Europe fantasizes about Mideast peace

EU observer reports the plan here.
The Plan

• Immediate Ceasefire
• Unity Palestinian Authority
• Meetings between Israel and Palestinian Authority
• Prisoner Exchange
• Euro-Peacekeepers

Ceasefire? All this does is perpretuate the violence because the agressor never gets its hat handed to it. The only thing that stops violence is victory.

Does Spain, France, and Italy actually presume to force a goverment on Palestine, when elections rejected a moderate goverment willing to negotiate in favor of Hamas and rejection of recognition of Israel? File this under "How Europe promotes Democracy".

No one will meet without Palestinian recognition of Israel.

Will the European peacekeepers be as effective as they were in south Lebenon, where there were promises of Europeans including a large French contingent, and we still haven't reached the primised numbers.

"A peacekeeping force does not come here with pre-set enemies. There is no enemy [inaudible] in a peacekeeping force. UNIFIL is a peacekeeping force. It's not a Israeli combat force or an anti-terror force, as they would like it to be. As long as we don't serve their direct interests, they are going to denigrate it as much as they can." Timur Goksel, former spokesman of the UNIFIL, July 26, 2006

If the purpose of a mission is to keep the peace, then any agressor is an enemy. For genuine peacekeepers, any hostiles are the enemy. In fact, based on Goksel's statement, UNIFIL is no peacekeeping force, its a Corps of Observation, and nothing more.

It would seem my brother shares my weak blogging this summer. Aside from this note promising a new dedication to blogging, he hasn't posted since April. What devious forces conspire to keep us silent? I don't have time to explain.

Steyn on Jefferfakery

Also some ideas on dissent.

Virgina on the "Energy Crisis"

Why this is so difficult to come to grips with I do not know.

Change in Work Load

My work load increased by orders of magnitude. My time at work has doubled and the amount of effort required has climbed from incidental to way serious. Some days I now wake up, go to work and come home and sleep. As a result, blogging has been notably absent. Alas. Internet news reading, talk show radio listening, and blog reading have gone down in increasing order. On the other hand, I am enjoying work and all the work I'm doing, so hurrah for the free market, market capitalism, and increasing liberty in the economy.

The Movie of my life would be a Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh.You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Kaplan on Nation Building.

Robert Kaplan has another installment on army transformation and building civil societies out of anarchy. The Atlantic also has an interview with Kaplan as an on-line extra. I find over and over again that Kaplan understands what is required to combat insurgency and can describe it with clarity. My own approach is historical, from that greatest of all counter-insurgencies, the Gallic wars, the English conquest of Wales, the Penninsular War to the winning of the American West, the Philippines, Vietnam, and so on. Kaplan's obviously much more anthropological, at least in the sense that he spends most of his time on contemporary insurgencies and hot spots. Yet the results are the same. The force with the most will to stay its course prevails. This is far, far truer in insurgency than it is in conventional warfare. In such contests, what Victor Davis Hanson calls, the Western way of war, opposing forces stand up against one another and test their resolution in a main battle. By presenting yourself as a target, you demonstrate a certain fearlessness, but you can also get killed. The guerilla war is much more a war of wills.

Once you have the will to fight, or to stay, you can stay in the game. But will does not mean victory, only a continued struggle. Victory requires right actions taken at the right times. Marshal Suchet pacified Catalonia while Soult, Ney, and the other marshals failed. David Chandler attributed this to Wellington and the English Army he commanded out of Lisbon.

On this subject of will, we speak not only of the will of leaders, or of soldiers, but of institutions. Old, established, strong institutions on the one hand, and weak, fragile institutions on the other. Sometimes the strongest institutions are the most primative. One of the key reasons for Allied success in WWII was the friendship of Churchill and Roosevelt. Another was the cultural similarities of the Americans and the Commonwealth. From 1939 to 1941, the totalitarian states were united against the democratic states. But Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union were not united in any firm sense. All that united them was a mutual self interest and opposition to the democracies. Cleavages between these powers resulted in Italy being flipped and Russia being dropped. Japan and Germany, on the other hand, had elements of suicidal commitment to resistance. Both Japan and Germany could have made the terrible switch to an insurgency. Japan was activly making plans for it. This is one of the reasons for the use of the A-bomb. In Germany, Hitler was so disapointed in the conventional failures that he pursued the destruction of the whole German nation. Imagine WWII in which Hitler and Stalin, especially, had a cordial friendship in the vein of Roosevelt and Churchill.

Friendships, cultural similarities, and even kinships, are a more primitive basis for social order, but being more natural, can exist without the effortful cultural creations of the West. Commitment to abstract principles requires habituation. Commitment to kin groups is ab initio.
Kaplan describes how tribal leaders are employed to get things done while the civil authorities take root.

