and sentenced to suffer in one of Romania’s most polluted areas? Why do they want to give George Soros and Hungary veto power over Romania’s mining industry and thousands of jobs and families?
Would Princess Margareta or any of the journalists, Church leaders or Society elites want to live even one winter in this "paradise" they want to "save"? Do they hate mining with enough passion to give up its benefits: their fine homes, jewelry, computers, cars and jet travel – none of which are possible without mining? Will Redgrave, Roth, Soros, Goldman and other project opponents do likewise? Will the anti-cyanide legislators?
Rather than aligning with the foreign militants, Romanian legislators, journalists, celebrities and citizens should visit the village, strip mines, streams and waste heaps, and speak with the people of Rosia Montana and Gabriel Resources. If there is a need for legislation, it is for laws that compel anti-development NGOs – and those that bankroll them – to abide by basic rules for honesty, transparency and accountability that every decent organization should be happy to follow.
Most important, they should let the people of Rosia Montana decide their own future – without lies and pressure from foreign activists. If that future includes this mining project, it will give Rosia and the entire nation an opportunity to rehabilitate this ecological disaster, preserve the best of their cultural heritage, and become healthy, modern and prosperous. Together, these actions would help ensure that a half-century of oppression by totalitarians is not followed by oppression at the hands of unaccountable eco-imperialists.
Note: For a local’s perspective on the situation in Rosia Montana, check out the Report from Rosia website run by Gheorghe Luchian. He writes of how desperately the villagers want the mine and the jobs it will bring. Thanks to Support MYOB for the link.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
For decades, Nazi and Communist regimes ruled Romania, kept her people impoverished and exploited her resources – tearing vast mineral wealth from her mountains, with little regard for worker safety, people’s health or the environment. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, Romania eagerly embraced a more hopeful future and embarked on a course to join the European Union.
Life has improved for many, especially in cities like Bucharest. But Romania remains one of the EU’s poorest nations, and valleys that once echoed with the shouts of workers and roar of heavy equipment are now silent. Over 300,000 miners are jobless. Their villages have descended into squalor, misery and despondency that have no historic parallel.
Rosia Montana is one such place. This Transylvanian town hosts a massive open-pit mine, enormous waste dumps and, beneath them, hundreds of tunnels. The legacy of 2000 years of mining – the most damaging of which occurred under Ceaucescu – they leach toxic chemicals into local streams that now are red-orange from cadmium and contain 110 times the EU’s legal limit of zinc, 64 times its iron limit, and three times the limit for arsenic, the most dangerous chemical on the US government’s toxic substances list.
Homes and buildings are crumbling, two-thirds of them lack indoor toilets and running water, and 70% of the workers are unemployed. Families survive on wild berries, subsistence farming in rocky, acidic soil, welfare, and often less than US$2 a day. Few own a car. Frigid winters are warmed only by wood stoves. Malnutrition and ill health are constant problems. The dentist serves as the area’s only doctor.
Unlike most former mining towns, however, Rosia has one last chance. Gabriel Resources wants to reopen the mine, to tease out nearly 2,000 tons of gold and silver that the antiquated methods of bygone eras could not extract.
In the process, the Canadian company would spend millions to erase the horrific environmental legacy, restore the land to forests, pastures and grasslands, and leave the alpine waters sparkling. All at no cost to the Romanian government, which cannot afford to clean up the mess itself.
Gabriel would also create high-paying jobs, revitalize the community, protect and restore Rosia’s most valuable churches and buildings in a special historic zone, build a modern village with homes in traditional Romanian styles, save Roman and other archeological treasures in a museum – and provide precious metals for jewelry, computers and other marvels. (The company has already spent over US$200 million; its US$10-million expenditure thus far on archeology is 40 times the Romanian Culture Ministry’s annual budget between 1990 and 2003.)
Over a 29-year period, the project would create 1,200 construction jobs, more than 600 mining jobs, and 6,000 indirect jobs in service sectors. It would inject US$2.5 billion into the local and Romanian economy, and leave Rosia Montana with a modern infrastructure: roads, electricity, internet, safe running water, a new school and clinic, and dozens of new businesses that will sustain a strong economy long after the mine is gone. Of course, other ore bodies might be discovered, prolonging the area’s mining economy for decades.
The museum, clean environment, and new hotels and restaurants will attract tourists who have never before had a reason to visit this cold, polluted, inhospitable region.
No wonder the mayor strongly supports the new mine and was re-elected with over 80% of the vote. If the project moves forward, miracles will happen. If it dies, the land and water will remain polluted, because Romania cannot afford to clean it up. More young people will leave, the elderly will be abandoned, and investors will think twice about coming to Romania.
But none of this matters to the international anti-mining movement. Almost the moment the plan was announced, foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) launched a local opposition group (Alburnus Maior) and well-financed campaign to stop the project – using techniques they had refined in countless actions across North and South America, Asia and Africa.
The region is idyllic, they say – perfect for farming and tourism. The people love their quaint homes and prefer horse-drawn carts over automobiles. Gabriel would uproot families, destroy Rosia’s churches and landmarks, and pollute the pristine environment. The people don’t want these temporary jobs. They’d rather pick mushrooms and carve wood figurines.
These and other absurd lies are chronicled in the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business." Residents can hardly imagine anyone would believe them. But websites, awards from celebrities and like-minded pressure groups, and a constant flow of spurious allegations have generated opposition all over Europe. A recent PBS television pseudo-documentary (funded by Greenpeace) is carrying their anti-mining battle to US audiences.
The latest fabrication attacks the proposed use of cyanide to recover the precious metals. The NGOs claim the method is dangerous and used only in destitute Third World countries. They have persuaded Romanian legislators to introduce laws banning the chemical – and thus scuttling the project and future mining prospects.
Actually, cyanide is produced by bacteria and fungi, and found in almonds, coffee and other foods. Over 400 modern mines in the US, EU, Canada, Australia and many other nations use it to extract gold and silver. Because it degrades quickly and naturally, and does not involve acids or heavy metals, it is safer for workers and the environment than alternative methods. Indeed, it is far less toxic than automobile exhaust or the arsenic and other chemicals that now foul Rosia Montana’s water.
Gabriel Resources – the only EU-licensed company to sign the International Cyanide Management Code – plans to use it in a state-of-the-art system that will safely recycle the chemical repeatedly and send nearly cyanide-free water into a lined waste facility. The system is designed so that even major storms will not release dangerous chemicals into the environment – a huge difference from the risky, antiquated system that caused the Baia Mare overflow.
The radical NGOs simply hate mining, don’t live in the village, have no compassion for these families, and are under no legal obligation to be honest, transparent or accountable for the consequences of their actions. As one foreign activist said in an email:
"Why should any NGO come forward with alternative projects? That is not the job of civil society. We are not a humanitarian organization, but a militant environmental NGO. If the whole community is in favor of the project, we simply put it on the list of our enemies."
They will spend millions to stop development, but not one cent on poor people or the environment. They destroy thousands of jobs, but create no new ones. When someone asked the Alburnus Maior president where his money comes from, he said "It’s not your business!"
George Soros and his Soros Foundation Romania appear to be the principal money behind this campaign. Not only is this support anti-poor, anti-environment and anti-Romania. It's also hypocritical, because Soros has made millions from mining operations that use cyanide – and a silver mine that relocated an entire village. But stopping Gabriel and other Western corporations could certainly benefit his political agenda and provide opportunities to profit from fluctuations in metals prices caused by restrictions on mining in the face of surging demand to meet the needs of new technologies and developing economies.
It also promotes Hungary's desire to assert influence over lands that once were part of its empire, or at least prevent those regions from becoming economic competitors. That desire may explain why its government issued a press release condemning the project, almost immediately after it had submitted 122 questions about the project, but before it had received a single answer.
Twenty-one Romanian NGOs visited Rosia Montana and met with the people and company. Eighteen of them changed their minds and now support the project. The radical activists refuse to have any dialogue.
Draped in gold, actress Vanessa Redgrave used a Cluj-Napoca film festival to proclaim her opposition to the mine. When the people of Rosia Montana wrote her a letter – asking "Where will be go? How will we live?" – she responded with stony, callous silence.
Wealthy San Francisco insurance magnate Richard Goldman gave Swiss-British Stephanie Roth US$125,000 for leading the project's opposition. He has also given nearly US$1-million to radical anti-insecticide groups that help perpetuate malaria, misery and childhood death in Africa.
But what possible reason can the Royal Society, Catholic Church, news media and Royal Family of Romania have for opposing this project? Why do they want to ensure that thousands of their own people remain unemployed, living in squalid homes and sentenced to suffer in one of Romania’s most polluted areas? Why do they want to give George Soros and Hungary veto power over Romania’s mining industry and thousands of jobs and families?
Would Princess Margareta or any of the journalists, Church leaders or Society elites want to live even one winter in this "paradise" they want to "save"? Do they hate mining with enough passion to give up its benefits: their fine homes, jewelry, computers, cars and jet travel – none of which are possible without mining? Will Redgrave, Roth, Soros, Goldman and other project opponents do likewise? Will the anti-cyanide legislators?
Rather than aligning with the foreign militants, Romanian legislators, journalists, celebrities and citizens should visit the village, strip mines, streams and waste heaps, and speak with the people of Rosia Montana and Gabriel Resources. If there is a need for legislation, it is for laws that compel anti-development NGOs – and those that bankroll them – to abide by basic rules for honesty, transparency and accountability that every decent organization should be happy to follow.
Most important, they should let the people of Rosia Montana decide their own future – without lies and pressure from foreign activists. If that future includes this mining project, it will give Rosia and the entire nation an opportunity to rehabilitate this ecological disaster, preserve the best of their cultural heritage, and become healthy, modern and prosperous. Together, these actions would help ensure that a half-century of oppression by totalitarians is not followed by oppression at the hands of unaccountable eco-imperialists.
Note: For a local’s perspective on the situation in Rosia Montana, check out the Report from Rosia website run by Gheorghe Luchian. He writes of how desperately the villagers want the mine and the jobs it will bring. Thanks to Support MYOB for the link.
The Return of the Eagles
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The dog days of August have drawn to a close. This is the calm before the gathering political storm. On Sept. 15, the far-left group ANSWER ("Act Now to Stop War and End Racism") will descend on the nation's capital to demand what they've been demanding for the last six years in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and immediate release of every last suspected al Qaeda operative in American custody; immediate impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney; and immediate capitulation to our enemies at home and abroad.
Who will be there to counter the Jane Fonda retreads? Will you?
Earlier this year, I reported on a new, nonpartisan movement that arose to challenge the surrender lobby. On a bitter cold weekend in March, the Gathering of Eagles brought together veterans, families of active-duty servicemen and servicewomen, Rolling Thunder members, military bloggers and their grass-roots supporters to raise their pro-troops, pro-mission voices. I interviewed Eagles who flew in from San Francisco, rode motorcycles south from Georgia, drove all night from Boston, and trekked in caravans from coast to coast to answer ANSWER. At the crack of dawn, facing biting winds and contemptuous taunts, tens of thousands of Eagles stood guard over war memorials threatened by anti-war anarchists and lined the streets where bongo drum-beating retreatists marched.
The Gathering of Eagles turnout was unprecedented. The Cindy Sheehanistas and socialist rabble-rousers had never been met and matched with such force. Now, the Eagles are organizing a return to Washington at a historic moment in the global war against jihad. Gen. David Petraeus, top commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are expected to testify before the Senate on Sept. 11. Yes, that Sept. 11. Four days later, Sept. 15, is the deadline for the president to submit reports to Congress on how Iraq is meeting benchmarks for progress since the troop surge was announced in January.
