From The Washington Post:
Replace Rumsfeld
By David Ignatius
Friday, April 14, 2006
With luck, Iraq will make a fresh start soon with the formation of a new government. The Bush administration should do the same thing by replacing Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.
Rumsfeld has lost the support of the uniformed military officers who work for him. Make no mistake: The retired generals who are speaking out against Rumsfeld in interviews and op-ed pieces express the views of hundreds of other officers on active duty. When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low.
But that isn't the reason he should be replaced. Military officers often dislike the civilians they work for, but in our system strong civilian control is essential. On some of the issues over which he has tangled with the military brass, Rumsfeld has been right. The Pentagon is a hidebound place, and it has needed the "transformation" ethic Rumsfeld brought to his job. I'm dubious about the Pentagon conventional wisdom that we needed 500,000 American troops in Iraq. More troops were necessary, but they should have been Iraqi troops from an army that wasn't disbanded.
Rumsfeld should resign because the Bush administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force, reduced to squabbling with the secretary of state about whether "tactical errors" were made in the war's conduct.
The Bush administration has rightly been insisting that the Iraqis put unity first and that in forming a permanent government they remove ineffectual and divisive leaders and replace them with people who can pull the country together. The administration should heed its own advice. America needs leadership that can speak to the whole country, not just the people who already agree with the president.
Rumsfeld's replacement should be someone who can help restore a bipartisan consensus for a sensible Iraq policy. One obvious candidate would be the centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman. Another would be a centrist Republican with military experience, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel or Sen. John McCain. The administration would have to swallow its pride to take any of them on board, but that's the point: Without bold moves from the White House, support for the war will continue to slip away.
It now seems clear that President Bush can't erase the Iraq credibility gap on his own. He has been trying to rebuild consensus for the war for months, in a series of speeches and strategy papers. But the poll numbers keep going down. His job approval ratings have fallen below 40 percent in all the latest polls, with Post-ABC News at 38 percent, CNN-USA Today-Gallup at 37 percent and Fox-Opinion Dynamics at 36 percent. Support for the war has crumbled even more sharply. The latest Post-ABC poll found that 58 percent of the country now feels the war wasn't worth fighting, compared with 27 percent back in April 2003.
If the Iraqis can form a unity government -- and that's certainly a big "if" -- they will need America's help in pulling the country back from civil war. America now has a better military strategy for Iraq, one that puts more responsibility on Iraqi forces and emphasizes counterinsurgency tactics. And it has a political strategy that is at last reaching out to all the different Iraqi communities -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurd -- rather than to a handful of former exile leaders. This political-military strategy may fail, but it's too soon to make that call. To buy some time, the administration needs a new political base. If it continues with the same team, it will get the same result.
Rumsfeld is a stubborn man, and I suspect the parade of retired generals calling for his head has only made him more determined to hold on. But by staying in his job, Rumsfeld is hurting the cause he presumably cares most about. The president, even more stubborn than his Pentagon chief, is said to have rejected his offer to resign. If that's so, it's time for Rumsfeld to take the matter out of Bush's hands.
The administration needs to look this one clearly in the eye: Without changes that shore up public support in America, it risks losing the war in Iraq.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Friday, April 14, 2006
The Generals' Revolt
By Patrick Buchanan
In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more.
This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment.
This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of that leadership. It is hard to recall a situation in history where retired U.S. Army and Marine Corps generals, almost all of whom had major commands in a war yet underway, denounced the civilian leadership and called on the president to fire his secretary for war.
As those generals must be aware, their revolt cannot but send a message to friend and enemy alike that the U.S. high command is deeply divided, that U.S. policy is floundering, that the loss of Iraq impends if the civilian leadership at the Pentagon is not changed.
The generals have sent an unmistakable message to Commander in Chief George W. Bush: Get rid of Rumsfeld, or you will lose the war.
Columnist Ignatius makes that precise point:
"Rumsfeld should resign because the administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force ..."
With the exception of Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command who opposed the Bush-Rumsfeld rush to war, the other generals did not publicly protest until secure in retirement. Nevertheless, they bring imposing credentials to their charges against the defense secretary.
Major Gen. Paul Eaton, first of the five rebels to speak out, was in charge of training Iraqi forces until 2004. He blames Rumsfeld for complicating the U.S. mission by alienating our NATO allies.
Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs up to the eve of war, charges Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith with a "casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results."
Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Division in Iraq, charges that Rumsfeld does not seek nor does he accept the counsel of field commanders. Maj. Gen. John Riggs echoes Batiste. This directly contradicts what President Bush has told the nation.
Maj. Gen. Charles J. Swannack, former field commander of the 82nd Airborne, believes we can create a stable government in Iraq, but says Rumsfeld has mismanaged the war.
As of Good Friday, the Generals' Revolt has created a crisis for President Bush. If he stands by Rumsfeld, he will have taken his stand against generals whose credibility today is higher than his own.
But if he bows to the Generals' Revolt and dismisses Rumsfeld, the generals will have effected a Pentagon putsch. An alumni association of retired generals will have dethroned civilian leadership and forced the commander in chief to fire the architect of a war upon which not only Bush's place in history depends, but the U.S. position in the Middle East and the world. The commander in chief will have been emasculated by retired generals. The stakes could scarcely be higher.
Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war, dismissal of Rumsfeld in response to a clamor created by ex-generals would mark Bush as a weak if not fatally compromised president. He will have capitulated to a generals' coup. Will he then have to clear Rumsfeld's successor with them?
Bush will begin to look like Czar Nicholas in 1916.
And there is an unstated message of the Generals' Revolt. If Iraq collapses in chaos and sectarian war, and is perceived as another U.S. defeat, they are saying: We are not going to carry the can. The first volley in a "Who Lost Iraq?" war of recriminations has been fired.
In 1951, Gen. MacArthur, the U.S. commander in Korea, defied Harry Truman by responding to a request from GOP House leader Joe Martin to describe his situation. MacArthur said the White House had tied his hands in fighting the war.
Though MacArthur spoke the truth and the no-win war in Korea would kill Truman's presidency, the general was fired. But MacArthur was right to speak the truth about the war his soldiers were being forced to fight, a war against a far more numerous enemy who enjoyed a privileged sanctuary above the Yalu river, thanks to Harry Truman.
In the last analysis, the Generals' Revolt is not just against Rumsfeld, but is aimed at the man who appointed him and has stood by him for three years of a guerrilla war the Pentagon did not predict or expect.
By Patrick Buchanan
In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more.
This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment.
This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of that leadership. It is hard to recall a situation in history where retired U.S. Army and Marine Corps generals, almost all of whom had major commands in a war yet underway, denounced the civilian leadership and called on the president to fire his secretary for war.
As those generals must be aware, their revolt cannot but send a message to friend and enemy alike that the U.S. high command is deeply divided, that U.S. policy is floundering, that the loss of Iraq impends if the civilian leadership at the Pentagon is not changed.
The generals have sent an unmistakable message to Commander in Chief George W. Bush: Get rid of Rumsfeld, or you will lose the war.
Columnist Ignatius makes that precise point:
"Rumsfeld should resign because the administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force ..."
With the exception of Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command who opposed the Bush-Rumsfeld rush to war, the other generals did not publicly protest until secure in retirement. Nevertheless, they bring imposing credentials to their charges against the defense secretary.
Major Gen. Paul Eaton, first of the five rebels to speak out, was in charge of training Iraqi forces until 2004. He blames Rumsfeld for complicating the U.S. mission by alienating our NATO allies.
Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs up to the eve of war, charges Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith with a "casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results."
Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Division in Iraq, charges that Rumsfeld does not seek nor does he accept the counsel of field commanders. Maj. Gen. John Riggs echoes Batiste. This directly contradicts what President Bush has told the nation.
Maj. Gen. Charles J. Swannack, former field commander of the 82nd Airborne, believes we can create a stable government in Iraq, but says Rumsfeld has mismanaged the war.
As of Good Friday, the Generals' Revolt has created a crisis for President Bush. If he stands by Rumsfeld, he will have taken his stand against generals whose credibility today is higher than his own.
But if he bows to the Generals' Revolt and dismisses Rumsfeld, the generals will have effected a Pentagon putsch. An alumni association of retired generals will have dethroned civilian leadership and forced the commander in chief to fire the architect of a war upon which not only Bush's place in history depends, but the U.S. position in the Middle East and the world. The commander in chief will have been emasculated by retired generals. The stakes could scarcely be higher.
Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war, dismissal of Rumsfeld in response to a clamor created by ex-generals would mark Bush as a weak if not fatally compromised president. He will have capitulated to a generals' coup. Will he then have to clear Rumsfeld's successor with them?
Bush will begin to look like Czar Nicholas in 1916.
And there is an unstated message of the Generals' Revolt. If Iraq collapses in chaos and sectarian war, and is perceived as another U.S. defeat, they are saying: We are not going to carry the can. The first volley in a "Who Lost Iraq?" war of recriminations has been fired.
In 1951, Gen. MacArthur, the U.S. commander in Korea, defied Harry Truman by responding to a request from GOP House leader Joe Martin to describe his situation. MacArthur said the White House had tied his hands in fighting the war.
Though MacArthur spoke the truth and the no-win war in Korea would kill Truman's presidency, the general was fired. But MacArthur was right to speak the truth about the war his soldiers were being forced to fight, a war against a far more numerous enemy who enjoyed a privileged sanctuary above the Yalu river, thanks to Harry Truman.
In the last analysis, the Generals' Revolt is not just against Rumsfeld, but is aimed at the man who appointed him and has stood by him for three years of a guerrilla war the Pentagon did not predict or expect.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Hey, Hey, It's Michael Nesmith
By Jason Silverman
Apr, 13, 2006
You remember Michael Nesmith. He's the Monkee in the wool cap.
But Nesmith is more than a pop-culture icon. He's built impeccable credentials as a media visionary. In the 1980s, Nesmith invented MTV, helped pioneer the home-video revolution, won a Grammy for his music video Elephant Parts and produced the cult films Repo Man and Tapeheads.
Throughout the 1990s he gathered deep thinkers at his Santa Fe, New Mexico, ranch to participate in his solutions-oriented conference, Council on Ideas. And in 1998, Nesmith published his acclaimed novel The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora on the web.
Now, it's back to songwriting. After a five-year hiatus, Nesmith, who Rolling Stone said writes "the greatest music never heard," has released Rays, an atmospheric, eclectic CD. He spoke with Wired News from his studio in Monterey, California.
Wired News: The release strategy for Rays seems inverted -- first on iTunes and later in the big-box stores.
Michael Nesmith: Ten or 15 years ago, I got hip to the net and thought it could be a great one-to-one way to sell things. I wrote Neftoon Zamora as a hypertext novel. Back then, the only browser was Mosaic.
From there, everything began to line up…. Online delivery started up. MP3 scared me for a while, because I believe in intellectual property rights. But when iTunes and Rhapsody arrived, transaction bases with users paying for stuff, it made sense to reverse the distribution sequence.
So instead of going after radio airplay and trying getting into the big boxes and then, maybe, giving the crumbs to the downloaders, I thought, I'll go with the downloaders first…. It wasn't some visionary hit. I was just swept along in the current of events.
WN: How different would your career have looked if MySpace had been around in the '60s?
Nesmith: When I struck out on my own, my idea was to break a chain … (of) doing the same thing that my family had done and ending up in a business I didn't want to be in. If opportunities like MySpace had been available then, I would have jumped that way. But as it worked out … I went the traditional television avenue.
WN: Do all of these digital opportunities change the nature of music?
Nesmith: Yeah, they do. They significantly change it. You have to think in different ways about what a song is.
When the carrier is a 45, one of those big-hole vinyl LPs, you can only get so much data on there, maybe 10 minutes. Radio airplay constrains it even further. So you ended up in the '50s and '60s with singles that were two-and-a-half or three minutes long. And you have these very simplified musical elements, just simple 1-4-5 turnarounds and other real easy-to-do things.
When you get into these big sampler engines and computer-based sequencing, the world opens up to you.... You can explore deep musical ideas and play with theory in ways you weren't able to before.
Forty years ago, maybe you played the piano, maybe you played the guitar. Or you wrote sheet music. But at the end of the day, if you came up with something, you couldn't render it beyond what you and a few friends could play. Now you can render something the size of a mountain, with hundreds of instruments and all sorts of explorations of harmonies and tonal centers and odd improvisations.
WN: Do you get lost in the possibilities? It's not like going into the studio with a couple of guys and banging out some songs.
Nesmith: That's an early discipline any artist learns. You don't get taken with the colors of paints that you've got. You've got to narrow it down. It's great to have all the possibilities, but it all starts with an idea.
To sit there and hope something will happen is like dumping 400 gallons of paint on the floor and hoping a picture is going to emerge. It doesn't work that way.
WN: You helped popularize music videos. I don't suppose you'll be doing a new one in support of Rays?
Nesmith: No. Haven't planned it. I did music videos in the '70s and that was fun because it was the launch of the basis of it and I was discovering some really interesting principles that govern the form. But after that I lost interest. MTV took off and it became this maze, this massive amount of information. I don't want to contribute any more to that.
WN: Now that indie musicians and filmmakers are selling direct to their fans -- sometimes hundreds of thousands of units -- what role can the corporate media play?
Nesmith: I don't hold much hope for Warner Music Group or Sony being a player in the future…. The problem with those kind of companies is that they don't have any good way to add value anymore.
For years, they'd support the artist in their nascent stages and get the goods to market. Those are old-time, Methuselean economics…. There are whole new businesses that will wander in and boot these guys out.
WN: So we can write the obituaries?
Nesmith: Those obituaries were written two decades ago. What you are seeing here is an inertial burn (laughs).
WN: So what happens to the consumer?
Nesmith: Well, its all to the good, I think…. It's a new personal freedom, new individualism. The individuals who come up with ideas can make perfectly good or even spectacular lives for themselves with just their own little shop. I'm certainly one of those guys. And there is a lot faster traffic than me out there.
Has anybody ever put together a word that means producer and consumer at the same time? That's what's going to happen. We'll be both. We'll have the means of production and consumption under our own control. I can't imagine that being anything but good.
By Jason Silverman
Apr, 13, 2006
You remember Michael Nesmith. He's the Monkee in the wool cap.
But Nesmith is more than a pop-culture icon. He's built impeccable credentials as a media visionary. In the 1980s, Nesmith invented MTV, helped pioneer the home-video revolution, won a Grammy for his music video Elephant Parts and produced the cult films Repo Man and Tapeheads.
Throughout the 1990s he gathered deep thinkers at his Santa Fe, New Mexico, ranch to participate in his solutions-oriented conference, Council on Ideas. And in 1998, Nesmith published his acclaimed novel The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora on the web.
Now, it's back to songwriting. After a five-year hiatus, Nesmith, who Rolling Stone said writes "the greatest music never heard," has released Rays, an atmospheric, eclectic CD. He spoke with Wired News from his studio in Monterey, California.
Wired News: The release strategy for Rays seems inverted -- first on iTunes and later in the big-box stores.
Michael Nesmith: Ten or 15 years ago, I got hip to the net and thought it could be a great one-to-one way to sell things. I wrote Neftoon Zamora as a hypertext novel. Back then, the only browser was Mosaic.
From there, everything began to line up…. Online delivery started up. MP3 scared me for a while, because I believe in intellectual property rights. But when iTunes and Rhapsody arrived, transaction bases with users paying for stuff, it made sense to reverse the distribution sequence.
So instead of going after radio airplay and trying getting into the big boxes and then, maybe, giving the crumbs to the downloaders, I thought, I'll go with the downloaders first…. It wasn't some visionary hit. I was just swept along in the current of events.
