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June 30, 2005
And the US is Deaf on Foreign Policy?
So what are the odds that having the new president of Iran being one of the lead hostage takers at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 will be good for American-Iranian relations? RandomPrecise, targeted bombing has moved up on my list of ways to deal with Iran, personally.
Supreme Choices
I'm with Jay Tea: I want the next two Supreme Court justices to be about as moderate - in the other direction - as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then, it will be time to get some true centrists onto the Court. (For that matter, it will likely be time in another 8 years or so to change the parties all around in the executive and legislative, too, like diapers, and for the same reason.)
The Duty of the Living
Tigerhawk has a letter from a surgeon in Balad, Iraq, that must be read:
The first rule of war is that young men and women die. The second rule of war is that surgeons cannot change the first rule. I think the third rule of war should be that those who have given their all for our freedom are never forgotten, and they are always honored.I wish there was not a war, and I wish our young people did not have to fight and die. But I cannot wish away evil men like Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi. These men are not wayward children who have gone astray; they are not great men who are simply misunderstood.
These are cold-blooded killers and they will kill you, me, and everyone we love and hold dear if we do not kill them first. You cannot reason with these people, you cannot negotiate with these people, and this war will not be over until they are dead. That is the ugly, awful, and brutal truth.
I wish the situation was different, but it is not. Americans have two choices. They can run from the threat, deny it exists, candy-coat it, debate it, and hope it goes away. And then, Americans will be fair game around the world and slaughtered by the thousands for the sheep they have become.
Our second choice is to crush these evil men where they live and for us to have the political will and courage to finish what we came over here to do.
It is the duty of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.
Posted by jeff at 9:17 AM | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONSTITUTION
I got this from Betsy. Absolutely spot-on brilliant.
Baby Steps
Captain Ed points to a NY Times article with some very good news about Iraq:
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani [] outlined a proposal that would scrap the system used in the January election....Under the proposal, voters in national elections would select leaders from each of the 19 provinces instead of choosing from a single country-wide list, as they did in January. The new system would essentially set aside a number of seats for Sunnis roughly proportionate to their numbers in the population, ensuring that no matter how low the Sunni turnout, they would be guaranteed seats.
This is an excellent development, for a couple of reasons. The most important thing that this would do is to ensure that the central government could not simply weld its power base to one faction, and use that to dominate the rest of the country. Almost as important, it means that those who would boycott elections would diminish their influence with the politicians elected in their area, meaning that the insurgents and Ba'athist holdouts would not have the propaganda weapon of having no one really represent the Sunni, and at the same time would have little or no influence with the Sunni elected officials. Since the Ayatollah Sistani is the most powerful religious figure among the Iraqi Shi'a Muslim majority in Iraq, his proposal carries great weight, and is very likely to be adopted in some form.
This is a good sign that Iraq is moving to a Federal system of some sort, which is the only type of democratic governance yet shown to be capable of running a democratic country without trampling the rights of minorities into the dust. Perhaps some day, we'll move back in that direction ourselves.
On an unrelated note, though apparently not to the Times, why is it that there can be no story with any good news about Iraq that does not also include every bit of bad news that can be dredged up?
The violence has cut deeply into Iraqi society, with about 1,200 Iraqis and more than 75 American soldiers killed in the past two months. The attacks have taken on increasingly sectarian overtones, raising fears that Iraq could be headed toward civil war.At least 10 Iraqis were killed and more than 36 wounded in attacks across Iraq in the past 24 hours.
A car bomb exploded late Sunday outside a barbershop in the New Baghdad district of the capital, killing the shop owner, a customer and a 4-year-old boy, an Interior Ministry official said. Barbershops have been singled out by Islamic attackers because they offer Western-style shaves and haircuts. On Monday, at least 4 Iraqis were killed and 29 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the same neighborhood.
Also on Monday, two American soldiers were killed when their Apache helicopter crashed about 11 a.m. near Taiji, a large air base northwest of Baghdad, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a military spokesman. It was the third loss of an American helicopter in about a month.
The military did not say what caused the crash. The Associated Press quoted an Iraqi witness as saying a rocket had hit it, and other witnesses heard heavy gunfire. Sergeant Kaufman could not confirm any of the details.
OK, certainly it's news about Iraq, but it is unrelated (or only incredibly tenuously related) to the lede of the story. It's as if stories about Chicago were written like this:
The City of Chicago let a new contract to firm X to polish the giant new mirrored bean in Millennium Park.The Mayor, in speaking about the new contract, did not mention the murder of two homeless men on the South side of Chicago, the ongoing trucking scandal, police corruption, or the seemingly invincible hold on power by the Daley family which, our lawyers advise us, is completely and totally unrelated to any corruption you may or may not have heard about.
I mean, it's silly. Why is it that only in events where some good news might be afoot in the war - or in some other thing where the good news might benefit non-progressive Americans - that all sorts of unrelated bad news must be featured in every single story about the event? Second off-topic bit: did the decline of journalism begin when journalists stopped writing reports and began writing stories?
Because of the tendency of mainstream media articles to disappear, here is the entire text of the article:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 27 - Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric appeared to offer a major concession to the Sunni Arab minority on Monday when he indicated that he would support changes in the voting system that would probably give Sunnis more seats in the future parliament.In a meeting with a group of Sunni and Shiite leaders, the cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, outlined a proposal that would scrap the system used in the January election, according to a secular Shiite political leader, Abdul Aziz al-Yasiri, who was at the meeting. The election had a huge turnout by Shiites and Kurds but was mostly boycotted by Sunni Arabs.
Such a change would need to be written into Iraq's new constitution, which parliamentarians are drafting for an Aug. 15 deadline. Although there has been little public talk about what form elections might take under the constitution, Ayatollah Sistani has been highly influential in Iraq's nascent political system.
Under the proposal, voters in national elections would select leaders from each of the 19 provinces instead of choosing from a single country-wide list, as they did in January. The new system would essentially set aside a number of seats for Sunnis roughly proportionate to their numbers in the population, ensuring that no matter how low the Sunni turnout, they would be guaranteed seats.
Sunni Arabs welcomed news of the suggestion. "This should have been done from the beginning," said Saleh Mutlak, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni Arab political group that has pressed for a more active role in politics. "That election was wrong."
