In researching for this article, I found a story that I consider quite well thought out and very well written. I attempted to use it as a guideline for my own article, apparently to closely. It appears that the internet Gestapo is accusing me of plagiarism, something that was never intended. With that, I have re-written the post, with particular attention to what I believe is the offending paragraph, and I’ll tender my sincere apologies to the original author. To the Gestapo however, I’ll mention that I don’t take kindly to threats.
"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."Richard Salent, former president, CBS News
The great American political carnival continues, with the next thrilling episode to be played out in Iowa. I am of course speaking about our ongoing presidential campaign, or at least the current primaries. Hillary and Obama are mudslinging it out… or at least there’s a lot of hissing, spitting, and scratching going on. (The democratic contremps reminds me of two cats arguing over dinner.) On the republican side, Rudy and Mitt are running neck and neck, with Mike coming up fast on the inside… Ahh… wait a minute… that looks suspiciously like Ron in third place and coming up fast, with Mike trying to catch him… And so go the tales in the press.
I’ve never really followed the primaries much, because as an Independent I don’t vote in them. This time however, with the ridiculously early start and the quite large field of hopefuls, I’ve been following along with things. I find it interesting that so many pundits are busy comparing the posturing of various Republican candidates, and yet there’s so comparatively little being said about the Democratic candidates. Unless I’ve unknowingly acquired a republican computer and it’s deliberately ignoring the democrats. Even so, for the most part I’m also ignoring the democratic candidates this time around as I haven’t heard any of them say much that I can agree with. Well, I disagree with most republican candidates as well, but their campaign (as reported in the news) is a lot more interesting.
One news source about the republican race for the White House claims that “Rudy Giuliani leads the pack.” Possibly, but the media seems to be all that’s keeping him afloat. But after all, being called “America’s Mayor” for some time does make him newsworthy I guess. As New York’s Mayor I guess he did a good enough job, and he did shine during the 9-11 rescue efforts. But he’s still a New Yorker, which isn’t going to play well in the western states. Mitt Romney is another media sensation who seems to be leading in many eastern state polls. However, his personal wealth, and in good part self financed campaign, is about all that keeps his name in the press. The religion card may or may not be important to his campaign as well.
Ron Paul is seemingly detested by the media because he he’s a “fringe” politician who refuses to roll over and play dead on demand. If he manages to get elected he has a distinct possibility of severely rocking the boat of “business as usual” special interest politics. Results of numerous straw polls normally show Paul in first to third place. Though he’s not a polished orator, Paul is intelligent, disciplined, principled, consistent, and independent of the political system that’s dominated American life for the last 100 years. Paul's nickname of "Dr. No" to his congressional colleagues reflects both his medical degree and his insistence on "never voting for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution." Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, “cute” and "charming", apparently because of his down home “aw, shucks” style. Nevertheless, his debate performance leaves a lot to be desired. The governor's record indicates he’s not taxpayer friendly, and certainly not a civil libertarian. John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona, is a certifiable war hero, and a reputation of being a political maverick. In reality he’s hardly done anything that is not part of the Washington Beltway wheeling and dealing. Tom Tancredo, U.S. Representative from Colorado, has a small but rabid following due to his appeal to voters’ anger over continuing illegal immigration and little else. Unfortunately, Rep. Tancredo is reportedly withdrawing from the race, and has already declined to run again for the House.
Every four years relatively unknown presidential hopefuls such as Paul and Tancredo enter the nomination races. The poll numbers of these contenders in the early stages of the nomination process usually indicate they have no chance to win. But then again, they just might. Remember Howard Dean four years ago? Or Ross Perot twelve years ago? Our short-attention-span nation generally wants our politics like we want our sports, fast-paced and hard-hitting, and so far the 2008 presidential contest has been neither. The race for the White House isn’t a horse race, yet. It’s more like the NASCAR circuit where the champion is crowned after months of competing in a series of different races, on different tracks, in different locations all across the country. And unless you’re a die-hard fan, the only thing that seems to get everyone's attention is the big fiery crash. In politics, "the crash" is that political blunder that keeps everyone talking for the next few days.
There are plenty of Americans who are not comfortable with either major political party at present. Millions of us who are fiscal conservatives, and quite skeptical of big government are not at all comfortable with any candidate.
As the call to rescue the GOP resonates with the next generation, you will hear Paul described as "nutty" and anti-Semitic and fringe and marginal and on and on. One classic anti-Paul statement claims that “Republicans should respond to voters who find Ron Paul appealing with a cold shoulder. They don't even want the voters and money that Paul is bringing into the GOP - because their power - and the big spending authoritarianism they favor - is threatened by this revival of grass roots conservatism.” As the mass media seems to be ignoring the facts, perhaps I should point out that of all the candidates, Ron Paul has the most Constitutional view of American policies, he has the most financial support, he has won a vast majority of the straw polls by a wide margin, and yet still only shows as a single-digit candidate in the media polls, if they bother to mention him at all.
Interesting isn’t it?
