The Bosque Boys

A quote from the opening of Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941-45 by Evan Thomas:

In 1943, American sailors and soldiers entering the harbor at Tulagi, the front-line U.S. Navy base in the South Pacific, passed a billboard telling them to

Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs!

The billboard was signed by Adm. William F. Halsey, Jr., their commander.

Whatever the political goal of war, the form of war always is the same: kill the enemy. Inflicting death is the harsh essence of the conduct of war. Somehow between 1943 and today the American public seems to have forgotten this elemental truth. Wars cannot be clean and neat. They of necessity will be bloody, messy, and painful.

When we went into Iraq, war was the reality we chose. We should not be surprised. No amount of precision munitions will change the basic reality: people will die. Ours and theirs. We want to kill many, many more of theirs, and must to win. Any attempt to lay down Rules of Engagement based on legal conventions will endanger our troops and victory itself. We will, as a nation, accept the risk of certain basic conventions--no execution of those who actively surrender or who are wounded beyond ability to fight--but cannot please "world opinion," whatever that means, by accepting more restrictive conventions. War is what it is. See the earlier post on Rules of Engagement in Iraq.

In a previous post, I pointed out the work of CAIR in portraying Muslims as victims of civil rights infringements, and linked to an earlier post with some statistics to refute CAIR claims. In the comments section, Farmer seemed to dismiss CAIR's efforts.

Katherine Kersten, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, presents the reason we should be concerned--legislation to prohibit security personel from paying any more attention to Muslims than to Jehovah's Witnesses. Story here. Link from Little Green Footballs.

Here's a portion of the article:
One piece of legislation in the works is the End Racial Profiling Act. It is an important priority of Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, whose district includes one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. Conyers introduced the bill in 2004 and 2005, but it went nowhere. Now the alignment of forces may be changing. Conyers will probably be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when the new Democratic-controlled Congress convenes next month. Nancy Pelosi, who called herself a "proud" cosponsor of the Profiling Act in 2004, is the incoming House speaker. And in January, Ellison, who represents the district where the imams incident occurred, will take his seat in Congress. The act, although it doesn't as yet impose large penalties, would bar any federal, state or local law enforcement agency from "relying, to any degree, on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion in selecting which individuals to subject to routine or spontaneous investigatory activities." That would include questioning, searches and seizures.

One of the act's central features is its definition of illegal profiling. Under it, if airport security personnel question passengers who are disproportionately Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent, this alone would constitute a presumptive violation of the law. Law enforcement agencies would bear the burden of proving that discrimination was not the cause.

Get this? Security personel would be forced to regard Muslims as no more likely to bomb anything than Buddhists would be. I must have forgotten how ecumenical the 9/11 terrorists were, or how many Sikhs have flocked to Al Qaeda, or the growing number of Hindus in Hamas. This is politically-correct b*llsh*t that any 5th grader would be able to see through.

So, what will Pelosi and company do? We know where her heart is. She was a cosponsor of this legislation in 04. But, if she has any political sense, she will listen to her head and prevent this legislation from seeing the light of day. If the Dems are not perceived as strong against terrorism, then 08 could be a problem. I suspect that Hillary will not want to see this legislation making headlines, even if it fails.

Farmer had an earlier post devoted to "America's Iron Lady." I would like to call your attention to this tribute by Bob Tyrrell on Jewish World Review. I especially was intrigued by this paragraph.

It was at Jeane Kirkpatrick's funeral this week that I finally heard of some good achieved by the United Nations amidst all its dithering and graft. According to Jeane's pastor, during her momentous tenure as our U.N. ambassador, Jeane was so wobbled by the international body's cynicism and moral emptiness that she forsook years of atheism and became a person of faith. Mind you, she had always had an abundance of secular faith before President Ronald Reagan tapped her for the United Nations. Her faith in the American way of life, its freedom, democracy and equality was as ardent as it was intelligently conceived. But after leaving the house of hustlers on the East River, she became deeply Christian; and religion gently informed all she thought and did thereafter.

