America Teams Up With Al Qaeda Against Christians in Syria

The first mass at Mar Elias Church in Qusayr, Syria after a year and a half of being occupied by the so-called Free Syrian Army.  This is the ragtag group of terrorists that Obama, McCain, and other assorted anti-Christian leaders of our country want to support with arms.

Syrian blogger Maridosa asks, “So I guess our churches in Syria were oppressing the people so badly that they have to be burnt down.”  She makes many good points and expresses genuine and understandable frustration and hostility to the so-called West that is trying to help an extremist group of outsider terrorists take over Syria.  The West has not been this far off the mark of justice since the idiotic campaign against Serbia in Kosovo. 

I feel more and more alienated from my own country and government, like a stranger living in a land subject to enemy occupation.

Sliding Scale

Notice this article.   It says that “Army officials plan to complete gender-neutral standards for the Ranger course by July 2015. Army Rangers are one of the service’s special operations units, but many soldiers who go through Ranger training and wear the coveted tab on their shoulders never actually serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment. To be considered a true Ranger, soldiers must serve in the regiment.”

Such “gender neutral standards” exist now. They’re the legacy standards that apply only to men in these all male units.  There is no need to make new standards; we can just apply the old standards to everyone.  They’re talking about rewriting standards, even as they say standards won’t be lowered. 

If you lower them across the board, you allow women and also lower qualified men to achieve a formerly prestigious position.  This will happen in order to prevent a 99.9% washout rate for women, such as we’ve seen with the entry of female Marines to the Infantry Officers Course.  The existing high standards that have worked for years are inherently nondiscriminatory and gender neutral, as they only applied until now in order to choose between one man and another.  Any real standards will discriminate between the weak and the strong.  And any real standards will have a hugely disproportionate impact on women, as their bodies, physiology, and physical strength and endurance are very different on average from men. 

Lowering standards and applying them to both sexes is how police and fire departments have ruined themselves to accommodate age and sex discrimination suits.  This is also how the military has allowed so many women into its ranks; in boot camp and beyond, they have much lower physical fitness requirements.  This entire policy is not about military effectiveness, but about feminist fantasies derived from movies, literature, and ignorance of basic science.  These people are working for an imaginary future utopia where there is physical equality of the sexes.

What is the goal here other than the destruction of military effectiveness and the male pride and competition on which it depends? It’s not like anyone can reasonably say our SF and male-only combat arms are somehow ineffective.  Indeed, they, more than support units, have maintained much of their elan and effectiveness in spite of the creeping political correctness of the Pentagon.  Truly, it is their higher standards that have much to do with this pride and effectiveness, and this is what is in the process of being destroyed by cowardly and treasonous leadership. 

Let’s not forget, the destructiveness of this initiative is two fold, going beyond its direct impact on combat effectiveness, to include also the destruction of the leadership ranks’ self-respect and integrity, which are ground down by the conspiracy of silence promoted by the politically correct culture of today’s military.

A Few Thoughts on Syria

We are arming al Qaeda-aligned rebels in Syria.  We are doing this because Bashar al Assad is supposedly a bad guy and now we are told there is a cassus belli in that he may have used chemical weapons.

Was it OK, by contrast, when the rebels massacred a Shia village earlier this week or shot government soldiers in cold blood and posted it on youtube?  Under what principle is it worse for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons than it is for the rebels fighting that government to engage in numerous, intentional, very brutal violations of the law of war?

One or another side’s tactics does not logically tell us that we ought to choose a side and go to war.  It matters a great deal what each of the sides are fighting for.  And it is even more important to assess whether assisting one or the other side is in our interest.  There is always the option of neutrality.  It should be adopted in the vast majority of cases.

Assad is no great guy.  He, like most Middle Eastern dictators, has little regard for the rule of law, has enriched himself at the expense of the public, has used disproportionate violence against his opponents, supported our enemies in Iraq, and has associated with Hezbollah, which is undeniably a terrorist group.  That said, he has led a moderately prosperous, orderly, and tolerant regime that is multireligious, protective of Christians, and otherwise stable and predictable. We’ve seen in recent years similar dictators deposed in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt with totally unpredictable results that are clearly worse than the status quo ante.  We can deal with dictators; we cannot manage anarachy.  Even if Assad deserves to be toppled–and I am doubtful of this–what business is it of ours to sign on with a rebel group that is even more hostile to our nation and its principles?

