Sunday, December 19, 2004

Offshoring the offshoring



Click here for AmazonInteresting column today from Siddharth Srivastava:

"The dynamics of the way the outsourcing business is being conducted is changing. Faced with rising business from the West, spiraling salaries of high cost employees who constantly hop jobs as well as a predicted shortage of skilled workers, Indian IT firms are doing the next best thing — outsourcing outsourced work from the U.S. to China."


Until now, India's reaped the biggest benefit from outsourcing. But when it comes to transnational economic forces nothing's etched in stone. The Chinese economy is growing by leaps and bounds and yes, they also know a little something about high-tech, thank you. (Lenovo, anybody?) What's more, the work force, which can meet -- and beat -- India on cost, is the largest in the world. And they increasingly speak English.

The unanswered question has to do with the future direction of China's government...


Offshoring the offshoring

The Man who Saved the World



Click here for AmazonStanislav Petrov... was in the commander's chair on Sept. 26, 1983, the night the world nearly blew up.

Tensions were high: Weeks earlier, on Sept. 1, Soviet fighters had shot down a Korean airliner, killing all 269 people aboard.

Petrov was in charge of the secret bunker where a team of 120 technicians and military officers monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning system. It was just after midnight when a new satellite array known as Oko, or The Eye, spotted five U.S. missiles heading toward Moscow. The Eye discerned that they were Minuteman II nuclear missiles.

Petrov's computer was demanding that he follow the prescribed protocol and confirm an incoming attack to his superiors. A red light on the computer that read START! kept flashing at him. And there was this baleful message: MISSILE ATTACK!

Petrov had written the emergency protocol himself, and he knew he should immediately pick up the hot line at his desk to tell his superiors that the Motherland was under attack...


LOST IN THE FALLOUT (Hat tip: PowerLine)

Real-time Traffic Maps



Click here for AmazonYahoo announced the availability of its integrated traffic-sensing and mapping system. Using a variety of sources, the main arteries of a city can be overlaid with real-time traffic data, color-coded to indicate clear sailing (green) down to 'don't bother driving this way' (red). Plainly put, this is cooler than 'Free Belvedere Martini Night' at the local Strip Club (jes' kiddin', honey!).

Can't you just imagine a day -- coming soon to a dashboard near you -- where you won't even have the choice to include a dedicated Navigation system in a new car? You'll either have the Auto/Internet package or not. If you purchase the A/I package, an on-board GPS system will be integrated with the car's browser, giving you a much more flexible and powerful navigation system that would include real-time traffic data and routing.

And not only will there be no need for proprietary, limited nav systems... there'll also be no separate OnStar-style emergency service link. Everything will be integrated under the aegis of an "Auto/Internet" package with a monthly charge.

High-speed links like Verizon's wireless broadband service will be utilized -- on a more standard computing platform -- and will enable a hybrid set of closely-tied services: Internet browser, Navigation+Traffic system, OnStar emergency services, etc.

Plus it'll read your email to you, which will be the big win for the Internet-addicted.

Yahoo Map overlaid with Real-Time Traffic

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Auto complete comes of age



If you haven't tried Google Suggest yet, click on the link right now and do so. Please. The characters at Google Labs -- who are more creative than Hunter S. Thompson on a Peyote-and-Tequila bender -- have come up with more simple, yet breakthrough technology. Simon Willison explains how it works.

Google Suggest, the latest bag of tricks from Google Labs, is a perfect example of how modern web applications are breaking out of the mold and becoming more interactive. It uses XMLHttpRequest to run queries against Google as yout type, proving an auto-complete box with the most likely results. As you might expect from Google, it's slick, intuitive and fits right in to their bare-bones interface.

The JavaScript that powers the feature is pretty well obfuscated, so if you want to see how it works your best bet is to install the Firefox/Mozilla Live HTTP Headers extension, set it up as a sidebar and watch what happens when you use the site. Basically, for every character you type it retrieves a page like this and evals the resulting string of JavaScript. It's the same kind of technique they use for Gmail.

XMLHttpRequest is a technology with amazing potential, and this is just the tip of the iceburg. The web's about to get a whole lot richer.


