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November 1, 2005
Important News You Probably Haven't Heard
The news media is terrible at reporting trends — in fact any development that extends past a single moment in time. The news media is also terrible at reporting anything that doesn't fit a story template they are already using (none of these templates tend to be favorable to Republicans). In combination, these two mean that many very important stories don't get widely reported, or only get reported in a form that misses the point entirely. So in an attempt to at least partially rectify that, here are three stories you probably haven't heard, but should have.
1. Paris is burning. There have been four nights of riots, in a suburb known as Clichy-sous-Bois [UPDATE: We're up to six nights, and the riots are now spreading], by young Muslims, after two young Muslim men were chased by police and were electrocuted when they vaulted a fence, and landed on a transformer. This is a larger problem than the riots themselves show, because Muslims in Europe are largely unassimilated, and the areas they live in tend to be no-go zones for police because of the violence (particularly the violence aimed at police and rescue workers). Strategy Page has more background. Most interesting, and most frightening, to me is that the long-term threat of a European civil war between Muslim immigrants and native Europeans seems to be growing more likely. With events like the murder of Theo van Gogh and the refusal of European leaders to take an unveiled look at the problems being created by public policy, the pressure relief valves for young Muslims will continue to be crime and radicalism. Not a recipe for civil peace, that.
2. The economy is booming. Growth has been positive since 4Q2001 — some four years now — and all but one of those quarters has exceeded 1% seasonally-adjusted GDP growth. For the last 10 quarters, GDP growth has been above 3% per quarter, seasonally adjusted. (That is to say, for the last 30 months, we have had consistently better than 3% GDP growth per quarter, which is a better economic performance than President Clinton ever presided over.) Meanwhile, interest rates are slowly rising and inflation is maintaining its remarkably low impact, as it has more or less done since the end of the Carter presidency. In other words, we are in the midst of a wonderful economic growth, and a resulting shrinkage in real poverty. But don't expect to hear that in the MSM, particularly as next year's campaigns for Senate and House start to get serious.
3. We are winning in Iraq. To make this point clear, I will posit a very unlikely scenario: the invasion and occupation of the continental United States by a foreign power, to free the vast majority from the oppression of the Catholics among us. (I used the Catholics only because they are not an insignificant part of the population in statistical terms, but are also quite the minority.) By using groups in American society and American geography, I hope to show how much progress we've made in Iraq.
Now imagine that immediately after the Catholic armies were driven from the field, and the government fled or were arrested, Catholic insurgents began to arm, and within a year were in full-scale uprising across the country, with the Catholic strongholds of Boston, New York and New Orleans in particularly violent uprising. Catholic supporters, pouring in from Europe and South America, brought particularly vicious methods of killing will them, as well as money and supplies. For that first year, the occupying troops could find hardly any people willing to enter the newly-created police force or army to face the Catholic terror gangs. Worse, any place not housing occupying troops was effectively under Catholic control, and the occupying troops were being attacked and killed daily in large numbers, while the full force of world press opinion was against the occupying troops.
Now imagine that the next year, the Catholic leadership in the United States had been captured or forced to flee the country, except for a few, that the non-Catholic police and army were being trained in large numbers, and that the occupying forces now effectively controlled everything except Massachusetts, southern Louisiana and the area within, say, 100 miles of New York City. Within those areas, attacks were still coming almost daily, but the country outside of those areas was quiet and beginning to for local and national governments and to talk about long-term self-rule. The Catholics, having failed to drive out the occupiers by attacking them, switched instead to attacking the newly forming police and government, in an attempt to ensure that the US stayed occupied, instead of becoming self-governing and non-Catholic. The international media, or course, continued to portray the occupation as a disaster, and the occupier as the reason why the police and government were being attacked, which of course the Catholics didn't do when they were in charge.
Imagine further that the year after that, a new non-Catholic government had been established, all of the country was pacified except for Manhattan (and even there the occupying forces were clearly in control), a Constitution had been agreed to, and the Catholics, having failed to stop the new government, were now concentrating on attacking civilians — even Catholic civilians — in order to keep things as chaotic as possible so that the Catholics could continue their operations as much as possible. The international media, meanwhile were saying that the occupation had failed utterly.
Now under that scenario, does it look like the occupation forces are winning or losing? They are continually expanding their ability to act, narrowing the Catholic ability to act, and standing up a government behind them so that it is not even necessary for them to act. Any reasonable measure says that the occupation forces are winning, except one: listening to the reports of the foreign media.
Given that this is a fairly good analogue to the situation in Iraq, the reality is that we are not only winning, but winning handily. But not if you listen to the media.
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Comments
Point 1: Paris is burning. In other news, Prince Charles is coming to lecture President Bush about being nicer to Muslims. (As if Bush doesn't go out of his way to call Islam a 'religion of peace' and to seperate Islam from Islamo-fascism.)
Point 2: I remember the 1992 election well. Every single day the media would bemoan the horrible state of the economy, parroting Clinton that it was the worst economy since the Great Depression. Doom, gloom, horror! After Clinton was elected, but before he ever took office, the media began reporting what an amazing turnaround the economy was having, seemingly crediting the mere election of Clinton for it. Years later, when Clinton was running for re-election he was touting his economic record. Clinton and the press constantly reported how many quareters of growth we had been having, coming out of the recession. It was simple math to figure out those numbers traced back to the middle of 1992, while George H. W. Bush was still in office and the press was bemoaning our horrible economy! Exit polling from that election showed that most voters felt they were doing fine economically, but they thought their neighbors were doing poorly. I repeat, most voters were doing fine economically! It was the press that made them believe we had a bad economy. When the press reported that amazing economic turnaround out of the blue in late '92, I saw right through their charade. It was blatantly obvious that they were shills for Clinton. I have not watched the network newscasts since then. The MSM will NEVER give a Republican good press about the economy, or a Democrat bad press (witness the complete ignoring of the internet bubble bursting in Clinton's final year in office, only really reported after Bush was elected).
Point 3: You certainly won't hear point three. Just today, Reuters is running a story (read: promoting a book) about two Clinton-era NSC officials claiming we are losing the war on terror. Mostly their reasoning appears to be that: a) Muslims don't like us since we went to Iraq (apparently they must have liked us when Clinton was president [please ignore WTC 1993, Khobar towers, Kenya and Tanzinia, and the USS Cole]), b) we've created a haven for terrorists in Iraq (No, we've destroyed one. A haven is somewhere safe to be; Iraq isn't safe for terrorists), c) by fighting them, we are energizing their quest for jihad (perhaps, but not fighting them led to the above incidents and 9/11, so does that really matter?), and c) by fighting them, they are gaining battle experience, making them more dangerous to us in the future (more dangerous than they were during the previous incidents and 9/11 to boot? Sorry guys, their new experience in urban warfare doesn't bother me as much as their already plentiful experience in mass casualty attacks). These guys seem to be arguing that fighting terrorists is more dangerous than leaving them alone. All I can say is, in one day not fighting terrorists 3000 people died; in two and a half years fighting terrorists in Iraq 2000 soldiers have died. Which tactic is more dangerous?
Posted by: Brian Medcalf at November 1, 2005 5:03 PM