Liberals/Progressives/Democrats (the whole crew on the Left) voted for Obama in significant part because they thought he was the antidote to the wars that Bush fought.  I wonder if any of them have noticed that, on Obama’s watch, there’s actually been more war in the headlines.  To his credit Obama continued the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan for quite a while, although he destroyed that credit when he announced in advance planned “pre-victory” withdrawals, giving Islamists time to re-group and turning our troops into sitting ducks.  He also expanded the fight to include Pakistan, he took the fight to Libya, and now there is every indication that our troops will be in Syria sometime soon.  In addition, civil wars are simmering and boiling all over, and there’s no doubt that the situation between Iran and Israel will soon come to a head.

(It’s worth noting that, even if the liberals have gotten their heads out of their . . . um, whatevers, they’ve been remarkably silent.  That is, they’ve ceased entirely the incessant anti-War squawking that characterized the Bush presidency.)

Unlike those few observant liberals who might be surprised by the global war frenzy, I am not surprised at all.  First, I’m not surprised that various pots are boiling over.  A weak American president is an absent cat — which means that the war-mongering mice can play all over.  Nor am I surprised that Obama himself has escalated fights, made them more vicious and impersonal, and taken us to battlefields that Americans haven’t seen before.  There is no more aggressive fighter than a cornered narcissist.  Cowardice flees when his own sense of self is finally at stake.

I’ve got to run, so this isn’t a very well-developed post, but I just wanted to get it in writing after reading the headlines today.

I’ve been thinking today about unmatched combatants and a combatant’s willingness to take hits in order to win a fight.  I think about the former often because, when I do jujitsu, I am an unmatched combatant.  I’m usually the only woman in the adult classes, which means that the people (i.e., men) with whom I’m rolling are 8 to 14 inches taller than I am, and outweigh me by 40 to 90 pounds.

Interestingly, these men, all of whom are nice, thoughtful people, are more scared of me than I am scared of them.  When we face each other before rolling, I look them in the eye and say, “Remember to give only about 50%” and, with those words, some of them just collapse in front of me.  They are so afraid that any move they do will hurt me that they do nothing at all.  Instead, they just kind of lie there, which isn’t fun for me or for them.  It’s only the strongest black belts who have sufficient control to give me a run for my money without hurting me.  I optimistically assume that the black belts have some fun with this careful grappling, because they get to focus on skill, rather than strength.

I had the same experience of being an unmatched combatant back in the day when I used to play tag football.  My specialty was sacking the quarterback.  After the snap, I’d just charge him.  (It was always a him.)  Invariably, the quarterback in these informal games would react as if a mosquito was attacking him — he’d back off quickly.  Had I been bigger, I know he would have gone forward, because he wouldn’t have worried about hurting me.  As it was, seeing me buzz around, the guy’s instinct (and this was true for whichever guy was quarterback) was to retreat, not attack.

Interestingly, I’m also an unmatched combatant when I end up in a class with teenagers — boys or girls — who are much closer to me in weight and overall size.  While the grown men are over-controlled, the teenagers are under-controlled, especially the girls.  I’m strong, agile and reasonably skilled, but I also have the slowness and slight rigidity of someone several decades older than these teenagers.  These kids don’t understand slow, their joints feel no pain, and they have cat-like flexibility.  I’m much more frightened of a 110 pound 15-year old girl than I am of a 180 pound 40-year old man.

There’s actually a point to these ruminations about unmatched combatants.  In the examples I’m giving, I am talking about sports combat.  People want to win, but they want to have fun, and it’s no fun when you hurt your friends.  Even the teenagers don’t want to hurt me.  They just have a very limited understanding of what will hurt me.

Problems arise when foolish people (by which I mean Lefties) try to apply the rules of sportsmanship to war.  War is not about winning for fun, it’s just about winning.  The fact that a war may be asymmetrical doesn’t mean that the larger power has to handicap itself to give the other side a fair chance.  Certainly, the winning side shouldn’t engage in sadistic massacres, but that’s not because sadism and overkill are unsportsmanlike.  It’s because they are (a) an unnecessary waste of resources and (b) morally bad for the bigger army.

After adjusting for necessary force and moral decency, the bigger army should do whatever is necessary to win, and it should do so without regard to the other side’s weaknesses.  When Lord Wellington reputedly said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, he wasn’t talking about fair play.  He was talking about the brutal field sports public school students used to play, in which no quarter was asked or given.