ANSWER will lead what it bills as a "massive" Sept. 15 demonstration to "End the War Now!" -- no matter what Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker report. They will hold a "die-in" and once again use the names and legacies of fallen soldiers without their permission to push for a precipitous pullout. They'll remain in Washington the following week to hold a Code Pink-led protest in the House and an Iraq Veterans Against the War-led harassment campaign against military recruiters in D.C. and nationwide.
For every anti-Bush activist agitating for immediate withdrawal and throwing rocks at ROTC offices, an Eagle will be there in Washington to oppose the planting of the white flag. The organizations leading the way include the Gathering of Eagles, Eagles Landing, Move America Forward, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Free Republic, Vets for Freedom and the Victory Caucus. (Visit gatheringofeagles.org and moveamericaforward.org for details.)
As retired Army Col. Harry Riley explains, "Unlike the '60s and '70s, the anti-war lemmings will not have the streets or the political stage to themselves. This time, Eagle Americans -- we who support our troops, understand the stakes in the War on Terror and the true nature of our enemy, who aren't blinded by an insane hatred of our way of life and our form of government -- will also be in Washington, D.C., to show Congress that we will not tolerate another betrayal of our own forces or our allies. . . . While the anti-democracy forces are well-funded by pro-left, anti-Americans, we Eagles have steadily been building our own coalition to stop ANSWER in its tracks, and keep Congress focused on winning the war, not their political ambitions."
I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The dog days of August have drawn to a close. This is the calm before the gathering political storm. On Sept. 15, the far-left group ANSWER ("Act Now to Stop War and End Racism") will descend on the nation's capital to demand what they've been demanding for the last six years in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and immediate release of every last suspected al Qaeda operative in American custody; immediate impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney; and immediate capitulation to our enemies at home and abroad.
Who will be there to counter the Jane Fonda retreads? Will you?
Earlier this year, I reported on a new, nonpartisan movement that arose to challenge the surrender lobby. On a bitter cold weekend in March, the Gathering of Eagles brought together veterans, families of active-duty servicemen and servicewomen, Rolling Thunder members, military bloggers and their grass-roots supporters to raise their pro-troops, pro-mission voices. I interviewed Eagles who flew in from San Francisco, rode motorcycles south from Georgia, drove all night from Boston, and trekked in caravans from coast to coast to answer ANSWER. At the crack of dawn, facing biting winds and contemptuous taunts, tens of thousands of Eagles stood guard over war memorials threatened by anti-war anarchists and lined the streets where bongo drum-beating retreatists marched.
The Gathering of Eagles turnout was unprecedented. The Cindy Sheehanistas and socialist rabble-rousers had never been met and matched with such force. Now, the Eagles are organizing a return to Washington at a historic moment in the global war against jihad. Gen. David Petraeus, top commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are expected to testify before the Senate on Sept. 11. Yes, that Sept. 11. Four days later, Sept. 15, is the deadline for the president to submit reports to Congress on how Iraq is meeting benchmarks for progress since the troop surge was announced in January.
ANSWER will lead what it bills as a "massive" Sept. 15 demonstration to "End the War Now!" -- no matter what Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker report. They will hold a "die-in" and once again use the names and legacies of fallen soldiers without their permission to push for a precipitous pullout. They'll remain in Washington the following week to hold a Code Pink-led protest in the House and an Iraq Veterans Against the War-led harassment campaign against military recruiters in D.C. and nationwide.
For every anti-Bush activist agitating for immediate withdrawal and throwing rocks at ROTC offices, an Eagle will be there in Washington to oppose the planting of the white flag. The organizations leading the way include the Gathering of Eagles, Eagles Landing, Move America Forward, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Free Republic, Vets for Freedom and the Victory Caucus. (Visit gatheringofeagles.org and moveamericaforward.org for details.)
As retired Army Col. Harry Riley explains, "Unlike the '60s and '70s, the anti-war lemmings will not have the streets or the political stage to themselves. This time, Eagle Americans -- we who support our troops, understand the stakes in the War on Terror and the true nature of our enemy, who aren't blinded by an insane hatred of our way of life and our form of government -- will also be in Washington, D.C., to show Congress that we will not tolerate another betrayal of our own forces or our allies. . . . While the anti-democracy forces are well-funded by pro-left, anti-Americans, we Eagles have steadily been building our own coalition to stop ANSWER in its tracks, and keep Congress focused on winning the war, not their political ambitions."
I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Liberals' Desire To Be Loved Is Their Achilles' Heel
By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I have spent a good part of my life trying to understand people I disagree with, whether on the right or the left, whether members of my own religion or of other religions or of no religion.
In particular, I have wanted to understand people who hold leftist positions. Many people who hold them are personally decent, some very much so -- yet they hold positions that I believe increase cruelty (e.g., advocating withdrawal from Iraq); increase criminality (e.g., more lenient attitudes toward punishing criminals); hasten the decline of Western society (e.g., pushing multiculturalism); and undermine liberty (e.g., expanding government, passing more and more laws, taking away ever larger percentages of citizens' money).
They also panic easily (e.g., heterosexual AIDS in America, carbon dioxide emissions leading to global catastrophe); and the further left one goes, the more morally confused they are (e.g., the inability to label the Soviet Union an "evil empire"; the exaggeration of America's flaws -- it is sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic -- and the undervaluing of its virtues).
Why is this? Why do so many good people hold bad positions?
There are many reasons. I believe that naivete about human nature and about evil heads the list. But high up there as an explanation of liberal and leftist thinking is the desire to be loved.
All normal people want to be loved -- and that is a very good thing when the love is sought from good people with whom we have close relationships.
But many people want to be loved by far more than friends and relatives. For example, most celebrities ache for the love of the public, and while that is a psychological problem for them -- since the love of the public is not personally fulfilling and one then craves it more and more -- the yearning of celebrities for an adoring public has no negative impact on society.
The yearning to be loved becomes a major problem, however, in most other instances. It becomes a problem, for example, when in raising children parents are guided by a desire to be loved by them. Parents cannot properly raise a child if they are unwilling to be disliked, even occasionally hated, by their child.
Sometimes what we have to do to raise a good child means not being loved at that moment (or even for extended periods over the course of years). That is one of the major reasons it is so difficult to raise children.
The liberal view of child-rearing over the last generation or two has placed love well above discipline, let alone punishment. The expressed reason is never that the punished child will not love the parent, but it is probably a factor in some liberal parents' mode of child-rearing.
But there are two areas where liberals do express a yearning to be loved, and these have macro, indeed, global, ramifications.
The most dangerous one is the liberal desire for their country to be loved.
One of the most often repeated liberal laments about American foreign policy under President George W. Bush is that America is more hated around the world than ever. As if a country being loved is evidence of its moral virtue.
The very idea is irrational. Name a country that is loved. Does a single country come to mind? Of course not. Canadian students traveling abroad often make sure -- via a big maple leaf on their backpack, for example -- to communicate that they are Canadian, not American. But that is because of America-hatred, not because foreigners love Canada. The idea is amusing. Are there pockets of Canada-love in India about which we have heretofore not heard? Are there 50 people in Uruguay who love Sweden, to mention the liberals' most admired country?
People don't love countries except during exceptional and brief moments in history -- such as when Germans loved America for the Berlin airlift or the French loved us right after we liberated their country from the Nazis.
The aim of the United States of America should not be to be loved. As nice as that would be, the one superpower on earth is never going to be loved -- though I would bet a large sum of money that if China or Russia or any other country became the reigning superpower, people the world over would yearn for the good old days when America was the superpower.
America would presumably be more loved if it abandoned Israel or if it abandoned Iraq. Each case would be morally wrong, but, hey, we'd be loved. Liberals believed we would have been more loved if we had destroyed our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Or if we had not pressured West Germany into accepting Pershing missiles.
Of course, in all these cases, if America had sought love, evil would have prevailed. But at least we'd be loved. What else really matters?
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I have spent a good part of my life trying to understand people I disagree with, whether on the right or the left, whether members of my own religion or of other religions or of no religion.
In particular, I have wanted to understand people who hold leftist positions. Many people who hold them are personally decent, some very much so -- yet they hold positions that I believe increase cruelty (e.g., advocating withdrawal from Iraq); increase criminality (e.g., more lenient attitudes toward punishing criminals); hasten the decline of Western society (e.g., pushing multiculturalism); and undermine liberty (e.g., expanding government, passing more and more laws, taking away ever larger percentages of citizens' money).
They also panic easily (e.g., heterosexual AIDS in America, carbon dioxide emissions leading to global catastrophe); and the further left one goes, the more morally confused they are (e.g., the inability to label the Soviet Union an "evil empire"; the exaggeration of America's flaws -- it is sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic -- and the undervaluing of its virtues).
Why is this? Why do so many good people hold bad positions?
There are many reasons. I believe that naivete about human nature and about evil heads the list. But high up there as an explanation of liberal and leftist thinking is the desire to be loved.
All normal people want to be loved -- and that is a very good thing when the love is sought from good people with whom we have close relationships.
But many people want to be loved by far more than friends and relatives. For example, most celebrities ache for the love of the public, and while that is a psychological problem for them -- since the love of the public is not personally fulfilling and one then craves it more and more -- the yearning of celebrities for an adoring public has no negative impact on society.
The yearning to be loved becomes a major problem, however, in most other instances. It becomes a problem, for example, when in raising children parents are guided by a desire to be loved by them. Parents cannot properly raise a child if they are unwilling to be disliked, even occasionally hated, by their child.
Sometimes what we have to do to raise a good child means not being loved at that moment (or even for extended periods over the course of years). That is one of the major reasons it is so difficult to raise children.
The liberal view of child-rearing over the last generation or two has placed love well above discipline, let alone punishment. The expressed reason is never that the punished child will not love the parent, but it is probably a factor in some liberal parents' mode of child-rearing.
But there are two areas where liberals do express a yearning to be loved, and these have macro, indeed, global, ramifications.
The most dangerous one is the liberal desire for their country to be loved.
One of the most often repeated liberal laments about American foreign policy under President George W. Bush is that America is more hated around the world than ever. As if a country being loved is evidence of its moral virtue.
The very idea is irrational. Name a country that is loved. Does a single country come to mind? Of course not. Canadian students traveling abroad often make sure -- via a big maple leaf on their backpack, for example -- to communicate that they are Canadian, not American. But that is because of America-hatred, not because foreigners love Canada. The idea is amusing. Are there pockets of Canada-love in India about which we have heretofore not heard? Are there 50 people in Uruguay who love Sweden, to mention the liberals' most admired country?
People don't love countries except during exceptional and brief moments in history -- such as when Germans loved America for the Berlin airlift or the French loved us right after we liberated their country from the Nazis.
The aim of the United States of America should not be to be loved. As nice as that would be, the one superpower on earth is never going to be loved -- though I would bet a large sum of money that if China or Russia or any other country became the reigning superpower, people the world over would yearn for the good old days when America was the superpower.
America would presumably be more loved if it abandoned Israel or if it abandoned Iraq. Each case would be morally wrong, but, hey, we'd be loved. Liberals believed we would have been more loved if we had destroyed our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Or if we had not pressured West Germany into accepting Pershing missiles.
Of course, in all these cases, if America had sought love, evil would have prevailed. But at least we'd be loved. What else really matters?
A Denier's Confession
Global warming is more alarmist than alarming.
By Bret Stephens
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.
But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach? When it was reported in January that 2006 was one of the hottest years on record, NASA's James Hansen used the occasion to warn grimly that "2007 is likely to be warmer than 2006." Yet now he says, in connection to the data revision, that "in general I think we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years."
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that the world has been and will be getting warmer thanks in some part to an increase in man-made atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. I acknowledge this in the same way I'm confident that the equatorial radius of Saturn is about 60,000 kilometers: not because I've measured it myself, but out of a deep reserve of faith in the methods of the scientific community, above all its reputation for transparency and open-mindedness.
