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TALLRITE BLOG
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ISSUE #144 - 28th January 2007 [417]
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Renewed Will to Lose in Iraq More than two years ago, Victor David Hansen was listing those who were fervently willing America to lose in Iraq. Not much has changed. It is understandable that countries such as Iran continue to hope that America will be defeated in Iraq, and indeed are doing their utmost to bring this about. A free, democratic Iraq, prosperous and hopeful, would be an inspiring example to their peoples and hence a grievous threat to their own illegitimate, despotic regimes. However, we have also come to expect, as a matter of course, that huge swathes of public opinion in democratic Europe, South America and probably Canada, egged on by venal politicians, fervently wish for the humiliation of America in Iraq, and with luck in Afghanistan as well. “Humiliation” is the key word here, born of seething begrudgery of America's hegemony, not just militarily but financially, materially and even culturally (eg who's winning the music, theatre and movie awards?). On the theory that the easiest way for me to close the gap with someone better than me is not for me to improve myself but to drag down the other guy, there is a desperate desire to yank the Yanks down a peg or two, and a success in Iraq would make this immensely more difficult.
These naysayers want America to bail out of Iraq immediately, and
leave it to the Iraqis, in some
Yet it is also baffling that they do not want to think about what the global consequences of an American defeat might be for us lazy, wealthy westerners, who forgot sixty years ago how to defend ourselves because America has been doing it ever since 1945. No-one else kept the vile Soviet communist empire from swallowing and enslaving the other half of Europe. Even today no-one else is keeping the vile North Korean communist dictatorship out of democratic capitalistic South Korea, and no-one else is keeping the vile Chinese communist dictatorship out of democratic capitalistic Taiwan. An American defeat in Iraq will be nothing less than a green light for Islamicist extremists everywhere to attack, attack, attack the despised infidels in the pursuit of their depraved Koranic dream (in Sura 9:5) of converting, enslaving or killing the entire world. With Iraq descending into tri-partite civil war which draws in its neighbours, Al Qaida will have free rein in the Sunni areas for its notorious training camps. Iran, expanding into the Shi'ite regions, will be able to complete its nuclear bomb-building unmolested. Across the globe, Islamic extremists will be emboldened. 9/11, Madrid, Bali, London will turn out to have been but a foretaste, and a non-nuclear one at that, for the world-wide atrocities that will ensue. And who will stand up to them if even the only superpower has been routed? Belgium? Argentina? Austria? Canada? And what with? According to the CIA's World Factbook, the combined military expenditure of the five biggest EU countries (as if they would ever combine them) is but a third of America's.
Whether the Islamicists are successful in their ambition is a separate issue, but that will not take from the universal carnage they will inflict on us infidels in the attempt. This is not idle speculation. I cannot envisage any other outcome of an American defeat in Iraq. Can you? Those who wish defeat on America can only give heart to its enemies, who we should never forget are also the enemies of all western civilisation. Thus their defeatism prolongs the war. Which makes the recent antics of America's own legislators, both Democratic and Republican, all the more astonishing. Love him or hate him, at least George Bush is trying, whether competently or incompetently, to win.
His recent change of tactics should be a cause of hope. He has a new Defence Secretary (though Robert Gates seems singularly invisible), and a new, imaginative military chief in Iraq; he has ignored (while diplomatically praising) the extraordinary call for de-facto surrender of the Iraq Study Group; and he has instituted a 22,000 man surge in military deployment while beefing up their terms of engagement. Finally, in his State of the Union address, he pled with Congressmen and Senators to support the troops in the field and to give his new plan a chance. Now, notwithstanding their various party affiliations, these intelligent men and women are free agents free elected and are free to develop different ideas from the Commander-in-Chief. They are free to suggest different courses of action that they might think are better. The one thing that they should under no circumstances do is to decry their president's efforts without proposing realistic alternatives. For this - like the behaviour of so many Europeans - will achieve only one thing: encouragement for the enemy. Yet this is precisely what a large proportion of them are doing. Whether it is
there can be only one conclusion drawn by America's enemies in Iraq: that the US is fast developing a resolute will ... to lose. That it is only a matter of months before American public opinion - not Iraq's deadly minority of Saddamites, Ba'athists, Al Qaeda groups, local and foreign jihadists, Sunni and Shi'ite gangs, common criminals, hangers-on and dead-enders - will cause America to withdraw, to in effect declare defeat and retreat. This conclusion may not be true - I hope it isn't and clearly Mr Bush and the military under its new commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, don't believe its true. But it can only strengthen the resolve of their enemies and encourage them to wait out the surge. And that's what the General thinks too. In turn, any boost in morale for the enemies must inevitably lead to more American casualties. Vietnam was not remotely a military defeat. In 1975, America cut and ran and deserted its friends and broke its promises solely because American public opinion developed an indomitable will to lose. Ho Chi Minh marched into the South, tens of thousands died in the resultant purge, and Vietnam remains to this day a Communist dictatorship, albeit more benign and competent than it once was. Is America today developing and renewing a similar will to lose in Iraq? If so, all of us here in the west are in danger of paying a terrible price.
