A forced tour of Iraq

While flipping through TV channels tonight, I briefly came upon a program on a Dutch channel, where they were interviewing protesters at an Amsterdam "anti-war" march. Asked why he was there, one protester said he was against war. Then the interviewer asked him which other protests he'd been involved in, and the protester fondly recalled his memories of Vietnam, Panama, the first Gulf War. Then a question reporters never think of asking: "So it's all war where America was involved. Did you protest against any wars where other countries were involved like Russia or China?" The protester was clearly taken aback and could not answer. After some prodding he said "Tibet, I'm against Tibet."

At least all those years of protesting haven't dulled the intellectual vigor of the left. They're as sharp as ever. (Others who were interviewed were similarly flummoxed, but I didn't have much time to watch. I should have taped it.) It wasn't a big surprise to see that the protesters' main driving motive was anti-Americanism. They've long been Moscow's useful idiots, and since our victory in the Cold War they've been looking for new tyrants to appease. Now that Saddam is gone, I'm sure they'll find the next one soon.

What to do with such people? It's obvious that they're not amenable to reason, as they're living in a fantasy world of their own making. One interesting suggestion would be to give them a tour of Iraq:

It is those outside Iraq, those who enabled Saddam's killing machine, those who extended his rule through the perversion of diplomacy, those who protested and signed petitions against the "immoral war" to remove him from power but who never once mentioned Saddam's victims, whom Gen. Franks should force to see the meat hooks hanging from ceilings, the electrodes, the human meat grinders and the acid baths.

It is they who should be forced to see the flimsy coffins stacked one upon another, the thousands of corpses - men, women and children - with mutilated bodies and a single gunshot wound to the head. It is they who should be forced to see the pictures and read the record books of Saddam's victims - like the Nazis, Saddam's executioners kept detailed records in order to demonstrate their ideological commitment to the cause.

That's the only way I'd welcome Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin, Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer to Iraq: on a guided tour by Tommy Franks.

"Vive Chirac. Stop The Jews!"

The peace movement has never been known for its moral fortitude, although they have always regarded themselves as morally superior, as if the single-minded pursuit of peace at all cost is the sign of a more advanced intellect. It is in fact the opposite, as it provides a seemingly easy way out of real life dilemmas, and ignores the real life costs of pursuing peace at all cost. The lesson of the 1930's has been completely lost on them. Appeasement does not work. Sometimes the peace won in the short term begets much more serious problems in the long term, but I guess if you're a sophisticated thinker such reasoning can be shot down easily.

But that's just the charitable interpretation, as the so-called "peace" movement has a long history of serving as the useful idiots for foreign regimes guilty of horrific human rights violations. In the 1980's it was the Soviet Union, now it is the likes of Saddam who find support on the left. But these peace-movements, together with the rise in Islamic influence in Europe (see also recent experiences in Denmark) a new element has been added to the "peace" movement's canon: anti-semitism. This has been mirrored by the rise of anti-semitism in the incubators of far-left radicalism on American campuses.

In France the toxic mix of Islamofascism from the Arab immigrants and the anti-Americanism of the French governments is leading to a dangerous environment if you happen to be Jew in France, as the Washington Times reports on the latest attacks of Muslim youths on Jews there. Of course, the fact that these Jews were protesting the war too made no difference to the Arabs. As the Washington Times writes:

The French government was forced to appeal for calm after protesters, some of them carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein, burned the Israeli flag and turned on Jewish students, attacking one of them with an iron bar, during a series of antiwar rallies.
Officials fear that antiwar sentiment, supported by President Jacques Chirac, may be running out of control and could ignite widespread violence. Banners at recent demonstrations have shown the Star of David intertwined with a Nazi swastika, while protesters shouted: "Vive Chirac. Stop the Jews."

That last slogan really sums it up. "Vive Chirac. Stop the Jews." And what does the celebrated Chirac do? According to the Washington Times, he's keeping quiet.

To be fair, the police are setting up a new unit to investigate racist and anti-semitic crimes. It's a bit late to focus on that only now, as anti-semitic violence has been increasing in France was several years now. The article also points out the potential for civil unrest in France, where millions of unassimilated Arabs live in the vast and depressing suburbs of French cities. The embers Chirac has been fanning may yet rise up into a firestorm.