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Space Development
On occasion I’ve commented about global warming and climate change, following which my published opinion has generated an assortment of “conversations” with various acquaintances (some of which get fairly heated in their own right). So… Yes, I do think we’re moving into a period of climate change for whatever cause. And no, I do not think that this climate change is solely caused by the activities of humanity. I do believe that we’re not helping things any at all with our extensive use of fossil fuels, but our total impact is pretty small compared with that of nature. After all, how much CO2 does just one forest fire dump into the atmosphere, or perhaps just one volcanic eruption? There are a lot of really big forest fires every year, all over the world, and not just a few active volcano’s dumping mega-tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I’ve also made comment about our nearly total dependence on fossil fuels, which I’ve never been very happy about either. For one thing they’re not renewable, so we’re going to run out eventually, and at the rate we’re using them probably sooner rather than later. For another, they’re much more valuable as raw materials for industry than they are as fuels for a Sunday afternoon drive. So why do we keep burning them for fuels? Because they’re about the most concentrated form of “portable” energy available to us at present, they’re easy to handle, and they’re cheap, despite the prices we see at the gas pump or the monthly electric bill. Still, with dwindling resources, I’d rather work on solving the problem now, rather than wait until we’re out of gas and have to start a scadzillion dollar government “crash program”.
Consider, we’re running out of domestic oil, and our tar sands and oil shale deposits don’t even rate a distant second place. We can of course continue importing oil from OPEC, but being at the tender mercies of the Islamic world doesn’t strike me as a good idea if national security is a concern. Coal fired power sources “could” take up the slack, but they’re rapidly becoming political suicide due to environmental considerations. Nuclear power would be an ideal interim power source, but we still have the almost superstitious public fear of “radiation” to overcome. All of the bio-fuels share a common drawback, in that they require high class (i.e. food grade) raw materials. With six billion people on this planet, food is getting scarce in many places, a problem that can only get worse if we start turning food into biofuels.
Wind power, tidal power, geothermal power… all are non-starters due to various technical limitations and high costs. Certainly they work to some extent, and make quite interesting demonstrations, but they are not a viable source of power for today’s energy starved hi-tech world. Fusion power and the theoretical “zero point” energy are to far down the pike to even be considered at present. Ground based solar power would pick up part of the load, temporarily. But solar arrays require direct sunlight to operate, leaving us with a major problem during the hours of darkness. What are we supposed to do, shut down the entire country at night?
It would appear that either we develop an effective alternate source of power, or we will soon be forced to turn yet again to the horse and buggy, along with candle lit evenings.
Finally, I’ve commented about the possibility of an electricity dependant economy rather one based on the burning of hydrocarbon fossil fuels. Last week I mentioned electric cars for local use. I’d think we all know that the electrics, and even the hybrids we see occasionally are at present more of a curiosity than a serious means of transportation. They do meet all the requirements for a “run to the store and grab a loaf of bread” car, but I for one wouldn’t want to start for Lewiston in what’s essentially an oversized golf cart that I’ll probably forget to plug-in and recharge the battery! Besides, contrary to some advertising claims, today’s electric vehicles are no more environmentally friendly than the gas burners! We have to “plug them in and recharge the battery” remember, and just where does that electricity come from? For most people it comes from a fossil fuel burning power plant, that’s where! Someplace, coal or oil is being burned (and dumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), so that I can feel good about my “environmentally friendly” electric car while I go get that loaf of bread. Ahh… what’s wrong with this picture?
So, I guess we need to get our electricity from an environmentally friendly source, which may prove somewhat difficult. One interesting technology is OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. OTEC utilizes the difference in temperature between warm surface water and cold deep sea water to drive an enormous low speed turbine. Unfortunately it’s not a mature technology at present, it’s terribly inefficient, and would cost billions to construct a decent size OTEC power plant.
Then we have my favorite, Solar Power Satellites, or SPS for short. Space based solar power systems appear to possess many significant environmental advantages when compared to alternative approaches to meeting increasing terrestrial demands for energy. The idea of an SPS has been around since the 1960’s when Dr. Gerald O’Neil developed the “High Frontier” concept of colonizing space with really big space stations. An SPS consists of a huge array of solar cells in sun synchronous Earth orbit. The output of the solar array is converted to microwave power, and transmitted (like radar waves) to a ground station, where it’s converted back into electricity and fed into the power grid. Since the idea first surfaced, building an SPS has been pretty well out of the question due to the high cost of launching the heavy equipment into space. Over the last forty years however, we’ve developed efficient thin film solar cells, lightweight microwave systems, and inflatable space structures which would greatly reduce the cost of an SPS to only a portion of what it would have been in the 1960’s, and seriously reduces the required launch efforts as well. It’s technically feasible to build an SPS today, and supply a few giga-watts of power to our economy, per unit on orbit. After all, space operations are no longer an arcane science, but simply a matter of engineering. However, when we consider the $2,500 to nearly $10,000 per pound cost of putting anything into orbit, an SPS is not yet economically feasible.
