Ha! I was wrong.

Yappy Hew Near!

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Statistical Mayhem!

Presented For The Stockholders

I launched Astonished Head on February 22, 2002. Since that date I have posted 439 entries, including this one. The graph above represents the number of Heads that have visited since I started the site, and is technically known as the Self-Satisfaction Index.

This includes a fair number of visits from bots and crawlers and indexers, which I can't filter out (or, at least, don't have the energy or motivation required to do so). But the disproportionate effect of these automated Heads is mostly upon accesses, rather than visits, which I've graphed here. Usually, if an IP address visits 3 times and has 2,417 accesses, it's not a human being.

The total number of visits for 2002 was 16,567. Approximately 1,500 of those visits were, um, me. Checking up on things and such. Of the total visits, a little over 5,000 were from unique addresses, so it seems that I do have many repeat customers.

That Big Big Spike around the beginning of October was the result of a mention on Vodkapundit. Unfortunately, Mr. Green is now of the opinion that I need to "Grow up," so I don't expect a repeat mention. I'm not really sure what the Not So Big Spikes in November and early December are, because my referral logs aren't working.

A typical visitor examined 7.15 documents before moving on. A typical visit supposedly lasts for .63 minutes, but I think that average is probably highly skewed by 'bot, crawler and spider visits. The longest visit was 58 minutes...which was probably me.

After myself, people who know me, and search engines, my biggest fan--with 110 visits and 812 accesses--is someone from Illinois. Hi!

I've had visitors from England, France, Italy, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia.

And that, it seems, is that. The trend of the number of daily visits is, slowly but steadily, upwards, which is gratifying, but I get hit by so many automated services that I can't quite tell if I've attracted more readers or more software.

So, as always: my appreciation and thanks to all of my human readers, and may each of you have a happy, healthy, prosperous, and astonishing New Year!

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Even though I am at home, I am working. I have a Virtual Private Network: a secure IPSec tunnel, one end of which is plugged into the LAN at my office, the other end of which is plugged directly into my skull. Pretty cool.

But it also means that it's not as easy to switch back and forth between work and play (which A-head is), because the security features of the VPN prevent surfing to addresses outside my workplace domain, and that means I need to disconnect the VPN each time I want to get here.

In the meantime, go fly around. (You'll need Flash MX, but if you have it, it's good fun).

[via BoingBoing].

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Oh! Such wacky craziness with the Internet, it hurts my head.

I started off the New Year with visits from Poland, India, China, Turkey, and Japan.

And I found that out by using this tool right here. It's very cool to watch the packets bounce around, and then discover that they originate from some far off place. My Turkish vistor, for example, saw the site via nodes in London and Amsterdam before the packets hit stateside in Virginia. All those little checksummed numbers, flittering about through fiber optics and copper wire and bouncing around the insides of machines across the globe. And while I sit here in New York State typing this, the site itself resides in a machine somewhere in Utah.

It makes me realize anew what all those Islamist pukes are afraid of: the more exposure via Western technology they get, the more glaring their evil idiocy will become. Best to smash all that stuff, and stay hidden away in the medieval dark.

Meanwhile, us infidel Western types are creating bicycle-powered WiFi networks and giving them away to Laotians.

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I almost kept my promise, but not quite. But better nate than lever, I always say.

Episode 6 of Theophany, titled "Monstrous Fruit Bearing Sharp Objects In The Night," is now up in the Serials section.

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At a time when most boys my age were focusing on determining the broad outlines of their interaction with the opposite sex for the next decade or so--that is, between the ages of 15 and 18--I decided to join up with a local Jesus Jumper church. That's my own term, of course; technically they're known as Charismatics or Neo-Pentecostals. The distinguishing features of a Charismatic Christian church are--usually--threefold.

The first is restorationism, the belief that the supernatural gifts of the early aspostolic church (1st-2nd century AD) are still available today, particularly speaking in tongues (think Robert Tilton on your TV at 4AM going "hum daba ceeta da abba ta, Praise Jesus" ), healing (think Robin Williams smacking you on the forehead and yelling, "You Are HEALed, yay-us!"), and prophecy (think...well, there aren't many preachers actively prophesying on the TV that I can think of at the moment).

The second characteristic is continuing revelation, the belief that God still delivers revelation to his people, via the Holy Spirit, just as He did in the first century. This tends to piss off Bible-believing Protestants, who are a bit hung up on the sufficiency and completeness of God's revelation as found in the Bible. The idea that God might be toddling off and giving new, authoritative, extra-Biblical revelations to folks who aren't them is a bit off-putting, I suppose.

The third characteristic is a certain ecumenism, whereby charismatic Christians seek unity with other Christians of any denomination, based on a personal experience of God rather than on some of the core doctrines of the Bible.

A fourth characteristic, not usually mentioned in academic treatments of the subject, is that charismatic churches must meet in school auditoriums, other churchs' basements, or members' houses. Once they get a building of their own--usually a converted supermarket--the whole meeting in upper rooms to hide from the Romans first-century mystique tends to fade a bit, I think.

My particular church was big on numbers one, two and four but not so big on number three...there weren't many charismatic Protestants or Roman Catholics offering guest sermons while I was in attendance. And I doubt that I could've asked Pastor Larry or any of the elders about how restorationism figured into their personal theology and gotten a straightforward answer. Partly that's because, like a lot of Pentecostal churches in general and Charismatic churches in particular, ours was a lay ministry...no Masters of Divinity or Doctorates in Theology. It's also because I didn't actually know about terms like restorationism and ecumenism back then. But while the terms themselves weren't bandied about, on any given Sunday in the school auditorium you could witness people dancing before the Lord (hopping, really...there were a lot of, well, white people in the church), babbling in tongues and, if the Spirit was really cooking, falling over backwards and spouting a prophecy or two. Usually those had to do with the rewards due to the faithful and how the church was moving into a season of triumph and so forth...as far as I know nobody was ever told not to go to the grocery store after church because they'd get into a car accident or some such thing.

Ours was an experiential church, based on personal relationships with God and a certain amount of ecstasy, not that they'd call it that. Anyone who's been to Grateful Dead concert--sober or not--can probably imagine what I'm talking about. You put a bunch of people who are intent on having an ecstatic experience in a room together and you can be pretty sure that they'll have one. It's the result of a focused group dynamic, and people were doing it long, long before the followers of the Galilean began sprouting tongues of flame and speaking in other languages as the Spirit enabled them (Acts 2:3-4). For many people in my church, that regular injection of the "Holy Spirit" was the tie that bound them most closely to the community of the church, and there were those that couldn't get enough: church on Sundays, prayer meetings once or twice a week or more, if they could manage it. I know that was true for me--not the three-prayer-meetings-a-week part, but I definitely felt the charge and the allure of the weekly ecstatic experience, and did my part as a member of the group to bring it about.

Until, as Renita Weems has written, I began to feel that it was naïve to believe that "breaking out into goose bumps at talk of the sacred was a signal of intimacy with God." I am again projecting superior knowledge and sophistication backwards in time upon my floundering self: I certainly didn't frame my dissatisfaction in those words then. What I came up with, in the aftermath of breaking with the church, was that I objected to the feeling that I was supposed to turn my brain off. I had questions about faith, about Scripture, and about my personal experiences of God that were not being answered to my satisfaction by the people ostensibly placed there by God to shepherd my faith.

So I became my own shepherd. This process, as it turned out, involved large quantities of illicit chemicals, lots and lots of goose-bumps, and hallucinatory encounters with a sensual and ephemeral world that had all the hallmarks of ecstasy, but was, I think, a bit lacking in divinity. I'm thankful that I got myself out of that before I ended up like the author of The Keys To Death And Hell. He called himself Infek bin Laden and spent much of his life undertaking a psychedelic exploration of that sensual and occult ephemeral world, only to realize in the months before his death from cancer that he had completely missed something of vital importance. His information-age legacy is a freakish website hundreds of pages in length, full of deliberately disturbing imagery, inverted necrophilial eroticism, horror, and chaos, all of which is contradicted by his last statement before his death. As a whole, this statement is a plaintive attempt to explain the site's contents, to declare some sort of paradoxical meaning for it all: "But for any who would wonder, or wander lost in Temple Dahmer, I want to declare that the real secret of Deathandhell.com is Infinite Compassion." When real death stared him down--as opposed to the death that is the fetishized plaything of the fashionably depressed and the gothically hip--he was forced to attempt to reconcile the undoubtedly real experiences he had collected under the influence of drugs and occult practice with the undeniable sense that he had, quite simply, focused on the wrong things. But by then it was too late.