Weekend slogans

Funny how the protesters over the weekend carried "Free Palestine" posters, but not a single one was concerned with a "Free Iraq." Makes you wonder... of course, I'm all in favor of both a free Iraq and a free Palestine. After we get rid of Saddam Hussein, we could do worse than put Yasser Arafat in the crosshairs.

It might even catch on...a free Middle East?

How people react in a storm

My apologies for the slow blogging over the last few days. I ended up spending too much time at work and had too little sleep. Moreover, the work included a ridiculous amount of writing, so I felt rather written out. I don't understand how anybody can write for a living like that; here at the blog, I can write about pretty much whatever I want whenever I want, but I don't think I could do this as a job. But just writing is one thing. Writing well is even more difficult, and I have the greatest respect for those can pull it off on a regular basis (Lileks and Den Beste spring to mind, each in a completely different manner).

The BBC broadcast tonight The Gathering Storm, a biographical movie about Winston Churchill from 1934 to 1939 when he was the proverbial lone voice in the wilderness warning of the danger of Hitler's ascent to power. Based on the eponymous first volume of Churchill's own memoirs, it was a fascinating glimpse into the period. I don't know enough about British politics in the years preceding the war, so I can't judge its historical accuracy (nor have I read Churchill's memoirs; it's on my ever-growing reading list). What I found most remarkable that the BBC would actually even broadcast this, the story of the man who had fought against appeasement and who had been proven right. With the current situation in mind, it is hard not to draw parallels between then and now. The arguments in favor of appeasement are eerily similar to those we hear now and the film is full of excellent one-liners that apply today as well as they did back then about the folly appeasement. Churchill publicized the military build-up of Nazi Germany from documents he had obtained from sources in the Foreign Office and the military. These facts were known to the government at the time, but weren't acted upon (unless you count appeasement as action).

Appeasement was politically convenient for a number of reasons. The memories of the First World War were still fresh in people's minds and averting a repeat of those horrors was were much in people's minds. The economy wasn't doing too well either as it was still suffering from the aftermath of the great Wall Street crash and the worldwide depression that had both the US and Great Britain in its grip. Rearmament would have been expensive, but as not as expensive as fighting the Second World War. But the biggest reason for appeasement was the capacity for self-delusion that idealism brings about. It is the belief that no-one could possibly be as evil and bloodthirsty as Hitler's enemies made him out to be. As long as that belief is firmly entrenched in people's minds, the facts themselves matter very little. All such facts can be explained away. Initially at least, because it gets harder as time goes on. Was building the Luftwaffe (initially Britain was even supplying Rolls-Royce aircraft engines to the Germans for "civilian purposes") enough to conclude Hitler was up to no good? The retaking of the Rheinland? Annexing Austria? Usurping Czechoslovakia? Invading Poland? That's the one that did it.

Once a grand policy theme has been established it develops a logic of its own. Whether it be the supreme folly of appeasement or innocuous local policies, once you commit yourself to it, the policy starts to take over. It's the "just one more" syndrome of compulsive behavior. Building the Luftwaffe was no proof of Hitler's evil plans, was it? Well, perhaps taking the Rheinland was a bit provocative, but we are to blame as well for the harshness of the treaty of Versailles, so we need more appeasement, not less. And so it goes. On a smaller scale you see this happening every day, where the policy becomes a goal unto itself and hold the policymakers in a stranglehold. Admitting you're wrong is a hard thing to do.

But the policy of appeasement would not have been possible without the self-delusion of the British electorate which drove the mood at the time. This is a fundamental problem that emerges in all conflicts between the decent and the ruthless (using the terms loosely). If you grow up and live in a society where "decency" is the norm, it is hard to imagine a completely ruthless opponent. Instead, you try to bring to bear the tools of your "decent" society on the errant opponent, because cannot and will not believe that he is fundamentally evil. There must be some way to come to a compromise, surely? Not if one side does not want a compromise. And that was the achilles heel of British public opinion in the 1930's, which was fueled by the memories of the First World War. The thought having to rearm, even to prevent another war, was just too painful and scary to contemplate. So instead you believe that "peace in our time" is possible with "Herr Hitler." (Obvious parallels to current situation left as an exercise for the reader.)

Fortunately, the message of the failure of appeasement has been learned, even if imperfectly. The Cold War was one long repudiation of appeasement. The West, led by the United States stood up to the Evil Empire and won. The opposite of appeasement is not war, but it's the refusal to back down. We stood our ground in the Cold War with the threat of being absolutely prepared to go to war if necessary. And it worked. Now a new war has been thrust upon us by the Islamofascists. Could we have prevented it or foreseen it? With hindsight, yes.