Simon Willison: Auto complete comes of age

Update: Jon Udell says that, while this breed of Google DHTML apps are cool, they still point out fundamental weaknesses in the browser development model. I think I said the something similar a while back, and suggested some evoluationary changes in JavaScript and DHTML.

Friday, December 17, 2004

This should be fun



For one night only, it'll be spitballs and Swift Boats together on the same stage — a who's who of Sen. John Kerry bashing.

The American Conservative Union on Thursday announced it has tapped Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., to present the "Courage Under Fire" award to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at the Conservative Political Action Conference's Feb. 18 banquet.

Miller and the group of Vietnam veterans were behind perhaps the campaign's two fiercest and most memorable attacks on Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid.

Miller, who is retiring next month, scorched Kerry in a Republican National Convention keynote address in which he suggested the four-term Massachusetts Democrat had voted to cut so many weapons systems, it appeared he wanted to send the military to war with only spitballs.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran ads after the Democratic convention questioning whether Kerry was in fact the decorated Vietnam War veteran that he claimed to be.

"The swift boat veterans performed an invaluable service to America," Miller said in a statement. "These veterans took a lot of undeserved criticism for daring to speak the truth...".


Miller to Honor Swift Boat Vets' Group

If today's MSM had covered the Battle of the Bulge



Click here for AmazonHugh Hewitt points us to this outstanding and eerily accurate work of pseudo-fiction. What would the press coverage look like if today's mainstream media were covering the Battle of the Bulge. There are no Ernie Pyle's in today's bunch, that much is certain.

PARIS (Routers) Long-time critics of the Roosevelt administration declared themselves vindicated today, as the Germans began a renewed offensive yesterday in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, opening a huge hole in the "Allied" lines and throwing back troops for miles, with previously unimaginable US casualties.

Early yesterday morning, eight German armored divisions and thirteen German infantry divisions launched an all-out attack on five divisions of the United States 1st Army. Hundreds of heavy guns, howitzers and multiple-rocket launchers were fired on American positions.

The 5th and 6th Panzer armies, consisting of some eleven divisions, broke through the Loshein Gap against the American divisions protecting the region. The 6th Panzer Army then headed north while the Fifth Panzer Army went south. The latter army attacked the U. S. VIII Corps some 100 miles to the south, which was quickly surrounded, resulting in mass surrenders of unprepared American soldiers. By any reasonable and objective standard, it was an utter military disaster for the "Allied" forces.

It all came as a complete shock to the Roosevelt administration who, rumor has it, had been informed by the head of OSS that the imminent collapse of the German army was a "lead-pipe cinch." This only confirmed reasonable pre-election suspicions that the administration and General Eisenhower were operating on flawed intelligence, and led the nation into an invasion of Europe on clearly false pretenses...


Transterrestrial: War Unwinnable In Face Of Renewed German Offensive

The $*#*!@^$# Bloggers



Click here for AmazonMary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager for John Kerry, spoke yesterday along with Ken Mehlman from Bush/Cheney '04, at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

She admitted that she underestimated the effect of the Swifty ads, but the telling line of the story follows:

Both sides also agreed that the Internet and other emerging news technologies have transformed the political process by making it more democratic and encouraging more people to become involved.


You can picture both Mehlman and Cahill answering this question about the effectiveness of the new media, namely the blogosphere. Mehlman would have a big smile on his face as he answered, and Cahill would be ready to spit. But now a little word about the writer of this story.

Steve LaBlanc filed the story for AP, and it is hysterical that he cannot use the words blog, blogger, or blogosphere. Emerging news technologies? What kind of sterile description is that?

In LaBlanc-ese, would John Kerry be considered a wooden presidential campaign unit?

What would the Global War On Terror translate to? Planetary Failure of Strife Resolution?

It's okay, Steve. Say the word. Say blog. We do exist. We have a name. We aren't necessarily coming after your job...yet. We are simply making sure you do yours.

You need not fear us, but camouflaging who we are and the role we played behind political correct speech is pretty ridiculous.


RadioBlogger: The $*#*!@^$# Bloggers

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Blame Bush on the Blog Awards



Click here for AmazonThe Blog Awards are over and I barely made it past 3%. No surprise. It's all one big popularity contest, if you ask me.

Besides, I knew it was over when the judges suddenly started enforcing their draconian set of "rules". That's how Republicans steal elections, boys and girls. Whenever people are forced to vote a certain way, at a certain place, at a certain time, it's the democrats who get the short end of the stick.

