The Opinionated Bastard

Which is interesting because he was a radical trade unionist. (Put in Leavenworth for running a union, so there all you guys who complain about living in a fascist state.)

Normally, I would think guys like David Horowitz are just nuts. After reading this transcript I'm not so sure

Awhile back I got on this kick of trying to read the Bible. It would have been slow going, except for this one book:

Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

That book was really helpful. I remember reading Genesis. For most lackadaisical Sunday-School Christians (i.e. me), it’s all about how God makes up these weird rules, people break them, and then God gets mad.

Lawrence Boadt’s book put it into perspective for me. At the time the Bible was written, the people in that region believed that there had been a flood, and that the region used to be more fertile. There were competing creation myths that went something like “The gods had a party, got drunk, threw up, and that created the earth.”. Not very inspiring, but if you look at the religions at the time, all the gods were really caricatures of humans. When they say you have to quote the Bible in context, the historical context is important too.

So Genesis tells the same story from the Jewish perspective. The message from the whole story about the snake and the apple is actually:

Pretty much, the bad things that happen to you are your own damn fault, so stop blaming the whims of the gods and clean up your act you lazy, shiftless pervert.

The older I get, the more I see this is true. It may not be immediate, the consequences of something I do, but if you go around being an asshole, eventually bad things start happening to you. So that’s message 1, page 1 in the Bible: Stop blaming other people; your problems are your own.

This of course explains why the Jews have done so well throughout history, they don’t whine, not whining is in their religion. It also explains why the Jews and Christians have been kicking Muslim ass for the last thousand years, for some reason Muslims miss this message. Strangely, they end up blaming the Jews instead, but I digress.

Of course most Sunday School Christians don’t get that message either, because in my experience, most Christians don’t actually know anything about Christianity. The Jews are lucky, they have the Talmud where they write down all their questions about the Bible. Though, I don’t actually really know anything about Judaism, I’m just having fun talking through my hat today.

The other thing that made me more of a believer was reading the New International Version, which is a much better translation then the crappy King James one:

Zondervan NIV Study Bible, Personal Size

I remember reading through to the laws about cleanliness and thinking, “Holy shit, they’re talking about the germ theory of disease! When did this get written again? 1400 BC? And us humans didn’t figure that out until 1870? So that’s 3400 years of people dying because they didn’t read this?”

So my new rule is if there’s something in the Bible I don’t understand (like everything from Revelations except the part about stamping people with barcodes), I give God the benefit of the doubt. I mean, after all, 3400 years ago he said “By the way, its a good idea to wash your hands after touching dead things.” No doubt people argued about that too. So maybe that whole “You really shouldn’t sleep around” thing isn’t so bad.

Though come to think of it, that’s kind of my rule for everything; give people the benefit of the doubt, from Walmart to Kerry. I think about half the problems in the world would go away if people would just ask one another more questions instead of assuming the other person is an idiot.

God knows why I’m blogging about this today. Must be dizzy from all the Weight Watchers dieting.

Read Micheal Yon's Latest

I figured I'd better post this today, so that in a week or so I can claim I knew it all along and get Glenn Reynolds to Instalanche me.

The whole Valarie Plame thing is going to turn out to be nothing. What's going to happen is that “everyone” knew Wilson had a wife that used to do something at the CIA, but no one had quite put it together that meant she was a spy, they all thought she was an analyst including whoever Novak talked to in the administration. (Given that the CA employes like 100 analysts for every spy, normally its a safe bet.)

So Novak publishes, then David Corn at the Nation puts it together that she wasn't publicly a spy given that “CIA” appeared nowhere on her resume. He publishes, suddenly she is “outed” which isn't a big deal given that she was married to a high-profile State Department guy, she wasn't exactly Jennifer Garner. But her co-workers get outed too which is a big deal.

Sure, its a colossal fuckup. But its not treason. Everything Wilson said is going to turn out to just be paranoia.

I always say never put down to evil what can more easily be subscribed to stupidity. Lots of people were stupid in this affair. Novak, the CIA, the Adminstration guy, Wilson.

But no one was treasonous. If being stupid was illegal, half of Congress would be in jail, and the other half would be on trial.

I myself was stupid just yesterday, and later today, I plan on being stupid some more. Its my god-given right as an American, a citizen of the world, and a blogger.