Kaplan describes how in Nimrud, LtC Norris first relies on a thuggish police chief, Salim, but gradually nudges him aside in favor of the more democratic and lawyerly Mayor Isa. One of his other themes, which also appeared in Imperial Grunts, was that order must preceed civil development, or that order must proceed freedom. This is a most Hamiltonian observation.

Hitchens on Hewitt

Christopher Hitchens was on Hugh Hewitt on Thursday (and I was listening to the early AM reboradcast on KIDS) . I have downloaded the interview of Hitchens and Mark Steyn as well as the one from a few days ago with VDH. I'll bring these to work on my flash drive. Hewitt's on at some pretty unfriendly hours in Springfield Missouri, but KRLA's webcast, Hewitt's website, and radioblogger make it easier to touch bases with this excellent resource.

Gaurav on Berlinski

Glenn and Helen interview Claire Berlinski on her new book Menace in Europe : Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too. Its worth listening too. But I was struck by a commenter, Gaurav, who had lived in Europe for many years and was an American of Indian origin. His comments are also worth taking a look at.

Strange Theodicy

A guy claiming to be a reverend, a certain Fred Phelps, is taking protests to funerals with the argument that bad things happen to good peolpe because America tolerates homosexuality. The Jefferson City News Tribune has an editorial condeming these protests, which gives a little background on the story. Missouri and other states have imposed a content neutral ban on demonstrations within an hour of a funeral. Here is a News Tribune news account of the legislation's passage. Two days earlier there was a story when the House passed the legislation.

Tom Scharbach over at Purple Scarf has found a source that suggests Phelps is actually an agent provocateur to discredit Biblically based opposition to any gay-friendly agenda. While its certainly possible that Phelps is an agent provocateur, I think its just as likely that he and his supporters are just nuts, and have no clue how much opposition they will get from the Right. By pitting a conservative warm regard for the military against a conservative hostility to any gay-friendly agenda, Phelps will inevitably split conservatives. By employing such an unpleasant tactic, its also inevitable that the weight of opinion will be against Phelps.

I am told that Phelp's people are praying outside the Missouri State capitol this morning, and have been given information about how Phelps and his protestors disrupted Lutheran services during discussion of the ELCA's position on homosexuality which involved serious injuries to a minister who approached the protestors to ask that they withdraw and allow the service to procede without disruption. Attacking clergy in the name of God certainly has to fall into the catagory of "things that will alienate your natural constituancy." Dennis Prager has identified that the Commandment against "taking the Lord's name in vein" means to attach God's name to a cause which is not Godly, and has nothing to do with swearing. In the current situation globally, this often refers to Islamicists who use terror in the name of Allah. It would seem that Phelps' efforts likewise qualify as a distinctly unGodly set of tactics (and perhaps purposes) dressed up under a Godly banner.

As I have posted once or twice, I don't think the Bible issues general condemnations of homosexuality. I do think the Bible frequently issues condemnations against the adoption of practices of neighboring people. This rejection of cultural assimilation has allowed Jews to maintain a distinct identity despite three thousand years of hardships, domination, and oppression. If a neighboring people engaged in distinctly different sexual practices, its to be expected that the Bible would condemn them as foriegn. If people ate distinctly different foods, that too would be forbidden. And if they worshiped different gods, that also is forbidden. The condemnations in the Bible reject assimilation to neighboring lifeways as a means of preserving a distinct identity, not because any of the prohibited actions (whether style of dress, foods, family arrangements, or sexual practices) are neccesarily bad. Of course there are prohibitions on some bad acts, whether medically (some of the dietary laws are good health advice), or because it is meant to invoke some attention to moral issues (such as the proscription of ways of killing an animal to be as humane as possible, or the injunction of an eye for an eye as a prohibition of demanding a life for an eye, or the slaughter of a family for an eye).

Distinguishing between universal claims of a text and simple descriptions of a particular set of conditions requires a level of text criticism which apparently eludes Fred Phelps. No doubt he reads the injunctions against bathing not to refer to Greek or Roman style bathing, but as a universal prohibition on bathing. Whether Phelps is an agent provocateur or just an idiot, its clear that his efforts do undermine his cause.

