Anticipating 2008

At this time of year we are always treated to a flurry of predictions for the new year. Unfortunately I cannot join the fun because my crystal ball is out of order. For your enjoyment, however, here are a few things I suspect will dominate the headlines for the next twelve months.

U.S. Presidential Election: If you're already tired of the endless campaign, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Tomorrow nigh week real people in Iowa will actually start selecting delegates to the national party conventions. Then things will start to happen really fast, and we ought to know who the two nominees will be sometime in the next few weeks. Then we will be treated to fun of a different kind as the two finalists spend months slinging rocks at each other. There's a good chance that one, and possibly both, candidates will be senators, which means every single vote in the U.S. Senate will become a presidential campaign issue. Congress may just grind to a complete halt - which wouldn't be such a bad thing, actually.

Troops Withdraw From Iraq: The "surge" strategy may or may not be working, depending who you ask and how they measure success, but one way or the other the U.S. military commitment in Iraq should start to fall significantly this year. The Pentagon simply can't sustain current troop levels for another year unless they lengthen tours beyond 15 months. Hopefully the force reduction will be orderly and the Iraqis will be able to maintain order on their own.

New War Fronts: The troops who leave Iraq may not get much rest before finding themselves in another hotspot somewhere around the Gulf. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey are all potential destinations. Iraq will not be the last campaign of the War on Terror.
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Geopolitics: Apart from the Middle East there are plenty of other trouble spots. Radical Islam is moving into Asia and Africa, for instance. It will be interesting to see how Russia develops when Putin moves from president to prime minister. North Korea, Venezuela, and other potential enemies will bear watching. The summer Olympics in Beijing will have vast political implications.

Pope Visit U.S.: Pope Benedict XVI will visit New York and Washington in April. He is scheduled to address the United Nations and meet with President Bush. The publicity surrounding this will be intense and coming in the midst of the presidential campaign it will inevitably turn political.

Culture War: The movie and TV writer's strike, if it drags on, may have the pleasant side-effect of sparing us from Hollywood's worst indignities, at least temporarily. Don't applaud too quickly, though; they will find new and innovative ways to pipe garbage into your home.

Bolt from the Blue: It's the things you don't expect that always matter the most. The possibilities are endless: another 9/11, nuclear war in the Mideast, bird flu pandemic, economic collapse, you name it. At some point in 2008 we'll get an ugly surprise, and maybe more than one. Should we worry about it? No. Just be ready. You can save time if you start praying now.

I can say with complete confidence is that this time next year, things will be a lot different. In what ways? I'll get back to you on that.

Pakistan After Bhutto

People want to know what I think about the Bhutto assassination in Pakistan. Here are a few quick points and some links for you to follow.

First, we cannot forget that the human tragedy of the last few days. Not only Ms. Bhutto but dozens of other people lost their lives, in a place where violence seems to be the most common way of settling differences. Here in the U.S. we have our share of problems, but not like they do in Pakistan. We should be grateful for this, and pray for the souls of those lost and for their families to find peace.

Second, I'm not sure the removal of Ms. Bhutto from the equation will make a lot of difference in the long run. People can debate her character, but even if she was the political hero that her supporters claim, I'm still dubious she would have been able to stabilize Pakistan. In fact, one could argue that Pakistan is inherently unstable because it is an artificial entity pieced together by colonial powers. It is, in many respects, a case study in Islamic Dis-unity. Military strongmen have held this conglomeration together by brute force, but for a variety of reasons that is ceasing to be a viable option. The global trend is toward de-centralization, so the breakup of Pakistan into its constituent parts is a real possibility.

Third, if the current crisis leads to a radical Islamist regime taking control of Pakistan, the Global War On Terror will take a dramatic turn for the worse. An Iran-Pakistan alliance would be a formidable foe even without nuclear weapons. Hopefully the Bush Administration would at that point finally decide to stop kicking hornet nests and leave well enough alone. The alternatives would be very bad indeed.