I am reminded of others whose journeys of faith were undertaken because of rigorous intellectual honesty. ( Including the surgeon general Everett Koop, who finally agreed to attend a church one of the nurses kept inviting him to, just so she would stop the invitations. Attending this Presbyterian church he sat through the sermon disbelieving everything said. But, he could not figure out why he thought the sermon untrue. So, he went back, and back again, and eventually became a believer.)

Simone Weil, the French existentialist writer of the 1930s, wrote that to find God it is necessary to hold firmly to two disparate truths: the world does not make sense, and, we want the world to make sense. Both are true, but we tend to abandon one or the other. She wrote that by holding to both we create Space for God, into which he will come, if we wait. See her essay Waiting for God.

For more information on Weil, link from an admirer, and Susan Sontag's brilliant essay here.

Question: Do you believe "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?" Do you also believe "that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it?"

If you answer yes, please read the next paragraph. If you answer no, then how much of the Declaration of Independence do you affirm?

Question: does it not follow that many, many of the governments sending representatives to the United Nations are unjust and deserving abolition?

Question: that being the case, in what sense is any vote of the United Nations morally legitimate?

I think it is time to seek alternatives to the corrupt morass of despotism that is the United Nations. Kofi Annan has no more moral standing to lecture anyone than the average prison inmate, and maybe less.

We have had some discussion here and here about Muslims in the US playing the Victim Card. Organizations such as CAIR certainly understand how to use the rhetoric, and the courts, to portray themselves as victims of discrimination, attempting to put themselves into the line that includes freedom riders. Farmer has pointed out that such a policy will backfire with the American public, but apparently CAIR does not take advice from this website.

From Jihadwatch: linking to The Washington Times:

Muslim pilgrims urged to complain
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 13, 2006

American Muslims making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca are being encouraged to file civil rights complaints if they feel discriminated against by airlines.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), citing what it called the "airport profiling" of six imams removed from a recent flight, yesterday said Muslims traveling this month to the holy site in Saudi Arabia need to be aware of their rights.
"Given the increase in the number of complaints CAIR has received alleging airport profiling of American Muslims, we believe it is important that all those taking part in this year's hajj be aware of their legal and civil rights," said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman.

Full article.

Jihadwatch has a great response:

The Council on American Islamic Relations, apparently oblivious to the public relations disaster that their trumped up Flying Imams controversy is becoming for them, is pressing on, asking Muslims flying on their way to Mecca to lodge complaints against airlines if their complementary pretzels are stale.

Memo to Ibrahim Hooper: I hereby volunteer to fly to Mecca. I promise you I'll keep close tabs on the airline service, Ibrahim, and will give you a full report as soon as I get back. What's that? As a non-Muslim, I am forbidden to enter Mecca? Any practice of faith by a non-Muslim in Saudi Arabia could land me in a Saudi Arabian prison? What are you, some kind of a kafirophobe?

I mention the fact that non-Muslims cannot enter Mecca to put CAIR's civil rights mau-mauing into perspective. In no majority Muslim country in the world today do non-Muslims enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims; at very least they are forbidden to proselytize, while Muslims are not so forbidden. But CAIR, although it has not hesitated to speak out about affairs in other countries, has never spoken out against that fact. It is in this light that its persistent attempts to gain victim status for Muslims in the U.S., with all the privileges that come with that status in this politically correct and silly age, should be evaluated.

I don't think the Arab world understands compassion, civility, restraint, the same way we do. It seems that Arab culture interprets restraint as weakness. And, what it cannot respect it cannot befriend.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler links to this post on Blackfive by a NCO in Iraq on the negatives of our current Rules of Engagement.

I think we need to remember that on our own Western Frontier, the rule of law was not established among white settlers by late-twentieth-century-judicial procedure. Cow Towns and Mining Towns were tamed by "Wanted Dead or Alive," armed posses who shot first, and quick rope justice.

In the history of the English language, "outlaw" meant one who lived outside the rule of law and therefore outside the protection of the law; in other words, one who could be killed with impunity.

Paging General Sherman.

In the recent past I have taught US History Survey courses at a community college on the banks of the Bosque. (I still teach for them online, but now only do a course on Christian History and Traditions).

