Peace With Honor

Clearly the best of all possible worlds is for the United States to be at peace with the people of Iraq and of the world. It is in the vital national interest of both countries and the civilized world that peace come through victory, the victory of the United States and our allies over the forces of lawlessness and Fascism. The now fashionable and all too common tactic of using any and every possible pretext that can conceivably be construed or mis-construed to damage Mr. Bush and the Republican Party regardless of the damage it does the welfare of the United States and its allies must be strongly condemned. This is pure agitprop straight out of Comintern's old play books. That is has succeeded in undermining the United States in the past, due in large part to the unflagging efforts of the Fourth Estate, is no credit to either the purveyors of politicized disinformation nor of those who slavishly pander to their misguided and malicious political sleight of hand. A policy of defeat has in this manner been perpetrated on the American people once before, with disastrous results for all concerned. Those who propound such non-solutions to difficult but not intractable problems do not deserve the public trust and ought to recuse themselves from the semblance of public service.

The American people do not deserve to be led by short-sighted and cowardly opportunists. The American fighting man does not deserve to be once again grist for the mills of petty political advantage. The friends and allies of the United States do not deserve to be once again betrayed to suffering, persecution and death to serve the politcal aims of the far Left who see their greatest gain in America's greatest loss. This war was brought to us on September 11, 2001. During its course to date American diplomacy and American arms have achieved notable victories which will be studied with gratitude by generations to come. The fact the ultimate victory, nor the set path to ultimate victory, can be seen with clear and concise certainty does not by any means indicate that such a victory will ultimately elude our grasp. The fact that there have been and will continue to be errors, misjudgements, underestimations and mishandlings does not mean that we are inextricably sunk in a military and moral morass, still less does it detract from what we have so far accomplished and will accomplish.

Those who choose surrender, those who claim defeat, those who would lead Americans by half truths, bald-faced lies and pure fantasy fiction into a shallow and illusory safety must be named what they are: blind incompetents, shameful cowards and out-and-out traitors. Failure of courage, failure of nerve, failure of vision, failure plain and simple, is still unacceptable failure, no matter how gaudily it is gilded and loudly lauded with the accolades of "peace with honor." The only peace with honor worthy of the American people is the total, utter and abject defeat of our enemies, never of ourselves.

Litiginous Americans Abroad

Hat tip to Consul-At-Arms

POW Claims Bump Into Foreign Policy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23576-2005Apr3.html

On Jan. 19, 1991, in the opening days of the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Tice's F-16 was shot down over Baghdad. Over the next six weeks in Iraqi captivity, Tice was repeatedly beaten, subjected to electric shock and left in a dirty cell with meager rations.

To this day he suffers from nerve damage to his hands from being tightly handcuffed, and he still has occasional nightmares and flashbacks.

In April 2002, Tice, now a retired lieutenant colonel, and 16 other former POWs and their families sued the Saddam Hussein government in U.S. District Court in Washington. Iraq refused to contest the charges, and in 2003, Judge Richard W. Roberts determined that the plaintiffs were entitled to $959 million in damages, which would have to come from assets now controlled by the new U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

The good Consul seems to be of the opinion that this massive award is a good thing, I argue the contrary.

1. The award is either a. compensatory, intended to restore the status quo ante or b. punitive, intended to teach the government of Saddam Hussein a painful economic lesson about hurting people or both. In the present instance the status quo ante cannot be gained by any amount of money. A tenth of that amount would suffice to do all that can be done for these people. Saddam Hussein is being taught a lesson of another sort. I do not see the point in penalizing an entire nation once the offending individual and his regime have been forcibly removed from power; if anything, go after his family wealth and that of his cronies.

2. Granted that the US has not been most generous to ex-POWs, nor even to it's own military veterans in general. Making 17 of these poor devils obscenely rich does nothing to ameliorate the situation of thousands of others. If vast sums of money are to be expended let them be expended to expand the common good.

3. Foreign policy objectives are important, but so are our veterans (I should hope so, I'm one of 'em). Small unit actions such as the one mounted by these 17 individuals in the courts should not be permitted to adversely jeopardize the outcome of an effort in which hundreds of thousands of men and billions of dollars are dedicated when doing so adversely affects the national interest. No, that does not mean that they should simply sit down and suffer in silence, it means that a conscientious government ought to take their welfare in hand until such time as adequate compensation can be obtained from the proper source without undermining the national goals. If the government is unwilling to do that, take them to court.

Side Effects of Middle East Democracy

The Middle East is in fermet with the notion of democracy. The realistic possibility of that supported as it is by the United States (the Prime Democracy) and (even!) Europe has just about everybody moving and shaking in some way or other. It occurs to me that one of the beneficial side effects of the spread of democracy, however imperfectly, is that it compels the jihadis to spread their resouces in reaction to it, thus dilluting their efforts. Sound military principle, that, forcing your enemies to react to your initiative.