Part of this willingness to do whatever it takes to win in true combat means a willingness to take the hit.  One of my favorite mil bloggers, America’s 1st Sergeant, wrote a wonderful post about dealing with bullies, a necessary life lesson for him because his father’s military career meant that, as a boy, Am’s 1st Sgt, was repeatedly tested by the bullies at a series of new schools.  He learned, very quickly, that you’re going to get hurt taking on the bullies, but you’ll get hurt worse if you immediately acquiesce.  Bullies do not believe in sportsmanship.  Or, if they do, the only sports that interest them are blood sports — with you being the one who bleeds.

What the Leftists conveniently ignore or forget is that it’s not size, but intention, that makes the bully.  They believe that because America is the biggest force, it is the bullying-est force, and that it must yield to smaller forces in asymmetrical warfare.  That Americans fight to win in a legitimate defensive war against a culture dedicated to world conquest, and do not fight simply to destroy, torture or convert, is a subtlety that eludes the Leftist elites, who root for the smaller, more brutal Al Qaeda or Taliban forces.  At the same time, the Leftists cannot stomach the fact that our troops, recognizing the nature of a fight with a bully, are willing to engage, even if it means taking very painful hits, because that’s the only way to win.

Leftists are bullies, that goes without saying.  But the American elite believe in a bloodless bullying that involves hectoring, embarrassing, humiliating and disempowering those who are ready, willing and able to take the real fight to the real enemy.  It’s rather sad that the Leftists reserve their savagery for their first defenders, while demanding that these same defenders hew to completely irrelevant rules of sportsmanship that have no place on the field of battle.

Mom’s in the hospital again and suffering greatly, not in body, but in mind. She’s mildly delusional, and very paranoid, angry and anxious. I can’t imagine how grim it is to live in her head.

I slipped away for an hour and had lunch with Don Quixote. Our conversation turned to evil. I believe evil exists. Don Quixote pointed out, correctly, that many people who commit evil believe in their own heads that they’re doing a good thing.  They believe in their revolution or their God, and believe that they are serving that revolution or God (and, therefore, the greater good) by torturing or murdering mass numbers people who “get in the way.”

I’m going for moral absolutism here:  I believe that my system, which is predicated on maximum individual freedom within a framework of stable laws, is the best.  If two systems, mine and another that is more repressive, find themselves clashing over physical or mental control of people, I believe my system must win, and the other system must be defeated, even if that battle spills blood and causes the death of innocents.  I justify these deaths on the ground that, over the long run, my system will provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people, while any other system (e.g., Communism or radical Islam) will force great suffering on people for an indefinite amount of time.

At this point in my thinking, I don’t care that the Islamist or the Communist things I’m the evil and he’s the good.  If I lie down right now and refuse to do battle, he wins, and I will have perpetuated what is, in my absolutist universe, the greatest wrong of all, which is to allow evil — admitted evil as I define it — to flourish.

What do you say?  Does evil exist?  Am I evil for taking an absolutist position and being willing to fight and kill to defend it?  (Or more accurately, given my armchair warrior status, sending others to fight and kill to defend it?)

I am very interested in what you have to say on the subject.

Incidentally, it’s worth thinking in this regard that part of my Mom’s continuing mental anguish is that she spent WWII interned in a Japanese concentration camp in a war the Japanese started and that she spent the Israeli War of Independence getting shot at by Arabs who refused to recognize the Jewish state.  Those events created a lifelong anxiety that kept her alive during war, but that is slowly and depressingly killing her in old age.

Winston Churchill wrote the following in a book published in 1899 about the Sudan.  It is remarkably prophetic (emphasis mine):

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Our government would do well to remember the nature of the forces arrayed against us, and to remember Churchill’s advice about recognizing the enemy sooner, rather than later:

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

But I think our current leader would be happy to live as a slave, because he does not see much in our culture that is worth saving by fighting.  I know that Obama suffers from a vast historical ignorance, one he reveals on a regular basis, so I doubt he has more than a passing familiarity with Churchill’s life or thinking.  Nevertheless, it was entirely fitting that our Quisling, Vichy-esque President, as one of his first acts in office, got rid of the Churchill reminder occupying space in his office, and sent it on an ignominious trip aback to its land of origin.

Click here to view the embedded video.

My belief, getting stronger by the minute, is that Obama’s sole Afghanistan policy was to be the un-Bush.  Bush’s critics claimed Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan the good war.  So Obama immediately stated that he’d focus on Afghanistan.  Obama, though, true Leftist that he is, and with his deep affinity for totalitarian rulers and Islamism, never had his heart in Afghanistan.  So, as Bush’s presidency recedes into the past, Obama abandons Afghanistan — and our troops too.  What a despicable man.