WN: How different would your career have looked if MySpace had been around in the '60s?
Nesmith: When I struck out on my own, my idea was to break a chain … (of) doing the same thing that my family had done and ending up in a business I didn't want to be in. If opportunities like MySpace had been available then, I would have jumped that way. But as it worked out … I went the traditional television avenue.
WN: Do all of these digital opportunities change the nature of music?
Nesmith: Yeah, they do. They significantly change it. You have to think in different ways about what a song is.
When the carrier is a 45, one of those big-hole vinyl LPs, you can only get so much data on there, maybe 10 minutes. Radio airplay constrains it even further. So you ended up in the '50s and '60s with singles that were two-and-a-half or three minutes long. And you have these very simplified musical elements, just simple 1-4-5 turnarounds and other real easy-to-do things.
When you get into these big sampler engines and computer-based sequencing, the world opens up to you.... You can explore deep musical ideas and play with theory in ways you weren't able to before.
Forty years ago, maybe you played the piano, maybe you played the guitar. Or you wrote sheet music. But at the end of the day, if you came up with something, you couldn't render it beyond what you and a few friends could play. Now you can render something the size of a mountain, with hundreds of instruments and all sorts of explorations of harmonies and tonal centers and odd improvisations.
WN: Do you get lost in the possibilities? It's not like going into the studio with a couple of guys and banging out some songs.
Nesmith: That's an early discipline any artist learns. You don't get taken with the colors of paints that you've got. You've got to narrow it down. It's great to have all the possibilities, but it all starts with an idea.
To sit there and hope something will happen is like dumping 400 gallons of paint on the floor and hoping a picture is going to emerge. It doesn't work that way.
WN: You helped popularize music videos. I don't suppose you'll be doing a new one in support of Rays?
Nesmith: No. Haven't planned it. I did music videos in the '70s and that was fun because it was the launch of the basis of it and I was discovering some really interesting principles that govern the form. But after that I lost interest. MTV took off and it became this maze, this massive amount of information. I don't want to contribute any more to that.
WN: Now that indie musicians and filmmakers are selling direct to their fans -- sometimes hundreds of thousands of units -- what role can the corporate media play?
Nesmith: I don't hold much hope for Warner Music Group or Sony being a player in the future…. The problem with those kind of companies is that they don't have any good way to add value anymore.
For years, they'd support the artist in their nascent stages and get the goods to market. Those are old-time, Methuselean economics…. There are whole new businesses that will wander in and boot these guys out.
WN: So we can write the obituaries?
Nesmith: Those obituaries were written two decades ago. What you are seeing here is an inertial burn (laughs).
WN: So what happens to the consumer?
Nesmith: Well, its all to the good, I think…. It's a new personal freedom, new individualism. The individuals who come up with ideas can make perfectly good or even spectacular lives for themselves with just their own little shop. I'm certainly one of those guys. And there is a lot faster traffic than me out there.
Has anybody ever put together a word that means producer and consumer at the same time? That's what's going to happen. We'll be both. We'll have the means of production and consumption under our own control. I can't imagine that being anything but good.
After Diplomacy Fails
Think Imaginatively About Iran
By Mark Helprin
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Even were one to believe that, despite its low and stagnant per capita gross national product and having the world's second-largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas, Iran would invest uneconomically in nuclear power generation, one would also have to disbelieve that it wanted nuclear weapons. But with an intermediate-range strategic nuclear capacity, it could deter American intervention, reign over the Persian Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle East and/or with a single shot destroy Israel.
Iran's claim of innocuous nuclear ambitions comports both with the Islamic doctrine of taqqiya (literal truth need not be conveyed to infidels) and the Western doctrine of state secrecy (the same thing), and it is part of a strategy of deception and false compromise deployed to buy time. After almost three years, the Bush administration has maneuvered the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, where it will fall under the protection of Russia and China, which will make any resolution meaningless or veto it outright. In the event of sanctions, Iran can sell oil to China in exchange for all the manufactures it might need, trade on the black market and eventually reenter the world economy after the inevitable unveiling of Iranian nuclear weapons stimulates the resignation of the West.
Were Russia not playing a double game, it would not have agreed in December to upgrade the Iranian air force and sell Iran 29 SA-15 SAMs for the protection of key facilities. Russia and China can operate in contradiction of what many assume to be their self-interest because they have always had a different appreciation of and doctrine relating to nuclear weapons, because they are willing to live dangerously and because they are the least likely targets. In addition, the agitation that they support roils the smooth surface of the Pax Americana to their maximum opportunity and relief. For example, chaos in the Middle East makes Russia in comparison a stable supplier of energy and shifts European resources and dependency to Russia's advantage.
Other than the likely nothing, what will the United States have done in the months and years ahead to prepare for the failure of diplomacy and sanctions? The obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. With the furious capacity of its new weapons, the United States can accomplish this readily. Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its oil production and transport. The Iranians know their obvious vulnerabilities, but are we aware of ours?
In this war with a newly revived militant Islam, we think systematically and they think imaginatively. As we strain to bring the genius of imagination to our systems, they attempt to bring systematic discipline to their imagination, and neither of us is precluded from success. Despite our superior power, its diminution by geography, overcommittment and politics means that they might confound us. And because they believe absolutely in the miraculous, one must credit their stated aim to defeat us in the short term by hurling our armies from the Middle East and in the long term by causing the collapse of Western civilization.
If, like his predecessors Saladin, the Mahdi of Sudan and Nasser, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes for the long shot, he may have in mind to draw out and damage any American onslaught with his thousands of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns; by a concentrated air and naval attack to sink one or more major American warships; and to mobilize the Iraqi Shia in a general uprising, with aid from infiltrated Revolutionary Guard and conventional elements, that would threaten U.S. forces in Iraq and sever their lines of supply. This by itself would be a victory for those who see in the colors of martyrdom, but if he could knock us back and put enough of our blood in the water, the real prize might come into reach. That is: to make such a fury in the Islamic world that, as it has done before and not long ago, it would throw over caution in favor of jihad. As simply as it can be said, were Egypt to close the canal, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lock up their airspace -- which, with their combined modern air forces, they could -- the U.S. military in Iraq and the Gulf, bereft of adequate supply, would be beleaguered and imperiled.
In trying to push the Iraqi snake by its tail, we have lost sight of the larger strategic picture, of which such events, though very unlikely, may become a part. But because the Iranian drive for deployable nuclear weapons will take years, we have a period of grace. In that time, we would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do.
To make these provisions will secure our flanks and give us a freer hand in the potentially difficult project of denying to a rogue nation of 68 million people, with a well-developed military and a penchant for rash action, the nuclear weapons it is bent on acquiring and rushing to construct. Our problem in Iraq has been delusion and lack of foresight. Iran is bigger and more powerful. What a pity it would be either to do nothing or once again to lurch forward with neither strategy nor thought.
The writer, a novelist and journalist, served in the Israeli army and air force. He is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. This article will also appear in the Claremont Review of Books.
Think Imaginatively About Iran
By Mark Helprin
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Even were one to believe that, despite its low and stagnant per capita gross national product and having the world's second-largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas, Iran would invest uneconomically in nuclear power generation, one would also have to disbelieve that it wanted nuclear weapons. But with an intermediate-range strategic nuclear capacity, it could deter American intervention, reign over the Persian Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle East and/or with a single shot destroy Israel.
Iran's claim of innocuous nuclear ambitions comports both with the Islamic doctrine of taqqiya (literal truth need not be conveyed to infidels) and the Western doctrine of state secrecy (the same thing), and it is part of a strategy of deception and false compromise deployed to buy time. After almost three years, the Bush administration has maneuvered the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, where it will fall under the protection of Russia and China, which will make any resolution meaningless or veto it outright. In the event of sanctions, Iran can sell oil to China in exchange for all the manufactures it might need, trade on the black market and eventually reenter the world economy after the inevitable unveiling of Iranian nuclear weapons stimulates the resignation of the West.
Were Russia not playing a double game, it would not have agreed in December to upgrade the Iranian air force and sell Iran 29 SA-15 SAMs for the protection of key facilities. Russia and China can operate in contradiction of what many assume to be their self-interest because they have always had a different appreciation of and doctrine relating to nuclear weapons, because they are willing to live dangerously and because they are the least likely targets. In addition, the agitation that they support roils the smooth surface of the Pax Americana to their maximum opportunity and relief. For example, chaos in the Middle East makes Russia in comparison a stable supplier of energy and shifts European resources and dependency to Russia's advantage.
Other than the likely nothing, what will the United States have done in the months and years ahead to prepare for the failure of diplomacy and sanctions? The obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. With the furious capacity of its new weapons, the United States can accomplish this readily. Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its oil production and transport. The Iranians know their obvious vulnerabilities, but are we aware of ours?
In this war with a newly revived militant Islam, we think systematically and they think imaginatively. As we strain to bring the genius of imagination to our systems, they attempt to bring systematic discipline to their imagination, and neither of us is precluded from success. Despite our superior power, its diminution by geography, overcommittment and politics means that they might confound us. And because they believe absolutely in the miraculous, one must credit their stated aim to defeat us in the short term by hurling our armies from the Middle East and in the long term by causing the collapse of Western civilization.
If, like his predecessors Saladin, the Mahdi of Sudan and Nasser, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes for the long shot, he may have in mind to draw out and damage any American onslaught with his thousands of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns; by a concentrated air and naval attack to sink one or more major American warships; and to mobilize the Iraqi Shia in a general uprising, with aid from infiltrated Revolutionary Guard and conventional elements, that would threaten U.S. forces in Iraq and sever their lines of supply. This by itself would be a victory for those who see in the colors of martyrdom, but if he could knock us back and put enough of our blood in the water, the real prize might come into reach. That is: to make such a fury in the Islamic world that, as it has done before and not long ago, it would throw over caution in favor of jihad. As simply as it can be said, were Egypt to close the canal, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lock up their airspace -- which, with their combined modern air forces, they could -- the U.S. military in Iraq and the Gulf, bereft of adequate supply, would be beleaguered and imperiled.
In trying to push the Iraqi snake by its tail, we have lost sight of the larger strategic picture, of which such events, though very unlikely, may become a part. But because the Iranian drive for deployable nuclear weapons will take years, we have a period of grace. In that time, we would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do.
To make these provisions will secure our flanks and give us a freer hand in the potentially difficult project of denying to a rogue nation of 68 million people, with a well-developed military and a penchant for rash action, the nuclear weapons it is bent on acquiring and rushing to construct. Our problem in Iraq has been delusion and lack of foresight. Iran is bigger and more powerful. What a pity it would be either to do nothing or once again to lurch forward with neither strategy nor thought.
The writer, a novelist and journalist, served in the Israeli army and air force. He is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. This article will also appear in the Claremont Review of Books.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Brown Is the New Black
by Ann Coulter
This is the only country on Earth that thinks it's not sporting to consider our own interests in choosing immigrants. Try showing up in any other country on the planet, illiterate and penniless, and announcing: "I've seen pictures of your country and it looks great. I think I'd like to live here! Oh, and by the way, would you mind changing all your government and business phone messages, street signs and ballots into my native language? Thanks!" They would laugh you out of the country.
What seems not to have occurred to the "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL" crowd is that this is a country, not a public park.
There are more than 6 billion people in the world, many of whom apparently like the idea of living in the wealthiest democracy on Earth. But if the billions of people of the world did live here, it wouldn't be "here" anymore. America is special for a reason that must transcend the right to vote -- or everyone would be trying to immigrate to Iraq right now.
America has a seller's market in immigration, but thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Kennedy's bill promptly cut the number of European immigrants in half and increased Third World immigrants to 85 percent of the total.
Not surprisingly, post-1965 immigrants have sharply higher levels of poverty and welfare dependence. Europeans may not seem like ideal new immigrants, but the truth is, if what they want is welfare, they'll stay in France.
It's as if we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and instead of doubling the price, we're entertaining low-ball offers. Or more accurately, we're paying our customers to take the darn things off our hands -- and the customers are still indignant with us.
On CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Monday, Dobbs was interviewing Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association about his demand for "full immediate, unconditional legalization for all persons currently in the United States."
Dobbs posed this innocuous question about Lopez's planned boycott, "You're talking about a boycott of all illegal aliens in this country?"
Lopez exploded: "Well, first off, I refute your terminology. You don't say 'kike,' 'patty,' 'WOP,' OK. You don't say 'nigger'! ... You're using language that's offensive to me and offensive to my people! ... You pollute the air every day, Dobbs. ... That language is offensive, it's derogatory, it's denigrating, and don't use that terminology to me again, referring to my people!"
Dobbs eventually ended Lopez's Tourette's episode by calmly asking him what he expected the impact of the boycott to be.
An hour later on MSNBC's "Hardball," Dave Rodriguez, of the League of United Latin American Citizens, leapt in to denounce Rep. Tom Tancredo for using the word "amnesty." He said: "There isn't any such thing as amnesty in this law. I don't understand what this debate is. That's your own terminology on it ..."
Bank robbers and drug dealers ought to start claiming that the words "bank robber" and "drug dealer" are akin to the N-word. They could accuse lawmakers of "criminalizing felonies" and claim they don't understand what the word "jailbreak" means.
At the same time on CNN's "The Situation Room," Maria Elena Salinas, an anchor at Univision, was informing Wolf Blitzer that "all Hispanics feel offended by what has been going on, by the rhetoric, the level of the negativity that you hear coming out of Capitol Hill and also on some television stations and by some journalists."
So it's really more like we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and the customers are not only demanding money to take the hottest sales item off our hands, but are verbally abusing us and acting petulant. I'm offended that you would even think about asking me to pay for the Xbox 360! You say it has a "20 GB detachable hard drive"? Well, would you use the word "kike"?
As hardworking as illegal immigrants are when they come here, they are immediately demagogued by liberals into adopting the victimhood pose so popular on college campuses. Everybody wants to act like his ancestors were brought here on slave ships.
Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza's director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I'd be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be "offended" all the time.)
Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin -- of the Guadalajara Waslins -- ominously warned that while the amendment "doesn't overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities."
Meanwhile, Americans aren't allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is "potentially dangerous to our communities." Here, please -- we'll pay you, just take the whole Xbox 360 factory.
by Ann Coulter
This is the only country on Earth that thinks it's not sporting to consider our own interests in choosing immigrants. Try showing up in any other country on the planet, illiterate and penniless, and announcing: "I've seen pictures of your country and it looks great. I think I'd like to live here! Oh, and by the way, would you mind changing all your government and business phone messages, street signs and ballots into my native language? Thanks!" They would laugh you out of the country.
What seems not to have occurred to the "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL" crowd is that this is a country, not a public park.
There are more than 6 billion people in the world, many of whom apparently like the idea of living in the wealthiest democracy on Earth. But if the billions of people of the world did live here, it wouldn't be "here" anymore. America is special for a reason that must transcend the right to vote -- or everyone would be trying to immigrate to Iraq right now.
America has a seller's market in immigration, but thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Kennedy's bill promptly cut the number of European immigrants in half and increased Third World immigrants to 85 percent of the total.
Not surprisingly, post-1965 immigrants have sharply higher levels of poverty and welfare dependence. Europeans may not seem like ideal new immigrants, but the truth is, if what they want is welfare, they'll stay in France.
It's as if we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and instead of doubling the price, we're entertaining low-ball offers. Or more accurately, we're paying our customers to take the darn things off our hands -- and the customers are still indignant with us.
On CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Monday, Dobbs was interviewing Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association about his demand for "full immediate, unconditional legalization for all persons currently in the United States."
Dobbs posed this innocuous question about Lopez's planned boycott, "You're talking about a boycott of all illegal aliens in this country?"