One may wonder why Russia has become so involved with this conflict, supplying sophisticated arms and a great deal of diplomatic support to Syria.  Two reasons seem clear.  Russia, like the US, has carried on some of its Cold War alliances out of habit, such as its friendly relations with Cuba and North Korea.   More important, Russia  is acting as the protector of Orthodox Christians throughout the world.  This is in line with Samuel Huntington’s thesis in Clash of Civilizations and explains at least a portion of Russia’s foreign policy. This was the chief reason for its support of Serbia during the Kosovo affair, for example.

Why this would be so in Syria is not readily apparent, as the Alawite minority ruling group is a subgroup of Shia Islam.  But there is a pretty obvious explanation.  The Alawaite Ba’athist regime in Syria, like Saddam’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq, grew out of a secular ideology and historically has found its greatest support in a hodgepodge of ethnic and religious minorities. These minorities are all scared of the numerical majority Sunnis and their increasing extremism.  In Syria, the Sunni extremists are part of the broader Salafist/Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam that finds its most militant expression in al Qaeda.

Thus, we have a war with secular and religious minorities (Christians, Shias, Alawites, Druze etc.) on one side, who favor law and order and the devil they know, and, on the other side, fanatical Sunni extremists aligned with increasingly irrelevant secular enemies of the regime. The rebel platform is essentially one of genocide and religious totalitarianism.  This is what we are supporting, and this is undeniably worse than what Assad has delivered throughout his time as leader, in spite of himself, because of the coalition nature of his minority support and the type of governance that flows naturally from such a coalition.

America and Reagan were criticized for “arming bin Laden” during the fight against the Soviet client state in Afghanistan.  This criticism always struck me as pretty stupid and facile.  It’s like saying we were incredibly wrongheaded in World War II to support the Soviet Union, whom we later opposed, in order to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  Things change.  Coalitions come and go. There was no easy way to predict what exactly would come of the anti-Soviet rebels back when there was no Taliban or al Qaeda and, more important, it was worth it at the time to contribute to the devolution of the Soviet regime, even when some risks were apparent.

Whether that criticism of US policy has any merit, it surely is absolutely ridiculous to arm al Qaeda-aligned rebels simultaneously when we’re fighting a war with such people. There is no need for a crystal ball, unlike the 1980s support of the Afghan mujaheddin.  The better analogy would be if the US had adopted a schizophrenic policy during World War II of  aligning with Nazi Germany, while we were fighting Imperial Japan, even as the two remained allies themselves.

Let’s not forget what the real Benghazi scandal is.  Libya spun out of control after the US and European powers in 2011 undertook a totally lawless campaign there, a campaign without UN Security Counsel or Congressional authorization.   The rebels killed Qadaffi in cold blood, when they were not killing black Africans allied with the government.  Soon Libya, like Syria today, became a magnet for the “jihad tourists,” who undoubtedly could not resist the American target. Learning nothing of the very recent past, we’re now going to arm al Qaeda rebels because the regime they are fighting against used one among many nasty weapons in what is invariably the most nasty of wars:  a civil war.

The law of war is important, as is respect for the rights of civilians and other noncombatants.  But violations of the law of war alone are not a reason to go to war.  This is doubly so when the so-called good guys are just as guilty of violating the law of war as those whom we now aim to oppose.  Most important, the people we are proposing to support with arms, in addition to fighting atrociously, are fighting for a goal that is fundamentally atrocious:  Islamist totalitarianism and mass murder of  the Assad regime’s supporters. 

For a guy who appeared to have some sensible, nonideological instincts to oppose a great deal of military intervention during the 2008 campaign, Obama has shown himself to be as deeply wedded to the Washington DC interventionist consensus as anyone before him.  Indeed, he has apparently doubled down in his recent elevation of the interventionist Samantha Power to the post of UN ambassador.

We find the answer to this apparent contradiction in Obama’s lifelong leftism.  Obama is not essentially a pacifist, but rather an anti-American leftist.  He most favors wars that have nothing to do with America’s interest. In the liberal imagination, such wars are far preferable to wars where strategic goods like oil or commerce may be affected, as these interventions are marked by purity of intention.  Thus, he proposed to fold up the tents and scale back the war on al Qaeda earlier this week, even as he propels our forces into messy civil wars in Libya, Egypt, and Syria.  Worse, Obama is willing not only to ignore America’s interest in these cases, but to work directly contrary to it by arming al Qaeda-aligned rebels in the name of “humanitarian war.”

This is more than misguided do-gooderism.  This is treachery that knows no bounds, as it is no ordinary betrayal of the common good, but rather a treachery that imagines itself as a cosmopolitan, universalist morality that transcends parochial and discriminatory notions of mere national interest.

Everyone’s Got an Obamaphone Now!