Which brings me back to the three Charismatic characteristics, all of which are experiential in nature. The apostolic gifts are spiritual powers, bestowed by God and experienced by the believer. These gifts were not limited to the big flashy ones like tongues or prophecy; there were people in my church known to have the "gift" of compassion, or of faithfulness, or some other no-less-worthy holy power. It was like Superfriends for Jesus, sometimes. After I gave a brief talk at a Youth Ministry meeting, the minister who ran the group told me, "You'll never be a preacher, but you'll sure be a teacher." That meant that I didn't have the gift of fiery oratory that could whip up a meeting, but that I did have an intellectual, "knowledge-based" gift. I remember feeling as though that was a backhanded compliment, of sorts...I wanted to be a preacher, the sort of person who could charge people up into a frenzy for God and bring the Holy Spirit down upon everyone. Preachers were exciting. Teachers were a bit dull and dry.

Revelation is an experience as well--after all, that's supposed to be God speaking to you, coming down on dove's wings and setting your mind aflame with insight into His Plan, or His Will, or what's in His Refrigerator. I've had some revelatory experiences, and while I won't claim that they're from the God, they were certainly memorable.

Charismatic ecumenism is sort of a combination of the previous two: if you experience the blessings of apostolic gifts and continuing revelation, you go and seek out other believers of whatever denomination who have had similar experiences.

Unfortunately, like most groups of this sort, it wasn't just the experience that bound people together as a community of God. There were other things, too, which were reflected in such terms as obedience and authority and order, and found expression in various political and social ideologies that I didn't necessarily agree with. All of those terms are found in Scripture, to be sure--particularly the bits attributed to Paul--but I eventually discovered that my experience of God wasn't quite as important as some other folks' experience of God, and of course was as nothing compared to the experiences laid down in the hardcoded pages of the Word Of The Lord.

Every group has boundaries that define it, even the most Unconditionally Loving And Accepting groups. Once you stray beyond those boundaries, whatever they may be, you find that there are conditions, and eventually it becomes clear that the acceptance--if, arguably, not the love--can be withdrawn, and replaced with judgment. This judgment goes by many names; I forget, exactly, what they called it at New Jerusalem Christian Fellowship. And if you're looking for acceptance--as I was at that green and tender age--then the love of the community no longer feels genuine. Wrap all of this up with even the slightest genuine desire to explore the Possible Divine, and it's quite easy to imagine the anger and bitterness that might result from anyone's bad experience with a church, a priest, or a proselytizer.

I'm often bemused by the raving atheists out there, the ones who make it their business to expose every hypocritical failing of every religious group, to mock the professed faith of all who dare voice it, and to defeat by logical argument every proof of God's existence ever conceived by humanity. I'm bemused because--even though I don't call myself a person of faith, or even a theist--I believe that I know something about faith, and about theism. These things are not about religious groups and their sins; they're not about professed belief; and they're certainly not encompassed by arguments made of frail words created by human minds. All of those are constructs. Words, made semi-imperishable, which in turn become the ideas that drive the creation and evolution of human cultures.

Beneath all of that, below the complexity, the philosophy, the ethos, and the words...are individual experiences and desires. That's why the committed atheist often expresses such frustrated incredulity when confronted with the truly committed theist: the theist has had an undeniable experience which the atheist has not. And while experience can be explained away, it can't be dismissed. Experience is a powerful thing, and can wrap a person up in a sheltered, solipsistic cocoon. That's what happened to Infek, and to this person here, who's off his nut in the same way but hasn't had the Uh-oh moment that Infek had.

That's why, when I happen to pray--which I do often, despite an acute lack of belief--there's always an element of Show yourself! in the act. Beguile me. Give me an experience. I've already dismissed the arguments of theist and atheist alike as beside the point. Ah, but to know, fully...that would be something, wouldn't it?

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Minoru Yamasaki, the chief architect of the World Trade Center towers, also happened to be a favorite of the House of Saud. He designed the King Fahd Dhahran Air Terminal, the Eastern Province Airport, the King Fahd Royal Reception Pavillion at the Jeddah Airport, and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency headquarters. The Saudis liked the Dhahran Air Terminal so much they put a picture of it on one of their banknotes. After their completion Yamasaki described the Twin Towers, with their broad central plaza, as "…a mecca, a great relief from the narrow streets and sidewalks of the surrounding Wall Street area."

Now, of course, that mecca is a rugged hole in the ground, and I routinely take narrow streets and sidewalks to seek relief from its maw by avoiding the sight of it on my way to work. Except on days like today, when it's cold and I'm foolishly underdressed, and I cut through the warm interiors of the Wintergarden and the World Financial Center. Then I get to cross over the West Side Highway via the pedestrian skyway, which is truncated at one end where it used to turn sharply left and connect to the WTC. It's been grafted to a makeshift pedestrian bridge that's not sealed from the weather and is floored with industrial gray diamondplate. To get from its height to street level I have to trundle down a long, steepish stairway. There's a lift for handicapped access, but it's often chained with an OUT OF ORDER sign clipped to it.

At the bottom of the steps, I slogged along the asphalt path at the South side of Ground Zero, through the uniquely urban winter mixture: black slush, icemelt pellets, and gritty sand. The plywood wall of scrawled messages is now a nearly indecipherable mass of ink; words on top of tangled words.

For lunch I had some Teas' Tea Pure Green tea, made by Ito En of Hawaii. You may view a diagram of this tea product here. While drinking it, I read the label and discovered that this pure, vitamin C-enriched, unsweetened, calorie- and preservative-free tea product is mighty:

"Made to refresh. Made to renew. Feel its power to transform. To make you whole once more."

I found myself wondering how many bottles of Pure Green Teas' Tea it would take to fill Ground Zero.

Actually, after drinking it I feel a little sloshy and bloated, but I suspect that its amazing restorative properties may be counteracted by pizza.

I am always fascinated by the coincidences that routinely emerge from the ever-increasing complexity of our world and its human relationships. Minoru Yamasaki designed structures for the House of Saud, inspired by classic Muslim architecture, and those structures were most probably built by companies owned by the bin Laden family, which made its fortune in construction. I started out the day feeling dragged into the muck, and purchased tea that promised to renew and transform me, to make me whole. V-8 certainly doesn't promise that. Whether the tea can deliver on its promise or not isn't really the point; it's the peculiarity of the sentiment, found on a mundane plastic bottle on this day, in this place, when I'm in this mood, that interests me.

It's been said that humans are pattern-seeking creatures. I think that's true, although I'm not sure whether that's evidence of how the world is ordered or of the nets our neurons are woven into. Today, I found connections between architecture, terrorism, and green tea. Tomorrow, I may find them between the sunrise and divine revelation.

We'll see.

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You know, there's nothing more geekily disappointing than discovering that your recent upsurge in visits is because you're being Googled to death.

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Man, am I getting fat. As I contemplated with dismay the rolled-over waistband of yet another pair of almost-new pants, I thought: I should just get a sack, and wear that. A variety of sacks! A denim sack for housework, a flannel sack for lounging. I'll see what Land's End has in the way of sacks for the casual workplace. After lunch, I'll go to Men's Wearhouse and tell them I need to see their power sacks. For formal occasions I'll get a tuxedo-sack, and for parties I'll wear the trusty burlap drinking sack.

Of course, I could just start exercising again and stop eating crap! but we can't have simplicity and effectiveness, now can we?

Perhaps there's a way to massively increase my thyroid function, using common household cleansers and a pointed stick. Hmmm...

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More lump-headedness in the comments section at BoingBoing.

This crop of Oh What A Fascist State Is America emerged as a result of the latest INS idiocy, wherein a Canadian programmer who went in to get his paperwork straightened out in California was treated to a five-day, all-expenses paid trip to the graybar hotel, courtesy of the bureaucratic morons who are currently in charge of keeping terrorists from overstaying their student visas while they build bombs and take flight training.

Whenever one of these stories crops up--as I remarked on December 30--there are always those who claim to see the true Evil Face Of America. Now, I also wrote that there is a certain uniquely American penchant to complain about things that aren't right, because we have high standards and because we have the freedom to bitch and moan as much as we want...hell, we can even get off our ever-fattening asses and do something about it, if we choose to.

But too often, there's another class of complainer, whose ignorance results in comments "such as, "Locking people up who have come in voluntarily to clear up fucking paperwork is only possible in a totally fucked up, repressive, unworthy police state."