But that faith is tested when leading climate scientists won't share the data they use to estimate temperatures past and present and thus construct all-important trend lines. This was true of climatologist Michael Mann, who refused to disclose the algorithm behind his massively influential "hockey stick" graph, which purported to demonstrate a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century. (The accuracy of the graph was seriously discredited by Mr. McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick.) This was true also of Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who reportedly turned down one request for information with the remark, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive parasites such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.
But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?
I confess: Denial never solves anything. But neither does sensational and deceptive journalism.
Newsweek illustrates this point by its choice of cover art--a picture of the sun, where the surface temperature hovers around 6,000 degrees Celsius. Given that the consensus scientific estimate for average temperature increases over the next century is a comparatively modest 2.6 degrees, this would seem a rather Murdochian way of convincing readers about the gravity of the climate threat. On the inside pages is a photograph of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. But the caption that the bears are "at risk" belies clear evidence that the bear population has risen five-fold since the 1960s. Another series of photographs, of a huge Antarctic ice shelf that quickly disintegrated in 2002, suggests the imminence of doom. But why not also mention that temperatures at the South Pole have been going down for 50 years?
I confess: It's easy to be indifferent to far-off and diffuse threats. It's hard to work toward solutions the benefits of which will not be felt in our lifetime.
Then again, if Americans are not fully persuaded of the dangers of global warming, as Newsweek laments, don't chalk it up to the pernicious influence of the so-called deniers and their enablers at ExxonMobil and Fox News. Today, global warming is variously suggested as the root cause of terrorism, the conflict in Darfur and the rising incidence of suicides in Italy. Yet the 20th century offers excellent reasons to be suspicious of monocausal explanations for the world's ills, monomaniacs intent on saving us from ourselves, and the long train of experts predicting death by overpopulation, resource depletion, global cooling, nuclear winter and prions. Also, hypocrites. When we are called on to bike to work, permanently abjure air travel, "eat locally" and so on, we expect to be led by example, not by a new nomenklatura.
I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
By Bret Stephens
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.
But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach? When it was reported in January that 2006 was one of the hottest years on record, NASA's James Hansen used the occasion to warn grimly that "2007 is likely to be warmer than 2006." Yet now he says, in connection to the data revision, that "in general I think we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years."
I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that the world has been and will be getting warmer thanks in some part to an increase in man-made atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. I acknowledge this in the same way I'm confident that the equatorial radius of Saturn is about 60,000 kilometers: not because I've measured it myself, but out of a deep reserve of faith in the methods of the scientific community, above all its reputation for transparency and open-mindedness.
But that faith is tested when leading climate scientists won't share the data they use to estimate temperatures past and present and thus construct all-important trend lines. This was true of climatologist Michael Mann, who refused to disclose the algorithm behind his massively influential "hockey stick" graph, which purported to demonstrate a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century. (The accuracy of the graph was seriously discredited by Mr. McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick.) This was true also of Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who reportedly turned down one request for information with the remark, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive parasites such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.
But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?
I confess: Denial never solves anything. But neither does sensational and deceptive journalism.
Newsweek illustrates this point by its choice of cover art--a picture of the sun, where the surface temperature hovers around 6,000 degrees Celsius. Given that the consensus scientific estimate for average temperature increases over the next century is a comparatively modest 2.6 degrees, this would seem a rather Murdochian way of convincing readers about the gravity of the climate threat. On the inside pages is a photograph of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. But the caption that the bears are "at risk" belies clear evidence that the bear population has risen five-fold since the 1960s. Another series of photographs, of a huge Antarctic ice shelf that quickly disintegrated in 2002, suggests the imminence of doom. But why not also mention that temperatures at the South Pole have been going down for 50 years?
I confess: It's easy to be indifferent to far-off and diffuse threats. It's hard to work toward solutions the benefits of which will not be felt in our lifetime.
Then again, if Americans are not fully persuaded of the dangers of global warming, as Newsweek laments, don't chalk it up to the pernicious influence of the so-called deniers and their enablers at ExxonMobil and Fox News. Today, global warming is variously suggested as the root cause of terrorism, the conflict in Darfur and the rising incidence of suicides in Italy. Yet the 20th century offers excellent reasons to be suspicious of monocausal explanations for the world's ills, monomaniacs intent on saving us from ourselves, and the long train of experts predicting death by overpopulation, resource depletion, global cooling, nuclear winter and prions. Also, hypocrites. When we are called on to bike to work, permanently abjure air travel, "eat locally" and so on, we expect to be led by example, not by a new nomenklatura.
I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Whose genocide will it be?
By John R. Thomson
Monday, August 27, 2007
Throughout most of the Muslim world, in virtually all media and with hardly a whimper of demurral, the charge is leveled and endlessly reiterated: the United States, frequently with its hated accomplice Israel, is labeled the world's modern leader in genocide. Led by George Bush, supported by his Zionist accomplices, it is charged the genocide is aimed at one segment of society: Muslims.
In madrassas and mosques, in the press and on television, with hardly an American much less Muslim voice raised to counter the calumnies, we, who consider ourselves the defenders of life and liberty, are charged, tried and convicted as the perpetrators of massive Muslim massacres from Detroit's Arab community to Darfur and to all points east.
Imams in their Friday sermons, commentators on television and demonstrators' placards in Birmingham, Damascus, Islamabad and London berate our country for supposedly heinous crimes which make minimal whatever may have been done by the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and currently, Sudanese President and Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir.
The objectives of this unprecedented and thoroughly mendacious propaganda are clear. First, the campaign seeks to distract as much of the world's attention as possible from the real murderers, the true ethnic and religious cleansers. For the truth is, the perpetrators to an overwhelming degree are the Muslims themselves.
Simultaneously, the accusations are calculated to inflame the credulous Arab/Muslim street, in order to
• justify murderous Muslim terrorism,
• recruit gullible suicide bombers and
• attract covert support from Saudi Arabia, once a stalwart U.S. ally.
Well-researched and extremely revealing statistics, gleaned from publicly available sources, decimate what fanatical Islamists are telling the world about the two terrible, sadistic "Satans". Muslims have slaughtered millions of their fellow Muslims, for political, religious or ethnic reasons. Not incidentally, this frightening phenomenon is a principal danger in premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
From the end of the 19th century, when the first Zionists settled in Palestine, the Arab-Israeli conflict has produced some 60 thousand Arab fatalities. An estimated 6,000 were Palestinians, the majority soldiers, as in the Six Day war in 1967, and the Yom Kippur war in 1973 [in fact, most battle casualties were Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Turk combatants fighting in the many wars commencing in 1948].
In the 1954-62 Algerian war of independence from France, estimates range from 600 thousand to Algerian claims of more than a million Muslim deaths.
In Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, 400 thousand were murdered in 1965-66. Adding East Timor, between 1975 and 1999 another 100-200 thousand Muslims and Christians were killed by the Indonesian army.
In largely Muslim Chechnya, during the period 1994-1996 Russian military murdered as many as 200 thousand; while in Kosovo in 1998-2000, the Serbs assassinated some 10 thousand Muslims.
The Bangladeshi fight for independence from Pakistan in 1971 led to between 1.4 and 2 million Muslims deaths.
In Somalia's, long running civil war, at least 550 thousand Muslims have perished. A 1988 aerial bombardment ordered by dictator Siad Barre flattened Somaliland's regional capital, Hargeisa, and slaughtered 50 thousand, in one horrific week.
Sudanese Muslim regimes have conducted 50 years of genocide in the south, of blacks, Nubians and other Muslims, resulting in between 2.6 and 3 million fatalities, including 2.4 million civilian deaths.
In Afghanistan, the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion and subsequent occupation produced between one and 1.5 million civilian Muslim murders over 10 years, plus another 90 thousand Mujahideen and Taliban fighters, equally split between Soviet and warring Muslim factions. The American invasion in 2001 created perhaps 10 thousand fatalities, interrupting the estimated 1.2 million additional deaths generated by Muslim militias' protracted civil war following Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban's current one-by-one assassinations of two dozen Korean Christian aid workers are a ghastly exception from routine murders of fellow Afghan Muslims.
In fact, the worst slaughters of Muslims have been committed by other Muslims, for political, religious or ethnic reasons. In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen and Taliban have been responsible for more than a million murders.
In Iraq, the 1980-88 war with Iran produced more than 1.5 million Muslim deaths. Saddam’s endless domestic purges added another million, mostly Shia and Kurd deaths. The current Sunni-Shia confrontation is estimated to have caused another 100 thousand deaths to date.
Neighboring Iran suffered between 450 thousand and 970 thousand deaths during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, plus unknown thousands of dissidents killed by Iran's secret police since 1979. In Syria, the late President Hafez al-Assad attacked the city of Hama in 1982, murdering 200 thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood … not to mention one murderous action after another in Lebanon, accounting for at least 130 thousand.
The foregoing does not consider lethal activities in Chad, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen and Zanzibar, Tanzania's island province. Experts estimate up to 600 thousand mostly Muslim fatalities in these areas since 1960.
Who are the real perpetrators of genocide, the people committing these religious and ethnic cleansings -- these massacres? Who are those responsible for spilling so much Muslim blood? In the overwhelming majority of cases the killers have been and continue to be the Muslims themselves.
Indeed, if we were to leave the Iraqis on their own, it is very likely that hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Muslims would be killed by fellow Muslims, goaded on by Iran to the east and Syria to their west, in a full scale sectarian civil war.
Should such a tragedy occur, would the world correctly consider the United States an accomplice to genocide? In such a situation, sadly, yes.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Throughout most of the Muslim world, in virtually all media and with hardly a whimper of demurral, the charge is leveled and endlessly reiterated: the United States, frequently with its hated accomplice Israel, is labeled the world's modern leader in genocide. Led by George Bush, supported by his Zionist accomplices, it is charged the genocide is aimed at one segment of society: Muslims.
In madrassas and mosques, in the press and on television, with hardly an American much less Muslim voice raised to counter the calumnies, we, who consider ourselves the defenders of life and liberty, are charged, tried and convicted as the perpetrators of massive Muslim massacres from Detroit's Arab community to Darfur and to all points east.
Imams in their Friday sermons, commentators on television and demonstrators' placards in Birmingham, Damascus, Islamabad and London berate our country for supposedly heinous crimes which make minimal whatever may have been done by the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and currently, Sudanese President and Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir.
The objectives of this unprecedented and thoroughly mendacious propaganda are clear. First, the campaign seeks to distract as much of the world's attention as possible from the real murderers, the true ethnic and religious cleansers. For the truth is, the perpetrators to an overwhelming degree are the Muslims themselves.
Simultaneously, the accusations are calculated to inflame the credulous Arab/Muslim street, in order to
• justify murderous Muslim terrorism,
• recruit gullible suicide bombers and
• attract covert support from Saudi Arabia, once a stalwart U.S. ally.
Well-researched and extremely revealing statistics, gleaned from publicly available sources, decimate what fanatical Islamists are telling the world about the two terrible, sadistic "Satans". Muslims have slaughtered millions of their fellow Muslims, for political, religious or ethnic reasons. Not incidentally, this frightening phenomenon is a principal danger in premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
From the end of the 19th century, when the first Zionists settled in Palestine, the Arab-Israeli conflict has produced some 60 thousand Arab fatalities. An estimated 6,000 were Palestinians, the majority soldiers, as in the Six Day war in 1967, and the Yom Kippur war in 1973 [in fact, most battle casualties were Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Turk combatants fighting in the many wars commencing in 1948].
In the 1954-62 Algerian war of independence from France, estimates range from 600 thousand to Algerian claims of more than a million Muslim deaths.
In Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, 400 thousand were murdered in 1965-66. Adding East Timor, between 1975 and 1999 another 100-200 thousand Muslims and Christians were killed by the Indonesian army.
In largely Muslim Chechnya, during the period 1994-1996 Russian military murdered as many as 200 thousand; while in Kosovo in 1998-2000, the Serbs assassinated some 10 thousand Muslims.
The Bangladeshi fight for independence from Pakistan in 1971 led to between 1.4 and 2 million Muslims deaths.
In Somalia's, long running civil war, at least 550 thousand Muslims have perished. A 1988 aerial bombardment ordered by dictator Siad Barre flattened Somaliland's regional capital, Hargeisa, and slaughtered 50 thousand, in one horrific week.
Sudanese Muslim regimes have conducted 50 years of genocide in the south, of blacks, Nubians and other Muslims, resulting in between 2.6 and 3 million fatalities, including 2.4 million civilian deaths.
In Afghanistan, the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion and subsequent occupation produced between one and 1.5 million civilian Muslim murders over 10 years, plus another 90 thousand Mujahideen and Taliban fighters, equally split between Soviet and warring Muslim factions. The American invasion in 2001 created perhaps 10 thousand fatalities, interrupting the estimated 1.2 million additional deaths generated by Muslim militias' protracted civil war following Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban's current one-by-one assassinations of two dozen Korean Christian aid workers are a ghastly exception from routine murders of fellow Afghan Muslims.
In fact, the worst slaughters of Muslims have been committed by other Muslims, for political, religious or ethnic reasons. In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen and Taliban have been responsible for more than a million murders.
In Iraq, the 1980-88 war with Iran produced more than 1.5 million Muslim deaths. Saddam’s endless domestic purges added another million, mostly Shia and Kurd deaths. The current Sunni-Shia confrontation is estimated to have caused another 100 thousand deaths to date.
Neighboring Iran suffered between 450 thousand and 970 thousand deaths during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, plus unknown thousands of dissidents killed by Iran's secret police since 1979. In Syria, the late President Hafez al-Assad attacked the city of Hama in 1982, murdering 200 thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood … not to mention one murderous action after another in Lebanon, accounting for at least 130 thousand.
The foregoing does not consider lethal activities in Chad, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen and Zanzibar, Tanzania's island province. Experts estimate up to 600 thousand mostly Muslim fatalities in these areas since 1960.
Who are the real perpetrators of genocide, the people committing these religious and ethnic cleansings -- these massacres? Who are those responsible for spilling so much Muslim blood? In the overwhelming majority of cases the killers have been and continue to be the Muslims themselves.
Indeed, if we were to leave the Iraqis on their own, it is very likely that hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Muslims would be killed by fellow Muslims, goaded on by Iran to the east and Syria to their west, in a full scale sectarian civil war.
Should such a tragedy occur, would the world correctly consider the United States an accomplice to genocide? In such a situation, sadly, yes.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Georgia on His Mind
The former Soviet republic is becoming a shining star. But will Russia drag it back into darkness?
By Melik Kaylan
Saturday, August 25, 2007 12:01 a.m.
TBILISI, Georgia--On Aug. 8, a missile the size of a bus struck near a village some 50 miles north of this Eurasian country's capital city, Tbilisi. It failed to explode. In all likelihood the missile came from Russian jet fighters violating Georgian airspace, as Georgians quickly claimed--the incident was eerily similar to one in March, when Russian attack helicopters flew at night and, without provocation, fired missiles into Georgian territory.
In both cases, Georgian authorities showed the world radar flight path data as proof. The world did nothing the first time, and will likely do nothing again. Meanwhile, unexplained incursions continue daily. This is the kind of near-lethal brinkmanship which Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili believes will only encourage more belligerence from Russia.
Mr. Saakashvili has spent his first 3 1/2 years in office impelling his country forward economically, courting NATO and European Union membership, eradicating corruption and trying to woo Russian-supported secessionists back into the fold. Above all, he strives daily to keep his country, with a population of four million, on the mind of Western nations so its security and success will seem synonymous with theirs--and keep the Russians at bay. The Russians still seem to perceive post-Soviet Georgian independence as a kind of betrayal, responding with an array of destabilizing policies, such as the imposition of embargoes on Georgian goods.
Earlier this summer, I spent some time with Georgia's president, checking on his progress. He has quite a story to tell, particularly about the economy. According to Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia's GDP was less than $3 billion five years ago. It's now $8 billion and will double in three years, and he is straightforward about his inspiration.
"I finally met Margaret Thatcher in London this year," he shouts over the noise of helicopter engines as we fly adjacent to the snow-peaked Caucasus mountains. "I always admired her, and I always thought, if I could do in Georgia a fraction of what she did in the U.K., I would be very happy. . . . And she said to me, 'You are doing all the things in Georgia that I wanted to do in the U.K. and more . . .' "
It's a strange place for an interview, but Mr. Saakashvili keeps a merciless schedule. On this day, after a speech in the main square of Tbilisi, he is presiding over five separate ribbon-cutting ceremonies around the country.
We begin the tour with a three-kilometer visit down a coal mine that has sat unused for 15 years, with the mining community above it going to ruin. It is now being revitalized with German money and machinery. We end the tour past midnight, at a new Turkish-built airport at the resurgent Black Sea resort of Batoumi.
Just four years ago, before the nonviolent Rose Revolution disposed of the Shevardnadze regime and soon voted in Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia was widely considered a failed state on a par with Zimbabwe--with corruption rampant, a stagnant economy and several civil wars smoldering.
That's changing. Three years ago, Mr. Saakashvili famously fired 15,000 traffic policemen and dissolved the pervasive bribery ethos in one stroke. The country is booming: Everywhere new hotels, factories and well-lit roads proclaim the changes. Even the old Soviet tower blocks look festive and newly painted. Foreign investment flows in from every quarter: Kazakhstan to the east, Turkey to the south, Europe and the U.S., the Gulf States, even from Russia, despite all of Mr. Putin's embargoes--and despite the shadow of two secessionist "black holes" inside Georgia backed by Russian arms and money: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mr. Saakashvili points out a little town in the distance, Tskhinvali, the disputed heart of South Ossetia, nothing more than a sprinkling of houses on a rise of farmland deep inside Georgian territory. "We've offered them everything they want . . . language rights, their own political structures, cross-border rights to their fellow Ossetians. . . . They probably would agree if they were free to do so."
I point down to the terrain beneath us and comment that if the well-regulated squares of green fields down below are any indication, Georgia's agriculture is doing well. "In Soviet times," he says, "all this was a chaotic mess. In contrast, you'd fly over Western Europe and see miles of perfectly cultivated land. . . . Now Georgia is the same. It's beautiful to look at. That's the aesthetic look of the free market."
A day or two later, at a dinner for Georgian businessmen, the president delivers a speech hammering home his well-honed message of self-help. "The government is going to help you in the best way possible, by doing nothing for you, by getting out of your way. Well, I exaggerate but you understand. Of course we will provide you with infrastructure, and help by getting rid of corruption, but you have all succeeded by your own initiative and enterprise, so you should congratulate yourselves."
Mr. Saakashvili's style of leadership feels like a permanent political campaign--which it is, in a way. He seems determined to show citizens how it's being done, visibly to demonstrate accountability, transparency and political process, so they grow accustomed to the sight of politicians answering to them--in short, to Western political habits. All the while, he's exhorting and explaining, striving to change attitudes ingrained through decades of Soviet rule and 15 years of stagnation, strife and corruption. "I keep telling people that this is not a process like some silver-backed gorilla leading them to new pastures. They must do it themselves, and they are."
Mr. Saakashvili famously gets very little sleep, calling his aides at 2 a.m. to remind them of neglected tasks. During the day, he never stops moving.
On one occasion, a sudden onset of severe bad weather forces down both his helicopter--and the one behind it that is full of his security--in farmland beside a small town. No matter. His aides borrow what conveyances they can, and we end up with the president driving a 1956 Volga modeled on a postwar American Dodge. As the sleet and hail hammer down, the car lurches along and we all double up in helpless laughter because the windshield wipers don't work. Mr. Saakashvili sticks one free arm out the driver's-side window to wipe the windshield manually while he drives.
At one point I ask him if security and dealing with Russian threats are a top priority. "We have two limbs of Georgia which are currently detached," he says, careful not to sound provocative, "and we have a hostile, powerful northern neighbor, even more powerful every day with oil money. But we can't be living in a state of gloom and paranoia. . . . When the Russians imposed the embargo on our wines, we simply found new markets. Like-minded countries such as Poland and the Baltic states actively sought out our products.
"When Russia cut off gas supplies, we had to work on developing new sources. So we're developing hydro-power and coal and nuclear energy. Next year, we'll be fully supplied by Azerbaijani power. . . . Everyone said we'd never survive but our success gives confidence to everyone else."
Mr. Saakashvili notes that his country had to diversify its markets anyway. "Georgia's natural strength is its role as a crossroads both culturally and geographically. It was always a kind of bridge on the old Silk Road. So we're building up our highway system; we're completing our rail link from Batoumi to Istanbul through to Europe; we've got the new international airport there.
"Eastwards we're connecting all the way to China via a ferry across the Caspian. It will offer an alternative to the trans-Siberian railway. And of course, the same goes for pipelines such as the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline which goes through Georgia."
I ask him if the Russians are making a big push now with maximum pressure while they can, realizing that before long, consumer countries will develop alternate supply routes to avoid Russian strategic pressure. "No, I don't think the Russians are calculating logically or strategically," he says. "I think it's an emotional and volatile process for them. Logically, they should realize that stable relations all around will pay off for them more in the long run. Instead they're driving countries to find alternative partners . . ."
He also speaks about Russia's domestic anti-Georgian campaign. "It wasn't working very effectively until they actually went to all the schools and asked for a list of all the children with Georgian names. Suddenly, the parents realized this was serious. That and the endless corruption of the Russian system became unbearable for them--so now we have tens of thousands of qualified Georgians . . . coming back and repatriating their money to Georgia."
There is a general sense in Georgia that the U.S. could be more supportive but badly needs Russian help over such critical areas as Iran, North Korea and the fight against terror. Does Mr. Saakashvili think that the U.S. could do more? "All we ask for is moral support," he answers. "It's all about shared values. You can see that the U.S. has a lot of moral authority here. We have a historic sympathy for the U.S. and the West. America should know how strong it still is and keep up the pressure at the highest levels. It should help enhance stability and serve as a deterrent to Russian adventurism."
Mr. Saakashvili also says that "Europe is waking up. After the French election, I was invited on a full state visit. That did not happen in the time of [former President Jacques] Chirac--he had other priorities. Europe is becoming aware that it must engage with the 'near abroad' region between itself and Russia. Europe is ending its false pragmatism.
"In return," he continues, "we are doing our utmost to stay engaged in the international community and to fulfill our obligations. Georgia has 2,000 troops in Iraq now deploying to the Iran border . . . to interdict arms smuggling across the border and we have told them not to be passive--[instead] to be active and get results. Before now they were in the Green Zone but now they will be acting as part of the surge, going wherever US troops can go. . . . failure in Iraq will be a disaster for everyone.
"For us it's also a matter of national pride. Georgian soldiers have always been famous for their courage but they've never fought as Georgians--they've always fought in others' armies. We've had generals in Mameluke, Russian and Soviet armies--even top U.S. generals. Now they will be serving in our name and for our country. In the 1920s Georgian officers fought for Polish independence to keep out the Bolsheviks (Retired U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili's father was one.) Poland has just put up a monument to those officers (to the chagrin of Mr. Putin)."
Nearing the end of our time together, I ask Mr. Saakashvili, whose administration will surely be remembered for the number and pace of its reforms, if he feels he can let up. Is he on schedule, and what's left undone?