The January elections ended in a decisive victory for Shiite Arabs and Kurds, leaving just 17 seats for Sunni Arabs in the 275-seat National Assembly. Voting in largely Sunni areas was extremely low, depressed by threats from insurgent groups who opposed the election.
Iraqi and American officials say feelings of disenfranchisement among the Sunni Arabs, who ruled Iraq for decades, may be fueling the insurgency. The violence has cut deeply into Iraqi society, with about 1,200 Iraqis and more than 75 American soldiers killed in the past two months. The attacks have taken on increasingly sectarian overtones, raising fears that Iraq could be headed toward civil war.
At least 10 Iraqis were killed and more than 36 wounded in attacks across Iraq in the past 24 hours.
A car bomb exploded late Sunday outside a barbershop in the New Baghdad district of the capital, killing the shop owner, a customer and a 4-year-old boy, an Interior Ministry official said. Barbershops have been singled out by Islamic attackers because they offer Western-style shaves and haircuts. On Monday, at least 4 Iraqis were killed and 29 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the same neighborhood.
Also on Monday, two American soldiers were killed when their Apache helicopter crashed about 11 a.m. near Taiji, a large air base northwest of Baghdad, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a military spokesman. It was the third loss of an American helicopter in about a month.
The military did not say what caused the crash. The Associated Press quoted an Iraqi witness as saying a rocket had hit it, and other witnesses heard heavy gunfire. Sergeant Kaufman could not confirm any of the details.
Another American was killed Monday in central Baghdad while he helped Iraqi policemen investigate a burning car, the military said.
In a Pentagon briefing on Monday, the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., confirmed that American and Iraqi officials had been meeting with Sunni leaders in Iraq in hopes of defusing the insurgency and drawing their followers into the political process. General Casey denied that the meetings constituted negotiations, and said he was unaware of any direct contacts with insurgent fighters.
"They're discussions primarily aimed at bringing these Sunni leaders and the people they represent into the political process," he said at a briefing with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "But to characterize them as negotiations with insurgents about stopping the insurgency, we're not quite there yet."
Both General Casey and Mr. Rumsfeld have said there have not been any contacts with foreign fighters like the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is believed to be responsible for some of the most deadly suicide attacks in Iraq.
The statements by Ayatollah Sistani are the latest foray into Iraqi politics by the Shiite leader. Pressure from him was a major factor in establishing an accelerated timetable for the elections in January. That pace, however, largely dictated the election's countrywide system, because United Nations organizers considered it the simplest and quickest way to organize the vote.
When United Nations officials met with the ayatollah in March, he chastised them for choosing the system, and said he favored setting assembly seats aside district by district, a preference he reiterated Monday. Mr. Yasiri, the Shiite politician, said Ayatollah Sistani had characterized the January election as flawed.
In the past, the ayatollah has reserved his efforts to pushing for measures, like nationwide elections, that were likely to enhance the power of Iraq's Shiite majority. His endorsement of a new voting system seemed to be made out of concern for the delicacy of the current political situation here.
"He said there were a lot of mistakes," Mr. Yasiri said. "He said this election must be different than the old one. He said we prefer that all the people share in it."
In other news, Iraq's foreign minister under Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, in a videotape of his interrogation that was released Monday and described by Agence France-Presse, said Mr. Hussein had personally ordered the crackdown on a Shiite uprising in 1991 without consulting top aides. The testimony could help prosecutors build a case against Mr. Hussein for his trial.
Posted by jeff at 1:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
Eminent Domain and the Ten Commandments
Leave it to Scrappleface to combine two of the most recent abominations of the Supreme Court.
Posted by Brian at 11:16 PM | TrackBackThe Lost Liberty Hotel
That's the proposed name of the hotel in the application filed to take over and develop the land owned by David Souter.
One question, when can I book my reservation?
(hat tip: Drudge)
Posted by Brian at 10:12 PM | TrackBackWell, I'm Glad They Cleared That Up
So, the Supreme Court has issued rulings in two Ten Commandments cases. In a stunning act of lucid, well-reasoned logic, the Court has decided the Ten Commandments are acceptable in some cases, but not in others. What wisdom! Thank you, Supreme Court!
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that displaying the Ten Commandments on government property is constitutionally permissible in some cases but not in others.
Thank you for clearing that up!
(Justice Stephen) Breyer was the only justice to vote with the majority in both cases
Now we know who to thank for his consistency of thought.
The court said the key to whether a display is constitutional hinges on whether there is a religious purpose behind it. But the justices acknowledged that question would often be controversial.
Well, at least we have such a wise oligarchy to answer these questions. Who better, I tell you, to know what lies in the hearts of other men. All hail, the Supreme Court!
He (Justice Souter) said it was important to understand the Constitution's Establishment Clause
Well, we're in trouble now.
The rulings mean thousands of Ten Commandments displays around the nation will be validated if their primary purpose is to honor the nation's legal, rather than religious, traditions.
Again, I'm glad our nine Supreme unelected officials have this duty. Only they know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Or is that the Shadow?
Location also will be considered, with wide open lots more acceptable than schoolhouses filled with young students.
Good grief! Is there any point in asking where in the Constitution they found the case for this reasoning?
"It means we'll litigate cases one at a time for decades," said Douglas Laycock, a church-state expert at the University of Texas law school, noting the decisions provide little guidance beyond the specific facts of the cases. "The next case may depend on who the next justice is, unfortunately," he said.
Well, it apparently won't depend on the Constitution.
Breyer, who provided the fifth vote in the holding, did not join Rehnquist's opinion. As a result, his separate concurrence, concluding that the Texas display was predominantly nonreligious and thus constitutional because it sat in a vast park
It was constitutional because it sat in a vast park?!? What? No, seriously, WTF?
God help us all!
Posted by Brian at 1:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack"Lost" And Found
Just to wet the appetite of "Lost" fans, check out Oceanic Air Flight 815's seating chart. Be sure to click on the infamous numbers in sequence.
Posted by Brian at 12:45 AM | TrackBackJune 27, 2005
GarageBand.com
I like music, but am less and less thrilled by what's getting airplay, especially in terms of new music. It seems as if only a few artists get airplay, and so much is being overlooked. So I was very happy to find GarageBand.com. This site has a ton of songs in almost every conceivable genre by many artists looking for an audience.
