Egoism
Individualism
Sovereignty
Splendor

(These ideas are explicated in this sloppy manifesto)

 
No nudes is good news

A fun take on unsightly naked war-protesters from WorldNetDaily:

With barely more skin than an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue, how is anyone supposed to be impressed or shocked by the goose pimples of anti-war protesters? It's old hat by now.

As our culture becomes increasingly drenched in nudity, naked protests are just one more thing at which to ogle--not take seriously. Instead of gauging their message, guys will simply gauge their cup sizes as they do with any other random woman in the nude.

If protesting the war is important to these folks, they should pull up their pants and say something meaningful.

There is more of course--for instance, that to 'protest' in the modern way, naked or not, is to become an object, a thing and not a mind--but clearly there is no point in arguing with unsightly self-made totems. All we can do is avert our eyes and cast about for an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog.
posted by Greg Swann at 6:23 AM

 
Cain's world: A Just and Libertarian war...

I am amused but not angered by the 'anti-war' protests, clothed and otherwise, that have polluted the news of late. If ignorant people want to promote barbarism in blind ignorance, this is their perfect right as ignorant Americans. The amusing part is that the war on Islam will be fought anyway, and the protests are about as important as the yipping and scrapping of puppies trying to scale the walls of a cardboard box. Aren't they just so cute?!

I am annoyed, however, with the Libertarians who have arrayed themselves against this war. I think they have become so glued to their slogans that they've lost the ability to think in principles. Whatever one might say about President George W. Bush, about the Republicans, about the state of the American body politic, it remains that this war not only will be fought, but that it should be fought. It must be fought, if the philosophical principles that undergird human liberty are to endure upon the Earth.

I have written a lot about this war, and much of it is linked back from this weblog entry, itself summarized here:

The objective the United States seeks in making war with Iraq is not any of those that have been imputed, whether by supporters or opponents of the war. The objective is to scare the hell out of the world, generally, and Islam in particular. By means of a minimal effort at wreaking maximum havoc upon Iraq in a very short span of time, the United States will demonstrate to her enemies and allies alike that she is not only the pre-eminent world power, she is in fact an inconquerable power. The anticipated benefits in the Islamic world will be either an immediate rounding-up of terrorists, or swift regime-changes followed by an immediate rounding-up of terrorists. In the Far East, the United States will disarm North Korea, with or without a regime-change, and neither North Korea nor--much more importantly--Red China will do anything to stop it. If all goes as planned--as I surmise it to be planned--Wahabi/Qutbist Islam will be discredited and Islam will return to a self-satisfied navel-contemplation. Red China will apprehend the lesson of the Soviet Union--that no Communist state can compete with the United States in the creation of capital-intensive weapons systems--and will devote its attentions to economic rather than military power.

I call this strategy The Cain Doctrine, after the Biblical and Koranic story of Cain and Abel:

Abel was a nomad, a shepherd following his flocks. Cain was a farmer, fixed to a plot of land. Abel was a traditionalist, doing what all his (ahem) predecessors had done before him. Cain was an innovator, doing things never done before. Abel roamed the deserts. Cain was bound to the markets of the city. Abel's wealth consisted of tangible chattels. Cain's wealth was speculative, a thing of hopes and promises. Abel was a warrior, defending his own moveable estate by combat and vengeance. Cain was a merchant, depending for his defense on specialists, with his defense often being effected by means of compensation and reconciliation.

Abel made a sacrifice of a lamb, thus establishing to God that he was a true Semite. Cain made a sacrifice of grain, demonstrating to God that he had been Hellenized. Forget the murder. The 'bad guy,' from the storyteller's point of view, always does bad things. The point of the story of Cain and Abel is this:

Abel was from Jerusalem or Mecca. Cain was from Athens.

Abel was the fixed, the unquestioning, the unchanging--and thus was favored by the fixed, unquestionable, unchangeable doctrine. Cain was the fluid, the inquisitive, the innovative--the horrifyingly Greek--and thus his offering of the fruits of agriculture, of urbanization, of task-specialization, of commerce, of speculation, of peaceful dispute resolution--his offering of all the fruits of reason--was spurned by God.

Christians and Jews hate this argument because Christianity and Judaism are such ugly compromises: Brief genuflections at Abel by the otherwise very-busy children of Cain. The important thing to understand is that Abel is a Warrior. He resolves his disputes by violent conquest--or meek surrender. Cain is a Merchant. He resolves disputes by conciliation, especially in the form of compensation. From Cain's point of view, Abel's style of life is suicidally insane, but is ordinarily a matter of complete indifference. From Abel's point of view, Cain's way of living is insufferably corrupt. With emphasis: A corruption not to be suffered.

The goal of Islam, established at its beginning, unchanged from that beginning, is to establish a Universal Caliphate. That is to say, every living human being, Muslim or not, is to be subject to Muslim rule under Sharia law. Muslims pursued this goal without abatement for most of a millennium, retrenching only when Europe--newly wakened from its own macabre nightmare with Abel--pushed it back, starting in the Spains and culminating at the Siege of Vienna. Warrior cultures seek to conquer when they think they can win, but they fade from the battlefield when they become convinced they must lose.

This is why, to understand this war, it is necessary to understand Islam. The display of force America will make in Iraq will cause Islam to turn its back on the West for the next 500 years. If you look beatable, Warrior cultures will fight savagely, insanely, suicidally. If you look invincible, Warriors fade. President Bush and his advisors are remarkably astute about the nature of our enemy.

