The Soth will rise again

Hello again, beloved imaginary readers. Once again I am avoiding school work in order to shout into the ether. My previous post was a response to some comments left by a gentleman from Georgia who shares my name. He apparently read my post, and had some other thoughts. Following are his reply and mine:

Hello John: I still cannot see how Israel can dislodge another 1M Palestinians when the entire world except for the US and its minions are against it and the World Court has declared the wall to be illegal. If the Israelis had built the wall on their own territory, it would be a means of protection. By building where they have, it is just another move to expropriate land from the Paleastinians.

The lies that Bush told have caused the death of over 900 men now. I was able to use the internet beginning in the summer of 2002 to find the information that contradicted wha

[message abruptly ends]

John F.,

Thanks for responding, although I think part of your response was inadvertently cut off. I would be interested in seeing what you had to say next, so please feel free to re-post.

Here are my thoughts on what you wrote.

1. You seem to believe that Israel is in the process of dislodging an additional one million Palestinians. I can only assume you believe the cause to be the construction of Israel’s new security wall. I find this hard to believe, since there are only perhaps four million people living in the areas nominally governed by the Palestinian Authority.

(source: http://www.pnic.gov.ps/english/Population/Population_Increase.html)

Are a quarter of all Palestinians going to be made homeless by the wall? Here are some maps of the wall:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/fencemap.html

To me it appears that not much territory formerly under the Palestinian Authority is now on the Israeli side of the wall. Some is, but not much. Not enough to dislodge one million Palestinians. So after careful consideration, the one million homeless figure seems to be a Chomsky-style wild exaggeration.

2. You find it hard to understand how Israel can pursue policies which are opposed by many other countries, and which have been declared illegal by the World Court. This is very easy for me to understand, because when faced with a choice between security and international popularity, states usually choose security. The wall may be unpopular, but it has reduced the number of suicide bombings carried out by Palestinian terrorists. I’m sure some Israelis have been persuaded that the wall is bad because of the World Court’s decision, but my guess is that this number is dwarfed by the number of Israelis who have been convinced that the court itself is bad.

3. You worry that the wall allows Israel to expropriate property from the Palestinian Authority. I agree that this might happen. But we already know that the wall has reduced the number of people killed and wounded in the conflict. That’s a fact, and it holds true for Palestinians as well as Israelis. I think that outweighs the worries about possible future land annexes.

Further, the reason the wall is being built is because the Palestinian Authority rejected peaceful negotiation as the way to settle the conflict. They didn’t like the border that they were offered by the Israelis. They decided to return to fighting, hoping that they would be able to make some gains t

Why did the Israelis put up the wall? Because of Palestinian suicide bombing. Why did the Palestinian Authority support suicide bombings? Because they did not like what they were being offered as a result of peaceful negotiation, and they hoped that terrorism would make the Israelis back down and offer them a better deal.

So, if some time in the future the security wall ends up being the border between Israel and an independent Palestinian state, the Palestinians have only themselves to blame. The Palestinian Authority was offered more expansive borders in negotiations, and they rejected them because they thought they could get better by fighting for it. Well, they fought, and they lost, and future Palestinians will have to live with the consequences of Arafat’s choice. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

4. You say that Bush lied, and that nine hundred men are dead because of it. I assume you are referring to the (roughly) nine hundred American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Again, I would like you to be specific: what lies has President Bush told? To be fair, you seemed to be heading in this direction when your letter cut off, so you must have a few particular lies in mind. Please write me again and tell me what they are.

But think about this first. John Kerry and George W. Bush had access to the same intelligence on Iraq, more or less. The two of them said more or less the same things about Iraq, its weapons, and the threats it posed. And John Kerry voted for the resolution authorizing George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq. Yet the people who say that Bush lied do not say that Kerry lied. Why not? He said the same allegedly false things about Iraq as President Bush. Then again, Senator Kerry believed those things were true when he said them, so it should not count as a lie. That sounds reasonable to me, but the same standard must apply to President Bush. He only lied if he knew what he was saying was false.

Simply put, both Bush and Kerry relied on the same information, and both men said the same things, so either both men acted in good faith or both men were liars. Which is it?

I look forward to your reply.