Lopez exploded: "Well, first off, I refute your terminology. You don't say 'kike,' 'patty,' 'WOP,' OK. You don't say 'nigger'! ... You're using language that's offensive to me and offensive to my people! ... You pollute the air every day, Dobbs. ... That language is offensive, it's derogatory, it's denigrating, and don't use that terminology to me again, referring to my people!"
Dobbs eventually ended Lopez's Tourette's episode by calmly asking him what he expected the impact of the boycott to be.
An hour later on MSNBC's "Hardball," Dave Rodriguez, of the League of United Latin American Citizens, leapt in to denounce Rep. Tom Tancredo for using the word "amnesty." He said: "There isn't any such thing as amnesty in this law. I don't understand what this debate is. That's your own terminology on it ..."
Bank robbers and drug dealers ought to start claiming that the words "bank robber" and "drug dealer" are akin to the N-word. They could accuse lawmakers of "criminalizing felonies" and claim they don't understand what the word "jailbreak" means.
At the same time on CNN's "The Situation Room," Maria Elena Salinas, an anchor at Univision, was informing Wolf Blitzer that "all Hispanics feel offended by what has been going on, by the rhetoric, the level of the negativity that you hear coming out of Capitol Hill and also on some television stations and by some journalists."
So it's really more like we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and the customers are not only demanding money to take the hottest sales item off our hands, but are verbally abusing us and acting petulant. I'm offended that you would even think about asking me to pay for the Xbox 360! You say it has a "20 GB detachable hard drive"? Well, would you use the word "kike"?
As hardworking as illegal immigrants are when they come here, they are immediately demagogued by liberals into adopting the victimhood pose so popular on college campuses. Everybody wants to act like his ancestors were brought here on slave ships.
Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza's director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I'd be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be "offended" all the time.)
Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin -- of the Guadalajara Waslins -- ominously warned that while the amendment "doesn't overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities."
Meanwhile, Americans aren't allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is "potentially dangerous to our communities." Here, please -- we'll pay you, just take the whole Xbox 360 factory.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Immigration 'Solutions'
By Thomas Sowell
Activists who are organizing mass marches and demonstrations in cities across America may well be congratulating themselves on the huge numbers of people they can get to turn out to protest efforts in Congress to reduce illegal immigration.
No doubt that will impress many in the media and intimidate many politicians. But how these marches will be seen by millions of other Americans is another question entirely.
The Mexican flags and the strident assertions of a right to violate American laws are a danger signal to this society, as they would be to any society.
The releasing of children from schools to take part in these marches and the support of the marchers' goals by some religious leaders demonstrate that this contempt for the laws of the land has spread well beyond immigrant communities.
For some, this is just another extension of their general anti-establishment attitudes and activities. They are ready to protest virtually anything at any time.
At the other end of the political spectrum are staid and sober representatives of business interests who simply want a continuing supply of cheap labor. They don't march, they lobby politicians.
Both liberals and free-market libertarians often see this as an abstract issue about poor people being hindered from moving to jobs by an arbitrary border drawn across the southwest desert.
Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be.
Some free-market advocates argue that the same principle which justifies free international trade in commodities should justify the free movement of people as well. But this ignores the fact that people have consequences that go far beyond the consequences of commodities.
Commodities are used up and vanish. People generate more people, who become a permanent and expanding part of the country's population and electorate.
It is an irreversible process -- and a potentially dangerous process, as Europeans have discovered with their "guest worker" programs that have brought in many Muslims who are fundamentally hostile to the culture and the people that welcomed them.
Unlike commodities, people in a welfare state have legal claims on other people's tax dollars and expensive services in schools and hospitals, not to mention the high cost of imprisoning many of them who commit crimes.
Immigrants in past centuries came here to become Americans, not to remain foreigners, much less to proclaim the rights of their homelands to reclaim American soil, as some of the Mexican activist groups have done.
In the wars that this country fought, immigrant groups were among the most patriotic volunteers, earning the respect of American citizens on the battlefield with their blood and their lives.
Today, immigrant spokesmen promote grievances, not gratitude, much less patriotism. Moreover, many native-born Americans also promote a sense of separatism and grievance and, through "multi-culturalism," strive to keep immigrants foreign and disaffected.
This is not to say that all or most of the illegal immigrants themselves share this anti-establishment or anti-American bias of many of their spokesmen or supporters. Most are probably here to make a buck and have little time for ideology.
Hispanic activists themselves recognize that many of the immigrants from Mexico -- legal or illegal -- would assimilate into American society in the absence of these activists' efforts to keep them a separate constituency. But these efforts are widespread and unrelenting, a fact that cannot be ignored.
Whatever is said or done in the immigration debate, no one should insult the American people's intelligence by talking or acting as if this is a question about the movement of abstract people across an abstract line.
What is likely to be done? A pretense of reducing illegal immigration and a reality of amnesty under some other name.
By Thomas Sowell
Activists who are organizing mass marches and demonstrations in cities across America may well be congratulating themselves on the huge numbers of people they can get to turn out to protest efforts in Congress to reduce illegal immigration.
No doubt that will impress many in the media and intimidate many politicians. But how these marches will be seen by millions of other Americans is another question entirely.
The Mexican flags and the strident assertions of a right to violate American laws are a danger signal to this society, as they would be to any society.
The releasing of children from schools to take part in these marches and the support of the marchers' goals by some religious leaders demonstrate that this contempt for the laws of the land has spread well beyond immigrant communities.
For some, this is just another extension of their general anti-establishment attitudes and activities. They are ready to protest virtually anything at any time.
At the other end of the political spectrum are staid and sober representatives of business interests who simply want a continuing supply of cheap labor. They don't march, they lobby politicians.
Both liberals and free-market libertarians often see this as an abstract issue about poor people being hindered from moving to jobs by an arbitrary border drawn across the southwest desert.
Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be.
Some free-market advocates argue that the same principle which justifies free international trade in commodities should justify the free movement of people as well. But this ignores the fact that people have consequences that go far beyond the consequences of commodities.
Commodities are used up and vanish. People generate more people, who become a permanent and expanding part of the country's population and electorate.
It is an irreversible process -- and a potentially dangerous process, as Europeans have discovered with their "guest worker" programs that have brought in many Muslims who are fundamentally hostile to the culture and the people that welcomed them.
Unlike commodities, people in a welfare state have legal claims on other people's tax dollars and expensive services in schools and hospitals, not to mention the high cost of imprisoning many of them who commit crimes.
Immigrants in past centuries came here to become Americans, not to remain foreigners, much less to proclaim the rights of their homelands to reclaim American soil, as some of the Mexican activist groups have done.
In the wars that this country fought, immigrant groups were among the most patriotic volunteers, earning the respect of American citizens on the battlefield with their blood and their lives.
Today, immigrant spokesmen promote grievances, not gratitude, much less patriotism. Moreover, many native-born Americans also promote a sense of separatism and grievance and, through "multi-culturalism," strive to keep immigrants foreign and disaffected.
This is not to say that all or most of the illegal immigrants themselves share this anti-establishment or anti-American bias of many of their spokesmen or supporters. Most are probably here to make a buck and have little time for ideology.
Hispanic activists themselves recognize that many of the immigrants from Mexico -- legal or illegal -- would assimilate into American society in the absence of these activists' efforts to keep them a separate constituency. But these efforts are widespread and unrelenting, a fact that cannot be ignored.
Whatever is said or done in the immigration debate, no one should insult the American people's intelligence by talking or acting as if this is a question about the movement of abstract people across an abstract line.
What is likely to be done? A pretense of reducing illegal immigration and a reality of amnesty under some other name.
From Right Wing News:
What "Jobs Americans Aren't Willing To Do" Translates Into In The Real World
By John Hawkins
This is what "jobs Americans aren't willing to do" translates into in the real world:
An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.
Linda Swope, who operates Complete Employment Services Inc. in Mobile, Ala., told The Washington Times last week that the workers -- whom she described as U.S. citizens, residents of Alabama and predominantly black -- had been "urgently requested" by contractors hired to rebuild and clear devastated areas of the state, but were told to leave three job sites when the foreign workers showed up.
"After Katrina, our company had 70 workers on the job the first day, but the companies decided they didn't need them anymore because the Mexicans had arrived," Mrs. Swope said. "I assure you it is not true that Americans don't want to work.
"We had been told that 270 jobs might be available, and we could have filled every one of them with men from this area, most of whom lost their jobs because of the hurricane," she said. "When we told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame."
What "jobs Americans aren't willing to do" really means is that people who come here from Third World countries and don't pay health care, don't pay for auto-insurance, and may not even pay any taxes, can take jobs from poor Americans who do.
If you're an American working in food service, construction, agriculture or any of the other fields rife with illegals, those "undocumented workers" are taking money out of your pocket by undercutting your wages and they may even be threatening your ability to keep your job and support your family.
How much sense does it make to bring in poor foreigners, whose presence here ends up being subsidized by the American taxpayers in a myriad of different ways, when these illegals just end up taking jobs from poor Americans?
What "Jobs Americans Aren't Willing To Do" Translates Into In The Real World
By John Hawkins
This is what "jobs Americans aren't willing to do" translates into in the real world:
An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.
Linda Swope, who operates Complete Employment Services Inc. in Mobile, Ala., told The Washington Times last week that the workers -- whom she described as U.S. citizens, residents of Alabama and predominantly black -- had been "urgently requested" by contractors hired to rebuild and clear devastated areas of the state, but were told to leave three job sites when the foreign workers showed up.
"After Katrina, our company had 70 workers on the job the first day, but the companies decided they didn't need them anymore because the Mexicans had arrived," Mrs. Swope said. "I assure you it is not true that Americans don't want to work.
"We had been told that 270 jobs might be available, and we could have filled every one of them with men from this area, most of whom lost their jobs because of the hurricane," she said. "When we told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame."
What "jobs Americans aren't willing to do" really means is that people who come here from Third World countries and don't pay health care, don't pay for auto-insurance, and may not even pay any taxes, can take jobs from poor Americans who do.
If you're an American working in food service, construction, agriculture or any of the other fields rife with illegals, those "undocumented workers" are taking money out of your pocket by undercutting your wages and they may even be threatening your ability to keep your job and support your family.
How much sense does it make to bring in poor foreigners, whose presence here ends up being subsidized by the American taxpayers in a myriad of different ways, when these illegals just end up taking jobs from poor Americans?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Kosovo: The real test of U.S. foreign policy
By Aleksandar Pavic
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
If you want to see a place where Christians are outside of the law on their own ancestral land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see American troops committed to establishing a narco-Islamic state on Christian land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see Christian churches, monasteries and cemeteries desecrated on an almost daily basis, under the noses of thousands of Western soldiers – look no further than Kosovo.
Seven years after William Jefferson Clinton launched a bombing campaign against a European Christian land in support of the Islamic terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, it's as though the bombs have never stopped falling on the Christian remnant in Kosovo. Whether Clinton did it to divert attention from a burgeoning sex scandal, or whether it was part of a global anti-Christian campaign by Western liberals with a cultural death-wish, the results for the Kosovo Christians – and all non-Albanians in Kosovo – are the same.
And the U.S. State Department is doing everything to make sure it stays that way, with a strong supporting role of the United Nations, Britain and Germany.
That's right, the might and the resources of U.S. diplomacy are being used to tear away a Christian European nation's spiritual and historical cradle and hand it over to a terrorist-breeding, white-slavery peddling, heroin-pushing narco-Islamic camarilla in Kosovo, which has, by all accounts, made the province into "Afghanistan in Europe." During the current U.N.-brokered talks on Kosovo's "final status," U.S. diplomats are tirelessly promoting the "necessity" and "inevitability" of Kosovo's independence.
There are well over 1,000 Christian churches and monasteries in Kosovo, many filled with priceless medieval frescoes from the Byzantine era, in which Italian art historians have spotted the beginnings of the Renaissance about a century before it appeared in Western Europe. At least 150 have been destroyed by Muslim Albanian mobs since Clinton's post-bombing deployment of NATO "peacekeepers" in 1999. The rest are menaced on a daily basis. Those that are lucky enough to be protected have armed NATO troops and barbed wire around them.
In its drive to secure Kosovo's independence from Serbia, preferably by the end of 2006, U.S. (and U.N.) diplomacy has helped install Islamic hardliners to top Kosovo political posts – people with gallons of Christian (and Roma, and moderate Albanian) blood on their hands. It has supported the revocation of international arrest warrants against them, as in the case of new Kosovo "Prime Minister," Agim Ceku, a man whom Canadian U.N. troops wounded in Croatia in 1995 to stop a killing spree against unarmed Serbian villagers in another "U.N. protected area." Ceku had an Interpol warrant against him lifted in March "in line with his new duties of prime minister." And U.S. diplomacy brings other terrorists, such as Hashim Tachi, aka "the Snake," to Washington, D.C., as it did this January, to promote the cause of narco-Islam on Christian soil in the highest forums of American foreign policy.
Why?
It is said that more than 600 years ago, when the first news of the Battle of Kosovo came to Western Europe, telling of a victory of the Christian Serb army against the Ottoman Turks, the bells of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out joyously in celebration.
Actually, this fierce battle on the Field of Blackbirds (the meaning of the name of Kosovo) ended in a draw, with both the Serbian Prince Lazar and the Turkish Sultan Murat being killed in battle. But the weakened Serbia, pressed from the north by the rival Hungarian kingdom, never recovered. It is then, as the story goes, that the bright red peonies that bloom by the millions each year on Kosovo's plains made their appearance, growing out of the soil consecrated by the spilt Christian blood. And it wasn't only Serbian blood that would be shed in the coming centuries. It was not until combined Slavic and German forces threw back the huge army commanded by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha at the walls of Vienna in 1683 that the tide against Ottoman Turkey began to be turned back and the Christian West could finally breathe easier.
Now, 323 years later, the West's secularized elites are doing everything to help Islam – an especially aggressive and corrupt variety of it – make a big comeback in Europe, with the United States taking the leading role.
Why?
Some say that it is because the State Department, at least the part dealing with the Balkans, is still staffed with Clinton-era secular globalists pursuing their own agenda. But this cannot be an excuse for an administration that sees itself as Christian. We know what the Bible says about pragmatism when moral issues are at hand: Better that you are hot or cold than lukewarm, for you shall be spewed out like salt that has lost its flavor. And that's the present U.S. policy in Kosovo.
To what end this "pragmatism" (if that's what it is) except straight to Hell? There is no getting around it. Jesus said, "Whoever is not with me is against me." So, what of those who actively or passively give aid to the burning of His churches on Kosovo? What sayest thou, Christian soldiers?
Where were you when Christian Kosovo burned? Did you cry real tears and help, or give aid and comfort to His enemies? Take heed, Christian Americans: A great anti-Christian crime is currently being committed in your name on Christian Kosovo. You cannot say that you haven't been warned. Now it is up to you to do something.
You cannot in good conscience support Kosovo's independence. For that shall mean its final destruction as a Christian land. What can you do? What is the only consequent Kosovo policy for American Christian policy makers? Demand that the destruction of churches, monasteries and cemeteries stop, that anti-Christian persecution stop, that Christian Serbs and other non-Albanians be allowed to return to their ancestral homes protected by their own armed forces. Help them renew their houses of worship, which were destroyed under the "protection" of U.S.-led international troops.
You can support Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia, with equal rights for all. But not independence for the Islamic narco-bosses running the place and their brand of anti-civilization. That's the current State Department agenda, the same as the agenda of the United Nations and European secularized, suicidal elites. That would be abomination. And, make no mistake, that would, ultimately, be the end of Christian America. For this crime will not be forgiven in the only place that counts.