Europe and American-style Conservatism

The American Right is a combination of liberalism (liberty seeking) and conservative (order seeking) while the American Left is a combination of liberalism and socialism (equity seeking). Europe has actual liberals, conservatives, and socialists. Attempts to build a coallition of economic liberals and social conservatives proves hard in Europe, as this piece in the Brussels Journal demonstrates. Liberals are wary of funding them, because of the social conservatism, and conservatives seem to not be interested either. In the comments you can see the Liberals posting warrily about how an illiberal social policy can support a liberal agenda (the notion that liberal economics is best insured by a Christian society). The Brussels Journal mostly publishes about its Liberal agenda of smaller goverments, EU-scepticism, lower taxes, less regulation, and free trade. As such its not a regular stopping point for European conservatives who might otherwise be posting in complaint of a social order which does not protect its people from the vicitudes of a liberal economy.

VDH nails it in the WSJ

A Nation Divided.

Thoughts on the Ports Contraversy

Let's start with a clarrification. Neocons are not advocates of commerce making friends, that's a different wing of the right. Its Hamiltonians who believe that commerce breeds a middle class and that middle class values produce democracy and liberal societies. Neocons invade Iraq to establish a democracy. Hamiltonians trade with Iraq to build a middle class who then demand a democracy.

The Hamiltonian thesis requires a long time to play out. Little countries like Korea and Taiwan took 50 years to go from unfree, western aligned states to functioning democracies. A big country like China will take longer. Start counting for China in 1976 when Mao died. Just as the revolutions in 1848 were a false start for Germany, where industrialization and the growth a middle class was too small to sustain the revolutions, Tiananmen was a false start for China. But like Germany, in a century (or perhaps more, China's too big to extrapolate reliably) China will have too many middle class people to accept a tyrannical regime.

Neocons advocate a risky, rapid democratization. Hamiltonians advocate a slow, steady development.

Regarding the UAE, because of the psychological crisis of "the failure of the Islamic" world in the 20th century, the best analogs are the 2nd phase democracies: Italy, Germany, and Japan. The countries had a substantial and growing middle class, but they also had a group of radicals owing to the Great Depression and unresolved trauma from WWI. As a result, their democratic development was vulnerable to being hijacked by the radicals. Arab states likewise have two forces largely at war with one another. The modernizing, westernizing, commercially oriented people, and the backward looking Islamic fundamentalists who want to re-create an imagined past of Islamic greatness. What the bombings in places like Saudi Arabia reveal is that these two forces are at war with each other in the Islamic world.

In fact, the thesis of Fawaz Gerfes _The Far Enemy_ and the historical background to Marc Sageman's _Terror Networks_ is that this struggle between the modernizers (those who think the Arab world can catch up to the west by becoming Modern, as the Japanese did between 1854 and 1954) and the Islamicists (those who think Islam becomes great by becoming salafi, Koranic, and sharia) has been going on since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and it was the specific shift in the ideology of Al Qaeda from fighting the local modernizers to fighting the exemplars of all that is modern, the United States and the West, which had forced us into this struggle.

Therefore it is a great error to regard all Arabs as potentially sympathetic to the Islamicists. Our allies in the Arab and Islamic world are the modernizers. Because they are in the heart of the struggle and are the direct targets of all Islamicists (and were long before Al Qaeda) being that they are the Near Enemy, we need to aid, protect, and guide them to a secure modernism. At the same time, we must understand that demanding that they openly and fully declare allegiance to full modernity makes them a target, not only of Islamicist violence but of all the anti-modern forces in the Arab and Islamic worlds. As such, even genuine modernizers will attempt to appear traditional by kow towing to traditional idols, such as Islamic charities, anti-Israeli declarations, and madrassas. These kinds of things happen in the most modern and Western oriented countries in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Its a sign of their insecurity, not their bad intentions. We will know we are winning when the modernizers no longer have to apologize for their modernity by kow towing to traditional Arab or Islamic institutions, causes, or ideas.

Some of the criticism of the UAE’s could be leveled at the Swiss, the Caribbean, or Hong Kong banks. One of the things we saw in 9-11 and from Al Qaeda is the ability to use our modernity against us; flying our planes into our skyscrapers by taking advantage of the open access of our society. Certainly they are doing the same to the modernizers in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

People who are operating ports in many countries outside the Islamic world, employing technical and administrative skills to advance commerce, these are the modernizers. They are our friends. We will not advance the cause of liberal societies (and would repeat the mistakes Michael Ledeen describes in _Freedom Betrayed_) by regarding Arab modernizers as potential Islamicists.

Coulter gets slammed

Its nice to see Ann Coulter take one on the chin. She took her hyperbole and over the top schtick to CPAC and was rejected. The American Mind reports just how bad reviews were. She's much more useful to the left, providing a living breathing straw man, than she is on the right. Further her attachment to any cause becomes a liability that has to be overcome, she's no assett.