--THE HOUSE OF PAYNE

Republicans in soth Georgia

Greetings, imaginary readers. Had to respond to this comment from a gentleman from Georgia who shares my name:

John: We nearly have the same name. I was born in 1936. It was also interesting that you father was teaching at Sam Houston State in Texas. I was born in Tennessee and am kin To Sam Houston.
Your politics seem to fit with the Republicans in soth Georgia. I would have hoped that Chomsky would have have indoctrinated you by now. The US and Israel cannot treat the Arabs with total disregard for Arab life. As a Pol Sci major or Ph D candidate I would have expected you to realize that there will be no peace until we treat Arabs as we treat Jews.
At present the Republican party in the South is composed of the big R's- the rdenecks, the rich , the relious right, and the racists.
Dubya should have been impeached for the lies he has told to get us into a war that should never have been started. As a Vietnam vet with over 9 years in the service before being retired, I agree with John Kerry. Having seved in Can Tho, I could not believe the couage of the guys in Kerry's group. These guys were nuts to risk their lives every day. I just wish I had a rich Daddy to get me into the National Guard. I went to Yale on scholarship, not as a legacy. I was in debt when I graduated. I had to suceed as I did not have my family and the bin Laden family to bale me out everytime iI drilled a dry hoe.
Please rethink your positions. I voted for Dole in 1996. I believe I was right then. The young Bush is not only learning disabled, but he is psychotic. John Payne, Thomasville, GA

John,

You are perceptive enough to figure out my politics (even if only to lump me in with “the rdenecks [sic] ... and the racists”). So you can hardly be surprised that Noam Chomsky has so far failed to indoctrinate me. Chomsky is a professor at MIT, but he teaches linguistics, not political science. I have not read enough of his theories on language to comment intelligently on them, but I have read enough of his political writings to know that he is either an exceptionally poor researcher or a deliberate deceiver.

In his long career Chomsky has continually apologized for totalitarian Communist regimes while continually attacking this great country I love. The fall of the Soviet Union has not changed his tune. I attended one of his sermons as the war in Afghanistan was beginning. He not only predicted that millions would be killed (by starvation), but asserted that this was the true purpose of the American intervention. Anyone who can say such things is a great fool, or simply twisted. Either way, he is no friend of mine.

On the Palestinian question, I agree that the US and Israel can not behave with total disregard for Arab life. What would such behavior look like? Let us imagine. If Israel had no regard for the lives of Arabs, they would simply kill or expel all Arabs from the occupied territories, and from Israel itself. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs would die, and millions would be evicted from lands now controlled by the Palestinian Authority. As it is, the Israelis have put a wall between terrorists and their targets. This and other Israeli actions have succeeded in reducing the numbers not only of dead Jews, but dead Arabs. Are you incapable of seeing the difference between the hypothetical strategy outlined above and the actual strategy pursued by Sharon’s government?

Obviously I disagree with you about impeaching the president. I supported Clinton’s impeachment because he perjured (as is admitted in his autobiography) and obstructed justice. Bush has committed no crime of which I am aware. I do not believe that he knowingly told lies to get us into war. (If you have an example, I would like to hear it.) And I am glad we threw out Saddam Hussein and his goon squad. That man was a real psychotic, as were many of his thugs. Are you sorry they are gone?

For your service in Viet Nam, I thank you. Likewise, I thank Senator Kerry. President Bush’s service in the National Guard was less glamorous and less heroic, but no less honorable. Like those who were exempted from the draft through marriage or education, he has nothing to be ashamed of.

Good for you for finding success on your own. My grandfather started out as a shepherd and ended up as a college professor, thanks to his own hard work and to Providence. As you noted, Bush succeeded in large part thanks to his family. This is a less inspiring achievement, but neither major-party candidate in this election could be called a self-made man.

Please rethink your positions. I voted for Bush in 2000. I believe I was right then. I believe I am right now to support him again.

PS - Noam Chomsky is not only intellectually dishonest, but he is a nihilist, a Communist and an vicious anti-semite. And his slavish cult of dope-smoking, self-loathing teenage conspiracy theorists carries with it the oh-so-proletarian smell of unwashed feet.

--THE HOUSE OF PAYNE

Pause

Greetings, imaginary readers. As you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. Lots of reasons for that, I suppose, but the most obvious one is school. My professors informed me a few weeks ago that I have a lot more work to do on a particular project that I had believed to be complete. I'm going to be working on it all summer, curse their hides. Blogging may be sparse, or it may start up again as I get into a good groove with my school work. My apologies.

--HOUSE OF PAYNE

The Honest Blogger Quiz

I really ought to write down all the interesting thoughts I've been having since the conference I attended two weeks ago. But instead, here's a silly web meme.

1. Which political party do you typically agree with?

GOP.

2. Which political party do you typically vote for?

GOP.

3. List the last five presidents that you voted for.

2000 - Bush
1996 - Dole
1992 - in high school

4. Which party do you think is smarter about the economy?

Neither one seems able to resist the temptation to meddle with the economy. Likewise, neither seem able to resist the temptation to spend like crazy whenever they're in power. To my mind, the beginning of economic wisdom is restraint, which quality seems in desperately short supply these days.

