Jujitsui Generis

The People Are Speaking

Let me take a quick break from my work schedule to point to this encouraging story.  It appears that the recent Supreme Court decision on Kelo has had at least one positive effect: it has highlighted the slow erosion of property rights, an erosion that is not sitting well with the public.  At least half of the states - in response to strong public outcry - are now moving to restrict cases in which eminent domain may be invoked.  It's a start.

Short Break

After a long weekend, I'll be using the next two days to catch up on some work and meet some pressing deadlines.  Be back Wednesday evening.

Thought For The Day

The horror of the recent car bomb in Iraq, which killed scores of Iraqi children, leaves me speechless.  Here's Mudville Gazette on 'Building Small Coffins' (warning: tough reading). And here's Wretchard doing what he does best: articulating hope and decency amidst the savagery:

That's part of it. I can't bring myself to repeat the rest. There are those who, after the London bombing, had convinced themselves that all Muslims were enemies of civilization. There are sound arguments for that: the existence of the Jihad, the silence of most Islamic clergy. But what of the children? What of the Muslim children who are the targets of these "freedom fighters", "resistants" or "militants", whichever the BBC prefers to call them? In what category do they belong? The empirical fact is that no group has been killed more often and more brutally by the "Jihad" than Muslims themselves. During the French Algerian war several times more Algerian Muslims died than French. Anyone with a calculator can see the same is true in Iraq. One of the targets of the London bombing was a subway station frequented by British Muslims. The first objective of terror, indeed of the Terror, and the first objective of the Jihad is to maintain internal control over its base. For as long as internal control can be maintained, a terrorist movement need not defeat its armed enemy. It will never lose; hence in the estimation of the Peace generation, it will always win.

Logically, a large part of the War on Terror will consist of creating an insurgency within the insurgency. Fighting Islamic extremism must comprise organizing a revolt against Islam's internal oppressors. That would include waging intellectual war against Islamic fundamentalism within its own theological context -- a reformation -- it will include creating clandestine cells to strike at the gangs which beat women and intimidate men within the community. It will require all the skills of a resistance fighter struggling against bearded Big Brother. The Left has a word for such people: "Uncle Toms". That is how they've already characterized Hirsi Ali. That is to be expected. But many conservatives have also been blind to the urgent requirement of creating a liberation movement within Islam, in part because they half believe all Muslims are themselves the enemy; in part because they despair of Muslims ever rising up against the medieval institutions which constrain them; in part because they haven't thought about it. But they should. That pile of bloody children's slippers on an Iraqi street is a tally of spirits who were created to be free.

Here's Why They Hate Us

I've argued before that there's no point in attributing rationality to the fanatical Islamic terrorists the West now faces.  To find the threat a product of our creation, to stupidly argue for passivity and understanding in the face of barbarism is to dangerously misunderstand the nature of the Islamo-fascists.  In case you haven't read it already, here's what the murderer of Theo van Gogh had to say in a courtroom in Amsterdam:

Mohammed Bouyeri, a baby-faced 27-year-old with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, broke his vow not to co-operate with the Amsterdam court by admitting shooting and stabbing his victim last November.

"I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion," he told its three-strong panel of judges.

"I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do the same, exactly the same." . . .

Bouyeri then turned to the victim's mother, Anneke, in the public gallery, and told her he felt nothing for her. Mrs van Gogh watched as he read out from what appeared to be a statement: "I don't feel your pain. I have to admit that I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because you're a non-believer."

Says it all, doesn't it? 

Troubled, But Reserving Judgment

As to the most recent political scandal, I agree with Andrew Sullivan (which is surprising given his exuberant animosity toward the Bush administration as of late) that it is probably best to reserve judgment on the Rove matter until we have a clearer picture.  Despite the frothing of those on the left, it now seems clear that Rove did not intend to break the law, nor did he maliciously seek to reveal Plame's identity.

What is less clear at this point - and what may never be known - is Rove's actual intent.  If Rove's actions were intended to compromise an active agent for political gain (and as a rebuttal to the lies of Joe Wilson) - all while technically staying within the letter of the law - then Bush has got to show him the door.  Political hardball within the beltway is one thing, but jeopardizing an agent's identity in the name of political expedience stoops far below politics as usual.  It borders on the dangerous.

His intent may never be known, but whether arrogance or recklessness is to blame, Rove's actions are troubling.  And Bush, via Scott McClellan, cannot stonewall forever.