Aleksandar Pavic covers the Balkans for WorldNetDaily.com
By Aleksandar Pavic
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
If you want to see a place where Christians are outside of the law on their own ancestral land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see American troops committed to establishing a narco-Islamic state on Christian land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see Christian churches, monasteries and cemeteries desecrated on an almost daily basis, under the noses of thousands of Western soldiers – look no further than Kosovo.
Seven years after William Jefferson Clinton launched a bombing campaign against a European Christian land in support of the Islamic terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, it's as though the bombs have never stopped falling on the Christian remnant in Kosovo. Whether Clinton did it to divert attention from a burgeoning sex scandal, or whether it was part of a global anti-Christian campaign by Western liberals with a cultural death-wish, the results for the Kosovo Christians – and all non-Albanians in Kosovo – are the same.
And the U.S. State Department is doing everything to make sure it stays that way, with a strong supporting role of the United Nations, Britain and Germany.
That's right, the might and the resources of U.S. diplomacy are being used to tear away a Christian European nation's spiritual and historical cradle and hand it over to a terrorist-breeding, white-slavery peddling, heroin-pushing narco-Islamic camarilla in Kosovo, which has, by all accounts, made the province into "Afghanistan in Europe." During the current U.N.-brokered talks on Kosovo's "final status," U.S. diplomats are tirelessly promoting the "necessity" and "inevitability" of Kosovo's independence.
There are well over 1,000 Christian churches and monasteries in Kosovo, many filled with priceless medieval frescoes from the Byzantine era, in which Italian art historians have spotted the beginnings of the Renaissance about a century before it appeared in Western Europe. At least 150 have been destroyed by Muslim Albanian mobs since Clinton's post-bombing deployment of NATO "peacekeepers" in 1999. The rest are menaced on a daily basis. Those that are lucky enough to be protected have armed NATO troops and barbed wire around them.
In its drive to secure Kosovo's independence from Serbia, preferably by the end of 2006, U.S. (and U.N.) diplomacy has helped install Islamic hardliners to top Kosovo political posts – people with gallons of Christian (and Roma, and moderate Albanian) blood on their hands. It has supported the revocation of international arrest warrants against them, as in the case of new Kosovo "Prime Minister," Agim Ceku, a man whom Canadian U.N. troops wounded in Croatia in 1995 to stop a killing spree against unarmed Serbian villagers in another "U.N. protected area." Ceku had an Interpol warrant against him lifted in March "in line with his new duties of prime minister." And U.S. diplomacy brings other terrorists, such as Hashim Tachi, aka "the Snake," to Washington, D.C., as it did this January, to promote the cause of narco-Islam on Christian soil in the highest forums of American foreign policy.
Why?
It is said that more than 600 years ago, when the first news of the Battle of Kosovo came to Western Europe, telling of a victory of the Christian Serb army against the Ottoman Turks, the bells of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out joyously in celebration.
Actually, this fierce battle on the Field of Blackbirds (the meaning of the name of Kosovo) ended in a draw, with both the Serbian Prince Lazar and the Turkish Sultan Murat being killed in battle. But the weakened Serbia, pressed from the north by the rival Hungarian kingdom, never recovered. It is then, as the story goes, that the bright red peonies that bloom by the millions each year on Kosovo's plains made their appearance, growing out of the soil consecrated by the spilt Christian blood. And it wasn't only Serbian blood that would be shed in the coming centuries. It was not until combined Slavic and German forces threw back the huge army commanded by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha at the walls of Vienna in 1683 that the tide against Ottoman Turkey began to be turned back and the Christian West could finally breathe easier.
Now, 323 years later, the West's secularized elites are doing everything to help Islam – an especially aggressive and corrupt variety of it – make a big comeback in Europe, with the United States taking the leading role.
Why?
Some say that it is because the State Department, at least the part dealing with the Balkans, is still staffed with Clinton-era secular globalists pursuing their own agenda. But this cannot be an excuse for an administration that sees itself as Christian. We know what the Bible says about pragmatism when moral issues are at hand: Better that you are hot or cold than lukewarm, for you shall be spewed out like salt that has lost its flavor. And that's the present U.S. policy in Kosovo.
To what end this "pragmatism" (if that's what it is) except straight to Hell? There is no getting around it. Jesus said, "Whoever is not with me is against me." So, what of those who actively or passively give aid to the burning of His churches on Kosovo? What sayest thou, Christian soldiers?
Where were you when Christian Kosovo burned? Did you cry real tears and help, or give aid and comfort to His enemies? Take heed, Christian Americans: A great anti-Christian crime is currently being committed in your name on Christian Kosovo. You cannot say that you haven't been warned. Now it is up to you to do something.
You cannot in good conscience support Kosovo's independence. For that shall mean its final destruction as a Christian land. What can you do? What is the only consequent Kosovo policy for American Christian policy makers? Demand that the destruction of churches, monasteries and cemeteries stop, that anti-Christian persecution stop, that Christian Serbs and other non-Albanians be allowed to return to their ancestral homes protected by their own armed forces. Help them renew their houses of worship, which were destroyed under the "protection" of U.S.-led international troops.
You can support Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia, with equal rights for all. But not independence for the Islamic narco-bosses running the place and their brand of anti-civilization. That's the current State Department agenda, the same as the agenda of the United Nations and European secularized, suicidal elites. That would be abomination. And, make no mistake, that would, ultimately, be the end of Christian America. For this crime will not be forgiven in the only place that counts.
Aleksandar Pavic covers the Balkans for WorldNetDaily.com
Missing From The Immigration Debate
By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal
Monday, April 10, 2006
Largely overlooked in the immigration debate roiling Congress and the nation are two themes that should be front and center. The first is that all efforts to control illegal immigration will be futile unless Congress requires workers to have forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards -- ideally embedded with biometric data matching the bearer's thumbprint or iris scan -- and imposes heavy penalties on employers who hire people without such cards. The second is that nobody seems to have any idea how to interest the millions of chronically unemployed Americans -- especially inner-city males -- in the low-paying jobs that go to illegal immigrants because Americans supposedly don't want them.
So here's a modest three-part plan. It would cut down the flow of illegals as efficiently and humanely as possible; use a federally funded minimum-wage increase to bring at least some unemployed Americans into the job market; and, while we're at it, narrow the vast income gap between skilled and unskilled workers.
First, Congress should create a system of forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards and a more robust enforcement process to put teeth in the laws against employing illegal immigrants. The influx of illegals will plunge if these workers cannot find jobs.
Experience shows that as long as there are jobs for illegal immigrants, neither a wall along the Mexican border -- unless festooned with machine-gun towers and troops under orders to shoot climbers on sight -- nor such punitive measures as making illegal immigration a felony will greatly slow the influx.
The 1986 immigration reform law sought to slow the flow of illegals by slapping sanctions on employers who hire them (while giving amnesty to the millions already here). But a coalition of employers eager to hire low-paid, hardworking illegals and libertarians obsessed with the specter of Big Brother killed proposals to create forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards.
The result was to render the employer sanctions almost completely ineffective. Illegals can easily buy forged Social Security cards, driver's licenses, and other identification documents upon which employers are entitled to rely. And many employers are happy to hire illegals as long as their paperwork passes muster.
The "Real ID" law adopted by Congress last year requires states to standardize driver's licenses by 2008 and to deny ordinary licenses to illegals. But it allows employers to accept other forms of identification and does not require that driver's licenses include Social Security numbers.
The bills adopted by the full House and the Senate Judiciary Committee do contain detailed provisions to create more ID cards that can be authenticated. But they don't go far enough. For example, they don't require job applicants, now or ever, to present biometrically verifiable cards.
Why is there not a more serious effort to solve the fake-ID problem that is the Achilles' heel of all efforts to slow illegal immigration -- not to mention efforts to identify possible terrorists? Because of the intransigence both of employers who like the status quo and of civil libertarians imbued with a peculiarly American fear of slipping down the slope toward totalitarianism.
Libertarians of the Left and the Right worry about society slipping into such police-state habits as cops randomly stopping pedestrians and demanding to see their papers. Libertarians also warn that high-tech identity cards could include all sorts of private information that would inevitably fall into the wrong hands.
And they dispute claims that a reliable identity-card system would help prevent terrorist attacks.
The libertarians may be right on the last point. Al Qaeda has plenty of eager young recruits who -- like Mohamed Atta -- have clean records and could obtain valid biometric passports or visas to enter the United States under their own names as legal tourists or students.
But we are already a long way down the slope that scares civil libertarians, and it has proven not to be very slippery. Various laws already require employers, airlines, security screeners, bartenders, and many others to demand ID cards. This has not led to random identity checks on the streets or other police-state measures. There is no reason to suppose that requiring authenticatable ID cards would either.
As for concerns about privacy, a biometric ID card establishing that a job applicant is legally qualified to work, and is the person he says he is, need not contain any more private information than is already printed on your driver's license. And the right to privacy does not include a right to lie about who you are.
Second, as President Bush and others have suggested to a greater or lesser extent, Congress should in some way grandfather the millions of illegals who have already settled here to avoid disrupting their lives and those of the many Americans who depend on them. A forgery-proof, theft-proof identity card would do more harm than good if adopted as part of a punitive, enforcement-only immigration law.
No force on earth is going to trigger the departure of very many of the more than 11 million illegals who have already settled here in pursuit of their own American dreams and (in many cases) have had children who are U.S. citizens and formed bonds with their employers and others.
A law requiring dismissal of all current employees who could not produce biometric ID cards could be enforced only on a random, inherently capricious basis and would only drive those employees fired by law-abiding employers into the hands of unscrupulous exploiters.
A law barring employers from hiring newly arrived illegals without authenticatable ID cards, on the other hand, would be both enforceable and relatively humane. Mexicans and others weighing the pros and cons of sneaking across the border would be on notice that they would have a very hard time finding jobs and would be constantly at risk of dismissal and deportation.
Third, Congress should raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15 to at least $9.15 per hour, for Americans and legal residents only. And to dispel concerns about killing jobs that aren't worth $9.15 per hour to employers, Congress should reimburse employers for some or all of the increase.
This higher wage would meet -- or at least test -- the suggestions by Bush and others that we need an annual influx of as many as 400,000 low-skilled "guest workers" (if not illegals) to clean our offices and hotel rooms, cut our grass, plant our gardens, staff our chicken factories, pick our fruit, and do other jobs that Americans won't take.
More Americans would be willing to take such jobs if they paid more. The jobs would pay more if employers could no longer tap into a constant stream of illegal immigrants willing to work for subsistence wages. And if unskilled jobs paid a lot more, they might alleviate one of our most intractable social problems by luring into the job market young, unemployed inner-city males and others who now prefer lives of sponging off others, idleness, drugs, and petty crime.
Hence my proposal. The cost to the government would be small change in the context of the current federal budget. About 2 million workers currently earn the minimum wage or less, according to Labor Department data. Many are part-timers. Assuming an average workweek of 30 hours, or 1,500 hours per year, a $4 hike in the minimum wage would cost about $6,000 per worker per year. That's about $12 billion in all -- one-fourth of the net worth of a single man, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates. Add to that a few more billion to cover the raises of workers now earning between $5.15 and $9.15 an hour.
I am not so naive as to assume that a $9.15 minimum wage would inspire millions of inner-city males to abandon lives of idleness and drugs for work mowing lawns, cutting up chickens, or picking fruit. But it might pull some of them -- the ones motivated to climb out of the underclass -- into the job market. That would be good for them and good for the rest of us.
It might be argued that a government-subsidized minimum-wage increase would duplicate the Earned Income Tax Credit. And so it would to some extent. But for some workers, the prospect of taking more money home every week would be a more powerful incentive than the promise of an Internal Revenue Service check months down the road for those who can figure out how to fill out and file the right forms.
It might also be argued that a government-paid minimum-wage increase would go mostly to people who are already working minimum-wage jobs and thus need no new incentive. But this is no objection unless you begrudge an exceedingly modest transfer of wealth from those of us who are well off to those of our fellow citizens who are willing to work but are struggling to get by.
-- Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine, where "Opening Argument" appears. His e-mail address is staylor@nationaljournal.com.
By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal
Monday, April 10, 2006
Largely overlooked in the immigration debate roiling Congress and the nation are two themes that should be front and center. The first is that all efforts to control illegal immigration will be futile unless Congress requires workers to have forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards -- ideally embedded with biometric data matching the bearer's thumbprint or iris scan -- and imposes heavy penalties on employers who hire people without such cards. The second is that nobody seems to have any idea how to interest the millions of chronically unemployed Americans -- especially inner-city males -- in the low-paying jobs that go to illegal immigrants because Americans supposedly don't want them.
So here's a modest three-part plan. It would cut down the flow of illegals as efficiently and humanely as possible; use a federally funded minimum-wage increase to bring at least some unemployed Americans into the job market; and, while we're at it, narrow the vast income gap between skilled and unskilled workers.
First, Congress should create a system of forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards and a more robust enforcement process to put teeth in the laws against employing illegal immigrants. The influx of illegals will plunge if these workers cannot find jobs.
Experience shows that as long as there are jobs for illegal immigrants, neither a wall along the Mexican border -- unless festooned with machine-gun towers and troops under orders to shoot climbers on sight -- nor such punitive measures as making illegal immigration a felony will greatly slow the influx.
The 1986 immigration reform law sought to slow the flow of illegals by slapping sanctions on employers who hire them (while giving amnesty to the millions already here). But a coalition of employers eager to hire low-paid, hardworking illegals and libertarians obsessed with the specter of Big Brother killed proposals to create forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards.
The result was to render the employer sanctions almost completely ineffective. Illegals can easily buy forged Social Security cards, driver's licenses, and other identification documents upon which employers are entitled to rely. And many employers are happy to hire illegals as long as their paperwork passes muster.
The "Real ID" law adopted by Congress last year requires states to standardize driver's licenses by 2008 and to deny ordinary licenses to illegals. But it allows employers to accept other forms of identification and does not require that driver's licenses include Social Security numbers.
The bills adopted by the full House and the Senate Judiciary Committee do contain detailed provisions to create more ID cards that can be authenticated. But they don't go far enough. For example, they don't require job applicants, now or ever, to present biometrically verifiable cards.
Why is there not a more serious effort to solve the fake-ID problem that is the Achilles' heel of all efforts to slow illegal immigration -- not to mention efforts to identify possible terrorists? Because of the intransigence both of employers who like the status quo and of civil libertarians imbued with a peculiarly American fear of slipping down the slope toward totalitarianism.
Libertarians of the Left and the Right worry about society slipping into such police-state habits as cops randomly stopping pedestrians and demanding to see their papers. Libertarians also warn that high-tech identity cards could include all sorts of private information that would inevitably fall into the wrong hands.
And they dispute claims that a reliable identity-card system would help prevent terrorist attacks.
The libertarians may be right on the last point. Al Qaeda has plenty of eager young recruits who -- like Mohamed Atta -- have clean records and could obtain valid biometric passports or visas to enter the United States under their own names as legal tourists or students.
But we are already a long way down the slope that scares civil libertarians, and it has proven not to be very slippery. Various laws already require employers, airlines, security screeners, bartenders, and many others to demand ID cards. This has not led to random identity checks on the streets or other police-state measures. There is no reason to suppose that requiring authenticatable ID cards would either.
As for concerns about privacy, a biometric ID card establishing that a job applicant is legally qualified to work, and is the person he says he is, need not contain any more private information than is already printed on your driver's license. And the right to privacy does not include a right to lie about who you are.
Second, as President Bush and others have suggested to a greater or lesser extent, Congress should in some way grandfather the millions of illegals who have already settled here to avoid disrupting their lives and those of the many Americans who depend on them. A forgery-proof, theft-proof identity card would do more harm than good if adopted as part of a punitive, enforcement-only immigration law.