Fourth, I'm not terribly concerned about Pakistan's nukes falling into the wrong hands. They are no doubt well-hidden and well-guarded. Some reports suggest U.S. special forces know the location of these weapons and have contingency plans to seize or destroy them. Even if radical elements capture them, then what? Exploding a nuke is not like pushing the button on your garage door opener. They have multiple safeguards and interlocks to prevent unauthorized use. Furthermore, transporting such weapons from Pakistan to a worthy target without being detected would not be easy. The bigger risk is that someone would disassemble the warheads and use the nuclear material to build a radioactive "dirty bomb." That would be bad, but not nearly as destructive as a nuclear detonation in a major city.

Fifth, the timing of all this in interesting in relation to U.S. domestic politics, with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary only days away. To the degree the electorate in those places is paying attention, it probably helps the strong-leadership candidates like McCain and hurts those whose appeal is primarily domestic, like Huckabee. But I really think the impact will be minimal. Larison has some interesting thoughts.

For ongoing commentary I recommend you visit Born at the Crest of the Empire, where Mike is posting a wealth of links and interesting thoughts.

So Much For "Peace On Earth"

Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Following the Christmas celebrations, Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church, which is built over the site where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.

But the ladders encroached on space controlled by Armenian priests, according to photographers who said angry words ensued and blows quickly followed.

For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.

A dozen unarmed Palestinian policemen were sent to try to separate the priests, but two of them were also injured in the unholy melee. [more]

This is certainly a turnaround: Muslims stepping in to quell violence between Christians in the very place where peace should reign. Apparently no one stopped to ask "What Would Jesus Do?"

The Allure of Power

I recently discovered a very interesting blog called Rebellion. The owner, Mike Tuggle, seems to share much of my concern about the state of our culture, and where it is taking us. Here's what he said about the Rev. Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani.

What attracted Robertson to Giuliani is the allure of State Power, the new object of post-Christian America’s veneration. It’s not a failing that’s confined to Robertson, but to all who support any and all demonstrations of the Empire’s military might. We Americans are all pagans now, and emperor worship has supplanted both the ideals and traditions of the American Republic as well as the foundations of our Christian faith. Power, our power, intoxicates and defines us at the same time. We may pay lip service to our old traditions, but with a few new definitions, we’re good to go on to our next imperial conquest. So when we invoke the core principles of the American tradition, we now affirm loudly, and with straight faces, that the Founders intended us to roam the world to root out deviations from the one, true system, which we still fool ourselves into believing is the American Way—which we still try to fool others into believing is a universal truth meant for all. Therefore, our armies do not conquer, but liberate. And those who stand in our way are so blind to our noble intentions that they deserve what they get.

This is the attitude that grips us now. That’s what Robertson has actually endorsed. And the longer the rot of empire eats away at us, the worse we will all become. Rudy’s outrageous antics will soon become the norm, and the death-spiral of empire will only accelerate. May God have mercy on us.

Read the rest

Panic in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Police and soldiers emboldened by state of emergency powers swept up hundreds of activists and opposition members on Sunday, dragged away protesters shouting "Shame on you!", and turned government buildings into barbed-wire compounds. [full coverage at Yahoo!]

It is difficult to overstate how much the U.S. strategy in the Middle East depends on Pakistan. That's why this is a very serious situation any way you look at it. It will be difficult for the Bush Administration to continue arguing that its goals are freedom and democracy for all if it allows Musharraf to become even more blatantly dictatorial than he already was. Reports indicate that the government has shut down all independent media, arrested the Supreme Court's chief justice, and suspended the Constitution. These aren't minor steps.

Neocons and other war hawks will argue that this is just the price we have to pay to win the War on Terror. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. The people of Pakistan just have to grin and bear it until we get around to liberating them, too. Therefore, the U.S. must do whatever it takes to prop up the Musharraf regime and prevent Muslim extremists from taking over Pakistan. He's an SOB but at least he's our SOB. Steven Taylor isn't buying it.