Here's Foreign Affairs showing in 1998 why “exit strategy” is bad news. Topic: Bosnia!

Opposing exit strategies does not necessarily mean favoring the waste of American blood and money in endless futile attempts to impose order or create harmony in Bosnia or anywhere else. The main reason to jettison the concept is because it lumps together several important issues that are best handled separately. The first question is when open-ended military commitments might actually make sense, and the answer is that it depends on the American interests at stake and the policy options available. The second question is how interventions can be closed out smoothly, and the answer is that they should leave some kind of stable order behind. The third question is how overcommitment can be avoided, and the answer is through selective intervention rather than the imposition of time limits. Finally, the fourth question is how unexpected developments should be handled, and the answer is according to well-developed contingency plans.

The adults have spoken...seven years ago...

I got quoted in a piece in this month's Boston Magazine from my review of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

The piece is really great, it covers my feelings about the book as well. Some of the book was fact but some just seemed delusional...

Kudos to Maureen Tkacik for writing a great piece, and really digging into his claims. Here she is talking to one of the people John mentioned in the book:

So that's it: Perkins is lying?

Long pause.

“I think that John,” Greve says, “really has convinced himself that a lot of this stuff is true.”

But her best bit references her own experiences:

My grandfather built nuclear power plants for Bechtel in Taiwan, and my dad was a diplomat in China. When I was a kid we lived in a crowded, beige former opium port called Guangzhou. My dad spent much of his time meeting provincial officials, advancing the causes of American companies like Nike and Proctor & Gamble. It was a bitch. Perhaps to get away, to detach himself from all the dilemmas created by geopolitics, my father devoted many of his vacation days to visiting shrines to those mostly altruistic pioneers of globalization, the Jesuits. On one of those trips he met a beggar child who was badly burned--deliberately burned, he realized, to elicit sympathy. Now, we had met hundreds of beggars in those years, fellow men with distended bellies and limbs the width of pencils and deformities you couldn't in your wildest dreams believe, and my dad is a big-hearted man. But never before had he felt so personally responsible, so overcome with the rottenness of the system, that he broke down sobbing.

That night after dinner, sitting with my mom alone at the ostentatious marble table the government had provided us, I heard him crying again. The thing is, he wasn't responsible, and he knew that. But my dad still cries, when you bring up that story. I'm crying right now.

Anyways, if you have access to Boston Magazine, pick up a copy.

Fucking Terrorists.

I hate them. But unlike them, I only want to kill the killers, not innocents on their way to work.

You know I like numbers...

Here are international incidents of terrorism over the years:

For those of you who have never read his older statements

The American government, we think, is an agent that represents the Israel inside America. If we look at sensitive departments in the present government, like the Defense Department or the State Department, or sensitive security departments like the CIA and others, we find that Jews have the first word in the American government, which is how they use America to carry out their plans in the world.

The American government is throwing away the lives of Americans in Saudi Arabia for the interests of the Jews. The Jews are a people who Allah cited in his holy book the Quran as those who attacked prophets with lies and killings, and attacked Mary and accused her of a great sin. They are a people who killed Allah's prophets--would they not kill, rape and steal from humans?

I hate Illinois Arab Nazis...

Here's some more

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.”

So lately, you're an ally of America if you're on your way to work?

There's a big difference between incidental targeting of civilians and specifically targeting them.

Sleeping with the viper

You’re mowing your grass, suddenly you saw an ugly poisonous viper right in front of you. You run to fetch an axe in order to kill it but your wife screams at your face and orders you to stop.

“Are you crazy? You want to kill a living soul! You are barbaric” she screams. “But its dangerous. It can kill us” you say. “No, it is not. And what options do you have. Do you want to kill it and commit murder? Do you want to throw it out of our house so that some viper hunter will take it and abuse it. PETA will not be happy with that. You should respect the Universal PETA Rules. Now I want to teach you a lesson you barbaric human being. I am going to sleep with the kids and you’re going to sleep with the viper” your wife says. “WHAT??” “You heard me honey. The viper is sleeping in our bed, right beside you so that you learn how to respect animal rights”

So, you pick up the viper and place it in your bed. The viper sleeps peacefully beside you for 3 days. On the fourth day, you wake up screaming. The viper bit you.