Cuddle Puddles and the New Modesty

This is something of a continuation of the previous post from yesterday. Still reading the Atlantic, still on the culture wars.

I read Caitlin Flanagan's Are You There God? It's Me, Monica. It hit many of the same points as the Laura Ingraham interview with someone behind the piece on the Cuddle Puddle in New York Magazine.

But at the same time that I see evidence for the new decadence, I still see evidence for the new modesty. There is Mona Charen's piece, A Modest Backlash Against the Culture. It refers to a group blog called Modestly Yours in which the issues of modesty are discussed. There is the Modesty page on Ladies Against Feminism.

My interpretation of both trends suggests that the ends of the bell curve are getting further apart. Another dominant culture is fragmenting and womanhood and girlhood are giving way to a series of distinct cultures with totally different value systems. Modesty may only describe a small group (let's suppose somewhere between a tenth and a sixth of females), and decadence may likewise describe a similar small group. In between we might find everything from 50's style petting to serial monogomous sex between teens based on stable (for teens) relationships.

The abstinance movement is real, and the kind of casual sex with strangers and multiple partners (Ingraham described the cuddle puddle as an orgy) seems to be real as well. I suspect that the modesty movement is more a responce to the decadence than what is going on in the middle. There is an ongoing discussion of what 's going on, as these sources begin to link to one another.

Deceptive Chart

The Atlantic has an interesting piece on twelve tribes of American votes, divided according to their views on religious issues. There is a chart, featured much more on-line than in print, which I think is deceptive. (Non-subscribers can see the chart, but not the article.) Consider the group, White-bread Protestants. This group is described as the heart of the old Republican Party, the country club Republicans who supported Republicans from McKinley to Ford. Some have gone to the left some to the right. They sure sound like center-right swing voters. The kinds of voters who are required for Democrats to win, but would normally default to Republicans.

Looking on the grid lines, they are on the mid-point of the economic values axis, perhaps a touch more conservative. However on cultural values, they are two grid lines to the left of the center line, only two grid lines from the edge of the chart. Another group described as "true moderates" are the Convertible Catholics who are one grid line to the left on both economic and social issues.

This chat deceptivly makes it look like moderates and leftists are clustered closely together, implying agreement, while the religious right ends up off in a corner by itself, impyling that its views are far from anyone elses.

Taranto on the Adversarial Media

James Taranto has a good peice at Opinion Journal dot com on the failures and growing challenges of the adversarial media.

Steve Colbert on Religion

Ann Althouse has an interesting set of comments and a few links on Steven Colbert's thoughts and comments on religion. She seems to have uncovered a serious side to the comic.

More on Boys and Education

The recent Glenn and Helen podcast interviewed Michael Gurian, author of The Minds of Boys. He argues that the industrial school is not a good fit for 30-40% of boys and 10% of girls. Last week, I reported my own findings from my experience. I found that a third of boys and a sixth of girls seemed unable or unwilling to stay on task in a classroom. Our numbers are pretty close together, and I am describing a behavior, so other causes might confound explanation of the Gurian thesis. Gurian on the other hand is describing a problem and its effect. Still the numbers are pretty close, and I think that's telling.

Those Beloved Judges

Hugh Hewitt was running audio of Sen Kenndey on the Alito filibuster today. Kennedy seems to have love only for the judicial branch of government. Only they solved the serious problems confronting America. The Founders were inadequate, so the Consitituion is no guide. The executive and legislative branches didn't do the specific things he mentioned, so they were inadequate. Only the judicial branch ensured progress for America.

Kennedy is in fact wrong, from Truman's desegreation of the Army in 1948, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclimation, the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendements, it turns out that the other branches were active in advancing civil rights and freedoms in America. Further, one can argue pretty persuasivly that when courts have acted first (Brown v Board of ed, Roe v Wade) they have mostly pre-empted the other branches. Its pretty clear that in the various cases which could be pointed to, the courts were only a little ahead of the political branches, and had they not acted, the other branches would have. Further, the political branches typically avoid the excesses of the judciary (not always, but much more frequently) and where they do over-reach, its much easier to repeal bad legislation than it is to reverse bad decisions. Judicial actions, because they are non-political have much less support among the people. With the political branches, the people get to weigh in and possibly over-turn executive or legislative over-reach. As such, judicial cases cause a back-lash that political action doesn't cause. This is because when you fight in a legislature or in elections and lose, you had your say and you can wait to put someone of your mind in office soon. In a court case, the people are not consulted and checks on the courts by the people are nearly absent.

Kennedy is not only factually wrong about the role of the courts as the sole institution of progress, but he embraces the least democratic and most tyrannical branch of government as the one to vest the most power in.