I confess a bit of instinctual resistance to this mass government spying on phone records.  On the other hand, I don’t believe it’s necessarily unjustifiable.  I’d like to hear more how it was used, what was gained, what safeguards are in place.

I have to laugh at the Obama administration on account of it, though. This is true blue schadenfreude.  First, he has denied we have an ongoing war on al Qaeda, when, in fact, that’s the only reason such a system could really be justified.  Second, he and his supporters were so incredibly self righteous about the war, about GITMO, and about civil liberties during the 2008 campaign, it’s rather plain to see now that this was all a pose, at least for Obama himself, as he has done almost nothing to scale back the national security state and related apparatus erected during the Bush administration and even undertook the Libya fiasco without congressional or UN authorization.  The man recognizes no limits.  Finally, when read in light of all the other scandals going on, it’s a reminder that government power is a serious thing, an easily abused thing, and while I’m not necessarily against such a system of metadata collection on principle, I am particularly suspicious about how such a small, venal, contemptuous man like Obama and his hateful, anti-American, leftist followers could possibly not abuse such power, as they have abused the intrinsically dangerous power of the DOJ, the IRS, and much else.

So, while I wouldn’t trust Obama as the head waiter at a restaurant, at the same time, I realize people doing any important job worth doing need a certain amount of power to get it done.  But there is no doubt we should be suspicious of any new and invasive federal involvement in our lives, even if it may ultimately be permissible to prevent mass murder.

The Power to Declare You Crazy

I originally wrote this in 2009.  Seems timely again.

One worrisome aspect of greater government involvement in health care is the politicization of health care, which would allow the government indirectly to punish critics, oddballs, and any others that are deemed undesirable.  Obamacare is nothing short of giving the government the power to destroy the lives of individuals without any due process whatsoever through the hazy and easily manipulated realm of “psychological institutionalization.”

This might appear, at first, kind of paranoid.  This is America, after all.  But it’s not unprecedented.  The Soviet Union declared political dissidents as mentally ill rather than having formal charges pressed through the criminal justice system.  Even in that sorry regime, it was easy for state evil to fly more easily under the radar in the medical field rather than in traditional law enforcement. The Soviet Union’s doctors locked decent men up for many years in mental wards. The state-paid psychologists did the bidding of the Communist Party in the end.

In the Soviet Union, where the government was the sole employer, the notion of professional independence had disappeared.  The state swallowed up every group or institution that might provide some locus of resistance–the wealthy, private property, private industry, free speech, education, labor unions, professional guilds, and the Orthodox Church.  In these circumstances, lone individuals had very little power to stop the state’s destruction of private life and were often themselves deemed “difficult” individuals suffering from mental illness.  All in the name of creating a socialist utopia.  The same trend of increasing government power over our lives is underway in the United States today.

It may be objected that there is a strong culture of professional independence and concern for patient welfare in the American regime.  How viable is this alleged protection?  For starters, whatever ethic prevails today depends on the about-to-be-destroyed system of fee-for-service, which will be eroded to nothingness under the influence of Obama’s “government option.”  Obamacare will require government approval for payments to doctors for the majority of patients and further encourage conformity to government-dictated “best practices.” It may go something like this:  “Well, you doctors can do whatever you like doctor, but we’ll only pay for X, Y, and Z. Govern yourself accordingly.”

Even today, it’s not so clear that the purported ethic of physician responsibility provides effective protection for patients.  Drug companies, for instance, have created a serious financial incentive for doctors to prescribe particular drugs to patients, regardless of their effectiveness, their own lack of expertise in psychological illnesses, or the desirability of therapies that do not involve mind-altering drugs.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of mental health. Hitherto unknown diseases like “shyness” now are declared sicknesses that require expensive drug treatments.  Primary care physicians with no time for time-consuming counseling instead hand out Prozac and Paxil like candy canes.  According to Forbes, “We now spend more on mood-altering drugs for our children, including antidepressants, than we spend on antibiotics.” This is a scandal.

We have also witnessed psychiatrists in particular gladly assist the military, the police, and industrial organizations with an eye towards institutional goals like effective interrogation, screening of employees, and the creation of systems that promote worker productivity. Institutionalization of people was once the norm, as too is a habit of experimentation, including in the abuses of lobotomies in the middle 20th Century right here here in the United States.  Patient welfare is secondary in all of these well established practices, and the proximity of the abuses should give pause to those that call critics “paranoid.”

What historical or ethical limit would prevent careerist doctors from also engaging in punitive diagnoses of “authoritative personalities” and labeling conservative “sickos” under Obamacare?  What would prevent the creation of new diagnoses such as “homophobia” or pathological conservatism?  After all, such politicized definitions of mental health and long-term involuntary incarceration of political dissidents happened under the long-standing socialist medical regime in history, that of the former Soviet Union.