We saw it in Florida four years ago, when the GOP exploited "election laws" to invalidate thousands of "improperly or vaguely punched" ballots. Many ballots which would have otherwise been counted were thrown out simply because they weren't punched at all. We're seeing the same sort of shenannigans here in my own state, where the Reichpublicans are invoking bizarre, archaic voting regulations to disenfranchise honest Americans who didn't "follow instructions" and vote "correctly". We may live in a big Melting Pot, but if your vote doesn't fit in with their WASP, Aryan, Master Race idea of perfection, it gets shipped off to the furnaces with the rest of the undesirables.

It never used to be that way. The founding fathers were intentionally vague when writing election laws into the Constitution, for fear that that strict adherence to a concrete set of rules would lead to a fascist dictatorship. Election laws were merely meant to be "suggestions", like the Ten Commandments or traffic signals. In order to insure that Every Vote is Counted, it would be necessary to "bend the rules", and speed through a red light every once in a while, t-boning a Ford Mustang and killing everyone inside for the sake of democracy. It wasn't until white slaveholders concocted a "Poll Tax" to supress the Black vote that Republicans learned to manipulate elections through the strict interpretation of election laws...


Blame Bush: Blog Awards '04

Tehran Recruiters Openly Seek Jihad Martyrs



Click here for AmazonHugh Hewitt points us to this blatant and war-like behavior on the part of the Mullahs. As Donald Rumsfeld says, "they're not making good choices".

The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.

It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates, who want better relations with the world, and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel.

But the presence of two key figures — a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards — lent the meeting more legitimacy and was a clear indication of at least tacit support from some within Iran's government.

Since that inaugural June meeting in a room decorated with photos of Israeli soldiers' funerals, the registration forms for volunteer suicide commandos have appeared on Tehran's streets and university campuses, and there is no sign that Iran's government is trying to stop the shadowy movement.

On Nov. 12, the day that Iranians traditionally hold pro-Palestinian protests, a spokesman for the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement said the movement signed up at least 4,000 new volunteers...

..."At a time when the U.S. is committing the crimes we see now, deprived nations have no weapon other than martyrdom. It's evident that Iran's foreign policy-makers have to take the dignified opinions of this group into consideration," said Mr. Kouchakzadeh, who also is a former member of the Revolutionary Guards.

...In general, Iran portrays Israel as its main nemesis and backs anti-Israeli groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. It says that it has no interest in fomenting instability in Iraq and that it tries to block any infiltration into Iraq by insurgents — while pleading that its porous borders are hard to police.

...Mr. Samadi said that 30,000 volunteers have signed up and that 20,000 of them have been chosen for training. Volunteers already had carried out suicide operations against military targets inside Israel, he said.

But he said discussing attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq "will cause problems for the country's foreign policy. It will have grave consequences for our country and our group. It's confidential."

As devoted Muslims, members of his group were simply fulfilling their religious obligations as laid out by Ayatollah Khomeini, he said... "With this religious verdict, we don't need anybody's permission to fight an enemy that has occupied Muslim lands."


Militant recruiters out in open in Tehran

Ahhh, the peat... *



Click here for AmazonThe next time someone asks about liberal media bias, just point them to this AP story about the Swift Vets. Excerpts:

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Republican-funded Vietnam War veterans who patrolled the same Mekong Delta in Swift boats similar to the ones piloted by Navy Lt. John Kerry, challenged Kerry’s accounts of his medal-winning service and anti-war protests.


Feel the bias! Republican-funded? How often have you heard MoveOn.org referred to as a “Democrat-funded” organization?

And notice how the Swifties are described as “Vietnam War veterans who patrolled the same Mekong Delta in Swift boats similar to the ones piloted by Navy Lt. John Kerry.” No mention of the fact that they all served in the same unit. Or that John O’Neill took over Kerry’s Swift boat when Kerry left Vietnam. Or that Steve Gardner was Kerry’s gunner. You’d think Kerry was a complete stranger to the Swifties.

It gets worse:

[Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill] said it was frustrating that the first ad continued to eat up so much air time even after the central allegations were debunked.


