Syria

“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.” 

Theodore Roosevelt

I hesitated to write about Syria, because I have neither military nor foreign policy expertise.* But then, neither does the guy ostensibly in charge, the one whose metaphorical Commander-in-Chief uniform fits him like a clearance-bin Halloween costume and promotes just as much respect. So, here it is.

The question is whether to intervene is Syria's civil war or not. The case for intervention rests on Assad's (alleged) uniquely brutal use of chemical weapons on the civilian population. This action is so terrible, so inhumane, so revolting that it demands retaliation. That is, whenever we get around to it. Someday, maybe, when all the speeches are done.

Imagine this: Four corpses, murder victims, lie at your feet. One was shot, one stabbed, one blown apart by a bomb, and one poisoned. Which one is more dead? Right. So why are we in such high moral dudgeon over these killings when we've ignored all the others that can be unambiguously laid at Assad's door? If we're to intervene at all it has to be for a good reason, defending the vital interests of the American people and our allies. Causing death and suffering to avoid even more in the future is justifiable, however gut-wrenching it may be to most of us. Ask Harry Truman or William T. Sherman. 

Before we do anything to cause such suffering, to our own people as well as others, we have to have a clear objective and a plan for realizing it. So far I've not heard any, from either the executive branch or Congress. Don't ask me to trust the judgement, competence, or even the good intentions of any of them--not when Obama, Kerry, and the "leaders" of both parties have been engaged in an endless political circle-jerk of solemn pronouncements and press releases.  Like less public forms of masturbation, this may be amusing to those lacking maturity and interpersonal skills, but it's ultimately unproductive. It also leaves you with a mess on your hands.

Let's face the truth: the idea of a "limited yet decisive"strike is not only oxymoronic, it's just plain moronic. It exists only in John Kerry's famously nuanced imagination. Any such limited action is, and will be perceived to be, a mincing, limp-wristed slap on the arm of a sneering bully. It will only empower the Islamists and encourage Vlad ("The Impaler") Putin, not to mention lesser thugs. 

If we take any action at all it must be broad, firm, and final. More of our own people will die, more will be maimed, more American families will suffer, and whatever our people experience will be magnified a thousandfold among the Syrian people. That's the way war works, even the "little" ones. Whatever we do must ultimately save lives--ours and theirs--to justify such losses. So we either fight to win or stay out of it altogether. Personally, I'd stay out, following Napoleon's advice not to interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake. But if we're going to fight we have to know in advance what winning would look like. 

To that end, I propose six military objectives and a final diplomatic action:

1. Kill Assad.

2. Kill all of Assad's enablers and supporters.

3. Kill all of their enablers and supporters.

Then turn on the rebels and:

4. Kill all the Islamist, Jihadist, and al-Queda affiliated leaders.

5. Kill all their enablers and supporters.

6. Kill all their enablers and supporters.

When these objectives have been accomplished, employing the rules of engagement we followed in, say, Normandy or on Okinawa, turn to the remaining rebels and say, more or less:

"We're leaving now. It's your country to run as you like, except that you must follow these three rules.

1. Leave Israel alone.

2. Leave the Christians alone.

3. Quit supporting Hezbolla and sucking up to Iran.

If you break any of these rules, even a little, we'll be back."

The Iranians might note that they're no longer immune. The Russians will huff and puff but can't push the issue. The rest of the world? They'll know the grownups are back in charge.

* Two who do are Michael Yon and Daniel Greenfield. Neither may agree with the above but that doesn't lessen my respect for them.

Torches and Pitchforks

My plainness of speech makes them hate me,
and what is their hatred, if not proof that I am
speaking the truth?
Socrates


It's been a while. I haven't written because, frankly, I didn't feel that I had anything to say about current issues that someone else hadn't said first and maybe better than I could have.
There's no point in adding to the general clamor. But it's about time I provoked somebody, so here goes:

Barack Obama is pushing his gun control agenda using the parents of the murdered children of Sandy Hook as props. The parents are complicit in this charade, and that's shameful. Shameful for Obama, to be sure, and he already has much to be ashamed of. Shameful for the parents, who are allowing themselves to be the eager tools of a crass political manipulator.

Understand this: I grieve for the children, as much as anyone can who was a stranger to them. I imagine the sorrow and the rage I would feel if the victims had been my children or grandchildren, a rage that would vent itself on whatever target was handy.

But.