Mr. Saakashvili responds by stressing the importance of integrating Georgia's ethnic minorities. "There used to be areas where only Russian was spoken and the central government had no influence. Now they are all voluntarily learning Georgian. It's important that we show an example to secessionist zones, that they have nothing to fear, that in fact their identity will be better protected by us than Russia."
He also speaks about the vital importance of "ridding ourselves of corruption," of reaching "the point of irreversibility. That's why we are in a hurry. If you relax on corruption it will come back in two months."
Mr. Saakashvili notes of his own country as well as many others emerging from the shadows of communism: "These are not societies with much experience in democratic processes. In parts of Eastern Europe they keep electing useless populists who are corrupt. So far the people here have made the right choices but we must govern in a way that's instructional and symbolic so it settles in the public's consciousness, and they learn to evaluate you by achievement. Democracy means constantly outperforming yourself or you are out on your backside. That's as it should be."
As night falls, back in the sky, we fly close enough to the Abkhazia border to see the contrast between well-lit Georgia and Russian darkness over the secessionist zone. From up above, and on the ground, the symbolism is clear enough.
But to Mr. Saakashvili, the more important issue might be: Is this distinction clear to his friends in the West--and how far will they go to stop the darkness from spilling over into Georgia?
By Melik Kaylan
Saturday, August 25, 2007 12:01 a.m.
TBILISI, Georgia--On Aug. 8, a missile the size of a bus struck near a village some 50 miles north of this Eurasian country's capital city, Tbilisi. It failed to explode. In all likelihood the missile came from Russian jet fighters violating Georgian airspace, as Georgians quickly claimed--the incident was eerily similar to one in March, when Russian attack helicopters flew at night and, without provocation, fired missiles into Georgian territory.
In both cases, Georgian authorities showed the world radar flight path data as proof. The world did nothing the first time, and will likely do nothing again. Meanwhile, unexplained incursions continue daily. This is the kind of near-lethal brinkmanship which Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili believes will only encourage more belligerence from Russia.
Mr. Saakashvili has spent his first 3 1/2 years in office impelling his country forward economically, courting NATO and European Union membership, eradicating corruption and trying to woo Russian-supported secessionists back into the fold. Above all, he strives daily to keep his country, with a population of four million, on the mind of Western nations so its security and success will seem synonymous with theirs--and keep the Russians at bay. The Russians still seem to perceive post-Soviet Georgian independence as a kind of betrayal, responding with an array of destabilizing policies, such as the imposition of embargoes on Georgian goods.
Earlier this summer, I spent some time with Georgia's president, checking on his progress. He has quite a story to tell, particularly about the economy. According to Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia's GDP was less than $3 billion five years ago. It's now $8 billion and will double in three years, and he is straightforward about his inspiration.
"I finally met Margaret Thatcher in London this year," he shouts over the noise of helicopter engines as we fly adjacent to the snow-peaked Caucasus mountains. "I always admired her, and I always thought, if I could do in Georgia a fraction of what she did in the U.K., I would be very happy. . . . And she said to me, 'You are doing all the things in Georgia that I wanted to do in the U.K. and more . . .' "
It's a strange place for an interview, but Mr. Saakashvili keeps a merciless schedule. On this day, after a speech in the main square of Tbilisi, he is presiding over five separate ribbon-cutting ceremonies around the country.
We begin the tour with a three-kilometer visit down a coal mine that has sat unused for 15 years, with the mining community above it going to ruin. It is now being revitalized with German money and machinery. We end the tour past midnight, at a new Turkish-built airport at the resurgent Black Sea resort of Batoumi.
Just four years ago, before the nonviolent Rose Revolution disposed of the Shevardnadze regime and soon voted in Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia was widely considered a failed state on a par with Zimbabwe--with corruption rampant, a stagnant economy and several civil wars smoldering.
That's changing. Three years ago, Mr. Saakashvili famously fired 15,000 traffic policemen and dissolved the pervasive bribery ethos in one stroke. The country is booming: Everywhere new hotels, factories and well-lit roads proclaim the changes. Even the old Soviet tower blocks look festive and newly painted. Foreign investment flows in from every quarter: Kazakhstan to the east, Turkey to the south, Europe and the U.S., the Gulf States, even from Russia, despite all of Mr. Putin's embargoes--and despite the shadow of two secessionist "black holes" inside Georgia backed by Russian arms and money: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mr. Saakashvili points out a little town in the distance, Tskhinvali, the disputed heart of South Ossetia, nothing more than a sprinkling of houses on a rise of farmland deep inside Georgian territory. "We've offered them everything they want . . . language rights, their own political structures, cross-border rights to their fellow Ossetians. . . . They probably would agree if they were free to do so."
I point down to the terrain beneath us and comment that if the well-regulated squares of green fields down below are any indication, Georgia's agriculture is doing well. "In Soviet times," he says, "all this was a chaotic mess. In contrast, you'd fly over Western Europe and see miles of perfectly cultivated land. . . . Now Georgia is the same. It's beautiful to look at. That's the aesthetic look of the free market."
A day or two later, at a dinner for Georgian businessmen, the president delivers a speech hammering home his well-honed message of self-help. "The government is going to help you in the best way possible, by doing nothing for you, by getting out of your way. Well, I exaggerate but you understand. Of course we will provide you with infrastructure, and help by getting rid of corruption, but you have all succeeded by your own initiative and enterprise, so you should congratulate yourselves."
Mr. Saakashvili's style of leadership feels like a permanent political campaign--which it is, in a way. He seems determined to show citizens how it's being done, visibly to demonstrate accountability, transparency and political process, so they grow accustomed to the sight of politicians answering to them--in short, to Western political habits. All the while, he's exhorting and explaining, striving to change attitudes ingrained through decades of Soviet rule and 15 years of stagnation, strife and corruption. "I keep telling people that this is not a process like some silver-backed gorilla leading them to new pastures. They must do it themselves, and they are."
Mr. Saakashvili famously gets very little sleep, calling his aides at 2 a.m. to remind them of neglected tasks. During the day, he never stops moving.
On one occasion, a sudden onset of severe bad weather forces down both his helicopter--and the one behind it that is full of his security--in farmland beside a small town. No matter. His aides borrow what conveyances they can, and we end up with the president driving a 1956 Volga modeled on a postwar American Dodge. As the sleet and hail hammer down, the car lurches along and we all double up in helpless laughter because the windshield wipers don't work. Mr. Saakashvili sticks one free arm out the driver's-side window to wipe the windshield manually while he drives.
At one point I ask him if security and dealing with Russian threats are a top priority. "We have two limbs of Georgia which are currently detached," he says, careful not to sound provocative, "and we have a hostile, powerful northern neighbor, even more powerful every day with oil money. But we can't be living in a state of gloom and paranoia. . . . When the Russians imposed the embargo on our wines, we simply found new markets. Like-minded countries such as Poland and the Baltic states actively sought out our products.
"When Russia cut off gas supplies, we had to work on developing new sources. So we're developing hydro-power and coal and nuclear energy. Next year, we'll be fully supplied by Azerbaijani power. . . . Everyone said we'd never survive but our success gives confidence to everyone else."
Mr. Saakashvili notes that his country had to diversify its markets anyway. "Georgia's natural strength is its role as a crossroads both culturally and geographically. It was always a kind of bridge on the old Silk Road. So we're building up our highway system; we're completing our rail link from Batoumi to Istanbul through to Europe; we've got the new international airport there.
"Eastwards we're connecting all the way to China via a ferry across the Caspian. It will offer an alternative to the trans-Siberian railway. And of course, the same goes for pipelines such as the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline which goes through Georgia."
I ask him if the Russians are making a big push now with maximum pressure while they can, realizing that before long, consumer countries will develop alternate supply routes to avoid Russian strategic pressure. "No, I don't think the Russians are calculating logically or strategically," he says. "I think it's an emotional and volatile process for them. Logically, they should realize that stable relations all around will pay off for them more in the long run. Instead they're driving countries to find alternative partners . . ."
He also speaks about Russia's domestic anti-Georgian campaign. "It wasn't working very effectively until they actually went to all the schools and asked for a list of all the children with Georgian names. Suddenly, the parents realized this was serious. That and the endless corruption of the Russian system became unbearable for them--so now we have tens of thousands of qualified Georgians . . . coming back and repatriating their money to Georgia."
There is a general sense in Georgia that the U.S. could be more supportive but badly needs Russian help over such critical areas as Iran, North Korea and the fight against terror. Does Mr. Saakashvili think that the U.S. could do more? "All we ask for is moral support," he answers. "It's all about shared values. You can see that the U.S. has a lot of moral authority here. We have a historic sympathy for the U.S. and the West. America should know how strong it still is and keep up the pressure at the highest levels. It should help enhance stability and serve as a deterrent to Russian adventurism."
Mr. Saakashvili also says that "Europe is waking up. After the French election, I was invited on a full state visit. That did not happen in the time of [former President Jacques] Chirac--he had other priorities. Europe is becoming aware that it must engage with the 'near abroad' region between itself and Russia. Europe is ending its false pragmatism.
"In return," he continues, "we are doing our utmost to stay engaged in the international community and to fulfill our obligations. Georgia has 2,000 troops in Iraq now deploying to the Iran border . . . to interdict arms smuggling across the border and we have told them not to be passive--[instead] to be active and get results. Before now they were in the Green Zone but now they will be acting as part of the surge, going wherever US troops can go. . . . failure in Iraq will be a disaster for everyone.
"For us it's also a matter of national pride. Georgian soldiers have always been famous for their courage but they've never fought as Georgians--they've always fought in others' armies. We've had generals in Mameluke, Russian and Soviet armies--even top U.S. generals. Now they will be serving in our name and for our country. In the 1920s Georgian officers fought for Polish independence to keep out the Bolsheviks (Retired U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili's father was one.) Poland has just put up a monument to those officers (to the chagrin of Mr. Putin)."
Nearing the end of our time together, I ask Mr. Saakashvili, whose administration will surely be remembered for the number and pace of its reforms, if he feels he can let up. Is he on schedule, and what's left undone?
Mr. Saakashvili responds by stressing the importance of integrating Georgia's ethnic minorities. "There used to be areas where only Russian was spoken and the central government had no influence. Now they are all voluntarily learning Georgian. It's important that we show an example to secessionist zones, that they have nothing to fear, that in fact their identity will be better protected by us than Russia."
He also speaks about the vital importance of "ridding ourselves of corruption," of reaching "the point of irreversibility. That's why we are in a hurry. If you relax on corruption it will come back in two months."
Mr. Saakashvili notes of his own country as well as many others emerging from the shadows of communism: "These are not societies with much experience in democratic processes. In parts of Eastern Europe they keep electing useless populists who are corrupt. So far the people here have made the right choices but we must govern in a way that's instructional and symbolic so it settles in the public's consciousness, and they learn to evaluate you by achievement. Democracy means constantly outperforming yourself or you are out on your backside. That's as it should be."
As night falls, back in the sky, we fly close enough to the Abkhazia border to see the contrast between well-lit Georgia and Russian darkness over the secessionist zone. From up above, and on the ground, the symbolism is clear enough.
But to Mr. Saakashvili, the more important issue might be: Is this distinction clear to his friends in the West--and how far will they go to stop the darkness from spilling over into Georgia?
Affirmative Action Backfires
Have racial preferences reduced the number of black lawyers?
By Gail Heriot
Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.
Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.
No one claims the findings in Mr. Sander's study, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," are the last word on the subject. Although so far his work has held up to scrutiny at least as well as that of his critics, all fair-minded scholars agree that more research is necessary before the "mismatch thesis" can be definitively accepted or rejected.
Unfortunately, fair-minded scholars are hard to come by when the issue is affirmative action. Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you--or anyone else--to know.
Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.
Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for these data (in which no names would be disclosed), but the root cause is clear: Over the last 40 years, many distinguished citizens--university presidents, judges, philanthropists and other leaders--have built their reputations on their support for race-based admissions. Ordinary citizens have found secure jobs as part of the resulting diversity bureaucracy.
If the policy is not working, they, too, don't want anyone to know.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hopes that it can persuade the State Bar to reconsider. Its soon-to-be released report on affirmative action in law schools specifically calls for state bar authorities to cooperate with qualified scholars studying the mismatch issue. The recommendation is modest. The commission doesn't claim that Mr. Sander is right or his critics wrong. It simply seeks to encourage and facilitate important research.
The Commission's deeper purpose is to remind those who support and administer affirmative action polices that good intentions are not enough. Consequences also matter. And conscious, deliberately chosen ignorance is not a good-faith option.
Mr. Sander's original article noted that when elite law schools lower their academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, schools one or two tiers down feel they must do the same. As a result, there is now a serious gap in academic credentials between minority and non-minority law students across the pecking order, with the average black student's academic index more than two standard deviations below that of his average white classmate.
Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.
The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.
Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander's research suggests that just the opposite may be true--that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.
Specifically, Mr. Sander found that when black and white students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school, they earn about the same grades. Similarly, when black and white students with similar grades from the same tier law school take the bar examination, they pass at about the same rate.
Yet, paradoxically, black students as a whole have dramatically lower bar passage rates than white students with similar credentials. Something is wrong.
The Sander study argued that the most plausible explanation is that, as a result of affirmative action, black and white students with similar credentials are not attending the same schools. The white students are more likely to be attending a school that takes things a little more slowly and spends more time on matters that are covered on the bar exam. They are learning, while their minority peers are struggling at more elite schools.
Mr. Sander calculated that if law schools were to use color-blind admissions policies, fewer black law students would be admitted to law schools (3,182 students instead of 3,706), but since those who were admitted would be attending schools where they have a substantial likelihood of doing well, fewer would fail or drop out (403 vs. 670). In the end, more would pass the bar on their first try (1,859 vs. 1,567) and more would eventually pass the bar (2,150 vs. 1,981) than under the current system of race preferences. Obviously, these figures are just approximations, but they are troubling nonetheless.
Mr. Sander has his critics--some thoughtful, some just strident--but so far none has offered a plausible alternative explanation for the data. Of course, Mr. Sander doesn't need to be proven 100% correct for his research to be devastating news for affirmative-action supporters.
Suppose the consequences of race-based admissions turn out to be a wash--neither increasing nor decreasing the number of minority attorneys. In that case, few people would think it worth the costs, not least among them the human costs that result from the failure of the supposed beneficiaries to graduate and pass the bar.
Under current practices, only 45% of blacks who enter law school pass the bar on their first attempt as opposed to over 78% of whites. Even after multiple tries, only 57% of blacks succeed. The rest are often saddled with student debt, routinely running as high as $160,000, not counting undergraduate debt. How great an increase in the number of black attorneys is needed to justify these costs?
The most important other recommendation of the Civil Rights Commission is a call for transparency. As a matter of consumer fairness, law school applicants--regardless of race--need to know the statistical likelihood that someone with their academic credentials will successfully graduate and pass the bar. Once informed, they can better decide whether to undertake the risk of attending that particular school, or any law school at all. If law schools are unwilling to undertake this simple reform, it should be mandated by law.
Under current practices, law school applicants are at the mercy of admissions officers for that information; it is almost never provided except on a class-wide basis where success rates are positively misleading. Minority students whose academic credentials are substantially below their average classmates are lulled into believing that they are just as likely to graduate and pass the bar. When they don't, they may be stuck with the bills, not to mention the loss of several years of their lives.
The problem is that the admissions officer's job is to enroll students, not to draw the risks of failure to their attention. Indeed, in some cases, the officer may be frantic to enroll minority students in order to comply with the stringent new diversity standards of the American Bar Association Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. As the federal government's accrediting agency for law schools, the ABA Council determines whether a law school will be eligible for the federal student-loan program. The law school that fails to satisfy its diversity requirements does so at its peril--as a number of law school deans can amply attest.
Decades of law students have relied upon the good faith of law school officials to tell them what they needed to know. For the 43% of black law students who never became lawyers, maybe that reliance was misplaced.
By Gail Heriot
Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.
Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.
No one claims the findings in Mr. Sander's study, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," are the last word on the subject. Although so far his work has held up to scrutiny at least as well as that of his critics, all fair-minded scholars agree that more research is necessary before the "mismatch thesis" can be definitively accepted or rejected.
Unfortunately, fair-minded scholars are hard to come by when the issue is affirmative action. Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you--or anyone else--to know.
Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.
Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for these data (in which no names would be disclosed), but the root cause is clear: Over the last 40 years, many distinguished citizens--university presidents, judges, philanthropists and other leaders--have built their reputations on their support for race-based admissions. Ordinary citizens have found secure jobs as part of the resulting diversity bureaucracy.
If the policy is not working, they, too, don't want anyone to know.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hopes that it can persuade the State Bar to reconsider. Its soon-to-be released report on affirmative action in law schools specifically calls for state bar authorities to cooperate with qualified scholars studying the mismatch issue. The recommendation is modest. The commission doesn't claim that Mr. Sander is right or his critics wrong. It simply seeks to encourage and facilitate important research.
The Commission's deeper purpose is to remind those who support and administer affirmative action polices that good intentions are not enough. Consequences also matter. And conscious, deliberately chosen ignorance is not a good-faith option.
Mr. Sander's original article noted that when elite law schools lower their academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, schools one or two tiers down feel they must do the same. As a result, there is now a serious gap in academic credentials between minority and non-minority law students across the pecking order, with the average black student's academic index more than two standard deviations below that of his average white classmate.
Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.
The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.
Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander's research suggests that just the opposite may be true--that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.
Specifically, Mr. Sander found that when black and white students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school, they earn about the same grades. Similarly, when black and white students with similar grades from the same tier law school take the bar examination, they pass at about the same rate.
Yet, paradoxically, black students as a whole have dramatically lower bar passage rates than white students with similar credentials. Something is wrong.
The Sander study argued that the most plausible explanation is that, as a result of affirmative action, black and white students with similar credentials are not attending the same schools. The white students are more likely to be attending a school that takes things a little more slowly and spends more time on matters that are covered on the bar exam. They are learning, while their minority peers are struggling at more elite schools.
Mr. Sander calculated that if law schools were to use color-blind admissions policies, fewer black law students would be admitted to law schools (3,182 students instead of 3,706), but since those who were admitted would be attending schools where they have a substantial likelihood of doing well, fewer would fail or drop out (403 vs. 670). In the end, more would pass the bar on their first try (1,859 vs. 1,567) and more would eventually pass the bar (2,150 vs. 1,981) than under the current system of race preferences. Obviously, these figures are just approximations, but they are troubling nonetheless.
Mr. Sander has his critics--some thoughtful, some just strident--but so far none has offered a plausible alternative explanation for the data. Of course, Mr. Sander doesn't need to be proven 100% correct for his research to be devastating news for affirmative-action supporters.
Suppose the consequences of race-based admissions turn out to be a wash--neither increasing nor decreasing the number of minority attorneys. In that case, few people would think it worth the costs, not least among them the human costs that result from the failure of the supposed beneficiaries to graduate and pass the bar.
Under current practices, only 45% of blacks who enter law school pass the bar on their first attempt as opposed to over 78% of whites. Even after multiple tries, only 57% of blacks succeed. The rest are often saddled with student debt, routinely running as high as $160,000, not counting undergraduate debt. How great an increase in the number of black attorneys is needed to justify these costs?
The most important other recommendation of the Civil Rights Commission is a call for transparency. As a matter of consumer fairness, law school applicants--regardless of race--need to know the statistical likelihood that someone with their academic credentials will successfully graduate and pass the bar. Once informed, they can better decide whether to undertake the risk of attending that particular school, or any law school at all. If law schools are unwilling to undertake this simple reform, it should be mandated by law.
Under current practices, law school applicants are at the mercy of admissions officers for that information; it is almost never provided except on a class-wide basis where success rates are positively misleading. Minority students whose academic credentials are substantially below their average classmates are lulled into believing that they are just as likely to graduate and pass the bar. When they don't, they may be stuck with the bills, not to mention the loss of several years of their lives.
The problem is that the admissions officer's job is to enroll students, not to draw the risks of failure to their attention. Indeed, in some cases, the officer may be frantic to enroll minority students in order to comply with the stringent new diversity standards of the American Bar Association Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. As the federal government's accrediting agency for law schools, the ABA Council determines whether a law school will be eligible for the federal student-loan program. The law school that fails to satisfy its diversity requirements does so at its peril--as a number of law school deans can amply attest.
Decades of law students have relied upon the good faith of law school officials to tell them what they needed to know. For the 43% of black law students who never became lawyers, maybe that reliance was misplaced.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Iraq Vets Respond
...to the New York Times seven.
by David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, Joe Worley
08/24/2007 12:00:00 AM
ON SUNDAY, seven soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Iraq penned a passionate opinion piece in the New York Times that further illustrates the complexity of what is "really" happening in Iraq. Of the almost 3,000 soldiers from the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division currently serving in the hottest of Iraqi neighborhoods, seven felt confident enough in their misgivings to sign an opinion piece. They should not be surprised that many of their comrades--including the seven undersigned here--find their work to be misguided.
The 2nd Brigade is responsible for two dangerous areas of Baghdad: Adihamiyah and Sadr City. Airborne troopers there have seen the worst al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army can throw at them and the Iraqi people. But the whole story is that the Iraqis and soldiers in their sector have not yet been fully affected by the surge of troops and operations, which have barely been in place two months.
Currently, American and Iraqi Forces are clearing sections of southern Baghdad before turning north to the 82nd Airborne's neighborhoods. As such, the portrait these soldiers painted, while surely accurate and honest, is more representative of pre-surge Baghdad: sectarian strife, lawlessness, and indiscriminate slaughter.
This is not, however, the picture elsewhere in Iraq, or even most of Baghdad. Additional American combat brigades first surged to the outlying areas around the capital, disrupting the flow of suicide bombers and car bombs and denying haven to al Qaeda.
The result? Attacks against civilians are at a six-month low and large al Qaeda-style truck and suicide bombings have dropped 50 percent in Baghdad. With additional troops and a sound strategy, the same results can occur in even the worst areas of Baghdad, including the 82nd Airborne's sector.
Take Anbar Province. In 2006, al Qaeda controlled the capital of Ramadi and Marine intelligence officers declared the province effectively lost. A leaked Marine Corps report concluded, "the prospects for securing western Anbar province are dim and there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there."
Today Ramadi is peaceful and Anbar no longer a haven for al Qaeda. The tribal awakening that brought about political reconciliation and stability in Ramadi and Anbar primarily resulted from an improved security environment provided by American forces. Americans not only cleared Ramadi, they also held it by occupying over 65 outposts.
This security environment allowed local tribal leaders to stand up to their former al Qaeda occupiers, and now American and Iraqi forces are improving security beyond Anbar in places like Diyala and Babil Provinces.
The 82nd Airborne soldiers quoted an Iraqi saying, "We need security, not free food." We could not agree more, and what American and Iraqi forces are doing now--for the first time in this war--is providing lasting security at the neighborhood level after driving insurgents out.
It's true that political reconciliation has not suited so-called "benchmarks," but political progress will only happen when the battlefield and political realities are congruent. We know that street level security is a necessary precondition for real political progress, and as such, the preconditions are finally being fulfilled. And as we've seen, Iraqi leaders--whether Sunni or Shia--will stand up for moderation and stability only when provided with a secure environment in which to do so.