From Big Pharaoh.

Iraq is the first internet war, as Vietnam was the first television war. It's interesting to read blogs in other countries, some of them make our left wingers look rational, some make our right wingers look liberal. I urge all Americans to get some other perspectives instead of just regurgitating the things that the left or right say.

Big Pharaoh gives the Egyptian perspective, which has been especially interesting since they may soon have real elections.

Osama has always struck me as a spoiled rich kid, but I never had any confirmation for this. Today, reading Wikipedia I found this quote:

I was filming a group of mujaheddin in Afghanistan as they fired mortars at the nearby town of Jalalabad. An impressive-looking Arab in beard and white robes [bin Laden], one of the many fundamentalist volunteers fighting alongside the mujaheddin, suddenly appeared. Jumping up on a wall, he screamed that we were infidels and that the mujaheddin should kill us at once. They grinned and shrugged their shoulders, so he ran over to a truck driver and offered him $500 (£312) to run us down. The truck driver grinned, too. Then the tall Arab ran off to the mujaheddin's sleeping-quarters and threw himself onto one of the beds, beating his fists on the pillow in frustration. My colleagues and I stood and watched him with a mixture of embarrassment and relief.

Sounds like a 3 year old personally.

How bad were things under Saddam? Doctors couldn't get medical textbooks.

So Instapundit said about three times today that “democracy is a process”.

It's a process the US government has been actively working on, and I'd like to point out that everyone can track their progress on the state department website. It's one of the advantages of living in a democratic, open society: the government has to tell us what its doing, and how well its doing.

Realize that prior to September 2002, the State Department and the US in general were working for “stability”. In 2002, as part of the War on Terror, President Bush proposed a new direction. Basically he said, that whole stability thing wasn't working, it just made lots of resentful crazy people in the third world, some of whom flew planes into our buildings.

Well, it did win the Cold War, but we should have shifted tactics somewhere between 1989 and 1995. Anyways, the President proposed a new direction in foreign policy, detailed here.

Since then, every year, the State Department has to come up with goals, and report on those goals.

Why read predigested pap from the Mainstream Media about what the Iraqis think? Get it Directly from the Horse's mouth

Warning: May shatter preconceptions.

By a War supporter who son is going to Iraq

For many Brits, terrorism is nothing new. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when the threat of the IRA was always present, but never more than at the back of your mind (at least, in most people in England). Even then, the IRA would usually give a coded warning so that evacuations could be completed before the bomb went off. The threat lay in their ability to infiltrate society, destroy at will and get away with it -- not in taking life.

Whoever did this -- and that hasn't yet been properly established -- are just out to kill people. It's ugly, really ugly.

Hat Tip: Drunk Cyclist

The “patriotic resistance” struck another strategic target in Iraq today. They attacked Iraqi’s hope and Iraq’s reserves and future; they murdered Iraqi children again.

Those pathetic terrorists are afraid of the future and of the children that are going to grow up to build, plant, serve and protect their country. No words can describe the ugliness of the massacre, no words can wipe the tears of the mothers who lost their loved ones today and no words can describe the difference between those handing sweets to the children and those handing death and pain.

The insane murderous servants of the tyrants think they can defeat us and protect their evil masters this way but they’re wrong, the hand of justice will reach them just like it pulled their master from the rat hole. The blood that was spilled today shall not go in vain and terrorists will lose and that is not going to be far from now.

Before you comment on the above, realize that it was written by an Iraqi.

Today in Opinion Journal:

n the fifth book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” something interesting happened. The author, J.K. Rowling, abandoned the mystery genre and gave her readers something more challenging: a historical allegory. Through sleight-of-hand, Ms. Rowling took a children’s book and transformed it into a parable about 1930s England. We’ve heard a lot recently about London and the Blitz. Ms. Rowling’s unfolding saga may illuminate that dark historical moment, not only the ordeals that led up to it but also—who knows?—the triumphs that followed.

The parallels between this volume and Britain’s prewar dithering are so great that the book is perhaps best read as a light companion to “Alone,” the second volume of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill.

Sounds pretty similar to my posting: Harry Potter and the Butcher of Baghdad. Jonathan Last is using Chamberlain and WWII instead of the WOT, but I think we both noticed the same thing.

