Month: April 2004

I can’t verify this first-hand but it comes from a source I know and trust. It’s from a military chaplain in Fallujah:

Here’s some background on Al Faluja to keep in mind.

A) Why is it in the news almost every night? Because it is one of the FEW places in all of Iraq where trouble exists. Iraq has 25 million people and is the size of California. Faluja and surrounding towns total 500,000 people. Do the math: that’s not a big percentage of Iraq. How many people were murdered last night in L.A.? Did it make headline news? Why not?

B) Saddam could not and did not control Faluja. He bought off those he could, killed those he couldn’t and played all leaders against one another. It was and is a ‘difficult’ town. Nothing new about that. What is new is that outside people have come in to stir up unrest. How many are there is classified, but let me tell you this: there are more people in the northeast Minneapolis gangs than there are causing havoc in Faluja. Surprised?

C) Then why does it get so much coverage? Because the major news outlets have camera crews permanently posted in Faluja. So, if you are from outside Iraq, and want to get air time for your cause, where would you go to terrorize, bomb, mutilate and destroy? Faluja.

D) Why does it seem to be getting worse? Two answers:

1) This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba’ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. Electricity, water, sewage, etc. was paid by the state. Go with the flow: life is good. Don’t and you’re dead. Now, what does that do to initiative? drive? industry?

So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. The good news is that millions of Iraqis are doing just that, and some pay with their lives. But many, many are struggling with freedom (just like East Germans, Russians, Czechs, etc.) and they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse. We don’t want to be plantation owners. We make it clear we are here to help, not own or stay. They get mad about that, sometimes.

Nonetheless, in Faluja, the supposed hotbed of dissent in Iraq, countless Iraqis tell our psyopers they want to cooperate with us but are afraid the thugs will slit their throats or kill their kids. A bad gang can do that to a neighborhood and a town. That’s what is happening here.

2) We have a battle hand-off going on here. The largest in recent American history. The Army is passing the baton to the Marines in this area. There is uncertainty among the populace and misinformation being given out by the bad guys. As a result there is insecurity and the bad guys are testing the resolve of the Marines and indirectly you, the American people. The bad guys are convinced that Americans have no stomach for a long haul effort here. They want to drive us out of here and then resurrect a dictatorship of one kind or another.

Okay, what do we do? Stay the course. The Marines will get into a battle rhythm and, along with other forces and government agencies here, they will knock out the crack houses, drive the thugs across the border and set the conditions for the Falujans to join the freedom parade or rot in their lack of initiative. Either way, the choice will be theirs. The alternative? Turn tail, pull out and leave a power vacuum that will suck in all of Iraq’s neighbors and spark a civil war that could make Rwanda look like a misdemeanor.

Hey, America, don’t go weak kneed on us: 585 dead American’s made an investment here. That’s a whole lot less than were killed on American highways last month. Their lives are honored when we stay the course and do the job we came to do; namely, set the conditions for a new government and empower these people to be the great nation they are capable of being.

The American burden.

This is fascinating, and addictive. A geographical guide to presidential fund-raising.

To some, I suppose, the hideous slaughter of so many innocents in suicide bombings in southern Iraq is another reason to worry that the occupation is doomed. I have a different response. It reminds me why we are in this war in the first place. It reminds me of the nihilist, fascist forces that killed thousands in New York and Bali and Madrid. These forces were not created by the toppling of Saddam nor by the end of the Taliban. They are killing people in Saudi Arabia. They were there all along – and had to be fought and defeated at some point. They now realize that they must sow terror and mayhem in the new Iraq in order to prevent any kind of representative government and free society from forming. We have the difficult task of fighting them, while protecting innocents in a war where the enemy deliberately and cynically conflates the two. That isn’t easy anywhere – but better to have drawn these elements out and to fight them in a struggle for Arab and Muslim democracy than to play constant, fitful defense at home. If the Iraqi middle does not and cannot see that these elements have no future in mind for Iraq but theocratic state-terror, then we truly are in trouble. But that is not the case, and, in face of such atrocities against Arab and Muslim civilians, cannot conceivably be the case. So we fight on. And I mean: fight.