Personally I consider space development and resource exploitation to be the single most important long term requirement facing not only the United States, but the entire world as well. Certainly I support the Return to the Moon initiative, along with manned Mars exploration. But NASA’s intended function is not and has never been space exploration, but rather NASA was chartered to research and develop safe, efficient, and cost effective methods to advance the technologies of air and space flight, leaving space exploration and development to private concerns. Development of manned space flight is crucial to our species, but with today’s launch costs, it “ain’t gonna happen”, until NASA starts getting serious about doing their intended job, and developing low cost space access. Perhaps we should remind our congressional representatives of that fact.
I’ve also made comment about our nearly total dependence on fossil fuels, which I’ve never been very happy about either. For one thing they’re not renewable, so we’re going to run out eventually, and at the rate we’re using them probably sooner rather than later. For another, they’re much more valuable as raw materials for industry than they are as fuels for a Sunday afternoon drive. So why do we keep burning them for fuels? Because they’re about the most concentrated form of “portable” energy available to us at present, they’re easy to handle, and they’re cheap, despite the prices we see at the gas pump or the monthly electric bill. Still, with dwindling resources, I’d rather work on solving the problem now, rather than wait until we’re out of gas and have to start a scadzillion dollar government “crash program”.
Consider, we’re running out of domestic oil, and our tar sands and oil shale deposits don’t even rate a distant second place. We can of course continue importing oil from OPEC, but being at the tender mercies of the Islamic world doesn’t strike me as a good idea if national security is a concern. Coal fired power sources “could” take up the slack, but they’re rapidly becoming political suicide due to environmental considerations. Nuclear power would be an ideal interim power source, but we still have the almost superstitious public fear of “radiation” to overcome. All of the bio-fuels share a common drawback, in that they require high class (i.e. food grade) raw materials. With six billion people on this planet, food is getting scarce in many places, a problem that can only get worse if we start turning food into biofuels.
Wind power, tidal power, geothermal power… all are non-starters due to various technical limitations and high costs. Certainly they work to some extent, and make quite interesting demonstrations, but they are not a viable source of power for today’s energy starved hi-tech world. Fusion power and the theoretical “zero point” energy are to far down the pike to even be considered at present. Ground based solar power would pick up part of the load, temporarily. But solar arrays require direct sunlight to operate, leaving us with a major problem during the hours of darkness. What are we supposed to do, shut down the entire country at night?
It would appear that either we develop an effective alternate source of power, or we will soon be forced to turn yet again to the horse and buggy, along with candle lit evenings.
Finally, I’ve commented about the possibility of an electricity dependant economy rather one based on the burning of hydrocarbon fossil fuels. Last week I mentioned electric cars for local use. I’d think we all know that the electrics, and even the hybrids we see occasionally are at present more of a curiosity than a serious means of transportation. They do meet all the requirements for a “run to the store and grab a loaf of bread” car, but I for one wouldn’t want to start for Lewiston in what’s essentially an oversized golf cart that I’ll probably forget to plug-in and recharge the battery! Besides, contrary to some advertising claims, today’s electric vehicles are no more environmentally friendly than the gas burners! We have to “plug them in and recharge the battery” remember, and just where does that electricity come from? For most people it comes from a fossil fuel burning power plant, that’s where! Someplace, coal or oil is being burned (and dumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), so that I can feel good about my “environmentally friendly” electric car while I go get that loaf of bread. Ahh… what’s wrong with this picture?
So, I guess we need to get our electricity from an environmentally friendly source, which may prove somewhat difficult. One interesting technology is OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. OTEC utilizes the difference in temperature between warm surface water and cold deep sea water to drive an enormous low speed turbine. Unfortunately it’s not a mature technology at present, it’s terribly inefficient, and would cost billions to construct a decent size OTEC power plant.
Then we have my favorite, Solar Power Satellites, or SPS for short. Space based solar power systems appear to possess many significant environmental advantages when compared to alternative approaches to meeting increasing terrestrial demands for energy. The idea of an SPS has been around since the 1960’s when Dr. Gerald O’Neil developed the “High Frontier” concept of colonizing space with really big space stations. An SPS consists of a huge array of solar cells in sun synchronous Earth orbit. The output of the solar array is converted to microwave power, and transmitted (like radar waves) to a ground station, where it’s converted back into electricity and fed into the power grid. Since the idea first surfaced, building an SPS has been pretty well out of the question due to the high cost of launching the heavy equipment into space. Over the last forty years however, we’ve developed efficient thin film solar cells, lightweight microwave systems, and inflatable space structures which would greatly reduce the cost of an SPS to only a portion of what it would have been in the 1960’s, and seriously reduces the required launch efforts as well. It’s technically feasible to build an SPS today, and supply a few giga-watts of power to our economy, per unit on orbit. After all, space operations are no longer an arcane science, but simply a matter of engineering. However, when we consider the $2,500 to nearly $10,000 per pound cost of putting anything into orbit, an SPS is not yet economically feasible.