That's wrong. It's wrong because that venting does no good, enhancing rather than reducing the grief one feels. It's wrong because such venting increases the sadness, the hostility, the misery in the world. It's wrong because it's yet another example of rationalizing actions driven by emotion, undermining the single aspect of humanity--our capacity for reason--that separates us from, say, chimpanzees.

That last is, of course, exactly what Obama and his co-conspirators depend on, and what they've been so successful at since 2008.

The Sandy Hook parents who appear with Obama, giving emotional cover to yet another attack on the Constitution, are the moral and intellectual equivalent of the mob in Frankenstein, identifying guns and gun owners as the monsters who murdered their children.
No, there are no real torches or pitchforks, just the much scarier weapons of the State. The real monster, Adam Lanza, is dead already, but the mob needs a villain to vent its rage on. Who better than anyone who tries to bring reason to bear on the issue? They must be monsters because they're not carrying torches and shouting.

This, too, is what Obama, his minions and his camp-followers want. "Never let a good crisis go to waste," indeed. The corollary to that is:  "When you don't have a crisis, manufacture one." That's what Obama and his sorrowful props are doing. 

For shame.

Collective Action

The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.

Joseph Goebbels

Obama's coronation inauguration has come and gone. The liberal media predictably fawned over his speech; the conservative media predictably gnashed their teeth. Both the fawning and the gnashing were about the same thing, Obama's frankness in admitting his liberal/Progressive/socialist agenda. The fawners acted as if this was news; the gnashers basically said "Told ya so!"

Obama, pretending to care about old dead white guys' trifles like the Declaration of Independence, made an effort to link his agenda with their principles, declaring: 

"For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on earth … We have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action." 

That is, in order to secure "for ourselves and our posterity" these inalienable rights we must act collectively. So far, so good. Ben Franklin knew that when he said "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." But collective action of what sort? Individualism and collective effort aren't necessarily contradictory, but both God and the Devil are in the details. Let's look there.

The United States, founded on overtly individualist principles, has always benefited from 

collective action. Alexis de Tocqueville noted our fondness for voluntary association early in the 19th century, but it predates that. Americans work together to get all kinds of things done: help neighbors, care for the poor and the sick, promote enterprise, compete at games. In colonial and frontier times we helped each other build barns and harvest crops, and it's still happening today. We formed real militias to protect each other from Indians, bandits, and Brits. Towns formed volunteer fire departments, as they still do.

The key idea here is voluntarism, acting for the benefit of others of one's own free will. It's adding a clause to the social contract, that which enables free people to live together in harmony (well, mostly) without losing their freedom. The point of such collective action is to maintain and enhance each person's individual welfare.

The same principle can be seen in social action. The civil rights movement was about reclaiming the inalienable rights that had historically been denied to black people. When Martin Luther King said "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he was speaking of individuals. Only individuals have character. Those who marched with him then did so in the tradition of American individualism and voluntary association. The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an organization in the spirit of the  citizen militias of frontier times, formed for the same reasons. 

It saddens and sickens me to see these ideals perverted. That's what happens when government-mandated "collective action" takes the place of real voluntary association.
You get Great Leaps Forward, Cultural Revolutions, Five-Year Plans, class warfare.
You get May Day in the USSR and Cuba. Worse, here's what happens when people define themselves by race, religion, language, as members of groups rather than responsible individuals. And worst of all, here's what happens when you combine the two.

So what now? I propose we give Obama and his minions exactly what they want--collective action, but in our own way. We don't need street demonstrations and we certainly don't want violence. Let's start in small ways. Recall all those "flash mob" videos? Not the violent ones, I mean the singing and dancing that occurs in public places, makes people smile, and then disappears. Like that, with a twist. Instead of one event, how about dozens all over a city, at random times and places? People could sing "God Bless America," then blend back into the crowds. Can't sing? No problem. Form a group, come together, raise a flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then hand out little flags, or copies of the Bill of Rights,  to people in the crowd, then fade away. Have somebody video the whole process and post it on YouTube. What does this accomplish? Besides any public sympathy it gains, it lets people know we're here. It says we're everywhere and anywhere; we're not going away.

Want more direct action? How about a consumer's strike? No mass demonstrations, no parades. On a selected day, nobody spends any money. None. No gas, no food, no movies, no Wal-Mart, no online purchases. What's it about? It's a peaceful way of saying that we're here and we can cooperate on a large scale. We can shut things down any time we want simply by refusing to participate. On a more active level we can take a cue from the unions.
One of their most effective "job actions" short of a strike is called a "rules action." Simply put, it means everyone in an organization follows every rule to the letter. If you know anything about modern organizations you know that this inevitably brings the place to a grinding halt.
Suppose hundreds of thousands of people all over the country followed every rule everywhere? If they drove no faster than the speed limit, for example? 