5. Which party do you think is smarter about domestic affairs?

GOP. But I'm really more of a foreign affairs kind of guy.

6. Do you think we should keep our troops in Iraq or pull them out?

We stay until the job is done. Period.

7. Who, or what country, do you think is most responsible for 9/11?

Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda carried it out. The money came from lots of wealthy sheikhs, including Bin Laden himself. But the operatives were the product of a poisonous cultural climate cultivated by (1) the Wahabbis and other Islamist sects (Osama is a Salafi, not a Wahabbi, and (2) corrupt Middle Eastern states who made Israel and America bogymen to distract their impoverished, oppressed, and angry citizens. Authoritarian politics and extremist religion came together perfectly in Iran in 1979, and psychos like Osama and Mullah Omar have been trying to duplicate the combination ever since. Western statesmen have been slow to recognize and respond to the danger, but I do not blame them for not seeing it coming. I do blame those who want to run and hide now that we know what the danger is.

8. Do you think we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

The Iraq Survey Group has already found a (very) few such weapons, although certainly not in the quantities which anyone expected, or even close. Will we find more than this? Yes, including weapons which were spirited out of Iraq before we were able to start searching in earnest. But we will not find stockpiles (in Iraq or out) on the scale that we anticipated prior to the intervention.

9. Yes or no, should the U.S. legalize marijuana?

No way. (Sorry, dudes.)

10. Do you think the Republicans stole the last presidential election?

The election was too close to call. I admit that I would have been mad if the positions of Gore and Bush had been reversed and Gore had won after a decision from the Supreme Court. But recounting does not necessarily mean more accurate counting. The Gore campaign wanted to keep counting until one of the counts showed Gore as the winner, and then not stopping. The Bush campaign naturally thought that the counts that showed Bush as the winner should be the final counts. If the Supreme Court had not stepped in and declared one party or the other a winner, the recount would have gone on forever. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't theft.

11. Do you think Bill Clinton should have been impeached because of what he did with Monica Lewinski?

He was rightly impeached for breaking the law in order to cover up personal immorality. No one should be above the law, and those who execute the law have a special responsiblity to abide by it faithfully.

12. Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?

Perhaps. It depends on what is meant by a 'good' president. She's certainly smart and determined, she knows what she wants, and she's got a lot of political support. And she seems to be doing a pretty good job in the Senate, much to my surprise. But I don't like her politics, and you can count her scruples on one thumb. I wouldn't vote for her, but this country has had worse presidents.

13. Name a current Democrat who would make a great president.

I wish Tony Blair were an American and a Democrat, because he would be my first choice. Joe Leiberman shows a willingness to continue the fight against Islamist terror, which I like. Sam Nunn is also a serious thinker on foreign policy issues. And there are a few younger Democrats who appeal to me, although I am not sure that they are presidential material yet, including Evan Bayh, John Edwards, Jim Turner, and Jim Matheson.

14. Name a current Republican who would make a great president.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice! Also, Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell, and Mitt Romney. I also think Bobby Jindal is someone to watch for the future.

15. Do you think that women should have the right to have an abortion?

In a very few cases (the child was conceived through rape, the mother would likely die in childbirth, etc.), I think it should be an option. Otherwise, no. Most abortions in this country are not because of extreme and extenuating circumstances. They happen either because (1) the parents did not use contraceptives, or (2) the contraceptives failed. If they did not want a child and did not use contraceptives, they are both fools. But everyone who has sex should know that no contraceptive is 100% effective; all heterosexual sex carries the risk of pregnancy. That's the chance you take. If you can't afford to lose, don't gamble.

It's true that it is a hardship to raise an unplanned child, especially if the father does not help. And it's an inconvenience to experience pregnancy and go through the process necessary to give a child up for adoption. But I know plenty of people who were conceived accidentally, and I know lots of people who were raised by single mothers. I'm glad they're alive. And I bet their mothers are, too.

16. What religion are you?

Mormon.

17. Have you read the Bible all the way through?

I have read each of the books through at least once and most of them several times. I don't know that I have ever read the entire thing straight through from Genesis to Revelation.

18. What's your favorite book?

The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber. Pick this up and read it. Out loud. I read it whenever I need to rekindle my love of the English language.

19. Who is your favorite band?

I like a lot of bands.

20. Who do you think you'll vote for president in the next election?

Bush. I've already donated to his campaign.

21. What website did you see this on first?

Llama Butchers.