A Clear Contrast

It didn't take long for someone to blame the London attacks on Tony Blair.  Here's George Galloway offering an odd rationale and suggesting appeasement as his preferred policy - as if passivity in the face of such barbarism is the surest way to face down a threat:

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain," he told Parliament on Thursday. "Tragically, Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."

Now contrast Galloway with the clarity of Niall Ferguson's latest statement:

No, whoever the perpetrators were, I am confident they will not achieve their aim of disrupting London life. More than that: I am certain they will live -- though perhaps not for very long -- to regret following in the cloven hoof-prints of the Luftwaffe and their Irish imitators.

London can take it. And dish it out.

And soon they will. 

Assassins

Here's an interesting bit of speculation on what those four Navy SEALs may have been doing alone in the remote border region of Afghanistan.  If they were close to bin Laden, he's probably long gone by now.  Here's hoping we get him the next time.

Hitch Sets Reagan Straight

Click here (hat tip Betsy's Page) to read Chris Hitchens skewer Ron Reagan over the war on terror.  Here's my favorite part:

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

The Best They Can Do

As usual, Wretchard over at Belmont Club makes a compelling case that the strength of al Qaeda has been dilued by its engagement with forces all over the world :

The London attack was as deadly as Al Qaeda could make it. They would have blown up 30 trains if they had the means. Certainly it was not the milk of human kindness that stayed their hand.

The inevitable question then is 'why could Bin Laden not find the means to attack 30 trains?' The answer it seems to me, must be Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and hundred other places where he is engaged without quarter by US forces. Resources, whether Jihadi or no are not infinite. They do not have some magical machine that allows them to be everywhere at once, to sustain losses yet grow. There's no free lunch, not even, and especially not for Bin Laden. If it were true that Islamism would shrivel faster were it pursued more passively, then pre-911 policy should have finished it by now. But what we empirically observe is that ignoring them allowed them to mount 911-scale attack. Hit them continuously and in four years they could scrape together enough to blow up a London bus and some subway trains.

I realize that this is not the unassailable proof that Patrick Belton seeks. I cannot provide that. But the practice of engaging an enemy on one front to weaken him on another has been tested from antiquity and is more natural than the alternative. The idea that fighting the enemy makes him stronger everywhere is a curious one and I've often wondered about the battlefield arithmetic that would make it possible. There are many who accept without question the proposition that the US Armed forces are being 'bled dry' in Iraq; that it has become over extended. They would accept, without reservation, the idea that using the US Army in Iraq would weaken it with respect to Korea. One Swedish researcher kept writing to me privately, 'proving' from all kinds of weird arithmetic that the USMC had been annihilated in Fallujah. Yet the very same persons will vehemently reject the idea that Al Qaeda can also be spread thin; that its cadres are subject to death as wastage; it is as if one set of natural laws operated for the Jihad and another for the blundering Americans. But mental honesty will compel us to accept that this can't be true: that the sun rises and sets on one man as for another: that if we thought about it really hard, everyone who lives peacefully in a Western city owes it to the men out on patrol tonight.

There's no permalink, but the post is titled, Iraq and London.  Read the whole thing.

Won't Somebody Please Think of the (fat) Children

Here's partisan economist, Paul Krugman, on America's obesity epidemic:

For one thing, the most rapid rise in obesity isn't taking place among adults, who, we hope, can understand the consequences of their decisions. It's taking place among children and adolescents.
...
Above all, we need to put aside our anti-government prejudices and realize that the history of government interventions on behalf of public health, from the construction of sewer systems to the campaign against smoking, is one of consistent, life-enhancing success. Obesity is America's fastest-growing health problem; let's do something about it.

Krugman has never met a problem that was not best solved by government taking its citizen in its bloated arms.  Here's Kip Esquire deflating Krugman:

The notion that "other people pay for obesity" is totally circular and obnoxious. Keep the true nature of this argument in perspective: The nanny-state central planners decide to provide public health care benefits, of whatever flavor, which are by definition paid for with public money (i.e., taxpayer money). They then turn around and tell those very same taxpayers that, since it's "the public's" money and not theirs, the government can therefore impose controls on the public's behavior to compensate for the resulting mismatch — that the government itself created! — between the "public" that pays for the benefits and the "public" that receives them.

The government creates the moral hazard in the first place, then turns around and decries it — all the while escalating the tax-and-regulate, tax-and-subsidize, tax-and-ban, tax-and-control spiral and all the while defending the practice with Orwellian economic double-talk.