We understand the frustration our fellow soldiers feel. All of us were in Iraq before the "surge" and lament never seeing a coherent, security-based counterinsurgency strategy. In truth, we were only clearing--not holding.
But we also know what's possible when even small portions of counterinsurgency strategy are applied. Insurgents are exposed, leaders stand up, and stability occurs. General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker understand the principles of counterinsurgency and are applying them up and down the chain of command. It's unfortunate that soldiers in the 82nd Airborne have not yet benefited from the new strategy, but it will ensure that their actions, and those of their fallen brethren, will not have been in vain.
Meanwhile, we applaud our brothers in the 82nd Airborne for their courage under fire, thank them for their commitment to our nation, and pray for the recovery of their injured co-author.
David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, and Joe Dan Worley all served with either the Army or Marine Corps in Iraq, and are all members of Vets for Freedom. This Op-Ed was originally submitted to the New York Times, which declined to publish it.
by David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, Joe Worley
08/24/2007 12:00:00 AM
ON SUNDAY, seven soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Iraq penned a passionate opinion piece in the New York Times that further illustrates the complexity of what is "really" happening in Iraq. Of the almost 3,000 soldiers from the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division currently serving in the hottest of Iraqi neighborhoods, seven felt confident enough in their misgivings to sign an opinion piece. They should not be surprised that many of their comrades--including the seven undersigned here--find their work to be misguided.
The 2nd Brigade is responsible for two dangerous areas of Baghdad: Adihamiyah and Sadr City. Airborne troopers there have seen the worst al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army can throw at them and the Iraqi people. But the whole story is that the Iraqis and soldiers in their sector have not yet been fully affected by the surge of troops and operations, which have barely been in place two months.
Currently, American and Iraqi Forces are clearing sections of southern Baghdad before turning north to the 82nd Airborne's neighborhoods. As such, the portrait these soldiers painted, while surely accurate and honest, is more representative of pre-surge Baghdad: sectarian strife, lawlessness, and indiscriminate slaughter.
This is not, however, the picture elsewhere in Iraq, or even most of Baghdad. Additional American combat brigades first surged to the outlying areas around the capital, disrupting the flow of suicide bombers and car bombs and denying haven to al Qaeda.
The result? Attacks against civilians are at a six-month low and large al Qaeda-style truck and suicide bombings have dropped 50 percent in Baghdad. With additional troops and a sound strategy, the same results can occur in even the worst areas of Baghdad, including the 82nd Airborne's sector.
Take Anbar Province. In 2006, al Qaeda controlled the capital of Ramadi and Marine intelligence officers declared the province effectively lost. A leaked Marine Corps report concluded, "the prospects for securing western Anbar province are dim and there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there."
Today Ramadi is peaceful and Anbar no longer a haven for al Qaeda. The tribal awakening that brought about political reconciliation and stability in Ramadi and Anbar primarily resulted from an improved security environment provided by American forces. Americans not only cleared Ramadi, they also held it by occupying over 65 outposts.
This security environment allowed local tribal leaders to stand up to their former al Qaeda occupiers, and now American and Iraqi forces are improving security beyond Anbar in places like Diyala and Babil Provinces.
The 82nd Airborne soldiers quoted an Iraqi saying, "We need security, not free food." We could not agree more, and what American and Iraqi forces are doing now--for the first time in this war--is providing lasting security at the neighborhood level after driving insurgents out.
It's true that political reconciliation has not suited so-called "benchmarks," but political progress will only happen when the battlefield and political realities are congruent. We know that street level security is a necessary precondition for real political progress, and as such, the preconditions are finally being fulfilled. And as we've seen, Iraqi leaders--whether Sunni or Shia--will stand up for moderation and stability only when provided with a secure environment in which to do so.
We understand the frustration our fellow soldiers feel. All of us were in Iraq before the "surge" and lament never seeing a coherent, security-based counterinsurgency strategy. In truth, we were only clearing--not holding.
But we also know what's possible when even small portions of counterinsurgency strategy are applied. Insurgents are exposed, leaders stand up, and stability occurs. General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker understand the principles of counterinsurgency and are applying them up and down the chain of command. It's unfortunate that soldiers in the 82nd Airborne have not yet benefited from the new strategy, but it will ensure that their actions, and those of their fallen brethren, will not have been in vain.
Meanwhile, we applaud our brothers in the 82nd Airborne for their courage under fire, thank them for their commitment to our nation, and pray for the recovery of their injured co-author.
David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, and Joe Dan Worley all served with either the Army or Marine Corps in Iraq, and are all members of Vets for Freedom. This Op-Ed was originally submitted to the New York Times, which declined to publish it.
Another Vietnam?
President Bush's analogy to Iraq is not inaccurate, just incomplete.
By Max Boot
Friday, August 24, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Ever since the mid-1970s, critics of American military involvement have warned that any decision to deploy armed forces abroad--in Lebanon and El Salvador in the 1980s, in Kuwait, Somalia, and Kosovo in the 1990s, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan--would result in "another Vietnam." Conversely, supporters of those interventions have adamantly resisted any Vietnam comparisons.
President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic--just as they were in Southeast Asia.
This has met with predictable and angry denunciations from antiwar advocates who argue that the consequences of defeat in Vietnam weren't so grave. After all, isn't Vietnam today an emerging economic power that is cultivating friendly ties with the U.S.?
True, but that's 30 years after the fact. In the short-term, the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps "where tens of thousands perished." Many more fled as "boat people," he continued, "many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."
That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America's enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from. Indeed, as Mr. Bush noted, jihadists still gain hope from what Ayman al Zawahiri accurately describes as "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."
The problem with Mr. Bush's Vietnam analogy is not that it is inaccurate, but that it is incomplete. As he noted, "The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech." If he chooses to return to the subject in future speeches, there are some other parallels he could invoke:
• The danger of prematurely dumping allied leaders. A chorus of voices in Washington, led by Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, is calling on Iraqis to replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Even Mr. Bush and his ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, have expressed disappointment with Mr. Maliki. They have been careful, however, to refrain from any calls for his ouster. That's wise, because we know from our experience in Vietnam the dangers of switching allied leaders in wartime.
In the early 1960s, American officials were frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem, and in 1963 the Kennedy administration sanctioned a coup against him, in the hope of installing more effective leadership in Saigon. The result was the opposite: a succession of weak leaders who spent most of their time plotting to stay in power. In retrospect it's obvious that, for all his faults, we should have stuck with Diem.
Today we should stick with Mr. Maliki, imperfect as he is. He took office little more than a year ago after his predecessor, Ibraham al Jaffari, was forced out by American pressure for being ineffectual. The fact that we are bemoaning the same shortcomings in both Messrs. Jaffari and Maliki suggests that the problems are not merely personal but institutional. The Iraqi constitution, written at American instigation, gives little power to the prime minister. The understandable desire was to ward off another dictator, but we shouldn't now be complaining that the prime minister isn't able to exercise as much authority as we would like.
The only hope for long-term political progress is to limit the power of the militias--the real powers--which must start by curbing the violence which gives them much of their raison d'être. That is what the forces under Gen. David Petraeus's command are now doing. We'll need considerably more progress on the security front before we can expect any substantial political progress at the national level. In the meantime, we shouldn't hold Mr. Maliki to unrealistic expectations as we did with Diem.
• The danger of winning militarily and losing politically. In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.
By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing.
Following in Abrams's footsteps, Gen. Petraeus is belatedly pursuing classic counterinsurgency strategies that are paying off. The danger is that American politicians will prematurely pull the plug in Iraq as they did in Vietnam. If they do so, the consequences will be even worse, since Iraq is much more important strategically than Vietnam ever was.
• The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border. This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. No matter how much success American and South Vietnamese forces had, there were always fresh troops and supplies being smuggled over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Something similar is happening today in Iraq. Dozens of Sunni jihadists are entering Iraq from Syria every month. While not huge in absolute numbers, they are estimated to account for 80% to 90% of suicide attacks. The National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday finds that "Damascus is providing support" to various groups in Iraq "in a bid to increase Syrian influence." Meanwhile, the NIE notes, Iran "has been intensifying" its support for Shiite extremists, leading to a dramatic rise in attacks using explosively formed penetrators that can punch through any armor in the American arsenal.
The Bush administration has cajoled and threatened these states to stop their interference in Iraqi affairs, but their pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears. For all of Mr. Bush's reputed bellicosity, he has backed away from taking the kind of actions that might cause Syria and Iran to mend their ways. He has not, for instance, authorized "hot pursuit" of terrorists by American forces over the Iraqi border. Until the U.S. does more to cut off support for extremists within Iraq, it will be very difficult to get a grip on the security situation.
• The danger of not making plans for refugees. One of the great stains on American honor in Indochina was the horrible fate suffered by so many Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who put their trust in us. When the end came we left far too many of them in the lurch, consigning them to prison, death or desperate attempts to escape.
There are many Iraqis who would be left in equally dire straits should the U.S. pull all or even a substantial portion of its forces out of the country. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have worked closely with our forces, whether as translators, security guards, police officers, civil servants or cabinet ministers. Many have already been targeted for death, and need to flee for their lives. Yet so far we have been accepting only a trickle of Iraqi refugees to our shores--a mere 200 in the first six months of this year.
We should take steps now to assure all those Iraqis who cooperate with us that visas and means of evacuation will be available to them if necessary. The U.S. government has been reluctant to do this for fear of admitting the possibility of failure, and perhaps facilitating an even greater "brain drain" from Iraq. But it would actually be easier for many to stay and serve in Iraq if they know that they and their families have a personal "exit strategy."
This does not, of course, exhaust the possible analogies between Iraq and Vietnam. Nor is it meant to suggest the parallels are exact; there are in fact substantial differences. Any historical comparison has to be handled with care and not swallowed whole. But there are important lessons to be learned from our Vietnam experience, and as President Bush noted, they are not necessarily the ones drawn by the doves who have made Vietnam "their" war.
By Max Boot
Friday, August 24, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Ever since the mid-1970s, critics of American military involvement have warned that any decision to deploy armed forces abroad--in Lebanon and El Salvador in the 1980s, in Kuwait, Somalia, and Kosovo in the 1990s, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan--would result in "another Vietnam." Conversely, supporters of those interventions have adamantly resisted any Vietnam comparisons.
President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic--just as they were in Southeast Asia.
This has met with predictable and angry denunciations from antiwar advocates who argue that the consequences of defeat in Vietnam weren't so grave. After all, isn't Vietnam today an emerging economic power that is cultivating friendly ties with the U.S.?
True, but that's 30 years after the fact. In the short-term, the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps "where tens of thousands perished." Many more fled as "boat people," he continued, "many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."
That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America's enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from. Indeed, as Mr. Bush noted, jihadists still gain hope from what Ayman al Zawahiri accurately describes as "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."
The problem with Mr. Bush's Vietnam analogy is not that it is inaccurate, but that it is incomplete. As he noted, "The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech." If he chooses to return to the subject in future speeches, there are some other parallels he could invoke:
• The danger of prematurely dumping allied leaders. A chorus of voices in Washington, led by Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, is calling on Iraqis to replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Even Mr. Bush and his ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, have expressed disappointment with Mr. Maliki. They have been careful, however, to refrain from any calls for his ouster. That's wise, because we know from our experience in Vietnam the dangers of switching allied leaders in wartime.
In the early 1960s, American officials were frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem, and in 1963 the Kennedy administration sanctioned a coup against him, in the hope of installing more effective leadership in Saigon. The result was the opposite: a succession of weak leaders who spent most of their time plotting to stay in power. In retrospect it's obvious that, for all his faults, we should have stuck with Diem.