The real irony here is not that there aren’t real problems associated with Muslim extremism in Pakistan, there most assuredly are. Indeed, it was elements of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus that helped the Taliban establish itself in Afghanistan. And yes, there are clearly jihadist elements in Pakistan. However, the notion that a strong dictatorship will make this situation better is problematic.

At a minimum, if authoritarian rule was the elixir that cured the world of jihadism, it would have been wiped out some time ago. Or have we not noticed that this type of extremist thinking and actions was conceived, gestated and born in the context of mostly secular authoritarianism in the Middle East and Central Asia? A “strong hand” is not some automatic fix. Indeed, such strong hands often inspire further radicalism. No doubt, for example, these “preventive arrests” will inspire the opposition to greater ties and sympathies with extremists, not diminish them. In simple terms, if the opposition wishes to continue its fight, and Musharraf is shutting down existing political mechanisms to do so, what choice will they have but to deepen their connections to radicalized elements in Pakistani politics?

It may be that the immediate crisis will subside, but the best case is that the U.S. now faces a very uncertain long-term problem in Pakistan. Keep in mind that, unlike Iran, Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Now imagine a radical Islamist regime taking power there. All of a sudden Iraq and Iran will be the least of our worries.

Reluctant Diplomats

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Career Foreign Service officers at the State Department reacted angrily at a town hall meeting on Wednesday to the possibility that they might be forced to go to Iraq, putting senior Bush administration officials on the defensive.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced just a few days earlier that the State Department would require some diplomats to serve at the American Embassy in Baghdad or on reconstruction teams in some of the country’s volatile provinces. Only those who can cite compelling reasons, like medical problems or extreme personal hardship, will be exempt from disciplinary action, including dismissal, if they turn down the assignment. [NY Times via Darth Beckman]

This is a strange story. On one level, it is easy to say that people at the State Department should stop whining and do their jobs. It's not like they're being asked walk through mine fields. They'll live in Bagdad's fortified Green Zone and be protected by Blackwater, the best security money can buy. Diplomats live in much better, safer conditions than most of the soldiers and Marines who are deployed to Iraq.

On the other hand, I wonder why this is suddenly a problem now. The world is full of places where it is not particularly safe to be an American diplomat, yet so far as I can tell it has not been necessary to threaten foreign service officers with termination to make them go anywhere else but Iraq. Why is this?

If, as we are told, the "surge" is working, violence in Iraq is falling and political reconciliation among the factions is right around the corner, you would think the State Department people would be pushing each other out of the way to get over there. Claiming a piece of the forthcoming great victory ought to be a good career move. This is not happening.

One would think that diplomats have a high degree of knowledge about the real situation in Bagdad. The reactions we see in this story suggest that the State Department rank and file is not optimistic. They could be wrong, of course. I sincerely hope so. Or, they may know some things that the rest of us don't.

Judging from the reports, Secretary Rice seems fully prepared to follow through on and replace anyone in the Foreign Service who refuses assignment to Iraq. From the Bush Administration's point of view this might not be an entirely bad thing. They would then get to re-populate the State Department's career ranks with people of their own choosing who would be more likely to share Bush's attitude toward diplomacy. This would make it that much harder for the next Administration to change course from the direction Bush has been going.

If in fact there are job openings at the State Department soon, it will be a golden opportunity for some people. Personally I am not interested. If I were, say, someone with a Ph.D. in political science who loves his country, fully supports current U.S. military operations around the world, and enjoys defending his positions vigorously, I might look into it. Then again, I might not.

The Real Iraq We Knew

Today's Washington Post has an editorial by 12 former U.S. Army captains, all of whom served in Iraq. They are not pleased with current policy.

... the U.S. military has been trying in vain to hold the country together. Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts...