Here are some of the handful of songs I've stumbled across while perusing the site that I really like:
Defenseless - Rook
This is the first song I found at the site that I really liked. It's a hard rock/heavy metal song that really rocks.
Muse - Rook
I really like this band; they remind me a little of Evanescence. I wish they would come play down here in DFW.
Elusive Butterfly - Geoff Byrd
I dare you to listen to this catchy pop song and not smile, tap your feet, and/or dance to the music. This could be a hit if it got the chance.
Silver Plated - Geoff Byrd
Sounds like John Mayer. This is another pop song that seems like a sure-fire hit if given airplay. In fact if it was a John Mayer song, it would probably be on its way to #1.
Dragonfly - Universal Hall Pass
This is a really catchy new wave kind of song that I really like.
Why - Mandi Perkins
Close your eyes and within the first 15 seconds of listening to this song tell me it's not Natalie Merchant. That's what first caught my attention. This is another song that could be a radio hit.
Lucky - Better Off Dad
I love the voice of lead singer Jaimee Harris. Her voice is much more mature than her 15 years. She has major talent.
It Only Hurts - Better Off Dad
So Better Off Dad is going to be playing in a Wall Street oriented coffee shop called Standard and Pours here in Dallas next month. Maybe I'll take off early from work to see 'em live.
Whimper - Better Off Dad
Jaimee's vocals sound a bit like Amy Ray of Indigo Girls to me.
This is just some of what I've found, and I haven't really spent that much time there. If you like music and get some time, check it out.
TSA Thoughts
I have hesitated mentioning that I work for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for a variety of reasons, but too many things happen not to blog about them. So from now on I will begin blogging random thoughts I have about the job as events warrant.
In the meantime, if you have any questions regarding the TSA, please feel free to ask.
Posted by Brian at 11:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackCatching Up
I've been busy lately and haven't been posting much, so it's time to catch up. Here are a few links to articles a week or two old that are too good not to mention if you haven't seen them.
First we have this interesting article on the huge advancements made in combat medicine and how it's making "the battlefield in Iraq one of the most survivable in the history of warfare."
Then we have Mark Steyn's take on the Dick Durbin controversy. Yes, it's a week old, but Mark Steyn is always worth the read.
Lastly, we have this brief post with links to several other interesting links about anti-gun protesters who are violating gun laws themselves (including the shooting and paralyzing of an innocent man in a quest for vengeance).
Posted by Brian at 10:59 PM | TrackBackLast Plane Out
Jay Tea has a post on an exit strategy for Iraq, and how the best exit strategy is none at all.
[L]et's presume we do set a deadline for our withdrawal from Iraq. Immediately we give a HUGE boost to the terrorists' morale -- "all we have to do is hang on until December 2006 (for example), and we win by default!" The immediate result of a timetable for withdrawal will most likely be an immediate decrease in deaths, but that will be merely the calm before the storm, as they will be saving up and resting and re-grouping and re-arming for the civil war that will break out the instant the last American leaves Iraq.But there's a far more compelling reason why setting an "exit strategy" or a "timetable for withdrawal" is such a bad idea: they don't work.
Yep, that's about the size of it. The thing is, the debate on whether or not we should have an exit strategy is meaningful only in its domestic political implications. The entire debate is merely a device the Democrats are using to attempt to undermine the Republicans in advance of 2006: they're setting up debating points for the mid-term elections. (Of course, they'd be quite happy to hit the jackpot and get us to withdraw, as the shame, malaise, resulting Iraqi civil war, lack of US ability to influence international events, and eventual massive attacks on the US could all be easily laid at Republican feet - which could be an electoral godsend for the Democrats for years to come. And they are already thinking about the domestic political implications, though Kevin Drum seems to think that they would be quite negative for the Democrats, and he is probably correct in the longer term.)
In practical terms, it doesn't matter unless the Democrats retake both the House and Senate in the mid-terms. Even if the Democrats won the next Presidential election, and assuming that the insurgency wasn't utterly defeated by then, a Democratic administration would not withdraw from Iraq, nor would it face much pressure to do so. The Democrats are not stupid, and the administration would recognize the disaster that withdrawal prior to victory would be. And since the advocates of withdrawal would trust a Democratic administration and would be deprived of Bush hatred as a motivator, they would not have to face large scale domestic political opposition based on being in Iraq (where problems could be blamed on Republicans, and successes claimed for Democrats).
The problem with the Democrats in Congress using withdrawal from Iraq as a political issue in this manner is that the message is not left in the United States. The enemy sees the debate, and the enemy sees weakness. This causes him to escalate his efforts, in an attempt to push the US into a panicked withdrawal, as we made from Viet Nam, Lebanon and Somalia. (The enemy's analysis of our character may be wildly off, but bin Laden did have a point about recent history.) Given that the enemy's only hope is to redo what Hizb'allah did with Israel - outlast us, followed by claiming that they drove us out when we do leave - it serves the enemy's purposes for American politicians to be calling for withdrawal before victory.
The Bush administration will not pull out prior to victory, and that victory is likely to be manifest prior to the next presidential election. No matter who wins in 2008, the US will be in Iraq until victory is assured. And for that reason, the only practical outcome of the debate is to get more Americans - and far more Iraqis - killed as the enemy escalates the violence to get the press coverage they pray (literally) will weaken our resolve enough for us to withdraw.
Withdrawal won't happen, but that doesn't bring back the dead.
June 26, 2005
Al Bean and Dinosaurs
Yesterday, we went to the Ft Worth Science and History Museum, along with some friends who are visiting from Maryland. At the entrance, there is a full-sized reproduction of an acrocanthosaurus, and inside is a great exhibit on Texas dinosaurs.
From left to right are Griffin, Lachlan, Connor and Aidan.
There is also a dinosaur dig, with a large number of small fossils in the sand (a fantastic use of dig waste!) that the kids can take home with them, as well as buried reproductions of dinosaur (sauropod of some kind) bones that the kids can excavate.