This is a long post touching on hernias, elderly parents, medicine, Qi Gong, dieting, nutritional fads and California…

It does not use the I-word at all…

So I’m watching this 60 minutes smear piece about armoring vehicles in Iraq.

I’m not going to write about that. What it sickening me right now is the clip they showed from Reuters of an IED blowing up. It’s perfectly clear to me that they knew where the IED was going to be, and stationed their camera in time to watch an American soldier get killed, and others wounded.

I hope they enjoyed their ratings, the evil fuckheads. For all the blathering I read about us killing people for corporate profits, what do you call not making a phone call if you know someone is going to blow up some American soldiers? Or if Reuters didn’t have a quarter, perhaps they could have just waved their arms and said “STOP!”.

If I was the family of that soldier who got killed, I’d be suing Reuters for $$$$$ right now.

So awhile back I went through the Brooking’s Institute report looking for trends. At the time, we were conducting some operations, so it was hard to tell if the recent bumps were starts of a bad trend, or just because the troops had been more active.

I looked at it again today. Iraq may be getting dramatically better. I know that’s hard to believe, but 2 weeks into July, the number of US troop fatalities and Iraqi Police fatalities is much lower then you might expect.

The low for the month over the last year was 40 deaths. So far in July, 18 as of halfway through the month. If we double that, that’s 36 which is significantly under the previous minimum. But even more interesting, only 11 of those were from “hostile incidents”. Compare that to 82 deaths in June, 70 of which were from hostile attacks. That means if we continue the typical rates, the number of deaths will be something like 33 deaths, which would be the 4th lowest month overall.

Now wounding is 293 so far, which if we double it would be 586. That wouldn’t be especially low, but would be consistent with the slow down since the elections.

Iraqi military and police killed so far in July is 113, double that to 226 and we still have a much smaller number then June’s 296.

Meanwhile, the bombings on civilians might be slowing, only 11 in the first half of July, which led to 146 deaths. That doesn’t include the terrible bombings of the last few ways, but dare we hope? There were 30 bombings last month, causing 548 deaths.

Lets hope the trends of early July continue.

According to this China is not the reason for high oil prices. Fear accounts for $10-20, but it was $12/barrell in 1999.

Haven’t found out the reason why oil prices are high though. Fear due to Iraq is surely a good part, but either there are other causes or its pure speculation. Which actually means there could be a huge collapse in oil prices…

Because after you’ve blown your dick off, its all you can do really, is eat raisins. From this interview:

But Manji says recent research shows all that virgin stuff was based on an erroneous translation of the Koran: what awaits in heaven are 72 raisins. What? Could 54 people really have been blown up for a bag of raisins? “Well in 7th century Arabia raisins were so exalted as to be promoted to paradise.”

That’s just funny. 72 raisins await you in Paradise? Wow, puts a new twist on going grocery shopping then.

Though come to think of it, I don’t like raisins.

That is, the Transportation Safety Authority.

I mean, if it means that from now on, when I travel, I’ll get to watch women in short skirts and a thong bend over to remove their high heels, then get to watch them bend over again to put their shoes back on after being scanned, that will much improve the travel experience for me…

Spent 8 hours trying to get somewhere 2 hours away today.

That is, I spent 8 hours in Phoenix trying to fly home to Flagstaff.

The problem is that it was all a small set of incremental decisions which are each reasonable but the overall outcome is just stupid.

My flight from SFO arrives at 2 pm for a 1 hour layover. Then the flight to Flagstaff is 1/2 hour late leaving…then they decide to switch from a 37 seat plane to a 20 seat plane…bumping 17 people. I’m #38 (don’t know how that works, but I was), so I know I’m getting forcibly bumped. Since I haven’t eaten all day, I volunteer for what I think is the 8pm flight, thinking I can change my mind and drive if I have to, but I have to eat first before I can make my decision.

But with one thing and another, I don’t get the paperwork until 5:30… At that point, I would still have to uncheck my bag, then rent a car, so I decide what the hell, I’ll wait, I’m tired anyways.

Except what I heard as the 8pm flight was actually the 8:56 flight. I kind of missed the :56 part.