Self-Discipline and Schools

A recent study finds that self-discipline beats IQ as a predictor of success in schools. Since being smart is actually a hardship in schools, that's hardly surprising. Bright kids find it so easy to skate through on native intelligence that they have no motive to develope self-discipline to succeed in school. For parents to teach discipline often means discipline outside of an academic context. As a result bright kids in college either push themselves and self-teach good study habits, or they a) reproduce skating by or b) end up leaving school.

If schools challeneged bright kids, and gave them the kind of assignments that they actually had to apply themselves to do well on, then they would benefit from smarts and discipline. As it is, we largely ignore the needs of our gifted kids and assume they'll just do fine. Learn they will, no doubt, but they will not on their own cultivate then habits of hard work and success.

Boys and Education

I was a fan of Christina Hoff-Sommers after Who Stole Feminism and was interested when I saw her War Against Boys. The War Against Boys argues that boy behavior is being labled as a problem. More recently, The New Republic has noticed the issue and this has sparked some comment in the blogosphere. This includes Ann Althouse, Stepping Stone, and Kirsten Mortensen. Ann's comments section is, as usual, abundant. As a boy who largely prospered under school and found typical school boy behavior disorderly enough that I joined the army after school looking for an orderly society, some of the suggestions for boys I think would work for some boys, but there also needs to be a middle ground between rambunctous school for energetic boys and dainty school for girls who can sit still for weeks on end.

I observed three catagories of students in the classroom. Those who sit still and remain on-task even with distractions, those who can remain on-task as long as there are no distractions, and those who simply don't remain on task. I found that 2/6 of girls and 1/6 of boys were nearly always on task. I found that 3/6 of both boys and girls could remain on task as long as distractions were eliminated. I found that 1/6 of girls and 2/6 of boys found remaining on task difficult under normal classroom circumstances. The things that distracted boys and girls wasn't neccesarily similar. Girls were more likely to be distracted by the opportunity to be social. But the always on task and the mostly on task students would seem to function well in the low energy and moderate energy enviroments. The other students I suspect will need a variety of strategies. Some need more discipline and regementation, some need a different teaching approach, some need more extenstive links to existing knowledge, and so on. 75% of students, however seem to be able to function well in some form of current school.

Blunt on Hugh

Last weekend I wrote my congressman, Roy Blunt and recommended he come out for all of the transparency issues and the sunshine. I also recommended he go on Hugh's show, and provided a link to Instapundit's join statement of bloggers. Whether my drop of water added to the filling of the bucket or not, Congressmen Blunt was on Hugh this Wednesday.

I admit to some favoritism of the native son variety, but I think Roy did fine.

Zawahiri

The New York Times called him "Top Qaeda Aide", but ExpressIndia has it better when they note, "Zawahiri is the brains behind Osama bin Laden". Many of the news broadcasts I am hearing refer to him as Al Qaeda's number two man, but I think that is an error. Zawahiri is in some ways more dangerous than bin Laden. He is the chief ideologist and propagandist of Al Qaeda. Since bin Laden has gone underground, Zawahiri is the one releasing the video tapes. Bin Laden was a financial and organizational leader, but what today is being financed or organized? Yet even from caves, a message is getting out and that is Zawahiri. He may well be the top man at Al Qaeda, even if the Times calls him an aide.

Tom Delay

Texas Tom is not my kind of Republican. Nevertheless, the baseless attack upon his PAC activity in Texas is stirring sympathy for him as far as I am concerned. If a PAC is a money laundering scheme, I think charities must also be money laundering schemes, not to mention the political parties. It certainly is possible to argue that PAC's as pools of money dilute the influence of any one giver (except in cases where the PAC is a front for a single person or interest). A PAC like Delay's was not a special interest PAC, and it wasn't beholden to a single donor the way MoveOn was to a certain currency speculator. It was performing the same function as the Republican Party, its purpose was to get Republicans elected in Texas. Some might be concerned with corporations donating money directly to candidates, though such organizations can still be influential when top officers all contribute anyway. But contributors to Delay's PAC were seeking influence with Delay (sort of) and not trying to do what was feared with direct corporate contributions. Since PAC contributions were legal, it should be obvious that this money laundering charge is a legal fiction.

All of this puts aside the notion that speech is protected, political speech more than commerical speech. Why can Company X run commercials advertising their product, but they can't take political positions? But that is a foundational question and won't be addressed in a court.

Delay's PAC is an example of a national politicial becomming a magnet for money because he is percieved as being effective. People who agree with him and find his agenda pleasing will send money to see Delay advance his agenda. As such its hard to see who was being corrupted by any of this.