To begin with, I asked this person to let the discussion thread know when the jackbooted representatives of this totally fucked up, repressive, unworthy police state showed up at his house to cart him off in the middle of the night for voicing dissent on the web. He responded in a clueless fashion, which resulted in comments roughly resembling the following.

Such people clearly have no idea what it means to live in a police state. They have no concept of what the term means beyond its use by various overwrought leftists. They know nothing about totalitarianism's place in history, what a real police state looks like, or how the people who live in such a state suffer on a massive scale.

None of which is a defense of the INS; far from it. But I'm sick and tired of these yammering yutzes who complain about what the INS is doing on "our" behalf--admitting the very real tradition of democratic representation--while spouting the same tired, knee-jerk trope that any failure or idiocy on the part of any governmental authority is full evidence of totalitarian oppression. This does nothing except expose them as fully-involved members of the chattering class of this country, with nothing to offer except their complaints.

The INS was a vast web of crap before 9/11; it's even more so now, and we desperately need it to do its job.

Instead of indulging in simple paranoia, I do wish that such folks would attempt the apparently novel task of recognizing the real problem: how can we meet the very real security needs of this country while maintaining the liberty that makes it so attractive to immigrants in the first place?

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Due to an outbreak of humorless insularity, publication has been temporarily suspended. We regret any inconvenience.

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Sigh. I do like Andy--and not just because he was among the first to link to various A-head bits--but he's sure got a bee in his bonnet about God. Alvays vith za sarcasm und za bitter dismissals, dat vun!

At any rate, his 4,515th reason why God's A Crock--specifically: guy's boat sinks, guy prays to God to save his two passengers, everybody dies but him--spurred a whole bunch of comments over at World Wide Rant, so I of course jumped in with my pair of pennies. Which, in turn, I put up here, because I am satisfied with the verbiage I have produced. I will now return to my moss-lined cave.

You can argue about the definition of God all you want, and about the words people wrote about what they thought of Him, the words people claimed He spoke, the actions people claim He took, and the promises people claim He made.

However: claiming that an unanswered prayer is proof of God's nonexistence only reflects the limits of those words, which are bounded by the limits of human language, which is in turn an artifact of the human mind.

Treating the monoGod concept as the only concept of God is limiting in and of itself. But treating the monoGod concept as though it promises endless happy sunshine days and the granting of all wishes--as though God is a big Blarney Stone in the sky--is to misunderstand and trivialize the concept.

The monoGod concept isn't something that fell out of the sky bound in a quality imitation leather with the words of Our Lord Jesus in red ink. It's an incredibly complex, ever-evolving artifact of human attempts to understand the world, which necessarily includes attempts to explain the evil and suffering in the world.

It didn't begin in Galilee 2,000 years ago, or in Babylon 2,500 years ago, or in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, or at Mount Sinai 4,000 years ago. It's a process of human thought and enterprise that dates from the time we first turned our monkey-brows skyward and went, "Mmmrgh...?" in vague contemplation.

In this culture we routinely behave as though all things religious have no value, because we have worked to ostensibly separate religion from governance. But there is a continuous thread of human intellectual endeavor that runs straight from our Constitution, through the New Testament, and is anchored firmly in the ancient Near Eastern cultural morass from which Judaism emerged. This same morass also produced Islam, and to devalue all things religious under the guise of maintaining secularity is to sacrifice any hope of understanding and countering the threat posed by that particular worldview.

In short, treating the 21st-century portion of this process as a finished totality, and then glibly dismissing the entirety of that process, is profoundly anti-humanist. Would you call every single person before you who has believed in God a fool? Doing so would make a fool of you, I think.

There's far more going on in Scripture than can be found via the search engines at BibleGateway.com, and you don’t have to be a believer to explore it.

Now: I believe I need more coffee.

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I didn't get to spend as much time in my mossy cave today as I would have liked.

Raving Atheist checks his referral logs, apparently, and picked up my mention of his site on January 6. Unfortunately, he seems to have missed my point a bit, which may be because he thought that "bemused" and "amused" are synomyms, and that I was "chuckling" at him in some smug sort of theist way. They're not and I wasn't. Some of his readers similarly missed my point; I suspect that this is because they didn't actually read anything I wrote beyond the three edited paragraphs excerpted on the RA site.

So, I thought I'd comment to clarify:

Actually, if you'd take a few moments to read the entire post of which you quoted the final three paragraphs, you’d see that I'm not attempting to make an argument to prove the existence of God, because I think that it's a pointless exercise. I'm not a "spokesperson" for faith or for theism, which is something that "the talking dog" might have grasped if he/she had read what I wrote in its entirety. Simply claiming to know something about the terms doesn’t make me an advocate, any more than claiming to know something about fascism makes me a fascist.

Anyone can argue with what people have said or written about God. I think that people who have fully committed themselves to either defending or debunking such arguments are simply working out in mental gyms. Those who defend seek to bulk up their faith; those who debunk, their intellect. Within this context, I'm not really interested in either. I haven’t got any faith and I’m quite happy with my intellect as it is, although it is getting a bit soft around the middle as I age. I'm well aware that there isn't a theistic argument ever created that makes any sense except to those who already believe. So to me, debunking them is an exercise in knocking over straw men, and hence "beside the point.” Such activity demonstrates a grasp of the methods of argument and rhetoric, which is fine, but again, not really what I’m interested in.

Therefore--like anyone confronted by someone who seems to be talking about the same thing, but whose purpose for doing so turns out to be not at all comparable--I am bemused by your devotion to such activity. It doesn’t mean you’re foolish for doing so; it just means that it’s not what I’m after.

I'm "in a position to know that the experience is undeniable" because I've read the writings of people who have had such experiences throughout history, and it seems fairly obvious. If I had a small capillary burst in my brain right now and had a big, whooshy, voices-a’calling, pink-beam-of-light experience, the experience itself is fairly concrete and hard to dismiss; it can, however, be "explained away," either by myself or someone else, such as a neurologist or a dedicated skeptic like yourself.

However, as one who does not claim to know whether a God of any sort exists or not, I am not entirely convinced that all such experiences are necessarily the result of some neurological event, nor am I convinced--as many people here so emphatically are--that "startled, unfocussed, muddleheaded confusion" are the only terms that can be used to describe what might otherwise be called theophany.

So no: to me, “Faith and theism are not about 1) religious groups, 2) religious beliefs or 3) religious arguments,” and yes, I believe this is so “because those things are merely ‘words’ and ‘constructs.’” And, as you helpfully pointed out, so are the words “faith” and “theism.” There are plenty of people who profess both, without the benefit of an undeniable whack on the head from God or anything even remotely resembling such an experience. There are plenty of people who make the same profession with the benefit of a sensual ecstatic experience of the sort that can also be had from chemicals of various kinds, a neurochemical imbalance, or group dynamics, but which they choose to attribute to God.

All I’m saying is that maybe—just maybe—there’s another sort of experience that doesn’t quite fit into those categories. If I have an experience that is truly ineffable, then--almost by definition--words wouldn't suffice. Why would I want an experience that I could explain away as a bubble in a blood vessel, a catastrophic failure of neurochemistry, or a sharp blow to the head?

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"That we once aided Saddam Hussein is a supposedly crippling fact of which we are reminded ad nauseam, as if, not before but after the Gulf War, France, Russia and Germany did not proceed to sell him the components for weapons of mass destruction, or as if we ourselves did not once give the Soviets a third of a million GMC trucks to thwart Hitler, only to see them used in the Gulag. But in the perfect world of America's critics, if Barbra Streisand can fly to Paris in four hours and fax her scrambled thoughts in seconds, and if Gore Vidal from his Italian villa can parse sentences better than the president of the United States, then surely we are terminally culpable for not having solved the globe's problems right now."

Victor Davis Hanson, skewering in one paragraph European hypocrisy, celebrity vacuity, and elitist posturing. From "Bomb Texas," a typically lancet-sharp analysis of the psychological roots of anti-Americanism.

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Episode 7 of "Theophany" is now available in the Serials section.

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“I was enraged, and went there at once.”

There was a brief flurry of ideas and verbiage last week about Representative Charles' Rangel's introduction of a bill to reintroduce the draft. My take on Rangel's headline-grabbing bill is that his reasons are divisive, prejudicial, and political, and that he should title his bill "Rich White People Suck." It is disingenuous for Rangel, who opposes action in Iraq, to claim that he is interested in renewing the nation's commitment to "shared sacrifice" when his true intention is to somehow prevent any military engagement with Iraq by legislatively forcing members of Congress to place their own children in harm's way. He seems to believe that Congress is composed entirely of self-interested men and women, and that these elected representatives will act to protect their own flesh and blood rather than to protect the nation as a whole. With that in mind, I must wonder: what interest of Representative Rangel's does his proposal serve?