Except now its 9:30, and the flight coming in from Flagstaff still hasn’t arrived, and it takes at least 20 minutes to turn the plane. So if it arrived right now, it wouldn’t leave until 9:50. So maybe I’ll get out of here at 10, then a 40 minute flight, so 10:40. If I’d just gotten my suitcase and rented a car, I would have been home at 6…

Sigh. And I’ll have to get a cab ride once I get to Flagstaff…

Ok, so last week, at the halfway mark through July, I noticed that the numbers for Iraq had dramatically improved.

Reviewing the numbers this week, things are still on track for a great month. 28 coalition deaths in Iraq so far, 20 of which were due to hostile action. I wonder if that capture of the large weapons cache in Mosul helped?

Injuries are at 369, so I suspect the injuries will be about typical for the post-Abu-Ghabib period probably ending up in the low 500's.

Iraq Military and police deaths are still down, and they've been seeing more action lately.

As I suspected last week, while July started out slow, the number of Iraqis killed by car bombs and such jumped with the events of last week. The number of people killed is almost up to June's level. Still the number of bombings is lower.

Attack's on Iraqi Oil and Gas infrastructure is lower still.

Hmm... Electricity generation is up, the power has been on an average of 13 hours/day in July. That's really important given how hot it is...

Rice visited Lebanon

Kerry Seeks Release of Roberts' Documents

You can't make this stuff up.

I've been thinking about how to define terrorism,lately.

The dictionary doesn't give a very useful definition: “the employment of methods of intimidation”.

Well, that's broad enough that the IRS qualifies...as does my credit card company.

Wikipedia basically throws up its hands and says “no one can agree”. Some wags have opined: “Terrorism is what someone else does to you”.

So Terrorism is one of those things no one knows how to define, but “You know it when you see it.”

I think the distinction between terrorism and regular military action boils down to honor. Honor in warfare has become somewhat of an old fashioned concept, but when I see an action that strikes me as being terrorist, its is invariably an action without honor.

It strikes me that thinking about things in terms of honor makes everything simpler.

Is it honorable to kill innocents with a car bomb? No.

Is it honorable to kill soldiers with a car bomb? Yes.

See, I need not reference terrorism at all. Turnabout is fair play:

Is it honorable to kill innocents as “collateral damage” when attacking a foe? No.

But I'm not talking about some sort of absolute honor which can be suddenly lost as if we're all Klingons in a bad Star Trek episode. I'm thinking of honor more as a balance sheet. Every action you take has varying degrees of honor and dishonor attached to it. If you make more honorable actions then dishonorable actions, you are honorable. In our turnabout case:

Is it honorable to purposefully hide behind innocents? No.

Is it honorable to minimize killing innocents who are being used as shields? Yes

Is it honorable to provide medical treatment for innocents harmed by either one's actions or another's actions? Yes

Were the incidents at Abu Ghabib honorable? No

Is prosecuting the soldiers responsible honorable? Yes

Is deposing a ruthless dictator honorable? Yes

Going back to the terrorists:

Is forcing/tricking an innocent to carry a suicide bomb honorable? No

Is hiding in a mosque honorable? No

Is violating a flag of truce honorable? No

Is flying a plane into a building full of civilians honorable? No

Is flying a plane into the Pentagon honorable? Yes

It seems to me that honor is the basic concept behind all of codes like the Geneva Convention that we run our wars by. For each action, the military elements involved must strive to be as honorable as possible. Of course, now we need to define honor, but that seems simple:

An honorable military action is one that attacks the enemy, or helps innocents.

A dishonorable military action is one that attacks or harms civilians.

If both sides strive to be honorable both sides gain honor. However, if one side is dishonorable, there are times when even an honorable warrior may need to commit dishonorable actions: In a hostage situation, it may be necessary to endanger an innocent hostage. So if a warrior is facing a dishonorable enemy, he will be forced to do a certain amount of dishonorable actions himself.

Perhaps then, we can now define terrorist and thus terrorism. A terrorist is a warrior whose primary military actions are always dishonorable ones. Terrorism we can then define as actions carried out by those warriors, whoever they may be. The key point here is that we've discarded any notion of perfection by either side. An honorable warrior is honorable defined by the majority of his actions, not by any one action.

By this measure, the activities of the insurgents in Iraq long ago passed the bar from honorable to dishonorable. They have become terrorists.

So that's what I've been thinking about lately.