Bruce Kesler sent around an email asking whether we thought victory was possible in Afghanistan.  My reply was that I don’t think the Democrats can conceive of victory as a possible outcome.  As I wrote to him, I’m the child of parents who fought in WWII and the Israeli War of Independence.  Although they were bone-deep Dems and loathed Goldwater, they too understood that the only way to fight a war is to win.  Otherwise, you’re just sacrificing your own troops needlessly in an endless slow bleed.

I don’t think the Democrats are capable of conceiving an outcome to a war that is tantamount to “victory.”  To them, all wars are failures because they are . . . wars.  This means that there are no strategic goals that the Democrats can contemplate that will justify continuing to fight a war.  They will therefore approach war in a half-hearted way, waiting, not to win, but to withdraw.

Obama’s support for the war in Afghanistan has never been a committed belief in the necessity of destroying the Taliban there and protecting Pakistan.  It has always been a political move to distinguish himself from Bush:  “Bush never focused on the real war.  That’s why I focus on that war.”  Obama, though, is a Democrat and believes that all wars are unwinnable, so he’s doing the Democratic thing.  He’s throwing in bodies, but actively supporting cutting costs and appeasing the enemy.

Taking own his practical experience in Vietnam, and his breadth and depth of knowledge, Bruce came up with a post that intelligently develops my own instinctive feeling that, with war, as with pregnancy, you can’t just be “a little bit” engaged in that situation.  It’s an all or nothing proposition.  I urge you to check out Bruce’s post and cast your vote on the side of true victory in Afghanistan.

During the 1970s, there was a post-Yom Kippur War joke that was very popular in Jewish circles:

Arab soldiers realized that at least half the Israeli troops they were fighting were named David.  They decided to use this information to deal with situations in whch they were facing Israeli fighters who were hidden from sight.  The order came down from on high that Arabs were to holler out “Hey, David!”  When the Israeli soldier stood up or waved in answer, he would get shot.  Alas, the best laid plans….

When the Arab soldiers hollered out “Hey, David!”, the Israeli soldiers, instead of standing up or waving, would hell back, “Is that you, Mohammed?”  The Arab fighters would instantly stand up and wave, at which point they’d get shot.

It’s a pretty awkward joke, but it came to mind almost irresistibly when I read this news story:

Taleban insurgents fighting German forces in northern Afghanistan have often lived to fight another day thanks to trilingual warnings that have to be shouted out before the men from the Bundeswehr can squeeze their triggers.

The seven-page pocket guide to combat tucked into the breast pocket of every German soldier offers such instructions as: “Before opening fire you are expected to declare loudly, in English, ‘United Nations — stop, or I will fire,’ followed by a version in Pashtu — Melgaero Mellatuna — Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!”

The alert must also be issued in Dari, and the booklet, devised by a committee in some faraway ministerial office, adds: “If the situation allows, the warning should be repeated.” The joke going round NATO mess tents poses the question: “How can you identify a German soldier? He is the corpse clutching a pocket guide.”

Max Boot, who brought this story to my attention, thought that the story was a joke, but it’s not.  The only good news is that Germans are relaxing the above requirements so that they can actually kill the bad guys, while preserving their own lives.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what it means to live in a world that sees yesterday’s jokes as today’s reality — with ourselves as the butt of every punch line.  I’m pretty darn sure, though, that it’s not a good thing when it comes to long-term survival.

For many years, I’ve thought that people confuse fairly neutral conduct with bad motives, resulting in false syllogisms.  I first came to this conclusion after reading John McWhorter’s wonderful Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.  Although my memories are a bit hazy about the details of the book, I seem to recall reading him bemoaning the fact that part of the Black community’s self-sabotage was the refusal to engage in the “white” work ethic of being reliable.

The message I took away from the book was that the Black community created a false syllogism:  Slavery was work and slavery was evil, therefore all work is evil.  Merely to state the proposition is to expose how flawed it is.  Slavery wasn’t about work.  It was about owning human beings and treating them like animals, rather than free agents, who could select their employment and be properly compensated for their contributions.  The work of a free agent in a free market isn’t evil.  It is, at least as far as I’m concerned, a good thing or, at the very least, a neutral thing.

Another false syllogism is that the Vietnam War was a bad war, therefore all wars are bad wars.  Wars are certainly hell, and there have been bad wars, but not all wars are bad. War is part of a human condition, and what matters in determining a war’s validity is the motives of those who fight a given war.