TRF makes short work of the proposal and of Mark Shields' defense of it. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers also dismiss to the idea with typical brevity. Today, the Pentagon released an 11-page white paper outlining the racial and economic makeup of the current all-volunteer force. Of particular interest is Figure 3: Minority Representation in Selected Career Fields on page 6:

"Blacks today account for 21 percent of the enlisted force, but make up only 15 percent of combat arms (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery). In contrast, Blacks account for 36 percent of Functional Support and Administration and 27 percent of Medical and Dental career fields."

Then there is the highly informative Table 3: Median Total Gross Household Income by Race & Ethnicity, 1999 on page 11, which shows that while white civilians make nearly $11,000 more per year than their military counterparts, black civilians make a little over $4,000 less than blacks who serve in the military.

Minorities are not disproportionately represented in combat troop deployments, and may in fact have slightly better economic and career development opportunities in the military than out of it. So much, then, for Rangel's proposed social engineering.

There is, however, another side to the pro-draft issue. While Rangel's use of the words "shared sacrifice" seems to be efficient code for "America is run by rich white folks who rely on poor brown folks to defend them while they sit on big piles of ill-gotten loot," other people use the same words for different reasons. Like Rangel's leftish proposal, Erick Stackelback's also contains shorthand that will appeal to Front Page's decidedly right-leaning readership. Like Rangel, Stackelback brings up the idea of the military class split, but within a different context and with a different conclusion:

"With the word 'sacrifice' apparently stricken from middle-class dictionaries, we’ll have to turn to that always-reliable group who suffered the brunt of U.S. casualties in Vietnam: the poor and working-class people of our nation’s rural and urban areas. Except that these most patriotic of citizens aren’t such a sure thing anymore. Besides sharing the corrupted culture of their suburban counterparts, poor and working-class kids of all races and ethnicities must often face the additional demons of violence, poverty, drugs and failing schools."

This problem is compounded, he says, by an

"...educational curriculum that seems bent on portraying Americans—whites and Christians in particular—as racist, imperialist bullies who’ve brought nothing but suffering to others. Such false teachings have gone a long way towards making our nation’s youth what it currently is—depraved, listless and indifferent, with little appreciation for America or its place in the world."

The question he finally asks is, I think, an important one: is our present educational and cultural climate one that can produce truly great men and women? This "greatness" is implicitly defined as the quality of recognizing the unique nature of American free society and being prepared to do what is necessary to defend that society from those who are sworn to destroy it.

The Bin Laden quote above is in reference to the time he spent in Afghanistan, supposedly engaging in Jihad against the Soviets. It is self-serving, intended to portray him as a righteous defender of Dar al-Islam. When reading Stackelback's familiar story of his grandfather's immediate enlistment following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, I was immediately struck by two things: the stark difference between Americans' response then and in 2001, and the similarity between Bin Laden's professed outrage and the actions of Stackelback's grandfather and hundreds of thousands like him.

Hawaii was annexed by America in 1898, and became a US territory in 1900. No American President visited it until Roosevelt in 1934. It wasn't even a state until 1959. The Japanese attack caused national outrage not because of the status of the territory in which it occurred, but because we had American military personnel stationed there. 2,388 Americans were killed, and this demanded a response. The stories of lines around the block at recruitment stations, and men having to take a number just to join up, are now familiar to us all.

Until 1790, New York City was the Capital of the United States. The site of the original Federal Hall, where the Constitution was ratified, the first session of Congress met, the Bill of Rights was written, and George Washington was inaugurated, is mere blocks from the World Trade Center. Washington, D.C. has been the seat of national government since 1800. On September 11, 125 people were killed at the Pentagon in Washington. 36 of those people were civilians. That same morning, 2,629 people were killed at the World Trade Center. All of those people were civilians. 245 more people were unwilling passengers on civilian aircraft that had been turned into guided missiles. That's 2,999 Americans altogether, killed within the continental United States, in cities that are integral parts of this country's history.

That ought to have provoked enlistment such as has never before been seen in this country. But the "upsurge" in new enlistment following September 11 seems to have been illusory, mostly measured by the ringing of phones at recruitment centers. There were no lines outside of those centers. No number-taking. Certainly no news coverage of Johnny Getting Ready For War. Instead there was a muddled chorus of "That was terrible! But...," led by the ever-ready pen of Noam Chomsky. Initially, I was part of that chorus. My first response, expressed in an e-mail sent to a friend twenty minutes after watching the Twin Towers burn, was to blame Israel. My second response, written two days after the towers collapsed and I escaped the area choking on their dust, was to blame America's insularity and its meddlesome, misguided foreign policy.

In short, I was a sterling example of the results of our present educational and cultural climate--and I didn't read Chomsky or any of his fellow-travelers until after September 11. I didn't need to. Like a fish who doesn't know that water is wet, I was so thoroughly saturated with the pleasant liberties of our nation that I failed to realize how unique those liberties are in the world. I was floating in a seemingly endless sea of privilege, where I was free to absorb fashionable ideas and accuse my government of mismanagement and ignorance without even bothering to vote in Congressional elections. When my nation was attacked--when 2,500 of my fellow citizens were burned, crushed, and torn apart less than 600 yards from me--my first instinct was not to protect these now-threatened freedoms, but to continue using them as though they are eternally without cost, like sunlight.

It would be easy for me to make the excuse that, until I read more and learned more, I did not understand the true nature of our enemy, or comprehend the enormity of the threat. But that would be, at best, an evasion. Who, in 1941, knew much of anything about the Japanese? The common factor in each instance is that Americans lay dead, slain without warning. In 1941, the citizenry's overwhelming response to this was outraged action. In 2001, the citizenry's response was...talk. Hand-wringing. Printing up stickers that read OUR GRIEF IS NOT A CRY FOR WAR, and plastering them all over New York. Parroting ideas spread, by and large, by the educated intelligentsia and the "activist" celebrities of the country, ideas that have become so ubiquitous that they are practically core editorial principles of the "paper of record," not to mention the implicit moral code at most of our universities.

The culture that Bin Laden wanted to convince his cohorts that he is willing to die for has produced the public execution of adulterous women, the imprisonment of women who have been raped on the grounds that they have become adulterous women, the stoning of homosexuals, the elimination of the free press, death sentences for authors and academics who question Shari'a, and the massacres of thousands of Americans and hundreds of Jews by extremists who embrace death with maniacal passion.

The culture that Bin Laden wanted to destroy has produced female members of Congress, governors and mayors, finely parsed legal decisions--however arguable--that have set precedent for rape charges after consensual sex has been initiated, special sessions of state Legislatures convened soley to consider the issue of homosexual rights, a press that is so free that one can find a publication that supports any position on any issue imaginable, no matter how repugnant, tenure for professors who demonstrate brazen contempt for their country, and a military that made possible the evacuation of Palestinian Liberation Organization forces from Lebanon and the survival of Muslims in the former state of Yugoslavia, and has developed multi-billion dollar weapons systems the sole purpose of which is to minimize civilian casualties in time of war.

I don't think that reinstating the draft will solve the problems described by Erick Stackelback. Stanley Kurtz has suggested re-invigorating the Junior ROTC and the ROTC itself, although he regards the potential benefits to the character of our youth as secondary to the benefits to our military readiness. But the problem exists, and is exemplified by Representative Rangel, whose idea of leadership is to drive wedges between rich and poor, black and white, to encourage us to focus on our differences, and to suggest that it can only be the self-interest of the elite ruling class that might cause them to send our young men and women to war.

I'm not beating my breast, lamenting, "Oh, but were I a younger, thinner man," and longing for some Byronic experience of warfare while knowing that there's little or no chance I would ever be called upon to make the commitment. The truth is, there are people who are cut out for such things, and I seriously doubt that I'm one of them. I'm easily distracted, I don't follow orders well, and if I managed to survive combat I would become an burden upon the American taxpayer for the rest of my life as my easily-traumatized brain attempted to salve itself with alcohol, drugs, and violent outbursts in public places. Actually...that would probably happen if I managed to survive boot-camp.