The world is more politically correct than ever.  To a great extent, we’ve become desensitized to the brainwashing and indoctrination of liberal group-think in corporate and academic settings.  Why wouldn’t medicine also be abused?  From diversity seminars to the scandalous sub rosa euthanasia that takes place in hospices to the anti-life practice of abortion, the potential oppressiveness of liberals knows no boundaries, because it’s not limited by the conscience:  it imagines itself to be good and promoting the good of all; therefore, dissent can be dismissed and classified as an expression of hate, racism, and, most sinisterly, “sickness.”

We must consider all the possibilities of evil under the Obamacare regime.  The potential abuses of Obamacare will not be spelled out in the plan.  Instead, the plan must be reviewed critically in light of the times, the dilapidated state of medical ethics, and the sorry history “repressive psychology” in the world’s longest-running experiment of government-run healthcare.

Bush at War

I just started reading Bob Woodward’s Bush at War written in 2002.  It has been sitting on my bookshelf maybe 10 years.  It detailed the initial planning and response to the 9/11 attacks.  It’s the type of book I like to read long after the events have passed.  There is more time for perspective, reflection, a cooling of emotions, and insight into how events and predictions ultimately transpired. 

I do not harbor illusions about Bush.  He and his presidency were a mixed bag.  On the good side he was in that moment decisive, clear thinking, and aggressive in dealing with al Qaeda.  He also is very human and connected to the American people and their anxieties in the weeks after the attack.  His iconic image and words on the top of the rubble of the World Trade Center were moving then and remain so.  On the bad side, he later allowed himself to allow his thinking to be transformed from an instinctual sense of vengeance and national self defense to the utopian idea that we could transform the Middle East by expanding democracy and addressing all of the other intractable problems in the region, such as Iraq and its alleged WMDs.  In doing so, al Qaeda and the worldwide jihad movement continued to fester, and we unwittingly empowered Iran. Bush also remained somewhat abstract in his concept of “the country” and the respect due to Islam.  This prevented him from closing the borders, which would have been the most effective means of stopping Islamic jihad power projection, and his failure to look deeper into the reality of Islam allowed him to be hoodwinked by the backslapping of the Saudis, who continually play both sides of the fence.

Bush appears in these early pages as a clear thinking and sympathetic figure, thrust into a dilemma that he had not been prepared for by his earlier life experience. One notable difference from Obama, made manifest in the latter’s recent “we are not really at war” speech, is that Bush understood this attack was an act of war to be addressed with military means.  This seems obvious now, but it was far from obvious at the time, when the prevailing ethos on dealing with al Qaeda was one of a law enforcement problem.  Bush later allowed his war footing to be chipped away by the interventions of the Supreme Court and the legion of “human rights lawyers” who gummed up what was supposed to be the streamlined detention regime of Guantanamo Bay.  Worse, he allowed the mission to lose focus and expand exponentially to one of   in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  That said, his initial approach, one of vengeance and one of speed was memorable and correct. 

What is noteworthy about Obama’s recent speech is its certitude.  He declares, “So that’s the current threat — lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists.  This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.  But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11. ”  Is this true?  We hope it is.  But the pre-9/11 threats did not necessarily give notice of what we faced on 9/11.  Further, the homegrown radicals may be capable of great and spectacular violence if they simply are able to get some leadership, such as Mohammad Atta provided . Finally, even if the threat has diminished, that is no reason to let up on terrorists and their networks and the states that sponsor them.  The Pakistans and Saudi Arabias of the world need to remain in fear of more than an unenforceable US indictment.  Why tie our own hands?

France and England fought the 100 Years War.  Central Europe was embroiled in the 30 Years War.  The Indian Wars stretched across nearly the entire 19th Century of American History. A slippery enemy requires patience and persistence.  But Obama, out of a combination of naivite and wishful thinking, simply thinks declaring victory is a substitute for actual victory.  I hope he does not have to eat his words, but the 30 year track record of Islamic extremism against the West does not bode well for his sanguine and meandering words.

How Do We Benefit From Immigration?

One of Tamerlan’s buddies in Florida was apparently involved in the murder of some buddies of theirs up in Boston, was spoken to by FBI, pulled a knife, and got summarily wasted.  Why do we let these worthless people in this country?  What kind of “refugee” goes back home every few years to hang out and talk jihad? What was America missing before it let in Chechen terrorists, Saudi students, and gazillions of uneducated Mexican peasants?

Oh yes, Diversity!