Personally I consider space development and resource exploitation to be the single most important long term requirement facing not only the United States, but the entire world as well. Certainly I support the Return to the Moon initiative, along with manned Mars exploration. But NASA’s intended function is not and has never been space exploration, but rather NASA was chartered to research and develop safe, efficient, and cost effective methods to advance the technologies of air and space flight, leaving space exploration and development to private concerns. Development of manned space flight is crucial to our species, but with today’s launch costs, it “ain’t gonna happen”, until NASA starts getting serious about doing their intended job, and developing low cost space access. Perhaps we should remind our congressional representatives of that fact.
Military Myths
Dec 23, 2007
Two trends over the past forty years contribute to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory in Iraq. First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break a long standing tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced military heroes, but now they’re little more than hotbeds of looney left politics. Yet those same universities still produce most U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead this nation in wartime routinely dismiss military service as a waste of their valuable time and talents. Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our soldiers had to pay for our freedom creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offers flawed or biased analyses the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments. National leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn't been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever's comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive.
Myth No. 1 is that war doesn't change anything. This campus slogan contradicts all of human history. Over thousands of years war has been the last resort of tribes, religions, dynasties, empires, states and demagogues driven by grievance, greed or a quest for glory. No one believes that war is a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. We need not agree about the manner in which a war is fought, but we can't pretend that if we laid down our arms all others would do the same. One thing we may be certain of, our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they’re not deterred by bumper stickers.
Myth: Victory is impossible today. Victory is always possible, if we’re willing to do what it takes to win. But victory is impossible if our troops are placed under impossible restrictions, if their leaders refuse to act boldly, if every target first must be approved by politicians, and if Americans are disheartened by a constant barrage of negative reporting, twisted facts, half-truths, and in some cases downright lies from the media.
Myth: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. Generally the reverse is true. Negotiations solve nothing until a military decision has been reached and one side recognizes a peace agreement as its only hope of survival. It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution. Every other faction - the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria – are convinced they can win, if only we would give up. The only negotiations that produce lasting results are those conducted from positions of inarguable strength.
Myth: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies. When dealing with bullies, either in the schoolyard or in a global war, the opposite is true: if you don't fight back, you encourage your enemy to behave even more viciously. Passive resistance only works when directed against rule-of-law nations. It doesn't work where silent protest is answered with a bayonet in the belly.
Myth: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. It's an anomaly of today's Western world that privileged individuals feel more sympathy for dictators, mass murderers and terrorists than they do for the victims. The truth is that when dealing with fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence. Imprisoned, they galvanize protests, kidnappings, bombings and attacks that seek to free them. Dead, they're dead. And dead terrorists don't kill anymore.
Myth: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them. Did the bombing campaign against Germany turn us into Nazis? Did dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American as well as Japanese lives turn us into the beasts who conducted the Bataan Death March? But our obsession with tragic incidents of which there have been remarkably few obscures the greater moral issue: the need to defeat enemies who revel in butchering the innocent, who celebrate atrocities, and who claim their god wants blood.
Myth: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems. This claim ignores the order of events, as if the attacks of 9/11 happened after Baghdad fell. The terrorist problems have been created by the failure of Middle Eastern civilization, and were worsened by the determination of successive U.S. administrations to pretend that Islamic terrorism was an aberration. “Peacefully” refusing to respond to attacks allowed our enemies to believe that we were weak and cowardly.
Myth: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their future that there's nothing more we can do. But leaving immediately would guarantee a series of slaughters and a massive victory for terrorism. It's ridiculous to claim that our presence is the primary cause of the violence in Iraq, a charge that ignores centuries of Muslim history.
Myth: It's all Israel's fault. Israel is the Muslim world's excuse for failure, not a reason for it. Even if we didn't support Israel, Islamist extremists would blame us for countless imagined wrongs, since they fear our freedom and our culture even more than they do our military. All men and women must recognize the difference between Israel and its neighbors: Israel wants to live in peace, while its genocidal neighbors want Israel erased from the map. As for the belief that the Saudis are our friends, Saudi money continues to subsidize anti- Western extremism, and hatred between Muslims and all others.
Myth: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. Muslim extremists want everyone to believe this, but it isn't true. The collapse of the once great Middle Eastern civilizations has continued for more than five centuries, and the region became a cultural backwater before the United States became a country. It’s social and economic structures, its values, its neglect of education, the indolence of its ruling classes and its inability to produce a modern state that served its people guaranteed that as the West progressed, the Middle East fell ever farther behind. The Middle East has only itself to blame for its problems.
The wealth and power of the United States allows us many things denied to human beings throughout history, but we simply cannot afford ignorance of our nations history.
Two trends over the past forty years contribute to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory in Iraq. First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break a long standing tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced military heroes, but now they’re little more than hotbeds of looney left politics. Yet those same universities still produce most U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead this nation in wartime routinely dismiss military service as a waste of their valuable time and talents. Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our soldiers had to pay for our freedom creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offers flawed or biased analyses the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments. National leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn't been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever's comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive.