But I'm disturbed when I juxtapose Bin Laden's propaganda--"I was enraged, and went there at once" (or,"Come and make the ultimate sacrifice so that we can bring about Most Holy oppression, misery and death!")--with Representative Rangel's propaganda--"I think, if we went home and found out that there were more families concerned about their kids going off to war, there would be more cautiousness and more willingness to work with the international community, instead of just saying that it's my way or the highway" (or, "Let us force all these rich white people to put their children in harm's way so that they will not choose to go to war because, after all, there's no threat from Iraq, and those 3,000 dead Americans were really our fault, anyway"). Bin Laden was purportedly ready to die for a corrupt culture that he found worthy of sacrifice. Representative Rangel apparently believes that our culture is so corrupt that it is unworthy of the same sacrifice. Bin Laden rose to power on his family's fortune and his willingness to kill Americans, and became the spokesperson for terror and oppression. Representative Rangel was elected by the people, and became a spokesperson for American self-recrimination. Something is wrong with this picture.

Representative Rangel does not sound like someone who is enraged by what was done to his country. He sounds like someone who thinks that his country is almost irredeemably flawed, and that now is the best time to redress all social inequalities, real or imagined. He does not sound like a leader. He sounds like exactly the sort of irresolute, soft-bellied paper tiger that Osama Bin Laden thought all Americans are. And because Rangel represents an electorate, it seems that Bin Laden was at least partly correct.

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Lileks points out the sheer volume of the cotton and glue 'twixt the synapses of all those who would have you believe we live in anything remotely resembling a repressive state:

"I remember the Soviet dissident we put up in our house in '83; he'd been imprisoned for ungood wrongthink, and injected with a wide variety of chemicals to pacify his anti-Soviet tendancies. Contrast: I have a newspaper column in a quasi-major metropolitan daily. I could, if I wished, spend the next year railing against the Bush administration, three times a week. Nothing would happen to me. Nothing. My editors would not complain.The publisher wouldn't take me aside. The guvmint would not come calling. It would never occur to me that I'd suffer any professional repercussions from changing my happy-fun column into a 24-7-365 anti-war diatribe - and if you think I'm mistaken, trust me on this: you have no idea what you're talking about."

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Then again...

On Tuesday I ranted for awhile about Representative Charles Rangel's proposed bill to reinstate the draft, and outlined the stark difference between the response of the citizenry in 1941 and 2001.

Courtesy of Reynolds, I found this piece by Michael Barone, who brings up an interesting point:

"Critics who look back at World War II with nostalgia and argue for shared sacrifice and a drafted military miss the point. We are no longer the kind of country that fights most effectively that way."

I don't think that I was voicing nostalgia per se, but Barone's nuanced criticism has caused me to rethink the issue. We don't need 15 million volunteers to fight this war. As he points out: in 1991 an aircraft carrier could destroy 162 targets a day; in 2003 that number is around 700 targets a day. We don't need men to carry around lethal bits of mass-produced machinery anymore. We need highly-skilled operators of highly technical equipment that can do the job of 100 or more WWII-era soldiers.

Barone's final words still give me pause:

"We can fight today's wars with fewer troops than we used to need. But every citizen should stand ready to fight at any time in any place."

No lines around the block at recruitment centers? Fine, it seems. But it's the lack of readiness that I still find disturbing.

Hopefully, this perception is the result of the insularity of the Northeast Corridor, where I live.

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Yesterday, I was starting to read Paul Tillich's Morality and Beyond, and I had a revelation. Not much of one, but it was one of those tiny "Well, duh!" realizations with consequences that spread throughout my mindscape like cracks running ahead of me on brittle ice.

Morality and Beyond is Tillich's attempt to relate the moral to the religious, but that's not what my little illumination was about. I read the beginning of paragraph six of chapter one:

"The moral act establishes man as a person, and as a bearer of the spirit. It is the unconditional character of the moral imperative that gives ultimate seriousness both to culture and religion. Without it culture would deteriorate into an aesthetic or utilitarian enterprise, and religion into an emotional distortion of mysticism."

My first thought was "Hey, cool!" and my second thought was, "Now wait a minute..." A flurry of "But"s and "I don't buy that"s and "That's not really a given, though, is it?"s tumbled through my brain as I unpacked those sentences, all these little objections. And then it dawned on me, bright sunlight upon thick dense mud: These things are givens. Not to me, perhaps, but Tillich developed a whole system of liberal Protestant theology (Systematic Theology), and this book post-dates that work. So as far as Tillich was concerned, there was a whole set of assumptions and theses and axioms that he had already developed to his satisfaction, and if I truly wanted to argue with what I found in Morality and Beyond, I would first have to understand how he had constructed those prior assumptions.

As I said: not much of a revelation. But it had immediate application to something that's been bothering me lately; namely, my cocooning. "Cocooning" is a phenomenon that happens when you read a lot of material on the Web: you find a site you like or find interesting, and you follow links out from that site, which are in all probability similar to it, and eventually you can be reading a dozen or more sites a day, all of which are speaking from roughly the same perspective. In my case, I've been running the circuit of neo- paleo- and plain old- conservative and Libertarian sites, with occasional forays into more liberal areas, which were usually involved with the arts and technology. I decided to break out of my cocoon a bit, and seek out the left and the liberal.

The trouble is, I kept finding infuriating idiocy everywhere, people taking positions and arguing for ideas that simply made no sense to me at all. I first noticed this phenomenon in the comments section at BoingBoing, which seems rife with people aho are convinced that we're all about to be tossed in an American gulag while Bush, Inc., sends our boys off to fight to secure his personal stash of oillll. Attempts to ask, "Um...how did you arrive at this conclusion?" are often met with a flurry of non-argumentative statements of How It Is.

So, I started my decocooning process at Warblogger Watch, which is an anti-war site apparently devoted to insult and and rhetoric rather than any actual argument. I ignored the various linked "Person-we-hate-very-much-watch.com" sites, which seem to be little hive-cults of obsessive anti-personality. I followed many links. I read many bits of verbiage. And I kept running into the same thing: So-and-so-is-wrong. So-and-so-must-be-mocked! So-and-so-is-wrong, mockable, and fascist! All without any serious attempt at real argument or a coherent statement of position. Although I am still in the early stages of the de-cocooning process, all of this was puzzling and disappointing.

Until, that is, Tillich opened my eyes. Like him, all of these folks, with their snarky put-downs and rhetoric, have--to some degree--developed a host of assumptions, axioms, and theses. It is upon these hidden "truths" that all of their verbiage is based. An image arose in my head, of an ocean, the surface of which is covered with fine, writhing seaweed like fronds, all tangling with each other and getting eaten by sea-otters and gulls and so forth. The surface of the water foams with activity, and much seaweed-sap glints in the sun, but the real action happens below the surface, where each frilly frond becomes a thicker tubule, which in turn joins to a trunk-like structure, which finally, deep in the dark, anchors to a rock or roots itself in thick mud. Each bit of minor frond on the surface is a part of a much larger anchored organism. This is, of course, as true of my fellow cocooners as it is of those outside of that wrapping, and it is also true of me.

What I suddenly realized, though, was the sheer futility of thrashing about on the ocean's surface with the gulls and otters. The Web is full of ideas and information, each frond-site the construct of a mind with its own roots. So much energy is put into arguing about whether Sheryl Crow is a vacuuous buffoon or not. It's pointless.

My first test-case after realizing this came when I found this article in the course of link-following: "Right-wing governments 'increase suicide rates.'" Great headline, huh? But look at the lead:

"Right-wing governments may sap some people's will to live and result in more suicides, conclude studies in Britain and Australia."

Then compare it with this 14th paragraph quote from Mary Shaw, the primary author of the study:

"Shaw admits that attempts to connect the differences [in suicide rates] to ideologies are pure speculation. 'But I'd be very interested to see if suicide rates are higher wherever there's a Right-wing government,' she says. 'I'd be particularly interested to see if the relationship holds in the US.'"

Did you catch that? We've gone from a headline which claims that all right-wing governments cause more suicides, to the author of the study admitting that such correlation is "pure speculation" and that the study doesn't even apply to the US.

But that's just the frothy, frondy surface. I went back to the page that had linked to the story, which is headlined "The hidden costs to society of 'right-wing' political governance." There, I found links to other stories: "Rejection massively reduces IQ;" "Social Exclusion Causes Self-Defeating Behavior;" "Exile groups should not be excluded from political dialogue;" "Social rejection has a host of behavioral consequences, none of them good;" and so on. The implication is clear: the author of this page, somewhere below the surface froth of his arguments, believes that "conservatism" is equal to rejection, social exclusion, segregation, psychological abuse, and anti-sexuality...not to mention loss of the will to live.