Looking at things from the American perspective, I truly believe that WWII was a good war, and that was despite mismanagement and mixed motives.  I believe the Civil War was a good war, and that was despite mismanagement and mixed motives.  And I believe the Revolutionary War was a good war.

What made those wars good despite the blood-bath element?  The fact that, on our side, the American side, they were being fought to free people, not to enslave them.  That a particular post-war period didn’t necessarily see freedom being put into effect as one would wish (especially with regards to slavery in the post-Revolutionary era and Jim Crow in the post-Civil War era) does not change the fact that these wars were fought for the highest human ideal:  freedom.

In the same vein, I would categorize the Vietnam War as a good war, since we were trying to rescue Vietnam from the slavery of Communism.  That we failed — and we failed mostly because of our own Fifth Column — resulted in those poor Vietnamese and Cambodians being subject to precisely the Communist slavery we sought to avoid.

Another false syllogism is that, because people have killed in God’s name, religion is evil and should be abolished.  In fact, as history shows, while people have used religion as a vehicle for their evil motives, it has also been the light shining the way to their greatest good.

Certainly there are things in the Jewish Bible that anti-religious people can criticize:  The unfair killing of the First Born in Egypt, merely because Pharoah was stubborn; the Jews’ scorched-earth policy when they first returned to the Promised Land; the harsh prohibitions against homosexuality; and the mandate to kill witches spring to mind.

But overall, compared to the moral landscape in the ancient, pagan world around them, the Jewish Bible was a hugely moral book.  Just to name a few examples, the Jews were the first people in the ancient world to limit slavery, requiring that Jews free their slaves after a set number of years.  The rules around Kosher food, too, were humane:  When the Jews mandated that animals be killed swiftly by having their throats cut (something animal rights activists find horrifying today), they were doing so against a backdrop of ritual animal slaughter that saw animals having their bellies slit open and their entrails slowly removed, while they still lived, so that they priests could read the “signs.”  The rule against mixing meat and milk was also humane in intention, because the Jews thought it indescribably cruel to cook an animal in the milk that once gave it life.

And yes it’s true that, in the medieval world, the Christian message was often perverted to allow the powerful to put their enemies to death, whether it was the Spanish Inquisition or the religious wars that convulsed Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Those were human twists on Christ’s words, though, not the words themselves (something that stands in stark contrast to Mohammad’s words, which enjoin his followers to slaughter and subjugate unbelievers).

By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Christianity was paving the way for the freedoms we recognize now:  our Constitutional freedoms, which the Founders believed came from their Judeo-Christian God; the abolition of slavery, which was, first and foremost, an Evangelical concern; the end of child labor, another Evangelical concern; and the end of Jim Crow, which also found footing amongst church groups, at least in the North.

In other words, religion is as easily a force for good as it is for evil.  Man can go either way, and it is his intentions that determine the use to which religion is put.  Religion as a force for good becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with each generation teaching its morals to the next.

It’s worth thinking about this last point when you hear Sarah Palin being taunted as a religious “extremist.”  What, precisely, is extreme about her religion?  She believes in God, she prays to God, she has the humility to hope that she is doing God’s work, and she chooses a child’s Life over woman’s inconvenience, which is not great for many women, but is certainly the more humane, less pagan/medieval option, etc.  The extremist tag comes about because, on the Left, a false syllogism has taken root:  Because bad things have happened in the name of religion, religion is bad — and anyone who takes religion seriously is, therefore, bad too.

I bet you can find other false syllogisms permeating Leftist thinking, especially as this political race heats up.  As for me, I’m tired and I’ll leave that thinking to you.

Last night, my husband had the kids join him while he watched the last 45 minutes of Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe. I blogged about it here.  If you haven’t watched it — and I don’t recommend it — I would summarize it briefly as an incredibly stupid anti-War, anti-American movie that cannot be salvaged by Taymor’s really beautiful and imaginative staging of lots and lots of wonderful Beatles’ songs.

When my kids came to me to get ready for bed after having watched the movie, my daughter, 10, said, “War is really bad.  Why do we have to go to war?”  I drew in a breath, and mentally collected my arguments that no one likes war, but that some wars are necessary because the alternative is worse.  Before I could even open my mouth, though, she chattered on:  “But the Nazis were really bad and the only way to get rid of them was war.  If we hadn’t gone to war with the Nazis, they would have put everyone in concentration camps.  Sometimes you have to fight wars.”  My planned lecture instantly shrank down to one phrase:  “Sweetheart, you’re absolutely right.”  Her brother nodded knowingly.