Myth No. 1 is that war doesn't change anything. This campus slogan contradicts all of human history. Over thousands of years war has been the last resort of tribes, religions, dynasties, empires, states and demagogues driven by grievance, greed or a quest for glory. No one believes that war is a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. We need not agree about the manner in which a war is fought, but we can't pretend that if we laid down our arms all others would do the same. One thing we may be certain of, our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they’re not deterred by bumper stickers.
Myth: Victory is impossible today. Victory is always possible, if we’re willing to do what it takes to win. But victory is impossible if our troops are placed under impossible restrictions, if their leaders refuse to act boldly, if every target first must be approved by politicians, and if Americans are disheartened by a constant barrage of negative reporting, twisted facts, half-truths, and in some cases downright lies from the media.
Myth: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. Generally the reverse is true. Negotiations solve nothing until a military decision has been reached and one side recognizes a peace agreement as its only hope of survival. It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution. Every other faction - the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria – are convinced they can win, if only we would give up. The only negotiations that produce lasting results are those conducted from positions of inarguable strength.
Myth: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies. When dealing with bullies, either in the schoolyard or in a global war, the opposite is true: if you don't fight back, you encourage your enemy to behave even more viciously. Passive resistance only works when directed against rule-of-law nations. It doesn't work where silent protest is answered with a bayonet in the belly.
Myth: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. It's an anomaly of today's Western world that privileged individuals feel more sympathy for dictators, mass murderers and terrorists than they do for the victims. The truth is that when dealing with fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence. Imprisoned, they galvanize protests, kidnappings, bombings and attacks that seek to free them. Dead, they're dead. And dead terrorists don't kill anymore.
Myth: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them. Did the bombing campaign against Germany turn us into Nazis? Did dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American as well as Japanese lives turn us into the beasts who conducted the Bataan Death March? But our obsession with tragic incidents of which there have been remarkably few obscures the greater moral issue: the need to defeat enemies who revel in butchering the innocent, who celebrate atrocities, and who claim their god wants blood.
Myth: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems. This claim ignores the order of events, as if the attacks of 9/11 happened after Baghdad fell. The terrorist problems have been created by the failure of Middle Eastern civilization, and were worsened by the determination of successive U.S. administrations to pretend that Islamic terrorism was an aberration. “Peacefully” refusing to respond to attacks allowed our enemies to believe that we were weak and cowardly.
Myth: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their future that there's nothing more we can do. But leaving immediately would guarantee a series of slaughters and a massive victory for terrorism. It's ridiculous to claim that our presence is the primary cause of the violence in Iraq, a charge that ignores centuries of Muslim history.
Myth: It's all Israel's fault. Israel is the Muslim world's excuse for failure, not a reason for it. Even if we didn't support Israel, Islamist extremists would blame us for countless imagined wrongs, since they fear our freedom and our culture even more than they do our military. All men and women must recognize the difference between Israel and its neighbors: Israel wants to live in peace, while its genocidal neighbors want Israel erased from the map. As for the belief that the Saudis are our friends, Saudi money continues to subsidize anti- Western extremism, and hatred between Muslims and all others.
Myth: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. Muslim extremists want everyone to believe this, but it isn't true. The collapse of the once great Middle Eastern civilizations has continued for more than five centuries, and the region became a cultural backwater before the United States became a country. It’s social and economic structures, its values, its neglect of education, the indolence of its ruling classes and its inability to produce a modern state that served its people guaranteed that as the West progressed, the Middle East fell ever farther behind. The Middle East has only itself to blame for its problems.
The wealth and power of the United States allows us many things denied to human beings throughout history, but we simply cannot afford ignorance of our nations history.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
President
For months now I’ve been ranting about political campaigns, politicians, the US government and its assorted programs, international relations, and what-have-you. All to no avail apparently, as our government hasn’t changed its ways one bit, and I still haven’t been invited to become a presidential advisor. So, purely as a thought exercise, what sort of platform would I be standing on if I were dumb enough to run for the office of president?
One of the major problems facing the president today is the war in Iraq, and a sticky problem that is. Just about anything he does is going to be the wrong thing. If it weren’t for mid-east oil we could just pick up our marbles and go home, leaving the local folks to enjoy their feudal governments and medieval religious tyranny. However, with the world wide demand for oil, I don’t think an indiscriminate troop withdrawal as many people favor will really solve any problems, it’ll just dump everything on the Iraqi citizen’s shoulders, leaving them at the tender mercy of the terrorists, and Al-Qaeda would shortly control a large part of the world’s oil reserves. A “How to create WW III in the sandbox” sort of deal. Nor is it feasible to send a few hundred thousand more US troops to Iraq, as we don’t have that many more soldiers available, and our economy certainly couldn’t stand the strain at present. Nor do I think it would be wise to send in a standard UN peacekeeping force as the insurgents/terrorists would quickly eat them alive. So, what to do? One part of the problem is that everyone in the mid-east considers us to be infidel crusaders, thus bringing an insurmountable religious component into the game, and making us out to be the bad guys no matter what. Has anyone considered an American sponsored coalition of Arabic Muslim nations mounting a peacekeeping force? I’m quite sure that the US would have to foot the bill, but we’re doing that anyway, and it would put us in the position of controlling operations.