The site's author, one J.R. Mooneyham, writes that he is:

"...one of a new generation of futurists inspired by such notorious figures as Alvin and Heidi Toffler (Future Shock), Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog), Eric Drexler (Engines of Creation), and Gene Roddenberry (the visionary responsible for Star Trek), as well as a wealth of science fiction authors like Vernor Vinge, Larry Niven, David Brin, and others."

So what we've got here are the beginnings of the "roots" of the aburd assertion that right-wing governments cause people to kill themselves. It seems that Mooneyham's support for this idea is based, in large part, upon science fiction, particularly upon "Star Trek."

The thing that such community-oriented "futurists" tend to ignore about Roddenberry's Star Trek is that the only reason that it's such a happy place is because of the invention of replicators, which provide whatever anybody wants at any time with, seemingly, no cost and no effort. It's a really nice technology, and you can bet that without it Captains Picard and Kirk would be travelling the galaxy looking for more resources to exploit. The goal of human society, as Picard explained, is to better itself. Unfortunately, that's only possible when nobody has to focus on feeding themselves or heating their homes. In short, human communities can only focus on total support for the personal improvement of their individual members when such provision of resources has already been achieved. This utopia cannnot be brought about before that time.

Mooneyham himself admits as much:

"Note that Mooneyham is a USA citizen, which has been a lucky break for him (so far as futurism is concerned), as this has arguably allowed him to live his life deep inside one of the most advanced republics and high tech markets in the world, as well as provided him with sufficient time and other resources with which to create and publish the timeline up through today. With perhaps a third or more of the world's population still mired in grinding poverty and a struggle simply to survive as of the early 21st century, it's not likely Mooneyham could have written the timeline if born anywhere other than a developed nation like the USA."

Now then, because technology is the only way to achieve his "Star Trek" future, you'd think he'd be most focused on the best and fastest way to increase technological progress...which, as it turns out, is the free market. But he's not. He's focused on the goal, rather than the most practical means of getting there (hence, "futurist").

One of the deepest roots here, I think, is the idea that humans are fundamentally "good," community-oriented creatures. I put "good" in quotes because it's an ideal quality, and I don't really think it applies to all of us monkeys here in the muck. The problem is, history has amply demonstrated that as a group human beings are generally insular, selfish, devoted to their own communities, and quite nasty. This should not be the basis for general misanthropy--plenty of individual humans are quite pleasant--but it should form the foundation for devising methods of reaching the very admirable goal of universal peace for all humans and freedom from want, with lots of nifty starships and snazzy tight-fitting uniforms. You can't reach the goal by pretending that humans are what they're not, but you can work to develop a system that mitigates the nastiness to the extent that overall progress is made. Perhaps, when we finally do invent replicators or Shipstones, the latent benevolence and community-oriented compassion inherent in all humans will finally emerge.

So far Tillich, instead of teaching me about the conflict between reason- and faith-determined ethics, has taught me that most of what I get so exercised about, and much of what I've ranted about on these pages, is a waste of time. The proverbial sound and fury. Therefore, I must now seek out new arguments, and new foundations...and boldly go where I haven't quite been yet.

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WAR: Sometime within the next two to three weeks, it seems.

Like Den Beste, I'm starting to get a "sick feeling in the pit of my stomach." I remember the last Gulf War, that strangely televised affair that was as remote as a Movie Of The Week. This is different. We've already taken casualties in this war, and I saw it happen.

I live in a peculiar house, I think: talk in bed after lights out can be about Aristotle, or Middle East policy. Last night, it was: why are we attacking Iraq? Why now?

It's always good to lay out the reasons, and from what I understand, Iraq is the lynchpin to the region:

1. Our real problem is Saudi Arabian money freely spent exporting fascist Wahabbism and supporting groups like al-Qaeda.

2. Right now, the House of Saud has oil leverage. Toppling Hussein will free up Iraqi oil fields (producing only a fraction of their capacity at the moment), which will eliminate Saudi oil leverage. We can then tell them to sod off without sacrificing our entire economy. If necessary, we can go in and seize their oil fields, cutting off their revenue. No money for terrorists=fewer planes flying into buildings.

3. Toppling Hussein will greatly reduce the possible provision of chemical, biological, and potentially, nuclear weapons to stateless groups like al-Qaeda that have sworn to destroy America.

4. Toppling Hussein will give us a strategic base in the region, freeing us from having to beg use of airspace and bases from other semi- and outrightly-hostile Middle Eastern countries. We will then have strategic muscle in place, which we can use to deal with the other states which support violence against us, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

5. Toppling Hussein now, before he has nuclear capability, will prevent the kind of limited set of options we now have with North Korea. If we allowed Hussein to develop nuclear capability, he could hold us at bay while he swept across the entire Arabian penninsula. That would be bad.

6. Toppling Hussein will free the Iraqi people from the grip of a fascist megalomaniac who kills them with impunity. We can administer their oil fields to produce income which will be used to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. This rebuilding will not include the construction of palaces or WMD stockpiles. If we follow the pattern established in Japan after WWII, in about 40 years our blighted automobile industry will face stiff competition from cheap, well-made Iraqi cars and trucks...I, for one, would love to see something like that happen. Accomplishing this will take at least 10 years of concentrated American effort in the country, dedicated to establishing democratic institutions and undoing the damage of several decades' worth of murderous oppression.

There are lots of folks out there who are convinced that this whole enterprise is a dynastic effort on the part of our President to settle a family score with a personal enemy, and to line his and his cronies' pockets with revenue from precioussss oillll. There are obvious and well-documented connections between our President and Vice-President and the American oil industry.

But I'm not troubled by this.

This is because, unlike the conspiracy-theorists, I don't believe that the current American leadership is evil, which is pretty much what you have to be if you're going to commit a nation to war for the sake of personal profit. I have just enough faith in them to give them the benefit of the doubt, to believe that they are morally serious men and women, that they are aware that they are beginning a historical, once-in-a-century endeavor that has great potential to make a real, valuable contribution to the world, to change it in a way that will have beneficial repercussions for many decades to come.

This is, of course, a hope. There is also the possibility that we will go in, topple Hussein, and pull out after 18 months, leaving the country in chaos and at the mercy of its tribal past. That would be a tremendous mistake, and would certainly cost the administration my vote.

We'll see...we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm making sure that the little portable "survival kit" I started carrying around with me after 9/11 is fresh and up to date. It contains vitamins, potassium iodide tablets, Ciprofloxacin, Levaquin, a smoke hood, Clif bars, an FRS radio, and a bicycle.

No, really: I've got a folding bicycle that I tote in and out of Manhattan now. It's like a little escape pod, and I feel better having it with me. It weights 26 pounds, folds up to 11" x 22" x 33", and fits into a bag I carry on my back.

Whatever works, I say! Things are going to get a little edgy real soon now, and I'd like to be able to maintain enough of an even keel to function in my daily life. If that means lugging a bicycle around with me, then so be it.

Let's...be careful out there.

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BoingBoing reader Rich Gibson has reasonably responded to my six reasons for going to war in Iraq. I included those six reasons in a comment to an item about Saturday's anti-war protests, ending with the following:

"Of course, none of this will make any sense if you don't think that we're at war, or if you believe that Bush and his cronies are evil men seeking to lead the nation into war for personal profit, or that we deserved what we got on September 11, or that we somehow created the Wahabbist movement that spawned al-Qaeda and those who share its goals, or that America is a fascist state dedicated to crushing the entire world beneath the heel of its imperalist boot. It also won't make any sense if you think that the world is the same today as it was in 1941, with tidy states neatly declaring war on each other with clearly defined armies.

Then again, perhaps there is another solution to the problem. I'd honestly like to hear it."

I'm including my response to his comments (in italics) here, to avoid hijacking the BoingBoing comments area with my endless blather. I'll start with the second half of his response--he fairly calls it a "Wrap up"--because in it I found the roots of the frondy frothy surface of his arguments.

The Wrap up...In fact, I do not believe that we are currently at war. I believe that the language of 'war' is being used in order to control the American people.

Control them? How? Do you believe that the American people are stupid?

I do believe that Bush, et al, are evil men, but not that they are pushing war only for personal profit.

Sadaam Hussein massacres entire villages full of minority Kurds with terrible chemical weapons simply to test their effectiveness, yet George Bush is an evil man. Sadaam Hussein maintains a corps of men whose job it is to rape the wives and daughters of dissenters, yet George Bush is an evil man. Sadaam Hussein uses the revenues allowed him under sanctions to build palaces and rebuild his military infrastructure while his people go without food or water, yet George Bush is an evil man. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait to "quite literally" steal its oil, yet George Bush is an evil man.