No force on earth is going to trigger the departure of very many of the more than 11 million illegals who have already settled here in pursuit of their own American dreams and (in many cases) have had children who are U.S. citizens and formed bonds with their employers and others.
A law requiring dismissal of all current employees who could not produce biometric ID cards could be enforced only on a random, inherently capricious basis and would only drive those employees fired by law-abiding employers into the hands of unscrupulous exploiters.
A law barring employers from hiring newly arrived illegals without authenticatable ID cards, on the other hand, would be both enforceable and relatively humane. Mexicans and others weighing the pros and cons of sneaking across the border would be on notice that they would have a very hard time finding jobs and would be constantly at risk of dismissal and deportation.
Third, Congress should raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15 to at least $9.15 per hour, for Americans and legal residents only. And to dispel concerns about killing jobs that aren't worth $9.15 per hour to employers, Congress should reimburse employers for some or all of the increase.
This higher wage would meet -- or at least test -- the suggestions by Bush and others that we need an annual influx of as many as 400,000 low-skilled "guest workers" (if not illegals) to clean our offices and hotel rooms, cut our grass, plant our gardens, staff our chicken factories, pick our fruit, and do other jobs that Americans won't take.
More Americans would be willing to take such jobs if they paid more. The jobs would pay more if employers could no longer tap into a constant stream of illegal immigrants willing to work for subsistence wages. And if unskilled jobs paid a lot more, they might alleviate one of our most intractable social problems by luring into the job market young, unemployed inner-city males and others who now prefer lives of sponging off others, idleness, drugs, and petty crime.
Hence my proposal. The cost to the government would be small change in the context of the current federal budget. About 2 million workers currently earn the minimum wage or less, according to Labor Department data. Many are part-timers. Assuming an average workweek of 30 hours, or 1,500 hours per year, a $4 hike in the minimum wage would cost about $6,000 per worker per year. That's about $12 billion in all -- one-fourth of the net worth of a single man, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates. Add to that a few more billion to cover the raises of workers now earning between $5.15 and $9.15 an hour.
I am not so naive as to assume that a $9.15 minimum wage would inspire millions of inner-city males to abandon lives of idleness and drugs for work mowing lawns, cutting up chickens, or picking fruit. But it might pull some of them -- the ones motivated to climb out of the underclass -- into the job market. That would be good for them and good for the rest of us.
It might be argued that a government-subsidized minimum-wage increase would duplicate the Earned Income Tax Credit. And so it would to some extent. But for some workers, the prospect of taking more money home every week would be a more powerful incentive than the promise of an Internal Revenue Service check months down the road for those who can figure out how to fill out and file the right forms.
It might also be argued that a government-paid minimum-wage increase would go mostly to people who are already working minimum-wage jobs and thus need no new incentive. But this is no objection unless you begrudge an exceedingly modest transfer of wealth from those of us who are well off to those of our fellow citizens who are willing to work but are struggling to get by.
-- Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine, where "Opening Argument" appears. His e-mail address is staylor@nationaljournal.com.
From Carolina Blue:
Journey Begins For 2006 Tar Heels
Bunting, coaches pleased with spring practice effort.
April 10, 2006
by Lee Pace, Extra Points
Two plays during the Tar Heels' month of spring practice provided Exhibits A and B for the speed, effort and heart that will help provide the foundation for the 2006 Carolina football season. Kentwan Balmer began on the back side of one snap but ran down a wide receiver across the field and made the tackle. Larry Edwards bit on a play-action fake on another. Nonplused, he wheeled, sprinted downfield and swatted the football to the ground
"Our players understand now our culture of giving effort on every snap - whether it's practice or a game," defensive coordinator Marvin Sanders says. "They know what is expected from an effort standpoint. We had to teach our expectations a couple of years ago. That's not an issue any longer."
Sanders is running slow motion of the Balmer play on his computer screen. He points to No. 90, aligned at left end, and watches as the reverse evolves to Brooks Foster toward the defense's right side.
"Kentwan slants into the B-gap ... here comes the reverse ... here's Brooks ... here's Kentwan ... here's Kentwan ... here's Kentwan ..."
Balmer barrels from at least a yard deep into the backfield, across the grid and some 20 yards downfield, where he snares Foster after the runner had paused to sidestep another defender.
"Holy cow, is that fast or what for a defensive end?" Sanders effuses. "That's a great effort play."
Also noticeable in the field of vision around Foster are three offensive linemen - guys carrying nearly 300 pounds who've followed the play downfield, ever alert to behead an unsuspecting defender. New offensive line coach Mark Weber, who donned a plastic construction hard-hat with an NC logo for an early spring practice to underscore his unit's mindset, demands his linemen aggressively follow every play downfield.
"I've seen guys pushing people, I've seen long runs being broken and I've seen linemen down field following the play," says center Ben Lemming, who missed spring with continued shoulder injury. "It an aggressive mindset we have this year."
"If a tackle's made 10 yards or 15 yards down the field now, you're going to see O-linemen right around the ball," Sanders adds. "Those guys are right down the field with the D-line. That's exciting to see that kind of mentality."
Sanders locates another snippet of digital imagery and points to No. 32. The senior linebacker watches from the right edge as QB Joe Dailey appears to hand the ball off to the tailback. Edwards steps up quickly to make the play but then realizes it's a fake as Dailey looks downfield to pass. Edwards spins to the outside, sprints 20 yards downfield and looks over his inside shoulder to find the ball. He locates it, times his jump and knocks it down.
"Larry's caught," Sanders says, pointing to Edwards' reaction to the play fake. "For some guys, that's it. They're done for that play. But not Larry. Look at that recovery speed. He goes from being totally out of position to making the play.
"That's ability and that's effort. We've got more ability than we've had. We still need more. We're not as deep as I'd like us to be. But I can't fault our effort at all. That's a nice change."
The 2006 spring was indeed about change and evolution: Three new assistant coaches, two new quarterbacks, a brand new offensive playbook, young faces throughout vying for playing time, older players watching from the boundary as they nursed all manner of injuries, position changes for a half-dozen players.
And it's been about the continued maturation of the culture John Bunting has been working to develop for five years.
"I like what I've seen out here this spring," Bunting says. "We've been very physical. We've worked extremely hard every day. Nobody questions what hard work means any more. That's the culture change I've been talking about for years. We had a lot of whiners, guys we had to re-teach that hard work is good. It's good. It makes you better.
"Well, we know how to work hard now."
It's all adding up to a noticeable buzz around the program. Don't look now, but Bunting and the Tar Heels are gaining on the rest of the world. They're 9-7 in the newly expanded ACC over the last two years (fourth best among 12 teams). The staff has recruited well for three years now and this year closed better than ever with the high-profile targets. The University has provided the funds for retaining and hiring quality assistant coaches.
"Next fall can't come soon enough," says Don McCauley, an All-America running back 36 years ago and today a key Rams Club executive. "I've not seen as much optimism for an upcoming season since John's been here. There's a lot of work left to be done. But if everyone does their part, it could be a very interesting season."
The Tar Heels to a man recognize that everything's been ratcheted up around Carolina football: the tempo, the demands, the intensity, the expectations, the energy.
"It's a different feel this spring," says Lemming. "People are excited. There's a breath of fresh air around the program. We have a fresh offense, fresh new coaches. You can see it permeate through all the players. People are flying around, hitting each other. There is definitely a new sense of purpose."
"There's a new aura around the program," says tackle Brian Chacos. "We had a lot of success on defense last year and have a lot of guys coming back. The additions of Coach Cignetti and Coach Weber on offense are going to be tremendous. Things are really exciting, really enthusiastic. We're anxious to share them with the fans in September."
The offensive staff has had an 80 percent turnover over the last two years, with Cignetti replacing the retired Gary Tranquill as coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Weber replacing Hal Hunter, who moved to the NFL, and Dave Brock and John Gutekunst taking the receiver and tight end reins one year ago. The defensive staff has evolved totally from the washout of 2002-03 (the days of 475 yards allowed a game), and new this year is Danny Pearman, who's coaching ends following the departure of Brad Lawing to South Carolina.
"I think the University of North Carolina has gotten a rebirth, a great burst of energy," says senior Jesse Holley. "We've won some games and we've had some new coaches come in who exude excellence. The team is starting to feed off their energy. You look at them and say, `How can your coach be more excited than you are?' It makes you up your ante a little more."
Bunting says this spring has been the most of fun of the six he's presided over since taking the Tar Heel job in 2001. He believes there's a sense of camaraderie and shared mission in the fourth-floor staff meeting room that's permeating the program.
"I had fun this spring watching the kids compete and watching the new coaches work," Bunting says. "Anytime you have something new and you see it starting to work and you see progress day to day, that's exciting." The No. 1 question for the 2005 Tar Heels is this: What will the new offense look like and feel like? And question 1-A is this: Who will pull the trigger at quarterback?
The offense is built around running the ball hard and often between the tackles and setting up a cavalcade of throws off play-action fakes. It will employ multiple personnel groups and stretch the secondary vertically and horizontally. Cignetti and Weber like to point to their Fresno State team's victory over Virginia in the MPC Computers Bowl one year ago and the telling statistic that the Bulldogs ran the ball 38 times and threw it 38 times - gaining 222 yards via the ground and 235 via air.
"It's a very physical offense," says Weber. "It's a downhill running game with lots of personnel groups and formations. It's a very aggressive offense. We try to stay balanced. We'll mix it up and, most importantly, get the ball in the hands of our playmakers."
The Tar Heels are sold.
"It's a lot more up-tempo," says tailback Ronnie McGill. "It's about getting out of the huddle, getting to the line and setting the tempo and the pace at the beginning of every game. There's more downhill running instead of running to the outside. It's a tougher mentality than we used to have."
"We've watched tons of Fresno State film, and you can see for yourself it's an attacking offense," says Holley. "The game that sticks out in everyone's mind is the way they attacked USC [42 points, 427 yards]. They didn't back down. I love the mindset of this offense."
"I love the new attitude," says tailback Barrington Edwards. "We're going to be aggressive with the ball and we're going to run it. Coach Cignetti has an attitude. Sometimes he wants to put a helmet on and get out there himself. We just feed off him. We're going to line up and come after you."
Dailey, the Nebraska transfer, and red-shirt freshman Cam Sexton, whose spring was ruined last year with a broken ankle, are listed in a dead heat in competition for the starting quarterback position. Both are quality players, and the Tar Heels can move the football with either. Both have good arms, though neither is particularly tall in the classic sense (each stands 6 foot 1). Both are mobile (Dailey was clocked in the 40 at 4.41 and Sexton at 4.5) and both are intelligent. Bunting acknowledges that Dailey might have an edge because of his having started 11 games for Nebraska in 2004. But it's a long way to Sept. 2 and Rutgers.
"I'm very pleased with their progress," Cignetti says. "I see two guys that know how to prepare and that love the game. When you talk about the mental preparation of a quarterback and functional intelligence, I see two guys that have what you want. They have great escapability, they can run, they play within the pocket as well as outside the pocket. I'm very excited to see where we're going to be come August with these two young men."
Sanders says that Dailey and Sexton both can be the kind of players to give opposing defensive coordinators fits. No one likes to play against a mobile quarterback. There's too much to worry about if he can run. It's particularly difficult if the quarterback has a good arm as well. Sanders is particularly familiar with Dailey; both were at Nebraska for the 2003 season, and Sanders introduced Dailey to Bunting, Tranquill and to the Carolina program when Dailey decided to transfer a year ago.
"Dailey will keep you awake at night," Sanders says. "A guy who can run and throw has an answer for anything you can do to him."
Spring is always a time for tinkering with personnel, and a handful of Tar Heels are in new positions. Cooter Arnold is now a backup free safety to senior Kareen Taylor, and Sanders sees great things for him. Balmer is playing some defensive tackle in addition to end; passing situations that work his speed and power on the inside with the quickness of Hilee Taylor on the edge could be a thing to behold. Joey Bozich has moved from quarterback and auditioned at fullback and made some splattering hits in the kicking game. Bobby Rome has shifted from quarterback and taken snaps at tailback and fullback. Martell Thatch has moved from safety to linebacker. Guard Calvin Darity has moved to center in Lemming's absence this spring, and defensive linemen Kenny Price and Aaron Stahl moved to offense.
The battle for backup tailback behind senior Ronnie McGill will continue through August. Edwards and Richie Rich had good performances in the Blue-White scrimmage, with Edwards notching 58 yards on 11 carries and Rich coming on strong the last two weeks of spring practice. Tailback, receiver and defensive line are three positions where Bunting is hoping for help with in the incoming freshman class.
Now that spring practice is over, Bunting will take to the road for a month of Rams Club speaking engagements and then another few weeks of May recruiting. The assistants go recruiting immediately, and the players focus on final exams.
"It's up to these kids to take it to another level, for the leadership to step up," Bunting says. "It's all about doing the right thing - in the classroom, in the weight room, everything else we do in the off-season. We need a great off-season of bonding, of growing together. I fully anticipate a very cooperative and workmanlike summer. It's important to our future."
Last summer the Tar Heels exhibited a sense of cohesion and esprit de'corps around the weight room, the football field, the running lanes, the backyard barbecue, the bowling alley and other spots where athletes gather that carried over to Saturdays during the fall. Seniors like Matt Baker, Tommy Davis and Chase Page led the way, and now the mantel is passed to Holley, Jon Hamlet, Melik Brown, McGill and others.
"We have players today buying into the whole concept," says Hamlett. "Everyone has to do the right things between now and August. The seniors will lead the way."
"It's all about bonding and trusting," says Brown. "The way we bond off the field helps us bond on the field. If you trust your teammates off the field - to study and do the right things - then you trust him to be there on the field."
It all sounds very good: the talent level, a quality staff, the incoming freshmen, the commitment to excellence and a tough-minded work ethic. But as Bunting cautioned Saturday in the wake of the final scrimmage, "We've got a long, long, long ways to go."
Cignetti has preached to this offense the notion of "the journey," that each day and each snap of the football is one cornerstone to the opener Sept. 2. Cignetti and the newcomers are lucky; they have no idea how far Bunting and the program have actually traveled.
Journey Begins For 2006 Tar Heels
Bunting, coaches pleased with spring practice effort.
April 10, 2006
by Lee Pace, Extra Points
Two plays during the Tar Heels' month of spring practice provided Exhibits A and B for the speed, effort and heart that will help provide the foundation for the 2006 Carolina football season. Kentwan Balmer began on the back side of one snap but ran down a wide receiver across the field and made the tackle. Larry Edwards bit on a play-action fake on another. Nonplused, he wheeled, sprinted downfield and swatted the football to the ground
"Our players understand now our culture of giving effort on every snap - whether it's practice or a game," defensive coordinator Marvin Sanders says. "They know what is expected from an effort standpoint. We had to teach our expectations a couple of years ago. That's not an issue any longer."
Sanders is running slow motion of the Balmer play on his computer screen. He points to No. 90, aligned at left end, and watches as the reverse evolves to Brooks Foster toward the defense's right side.
"Kentwan slants into the B-gap ... here comes the reverse ... here's Brooks ... here's Kentwan ... here's Kentwan ... here's Kentwan ..."
Balmer barrels from at least a yard deep into the backfield, across the grid and some 20 yards downfield, where he snares Foster after the runner had paused to sidestep another defender.
"Holy cow, is that fast or what for a defensive end?" Sanders effuses. "That's a great effort play."