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

I'm pretty sure this sentiment is more widespread than the Pentagon is willing to admit. Of course, the nation's military policy is not decided by captains - nor should it be. Their proposed solution of "get out or impose a draft" isn't especially workable, either. Even if you could re-start the draft tomorrow, it would take a couple of years to train enough troops to make a difference. In World War II it was relatively simple to convert farm boys into infantry soldiers with a few months of training. That is not the case in today's high-tech military.

Where are we left? The same place we are now: all the options are bad. Choose your poison.

A Useless Appendage?

What does the human appendix have to do with Iraq, interrogations, and the U.S. Constitution? Quite a lot, it turns out.

Submitted for your fascination: Doctors just now think they have come up with the function of the appendix.

In a similarly fascinating story, the American executive branch just now claims it knows the function of the Geneva Conventions.

Which explanation do you want first?

Read the rest.

Saudis Release Terror Suspects

Here is a disturbing story. The U.S. recently transferred 55 suspected terrorists, all of them Saudi Arabian citizens, from the Guantanamo Bay facility and gave them back to Saudi authorities to be kept in prison there. Presumably the U.S. government received assurances that the prisoners would be kept securely locked up.

It seems that the Saudis have “temporarily” released all 55 to spend a Muslim holiday with their families. Furthermore, each prisoner was given $2,600 with which to celebrate. They are supposed to return to custody and eventually stand trial. We’ll see. I think there is reason to be dubious.

Now there are two possibilities here. Either:

• Our so-called allies, the Saudis, think it is well and good to let dangerous terrorists out to roam the streets, creating who knows what kind of problems, and the Bush Administration let itself be duped once again; or
• These 55 prisoners are actually not dangerous terrorists - as we are often told the residents of Guantanamo must be - and were being held by the U.S. under false or incorrect charges.

Neither scenario is particularly comforting.

Hat tip: Born at the Crest of the Empire

American Torture

Mark Shea unloads on the Rubber House Right, its supporters and defenders, in a long and colorfully illustrated post today.

It is a painful thing to face and I don't enjoy it any more than you do. But the facts are really quite plain. The reality is Abu Ghraib was not an isolated event. We have been torturing people in other facilities. What happened at Abu Ghraib was that some morons who loved their work thought it would be fun to take pictures and those pictures shocked the world. Naturally, the Bush Administration could not say, "Yeah! We support that!" Of *course* they repudiated it and made sure the lackeys got punished in order to distance the Administration from the awful press.

But the reality is that after Abu Ghraib, the Administration labored--intensely--to make sure that the abusive techniques used at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere would remain part of what the President calls his "tools" for fighting the War on Terror. You can read all about it here.

The White House response has been, I must be blunt, to lie through its teeth in the knowledge that it has broad support from a people that don't want to look too closely at what we are doing. Indeed, past polls have shown that Catholics have a higher rate of support for torture than the general population.

The lie is simple and plain: President Bush continue to look us in the eye and say “This government does not torture people.”

But the reality is, it does. Bush made certain of this by loading the Justice Department with toadies who gave him what he wanted:

In two separate legal opinions written in 2005, the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Note that word "including". This is not an exhaustive list. Much of the degrading stuff you saw at Abu Ghraib isn't even life-threatening, so it falls well below the threshhold of "torture" for this Administration's Justice Department, as far as we can tell. And when we speak of "simulated drowning" or what our Vice President lightly laughs off as "dunking" we are looking at prima facie evidence of the Administration's careful mendacity. [Source]

You must read the whole thing. The doubletalk we get from Bush defenders about this is astonishing. It boils down to "Torture is fine. We don't torture." Which is it? If there's nothing wrong with torture, why all the gymnastics denying that the U.S. does it? This bunch can't even keep its lies straight.

In the combox at Mark's post, someone asked a chilling question: is there any example any time in history of a government that tortured its enemies but not, eventually, its own citizens as well?

The Line Held at Lepanto

Today is the 436th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. On October 7, 1571, against overwhelming odds, a ragtag fleet from the Christian West faced the Ottoman Empire. Christianity had been retreating for the last thousand years. Islam had conquered North Africa, Spain, Sicily, Portugal and part of France.