Today we should stick with Mr. Maliki, imperfect as he is. He took office little more than a year ago after his predecessor, Ibraham al Jaffari, was forced out by American pressure for being ineffectual. The fact that we are bemoaning the same shortcomings in both Messrs. Jaffari and Maliki suggests that the problems are not merely personal but institutional. The Iraqi constitution, written at American instigation, gives little power to the prime minister. The understandable desire was to ward off another dictator, but we shouldn't now be complaining that the prime minister isn't able to exercise as much authority as we would like.
The only hope for long-term political progress is to limit the power of the militias--the real powers--which must start by curbing the violence which gives them much of their raison d'être. That is what the forces under Gen. David Petraeus's command are now doing. We'll need considerably more progress on the security front before we can expect any substantial political progress at the national level. In the meantime, we shouldn't hold Mr. Maliki to unrealistic expectations as we did with Diem.
• The danger of winning militarily and losing politically. In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.
By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing.
Following in Abrams's footsteps, Gen. Petraeus is belatedly pursuing classic counterinsurgency strategies that are paying off. The danger is that American politicians will prematurely pull the plug in Iraq as they did in Vietnam. If they do so, the consequences will be even worse, since Iraq is much more important strategically than Vietnam ever was.
• The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border. This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. No matter how much success American and South Vietnamese forces had, there were always fresh troops and supplies being smuggled over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Something similar is happening today in Iraq. Dozens of Sunni jihadists are entering Iraq from Syria every month. While not huge in absolute numbers, they are estimated to account for 80% to 90% of suicide attacks. The National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday finds that "Damascus is providing support" to various groups in Iraq "in a bid to increase Syrian influence." Meanwhile, the NIE notes, Iran "has been intensifying" its support for Shiite extremists, leading to a dramatic rise in attacks using explosively formed penetrators that can punch through any armor in the American arsenal.
The Bush administration has cajoled and threatened these states to stop their interference in Iraqi affairs, but their pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears. For all of Mr. Bush's reputed bellicosity, he has backed away from taking the kind of actions that might cause Syria and Iran to mend their ways. He has not, for instance, authorized "hot pursuit" of terrorists by American forces over the Iraqi border. Until the U.S. does more to cut off support for extremists within Iraq, it will be very difficult to get a grip on the security situation.
• The danger of not making plans for refugees. One of the great stains on American honor in Indochina was the horrible fate suffered by so many Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who put their trust in us. When the end came we left far too many of them in the lurch, consigning them to prison, death or desperate attempts to escape.
There are many Iraqis who would be left in equally dire straits should the U.S. pull all or even a substantial portion of its forces out of the country. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have worked closely with our forces, whether as translators, security guards, police officers, civil servants or cabinet ministers. Many have already been targeted for death, and need to flee for their lives. Yet so far we have been accepting only a trickle of Iraqi refugees to our shores--a mere 200 in the first six months of this year.
We should take steps now to assure all those Iraqis who cooperate with us that visas and means of evacuation will be available to them if necessary. The U.S. government has been reluctant to do this for fear of admitting the possibility of failure, and perhaps facilitating an even greater "brain drain" from Iraq. But it would actually be easier for many to stay and serve in Iraq if they know that they and their families have a personal "exit strategy."
This does not, of course, exhaust the possible analogies between Iraq and Vietnam. Nor is it meant to suggest the parallels are exact; there are in fact substantial differences. Any historical comparison has to be handled with care and not swallowed whole. But there are important lessons to be learned from our Vietnam experience, and as President Bush noted, they are not necessarily the ones drawn by the doves who have made Vietnam "their" war.
Gwen Stefani Dresses Down
By Lorie Byrd
Friday, August 24, 2007
Recently pop singer Gwen Stefani made news by making what she referred to as a “major sacrifice” by performing her concert in Malaysia with shoulders, legs and belly completely covered. The reason for ditching her usual attire, which often consists of short skirts and midriff-revealing halter tops, was in reaction to protests from the 10,000-member National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students who said such clothing would clash with Islamic culture and values and provide a poor role model for Malaysian youth. The revealing costumes routinely worn by Stefani and other performers are not only found offensive by Muslims. There are many Jewish, Christian and other religions and cultures that discourage immodest clothing, too. Some groups representing those religions have even complained in the past about the bad example being set for girls and young women by so many in the entertainment industry.
So why would Stefani respond to the protests from a Muslim group, while ignoring similar complaints from Christian and other groups? About 60 percent of Malaysia's population is Muslim, while those in the United States identifying themselves as Christian is over 75 percent. The reason Stefani would bow to Muslims protesting her dress therefore could not be about numbers.
Maybe it is an example of the squeaky wheel getting the oil and Christian and other groups have just not complained as loudly as some Muslim groups have. Perhaps no other groups have ever directed their pleas for decency in the entertainment industry specifically at Stefani. Speaking of the protests from the Malaysian Muslim group, Stefani said, “I’ve been in the music industry for 20 years and this is the first time that I’m facing opposition from people who have misunderstood me…I’m not a bad girl.”
Michelle Malkin said Stefani is not a bad girl, “just a dhimmi.” “Dhimmi” is a term used to refer to a non-Muslim living in a country ruled by sharia law who entered a contract to pay respect to and acknowledge Muslim supremacy in return for a guarantee of safety. In other words, maybe it is not a matter of Stefani respecting Muslims more than Christians, but rather a matter of fearing them more. Only she knows whether her decision was made more out of respect for another religion and a foreign culture or out of fear for her safety, or simply if this is the only time anyone specifically asked her to cover up her bare parts. It could just be that simple.
For six years I attended a Christian school with a dress code that required girls to wear skirts no shorter than just above the top of the knee. Girls were allowed to wear slacks to after-school events, but were not allowed to wear shorts. Most visitors to the school honored the dress code as well. There is nothing wrong with voluntarily paying respect to another person or group’s idea of what is appropriate. It does make me wonder, though, what it would take for performers in this country to start showing more respect for the beliefs and ideals of Christian, Jewish and other religions. Leaving aside the religious or cultural aspect even, I wonder what it would take for some of today’s entertainers to listen to moms who don’t want their daughters emulating singers performing in what look like bedazzled undies. Would a protest, or maybe even a boycott, do the trick, or are threats of violence the only thing that gets results?
In the rare instance when individuals today commit violence in the name of Christianity, as some of the abortion clinic bombers in the United States have done, you will hear most Christian groups loudly renounce that violence. Denunciations of violence committed in the name of Islam, whether it be bombings or beheadings of people who refuse to conform to sharia, are generally more scarce and less loud.
I have no quarrel with Gwen Stefani, or anyone else, who makes the decision to dress more modestly out of respect for another’s culture or religion. In the case of an entertainer like Stefani who has many young female fans looking up to them, it can actually be a very good thing. I just wish that it did not take a protest from a Muslim group in a foreign country to make it happen. There are plenty of moms that I hear from on a regular basis right here in America who would like to see a whole lot less of the women their daughters idolize.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Recently pop singer Gwen Stefani made news by making what she referred to as a “major sacrifice” by performing her concert in Malaysia with shoulders, legs and belly completely covered. The reason for ditching her usual attire, which often consists of short skirts and midriff-revealing halter tops, was in reaction to protests from the 10,000-member National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students who said such clothing would clash with Islamic culture and values and provide a poor role model for Malaysian youth. The revealing costumes routinely worn by Stefani and other performers are not only found offensive by Muslims. There are many Jewish, Christian and other religions and cultures that discourage immodest clothing, too. Some groups representing those religions have even complained in the past about the bad example being set for girls and young women by so many in the entertainment industry.
So why would Stefani respond to the protests from a Muslim group, while ignoring similar complaints from Christian and other groups? About 60 percent of Malaysia's population is Muslim, while those in the United States identifying themselves as Christian is over 75 percent. The reason Stefani would bow to Muslims protesting her dress therefore could not be about numbers.
Maybe it is an example of the squeaky wheel getting the oil and Christian and other groups have just not complained as loudly as some Muslim groups have. Perhaps no other groups have ever directed their pleas for decency in the entertainment industry specifically at Stefani. Speaking of the protests from the Malaysian Muslim group, Stefani said, “I’ve been in the music industry for 20 years and this is the first time that I’m facing opposition from people who have misunderstood me…I’m not a bad girl.”
Michelle Malkin said Stefani is not a bad girl, “just a dhimmi.” “Dhimmi” is a term used to refer to a non-Muslim living in a country ruled by sharia law who entered a contract to pay respect to and acknowledge Muslim supremacy in return for a guarantee of safety. In other words, maybe it is not a matter of Stefani respecting Muslims more than Christians, but rather a matter of fearing them more. Only she knows whether her decision was made more out of respect for another religion and a foreign culture or out of fear for her safety, or simply if this is the only time anyone specifically asked her to cover up her bare parts. It could just be that simple.
For six years I attended a Christian school with a dress code that required girls to wear skirts no shorter than just above the top of the knee. Girls were allowed to wear slacks to after-school events, but were not allowed to wear shorts. Most visitors to the school honored the dress code as well. There is nothing wrong with voluntarily paying respect to another person or group’s idea of what is appropriate. It does make me wonder, though, what it would take for performers in this country to start showing more respect for the beliefs and ideals of Christian, Jewish and other religions. Leaving aside the religious or cultural aspect even, I wonder what it would take for some of today’s entertainers to listen to moms who don’t want their daughters emulating singers performing in what look like bedazzled undies. Would a protest, or maybe even a boycott, do the trick, or are threats of violence the only thing that gets results?
In the rare instance when individuals today commit violence in the name of Christianity, as some of the abortion clinic bombers in the United States have done, you will hear most Christian groups loudly renounce that violence. Denunciations of violence committed in the name of Islam, whether it be bombings or beheadings of people who refuse to conform to sharia, are generally more scarce and less loud.
I have no quarrel with Gwen Stefani, or anyone else, who makes the decision to dress more modestly out of respect for another’s culture or religion. In the case of an entertainer like Stefani who has many young female fans looking up to them, it can actually be a very good thing. I just wish that it did not take a protest from a Muslim group in a foreign country to make it happen. There are plenty of moms that I hear from on a regular basis right here in America who would like to see a whole lot less of the women their daughters idolize.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO's Health-Care Study
By John Stossel
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The New York Times recently declared "the disturbing truth ... that ... the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care."
As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.
They find evidence in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May.
In the WHO rankings, the United States finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy. Michael Moore makes much of this in his movie "Sicko."
The Commonwealth Fund looked at Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and ranked the U.S. last or next to last on all but one criterion.
So the verdict is in. The vaunted U.S. medical system is one of the worst.
But there's less to these studies than meets the eye. They measure something other than quality of medical care. So saying that the U.S. finished behind those other countries is misleading.
First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.
Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.
So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.
The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.
Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.
When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.
Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.
Another reason the U.S. didn't score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it's crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.
It's when this so-called "fairness," a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.
The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.
Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.
For all its problems, the U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including development of life-saving drugs. It "falters" only when the criterion is proximity to socialized medicine.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The New York Times recently declared "the disturbing truth ... that ... the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care."
As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.
They find evidence in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May.
In the WHO rankings, the United States finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy. Michael Moore makes much of this in his movie "Sicko."
The Commonwealth Fund looked at Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and ranked the U.S. last or next to last on all but one criterion.
So the verdict is in. The vaunted U.S. medical system is one of the worst.
But there's less to these studies than meets the eye. They measure something other than quality of medical care. So saying that the U.S. finished behind those other countries is misleading.
First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.
Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.
So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.
The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.
Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.
When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.
Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.
Another reason the U.S. didn't score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it's crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.
It's when this so-called "fairness," a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.
The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.
Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.
For all its problems, the U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including development of life-saving drugs. It "falters" only when the criterion is proximity to socialized medicine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)