Antidisestablishmentarianism Not Yet
Dead Britain's' Equality Act of 2006 is a piece of legislation pushed into being under EU pressure. Its laudable aim is to outlaw discrimination towards people on grounds of - listed in this order - age, disability, gender, sex-change, race, religion, belief or sexual orientation. (The order is interesting. Is there an implied hierarchy that values my aged transgenderism over your one-legged voodoo?). On a general level, there is nothing much controversial about the bill, which was passed with ease. But, as always, the devil is in the detail. The devil in this case is the issue of child-adoption by gays: the law as it stands makes it illegal to refuse to hand a child over for adoption if the sole reason is that the prospective parents are gay. The Catholic church, which handles a third of Britain's thousands of adoptions, has, in a rare bout of courage, denounced this part of the legislation, and said that in the absence of a derogation, it will close down its adoption agencies rather than comply. The Church of England quickly followed suit, as did a few Muslim leaders. They all make the point that, to them, homosexual practices are sinful and provide an unsuitable backdrop for bringing up children. Even many atheists, for whom the concept of sin does not exist, might however agree with the second part. The Cabinet, with the exception of the prime minister whose wife is a Catholic and the doughty Opus Dei diehard Ruth Kelly, have all declared - including even the Catholic heavyweight John Reid - that the churches will get no exemption. When I was small, the longest word I knew (but couldn't spell or understand) was antidisestablishmentarianism, which I eventually learnt meant wanting the state to remain wedded to the Church (of England); a desire for some continued theocracy you might say. Well, other than the Head of State being also the chief of the Church and not being allowed to marry a Catholic, that's clearly a lost cause in the UK - for the moment anyway. If you ever doubted the separation of Church and State, the Cabinet's determination to stampede the Christian churches is the definitive statement. But will it prevail; can it win a confrontation? This depends on whether the churches - particularly the Catholics - will continue to be strong on the issue. That means that when, for example, a Catholic adoption agency is first confronted with the possibility of having to assign a child to gays, it must either dissolve itself, as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Catholics' boss in England and Wales, has threatened, or else deliberately ignore and flout the law as Archbishop Mario Conti in Scotland has threatened. This will lead to a classic confrontation of values and discrimination hierarchies. Will the British government be brave enough
The church will argue it is acting in accordance with its own sincerely-held beliefs and teachings, and claim that to prevent it from doing so is to discriminate against it and its members on purely religious grounds, itself a breach of the 2006 Equality Act. And note that the Act places religion ahead of sexual orientation in the list of things that are discrimination-worthy. This would be a hugely polarising issue, which regardless of the eventual outcome, could not fail to make the government look foolish. Yet simply to succumb to the church's defiance will make it look pretty stupid also. It really cannot win, but the longer the controversy goes on the worse it will look. (Mr Blair's deferral of full implementation of the Equality Act by the churches until 2009 is merely kicking the issue into touch until after he leaves office.) That's why Mr Blair's cabinet should take a leaf out of Bertie Ahern's book, and without delay grant the churches the derogation they are seeking. (It won't be the only exemption: as far as I know I will still be ineligible, on gender grounds, to join the Women's Institute). Last month, Ireland's Taoiseach faced his own religious row when a heavyweight parliamentary and cabinet committee chaired by his own party (amazingly, the “Child Protection Committee”) proposed to lower the age of consent from 17 to 16. He initially supported this, but the Catholic and Protestant churches immediately expressed alarm, not because of church teaching but on morality grounds, a concept very few dare float in today's non-judgmental times. Mr Ahern, famously “the most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all”, knew an elephant trap when he saw one and promptly backtracked. After a few blushes and a bit of bravado, the issue quickly died out. Antidisestablishmentarianism is not yet quite dead in Ireland, and may well revive in Britain once the adoption row gets properly underway.
Sports Careers Ending with a Thump
The prophetic (though non-Gallic) George Orwell What is it about major sports stars with a Gallic flavour who want to kill their careers with a macho display of their donnybrook skills? Eric Cantona, for several years football captain of France and star of Manchester United, set the pace in 1995 when he kung-fu kicked spectator Matthew Simmons, then punched him a few times for good measure, because he had apparently made an insulting remark.
Mr Cantona earned a hefty fine, a nine-month ban and narrowly escaped a prison sentence. He was reviled for ever more, his professional career never fully recovered and a couple of year later it was over. Then, last year, it was Zinedine Zidane, another captain of France, who at the pinnacle of his career, played in the the World Cup final against Italy. Then, in the last ten minutes of the contest, with victory still a distinct possibility, he assaulted Italy's Marco Materazzi with a vicious head-butt for all to see, knocking him to the ground in pain.