And I think I left out something important. In a two-semester survey course, I covered politics, territorial and economic expansion, arguments over and expansions of the concept and practice of "liberty," foreign relations (especially in the second semester), some cultural history, and probably a few other things. But, I hardly ever lectured on military history. I did hit a few basics for each war, but let the assigned reading (with lists of required People, Places, and Things for each chapter) carry the load. And, I knew full well that most of my students would read the main textbook haphazardly, if at all. They soon figured out that attendance on and attention to the lectures could earn them a B, without reading the main narrative text (with a bit of lucky guesswork, they might even manage an A).

I think I was wrong. (more below)

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Rush links to this BBC story that healthy newborn babies in the Ukraine may have been killed in order to harvest stem cells.

We'll perhaps know eventually if the story is accurate. But it is certainly possible. Once we view human beings as commodities, then anything becomes possible. See my earlier post.

Please consider this brief biographical essay in aid of our discussion of modern Republicanism. Perhaps this will jar my thinking into the twentieth century. Originally published as an entry in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia earlier this year.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969.

Immensely successful and popular as Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War, General Dwight Eisenhower vaulted onto the political stage after his homecoming and won a landslide victory in 1952 to become the thirty-fourth president of the United States (1953-1961). Affectionately called “Ike” by millions of Americans, Eisenhower secured an even more lopsided victory in his 1956 bid for reelection. President Eisenhower presided over a period of robust growth and “happy days” at home, and he steered American foreign policy through a series of global crises in an increasingly perilous bipolar postwar world. His statecraft cemented the strategy of “containment” as the fixed American response to the threat of Soviet expansion during the Cold War world.

Although he cast himself as a Republican committed to less government and more local control, Eisenhower drew sharp criticism from conservatives before, during and after his presidency. His low marks emanated from what detractors called his acceptance of “New Dealism,” his cozy relationship with big business, and a “deficient understanding of Communism.” Eisenhower supported two massive national public works projects, the Interstate Highway System and the St. Lawrence Seaway Act, both of which poured billions of federal dollars into internal improvements designed to promote commerce. For many conservatives, the Eisenhower circle was blindly committed to a market-based economy and society. They were gratuitously materialistic and far too willing to sacrifice tradition on the altar of capitalism. He also appointed arguably the most liberal Chief Justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren (although he later called it a “damn fool mistake”). In 1957, he boldly and unequivocally asserted federal supremacy over state rights when he dispatched the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce a federal court order desegregating Central High School. Eisenhower also ran afoul of the staunch anticommunist-wing of the Republican Party.

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In response to Gossenius's critique of the Republican Party:
Why I love the Grand Old Party. Part II.

Judicial Restraint: The Republican Party came to prominence railing against one of the most shameful Supreme Court decisions in American history: Dred Scott. Abraham Lincoln did not call the Taney court "activist" (according to one scholar, Arthur Schlesinger coined the term in 1947), but the Illinois Republican deemed the ruling unacceptably political and a vast overreach into policy making. When the Dred Scott decision seemed to extend the Constitutional right to own slaves into all federal territories, Lincoln charged that the Court usurped the democratic process. The Republican Party of today continues the tradition of advocating judicial restraint.

Of course, the courts are not apolitical or completely independent, and there are notable historical instances of Republican actions that seem to contradict "restraint" as a guiding principle. The Lochner era (roughly from the late-nineteenth century until the FDR appointees gained control of the Court) serves as an example of a Republican-dominated federal judiciary aggressively protecting business interests. A more recent example, the Republican majority on the Rehnquist Court ruled in favor of the plaintive in Bush v. Gore in 2000, which struck many as egregiously unrestrained. However, for the most part, the Republican Party prefers legislative solutions to major national questions rather than judicial interference in the democratic process, favoring local control via popular rule whenever possible. For example, consider issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and public religiosity. On the occasions when the Republican Party seeks to nationalize those sorts of issues, they tend to offer Constitutional amendments requiring super majorities of the American electorate rather than legal actions custom-designed to appeal to a judicial aristocracy.

Judicial Restraint is an important component in the Republican view of individual freedom and the role of government.

Please allow me another pause. In subsequent installments, I intend to reconcile the GOP small-government rhetoric with its penchant for internal improvement projects and assistance to business interests. Next up: Republican foreign policy. But you are invited, once again, to comment on my musings thus far.