At Lepanto, the retreat stopped. It was a turning point in history that is all but forgotten today.

The two greatest naval forces ever assembled — 280 ships in the Turkish Armada, some 212 on the Christian side — came into each other’s sight on the brilliant morning of October 7. So confident was the Turkish admiral, Ali Pasha, that he sailed proudly at the center of his own Armada, bringing with him on vessels just to his rear his entire fortune, and even a part of his harem.

Historians tell us that all over Europe a pall fell. Few had hopes that the Christian fleet could avoid the doom that seemed to hang over Italy. The pope had urged all Christians to say the rosary daily on behalf of the brave crews on the Christian galleys. The rosary is a simple prayer that can be said in almost any setting, and had already achieved a certain popularity among humble folk. With each decade of the Hail Marys they had been taught to reflect upon a different event in the life of Jesus. The beads went through one’s fingers as regularly as the blood through one’s body, as regular as heartbeats and the breathing of the lungs.

To make a long story short, Don Juan aimed his own galley directly at the heart of the Turkish armada, directly at the clearly colored sails of the Ali Pasha’s galley, with its great green flag, inscribed 28,000 times with the name of Allah in gold. The Venetian vessels sailed furiously into the Turkish right wing, and with the help of the revolt of the galley slaves collapsed that wing. Six of the largest Christian vessels had been outfitted with a platform elevated above normal levels on which rows of devastating cannons were arrayed. Blasts from these new cannons were withering, and within minutes sank dozens of Turkish ships. The sea, witnesses said, was covered with flailing sailors, floating turbans, pieces of wood and sail.

The passion for defending their own civilization against ruthless invaders also strengthened the muscles of those engaged in the close, bloody, violent hand-fighting when one vessel came alongside another. But it was mainly the new firepower of the smaller Christian fleet that quickly sank galley after galley until, after not too many hours, the Turkish center also collapsed, as if cut through by a hot knife. The Admiral’s galley was captured, along with 240 more Turkish ships. Only on the other flank some Christian vessels hesitated, approached the enemy half-heartedly, and thus spurred defections by still other vessels. Although even there some acts of heroism appeared, a number of Turkish vessels were able to slip away through that gap in the battleline.

The Christian victory was far more complete than anyone had dreamed. The victory seemed to many quite miraculous, and victory was immediately attributed to Our Lady Queen of the Rosary — soon to be called by a new title, Our Lady Queen of Victory. All over Europe, from city to town, church bells rang out continuously when news of the impressive victory arrived. MORE

Today, with Islam again menacing the West, we would do well to remember Lepanto and honor the Queen of Victory. She is with us still. Be not afraid.

Interesting Links:
Clash of Civilizations: Battle of Lepanto Revisited
Wikipedia entry: Battle of Lepanto
Remembering Lepanto
Poem: Our Lady of Victory
Video: Men of the West

The Battle for Malta

September 11 was a significant date in the history of Christian-Islamic conflict long before the year 2001. Do you know what happened on September 11, 1565? I didn't either, until I read this excellent article by Paul Cella.

By the middle of the 16th century, the Knights of Malta had been for decades a particular irritation to the Sultan of the Empire of the Ottoman Turks, then the world's premier superpower and the imperial power of the Jihad. The Knights were skilled and cunning seamen: the Christian answer to the Barbary pirates whose razzias or jihadist raids had, literally for centuries, terrorized the coastal lands of southern Europe. These pirates were slavers and pillagers, terrors of the sea. How many "sick and sunless" captives were made by them, consigned to the filth and misery of the life of a galley oarsman, can only be conjectured. They made prisons of great oared ships; and the fate of their prisoners was one of wretchedness beyond reckoning. Athwart this menace stood the ancient Noble Order of St. John of Jerusalem. One historian (voicing a consensus of historians) gives them this honor: "in skill, seamanship, and fighting ability there was no single vessel in the Mediterranean that could compare with a galley commanded by one of the Knights from Malta."