We are also fortunate to have a President in this war who will not back down, who understands the failure of appeasement. Thus far, we have been winning the war by being steadfast in our resolve to pursue and destroy our enemies. The next one in line is Saddam Hussein, and I am confident the President will see to it that we are successful in removing him as well. We in the Anglosphere, if not the entire West, are now embarked yet again on a policy of non-appeasement. And that is as it should be.

Policy rigidity is a symptom not unique to appeasement. Just as appeasement captured its proponents in the 1930's, the opposite policy has the same danger. Non-appeasement does not mean using military force in every instance. Even though it is the right policy with regards to Iraq, it's not necessarily the right policy elsewhere. The other members of the Axis of Evil can be dealt with differently. The Iranian theocracy is beginning to collapse under its own unpopularity, and there's an even chance that the ayatollahs will no longer be in power a year from now. North Korea can be isolated and/or dealt with China's help. Each of our other enemies, be it the Saudis, Syrians, Palestinians or others will have to be dealt with in their own way. The Islamofascist hardcore will have to be defeated in each case, but other tools stand at our disposal as well. Avoiding capture by a logic of military action for everything. This means that at times we'll have phases in which it'll appear the war has stalled or lost its focus while other tools are being used to further our cause. (Of course, the war effort could stall and fail, but that would be apparent only afterward.)

We are at war. If we do nothing, our enemies will kill more of us, and will keep doing so until they achieve their dream of an Islamofascist Caliphate. That's their goal; one only needs to read their statements. But in pursuing this war, we will need to keep our bearings. This can only occur if there is cogent and realistic criticism of the pursuit of the war effort, and that has been spectacularly lacking. The so-called anti-war movement has never managed anything better than regurgitating puerile slogans and the same old anti-American propaganda again and again.

Our storm has gathered. It is upon us. Whether our ship will sink or float depends on how we react to the storm, each and every one of us. But doing nothing is not an option.

Slogging through the mire

Prominent Dutch idiotarian Mient-Jan Faber, the head of the IKV "peace movement," spoke at the silent procession at the World War II concentration camp Westerbork yesterday, despite protests from Jewish organizations. His speech was predictably, well, idiotarian. He claimed that the Netherlands is no longer a multicultural society (so far, so good). But why? Well, he asks himself how immigrants must feel in Dutch society, having been here all these years, and suddenly they're not part of it anymore:

"They've been in the Netherlands for years and now suddenly they're told tht their mosques are incubators for terrorism."

Eh, perhaps that's because their mosques ARE incubators for terrorism? It's not something that they're told, it's something they're actively doing with funding from Saudi Arabia. Islamic schools in the Netherlands preach hatred of the West and the Jews, again with Saudi funding. The fault lies not with Dutch society, but with those who preach hatred and call for the destruction of the infidels.

After the criticism that Jewish organizations had had about his speaking at the procession, Mient-Jan Faber also addressed the situation in the Middle East. He had previously called on Israel to get rid of its Jewish character, and now added these words to his record of shame and infamy:

"[...] both [the] Jewish and the Palestinian communities live in constant panicked fear. People yell at each other from fear and hate, but there is lack of a dialog. In the Netherlands too it is hard to have a good discussion about, as I have experienced again."

Yes, poor Faber is being held accountable for the idiocy he spews. Let's take this one at a time. The Jewish community lives in fear because the Palestinians are trying to murder as many of them as they possibly can. The Palestinians live in fear because the PLO is running a totalitarian police state where deviating from the official line means torture and death. Note the moral equivalence: Palestinians who deliberately murder civilians are put on the same moral basis as the Israelis who are trying to stop the Palestinian terrorists and take great care to avoid civilian casualties. Faber trudges even deeper into the swamp of moral equivalence: he claims people shout at each other from fear and hate. There's plenty of hate on the Palestinian and Arab side; after all, they've been trying to destroy the state of Israel for the last half century, and still see that as their ultimate goal. Arab and Palestinian official news media are reviving and recycling Nazi anti-semitic propaganda. They're actively fanning the flames of hate. Now, show me the equivalent of this hate on the Israeli side. There is none. Israeli newspapers and politicians don't call for the destruction of the Palestinians, they don't call on God to destroy the Muslims, they don't wish to eradicate them from the face of the earth.