Also noticeable in the field of vision around Foster are three offensive linemen - guys carrying nearly 300 pounds who've followed the play downfield, ever alert to behead an unsuspecting defender. New offensive line coach Mark Weber, who donned a plastic construction hard-hat with an NC logo for an early spring practice to underscore his unit's mindset, demands his linemen aggressively follow every play downfield.
"I've seen guys pushing people, I've seen long runs being broken and I've seen linemen down field following the play," says center Ben Lemming, who missed spring with continued shoulder injury. "It an aggressive mindset we have this year."
"If a tackle's made 10 yards or 15 yards down the field now, you're going to see O-linemen right around the ball," Sanders adds. "Those guys are right down the field with the D-line. That's exciting to see that kind of mentality."
Sanders locates another snippet of digital imagery and points to No. 32. The senior linebacker watches from the right edge as QB Joe Dailey appears to hand the ball off to the tailback. Edwards steps up quickly to make the play but then realizes it's a fake as Dailey looks downfield to pass. Edwards spins to the outside, sprints 20 yards downfield and looks over his inside shoulder to find the ball. He locates it, times his jump and knocks it down.
"Larry's caught," Sanders says, pointing to Edwards' reaction to the play fake. "For some guys, that's it. They're done for that play. But not Larry. Look at that recovery speed. He goes from being totally out of position to making the play.
"That's ability and that's effort. We've got more ability than we've had. We still need more. We're not as deep as I'd like us to be. But I can't fault our effort at all. That's a nice change."
The 2006 spring was indeed about change and evolution: Three new assistant coaches, two new quarterbacks, a brand new offensive playbook, young faces throughout vying for playing time, older players watching from the boundary as they nursed all manner of injuries, position changes for a half-dozen players.
And it's been about the continued maturation of the culture John Bunting has been working to develop for five years.
"I like what I've seen out here this spring," Bunting says. "We've been very physical. We've worked extremely hard every day. Nobody questions what hard work means any more. That's the culture change I've been talking about for years. We had a lot of whiners, guys we had to re-teach that hard work is good. It's good. It makes you better.
"Well, we know how to work hard now."
It's all adding up to a noticeable buzz around the program. Don't look now, but Bunting and the Tar Heels are gaining on the rest of the world. They're 9-7 in the newly expanded ACC over the last two years (fourth best among 12 teams). The staff has recruited well for three years now and this year closed better than ever with the high-profile targets. The University has provided the funds for retaining and hiring quality assistant coaches.
"Next fall can't come soon enough," says Don McCauley, an All-America running back 36 years ago and today a key Rams Club executive. "I've not seen as much optimism for an upcoming season since John's been here. There's a lot of work left to be done. But if everyone does their part, it could be a very interesting season."
The Tar Heels to a man recognize that everything's been ratcheted up around Carolina football: the tempo, the demands, the intensity, the expectations, the energy.
"It's a different feel this spring," says Lemming. "People are excited. There's a breath of fresh air around the program. We have a fresh offense, fresh new coaches. You can see it permeate through all the players. People are flying around, hitting each other. There is definitely a new sense of purpose."
"There's a new aura around the program," says tackle Brian Chacos. "We had a lot of success on defense last year and have a lot of guys coming back. The additions of Coach Cignetti and Coach Weber on offense are going to be tremendous. Things are really exciting, really enthusiastic. We're anxious to share them with the fans in September."
The offensive staff has had an 80 percent turnover over the last two years, with Cignetti replacing the retired Gary Tranquill as coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Weber replacing Hal Hunter, who moved to the NFL, and Dave Brock and John Gutekunst taking the receiver and tight end reins one year ago. The defensive staff has evolved totally from the washout of 2002-03 (the days of 475 yards allowed a game), and new this year is Danny Pearman, who's coaching ends following the departure of Brad Lawing to South Carolina.
"I think the University of North Carolina has gotten a rebirth, a great burst of energy," says senior Jesse Holley. "We've won some games and we've had some new coaches come in who exude excellence. The team is starting to feed off their energy. You look at them and say, `How can your coach be more excited than you are?' It makes you up your ante a little more."
Bunting says this spring has been the most of fun of the six he's presided over since taking the Tar Heel job in 2001. He believes there's a sense of camaraderie and shared mission in the fourth-floor staff meeting room that's permeating the program.
"I had fun this spring watching the kids compete and watching the new coaches work," Bunting says. "Anytime you have something new and you see it starting to work and you see progress day to day, that's exciting." The No. 1 question for the 2005 Tar Heels is this: What will the new offense look like and feel like? And question 1-A is this: Who will pull the trigger at quarterback?
The offense is built around running the ball hard and often between the tackles and setting up a cavalcade of throws off play-action fakes. It will employ multiple personnel groups and stretch the secondary vertically and horizontally. Cignetti and Weber like to point to their Fresno State team's victory over Virginia in the MPC Computers Bowl one year ago and the telling statistic that the Bulldogs ran the ball 38 times and threw it 38 times - gaining 222 yards via the ground and 235 via air.
"It's a very physical offense," says Weber. "It's a downhill running game with lots of personnel groups and formations. It's a very aggressive offense. We try to stay balanced. We'll mix it up and, most importantly, get the ball in the hands of our playmakers."
The Tar Heels are sold.
"It's a lot more up-tempo," says tailback Ronnie McGill. "It's about getting out of the huddle, getting to the line and setting the tempo and the pace at the beginning of every game. There's more downhill running instead of running to the outside. It's a tougher mentality than we used to have."
"We've watched tons of Fresno State film, and you can see for yourself it's an attacking offense," says Holley. "The game that sticks out in everyone's mind is the way they attacked USC [42 points, 427 yards]. They didn't back down. I love the mindset of this offense."
"I love the new attitude," says tailback Barrington Edwards. "We're going to be aggressive with the ball and we're going to run it. Coach Cignetti has an attitude. Sometimes he wants to put a helmet on and get out there himself. We just feed off him. We're going to line up and come after you."
Dailey, the Nebraska transfer, and red-shirt freshman Cam Sexton, whose spring was ruined last year with a broken ankle, are listed in a dead heat in competition for the starting quarterback position. Both are quality players, and the Tar Heels can move the football with either. Both have good arms, though neither is particularly tall in the classic sense (each stands 6 foot 1). Both are mobile (Dailey was clocked in the 40 at 4.41 and Sexton at 4.5) and both are intelligent. Bunting acknowledges that Dailey might have an edge because of his having started 11 games for Nebraska in 2004. But it's a long way to Sept. 2 and Rutgers.
"I'm very pleased with their progress," Cignetti says. "I see two guys that know how to prepare and that love the game. When you talk about the mental preparation of a quarterback and functional intelligence, I see two guys that have what you want. They have great escapability, they can run, they play within the pocket as well as outside the pocket. I'm very excited to see where we're going to be come August with these two young men."
Sanders says that Dailey and Sexton both can be the kind of players to give opposing defensive coordinators fits. No one likes to play against a mobile quarterback. There's too much to worry about if he can run. It's particularly difficult if the quarterback has a good arm as well. Sanders is particularly familiar with Dailey; both were at Nebraska for the 2003 season, and Sanders introduced Dailey to Bunting, Tranquill and to the Carolina program when Dailey decided to transfer a year ago.
"Dailey will keep you awake at night," Sanders says. "A guy who can run and throw has an answer for anything you can do to him."
Spring is always a time for tinkering with personnel, and a handful of Tar Heels are in new positions. Cooter Arnold is now a backup free safety to senior Kareen Taylor, and Sanders sees great things for him. Balmer is playing some defensive tackle in addition to end; passing situations that work his speed and power on the inside with the quickness of Hilee Taylor on the edge could be a thing to behold. Joey Bozich has moved from quarterback and auditioned at fullback and made some splattering hits in the kicking game. Bobby Rome has shifted from quarterback and taken snaps at tailback and fullback. Martell Thatch has moved from safety to linebacker. Guard Calvin Darity has moved to center in Lemming's absence this spring, and defensive linemen Kenny Price and Aaron Stahl moved to offense.
The battle for backup tailback behind senior Ronnie McGill will continue through August. Edwards and Richie Rich had good performances in the Blue-White scrimmage, with Edwards notching 58 yards on 11 carries and Rich coming on strong the last two weeks of spring practice. Tailback, receiver and defensive line are three positions where Bunting is hoping for help with in the incoming freshman class.
Now that spring practice is over, Bunting will take to the road for a month of Rams Club speaking engagements and then another few weeks of May recruiting. The assistants go recruiting immediately, and the players focus on final exams.
"It's up to these kids to take it to another level, for the leadership to step up," Bunting says. "It's all about doing the right thing - in the classroom, in the weight room, everything else we do in the off-season. We need a great off-season of bonding, of growing together. I fully anticipate a very cooperative and workmanlike summer. It's important to our future."
Last summer the Tar Heels exhibited a sense of cohesion and esprit de'corps around the weight room, the football field, the running lanes, the backyard barbecue, the bowling alley and other spots where athletes gather that carried over to Saturdays during the fall. Seniors like Matt Baker, Tommy Davis and Chase Page led the way, and now the mantel is passed to Holley, Jon Hamlet, Melik Brown, McGill and others.
"We have players today buying into the whole concept," says Hamlett. "Everyone has to do the right things between now and August. The seniors will lead the way."
"It's all about bonding and trusting," says Brown. "The way we bond off the field helps us bond on the field. If you trust your teammates off the field - to study and do the right things - then you trust him to be there on the field."
It all sounds very good: the talent level, a quality staff, the incoming freshmen, the commitment to excellence and a tough-minded work ethic. But as Bunting cautioned Saturday in the wake of the final scrimmage, "We've got a long, long, long ways to go."
Cignetti has preached to this offense the notion of "the journey," that each day and each snap of the football is one cornerstone to the opener Sept. 2. Cignetti and the newcomers are lucky; they have no idea how far Bunting and the program have actually traveled.
From Gladwell.com:
Game of Shadows
By Malcolm Gladwell
I’ve been reading (like everyone else) “Game of Shadows,” the book about Barry Bonds and steroids and the BALCO scandal. It’s quite a remarkable feat of reporting. What striking about it is something that you might not notice unless you’ve journalist—which is the absence of obvious lawyering. If you ever write something even remotely critical of someone, the lawyers invariably go through it, and before you know it your prose is strewn with “apparently” and “allegedly,” and “according to” and so-so “denies. . .” There’s almost none of that in “Game of Shadows,” which is amazing considering the book accuses, in devastating detail, several of the biggest names in sports—Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, among others—of being serious steroid users. The two writers—Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams—must have had really impeccable sourcing. When the book first came out, and several baseball writers predicted that Bonds’ reputation was destroyed and his chances are getting in the Hall of Fame seriously damaged, I thought they were overstating things. Now I’m not so sure. “Game of Shadows” is a death sentence for Bonds. More to the point, it’s impossible to read the book and accept that Bonds has a right either to the single season home-run record or, assuming he keeps playing, the career home run mark.
So what should we do? I think we need to set the bar a little higher for record-setters. Justin Wolfers, an economist at Penn, just did a study analyzing college basketball scores, concluding that there is ample statistical evidence for point-shaving in about five percent of college games. Steven Levitt (I know, I know. I’m obsessed with him) has done the same kind of work on student test scores. Forensic economics look at large data sets and draw surprisingly sophisticated inferences about behavior and intention. I think we should loose the forensic economists on all record-setters, and require that athletes pass a statistical plausibility test in the wake of their achievements.
Obvious example:
Florence Griffiths Joyner, in 1988. Before that year, her best times in the hundred meters and the two hundred meters were, respectively, 10.96 and 21.96. In 1988, at the advanced (for a sprinter) age of 28, a suddenly huskier FloJo ran 10.49 and 21.34, times that no runner since has even come close to equaling. At the time, people in the track world just rolled their eyes. But since FloJo never failed a drug test, there was nothing they could do. Well, there is something we can do. We can bring in the forensic economists—and any statistical analysis of the career marks of world class sprinters would have told us that marginally world-class 28 year old do not, in the absence of some kind of help, suddenly turn into the greatest runners the world has ever seen.
Bonds falls into the same category. From the moment he started his late career surge, everyone who knew anything about baseball suspected mischief. “Game of Shadows” points out that Bonds had the second, ninth and tenth greatest offensive season in baseball history at the ages of 36, 37, and 39 respectively—and the average age of everyone else on that list (Gehrig, Foxx, Ruth and Hornsby) is 27. No one—no one—turns himself into one of the greatest hitters of all time in his late 30’s. His home run record should have been denied as statistically implausible.
Will raising the bar this way mean we occasionally deny a genuine record? It’s certainly possible. Bob Beamon jumped 29 ft, 2.5 inches at the Mexico City Olympics, and had never jumped more than 27 ft, 3 inches before that, and never again jumped more than 27 feet. No one has ever doubted that Beamon was clean. But it’s a totally weird performance. On the other hand, it was at altitude. Because of the difficulty in hitting the board, long jump performances are highly variable. And the effect of drug enhancement is sufficiently long-lived, that a single anomalous performance in an otherwise quiet career is more statistically plausible than a string of closely-linked anomalous performances in an otherwise quiet career. FloJo had a fantastic year in 1988, which is why she raised so many eyebrows. She wasn’t Beamon. She was Bonds. I think if we’re smart about it, we can learn to distinguish the fluke performances from the phony performances.
One obvious objection to this idea is that we have a tradition of presuming people innocent until proven guilty, and prima facia statistical tests violate that. But the presumption of innocence is a legal principle. We’re dealing with sports records here, and it seems reasonable, particularly in this day and age of advanced athletic chemistry, to ask a bit more of record holders.
Game of Shadows
By Malcolm Gladwell
I’ve been reading (like everyone else) “Game of Shadows,” the book about Barry Bonds and steroids and the BALCO scandal. It’s quite a remarkable feat of reporting. What striking about it is something that you might not notice unless you’ve journalist—which is the absence of obvious lawyering. If you ever write something even remotely critical of someone, the lawyers invariably go through it, and before you know it your prose is strewn with “apparently” and “allegedly,” and “according to” and so-so “denies. . .” There’s almost none of that in “Game of Shadows,” which is amazing considering the book accuses, in devastating detail, several of the biggest names in sports—Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, among others—of being serious steroid users. The two writers—Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams—must have had really impeccable sourcing. When the book first came out, and several baseball writers predicted that Bonds’ reputation was destroyed and his chances are getting in the Hall of Fame seriously damaged, I thought they were overstating things. Now I’m not so sure. “Game of Shadows” is a death sentence for Bonds. More to the point, it’s impossible to read the book and accept that Bonds has a right either to the single season home-run record or, assuming he keeps playing, the career home run mark.
So what should we do? I think we need to set the bar a little higher for record-setters. Justin Wolfers, an economist at Penn, just did a study analyzing college basketball scores, concluding that there is ample statistical evidence for point-shaving in about five percent of college games. Steven Levitt (I know, I know. I’m obsessed with him) has done the same kind of work on student test scores. Forensic economics look at large data sets and draw surprisingly sophisticated inferences about behavior and intention. I think we should loose the forensic economists on all record-setters, and require that athletes pass a statistical plausibility test in the wake of their achievements.
Obvious example:
Florence Griffiths Joyner, in 1988. Before that year, her best times in the hundred meters and the two hundred meters were, respectively, 10.96 and 21.96. In 1988, at the advanced (for a sprinter) age of 28, a suddenly huskier FloJo ran 10.49 and 21.34, times that no runner since has even come close to equaling. At the time, people in the track world just rolled their eyes. But since FloJo never failed a drug test, there was nothing they could do. Well, there is something we can do. We can bring in the forensic economists—and any statistical analysis of the career marks of world class sprinters would have told us that marginally world-class 28 year old do not, in the absence of some kind of help, suddenly turn into the greatest runners the world has ever seen.