We also got to see Alan Bean speak, in the course of a presentation to the city of Ft Worth (where CPT Bean grew up) of some items he took with him into space. He spoke about the need to take risks in the course of exploration, to accept losses and move on, and praised the troops in Iraq for their dedication and sacrifice. It was a short talk, but a good one.
We saw Jim Lovell a few years ago, in a longer speech (it was actually intended as a speech in and of itself, rather than a presentation). Both men are fascinating to listen to, and well worth seeing if you get the chance.
Then we came home, where some other friends joined us and we had dinner (grilled burgers, yum) and talked. So, in our little house we had twelve kids ranging from less than a year old up to 10 and a half. Loud, but fun.
Welcome
As you can see, we have a new blogger here at Caerdroia. CPT is an Army National Guard Captain of long standing, who will be posting here throughout his upcoming deployment (and hopefully after, hint hint).
Welcome to the blog, CPT.
June 25, 2005
New Blogger
Hello,
If anybody was to ask me to describe myself I would say I was a good yankee Captain, from a long line of good yankee Captains. You will have to forgive me, Im new here and am looking for a good method to vent what Im sure will be one of the most frustrating and worthwhile events of my life. I have done a deployment or two and am not going to go again without good comment. You will get the chance to live it with me as it happens. I don't want to give anything away other than it should be a good read and I value any commentary. Tell me what you think, I need the feedback and you just might be contributing to your national security in a really new way. It would certainly give the armchair general a whole new meaning.
The Good Yankee CPT
Posted by CPT 4ever at 9:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBackJune 24, 2005
Correctable Flaws
It strikes me that there are two flaws which lead to a lot of unnecessary problems in the US. One is a flaw of libertarianism, and the other a flaw of the US legal system.
The libertarian flaw is its absolutism. More particularly, it's failure to recognize density. Let me back up a bit.
When a single person is alone in a vast wilderness, it is simply the case that anything they can do is theirs to do by right: an assertion of a right is after all nothing more than saying that by doing a thing, no one else can claim to be prevented from doing the same thing. (For example, if I say something offensive, it does not prevent another person from saying something else. If I use my property as I see fit, it does not prevent others from using their property as they see fit, and so on.)
Bring two people together, and conflicts begin to arise almost immediately. My claim to a particular item as my property is questionable as a matter of right: why is it mine and not the other person's? I have the right to express an opinion, but do I have the right to express an opinion on the street outside your house at 2am using a bullhorn? It becomes obvious that rights are limited to the extent that they are contestable on rational grounds, so much so that it is a cliché that "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
But libertarianism in general is blind to such conflicts, resorting to absolutism and only very vaguely defining the boundaries within which rights can be exercised. This probably - apparently - works fine in situations where the population density is low. If I'm at my Dad's house in the middle of the Ozarks, I can play music at any volume at any time and disturb no one but my parents. If I'm in an apartment in Chicago, playing music loudly at midnight is quite disturbing. Trust me: when I was in an apartment in Chicago, our neighbors one time were playing loud music at midnight; I was disturbed. What libertarian theory of property accounts for this? None of which I am aware. And it seems obvious that as density increases, rights must inevitably decrease if civil society is to be maintained.
So it seems to me that a needed advance in libertarian thought would be to define how rights are gained and lost based on the population density and other factors (association, familial bonds, etc), such that a consistent determination of rights can be made. It might actually be reasonable to deny rights in a city that would be beyond the pale in the country. This is not hypocrisy, but respect.
The second problem, the one of American law, is actually related. Our system of property rights is fundamentally broken. There is no concept of how property comes into existence (enclosure) or how it goes out of existence (abandonment). All property is assumed to be enclosed (at least since the frontier was closed in the early 1900s), and no property is ever considered to be abandoned. With the recent Supreme Court decision suggesting that "a limited time" is any time that is not actually infinite, no matter how long it might be, this has come to be a problem with intellectual as well as physical property.
Let's take some cases where a clear law on abandonment would serve a real societal purpose. The first that comes to mind is an abandoned building. Let's say that the owner of the building has, for some fixed period of time, not maintained the building, secured it, or even visited it. At some point, doesn't it simply make sense that the owner no longer maintains any interest in the property? And if that is so, why not allow squatters to claim the property and take title? It would certainly have the potential to help the problems of both homelessness and blight, as owners who gain no value from the property could be exchanged painlessly for owners who would find value. It might not be worth the money for a property owner to maintain a slum building, while it might be worthwhile to the homeless to have a place to live for the cost of their labor in maintaining it. But the law allows no such thing.
A second case is evident in copyrighted works. Let's say that a book is written, but after several years goes out of publication. Under current law, the copyright owner maintains rights for so long that the odds of such a work simply dropping into oblivion (because no copies survive long enough to enter the public domain) is quite high. Yet others might find value in maintaining the work, shifting it to new formats (such as digital reproductions) as they become available, and so on. As it is now, there is too much risk in doing so: the heir of the original copyright holder, long dead, could still sue you into oblivion if, for some reason, the abandoned work becomes profitable at some future time. This does not, as the Founders plainly meant, advance the sciences or arts in any meaningful way.
Why not create a law whereby intellectual property is abandoned if a nominal fee is not periodically paid to the government to maintain title to the work? It would increase the public domain dramatically, reduce the chances of works disappearing, and not diminish the real rights of intellectual property creators (if it's not worth, say, $1 every 20 years to maintain, you really don't derive any value from it anyway).
It seems to me that both of these problems are fixable - the property rules by simple lawmaking, the density problem by someone more clear-minded than I - and that both need to be fixed.
No Excuse
Randy Cunningham is a war hero, a fine pilot who became America's first ace in Viet Nam, by shooting down three enemy aircraft in one day (he had downed two others earlier). The last of these kills was originally thought to be against "Col. Tomb", top Viet Namese ace with 13 kills (who apparently didn't actually exist), and was a very close-run battle. In fact, this last battle is one of the scenarios included in "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" flight simulator, though there you have an advantage, because the simulated American F-4 has guns, which Cunningham's real F-4 did not. (Yes, that's correct, Randy Cunningham got in a low-speed dogfight with a more maneuverable enemy aircraft flown by an expert pilot, and he only had missiles to work with, and at that had fired off several in earlier combat on that mission, and beat him!)