I fail to see how you can seriously make that claim.

I don't believe that we 'got what we deserved' on Sept 11, but as a country we have engaged in countless acts of agression on other peoples in the world that have been far worse than what happend on 9/11.

"But?" What is this "but?" Hanson knows, and I agree with him:

"Language is the mirror of morality. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, BUT and its weasel-word clan were huddling in silence, afraid to come out when people of confidence and conviction had no use for their prevarication. But I'm afraid that now the worm tongues are making a comeback, and thus their BUT once more threatens to lord over us all."

How far back do you want to go? The genocide of the Native Americans? Or are we still accountable for slavery? For Tokyo? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Dresden? And the usual Chomskyian tropes: Guatemala, East Timor, and so forth.

That "but" of yours is nothing but moral equivocation, and suggests that there is, in fact, some form of equivalence between September 11--a massacre perpetrated by a group that holds up such massacres as a definitive Good--and the egregious violations committed by America in pursuit of its own interests, which by definition violate its stated principles. That "but" suggests that as a nation we continually deserve punishment for our past sins, and that until some unspecified form of repentance is performed, we have no moral authority whatsoever to act in the world. That "but" indicates that these sins exist in an eternal present peculiar to America alone; our leaders are continually judged by the wrongful acts of those who have gone before them, whereas other leaders are not even judged by their own acts.

Why is this?

We did create al-Qaeda in its current form, but not the Wahabbist movement from which it is derived.

By what logic to you make this claim? Because Osama bin Laden happened to be in Afghanistan at the same time as American logistical support? Explain, if you would, how America created an organization whose stated goal is to destroy America, when Osama Bin Laden had more than enough of his own motivation and financial resources to create it, fund it, and train its members. I will explain below why this claim is false.

And I don't believe that America is a fascist state, but it seems obvious that we do violate our own principles and crush the rest of the world under our boot when it serves our interests (I spent a year in Chile under Pinochet we created that mess).

It's good that you do not believe in American fascism. There is hope for you yet. :-)

Like every person short of sainthood, America violates its own principles. This does not negate our very real striving to live up to those principles in a complicated world that contains people and ideologies dedicated to our destruction. And--like every person short of sainthood--we do not operate in the world in a selfless manner, nor should we. For most of the last half of the 20th century our overwhelming task was to defend this nation against the totalitarian threat. The very fact of your knowledge of and objection to these violations of principle--however debateable the particulars--along with your continued ability to freely voice those objections, is evidence both of our success and of the justice of our cause. The consequences of the decisions we made to win that fight didn't cease when the Berlin Wall came down, nor do they negate the results of our success or invalidate the reasons for our actions.

And I don't believe that the world is the same as it was in 1941, but I don't believe it is as different as you believe.

Yes, I belive that the world is quite different. In 1941, the death of 2,500 American servicemen an ocean away was cause for immediate and overwhelming support for war. In 2001, the death of 3,000 American civilians in our nation's capital and it's greatest city is cause for self-recrimination and the wearing of hair-shirts, while many of the very countries whose implosion we prevented then are now seeking to prevent us from enforcing their own international law and defending our nation.

As for another solution: We can't have a 'solution' until we define the problem. It is my belief that the problem is our fear of Iraqi offensive military capability. The focus on WMD's is, to me, absurd. Ten artillary shells of mustard gas are far less dangerous then 50,000 trained troops."

First of all, 50,000 trained troops can't be smuggled into this country in a cargo container.

Second: we're not talking about "mustard gas." We're not talking about "ten shells." We're talking about 15 to 20 thousand shells and six thousand bombs. We're talking about hundreds of gallons of VX nerve agent, 300 tons of chemical weapons precursors, and growth medium for over 5,000 gallons' worth of biological agents, including anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox. All of this remains unaccounted for, and the exact status of Hussein's nuclear weapons program remains unknown.

While one suitcase nuke or dirty bomb is more dangerous and far scarier. But we have an inspection regime that has the power to continually inhibit effectively all Iraqi development of WMD's. That is what we have a right and a responsibility to do..

"Effectively?" If these inspections were effective, there would be no questions about Iraq's WMD program or the state of its WMD arsenal, the sanctions would have been lifted years ago, and Iraq would be taking its place among the civilized nations of the world. That hasn't happened. We are in this situation precisely because the inspections were ineffective. We are going back to Iraq precisely because the inspection regime failed. We are taking care of this threat ourselves precisely because the United Nations cannot be counted on to do so.

I see here four major "root" beliefs: one, the American people are mostly idiots, easily deceived. Two, George Bush and his administration are "evil," and therefore cannot be expected to act for the good of the world or even the nation. Three, America's morally imperfect history continually renders suspect any attempt to act on the world stage, either in its own defense or otherwise. And four, America should trust its defense and its security to transnational organizations such as the United Nations.

I grant none of those premises.

Now, moving on to the frothy frondy specifics.

1. I absolutely agree about the danger of wahabbism. And I would add that US policy has specifically supported the export of Saudi fanaticism when it has supported our strategic Cold War interests (ie. in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan). Whether on balance this was good or bad is still unclear.

Why would Osama bin Laden, with his personal fortune, need any American assistance to create training camps, purchase weapons or recruit personnel? The answer is that he wouldn't, and didn't. Any material assistance he received from America was incidental.

The notion that US specifically sanctioned the use of Wahabbist fighters as part of our overall efforts countering totalitarianism is simply untrue. More than 25,000 Arabs went to Afghanistan--including Osama bin Laden--to join the hundreds of thousands of native Afghani Muslims who were fighting against the Soviets. They did so of their own accord, in response to the Islamic call to jihad by the Afghan mujahadin. The CIA purchased massive quantities of weapons and ammunition, which were then distributed to Afghanis and Arabs alike via the Pakistani intelligence service. Contrary to popular myth, there were no CIA "training camps" for either Afghans or for Arabs. Training in terror tactics was, in fact, provided by the Pakistanis, and because of their close experience with the situation "on the ground," the Pakistanis were also in charge of directing the distribution of American logistical support. They distributed the bulk of that support to violent, extreme Islamist Afghani factions, which they felt would be the most effective at resisting the Soviet incursion.

As far as "the balance" of good and bad: draining Red Army resources to bring about a faster end to the Cold War, and the resultant freeing of more than a billion people from totalitarian oppression, seems to me to be a good thing.

2. House of Saud oil leverage: I honestly don't believe that increasing Iraqi oil production will lead to any real decrease in that leverage. I also don't believe that this administration has any intention of doing anything to annoy the Saudis even if we didn't need their oil.

Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and up 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. We currently only import around 17% of our total petroleum products from Saudi Arabia, (Canada ranks first in that category by a little bit, and Saudi Arabia ranks first in crude oil imports, but only slightly; the percentage is about the same). We import 8% of our crude oil from Iraq (crude is all we get from Iraq).

Saudi Arabia currently produces 8 million barrels a day, down from a high of 10 million in 1980. Iraq's production is currently around 2.5 million barrels a day, down from a high of 3 million in 1988.

But only 24 of 73 Iraqi oil fields are operating, and those are using obsolete or damaged equipment. Iraq has signed deals with companies from Russia, China, Italy, France, Spain, India, Turkey and others with the goal of updating this equipment and increasing total production to 6 million barrels per day. That's only 2 million barrels shy of Saudi Arabi's current daily production levels, and more than double current Iraqi production levels.

In other words, we could double our imports from Iraq, adjust for any difference with slight increases from Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, and Nigeria, and see a negligible reduction in our immediate supply.

Oil makes up 90-95% of Saudi export earnings, 70%-80% of state revenues, 40% of their gross domestic product (GDP), and they are currently saddled with debt equal to 100% of their GDP. Like Iraq, they are entirely dependent upon foreign countries to actually extract their oil or increase their production.

In my opinion, that adds up to the short-term elimination of most if not all of their strategic oil leverage. That advantage won't last, though, because Iraq's recoverable resources are about half of Saudi Arabia's, and their potential recoverable reserves are a pittance compared to Saudi Arabia's trillion barrels. But we won't need long to accomplish what we need to, which is to force the teetering House of Saud to reign in its extremist cousins and cut off the flow of money from their country to Muslim terrorists across the globe.

But in the context of a war with Iraq: even if your scenario in #2 is totally true, I don't believe that we have a moral or legal right to invade one country in order to secure their oil in order to tell a second country to sod off (though I agree that the Saudi's are near to the top of countries and non-governmental entities who should be told to sod off).