Please understand: I am normally opposed to the underlying philosophy of this war--'Teach 'em a lesson!'--even though virtually all Libertarians are normally for it. The reason I am for it here is that Cain is correct: A demonstration of invincibility is the only strategy that will work against Abel--who is anti-rationality-by-choice. To forebear to convince the Muslims to fade is to invite them to persist in fighting savagely, insanely, suicidally against what they see as our insufferable corruption. In the long run, we must conquer Islam culturally. In the short run, we have to get Muslims to stop slaughtering innocents. This war will do this, and nothing else will. (And a very brief hot war will do for the Red Chinese what it took forty years of Cold War to do for the Soviets.)

Cain can co-exist peacefully with Abel. Abel cannot live in peace with Cain. If we don't isolate the Muslims now, and assimilate them in due course, they will chew us up. It's what they do, and they're a lot better at it than the Communists, the Nazis, Hillary Clinton or John Ashcroft. We may fight this war and come to have less liberty at the end of it. But if we fail to fight it, we will deliver perpetual tyranny and slaughter to our children--and to every living mind on Earth.

That is to say: This is a Just and Libertarian war. It will be led by people who are less than ideal, using means that are less than ideal, achieving ends that are less than ideal. But to oppose this war is to stand in opposition to all that is uniquely human in human life. To oppose this war is to make common cause with the brutal animality that, with but one shining exception in human history, has always usurped, enslaved and murdered the uniquely human life.

This war is Cain versus Abel. If you're not on the side of civilization, you're on the side of savagery. And Libertarians don't get a pass just because they're politically irrelevant.
posted by Greg Swann at 3:44 PM

 
Cain's world: Veni, vidi, vici...

A month or two ago, I said:

The tragedy of this war is not the war itself. It will probably be all but bloodless on our side, and could well be bloodless on theirs--"A rational army would run away."

Today we have this from The Washington Times:

Morale is low in the Iraqi army and many soldiers are preparing white flags of surrender, we are told by someone in northern Iraq who recently interviewed two defectors from Saddam Hussein's army.

One was a captain who defected from the 5th Mechanized Division of the 1st Corps, based near the northern city of Kirkuk. The captain told our informant that the heavy division was only 35 percent combat-effective. The captain said morale was so low that younger soldiers are speaking openly about surrendering--before the first shot has been fired.

A second soldier, a senior noncommissioned officer, defected from the same division's 34th Brigade, based south of the northern city of Mosul.

This soldier said that of the 28 tanks in his care, only six were working. The others were broken down or otherwise in need of repair.

"He said the whole division was at about 25 percent effectiveness and most soldiers were hiding their white flags," said our source, who spoke recently to both defectors.

There has been a lot of chatter about imperialism and a Pax Americana, etc., most of it dry wind. But we could well be about to see the most amazing military demonstration since Caesar at Pharsalus. We're still going to blow the place to bits, since the objective of the war is to advise the world, especially the Red Chinese, that the United States is inconquerable. But the Iraqi soldiers will be able to watch the pyrotechnics on TV, just like the rest of us.
posted by Greg Swann at 8:34 AM

 
Faster than a speeding bureaucracy...

Way back when, I told you about Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, the FBI agent who would not scruple to secretly record conversations--of fellow Muslims. If you invert the already inverted logic of the FBI, you will already have guessed that Abdel-Hafiz was not fired but instead promoted. That he was not assigned to investigate pizza-truck hi-jackers in Hoboken but was instead posted to Riyadh. Saudi Arabia. Where the wild things are.

But: Like neutrinos boring through planets of solid lead, eventually the smallest and most logical idea will penetrate the skull of the managerial cadre of the FBI. As ABCNEWS.com reports, Abdel-Hafiz will now have to provide his unique service to American interests from our own shores:

The FBI has placed one of its two agents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on administrative leave and has sent him back to the United States, FBI officials told ABCNEWS.

Two months ago ABCNEWS' Primetime reported that before being assigned to the Riyadh office, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, a Muslim, had twice refused requests by other FBI agents to secretly record conversations with Muslims suspected of supporting terrorist activities.

The FBI has now placed Abdel-Hafiz on administrative leave and has sent him back to the United States, FBI officials told ABCNEWS, though they would not reveal the reasons why.

Who says the FBI can't catch a clue?
posted by Greg Swann at 10:39 PM

 
Human shields as pawns? Only the thoughtful could think so!

The Rev. Frederick Boyle, leader of a team of wannabe Iraqi human shields, takes a moment to reflect from Amman in the Bergen Daily Record News:

The pastor of Millbrook United Methodist Church in Randolph said his time in Amman, circulating among the people, the human shields and other anti-war contingents such as the Iraq Peace Team has caused him to come to new conclusions, including that the human shields just may be pawns of the Iraqi government.

Jeez, ya think?

It would be easy to make jokes about these jackasses--why couldn't they just stay home and make naked peace angels in the snow?--but the story Boyle relates is harrowing. Blind, mindless sheep, and they're all going to be pulverized.

Among the ranks of the shields, the minister said, he met an atheist, a young man who just embraced Islam, a middle-aged activist who'd planned to bring medicine into Iraq and a young man from Ireland who hadn't made contact with his parents in a month.

"I saw one or two of the young ladies getting on the bus the other day," he said.

"There was a mystified feeling and they weren't reflective. They were following along as if they were on a peace train. In their heart and in their own minds they really are doing something important, and they are, but they just haven't thought it through."

These children will be incinerated, blown as dust in the wind. Their parents will never know what happened to them in the end. And they'll never admit to what happened to them in the beginning--when they failed to teach their children to think.

Sic semper stolidis. Requiescant in pace...
posted by Greg Swann at 8:28 AM

 
Quote of the day...

Chinese law (sic) student Wang Xiaohui from Reuters:

"I thought China was the safest place in the world right now."

No, that would be the morgue. Close, though...

posted by Greg Swann at 7:44 AM

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