All of that does not in the least excuse now-Representative Cunningham if he is indeed guilty of corruption.
(hat tip: My Pet Jawa)
Hate is Stronger Than Love in Some People
Big surprise: the European fringes - the hardcore Marxists, Maoists, fascists and the other assorted types you see driving the anti-globalization/anti-capitalist/anti-freedom movements - are funding the terrorists in Iraq.
June 23, 2005
Bye Bye Private Property
In the ongoing obliteration of the written Constitution, the Supreme Court has rendered the 5th amendment meaningless. (More here) I haven't seen the actual decision and dissent yet, but it's clear from the articles that the Supreme Court has just decided that government can take your private property to give to another private person simply by declaring that this is "for the public good". Interestingly, while this decision goes with the previous decision on medical marijuana (that is, that activity conducted by one person entirely within one state and involving no exchange of value is "interstate commerce" because Congress says it is), the lineup of votes was somewhat different.
Here is what the fifth amendment says, by the way:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
So what the Supreme Court has just said is that the point I emphasized above serves to limit government only in that the government has to pay for the property - at a value it sets.
I believe that it is inevitable that people will, at some point soon, begin to resist the government in cases like this with armed force. A "rule of law" that doesn't protect individuals obligates them to protect themselves. It would be better to call a Constitutional convention, or to amend the Constitution to strictly limit the powers of government (by removing the ability of the Court to expansively interpret the Constitution to mean anything they want it to), but there is little apparent support for this course. Natural human frustration, then, will lead where it will, as it generally does.
UPDATE: More from Dale Franks, Glenn Reynolds (more here), David Bernstein, Kevin Aylward, Orin Kerr, Jay (Accidental Verbosity), Captain Ed, Will Collier and others.
On thinking more about this, there are two things I find even worse than the thought that our Constitution as written is meaningless: the Court just handed city officials everywhere the ultimate fundraising tool, because the opportunity for corruption inherent in city officials selling your property for campaign cash is unlimited; and we've tried in the West a system where the wealthy can simply expropriate land at need, reducing the non-wealthy to indentured tenants in fact if not in word - it's called feudalism, and it didn't work out too well, all things considered.
I have to hand it to the Supreme Court: in the past year they've managed to so debase the Constitution as to make me a supporter of the right of secession from the United States. I've certainly become convinced in fact of what I had mentioned often before in theory: we need a Constitutional Convention.
UPDATE (6/24): Lots more reaction to the Kelo decision here.
And as I noted yesterday, it's only a matter of time before the incursion of the State run up against someone like Francis Porretto.
UPDATE (6/24): I can't resist, sorry: this brings a whole new meaning to the "takings" clause. Good parody by My Pet Jawa.
Also, Steven Taylor at PoliBlog has a fine post on the topic:
In short: this radically increases the power of local governments and diminishes individual rights–indeed, gives local governments the power to seize the homes of private citizens because said government thinks it is a good idea.I however, think it is a pretty bad idea
Posted by jeff at 11:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The Final Arbiter
Jack Kelly of Irish Pennants, in an essay I otherwise agree with, says:
The second [Constitutional amendment that would provide a way to diminish the reach of activist judges] is to do what the Founding Fathers didn't, and establish a means for resolving disputes in Constitutional interpretation among the three separate, but equal branches of the federal government.Judicial review is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. In his landmark decision in the case of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall said it was implied by the Founders. But James Madison hotly disputed this, and Madison took part in writing the Constitution. Marshall did not.
Not providing a means for addressing disputes in constitutional interpretation was one of the (few) mistakes the Founders made, like the original method for selecting the vice president (the guy with the second highest total of electoral votes). There needs to be a power of judicial review. But the one unelected branch should not be able to run roughshod over the other two.
This is a fundamental mistake; the same mistake in fact, that the justices made in Marbury v. Madison: the meaning of the Constitution is not up to the government.
The reason that no final arbiter of Constitutional meaning is named in the Constitution itself is that, in a free Republic, every citizen is the arbiter of Constitutional meaning. If I, for example, am seated on a jury, and find the law with which the defendant is charged to be unconstitutional, it is my duty as a citizen to find the defendant not guilty. If I am a judge, and find the law under which a person is charged to be unconstitutional, it is my duty as a citizen to dismiss the case. If I am a police officer, who after all is merely charged with doing full time what all citizens are supposed to do opportunistically (that is, to enforce the laws duly set out under the authority of the appropriate governing documents that bind me), and I find that a law is unconstitutional, it is my duty as a citizen to not enforce that law. The same goes for a district attorney.
And this power works in reverse: if the Court attempts to strike down a law that is Constitutional, the President and Congress and every citizen should ignore the Court on that issue. (That option, obviously, is not available to the defendant in the case at issue, who is still bound by the decision of the Court. The key is to keep that decision from having broader effect.)
And what goes for any other citizen goes for the President: no matter what the Supreme Court says, the President should not enforce an unconstitutional law. And it goes for the Congress: unconstitutional acts by the President should be a case for impeachment. And it goes for the Courts: a power unconstitutionally granted the Court by law is still unconstitutional.
In fact, Marbury v Madison itself shows that the Court itself recognized this to some degree: the Court refused to use a power (to issue writs of mandamus) granted it by the Congress, when the Congress had no Constitutional authority to grant the Court that power. Had the Court stopped there, rather than arrogating the power to strike down as unconstitutional any law, rather than to prohibit the application of that law in cases that come before it, Marbury v Madison would have been a good precedent. As it is, it must be reigned in, but not by giving the government the exclusive control of the Constitution that Kelly's proposal would inevitably grant.
Local Warming
George Bush withdrew the US signature from the Kyoto Accord on global climate change, after the Senate previously had voted overwhelmingly against it.
Several years later, my air conditioner is broken, and the repairman failed, during the hottest Texas summer (predicted) in about 6 years.
COINCIDENCE?
Well, I think you know the answer to that!
MIT Blog Survey
I took the MIT blog survey. It was actually interesting (most surveys, to me, aren't). Anyway, I wasn't going to post about it, except I liked a couple of their icons:
June 22, 2005
That's About the Size of It
Bill Roggio lays out the likely consequences of withdrawing from Iraq without first beating the enemy. And note that, unlike the Left, he's not looking at domestic political consequences. And yet the Left anxiously wants us to pull out, primarily for domestic political reasons. Somehow, they never address what happens after. Talk about not planning for the aftermath...