Unfortunately the events in Indonesia cannot make me smile (Bali bomb mastermind gets 30 months for murder of 202). At the moment the jihadis have the upper hand there, and the whole area is their playground, as much as if not more than the Middle East has been. Soon I hope, more attention will be paid to this area, as it is a swamp of radical islamism.

Blogs may well save democracy.

Chester over at The Adventures of Chester was commenting on the the relationship between the blogosphere and the Main Stream Media. Granting that everything he says is basically true, I have this to add:

Blogs may well save democracy.

To be effective a democracy needs informed citizens. Further, it needs citizens with the capacity for critical thinking. To date the MSM was virtually the only means available by which citizens could inform themselves on the issues of the day. Many of out here have noticed for some number of years now that the MSM has not been a reliable provider of accurate information, consequently citizens have not been able to make truly informed decisions.

Facts, opinion to the contrary, do not stand by themselves, they must be put into a context to be understood. Events need to be analyzed. Until now the MSM controlled not only the facts, but the context. The knowledge and experience of millions will be available to all. The power of the genteel demagogues of the MSM to sway the credulous crowds and stampede citizens is gone forever (well, I hope so, anyway). They tried, and for long succeeded, in shaping the minds of nations. No more.

Knowledgee, it is said, is power. There is truth to that, for without knowledge the people are powerless. But that is not the whole of the matter, for it is not sufficient to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is also necessary to act. Having removed the power to direct action from the MSM the blogosphere places it squarely in the hands of the citizens. Further, action implies responsibility, which in turn implies accountability, both sorely lacking in the ancien regime and now restored to us, the people.

As a Christian, I see in this (Going All Mystical Alert!) the Hand of God at work. If the Church (understood as widely as possible) as the Body of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit, then I say that we see before us idols being cast down and God, through the Holy Spirit, is at work among His People. The oracles and prophets of the MSN rightly tremble; they stand stripped and feckless in the crumbling temples of the Department of Truth.

God in the tsunami

A friend recently asked me "Where was God in the tsunami?" The assumption being that as the deavastation was so enormous and widespread God was nowhere to be found, leading to the conclusion that either God does not exist or that He somehow dropped the ball.

I note that devastation and loss on whatever scale is irrelevant to whether God exists or not. The world as created by God is good in its existence and generally in its workings. A world that exists is better than one that does not. The way the world exists involves change, some changes are going to be swift and widespread, though mercifully few fall into this category. The fact that the world is changing is good, the alternative is a static world. A static world cannot develop or improve, a world that can improve is better than one that cannot. The fact that some changes are inconvenient to the inhabitants of the world is unfortunate for them but irrelevant to the world considered as a whole.

In this sense the world as we find it is a perfect world, as its imperfection contributes to its greater, though never complete perfection. The fact that it is uncomfortable for we humans who have the wit and means to complain about it is in fact part of the goodness of the world. Imagine a "perfect" world in which humans suffered no inconvenience or discomfort. What would it look like? It would be a world in which everybody had a dry cave, enough game and other provender and would contain no nasty people eaters. Because it is perfect it would remain that way forever because it would need nothing more. The fact that the world in painful at times and that we have the means to do something about it has led to the kind of world in which virtually no one would be satisfied to live in a cave and go hunting and foraging every day.

All very well, you will say, but the fact is that a lot of people died and a lot of people are suffering as a result, what of that?

A lot of people die every day, on that particular day an unusually large number of people died of a single cause. Death is inevitable, without exception birth is a death sentence; death is no stranger to our nature. Yet we rightly fear death, not simply out of a desire for life, but because we are made in the image and likeness of God and so have within us a spark of the Immortal for whom death is utterly alien. Generally when we die those whom we leave behind grieve our loss (the saddest thing in the world is a funeral with no mourners), all the more so when the dead and the mourners are so numerous. In every age and place men have tried to peer through the veil of mortality and discern what lies beyond. The success of that that endeavor can only be attested to by those who have made the journey, and they, having passed beyond our ken, are unperceived by our mortal senses.

Yet faith, hope and love persist, binding us still to those awaiting our company there beyond. We all believe that somehow our life matters, there is or was a plan for us and our death marks a place where a portion of that plan was accomplished and the servant, more or less instrumental to the plan, has been called away to other matters. What that plan in the mind of God may be is further beyond our understanding than the launch of the space shuttle is to an ant on her appointed rounds (not one drops unnoted!). Whether we passively accept or cry injustice the design of God is implacable, inscrutable, and contains us all.

But not without compassion. I have seen that while dying is usually hard, the moment of death is frequently suffused with grace. I have no reason to doubt that those shores that morning were more drenched by grace than by the wave. Nor were the dying alone touched by it. Mercy was much in evidence as survivors repeat tales of miraculous escapes, as often as not assisted by others, those servants who played their part for those who have parts yet to play. Nor was grace stoppered on that day, for all across the globe millions stood aghast as the magnitude of the catastrophe unfolded and they - we! - poured out and continue to pour out compassion and generosity both material and spiritual on those afflicted. This too is no small act of God.

Where was God in the tsunami?

God is all over the tsunami.