And now we're done!

--REDBEARD

Good old UN

Bummed out about Abu Ghraib and all that jazz? Well, buddy, have I ever got an idea for you! Let's get the UN to run Iraq! They'll do a great job! It'll be awesome!

A book by three current and former U.N. employees about peacekeeping operations portrays wild parties with alcohol and drugs, and convicts and mental-asylum inmates passing as soldiers.
...
In another section, the authors say the "peacekeeping troops" sent to Cambodia by Bulgaria were not really soldiers.
They write that the Bulgarian government, starved for hard currency, actually cut a deal with inmates, offering them pardons if they accepted the U.N. assignment. Bulgaria, in turn, received financial compensation from the United Nations for its troops.
"The Bulgarians wanted the money, but didn't want to send their best-trained troops. So ... they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: Put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months, you're free on return," the book says.
Scores of criminals accepted the offer, were given uniforms and became U.N. peacekeepers, the authors say.
Mr. Cain describes the Bulgarians as "a battalion of criminal lunatics [who] arrive in a lawless land. They're drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women and crash their U.N. Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency."
...
Without going into the merits of the accusations in the book, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard conceded that the United Nations does not have a system to "verify" the credentials of troops offered for peacekeeping.
"When it comes to formed military units, we rely on the donor country to give us professional soldiers. ... There is not a quality-control test, and units vary in the degree of their training from country to country, even from unit to unit," he said.

Wait. Wait a second. Did I say 'awesome'? I meant 'horrible.'

--JAN DEPAUW

Hooray for Mayor Daley!

On the road still. I am in Texas with my parents and my youngest brother, who is leaving in a few days to be a missionary. I won't see him again for two years, so I am spending some time with him to say farewell. I love being home except that they only have dial-up. Stupid dial-up. How did I ever tolerate it?

Anyway, just a quick note because I could not read this without taking a minute to pass it along.

Mayor Daley scolded Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry Tuesday for making a wisecrack about the bicycle accident that scraped the face, hands and knees of President Bush.

...Daley, who ripped the skin off his kneecap during a bicycle accident a few years ago, said the joke was disrespectful. "When someone falls . . . you should not wish ill upon anyone. It's not right. . . . You just don't do that. Let's have some respect for one another."

To Daley, Kerry's remark symbolized a hate-filled brand of politics the mayor has long despised.

"The thing I worry about in politics is all of these people hating one another [saying], 'I hate Kerry', 'I hate Bush.' I wish the former presidents -- Carter and Ford and Clinton and Bush -- would all get up and tell people, 'You may support candidates, but don't hate the other candidate.'

"You see too much hate. And I'll tell you one thing -- hate will turn on people. . . . When hate gets in politics, it's a very, very dangerous aspect."

(Thanks to Just One Minute for pointing this out.)

--JOHANNES CLERK

Second-hand news from the Sandbox

One of the women at the conference is married to a soldier ("Dave") who just returned two days ago from thirteen months in Iraq. Saturday night I spent quite a long time talking to this gentleman, and I thought it would be a good idea for me to record what he said. Of course, I cannot say that the things I have written here are correct beyond a shadow of doubt.

These are my secondhand recollections of this good man's opinions, so some error may have crept in either through either filter (him or me). All the same, I thought that there might be some among my imaginary readers who would find this information helpful in some way, and so I share.

1. We are not going to find a huge cache of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Dave was in the Iraq Survey Group, whose job it is to look for WMDs. This is also the group who dealt with the recently discovered artillery shell filled with GB (aka Sarin). The shell had been rigged as an improvised explosive device (IED) in a manner which, in Dave's opinion, meant that those who rigged it didn't know what was in the shell. This was why the agent failed to disperse properly. Combined with the age of the shell (and the agent) explains why the EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) crew who were first called in to deal with the shell were not seriously harmed. Dave does not blame President Bush but thinks that he, along with every other leader and intelligence agency in the western world, was deceived by Iraqi exiles who sold us a story that we wanted to believe. This goes to show that the media are not the only folks who sometimes fail to be adequately skeptical of "facts" that we want to believe are true.

2. Soldiers are not happy that they are being asked to stay in Iraq past the dates when they were originally told they were going to be home. They are dealing with it and doing their jobs, but many of them are beginning to wonder if they are ever going home.

3. We need more Civil Affairs people (and MPs) in the military. And the military needs to leave them alone and let them do their jobs. Right now the administration wants zero casualties, and so the CA guys are hampered by excessive security details. They would be more effective if they didn't have to take Bradleys wherever they went, but a few of them would probably get killed.