READ MORE

Fighting Them Over There

via What's Wrong With the World

Tough Choices: SEALS vs Goatherders

From a column by Diana West:

Dropped behind enemy lines to kill or capture a Taliban kingpin who commanded between 150 and 200 fighters, the SEAL team was unexpectedly discovered in the early stages of a mission whose success, of course, depended on secrecy. Three unarmed Afghan goatherds, one a teenager, had stumbled across the Americans' position, presenting the soldiers with an urgent dilemma: What should they do?

If they let the Afghans go, the Afghans would probably alert the Taliban to their whereabouts. This would mean a battle in which the Americans were outnumbered by at least 35 to 1. If the Americans didn't let the goatherds go -- if they killed them, because there was no way to hold them -- the Americans would avoid detection and, most likely, leave the area safely. On a treeless mountainside far from home, four of our bravest patriots came to the ghastly conclusion that the only way to save themselves was forbidden by the ROE. Such an action would set off a media firestorm, and lead to murder charges for all.

It is agonizing to read their tense debate as recounted by Marcus Luttrell, the "lone survivor" of the disastrous mission. Each of the SEALs was aware of "the strictly correct military decision" -- namely, that it would be suicide to let the goatherds live. But they were also aware that their own country, for which they were fighting, would ultimately turn on them if they made that decision. It was as if committing suicide had become the only politically correct option. For fighting men ordered behind enemy lines, such rules are not only insane, they're immoral.

The SEALs sent the goatherds on their way. One hour later, a sizeable Taliban force attacked, beginning a horrendous battle that resulted not only in the deaths of Mr. Luttrell's three SEAL teammates, but also the deaths of 16 would-be rescuers -- eight additional SEALs and eight Army special operations soldiers whose helicopter was shot down by a Taliban RPG.

Actually, Ms. West, what would be immoral is murder of civilians. The SEALs did exactly the right thing, both ethically and tactically. I doubt political correctness had anything to do with it.

As an Army officer and company commander I thought a lot about these issues. Here is the deal: American soldiers do not intentionally kill non-combatants. Never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever. We do not do it. Or at least we should not; sometimes it happens, and those who do it are deservedly punished.

Obviously, civilians will be caught in the crossfire at times and get hurt or killed. That’s different. Killing them was not our intent. We take reasonable steps to minimize it, but in modern warfare civilian deaths are inevitable. Everyone recognizes this.

That was not the case in this situation. The goatherders had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ms. West thinks that this was, in effect, a capital offense. The SEALs should have just executed these people in order to save themselves, she says.

The SEALs made the right choice. It is unfortunate that some of them paid for it with their lives, but should not be surprising. U.S. troops are all volunteers who know they may go into combat and risk death. Special Ops units like the SEALs are doubly so. The goatherders, on the other hand, did not volunteer for any such thing. They were simply going about their business, harming no one. If you want to blame someone for the American casualties, blame the commander who appears to have sent them into this situation without adequate plans and resources.

On a purely practical level, killing the civilians might have saved some American lives in the short run. It would also have ended any chance of further cooperation from the inhabitants of that region. Creating still more enemies when you already have enough of them is rarely a good strategic move. The end result would likely have been far more American deaths as the population turned hostile.

Ms. West concludes her column with a particularly despicable line: “A nation that doesn't automatically value its sons who fight to protect it more than the "unarmed civilians" — spies? fighters? — whom they encounter behind enemy lines is not only unlikely to win a war, it isn't showing much interest in its own survival.”

Let me rephrase: a nation that allows, and even encourages, its sons to kill unarmed civilians in cold blood will not only lose its wars. It will lose its soul.

The Rape of Europe

An e-mail called "The Rape of Europe" is circulating around the net, apparently; I got it for the first time this weekend. Steve Ray helpfully linked back to what seems to be the original source. Here is how it starts.

The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.”

Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. “I am too old,” he said. However, he urged young people to get out and “move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable.”