Having satisfied herself on this point, she came up with another question:  “But isn’t it horrible to have to fight?  I’d be so scared if I had to go to war.”  Again, I gathered my argument, which was going to be that war is horrible, something I, as a physical coward, fully understand.  Nevertheless, some fates are worse than war, such as being marched off like lambs to a slaughter to a gas chamber.  At least with a gun in your hand, you have a fighting chance.  I never got the chance.  I’d just started my preface about understanding how frightening war is, when my daughter interrupted me:  “But you know, I’d rather fight than go to a gas chamber.  If they take you to a gas chamber, you know you’re going to die.  But if you’re in a battle, maybe you won’t die.”  Again, my contribution was “You’re absolutely right.”

The one thing I added to the mix is that people who assume no one wants to be a soldier lack empathic imagination (although I toned down my vocabulary for the elementary school set).   While freely acknowledging that I’m too in love with my creature comforts (a clean home and a comfy bed) to want to be in the military on a day to day basis (and that’s not even considering the fighting part), I pointed out that a lot of people don’t mind the discomforts and that many people, while they find battle and death horrifying, nevertheless like the purpose and excitement of military service.

My Dad was an example of that mentality.  While he had nightmares to the end of his days about some of the more horrible battles he experienced (with Crete and El Alamein at the top of the list), he also was at his happiest when he was in the military.  He didn’t mind the discomfort too much, and he loved the purpose and camaraderie.  From an aimless Marxist living (or, should I say, starving) on the streets of Tel Aviv, he suddenly had a life that mattered.  He mattered.  For the most part, that more than offset the truly terrible downsides he experienced.

I have smart kids, if I do say so myself.

My father, who was a veteran of World War II and the Israeli War of Independence, was still alive during the first Gulf War. I vividly remember his comment that it was idiotic how much the press made of how nice Americans were and how our troops were so good that they didn’t want to hurt the enemy. He said, “You fight wars to win. That was the problem in Vietnam. The Americans never fought to win.” My Dad was not talking about burning down all the buildings, slaughtering all the citizens, destroying the food crops and sowing the fields with salt. Instead, he was saying that treating a war as a police action, where you’re trying to be a bit punitive without a clear goal in mind (their surrender, your victory), is a waste of time and lives, both in the short and in the long term.

I thought of that when I read this morning that the Israelis, after two days of banging away, had already withdrawn from Gaza. Keep in mind that Israel didn’t go into Gaza on a whim. She went in because the Gazans had been launching thousands of rockets against Israel. I don’t know about you, but I see what the Gazans did as as an act of war. Certainly we would consider that we were at War if Canada suddenly went berzerk and launched thousands of missiles at US soil. In the face of this war and the murderous intent behind it, Israel retaliated by taking out some buildings and killing 70 people. After the yada, yada about each death being a tragedy, reconsider those 70 people, and keep in mind that they come from a society that doesn’t celebrate life, but celebrates death — it sees death as a religious martyrdom, a civic duty, and a useful propaganda tool. So, while family and friends may mourn the death of the individual, Gaza as a whole has to be delighted that the sole consequence for a year of unlimited missile firing into Israel was 70 propaganda moments. Yay!

Israel continue to be on the receiving end of those rocket launches until (a) she takes seriously the fact that you don’t defeat an enemy with the war equivalent of lashes with a wet noodle, and (b) she begins to understand that these limited incursions, rather than demoralizing Gazans, give them hope. And while the Gazan rocket launches, so far, have been somewhat limited in their scope, merely killing or wounding a few of the citizens that Israel values most when they are alive, not dead,that’s going to change one of these days. The rockets will get bigger and stronger and will be able to travel further (certainly with Iran and Syria’s help). Even if they don’t get better, there’s going to be a lucky hit on a nursery school or crowded apartment building. And then, even as Israel mourns her dead, the Gazans will be dancing in the street.

UPDATE: Alan Dershowitz looks at the Muslim death-cult to which I allude, above:

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at — some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the “harsh arithmetic of pain,” whereby civilian casualties on both sides “play in their favor.” Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: “We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children.”

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about “civilians” who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable — as the terrorists well understand.

UPDATE II:  This LGF post exposes the dual enemies Israel faces, in the media and amongst the Palestinians, and explains why polite “police actions” will never quiet either the Palestinians or the press.