Not Again!
The moment the idiots in the Republican party manage to pass a flag burning amendment, I will be booking a trip to Washington DC, where I will burn copies of the Constitution on the steps of the Capital. Go ahead, keep on amending.
Tick, Tick, Tick
Since we have decided that we are not fighting a war against Islam per se (a good decision), we are also being very careful to not go after jihadis who are not actively fighting us at the moment (a bad decision).
Let's just be very clear before I go on: I am not advocating civil violence; I'm making a prediction.
Given the tendencies of Americans, and given the actions of jihadis in America to misunderstand how Americans behave, and given that our government is not actively going after jihadis until they commit, or attempt to commit, acts of terrorism - given all of this, how long until vigilantes attempt to solve the problem? My guess is that the next major terrorist attack in the US will see outbreaks of real anti-Muslim violence in the US, and my other guess is that it won't be confined to the anti-American Muslims, but will target anyone who is Muslim - or Indian subcontinental for that matter. If the people don't see their government fixing a problem, they will fix it themselves, and mobs are not known for their restraint or their powers of discrimination.
Can I Question Their Patriotism Now?
And if not now, when?
UPDATE: How about now?
Doing Without the UN
Francis Porretto points to an over-the-top editorial about the possibility of the President using a recess appointment to appoint John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.
Frankly, I hope that the President doesn't use the recess appointment power for this. I certainly recognize his Constitutional right to do so. I certainly recognize that the Democrats are not remotely interested in being reasonable so long as they are in the minority (and wonder why the President didn't use the recess appointment power to appoint judges). I just think it would be, um, instructive to see how little difference it makes whether we even have an ambassador to the UN.
It wasn't always so. There was a time when the UN could have been expected to take concrete actions to do good things. That time is long past.
Guns in Society
Daniel Nexon at the Duck of Minerva disagrees with my claims that it is the right of the Zimbabwean people to be armed against their government and to resist it with force. Daniel's is an excellent post, and you should read it. However, I would like to note that the if one takes up arms in self-defense, it is not the defender who has created the "state of war", but the attacker. The defender has merely recognized the state exists and taken reasonable action to survive under those conditions.
The decision to defend one's self, loved ones and property is not the least problematic. It is the decision to take up arms (within the context of society) as an aggressive means that is problematic. This is why vigilantism is so worrisome: it is a sign that the citizens do not trust the rule of law on the matter at hand. And taking up vigilantism is problematic, because it means that you are acting outside the law. Even correct action outside the law can be corrosive to society, and should only be done in extreme circumstances.
The key is taking responsibility for one's actions within society.
But in the case where the government takes up arms against a subset of its people, it is certainly the people's right to defend themselves against that government. Otherwise, the entire founding basis of liberal political thought - that the government exists to serve the people - is worthless, and tyranny of a more or less benign nature (and no, you don't get to choose) is inevitable.
A Struggle for Power and Money
Winds of Change has a fine addition to their ongoing AAR/LL post.
Most immediately interesting to me is the bit about the media: this indicates to me that the military sees the non-embedded media as hostile-neutral at best, which fits with the behavior of the non-embedded media in Iraq in particular. This is a dangerous development, because the perception that the media embeds with the enemy will lead to us tracking the media to find the enemy, which will lead to a lot of journalists being caught in crossfire, or killed by enemy who think the journalists are leading the military to them.
Second most interesting to me is the involvement of non-Muslim terror groups in training. This is not entirely unexpected - criminals and terrorists and rogue regimes of all types work together all the time - but is the first time I've seen it explicitly reported. Also, note that some of the camps are over the border. As in Viet Nam, we are making the mistake of giving our enemy safe havens: this must end.
Third most interesting to me is the inefficiency of IEDs at killing American troops - 12000 attacks in one year did not net a large number of dead soldiers. An IED is a pretty safe attack to make, and has been a jihadi tool for a long time. (So has taping every attack. Before 9/11, I had seen some interesting footage of dozens of attacks in Chechnya using IEDs, sometimes followed up with small-unit assaults, on Russian troops.) Figuring out how to turn the tables on the enemy - that is, not just to avoid the IEDs or seal the area afterwards to prevent a full-scale ambush from developing, but to actually preempt the IED attacks by taking out the camera crews and trigger-pullers - would be a big win against the jihadis.
UPDATE: And Winds is on a roll today. Armed Liberal's The Cowboy War is a must-read. He nails exactly what's been bugging me about those who say they support the troops and the war while simultaneously denigrating everything done by the troops or in pursuit of the war as not good enough: compared to what. It's only in fantasy land that perfection is attainable, and yet for these guys, perfection is the norm, and any deviation from perfection is sufficient to make us as bad as the Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalin.
But the really sad part is that they think this way for purely partisan reasons. Look at Dick Durbin's words with President Bush in office:
I cannot and will not support President Bush's unilateralist, aggressive foreign policy of preemption. It is wrong. It was wrong when we voted on it in October of last year. It is wrong in November of this year.
as opposed to when Bill Clinton was President:
I call on those who question the motives of the president and his national security advisors to join with the rest of America in presenting a united front to our enemies abroad.The men and women who are risking their lives in defense of our national and global security deserve nothing less.
UPDATE: Callimachus notices the same thing, this time comparing praktike with Molly Ivins. And here is the killer question that I think should be posed to the anti-war types, and with slight modification to the pro-war types as well:
Let's say the devil popped up from a burning Texas sagebrush and made Molly Ivins an offer: not a single American dies in Iraq from this day forth, and democracy takes root there, and Condoleezza Rice wins the presidency in 2008 and the Democratic Party sinks further into irrelevance. "Or," Old Nick smiles, with a twinkle in his eye, "the butcher's bill continues to mount, the American public reaches its tipping point, and your chicken-fried prose pushes them over it. Bush, Rummy and Cheney go to the Hague in the 'war criminals' docket. And you never see another Republican in the White House or a GOP majority in either branch of Congress for the rest of your life."