WHOPPER OF THE DAY: “We want calm in Iraq and condemn any activity which might cause disorder in Iraq, but we say the source of problems is the continuation of the occupation,” – theo-fascist dictator of Iran, Mohammad Khatami.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “When I watched those planes go into the Twin Towers, I felt elated. That magnificent action split the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al Qaeda, or with the enemy. I decided to quit my job and commit myself full-time to al-Muhajiroun. I am a Muslim living in Britain, and I give my allegiance only to Allah.” – Sayful Islam, British citizen, exercizing his constitutional right to free speech in the London Evening Standard. Sayful says he never experienced anti-Muslim discrimination in Britain, had a good job, but decided to join the theo-fascist revolution, after 9/11. The entire article is chilling. Another money quote:

“As far as I’m concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better. I know it’s going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid – I pray for it, I look forward to the day.”

“I pray for it.” Is there something about that statement that we don’t understand?

Here’s a charming quote to ponder:

The New Mexico Republican Central Committee has voted to censure the Sandoval County clerk, who issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The resolution says Republican Victoria Dunlap has brought disgrace to the party. “Other than assassination, all we can do is censure her,” said committee chairman Richard Gibbs.

Other than assassination?

MEMO TO ZAPATERO: “If a nation once establishes and proclaims as its rule of conduct, that any sacrifice of interest is preferable to war, it had better at once abdicate its independence and place itself under the protection of some less Quakerlike state; for to that condition of subjection it must come at last, and it is better to get to it decently and at once than to arrive at it painfully after successive humiliations, and all the the losses and sufferings resulting from repeated spoilations” – Lord Palmerston.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN BRITAIN: The Independent runs a story about growing Jew-baiting in Britain. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the editors of that virulently anti-Israel paper, that they might in some ways have contributed to it.

WHY NOT TEAR-GAS IN FALLUJAH? Tom Palmer asks a simple question. I guess Iraq’s hideous history of dealing with real chemical weapons is one reason the coalition is reluctant to use non-lethal weaponry in such a situation.

National Review writer, Stanley Kurtz, has become something of a folk hero on the religious right for his opposition to marriage for gays. And the anti-marriage advocates have been using articles of his (see here and here), on the impact of same-sex marriage rights in Scandinavia very heavily in the debate. For Kurtz, allowing gays to marry essentially killed civil marriage in the Nordic countries. In his eyes, it has increased out-of-wedlock births. It has led to the end of marriage as we know it. All gripping stuff, except that Kurtz failed, as many pointed out, to prove anything but a correlation between rising rates of non-marital cohabitation and gay marriage. The distinction between correlation and causation, indeed, is blurred beyond recognition in Kurtz’s articles on the subject. But Kurtz also dismisses the research of others who have actually spent months on the ground in Scandinavia resarching this topic, namely one Darren Spedale, a young Fulbright scholar who has dedicated himself to the subject and has produced an as-yet unpublished book. Kurtz has dismissed Spedale’s on-the-ground research as the work of “a kid barely out of college.” Now he is moving on to the Netherlands. I sent Kurtz’s pieces to Spedale and he has some cogent points to make in response.

SPEDALE RESPONDS: First, the legal and cultural norms around coupling and family are very, very different in Scandinavia than in the U.S. Civil marriage doesn’t have the kind of privileges that it has in the U.S. and marriage laws ensure that there is little, if any, incentive to get formally married, rather than simply cohabitate or live under partnership arrangements. Put this down to an egalitarian welfare state or a different culture, but that makes it strikingly different than the U.S., where civil marriage remains (in my view, rightly) the privileged organizing unit for coupling and rearing children. As Spedale explains:

Norwegian individuals are entitled to most benefits regardless of their possession of such a certificate, as almost all government benefits accrue to the individual rather than to couples based on their marriage status. Even when long-term unmarried domestic partnerships break up, the state has provisions in place to protect the needs of the weaker (i.e., financially dependent) party in such a relationship. Thus, many couples have decided that a state sanction in the form of a marriage certificate is not necessary for them to live their lives together.

This is a far, far more central cause for the decline of formal marriage in Scandinavia, which, as Kurtz concedes, has been going on for decades. To attribute it to the rise of same-sex registered partnerships is an almighty stretch. And it doesn’t mean what it might mean in America. Scandinavia tends to be a very socially conservative and culturally heterogeneous place. By that I mean that, although marriage is in decline, there’s little evidence that this has led to family dissolution. Over to Spedale again:

Couples in Scandinavia who have chosen to spend their lives together without a marriage certificate often plan for an otherwise traditional family structure, including children. Thus, the ‘out-of-wedlock births’ that Kurtz refers to in Scandinavia are children who are wanted by their parents… Probably the most telling proof of this is the incredibly low number of Scandinavian children available for adoption each year. In Denmark, for example, only about 25 Danish children are available for adoption each year in the entire country. (The vast majority of adopted children, over 90%, come from poorer countries.) Kurtz’s claim that ‘rising rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births stand as proxy for rising rates of family dissolution’ is therefore misleading. The only thing that such statistics demonstrate is a continuing shift in the Scandinavian countries to permanent relationships of families in a traditional family structure (i.e., with children), who don’t hold a marriage license. Kurtz fails to prove any connection whatsoever between unmarried couples and family dissolution.