Bonds falls into the same category. From the moment he started his late career surge, everyone who knew anything about baseball suspected mischief. “Game of Shadows” points out that Bonds had the second, ninth and tenth greatest offensive season in baseball history at the ages of 36, 37, and 39 respectively—and the average age of everyone else on that list (Gehrig, Foxx, Ruth and Hornsby) is 27. No one—no one—turns himself into one of the greatest hitters of all time in his late 30’s. His home run record should have been denied as statistically implausible.
Will raising the bar this way mean we occasionally deny a genuine record? It’s certainly possible. Bob Beamon jumped 29 ft, 2.5 inches at the Mexico City Olympics, and had never jumped more than 27 ft, 3 inches before that, and never again jumped more than 27 feet. No one has ever doubted that Beamon was clean. But it’s a totally weird performance. On the other hand, it was at altitude. Because of the difficulty in hitting the board, long jump performances are highly variable. And the effect of drug enhancement is sufficiently long-lived, that a single anomalous performance in an otherwise quiet career is more statistically plausible than a string of closely-linked anomalous performances in an otherwise quiet career. FloJo had a fantastic year in 1988, which is why she raised so many eyebrows. She wasn’t Beamon. She was Bonds. I think if we’re smart about it, we can learn to distinguish the fluke performances from the phony performances.
One obvious objection to this idea is that we have a tradition of presuming people innocent until proven guilty, and prima facia statistical tests violate that. But the presumption of innocence is a legal principle. We’re dealing with sports records here, and it seems reasonable, particularly in this day and age of advanced athletic chemistry, to ask a bit more of record holders.
No easy answers on immigration conundrum
BY MARK STEYN
April 9, 2006
Here's my immigration "compromise": We need to regularize the situation of the 298 million non-undocumented residents of the United States. Right now, we get a lousy deal compared with the 15 million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented American community. I think the 298 million of us in the overdocumented segment of the population should get the chance to be undocumented. You know when President Bush talks about all those undocumented people "living in the shadows"? Doesn't that sound kinda nice? Living in the shadows, no government agencies harassing you for taxes and numbers and paperwork.
Go ahead, try it. In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there. The very next day, the two guys returned with two pals of their own, and used their own brand-new state ID on which the ink was not yet dry to obtain in turn brand-new state ID for their buddies. A couple of weeks later, all four of them used their Virginia ID to board American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and plowed it into the Pentagon.
Think about that. From undocumented illegal alien in the 7-Eleven parking lot to lawful resident of the State of Virginia in just a couple of hours. Wow. Say what you like about Luis Martinez-Flores, but he runs one efficient operation.
By comparison, say you've got two kids under 5, and you'd like to bring over a nice English nanny to look after them. Name of Mary Poppins. Good references, impeccable character. If you apply now, there's a sporting chance the process may be completed before your children's children are in college.
Given that the new immigration "compromise" bill retrospectively approves all the millions of people who've been through the super-efficient Luis Martinez-Flores immigration system but without doing anything to improve the sclerotic U.S. government immigration system, maybe it would be better just to subcontract the entire operation to Senor Martinez-Flores and his colleagues. It would certainly be cheaper. The extensive Undocumented American support network manages to run it out of the back of the car from a parking lot without a lot of air-conditioned offices full of lifetime employees on government pensions, and given that the net result is exactly the same people who'd be living here anyway, why not go with the lowball bid? Legal immigrants to the United States can only envy the swift efficient service Messrs. Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar received outside that 7-Eleven.
All developed countries have immigration issues, but few conduct the entire debate as disingenuously as America does: The president himself has contributed a whole barrelful of weaselly platitudes, beginning with his line that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." True. They don't stop at the 49th parallel either. Or the Atlantic shore. Or the Pacific. So where do family values stop? At the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you're an American and you marry a Canadian or Belgian or Fijian, the U.S. government can take years to process what's supposed to be a non-discretionary immigration application, in the course of which your spouse will be dependent on various transitional-status forms like "advance parole" that leave her vulnerable to the whims of the many eccentric interpreters of U.S. immigration law at the nation's airports and land borders.
Here's another place where family values stops: The rubble of the World Trade Center. Deena Gilbey is a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor: On the morning of Sept. 11, instead of fleeing, he returned to the building to help evacuate his co-workers. A few days later, Mrs. Gilbey receives a letter from the INS noting that as she's now widowed her immigration status has changed and she's obliged to leave the country along with her two children (both U.S. citizens). Think about that: Having legally admitted to the country the terrorists who killed her husband, the U.S. government's first act on having facilitated his murder is to add insult to grievous injury by serving his widow with a deportation order. Why should illegal Mexicans be the unique beneficiaries of a sentimental blather about "family values" to which U.S. immigration is otherwise notoriously antipathetic?
How about "the jobs Americans won't do"? Most of them would be more accurately categorized as the jobs American employers won't hire Americans to do -- that's to say, in a business culture ever more onerously regulated, the immigration status of one's employees has become one of the easiest means of controlling costs. I see no reason why this would change, and given that, as a matter of policy, U.S. illegal-immigration law is not enforced by the U.S. government, it's hard to know why private employers should do it.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration is cracking down on classical violinists. Don't ask me why. Presumably, Brahms' violin concerto falls into the ever dwindling category of jobs Americans will do. At any rate, the Halle Orchestra of Manchester, one of England's great orchestras, has just canceled its 2007 concerts at Lincoln Center. Why? Because all 80 musicians plus the 20 support staff are required -- under new "homeland security" regulations -- to be interviewed personally at the U.S. Embassy in London before each visa can be issued. They can't go en masse on the tour bus: They have to make individual appointments stretched out over several weeks. And they can't go to the local U.S. consulate in Manchester because -- and this detail is worth savoring five years after 9/11 -- the consulate's computers cannot handle the biometric data. The orchestra worked out that in train fares and accommodation it would cost about $80,000 to get the visas and decided it would rather cancel the tour. The good news is that Lincoln Center subscribers don't have to worry about the tuba player having plastic explosives packed down there. The bad news is, if a rogue tuba player ever breaks through the system, Homeland Security won't be able to e-mail his data back to the U.S. consulate in Manchester for a background check.
We're now expected to believe that this system will be able to stop hassling 68-year-old cello players long enough to process an extra 10 million-plus immigration applications, and that furthermore an agency that keeps no reliable records of legal entry into the United States will somehow be able to determine on the basis of utility bills whether this or that undocumented alien falls into amnesty-eligibility category.
Sure, believe that if you want to. It'll be good practice for swallowing the amnesty for the next 40 million circa 2025.
© Mark Steyn, 2006
BY MARK STEYN
April 9, 2006
Here's my immigration "compromise": We need to regularize the situation of the 298 million non-undocumented residents of the United States. Right now, we get a lousy deal compared with the 15 million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented American community. I think the 298 million of us in the overdocumented segment of the population should get the chance to be undocumented. You know when President Bush talks about all those undocumented people "living in the shadows"? Doesn't that sound kinda nice? Living in the shadows, no government agencies harassing you for taxes and numbers and paperwork.
Go ahead, try it. In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there. The very next day, the two guys returned with two pals of their own, and used their own brand-new state ID on which the ink was not yet dry to obtain in turn brand-new state ID for their buddies. A couple of weeks later, all four of them used their Virginia ID to board American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and plowed it into the Pentagon.
Think about that. From undocumented illegal alien in the 7-Eleven parking lot to lawful resident of the State of Virginia in just a couple of hours. Wow. Say what you like about Luis Martinez-Flores, but he runs one efficient operation.
By comparison, say you've got two kids under 5, and you'd like to bring over a nice English nanny to look after them. Name of Mary Poppins. Good references, impeccable character. If you apply now, there's a sporting chance the process may be completed before your children's children are in college.
Given that the new immigration "compromise" bill retrospectively approves all the millions of people who've been through the super-efficient Luis Martinez-Flores immigration system but without doing anything to improve the sclerotic U.S. government immigration system, maybe it would be better just to subcontract the entire operation to Senor Martinez-Flores and his colleagues. It would certainly be cheaper. The extensive Undocumented American support network manages to run it out of the back of the car from a parking lot without a lot of air-conditioned offices full of lifetime employees on government pensions, and given that the net result is exactly the same people who'd be living here anyway, why not go with the lowball bid? Legal immigrants to the United States can only envy the swift efficient service Messrs. Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar received outside that 7-Eleven.
All developed countries have immigration issues, but few conduct the entire debate as disingenuously as America does: The president himself has contributed a whole barrelful of weaselly platitudes, beginning with his line that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." True. They don't stop at the 49th parallel either. Or the Atlantic shore. Or the Pacific. So where do family values stop? At the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you're an American and you marry a Canadian or Belgian or Fijian, the U.S. government can take years to process what's supposed to be a non-discretionary immigration application, in the course of which your spouse will be dependent on various transitional-status forms like "advance parole" that leave her vulnerable to the whims of the many eccentric interpreters of U.S. immigration law at the nation's airports and land borders.
Here's another place where family values stops: The rubble of the World Trade Center. Deena Gilbey is a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor: On the morning of Sept. 11, instead of fleeing, he returned to the building to help evacuate his co-workers. A few days later, Mrs. Gilbey receives a letter from the INS noting that as she's now widowed her immigration status has changed and she's obliged to leave the country along with her two children (both U.S. citizens). Think about that: Having legally admitted to the country the terrorists who killed her husband, the U.S. government's first act on having facilitated his murder is to add insult to grievous injury by serving his widow with a deportation order. Why should illegal Mexicans be the unique beneficiaries of a sentimental blather about "family values" to which U.S. immigration is otherwise notoriously antipathetic?
How about "the jobs Americans won't do"? Most of them would be more accurately categorized as the jobs American employers won't hire Americans to do -- that's to say, in a business culture ever more onerously regulated, the immigration status of one's employees has become one of the easiest means of controlling costs. I see no reason why this would change, and given that, as a matter of policy, U.S. illegal-immigration law is not enforced by the U.S. government, it's hard to know why private employers should do it.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration is cracking down on classical violinists. Don't ask me why. Presumably, Brahms' violin concerto falls into the ever dwindling category of jobs Americans will do. At any rate, the Halle Orchestra of Manchester, one of England's great orchestras, has just canceled its 2007 concerts at Lincoln Center. Why? Because all 80 musicians plus the 20 support staff are required -- under new "homeland security" regulations -- to be interviewed personally at the U.S. Embassy in London before each visa can be issued. They can't go en masse on the tour bus: They have to make individual appointments stretched out over several weeks. And they can't go to the local U.S. consulate in Manchester because -- and this detail is worth savoring five years after 9/11 -- the consulate's computers cannot handle the biometric data. The orchestra worked out that in train fares and accommodation it would cost about $80,000 to get the visas and decided it would rather cancel the tour. The good news is that Lincoln Center subscribers don't have to worry about the tuba player having plastic explosives packed down there. The bad news is, if a rogue tuba player ever breaks through the system, Homeland Security won't be able to e-mail his data back to the U.S. consulate in Manchester for a background check.
We're now expected to believe that this system will be able to stop hassling 68-year-old cello players long enough to process an extra 10 million-plus immigration applications, and that furthermore an agency that keeps no reliable records of legal entry into the United States will somehow be able to determine on the basis of utility bills whether this or that undocumented alien falls into amnesty-eligibility category.
Sure, believe that if you want to. It'll be good practice for swallowing the amnesty for the next 40 million circa 2025.
© Mark Steyn, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
From www.news-record.com:
Second thoughts about Nov. 3, 1979
By John Young
The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission will deliver its final report at a closing ceremony at Bennett College on May 25. The report will include recommendations for community healing and restorative justice. The commission is now looking for organizations to become GTRC Report Receivers. Receivers agree to read the report or its executive summary, to engage in dialogue about its findings and to work as an organization to implement recommendations each group accepts. For more information, contact Samantha Hargrove at samhargrove@hotmail.com or (336) 988-2019. The commission will no longer exist after it distributes the report.
What could be better than seeking truth and reconciliation? In 2002, it appeared to me that getting involved with the painful issue of Nov. 3, 1979 — when five people were killed and 10 wounded in a Klan/Nazi shooting at a Communist Workers Party demonstration in Greensboro — was a valuable task that I could embrace. I joined the local task force for the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project. I came to see that I had joined with a group whose story was understandably informed by the survivors of Nov. 3. I learned a lot from their stories and continue to be moved by them.
In October 2004 I wrote an op-ed column for the News & Record that showed my support for the process. I quoted from a public presentation by Greensboro Police officer Jim Ballance, in which he discussed failures on Nov. 3 by the Greensboro police. Several weeks later, Ballance responded to my piece in a letter in The Rhinoceros Times. He accused me of exaggerating and misrepresenting what he had said.
I took Ballance's criticisms to heart. I looked deeper into my own thinking and realized that I had selectively picked comments that supported my preconceived view of police malfeasance in the killings. I had filtered Ballance's comments through a lens far too narrow. His letter helped me see that I had become so absorbed in the survivors' narrative that I had failed to listen clearly to his words and the critical words of many others.
Two weeks later I read Elizabeth Wheaton's comprehensive and balanced book on Nov. 3, "Codename GREENKIL," which places blame on all the participants: the Klan/Nazis; police; and the Communist Workers Party, the organizer of the Nov. 3 march.
MORE ONLINE
Click here to read previous articles and listen to testimony from the three rounds of public hearings held by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation.
I had felt the CWP members had minimal responsibility for Nov. 3. I now thought they were partially responsible for the violence. I reread several books written by the survivors and realized that I was now beginning to underline different passages. I made trips to the Greensboro Justice Fund archives at UNC-Chapel Hill's Wilson Library. I wanted to learn the complete story about Nov. 3 by learning more of the history of the CWP.
The history of Nov. 3 is complicated. Many have allowed the immense pain of the survivors to keep them from scrutinizing the role of the CWP. This allows them to support the survivors' narrative, which, it seems to me, is as follows:
Peaceful labor organizers, who were on the verge of developing multiracial textile unions, were gunned down on Nov. 3 by Klan/Nazi assassins. The assassination plot was conceived by textile factory owners because the owners greatly feared the emerging union. The textile barons had the cooperation of the police, FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and these law enforcement agencies were assigned the task of organizing and allowing the assassinations to take place. The city of Greensboro, the local media, the powerful white community leadership, the state of North Carolina and the U.S. attorney's office conspired and covered up the plot and used the court system to ensure a continuation of the cover-up and the acquittal of the assassins.
The one exception to the cover-up, according to the survivors' narrative, was the 1985 civil suit. A jury awarded almost $400,000 for the wrongful death of Michael Nathan and the wounding of two other marchers. The jury also found Greensboro Police officers Paul Spoon and Jerry Cooper, FBI informant Eddie Dawson and five Klan/Nazi members liable. But the jury found no conspiracy, collusion or cover-up after hearing the arguments from the survivors' attorneys over several months. The judge who presided over this civil case was considered to be fair and trustworthy. This jury was also considered by most to be fair and reasonable.
The Klan, police malfeasance, seedy informants and the climate of racism are fertile ground and great theater for packaging this sinister story. Most in the progressive community have accepted some parts of the CWP narrative because we know that similar events have happened.
But the record shows many important facts that cannot be ignored:
• The Communist Workers Party members were not peaceful labor organizers but Maoist extremists seeking militant and violent conflict on Nov. 3. Founder and general secretary of the CWP, Jerry Tung, said, "Yes, in the final analysis, the practice of our party's correct and militant line, and indeed the party itself, can only be forged by blood — by sacrificing the most sacred of all things — our lives."