Answer carefully. (hat tip: The Glittering Eye) Posted by jeff at 9:08 AM | TrackBack
Not My Week, Mechanically
So, first the air conditioner goes out, now that we're really into the heat wave. This was Monday night, and it won't get fixed until this afternoon. Sleep has been intermittent.
Then, this morning, the beater I bought to get across town to work decided that it would only shift into gear when the car was not running. Not sure yet why that is.
Bleah.
June 21, 2005
The Ends Justify What Now?
Jay Tea at Wizbang discusses circumstances under which attaining good ends might justify otherwise immoral means used in the attempt. This is very dangerous ground, because it's exactly the kind of reasoning that led to millions dead in the death camps of Communism: capitalists and reactionaries are holding up the good that comes from the Revolution, and must therefore be killed so that the good of the true just society that Communism brings about can be realized.
Jay Tea is not sliding down that slope; that is not my point. My point is that when you begin to use reasoning that has known dangerous ends, to which people have been proven to travel before, it is a good idea to set up limiting reasoning in the same breath. Rather than "the ends justify the means", a better formulation would be "actions that harm one person to save more than one person, or harm the guilty to save the innocent, are permissible". That way, you allow for the "lifeboat ethics" scenarios Jay Tea posits, while preventing the reasoning from being taken to an extreme it was never intended to reach.
Engineers deal with this kind of thing all the time: if you don't have a way of preventing a feedback loop, the radio blows up. Unfortunately, people don't tend to build in logical breaks, leading to reactions extreme on both ends. There are some who advocate actual torture, even in less than "lifeboat ethics" situations, and others who advocate against even detaining the enemy. Both positions are morally destitute and ethically worthless.
Free Advice
Per Transterrestrial Musings, we have a reported death from electoral trauma:
Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled.
Please allow me to offer my advice to any of you who feel trapped in an unjust country that steals elections away from your preferred candidate: move to a more just country, renounce your American citizenship, and find your inner peace. You've already decided that America isn't worth your life in other ways; don't let it take your life now.
Posted by jeff at 1:00 PM | TrackBack
More Evidence that we are Winning in Iraq
When Kofi Annan tries to claim credit for success in Iraq, it's a pretty good sign of two things: success is unmistakeable, and the UN had nothing to do with it. Interestingly, Annan is starting to sound like the military and the more hawkish bloggers who follow war events closely: "In a media-hungry age, visibility is often regarded as proof of success. But this does not necessarily hold true in Iraq. Even when, as with last week's agreement [bringing Sunnis into the process of writing the new Iraqi constitution], the results of our efforts are easily seen by all, the efforts themselves must be undertaken quietly and away from the cameras."
Of course, for the military, it's often the opposite: actions are taken in full view of the cameras, but the results are off-camera and largely not understood by a public and punditry that does not, by and large, understand the military or the nature of guerilla warfare.
June 20, 2005
Tell me you didn't see This Coming
The chickens released by Sen. Durbin, Amnesty International, and so on, and so on are coming home to roost. Big surprise.
Objectives
Those who do not study history, or omit the military parts of it1, and who are not trained in warfare, generally miss a lot of the big characteristics, strategies, and determinants of war. It's not just the "little" things, like what particular equipment can and can't do, and how units are organized for different tasks, but big things, like the importance of morale, the inevitability of escalation, and the fact that the opponents aren't fighting the same war.
Aren't fighting the same war? Well, let me put it another way: aren't fighting for the same end state. It is, in fact, more uncommon for two belligerents to have the same conditions for victory than it is for them to have different conditions. For example, in the US Civil War, the North's objective was to reunify the nation, while the South's objective was to successfully separate from the North. So the condition for victory for the North was the defeat of the South; the South did not have to beat the North, just get the North to stop trying to beat it. Yet this is a case where the objectives are relatively similar - they flowed from the same choices of outcome. This is not always the case: sometimes the goals diverge markedly, such as the War of 1812, where our goal was to prevent British predation on our merchants, and the British goal was to defeat the French (for which aim the British needed seamen, which it got in part by preying on American merchants).
In the Terror Wars, our objectives started out markedly different from the enemy's: we sought to punish the terrorists for 9/11, and to destroy the terrorist organizations so that they wouldn't threaten us again; the enemy sought to kick us out of Saudi Arabia as part of their plan to restore the Caliphate. To them, we were a sideline, interesting mostly because of our support of the regimes they intended to bring down.
But while the enemy objectives have not changed, except that we are now in Iraq instead of in Saudi Arabia, our objectives have changed dramatically. As we came to realize that defeating the terrorists now would be meaningless, because the totalitarian fascist ideology that drives them would simply create new terror groups, our objective shifted to democratizing and modernizing the Middle East, so as to remove the ideology of jihad as a threat. This change in goals took place between the beginning of the build-up to war in Iraq and the replacement of General Garner - in fact I think that it was the replacement of General Garner that marked the acceptance within the administration that our long-term strategy must include democratizing the Middle East.
In other words, our goals have converged with our enemy's goals, and as a consequence, our objectives have become symmetrical: they seek to restore the Caliphate, and we seek to ensure conditions that would prevent the Caliphate from being established: representative government, economic prosperity, and a more realistic world-view. In order for the enemy to win, they must continue fighting - not necessarily effectively, just noticeably - until we withdraw. At that point, they claim victory and, greatly strengthened, proceed to attack the Arab governments in order to restore the Caliphate. In order for us to win, we must establish representative governments strong enough to resist the jihadis or we must destroy the jihadis and the funding and ideology-generation systems that create them (which effectively means destroying every Wahabi and Salafist mosque and imam, as well as the jihadis, so thoroughly that no one will be tempted to try preaching jihad out of fear for their lives). Since we aren't prepared to do the latter (yet), we must attempt the former.
What's very interesting is that this means that the primary determinants of the war are time and public will: so long as we are able to sustain the public will to simply not withdraw, we will eventually succeed in establishing representative governments in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And it is here that we come to the third force in this war: the Western Left (and to a much lesser extent, the extreme right).
For these groups, their goal is to gain political power. At the moment, the balance of power in the US is highly in favor of the Republicans, which is not helpful to the Left. So how does the Left gain power? Well, certainly, the last time that there was a significant Leftward lurch electorally was after Viet Nam, where the Republicans - humiliated by a combination of Watergate and losing the war after a politically-forced withdrawal - lost heavily. And thus, from the Left's goals and history, we get their objectives: embarrass the Republicans, and force us to withdraw from Iraq. The combination of the two will (at least in the mind of the Left) return the Left to power.