And if that is true, it’s doubly true that he proves no connection whatsoever between such shifts and allowing gays to become registered partners or to marry.

KURTZ’S DISTORTIONS: Kurtz also wants to argue that same-sex marriage advocates are cultural radicals who wish to destroy the traditional family. He has barely acknowledged the long battle that gay conservatives have waged against some gay radicals in the U.S. and elsewhere in promoting civil marriage rights. And he wants to describe the low numbers of same-sex marriages in Scandinavia as a function of gays protesting marriage. Spedale believes otherwise:

The reason that marriage rates among gay couples in Scandinavia is so low reflects the seriousness with which gays and lesbians have taken the institution of marriage. Most gay couples wait many years into their relationship before choosing to marry, specifically for the reason that they want to be sure that their chosen partner is truly their life partner. This solemn approach towards, and respect for, entering into the institution of marriage also explains why divorce rates among gay and lesbian couples is so much lower than rates of divorce among their heterosexual counterparts.

Yes, you read that right. Gay divorce rates are in fact lower than straight ones. Straining to find a connection between gay radicalism and family collapse, Kurtz finds a specific area in Norway to make his point:

Now consider the county of Nord-Troendelag, which is bordered by NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). NTNU is where Kari Moxnes and Kari Melby teach – two radical pro-gay marriage social scientists. Nord-Troendelag is like Massachusetts – a socially liberal state influenced by left-leaning institutions of higher learning. In Nord-Troendelag in 2002, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for first-born children was 83.27 percent. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for all children was 66.85 percent. These rates are far higher than the rates for Norway as a whole.

As we’ve seen, such “out-of-wedlock” births may not mean in Norway what they might mean in, say, Anacostia, D.C. But was this because of same-sex marriage? Between 1994 and 1999, there were a total of five registered same-sex partnerships in the county Kurtz cites. Kurtz wants to explain the shift in that county’s heterosexual conduct by citing a mere ten people? It’s also true that in the period Kurtz is concerned about the number of marriages in Norway increased by almost 25 percent from 20,161 in 1993 to 26,425 in 1999. How does that square with the “death of marriage”? Kurtz is now preparing to do the same job on Holland. Since real marriage rights have been legal for all citizens in the Netherlands, the Boston Globe reports, there is no “evidence of damage to the institution. For example, divorce rates are no higher, and there is no sign that conventional couples are shunning marriage.” Can’t wait to see how Kurtz manages to reverse that.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, recalls an interview he had with Benon Sevan, the oil-for-food U.N. administrator now under scrutiny for allegedly skimming vast amounts of money in bribes from Saddam’s regime. It was in a piece for the New Yorker in March 2002. I quote:

Last week, in New York, I met with Benon Sevan, the United Nations undersecretary-general who oversees the oil-for-food program. He quickly let me know that he was unmoved by the demands of the Kurds. “If they had a theme song, it would be ‘Give Me, Give Me, Give Me,’ ” Sevan said. “I’m getting fed up with their complaints. You can tell them that.” He said that under the oil-for-food program the “three northern governorates”-U.N. officials avoid the word “Kurdistan”-have been allocated billions of dollars in goods and services. “I don’t know if they’ve ever had it so good,” he said.

I mentioned the Kurds’ complaint that they have been denied access to advanced medical equipment, and he said, “Nobody prevents them from asking. They should go ask the World Health Organization”-which reports to Sevan on matters related to Iraq. When I told Sevan that the Kurds have repeatedly asked the W.H.O., he said, “I’m not going to pass judgment on the W.H.O.” As the interview ended, I asked Sevan about the morality of allowing the Iraqi regime to control the flow of food and medicine into Kurdistan. “Nobody’s innocent,” he said. “Please don’t talk about morals with me.'”

Yeah, Mr Sevan. Talking about morals with you would be a little beside the point, wouldn’t it?

He does a good job defending National Review against charges of wobbliness. I’m relieved.

Blair’s decision to put the EU constitution to an actual vote has sent Paris into a tizzy. Democracy?? In the European Union?? What are the Brits smoking?

A Muslim fatwa makes an exception to the usual prohibition on theft for “Zionist” banks.

A new low in enviro-lefty discourse.