Read the rest, and then check out Steve's article on The Skyline of the Future for a similar outlook. I wrote about this subject last year. Here is a slightly more optimistic view. Demographic forecasts are based on a lot of assumptions, of course, but the short-term trend (i.e., the next 50 years) seems to be locked in.

The big question is how native Europeans will respond. I'm not so sure they will fade silently into the night. They will, however, probably avoid doing anything until the only remaining alternatives involve a lot of violence and brutality. It won't be pretty.

A Surge of Headlines

Mike at Born at the Crest of the Empire has this interesting, if somewhat confusing, roundup of newspaper headlines. All are, theoretically, referring to the same events.

AP: Bush preserves big troop level in Iraq

Reuters: Bush agrees to limited troop cuts in Iraq

AFP: Bush orders partial Iraq pull-out, citing 'measure of success'

USAToday: Bush: Continue U.S. presence in Iraq

NYTimes: Success Allows Gradual Troop Cuts, Bush Says

WaPo: Bush Tells Nation He Will Begin 'Surge' Rollback

LATimes: President redefines the U.S. objective in Iraq

CNN: 'Come together' on Iraq war, Bush urges

McClatchy: New Iraq plan recalls strategies past

You must read this "fact check" article on the President's speech from the Washington Post. Rod Dreher does a good job dismantling the White House lines, too. Professor Taylor of Poliblog has another four part post mortem.

You have to hand it to the Bush team. They've played Surge Politics very, very well. Having guaranteed that U.S. forces will stay in Iraq for the next generation, they are now turning attention to Iran. The Bush Jihad is just getting started.

We're In Iraq To Stay

With this week’s reports to Congress by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, the Bush Administration appears to have bought itself some more time in Iraq. As a result, the withdrawal - if there is to be one - will almost certainly happen under the next president. There will be some token redeployments next year, but these will at best return the U.S. presence to its pre-surge levels.

We were told this week that violence in parts of Iraq has fallen as a result of the increased U.S. military presence. This is wonderful news. However, what reason do we have to think the prior trends will not resume once the Americans leave? Violence will most certainly return unless the Iraqis decide in mass to become religiously tolerant, politically diverse, and economically altruistic. That hardly seems likely, at least not in the near future.

The latest American strategy of empowering local leaders, which was turned to in frustration after the central government proved dysfunctional, will probably create problems of a different kind. By installing multiple power centers with varying self-interests, there will now be a kind of feudal system of independent city-states with little incentive to cooperate for the common good.

Victory is still possible in Iraq, we are told. But exactly what is "victory?" No one can answer that question. The furious debates about the various statistics and benchmarks ought to tell you something: no one knows whether we are winning or losing this war. And if no one knows, then it will likely never end.

"Trust General Petraeus," the White House says. Fine, except that the same White House wants us to ignore General Pace, General Casey, Admiral Fallon, Secretary Gates, the GAO, former Secretary Baker and the entire Iraq Study Commission - all of whom offered radically different recommendations to the President.

Why is it we are supposed to trust this one expert while ignoring all others? Simple: the President has already made up his mind that there will be no troop reductions. The fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff are, by law, supposed to be the president's primary military advisors is conveniently forgotten because the JCS will not offer the advice the president wants to hear. General Petraeus is, apparently, willing to be a scapegoat for Bush, so it is his opinion that we are told is most important. Everything else is just political maneuvering.

Bottom line: the U.S. is in Iraq to stay. There is no exit strategy. The Democrats are unable to force a policy change on Bush, so the train will keep on going. Where the tracks will take us, no one knows, but we're all aboard for the ride. The troops shovel coal into the engines while the rest of us relax in the lounge. Nonetheless, we are all going the same place.

A little advice: fasten your seat belt.

Nuking Mecca

CNN reports that presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo wants the U.S. to threaten nuclear strikes on the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina as retaliation against any more attacks on the U.S. He's actually been saying this for some time. I first heard it from The Catholic Knight a few weeks ago.

