Category: Old Dish

Instapundit has compiled a series of charity links for the victims of Katrina.

GAY ANIMALS: The animated version.

Britain considers banning “violent and abusive” pornography. My response is basically this one.

Some Germans start lecturing the U.S. about global warming. As if any serious expert believes this is in any way connected. And while the waters continue to rise in New Orleans. Extra points to the Green Party, of course.

I haven’t commented on Katrina because there is nothing much to say that isn’t being reported by others far more qualified than me. But the devastation is still gut-wrenching and all-the-more disturbing for coming slowly, after the initial storm. The rest of us can pray and pitch in where we can.

“Too many Christians think if they shout loud enough and gain political strength the world will be improved. That is a false doctrine. I have never seen anyone “converted” to a Christian’s point of view (and those views are not uniform) through political power. I have frequently seen someone’s views changed after they have experienced true conversion and then live by different standards and live for goals beyond which political party controls the government.” – Cal Thomas, today. I differ with Thomas on many issues, but he has a long record of being committed to the role for faith that I believe is found in the Gospels, not the broadcasts of politicized televangelists. I wish more political conservatives would speak up in this way – for the sake of politics and Christianity.

GAYS AND LESBIANS: Common goals; very different cultures.

I’m as interested in strategies to win in Iraq as anyone, which is why I linked to Andrew F. Krepinevich’s essay on an “oil-spot” strategy. But I didn’t emphasize something that some readers have pointed out – and I should have. It’s the last paragraph:

Even if successful, this strategy will require at least a decade of commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars and will result in longer U.S. casualty rolls. But this is the price that the United States must pay if it is to achieve its worthy goals in Iraq. Are the American people and American soldiers willing to pay that price? Only by presenting them with a clear strategy for victory and a full understanding of the sacrifices required can the administration find out. And if Americans are not up to the task, Washington should accept that it must settle for a much more modest goal: leveraging its waning influence to outmaneuver the Iranians and the Syrians in creating an ally out of Iraq’s next despot.

I’ve always thought of the Iraq operation on such a scale; which was why I was so shocked by the way in which the campaign was conducted from the very beginning. I could not understand why such a mammoth undertaking with such huge consequences would be conducted on the fly, with too few troops, no real concern for post-war stability, indifference to looting and random violence, and on and on. Incompetence is one answer. Another is Rumsfeld. In Rumsfeld’s mind, if there’s a contest between a vital American interest and his own pet theories, pet theories will always win. The president has split the difference, speaking grandiloquently about the goal while backing a defense secretary patently unwilling to provide the resources or commitment to make it work. It seems to me that the sure sign that we are actually planning to win in Iraq will be when the president fires his defense secretary.

A REELING CHURCH: This strikes me as an important development: a court has ruled that Catholic parishes facing sex abuse cases can have their property removed in damages, including churches. Wally Olson has the details.

I’m a bit of a Berman groupie (not that I agree with him most of the time). This looks fascinating to me, about a generation I still don’t understand.

“A great deal of nonsense is being talked in this zone recently. Science is science, and ought to be taught in our public schools conservatively, from the professional consensus, as settled fact. Religion is quite a different thing.” – John Derbyshire, talking sense, at NRO. I have to say that, although it happened while I was avoiding the news, president Bush’s endorsement of “intelligent design” for teaching in public schools really does strike me as the dumbest idea he has ever expressed. There are two views of Bush-as-evangelical. The first is that he uses the religious right; the second is that he is the religious right. Of course, they’re not exlcusive. I think he’s around 30 percent cynical on these matters and 70 percent sincere. It’s the 70 percent that more thoroughly worries me.

It’s a good question:

What is a ‘typical’ citizen to do here? As a typical citizen, I know next to nothing about Iraq, the Middle East, how to conduct a war, the construction of a constitution, and other details pertaining to this matter.

I do know about how difficult it is to change, for me to change, and for others to change. It is extremely difficult to impose lasting change from the outside (although it can happen). Enduring change is best driven, in part, by intrinsic motivation. Since the changes in Iraq have been instigated by outside force and outside pressures are in place in an effort to maintain these changes we can only estimate the amount of intrinsic motivation for democracy that lies within the Iraqi populace. Ultimately, we will learn about the will of the Iraqi’s when the extrinsic pressures are reduced and we see the development of their ideology and nation without occupying U.S. forces imposed upon the region.

The experts, our leadership, and pundits are all over the map on Iraq. The information peddled by our government, newspapers, and other media have been false on critical issues from the very beginning. Histrionics, ego, subjectivity, and self-interest appear to prevail in most of what I read about Iraq. However, what I appreciate about your blog is your efforts to think independently on many of these issues.

Pundits, policy makers, politicians, etc. all claim that the nascent democratization of the Middle East is primarily a function of our intervention in Iraq. These individuals claim this with the utmost confidence and express no doubts. Again, as an ‘average’ citizen, I ask myself, how can folks make this claim with such definitiveness? Who knows where the Middle East would be if we had elected to take another tack other than invading Iraq? Depending on the alternative route taken (and there were probably many alternatives to invading Iraq) and the effectiveness of its execution, we could be in the same, better, or worse position than we are in now in or efforts to deal with terrorism and it’s tributaries. Without any kind of ‘control’ group, how can these so called experts assert that Bush’s Iraq policy was the primary driver of democratization in the Middle East.

The bottom line is this – how does the average citizen go about evaluating the decision made by our government to invade Iraq and how do we go about assessing the status of this war? It seems like an impossible task.

I think the answer is that it is very, very difficult, but not impossible to ask the right questions, sift the information we have and try and come up with a provisional judgment of where things are and where they’re headed. The key word there is ‘provisional.’ The important thing to keep in mind is that all human action is conducted in a fog of unknowing, of unforeseen circumstances, of chance and contingency. Even years from now, there will be a debate on the decisions we are now examining. What I have found valuable about the blog as a genre is that it puts this process on display in a way that even columns do not; a blog can expose uncertainty and ask questions and probe for answers or logic. The objective is an open mind; an ability to change it; and a sure sense of one’s own values. My values include a love of freedom, a desire to make the world a slightly better place and a suspicion of authority. Those are the rough bases on which I have tried to make sense of the successes and failures of the past three years in a part of the world so alien to so many of us.

A fun, animated cartoon satire for all those of you who like to enrich the Saudis and drive tanks to work. Great work-procrastinator.