Tax reform is all over the news nowdays, and I suspect that the system could use some serious repairs. So, appoint a “Blue Ribbon” panel of taxpayers from all walks of life to sort through the current tax code, simplify the daylights out of it, find an equitable tax rate, eliminate the loopholes, and put things in simple English words that don’t require a high dollar tax lawyer to understand. At the same time we could shake up the IRS quite a bit, and remove all the arbitrary authority they use to terrorize American citizens.
National Security is one of my hot button subjects, and would get a lot of personal attention. For one thing, I’d immediately call on Congress to repeal most of the Presidential War Powers act, and all of the Patriot Act, as neither is needed today. The Department of Homeland Security would soon be a footnote in history as well.
The “All Volunteer” military served us well in the post Vietnam era, as long as we didn’t have any wars to fight. However, now that we’re involved in a messy little long term war in the mid-east, we can see many of its shortcomings. The conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan have aptly demonstrated that we need to greatly enlarge our conventional armed forces and war fighting capacity, which essentially means a return to the draft, unpopular as that would be. At the same time we need a “lean and mean” Army, well trained and properly equipped to fight anywhere in the world on a moments notice, and survive, rather than an army that’s going to be six months getting “there” with all the luxuries found on today’s TO&E. We need forces that can move fast and hit hard, which means Light Infantry, Rangers, and Special Forces, rather than armor heavy divisions that require an entire fleet to move them across the pond.
Immigration problems have been getting a lot of bad press lately, and I think could be quickly solved with a beefed-up Border Patrol providing tighter border security, along with severe penalties for the folks that hire illegals. I don’t particularly mean slapping them with a ten thousand dollar fine either, but how about an automatic five year sentence at hard labor for the CEO of the company that hired them?
Despite Al Bore… err… Gore and his Oscar winning movie, I don’t see global warming as a man caused problem. Sure, man’s activities isn’t helping the situation any, but it’s not something that we can really blame humanity for. Climate change is something that happens every few centuries, unless we can find a way to control nature and we haven’t been real successful at that over the last few thousand years. So, instead of mandating hundred mile-per-gallon cars, why not push for efficient low cost electric vehicles. After all, how many trips a day do we make to Boise, as opposed to how many trips around town? If it’s a case of “Boise or Bust”, wouldn’t an effective mass transit system be a better way to get there, and then grab an electric powered runabout while you’re shopping? Oil burning heavy trucks are great for moving large cargo’s when nothing else will work, but electric railroads for long distance hauling are a lot more energy efficient.
Where does all that electricity come from? Well, if we’d get serious about hydrogen fusion research, that’s one possibility. Another possibility would be Solar Power Satellites, which is a technology well doable today. Besides, an electric based transportation infrastructure would certainly take the wind out of OPEC’s sails! A hydrogen based economy is great in theory, but making the required sudden and massive change in our vehicle fueling system would probably bankrupt the nation!
If we’d leave the economy alone, it would probably bounce around like a Mexican jumping bean for awhile, and then level out. Historically a free market always does. The problems arise when government or financial gurus start tinkering with the system in an effort to “improve” things, “improvement” usually meaning the rich get richer, and the rest of us foot the bill. I’d also think that a gold (?) based economy would be far superior to a credit based paper economy.
Gay rights seems to be a hot button topic in the media, and most of southern California as well, so what to do about that? Well, nothing really. I see no reason for gays, or any other minority group, to have any special rights, privileges, or legal protection that the rest of us don’t have, just because they’re “different”.
The ever popular schemes to forcibly change our society yet again have always struck me as tantamount to tip-toeing through a political minefield, and besides, social engineering is not our government’s job. But with the technology available to us today, and with a little inspired leadership from on high, we could build a wonderful world for our kids and grandkids, which is a job for the government.
One of the major problems facing the president today is the war in Iraq, and a sticky problem that is. Just about anything he does is going to be the wrong thing. If it weren’t for mid-east oil we could just pick up our marbles and go home, leaving the local folks to enjoy their feudal governments and medieval religious tyranny. However, with the world wide demand for oil, I don’t think an indiscriminate troop withdrawal as many people favor will really solve any problems, it’ll just dump everything on the Iraqi citizen’s shoulders, leaving them at the tender mercy of the terrorists, and Al-Qaeda would shortly control a large part of the world’s oil reserves. A “How to create WW III in the sandbox” sort of deal. Nor is it feasible to send a few hundred thousand more US troops to Iraq, as we don’t have that many more soldiers available, and our economy certainly couldn’t stand the strain at present. Nor do I think it would be wise to send in a standard UN peacekeeping force as the insurgents/terrorists would quickly eat them alive. So, what to do? One part of the problem is that everyone in the mid-east considers us to be infidel crusaders, thus bringing an insurmountable religious component into the game, and making us out to be the bad guys no matter what. Has anyone considered an American sponsored coalition of Arabic Muslim nations mounting a peacekeeping force? I’m quite sure that the US would have to foot the bill, but we’re doing that anyway, and it would put us in the position of controlling operations.