On this surface it seems like an appealing idea, not unlike the strategy of "Mutual Assured Destruction" that the U.S. and Soviet Union followed in the Cold War. Think a little further and the logic falls apart quickly.

• First, in the Cold War, Soviet nukes were under firm, centralized control, as were those of the U.S. Hence the two governments could actually make agreements with each other. Not so with radical Islam, which has a wide variety of insurgent groups, any one of which could attack the U.S. whether the others like it or not.
• Second, there may well be Islamist groups that would like to see Mecca destroyed, just as there are Christians who would not mind seeing Vatican City or Westminster Abbey burn to the ground. Tancredo's plan would not serve as a deterrent to these groups. In fact, it would inspire them even more. There being no central control to radical Islam, it is impossible to make an enforceable agreement of any kind. That is why the current conflict is so challenging.
• Third, if it became necessary to execute Tancredo's plan the United States would be killing thousands of people who had nothing to do with attacking the U.S. This is, as Steven Taylor and Daniel Larison explain, both morally repugnant and politically stupid.
• Fourth, Mecca and Medina are located in Saudi Arabia, which is (putatively, at least) an ally of the United States. Nuking the territory of one's allies is not the way to win friends and influence people.
• Fifth, it would also not serve the U.S. well in the long run to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle in this way. Others - say, North Korea, or Pakistan, or India, or China - would then find it much easier to use nuclear weapons for their own purposes.

This sort of thing is the reason Tancredo is a third-tier candidate. He thinks that "tough talk" will somehow impress people into supporting him. In some cases it does. The guys who sit around in bars and try to impress each other with their macho manliness, without giving too much thought to the consequences of their actions, tend to like Tancredo. Fortunately they usually come to their senses after they sober up.

Tancredo, conversely, is saying these things while he is cold sober. I'm sure he is a very nice man most of the time, loves animals, kisses babies, all that sort of thing. But anyone who so cavalierly throws out such an idiotic idea, and then sticks to it despite objections, and then surrounds himself with advisers who agree with him, proves himself unqualified to be president. I'm striking him off my list.

Tortured Logic

We are, many believe, engaged in an epic struggle against a barbaric enemy that wishes to destroy Western Civilization. It is critical that the U.S. fight back with all the means at our disposal. The enemy, of course, is radical Islam.

Now those, including President Bush, who say that we must use "all available means" don't really mean what they are saying. For example, the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons available. We know roughly where Osama bin Ladin is hiding in the mountains of Pakistan. The United States could, with the push of a few buttons, launch a dozen nuclear missiles and vaporize all the inhabitants of that area. Presto, no more Osama. This is one of the "available means" we have in the toolbox.

The President has chosen, quite wisely, not to use that particular tool because doing so would create a variety of other negative consequences even though the primary objective would have been achieved. So it seems clear that we are not really prepared to do "anything" in this struggle. There are lines which, so far at least, the United States is not prepared to cross.

Unfortunately, plenty of lesser boundaries have been crossed in the course of the current conflict. One of them is torture of prisoners. The president denies that the U.S. uses torture. When pressed, however, he reserves for himself the right to define what is and is not "torture." Given the creative way in which the prior president defined "sex" so that he could plausibly deny having it, I am not prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt in this matter - especially after I read this article in which he ostensibly forbids torture while simulaneously establishing loopholes a mile wide that will likely result in it becoming even more widespread.

Note that the article is written by a former Commandant of the Marine Corps as well as a former White House lawyer who has vigorously defended President Bush in other matters. These are not radical leftists or Bush-haters. They are people who care about the rule of law and the standing of America in the world. Read it.

I don't deny that our enemies are employing torture themselves. That does not make it right. We are not like them. One of the things that separates us from the jihadists is respect for life. Lowering our standards to match those of the enemy is not the path to victory. Quite the opposite. It will lead to our defeat.

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Hat tip: Mark Shea