If he'd had any credibility to begin with, Faber would have lost it now. But he's hit absolute zero a long time ago, in the days when we was Moscow's useful idiot during the cold war. Now he's Islamofascism's useful idiot. Quite a career.

Commemorating the past

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands the town of Westerbork became the home to a concentration camp. It was just a transit camp though, and the Jews who were imprisoned here were soon sent on their way to be murdered in Auschwitz and other German camps. To commemorate the evil that took place here, a committee has been organizing annual silent processions at Westerbork. This year though, a Dutch Jewish organization is protesting against the choice of speaker to address the crowd. Somehow the head of a Dutch "peace" movement, the IKV, got the job. This is someone who during the cold war invariably chose Moscow's side, wallowing in a deep mire of moral equivalence. He and his organization were the Evil Empire's useful idiots who protested against the US for keeping the Netherlands free and prosperous. Of course, he's learnt nothing from the cold war, and he and his ilk are not content with having been on the wrong side of history once in a lifetime, but they're going for two. Thus the usual anti-American protests, which you would expect from a "peace" movement. But part and parcel of that is also an anti-Israeli attitude, which is manifested by the IKV steadfastly taking the side of the Palestinians terrorists who are trying to destroy the state of Israel. In his wisdom the IKV's leader said that Israel should distance itself from its Jewish character. The insanity of multiculturalism from the mouth of an idiot. His long track record of pacifist depravity should have disqualified him from being taken seriously in the first place. Anti-semitic? I won't go that far yet.

This will be the 50th, but also be the last silent procession. The group who's been organizing these marches since 1992 can't find anybody to continue the tradition.

Great moments in Peace Movement History

I am sure Le Chi Quang is delighted that the Peace Movement stopped war in his country. He is a 32 year-old Vietnamese man who got sentenced to four years in prison for "propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." Who cares about freedom of expression when you can have peace? Protesting against this sentence, the organization "Reporters without Borders" wrote to Vietnam's Justice Minister: "Even if your government persists in abusing the basic rights of its citizens, we appeal to you to free Le Chi Quang because he is seriously ill." But at least they have peace now in Vietnam. The group also said that Quang was in a very weak state with a swollen face. He has kidney problems that the prison officials are refusing to treat. Good thing they have peace though in Vietnam. The government says Quang was "caught red-handed" while "illegally uploading the information" to the Internet. What would the situation be like if they didn't have peace though? The Hanoi government accuses Quang of posting articles that "distort the situation in Vietnam, slandering the Vietnam Communist Party, the state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and undermining the national and religious unity." Fortunately, the people of Vietnam now can live in peace. That must be the reason for the exodus of boat people from Vietnam. They probably wanted to convey their personal thanks to the Peace Movement for bringing Peace to Vietnam. It's so good to live in peace, you know.

I am sure the Iraqi people are very worried their peace may soon end. Thankfully the Peace Movement is out in force again to help Saddam Hussein maintain the Peace, thereby helping the Iraqi people to achieve the same kinds of benefits their intervention in Vietnam has brought.

Pacifism is not some muddle-headed, harmless pastime. Pacifism aids and abets those who want to destroy us. Pacifism is not merely wrong, it's morally repugnant. Pacifism is evil.

Glimmer of sanity on the left

Next Saturday, an anti-war demonstration is being planned in Amsterdam, with the obvious target being the US. All the usual suspects have signed up for it, the great coalition of Dutch Idiotarians. Many of the organizations that are going to show up were born as the so-called "peace movement" of the 1980s, whose principal message was unilateral disarmament in the face of the Soviet threat. These were people whose choice in the Cold War was to side with the Evil Empire, and most of Moscow's useful idiots still march to the tune of anti-Americanism.

Nothing new so far. However, what struck me in this report is that one of the organizations known as the IKV (its name would be the inter-church peace council in English) has refused to sign on to the anti-war platform. The reason: opposing military action also means opposing the liberation of the Iraqi people. If an organization with a track record such as the IKV can come to its senses, there may be hope yet.

Repeating the mistakes of the past

Trying to revisit the some of the most egregious blunders of the past, "peace activists" are planning to demonstrate at RAF Lakenheath and other US bases in Europe against the supposed presence of nuclear weapons. Not content to have been on the wrong side of history in the 1980's, when they demanded unilateral surrender to the Soviet Union, the "peace activists" are determined to repeat their folly yet again. Apparently being on the wrong side of history once is not enough for them.