Tax reform is all over the news nowdays, and I suspect that the system could use some serious repairs. So, appoint a “Blue Ribbon” panel of taxpayers from all walks of life to sort through the current tax code, simplify the daylights out of it, find an equitable tax rate, eliminate the loopholes, and put things in simple English words that don’t require a high dollar tax lawyer to understand. At the same time we could shake up the IRS quite a bit, and remove all the arbitrary authority they use to terrorize American citizens.
National Security is one of my hot button subjects, and would get a lot of personal attention. For one thing, I’d immediately call on Congress to repeal most of the Presidential War Powers act, and all of the Patriot Act, as neither is needed today. The Department of Homeland Security would soon be a footnote in history as well.
The “All Volunteer” military served us well in the post Vietnam era, as long as we didn’t have any wars to fight. However, now that we’re involved in a messy little long term war in the mid-east, we can see many of its shortcomings. The conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan have aptly demonstrated that we need to greatly enlarge our conventional armed forces and war fighting capacity, which essentially means a return to the draft, unpopular as that would be. At the same time we need a “lean and mean” Army, well trained and properly equipped to fight anywhere in the world on a moments notice, and survive, rather than an army that’s going to be six months getting “there” with all the luxuries found on today’s TO&E. We need forces that can move fast and hit hard, which means Light Infantry, Rangers, and Special Forces, rather than armor heavy divisions that require an entire fleet to move them across the pond.
Immigration problems have been getting a lot of bad press lately, and I think could be quickly solved with a beefed-up Border Patrol providing tighter border security, along with severe penalties for the folks that hire illegals. I don’t particularly mean slapping them with a ten thousand dollar fine either, but how about an automatic five year sentence at hard labor for the CEO of the company that hired them?
Despite Al Bore… err… Gore and his Oscar winning movie, I don’t see global warming as a man caused problem. Sure, man’s activities isn’t helping the situation any, but it’s not something that we can really blame humanity for. Climate change is something that happens every few centuries, unless we can find a way to control nature and we haven’t been real successful at that over the last few thousand years. So, instead of mandating hundred mile-per-gallon cars, why not push for efficient low cost electric vehicles. After all, how many trips a day do we make to Boise, as opposed to how many trips around town? If it’s a case of “Boise or Bust”, wouldn’t an effective mass transit system be a better way to get there, and then grab an electric powered runabout while you’re shopping? Oil burning heavy trucks are great for moving large cargo’s when nothing else will work, but electric railroads for long distance hauling are a lot more energy efficient.
Where does all that electricity come from? Well, if we’d get serious about hydrogen fusion research, that’s one possibility. Another possibility would be Solar Power Satellites, which is a technology well doable today. Besides, an electric based transportation infrastructure would certainly take the wind out of OPEC’s sails! A hydrogen based economy is great in theory, but making the required sudden and massive change in our vehicle fueling system would probably bankrupt the nation!
If we’d leave the economy alone, it would probably bounce around like a Mexican jumping bean for awhile, and then level out. Historically a free market always does. The problems arise when government or financial gurus start tinkering with the system in an effort to “improve” things, “improvement” usually meaning the rich get richer, and the rest of us foot the bill. I’d also think that a gold (?) based economy would be far superior to a credit based paper economy.
Gay rights seems to be a hot button topic in the media, and most of southern California as well, so what to do about that? Well, nothing really. I see no reason for gays, or any other minority group, to have any special rights, privileges, or legal protection that the rest of us don’t have, just because they’re “different”.
The ever popular schemes to forcibly change our society yet again have always struck me as tantamount to tip-toeing through a political minefield, and besides, social engineering is not our government’s job. But with the technology available to us today, and with a little inspired leadership from on high, we could build a wonderful world for our kids and grandkids, which is a job for the government.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Arrogance
In 1966, Democratic Sen. William Fulbright of Arkansas, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, entitled “The Arrogance of Power”, which he defined as “the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission.” A description that aptly describes the worldwide activities of the United States over the last few decades. As the Vietnam War raged, the Sen. continued “We are now engaged in a war to "defend freedom" in South Vietnam… The official war aims of the United States Government, as I understand them, are to defeat what is regarded as North Vietnamese aggression, to demonstrate the futility of what the communists call "wars of national liberation," and to create conditions under which the South Vietnamese people will be able freely to determine their own future. I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of the President and the Vice President and the Secretaries of State and Defense in propounding these aims. What I do doubt, and doubt very much, is the ability of the United States to achieve these aims by the means being used. I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive. What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.” The Senator went on to say, “The cause of our difficulties in Southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends. We are still acting like boy scouts dragging reluctant old ladies across streets they do not want to cross. We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders. The objective may be desirable, but it is not feasible....”
Today, if we were to change the term “Asian nation” to “Islamic nation”, we might well find ourselves describing the situation in Iraq, or nearly anywhere else in the world where the United States has embarked on a self appointed crusade to “improve things”!