I entirely agree. But that's not the only reason we're invading.

Imagine if Hussein developed a nuclear weapon--just one or two--and then held us at bay while he completed the project he started in 1991: the seizure of all oil fields on the Arabian penninsula. He wouldn't have to use the weapons, but--as in North Korea--his possession of them would severely limit our options. Unless we were willing to use nuclear weapons ourselves, a murderous tyrant with a proven track record of creating massive WMD programs--and using the weapons produced--would gain ready access to enough oil revenue to build an arsenal of nuclear and other weapons that could potentially reach anywhere in the world, and could most certainly reach Europe and North Africa.

I find that threatening, and think that it's more than enough to provide moral justification for removing him from power.

As far as legal justification: Hussein has never complied with any of the UN resolutions that were conditions of the 1991 cease-fire, nor is he currently in compliance with UNSC 1441. As such, the international community should be taking steps to insure his compliance with much-vaunted international law. Unfortunately, the international community has absolutely no leverage against Hussein because--without the US--it has no muscle to speak of.

3. I don't believe that Hussein has substantive contacts or interests in al-Qaeda or their interests. He is a secular leader who is nearly as opposed to al-Qaeda as we are. In fact, historically WE have supported al-Qaeda far more than Hussein.

This is, to put it politely, a fiction. As I mentioned in response to #1, logistical support was funnelled into Afghanistan via Pakistan to anyone who was willing to pick up a rifle and point it at the Soviets. Sadaam may be a secular leader, but Iraq's public rhetoric relies heavily on appeals to Islam, and there is no reason to assume that he would not make covert use of al-Qaeda if it served his interests and he thought that he could get away with it.

4. With respect, while it is true that through conquest we could gain a useful base in the middle east, that is a horrible reason to go to war. And, that is a blatantly illegal reason to go to war.

Again: that's not the only reason we're invading. If, as you say, Saudi Arabia's Wahabbist threat needs to be dealt with, how do you propose we do so most effectively? With diplomacy? Or with economic and military muscle? I've already outlined one possible exercise of economic muscle that would result from the successful invasion of Iraq; the establishment of a strategic base in the region would comprise the military portion of that effort.

5. I agree that working to keep nukes away from Hussein is a Good Thing. But remember that we pulled the inspectors from Iraq. They were not kicked out. We chose to disengage in order to provide him with the rope to hang himself. But that is not a valid reason to go to war.

Even with the inspectors in place, Hussein's nuclear program proceded: the inspections were a joke, and Hussein treated them as such. We disengaged because we got tired of the endless shell game he was playing while continuing to develop the weapons we didn't want him to have and which he was ordered to destroy by the United Nations. See #2 as to why that's worth going to war over.

6. You have two points here, both of which are true, except that 1. I don't believe that we will do what is needed to rebuild Iraq. I believe that we will quite literally go in, steal (yes, steal) the oil, and tell the people to sod off. History supports that view, as that is exactly what we did in Gulf War I. We encouraged the resistance, then left them to die. and 2. Even if your scenario is correct: we do not engage in foreign wars because we don't like the government, even when the government is really bad.

Again, that's not the only reason we're going to war. I'm not suggesting that each of these reasons is sufficient in and of itself. But all of them together are more than enough.

Are you suggesting that in 1991 we should have given full aid and assistance to the resistance? Why was encouraging the toppling of Sadaam Hussein through American intervention the right thing to do then, but not now?

You're right, we don't engage in foreign wars--as if there are other kinds these days--because we don't like the government, even when the government is really bad. But we do engage in foreign wars with nations that pose sufficient threat to us or to those around them. To say that we're embarking on this effort because Hussein is very nasty is a gross oversimplification that ignores the facts of the situation, as presented above.

But, as I have recently discovered, the frothy facts of a given situation don't make any difference if they conflict with the root positions of an interlocuter. If you believe that our leadership is evil, that America is eternally culpable for its failings, and that we have no right to protect our interests except through transnational agencies, then there is no particular argument I can make that will sway you.

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A piece of advice: never snooze on the couch with NPR on. It was okay at first in the early morning, but then they started taking phone calls. I swear that I heard the distinctive, menacing voice of guy who called Victor Davis Hanson a "Zionazi stooge" last week: he seemed upset about Martin Luther King Day being a holiday, because it meant that we, the taxpayers, pay government workers to do nothing today. He was very concerned about those government workers. Let's see: thinks that America is a "vassal state" of Israel...has problems with MLK Day...and problems with the Government. I think this long-time-listener-many-time-caller probably knows a thing or two about mixing fuel oil and fertilizer, too.

At any rate, I finally hurled myself off the couch when some breathless caller mentioned that the WaPo was reporting 500,000 people in D.C. for the anti-war protests this Saturday. "Enough!" I cried. "To the Head Cave!" I fired up the Astonished Head Information Appliance! (AHIA!)

What I found of course, was this: "Crowd Estimates: 30,000 to 500,000." It's an interesting bit about how the count varies depending on who you talk to. I like the D.C. District Police count: "an awful lot of people."

From the AP, via the handy OxBlog, I found:

Paris: 6,000
London: "about 200"
Goteborg: 5,000
Cologne and Bonn: "a few hundred"
Istanbul: 100
Cairo: 1,000
Beirut: 4,000
Moscow: "thousands"
Washington: 30,000
Portland: 20,000
Lansing: "several hundred"
Des Moines: "about 125"
Venice, FL: "about 400"
Tokyo: 5,000
Hong Kong: 60
Christchurch, New Zealand: "more than 400"

Ox also points out that in Venezuela, 100,000 marched against Chavez, supported by 50,000 in Miami. In this article, I also discovered that Venezuela is the fifth-largest exporter of petroleum in the world, and that production is down to 800,000 barrels a day because of the strike, from a high of 3 million. That's half a million barrels more a day than Iraq can muster at the moment.

Hmm...if we divide the total number of barrels by Saddam's mustache and add in cocoa exports, we can arrive at a means of achieving clean fusion power!

No, wait...

Ach, it's too hot today.

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Apparently, a story about the inspector's finding some documentation regarding Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the house of an Iraqi scientist is getting some play in Europe, and a bit here as well.

At least, they're saying it was just documentation...

Inspector: We're getting a reading from this room, here.
Faleh Hassan: That is our bedroom.
Inspector: Step aside, please. We need to search this room.
Faleh Hassan: You offend the honor of my wife and of myself with this demand!
Inspector: On behalf of the United Nations, I extend sincere apologies to you and your wife. The readings are strongest over here, by this dresser.
Faleh Hassan: That contains my wife's private things. I assure you she is not involved my work, which has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Inspector: This drawer right here is off the scale...
Faleh Hassan: Again, I must protest this insult!
Inspector: United Nations, apology, yada yada. [Opens drawer] Wow. Uh...Mr. Hassan...apparently your wife's panties are radioactive.
Faleh Hassan: By Allah, I swear that you will pay for this insult to my wife's chastity!
Inspector: Uh-huh. [Rummages] What's this? [Holds up a black rod made of dense metallic material]
Faleh Hassan: It is...a marital aid. You have deeply shamed my family.
Inspector: Uh-huh. Are you aware, Mr. Hassan, that your "marital aid" seems to be emitting...very high levels of radiation? [Quickly places rod back in drawer and closes it]
Faleh Hassan: It is most unfortunate, is it not, that you were holding it in your bare hands. My wife and I use gloves during lovemaking, which also has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Inspector: [Faintly] I feel a little nauseous...
Faleh Hassan: Would you care for some espresso?

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (3)
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"The fact is that democracy does not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus but rather is an epiphenomenon--the formal icing on a preexisting cake of egalitarianism, economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and constant self-criticism."

Since the anti-war protests this past Saturday, there have been various weather phenomena occurring inside of tea-preparation devices. The nation-wide events, see, were co-ordinated by ANSWER, which in turn is a front for the Workers World organization, which excuses things like the massacre in Tienanmen Square, and creates apologies for Sadaam Hussein, North Korea's state-sponsored famine, and Slobodan Milosevic. Fairly unpleasant folks, really, excusing death, starvation and general mayhem in their fevered quest for the Big Big Utopia. Apparently, they also happen to be really good at organizing things, particularly things that are "Anti-". You know--"Anti-War," "Anti-Bush," "Anti-White People In SUVs Mowing Down Exploited Third World Children While Clubbing Baby Seals With Cudgels Made Fr