4. Garner's people loved him and thought he got screwed. Bremer doesn't pay as much attention to the military, and Dave does not expect that the move to two commands in Iraq will increase the coordination.

5. Iraqis and people in the region more generally don't care that much about Abu Ghraib. To Westerners, they complain, and loudly. Among themselves, however, it is not such a big deal. They know that standard treatment for prisoners in the region is often worse than the mistreatment alleged to have occurred in Abu Ghraib.

6. Almost all Iraqis are aiding the Coalition forces, either passively or actively. If it were not so, we would be losing fifty men every day. Insurgent attacks are often thwarted thanks to timely information from friendly locals. Example 1: A boy who plays soccer with the guards to a Coalition base goes home early one afternoon, explaining to the soldiers that his mother wants him home because there is going to be an attack later that day. Example 2: A soldier riding in a humvee on a patrol hears urgent shouts in Arabic. He looks for the source of the shouting and sees people yelling at him and pointing to three insurgents who are preparing to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at his vehicle. He quickly fires, killing one of them and injuring another. He escapes harm, as do the other soldiers in the humvee.

7. The insurgency is a few thousand guys whipped into a frenzy by a few extremist clerics. Quite a few of them are unemployed ex-Iraqi soldiers, which leads Dave to think that we should not have disbanded the Iraqi military.

8. There are thousands of civilian contractors doing soldiering stuff (if you don't count security as soldiering, the number is much lower). And they're not restrained by anything but the desire to stay employed by the Coalition. They're also not protected by the Geneva Convention. Also they get to grow beards, wear non-standard clothes and use non-standard guns, which makes regular soldiers envious.

9. Press people in Iraq think they're immune to harm because they're doing something important. It's a wonder more of them don't get their heads blown off.

There. It's a pretty random information dump, but that's everything I could remember. Hope someone finds this useful.

--DAOUD AL-RAHIMI

Kablogh City Jail

In the immortal words of Jesse Jackson (as heard in James Brown's "Same Beat"):

"I may be in jail, but I am somebody."

Thanks, Commissar. (Click on the map and look in the lower right-hand quadrant. Yeah, that's right. The House of Payne is in effect, ya'all.)

--THE HOUSE OF PAYNE

Logrolling

Still at the conference. I wrote a lengthy post last night about America's moral obligations towards Sudan and other vacation spots. But as I was completing it, my laptop abruptly shut down for no apparent reason. Miserable piece of junk. Anyway, I'll see if I have the time to reproduce it later today, but for now there's other business.

Several other websites have added the House of Payne to their blogrolls, which has moved this blog a bit up the evolutionary ladder. I think I like the idea of being a reptile, although I worry that some day a cheerfully obnoxious Australian man with a camera crew will show up to tag me.

Anyway, they've linked me, and so I shall link them in return. It is the law, just like "ape shall not kill ape." Fortunately, they all run good blogs and so I am happy to return the favor.

First, the Wump Blog, which has recently posted a terrific essay about how "Sunni Islamic sacred texts perceive the issue of violence." Those of my imaginary readers who want to understand better what is going on in places like Fallujah should read this right away.

Second, Gilly's World. Gilly has a great post about the need for Europe to get involved in Iraq. The last couple of years have left me feeling much less interested in what Europe does, but Gilly makes a good case. Check it out.

Third, the Geek Empire, a blog have linked to before. One recent post that deserves your attention concerns the recent editorial published by Nick Berg's father, which contrasts dramatically with the one I excerpted here from Danny Pearl's father. In a related post, we find out about a gentleman who says about Nick Berg's decapitation that there is a "98% chance that this is a military-industrial complex psyop." Nice. Go read it, and be sure not to miss my very snarky remark in the comments section.

Fourth, and finally, the amazingly prolific Llama Butchers. Yip, yip, yip! Any day of the week you can stop in and find a few things that make you think and a few that make you giggle. Be sure to read the post about British soldiers living up to the example of valor set by their forefathers at Rorke's Drift. And also be sure to check out their take on what is happening in North Korea. (My friend Lyle at LDS4Bush also talks about this and notes with disappointment that Bush isn't getting any credit for this and other diplomatic successes.)

Anyway, I have to jump in the shower and go grab my continental breakfast. More posting later tonight maybe. Muchisimas gracias a todos que me han linqueado, y gracias a todos que lean este blog. Bueno, ya me voy. Chau chau.

--JUAN PENA

Fun and games

This weekend I'm at a conference in DC, and all next week I am with my family in Houston, so posting will be sporadic. In the meantime, think about what we need to do to prepare the rising generation for the challenges that lie ahead. Is it this?

--REDBEARD