Yes, we are (for the moment) the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, as we were in the 1960s. And equally as certain we are just as arrogant, if not even more so. Historically we have set ourselves nearly impossible goals, and achieved them on a regular basis. Who would have believed that a loose confederation of impoverished former colonies could have claimed, tamed, and settled a very large part of North America, in slightly less than a century! In the 1860’s we decided we needed a transcontinental railroad, and promptly built it in record time, and did so in the face of incredible adversity. Who would have believed that we could advance from a large and somewhat clumsy agrigriarian nation in the 1930s, to the worlds premier industrial and military power, in only slightly more time than it took us to fight WW II? In 1960 we didn’t even know if manned spaceflight were possible, yet in less than ten years we watched enthralled as Americans walking on the surface of another planet! We believed then, as we believe now, that there is nothing America can’t do if we once set our minds to it. Except perhaps, build a free-wheeling democracy in a small nation that doesn’t want democracy. Are we really so arrogant as to believe that a people… any people… who have for centuries quite willingly lived under a rather medieval theocratic political system, really have a desire to almost overnight switch to our particular form of democracy, only because our politicians tell them that “our system is better”!? The Soviets told the entire world how much better their political system was, from 1917 until they collapsed in 1990. Not many people believed them either.
If America has a means to lead in the modern world, it is in large part by our own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are expending the economic lifeblood of the nation, and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources. We are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. Regrettable I think, in a nation that aspires to teach democracy to others, because as Burke said "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other." A lesson America should have learned fifty years ago.
Why can’t we understand that America's true power lies not in our will to threaten, conquer, or intimidate, but in our ability to inspire? There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous men that leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the perceived needs of the moment. Today we see greed, corruption, distain for the law, and an insatiable thirst for power openly displayed in this country, nearly everyplace we might look. That arrogance of power is deeply imbedded in our personal and business relations as well as our political relations, not only among ourselves, but with the rest of the world as well.
There are many respects in which America can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation in our relations with Russia, of reliable partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with developing nations, of avoiding the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of minding our own business in our relations with everybody. We have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be "the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all" but "the champion and vindicator only of her own." . . . We can demonstrate to the world that a free people can continue to live free even in the face of severe adversity, it’s certainly not necessary for them, or us, to adopt the ways and means of a totalitarian police state.
If we can bring ourselves to act, we will have overcome the arrogance of power.
Today, if we were to change the term “Asian nation” to “Islamic nation”, we might well find ourselves describing the situation in Iraq, or nearly anywhere else in the world where the United States has embarked on a self appointed crusade to “improve things”!
Yes, we are (for the moment) the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, as we were in the 1960s. And equally as certain we are just as arrogant, if not even more so. Historically we have set ourselves nearly impossible goals, and achieved them on a regular basis. Who would have believed that a loose confederation of impoverished former colonies could have claimed, tamed, and settled a very large part of North America, in slightly less than a century! In the 1860’s we decided we needed a transcontinental railroad, and promptly built it in record time, and did so in the face of incredible adversity. Who would have believed that we could advance from a large and somewhat clumsy agrigriarian nation in the 1930s, to the worlds premier industrial and military power, in only slightly more time than it took us to fight WW II? In 1960 we didn’t even know if manned spaceflight were possible, yet in less than ten years we watched enthralled as Americans walking on the surface of another planet! We believed then, as we believe now, that there is nothing America can’t do if we once set our minds to it. Except perhaps, build a free-wheeling democracy in a small nation that doesn’t want democracy. Are we really so arrogant as to believe that a people… any people… who have for centuries quite willingly lived under a rather medieval theocratic political system, really have a desire to almost overnight switch to our particular form of democracy, only because our politicians tell them that “our system is better”!? The Soviets told the entire world how much better their political system was, from 1917 until they collapsed in 1990. Not many people believed them either.
If America has a means to lead in the modern world, it is in large part by our own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are expending the economic lifeblood of the nation, and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources. We are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. Regrettable I think, in a nation that aspires to teach democracy to others, because as Burke said "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other." A lesson America should have learned fifty years ago.
Why can’t we understand that America's true power lies not in our will to threaten, conquer, or intimidate, but in our ability to inspire? There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous men that leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the perceived needs of the moment. Today we see greed, corruption, distain for the law, and an insatiable thirst for power openly displayed in this country, nearly everyplace we might look. That arrogance of power is deeply imbedded in our personal and business relations as well as our political relations, not only among ourselves, but with the rest of the world as well.
There are many respects in which America can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation in our relations with Russia, of reliable partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with developing nations, of avoiding the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of minding our own business in our relations with everybody. We have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be "the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all" but "the champion and vindicator only of her own." . . . We can demonstrate to the world that a free people can continue to live free even in the face of severe adversity, it’s certainly not necessary for them, or us, to adopt the ways and means of a totalitarian police state.
If we can bring ourselves to act, we will have overcome the arrogance of power.
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