You might ask how all this is to be coordinated. Who's in charge? Think creatively for a minute. Why does anyone have to be? There's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. There's virtually instantaneous communication. Those are the bases of self-organizing systems.
Keep things simple and nobody has to be a director. Spread the idea and let people organize themselves in small groups with a common goal. Let ideas generate and spread the same way. Let the common message be this: We are a free people who will not surrender our rights, our arms, the products of our labor to an all-consuming State. We will not be plodding refugees on the road to serfdom. We wish no harm to anyone, but:

We will not be moved.

J'Accuse....!

A while ago a friend asked me when I was going to write about Libya. I passed, explaining that I have no expertise in foreign relations, intelligence or security, and therefore doubted that I had anything except personal opinions to offer. We all know what they're worth. So why now? It occurred to me that there are aspects of the whole sad, sickening Benghazi affair that I do know something about, and that nobody else seems to be discussing. Let's start with background:

If you've read the "evolution" essay you know that I take natural science seriously. In that context let's examine the Obama policy toward the Middle East, the "Arab Spring" particularly. I maintain it's one of appeasement and playing to the mob. Obama's words and deeds are designed to give the impression that we support the so-called "democratic" movements despite their dominance by the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups. He, and his mouthpiece Clinton, speak and act as if al-Qaeda is no longer a viable threat despite all the evidence to the contrary. This fits Obama's fantasy image as a terror-fighter, as if he'd fast-roped into Bin Laden's compound with a Bowie in his teeth, MP5 blazing.

Our real policy is very different. We hamper our troops in Afghanistan with with unrealistic rules of engagement and overreliance on technology (read here) while using drones to blow people up by remote control. Consider this: Afghans, Persians and Arabs place tremendous importance on honor. Honor includes personal courage, among other things. Drone attacks and restrictive rules of engagement don't signify courage to these people; they imply cowardice. It doesn't matter how much personal courage our troops have if our enemy doesn't see it. It doesn't matter how much courage our people display if our leaders are seen as cowards. What matters is that cowards are weak. When attacked, they run.

Given the above, what does it say to our enemies about American resolve and courage when the Marine guards at our Egyptian embassy have no live ammunition? When the United States contracts the security of our Benghazi consulate to questionable locals and refuses repeated requests for real forces? These actions fit the Obama/Clinton line that Muslims love us, but they communicate weakness to anyone paying attention. Here's the punchline: Throughout the natural world, weakness attracts predation. Everywhere, all the time. Obama's public relations game virtually guaranteed an attack somewhere, sometime---especially on the 9/11 anniversary.

That's Part 1. Part 2 is why security at the Libyan consulate was so poor despite repeated requests from our late ambassador. Start with the organizational culture of every bureaucracy, public or private. How does one survive? By going along and keeping one's head down. How does one advance? By sucking up. At General Motors it was widely known that the surest way to ruin your career was to be right when your boss was wrong, and prove it. Is there any doubt that the State Department is the same? Who's going to dispute the Secretary and stand up for the people under threat?

Given the top-down political imperative to make Obama's policies look successful, and the doubt that serious embassy and consular security might cast on that image, it's no wonder that neither the realities of Libya nor our people's repeated, almost desperate, requests made any difference. Clinton went along with Obama because her personal ambitions--whether as a Supreme Court justice or future presidential candidate--are tied to his success. Now she's taken responsibility for her department's failings, acting the good soldier to protect her boss. But her public-relations efforts can't hide the fact that the conditions precipitating the murders of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were the direct, deliberate creation of Barack Hussein Obama in the service of his reelection. Hilary Rodham Clinton is an accessory both before and after the fact.  Both are guilty of depraved indifference to the lives of our overseas personnel, and both have the blood of Stevens, Smith, Woods and Doherty dripping from them.

Quote of the week:

"You ask, what is our policy? I say: To wage war... with all our might  and

with all the strength God will give us; to wage war against a monstrous

tyranny...  What is our aim?  I answer with just one word: Victory!...

absolute, final, immaculate... victory for which neither we nor  our

descendants will ever apologize!"

 Winston Churchill

No wonder Obama had Churchill's bust removed from the Oval Office.