The resultant red card ended in shame the previously illustrious career of Mr Zidane. Now it's the turn of Trevor Brennan, a redoubtable Irish rugby professional, who is currently a star with Stade Toulousain, arguably France's finest club. He holds ten Irish caps, two Heineken cup medals (the only Irishman to do so), a number of all-Ireland AIB championships medals, and has many other rugby accomplishments. Off the ball, he runs a successful Irish pub in Toulouse, De Danú, and writes regular contributions to newspapers about rugby life in France.
Aged 33, his stellar career is in the process of ending in similar
disgrace.
Likewise, his career has now effectively ended in disgrace, with a fine, a ban and possible legal action for the assault(s). He later said that his attack on Mr Bamford was provoked when Ulster supporters called his mother a “whore”, an unusual epithet. My guess is that they called him a “bastard”, which post-factum he has liberally and literally reinterpreted as an insult to his mother. Of course this kind of brouhaha is what makes French sport so much more interesting. Things that go thump in a fight.
The Qatar Masters golf tournament that took place last week produced an interesting, little-reported whimsy. The prize for a hole-in-one at the 17th hole (normally the 8th, as the pros play the nines in reverse order) was to be a 26-foot motor cruiser worth $150,000, which would be put on display by floating it in the duck pond over which the players have to hit. Just before the tournament, the boat was gingerly lowered into the water, but someone had forgotten to insert the bungs, and the bilge pumps didn't work, so the boat simply started to sink. Only an alert crane driver saved the day (and the boat) by putting the crane hastily into reverse before irreparable damage was done.
Tony in Doha, the keen-eyed observer who reported this story, reckoned it was a case of “a hole in the hole-in-one”. No-one won it, by the way.
Week 144's Letter to the Press Just one lonely letter this week, and not published.
- - - - - - - - - - U S i n I R A Q - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “Whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field, and those on their way ... Let us find our resolve and turn events toward victory.” George Bush, in his State of the Union address to Congress
Typical responses of
naysayers, respectively - - - - - - - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “It would be easy to blame the junior officers' conduct in dealing with various informants and indeed they are not blameless. However, they could not have operated as they did without the knowledge and support at the highest levels of the RUC and PSNI.” The redoubtable
Nuala
O'Loan, Northern Ireland's police ombudsman,
Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable since 2002, Quote: “Is it wrong that a prisoner who might be in for a long stay, that they [sic] might get out on humanitarian and welfare grounds, that they [sic] might get out for an hour for a Communion or for a Confirmation or for the Baptism of their child?” Ireland's Taoiseach
Bertie Ahern,
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ISSUE #143 - 21st January 2007 [372]
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Darwinism:
Not Just About Animals and Plants I'm still ploughing my way through Richard Dawkins' “The God Delusion”, which I must say is wonderfully written. His big thing, and answer to all theocratic and creationist arguments, is Darwinism, Charles Darwin's 1859 theory by which all creatures great and small, not to mention plant life, have evolved over millennia through nature's relentless and merciless selection of the fittest. But Darwinism need not be confined to living things. It also explains modern technology, for instance. Every component of every bit of it has come about through the steady improvement of what lay before. Just one simple example. I am using Microsoft's FrontPage 2003 to prepare this post. It's not an invention from nothing: it is an improvement on the two versions I used previously, which came out in 2000 and 1997. Like every other industrial product, it's evolutionary. If we go back far enough there will be a link to the proverbial wheel of our ancestors. Likewise, Darwinism explains much in the arrangement of human affairs.
And quel surprise. Those open societies are the same ones that deliver most wealth to their citizens, and the source of their openness is, of course, democracy. When it is the people who elect their governments, and can get rid of them, the politicians in those governments have to be able to back up their intentions and decisions with hard facts and arguments. There is a limit to what they can hide and get away with hiding. When they make errors, they need to correct for them or they won't remain in government for very long. They in turn demand openness from those doing business in their jurisdictions, in terms of providing reliable data both for taxation purposes and for their shareholders. Thus, if businesses don't make a profit and don't learn from their mistakes, their managers don't remain in position for very long. That old business mantra, “put it right or I'll find someone else who will” remains as powerful an incentive to take difficult decisions as it ever was. The net effect of this openness in democratic societies is continual improvement on prior practices, manifested in continual growth. This is pure Darwinism, survival of the fittest, ever adapting and evolving to meet an ever changing environment. And it's the reason for the slower growth and/or lower wealth levels of closed, undemocratic societies. And it also explains why the armed forces of democratic countries are also the world's most powerful - America, Britain, France, Israel, Australia - even though less numerous than those of say China and North Korea. Because they too have to operate in the glare of openness, which obliges their commanders to constantly improve or else find another means of livelihood. Israel, for example, is still smarting over the inconclusive end to last summer's war in (not against) Lebanon. Its previous wars have all ended in decisive victories, which earned it a reputation of invincibility for its first 58 years. Its failure to meet its 2006 war aims of
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