• The primary goal of the CWP was to recruit membership for the party, not to create effective textile unions. Jim Waller, one of those killed on Nov. 3, said: "We will struggle against any tendency to raise building this union as the principal goal, to elevate it above building the party to prepare for revolution."
• The precursor to the CWP, the Workers' Viewpoint Organization, found little success in recruiting textile workers in the late '70s. The WRL, a far left group, said about the CWP and the WVO: "Anti-communist sentiment runs deep, even and especially among the working class, and the CWP's Maoist inspired rhetoric was evident and never won them many allies in the community. Relationships between the WVO people and the rest of the left political community were little better. The CWP's stance of calling for armed struggle ... rendered them untenable in coalition building."
• The extremist ideology of the CWP required complete sacrifice and commitment. Tung said "There will be a lot of sacrifices. Sacrifices like you have never done before. Tightness, discipline in a way you have never done before. Because the extent to which we can do that is the extent to which we can seize state power with a minimum of bloodshed."
• The CWP was an authoritarian organization. Survivor Sally Bermanzohn has said: "We all studied democratic centralism in a book called 'A Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China.' … What democratic centralism comes down to is: Don't cross the leadership."
• Jerry Tung directed CWP members in North Carolina to sponsor militant, aggressive, anti-Klan events. The local CWP made a militant challenge to the Klan via flyers, posters and letters.
• Tung considered the CWP's violent and militant confrontation with the Klan/Nazis in China Grove in the summer of 1979 to be a good format for future party-building activities. Bermanzohn was very concerned about the level of violence that developed at China Grove. She tried to convince Tung that such events were too dangerous. "Rather than address the issues of danger, Jerry said that the China Grove confrontation was a 'shining example' of struggles that WVO (CWP) should be taking up" she says in the book, "Through Survivors' Eyes."
• The CWP did not provide important information on Nov. 3 about security for the march in spite of attempts by Greensboro Police to speak with people gathering for the march at Windsor Community Center. The officers were treated with hostility and weren't told that Windsor was a secondary gathering location. The plan for a low-profile police presence on Nov. 3 was flawed, but the field officers near the scene might have modified these plans if they had had proper information.
• TV news footage shows that only about 20 adult marchers were gathered at Morningside Homes at the time of the shooting, although the CWP claims there were about 100. The Klan/Nazis have been accused of targeting specific demonstrators, but Klan gunfire struck 15 of the 20 demonstrators.
• Some members of the CWP on Nov. 3 were armed with pistols and a shotgun, and more weapons were in a nearby demonstrator's car.
• According to the court testimony of FBI audio witness Bruce Koenig, 39 shots were fired on Nov. 3; 23-25 of them were likely fired by the Klan, and 14 to 16 shots were probably fired by the CWP. Koenig's testimony was confusing at times and the method he was using was just being developed by the FBI, but his testimony is the best evidence available about the number of shots fired after the initial stick fighting between the two groups.
• The CWP placed the residents of Morningside Homes at great risk by having its march in a residential community.
Will the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission take the time to scrutinize and understand the CWP? Many think that the commission's final report, which is due in May, will be tilted toward the survivors because they have suffered greatly and because they have been the key presence behind the creation of the truth and reconciliation process.
The commission's founding documents declare it supports a complete truth-seeking process. It is also assumed that, based upon the truth, community reconciliation can gradually emerge.
I hope that these words will be taken in that spirit.
John Young is a member of the local task force of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, which started the process that created the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Second thoughts about Nov. 3, 1979
By John Young
The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission will deliver its final report at a closing ceremony at Bennett College on May 25. The report will include recommendations for community healing and restorative justice. The commission is now looking for organizations to become GTRC Report Receivers. Receivers agree to read the report or its executive summary, to engage in dialogue about its findings and to work as an organization to implement recommendations each group accepts. For more information, contact Samantha Hargrove at samhargrove@hotmail.com or (336) 988-2019. The commission will no longer exist after it distributes the report.
What could be better than seeking truth and reconciliation? In 2002, it appeared to me that getting involved with the painful issue of Nov. 3, 1979 — when five people were killed and 10 wounded in a Klan/Nazi shooting at a Communist Workers Party demonstration in Greensboro — was a valuable task that I could embrace. I joined the local task force for the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project. I came to see that I had joined with a group whose story was understandably informed by the survivors of Nov. 3. I learned a lot from their stories and continue to be moved by them.
In October 2004 I wrote an op-ed column for the News & Record that showed my support for the process. I quoted from a public presentation by Greensboro Police officer Jim Ballance, in which he discussed failures on Nov. 3 by the Greensboro police. Several weeks later, Ballance responded to my piece in a letter in The Rhinoceros Times. He accused me of exaggerating and misrepresenting what he had said.
I took Ballance's criticisms to heart. I looked deeper into my own thinking and realized that I had selectively picked comments that supported my preconceived view of police malfeasance in the killings. I had filtered Ballance's comments through a lens far too narrow. His letter helped me see that I had become so absorbed in the survivors' narrative that I had failed to listen clearly to his words and the critical words of many others.
Two weeks later I read Elizabeth Wheaton's comprehensive and balanced book on Nov. 3, "Codename GREENKIL," which places blame on all the participants: the Klan/Nazis; police; and the Communist Workers Party, the organizer of the Nov. 3 march.
MORE ONLINE
Click here to read previous articles and listen to testimony from the three rounds of public hearings held by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation.
I had felt the CWP members had minimal responsibility for Nov. 3. I now thought they were partially responsible for the violence. I reread several books written by the survivors and realized that I was now beginning to underline different passages. I made trips to the Greensboro Justice Fund archives at UNC-Chapel Hill's Wilson Library. I wanted to learn the complete story about Nov. 3 by learning more of the history of the CWP.
The history of Nov. 3 is complicated. Many have allowed the immense pain of the survivors to keep them from scrutinizing the role of the CWP. This allows them to support the survivors' narrative, which, it seems to me, is as follows:
Peaceful labor organizers, who were on the verge of developing multiracial textile unions, were gunned down on Nov. 3 by Klan/Nazi assassins. The assassination plot was conceived by textile factory owners because the owners greatly feared the emerging union. The textile barons had the cooperation of the police, FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and these law enforcement agencies were assigned the task of organizing and allowing the assassinations to take place. The city of Greensboro, the local media, the powerful white community leadership, the state of North Carolina and the U.S. attorney's office conspired and covered up the plot and used the court system to ensure a continuation of the cover-up and the acquittal of the assassins.
The one exception to the cover-up, according to the survivors' narrative, was the 1985 civil suit. A jury awarded almost $400,000 for the wrongful death of Michael Nathan and the wounding of two other marchers. The jury also found Greensboro Police officers Paul Spoon and Jerry Cooper, FBI informant Eddie Dawson and five Klan/Nazi members liable. But the jury found no conspiracy, collusion or cover-up after hearing the arguments from the survivors' attorneys over several months. The judge who presided over this civil case was considered to be fair and trustworthy. This jury was also considered by most to be fair and reasonable.
The Klan, police malfeasance, seedy informants and the climate of racism are fertile ground and great theater for packaging this sinister story. Most in the progressive community have accepted some parts of the CWP narrative because we know that similar events have happened.
But the record shows many important facts that cannot be ignored:
• The Communist Workers Party members were not peaceful labor organizers but Maoist extremists seeking militant and violent conflict on Nov. 3. Founder and general secretary of the CWP, Jerry Tung, said, "Yes, in the final analysis, the practice of our party's correct and militant line, and indeed the party itself, can only be forged by blood — by sacrificing the most sacred of all things — our lives."
• The primary goal of the CWP was to recruit membership for the party, not to create effective textile unions. Jim Waller, one of those killed on Nov. 3, said: "We will struggle against any tendency to raise building this union as the principal goal, to elevate it above building the party to prepare for revolution."
• The precursor to the CWP, the Workers' Viewpoint Organization, found little success in recruiting textile workers in the late '70s. The WRL, a far left group, said about the CWP and the WVO: "Anti-communist sentiment runs deep, even and especially among the working class, and the CWP's Maoist inspired rhetoric was evident and never won them many allies in the community. Relationships between the WVO people and the rest of the left political community were little better. The CWP's stance of calling for armed struggle ... rendered them untenable in coalition building."
• The extremist ideology of the CWP required complete sacrifice and commitment. Tung said "There will be a lot of sacrifices. Sacrifices like you have never done before. Tightness, discipline in a way you have never done before. Because the extent to which we can do that is the extent to which we can seize state power with a minimum of bloodshed."
• The CWP was an authoritarian organization. Survivor Sally Bermanzohn has said: "We all studied democratic centralism in a book called 'A Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China.' … What democratic centralism comes down to is: Don't cross the leadership."
• Jerry Tung directed CWP members in North Carolina to sponsor militant, aggressive, anti-Klan events. The local CWP made a militant challenge to the Klan via flyers, posters and letters.
• Tung considered the CWP's violent and militant confrontation with the Klan/Nazis in China Grove in the summer of 1979 to be a good format for future party-building activities. Bermanzohn was very concerned about the level of violence that developed at China Grove. She tried to convince Tung that such events were too dangerous. "Rather than address the issues of danger, Jerry said that the China Grove confrontation was a 'shining example' of struggles that WVO (CWP) should be taking up" she says in the book, "Through Survivors' Eyes."
• The CWP did not provide important information on Nov. 3 about security for the march in spite of attempts by Greensboro Police to speak with people gathering for the march at Windsor Community Center. The officers were treated with hostility and weren't told that Windsor was a secondary gathering location. The plan for a low-profile police presence on Nov. 3 was flawed, but the field officers near the scene might have modified these plans if they had had proper information.
• TV news footage shows that only about 20 adult marchers were gathered at Morningside Homes at the time of the shooting, although the CWP claims there were about 100. The Klan/Nazis have been accused of targeting specific demonstrators, but Klan gunfire struck 15 of the 20 demonstrators.
• Some members of the CWP on Nov. 3 were armed with pistols and a shotgun, and more weapons were in a nearby demonstrator's car.
• According to the court testimony of FBI audio witness Bruce Koenig, 39 shots were fired on Nov. 3; 23-25 of them were likely fired by the Klan, and 14 to 16 shots were probably fired by the CWP. Koenig's testimony was confusing at times and the method he was using was just being developed by the FBI, but his testimony is the best evidence available about the number of shots fired after the initial stick fighting between the two groups.
• The CWP placed the residents of Morningside Homes at great risk by having its march in a residential community.
Will the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission take the time to scrutinize and understand the CWP? Many think that the commission's final report, which is due in May, will be tilted toward the survivors because they have suffered greatly and because they have been the key presence behind the creation of the truth and reconciliation process.
The commission's founding documents declare it supports a complete truth-seeking process. It is also assumed that, based upon the truth, community reconciliation can gradually emerge.
I hope that these words will be taken in that spirit.
John Young is a member of the local task force of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, which started the process that created the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
FROM TNR ONLINE:
04.09.06
JOHN KERRY AND JESUS:
Continuing his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, John F. Kerry addressed (by telephone) a conference convened by that racist hustler and prevaricator Al Sharpton who won, if I'm not mistaken, exactly one delegate at the party convention in 2004. According to The New York Times yesterday, in what appeared to be rather inchoate remarks, Kerry used Iraq as a trope but offered a ten-point plan for the nation from soup to nuts ... well, from getting Osama bin Laden to legislating lobby reform. The Times alluded to Kerry's well-known verbosity. So it wasn't surprising that he also went off and said, "Not in one phrase uttered and reported by the Lord Jesus Christ, can you find anything that suggests that there is a virtue in cutting children from Medicare." I'd actually go Kerry one further: I doubt that Jesus ever mentioned Medicare at all. Still, it's probably significant that some presidential aspirants--Kerry, for one--want to demonstrate that there are among them some real live Democrats for God. Or, as the Times said about him, he is "A Roman Catholic, who has struggled at times to talk about his own faith ... Mr. Kerry also told the group that he believed 'deeply in my faith'." Now, there are many Catholics including high ecclesiastics who doubt this. But who am I to have a point of view on what is essentially an intramural fight? In any case, as it turns out, Kerry is not only a Roman Catholic but also an ecumenicist. Once again I rely on the Times: Kerry asserted that "the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics." My God, what bullshit politicians feel obliged to utter! Or maybe the bullshit is already second nature, or even first. But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why? And here I have a personal interest: Which of the injunctions of Leviticus and who among the Prophets have the most meaning for him? Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn't ask such personal questions of a politician. In the spirit of Jesus, Kerry will certainly forgive me for doing so.
--Martin Peretz
04.09.06
JOHN KERRY AND JESUS:
Continuing his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, John F. Kerry addressed (by telephone) a conference convened by that racist hustler and prevaricator Al Sharpton who won, if I'm not mistaken, exactly one delegate at the party convention in 2004. According to The New York Times yesterday, in what appeared to be rather inchoate remarks, Kerry used Iraq as a trope but offered a ten-point plan for the nation from soup to nuts ... well, from getting Osama bin Laden to legislating lobby reform. The Times alluded to Kerry's well-known verbosity. So it wasn't surprising that he also went off and said, "Not in one phrase uttered and reported by the Lord Jesus Christ, can you find anything that suggests that there is a virtue in cutting children from Medicare." I'd actually go Kerry one further: I doubt that Jesus ever mentioned Medicare at all. Still, it's probably significant that some presidential aspirants--Kerry, for one--want to demonstrate that there are among them some real live Democrats for God. Or, as the Times said about him, he is "A Roman Catholic, who has struggled at times to talk about his own faith ... Mr. Kerry also told the group that he believed 'deeply in my faith'." Now, there are many Catholics including high ecclesiastics who doubt this. But who am I to have a point of view on what is essentially an intramural fight? In any case, as it turns out, Kerry is not only a Roman Catholic but also an ecumenicist. Once again I rely on the Times: Kerry asserted that "the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics." My God, what bullshit politicians feel obliged to utter! Or maybe the bullshit is already second nature, or even first. But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why? And here I have a personal interest: Which of the injunctions of Leviticus and who among the Prophets have the most meaning for him? Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn't ask such personal questions of a politician. In the spirit of Jesus, Kerry will certainly forgive me for doing so.
--Martin Peretz
"Why I Think Rumsfeld Must Go"
A military insider sounds off against the war and the "zealots" who pushed it
By LIEUT. GENERAL GREG NEWBOLD (RET.)
Two senior military officers are known to have challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the planning of the Iraq war. Army General Eric Shinseki publicly dissented and found himself marginalized. Marine Lieut. General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's top operations officer, voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war. Here, for the first time, Newbold goes public with a full-throated critique:
In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture—who became career members of the military during those rough times—the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again. From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq—an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat—al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.
I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.
With the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't—or don't have the opportunity to—speak. Enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the Constitution. The distinction is important.
Before the antiwar banners start to unfurl, however, let me make clear—I am not opposed to war. I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And while I don't accept the stated rationale for invading Iraq, my view—at the moment—is that a precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake. It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists' message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.
I will admit my own prejudice: my deep affection and respect are for those who volunteer to serve our nation and therefore shoulder, in those thin ranks, the nation's most sacred obligation of citizenship. To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.
What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.
Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort. There have been exceptions, albeit uncommon, to the rule of silence among military leaders. Former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki, when challenged to offer his professional opinion during prewar congressional testimony, suggested that more troops might be needed for the invasion's aftermath. The Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense castigated him in public and marginalized him in his remaining months in his post. Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq—often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability.
To be sure, the Bush Administration and senior military officials are not alone in their culpability. Members of Congress—from both parties—defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.
So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach. The troops in the Middle East have performed their duty. Now we need people in Washington who can construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it. It is time for senior military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly. And that we won't be fooled again.
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