But the small expected attendance at the protests by the Appeasement Movement are yet another sign that these people are well and truly living in the past. Nostalgia for their heyday in the 1980's and the anti-American sentiment they rode back then drives them to the pavlovian response of blaming America yet again. Of course, protesting was a lot easier when they had the support of the KGB in the olden days. Now they have to make do on their own. Life is tough if you're an Appeasenik, even in Europe.

"The Web site also stresses that the protest is neither anti-American nor pro-American, or anti-Iraq or pro-Iraq." Of course, by all means, don't take sides folks. That might actually require thinking to lift yourself out of the morass of moral relativism. But it's such a nice morass to wallow in, isn't it?

Cosmic Justice

Over at USS Clueless, the Captain makes an attempt to understand the mindset of those who oppose further military action by the United States, or those whose views on the attacks of September 11th 2001 are that somehow "we had it coming." He thinks he's found the answer:

But I think that a lot of people believe that there is some sort of universal principle, something acting at a higher level, which keeps score anyway.

If you grant that, then proposing that we clean up our own act actually makes sense as a way of preventing future attacks. It may well be that those who attacked us had some specific motives for doing so, and might seem to have motive for doing so again, but that's unimportant. The real reason we were attacked is because we had built up a heavy load of bad karma, and we're going to keep being attacked as long as we've got it. The only real way to make the attacks stop is to do good deeds to relieve that load of bad karma, and once we've done so, then cosmic justice will stop punishing us.

[...]

I'm pretty sure that's what they're thinking.

So the Cosmic Justice Principle, whether you call it God or Karma or something else, will make sure that all bad deeds are punished eventually, and that the immediate cause-and-effect relationship as we know it do not apply. I think he's on to something in that some people probably do think like this. He also says:

It's not that I think the concepts are evil or stupid; it's just that I don't believe that they can be implemented in practice in the world I live in. There's too much possibility of free riding, of spoiling of the commons, of defections (per the Prisoner's Dilemma). There's too much opportunity for abuse, for those systems to be subverted and used to fulfill some particular group's agenda.

I think he's being too kind, because the concepts do have a hefty dollop of muddle-headed thinking. The key implicit assumption in all of this is that someone can actually determine what you have to do to get good karma, and what kinds of actions result in bad karma. And those propounding this view arrogate to themselves the right to determine what is good or bad. In their view, "bad" is anything that America does, and "good" whatever our enemies do. But even if they do not take this extreme view, the problem remains that it is impossible to determine what is "good" or "bad," because doing so means second-guessing Cosmic Justice, an abstract concept which does not manifest itself directly. Within the Cosmic Justice Paradigm, the attacks of 9/11 could well be payback for our past sins; not because we waged war, but because we waged war too late and did not stop Hitler before he killed 6 million Jews. That would be an awful lot of bad karma there. And as for doing good, liberating Afghanistan should certainly count as good karma. It would be bad karma NOT to liberate Iraq as well. And overthrow the house of Saud.

The point I am trying to make is that even within the Cosmic Justice Paradigm the currently prevailing strand of thought ("Blame America!") is not the only possible or valid one. Adhering to an interpretation of the Cosmic Justice Paradigm is a religious choice, meaning there is no empirical basis for either believing it, or determining how to act. Everybody will have to decide for himself what will increase or decrease the cosmic karma balance. And since it's religious and not susceptible to empirical verfication, there's no way of determining what the "right" thing to do is. Cold, hard reality is the ultimate arbiter of what works and what does not. The Cosmic Justice Paradigm lacks this vital feedback loop and is therefore doomed to languish in fuzzy thinking and counting angels dancing on pinheads.

But let's take it a step further. In the worldview of the CJP-followers, the nation-state is an abomination that needs to be abolished, individuals are unimportant and the true organizing principle consists of Groups. Now, let's look at the Group of Silly Left-Wing Intellectuals, who're now complaining that they're not being taken seriously. It's all a case a karma folks. You guys built up a lot of bad karma over the last half century by supporting evil, totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union and communist China, and even cheerleading for the genocidal Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror in Cambodia. Your Cosmic Karma Balance is way, way in the red. I know you're asking yourself why everybody hates you, so you'll be happy to understand of why we do so. Modify your behavior to change your karma. Do something good for a change. Support the country that has upheld the principles that have given you the chance to be overpaid silly left-wing intellectuals.