Thus, the left's objectives have become congruent to the enemy's objectives: forcing the US to withdraw from Iraq, and in general to lose the Terror Wars, serves both the enemy's and the Left's purposes. This is why it seems that the Left is on the side of the enemy: they are working to the same midpoint. The Left seems to believe that it stops there, that the enemy will simply work on restoring the Caliphate, behead a bunch of other Muslims and who cares? and will happily mind their own business. How they can think this after 9/11 escapes me totally. There are a few other things they are missing as well about the probable consequences.
1No kidding: my college American history professor made very clear up front that we would not study any wars, because they weren't relevant to how people live, which is what's important about history. Ever since then, I've understood how we get people waving paper and declaring "Peace in our Time" - fantasy is so much less upsetting than reality.
Needs a Killin'
There was a case in Texas in, I think, the 1920's, where a jury let a man off for murder, because the murdered man "needed killin'". If that description ever fit anyone, it fit these morons. (hat tip: InstaPundit, who has links to more pictures and commentary)
In fact, were I seated on a jury, hearing the murder trial of, say, a family member who saw these signs, jumped out and started firing at the placard bearers, I'd have a hard time doing anything but letting them walk. Maybe applauding them, too.
June 19, 2005
Daddy
My sons presented me with a notebook this morning: whay we love dad [spelling goes uncorrected for today]. Each had drawn a picture, and written down why they love me.
Connor, age 9, drew a picture of me, hairless and fiendishly grinning as I choke a small child, with two other children running away, smiling for some reason. I am informed that in fact I was tickling the child, and chasing the others. My fourth is nowhere to be seen, a fact that apparently disturbed Griffin to no end. The text says:
he Plays lots of Games with us he lovse us and works hard to Get the mony to feed us and Get toys for us and buys books for us and Givs us mony to do what ever we want with and takes us to fun Places.
Clearly, I need to explain the concept of allowance again.
Aidan, age 7, drew a frame within which it says "i love you dad". His text was:
He plays lots of games with us. He chases us. He loves us.
Griffin, or as he would say it, Frippen, age 4, refused to draw a picture. Instead, my wife wrote for him why he loves me: "He kills dinosaurs." Apparently, some time later, he added "with his fork", but the text does not reflect this, so it must remain apocryphal.
Lachlan, age 3, was the most colorful with his picture, a cross between Seurat and Pollack, and told my wife, "He's big. He's this tall. I love him 'cause I do."
Of all the titles I've been graced with at one time or another, the best ever has to be "Daddy". And I love my boys, too, just 'cause I do.
More Analysis of the War in Iraq
Grim provides a fine essay on the situation in Iraq, and the difference the choice of battlefield makes strategically.
June 18, 2005
The Avoidable Genocide
We are coming to a dangerous crossroads. In America in particular, increasing numbers of people have tired of being at war. The steady dribble of casualties - small in historical terms - has been blown all out of proportion by the domestic forces of defeatism - particularly odious are those who would be fine with America winning, so long as the Republicans didn't get credit. The normal, slow course of counter-insurgency, the whining of the domestic Left, the self-seeking politicians, and the receding sense of direct threat to America combine to weary those who simply don't focus much on anything except direct threats to them. Much of the American public is being lulled. This QandO analysis of a Victor Davis Hansen essay makes the essential dichotomy clear.
Ironically, this is a byproduct not of failure, but of success: we have done such a good job of disrupting the large terrorist organizations and eating alive the core of the jihadi movement, who come to Iraq to fight our soldiers rather than to America to attack our civilians, that the immediacy of the threat has been reduced. So long as we continue to aggressively pursue the fight. Because when we stop, give up, go home and once more doze in contemplation of the end of history.
The ability of the United States to make war depends on our willingness to make war. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the only way for any country at present to actually defeat the United States in war is to make us weary of the fight, give up and go home. And our desire to minimize the destructiveness of war, on both our own people and enemy civilians (and increasingly, even on enemy combatants), mitigates against our fighting the kind of war we can win swiftly. We could end the insurgency in Iraq in 3 months, were we willing to destroy the Sunni Arab population of Iraq in order to do so; we are not.
But there is a serious, often unstated problem with giving up. Once we leave the field, we see ourselves as our enemy sees us: defeated. And as the aftermath of Viet Nam showed, such a defeat makes further action politically impossible. In the 1970s, we could not have defended any place but Europe and maybe Japan from attack, because politically we would have prevented our government from doing so. Even in the 1980s, there was a serious, strong, determined and sustained movement to prevent the United States from protecting Europe! Younger readers may not remember, but there was in fact a serious effort to convince the United States to disarm unilaterally even up to the point that the Soviet Union dissolved.
And in the Middle East, today, such a mistake - giving up our ability to fight against a threat - would be fatal. Not to us - well, not to us collectively, anyway - but to the Arab world. Consider the consequences:
If the United States pulls the threat of military engagement from the Middle East, Iraq would pretty much immediately fall into chaos. Conventional invasions from Syria and Iran are possible, but more likely would be a full-scale civil war, culminating in either a dictatorship of the Sunnis or a Shia theocracy similar to neighboring Iran. In the process, we would have lost every single base that the United States has in the region: as an untrustworthy ally, those that were not conquered would be closed by our former friends, now eager to distance themselves from us as far and fast as possible. (Read up on what happened after the fall of the Shah in the late 1970s.) This would further complicate any American attempts to use force in the region.
With the US not engaged, and with the world focused on Iraq's slide into chaos, the likelihood of Iran developing weapons within five years approaches certainty. Pakistan might even decide, in order to prevent Musharraf's fall, to open sell nuclear weapons to Muslim states. This means that with every year that passes, with democracies and Western leaning tyrannies in the Middle East falling in succession to the Islamists, the realization of a caliphate becomes progressively more likely. Even without that, there is still the problem of two or more nuclear armed states with a history of supporting terrorism.
We probably wouldn't be the first target of nuclear terrorism; that would more likely be Israel.