Debunked?? When did that happen? Every one of the Swifties’ charges still stands. The only debunking has been of Kerry’s Excellent Cambodian Adventure.

And the lying liberal media wonders why we don’t listen to them anymore.


PoliPundit: Ahhh, the peat...

*Obscure Seinfeld reference

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

All Intifada, All the Time



Click here for AmazonAriel Cohen has a good piece about the flagship propaganda channels of the global jihad, Al Jazeera and Al Manar: All Intifada, All the Time.

Since 9/11, the U.S. Government has expressed its concerns about al Jazeera’s biased coverage to the Emir of Qatar. A State Department official told CNN that Secretary of State Colin Powell and the emir "had a frank exchange" on the issue and "there should have been no mistake of where we are coming from." Condoleezza Rice has also criticized the channel. No wonder: typical coverage would include the following pictures shown in quick succession: tiny bodies of Iraqi children supposedly killed by American bombs, woman in a chador sobbing, a giant American B-52 bomber, and fireballs lighting up the Baghdad night sky. One American observer in the Middle East calls al Jazeera "All Intifada, all the time."

Al Manar, however, makes al Jazeera look like PBS. A new study by Avi Jorisch, a former Pentagon Arab media and terrorism expert, published by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, exposes this deadly media weapon wielded by Hizballah. "The United States is one of al-Manar’s main targets. Hizballah views America as a terrorist state... Al Manar is used to further that perception, attempting to win the hearts and minds of Arab and Muslim viewers by waging a powerful public relations campaign against the 'Great Satan.'" writes Jorisch.

He quotes Sheikh Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s Secretary General in a March 2002 speech:

"Today the main source of evil in this world, the main source of terrorism... the central threat to international peace and to the economic development... the main threat to the environment, the main source of ... killing and turmoil, and civil wars, and regional wars is the United States of America. The American political discourse is to terrorize the countries of the world. American is a beast in all meanings of the world. A beast that is hungry for power and blood."

Al Manar focuses much of its broadcasts on alleged American atrocities towards Native Americans, blacks, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while stating that U.S. "oppression" continues unabated. Al Manar brainwashes its audience, including its viewers in the U.S., that America’s foreign policy is designed to "enslave the governments and people of the Middle East and their resources."



LGF: All Intifada All the Time

Try not to Cry



Click here for AmazonTry not to sob as you watch this (hat tip: LGF). Heh.

Serious about Syria



Click here for AmazonIn the fall of 1998, the Turkish army mobilized for war against Syria. For years, the Kurdish PKK had trained in Syria and used it as a base from which to wage a terrorist campaign in neighboring Turkey, at a cost of some 35,000 lives. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan lived more or less openly in Damascus. Years of Turkish diplomatic pressure on Syria to close the camps and expel Ocalan had been unavailing. Finally, the Turks made it plain to then Syrian dictator Hafez Assad that he faced a choice between expelling the PKK for good and having his country invaded. Assad capitulated. Within a year, Ocalan was in jail and the PKK had ceased its attacks...

...It helps to understand the full scope of Syrian malfeasance [in Iraq]. So far, the U.S. has accused Syria only of allowing foreign fighters to transit to Iraq. But a report in the Washington Post notes that a global positioning signal receiver found in a Fallujah bomb factory "contained waypoints originating in Western Syria."

Fedayeen interviewed by Western media say they received training in light weapons, explosives and hit-and-run operations at camps in Syria. These camps are likely financed by the $2.5 billion Saddam Hussein is believed to have stashed in Syrian banks before the war. In April, Jordanian intelligence captured an al Qaeda cell as it planned a chemical-weapons attack in Amman. That cell, too, was apparently trained in Syria.

...In an interview in the Lebanese paper Al-Safir, Syrian President Bashar Assad was no less explicit when he offered Lebanon circa 1983 as an example of how the U.S. was to be fought in Iraq: "Lebanon was under Israeli occupation, up to its capital, but we did not consider that a disaster. Why? Because it was very clear there are ways to resist. The problem is not the occupation, but how people deal with it. . . . [In Iraq] the solution is resistance."

...Mr. Assad's calculation is that the U.S. is too tied down in Iraq to entertain any action against Syria.

Maybe. But the fact remains that Syria is providing material support to terrorist groups killing American soldiers in Iraq while openly calling on Iraqis to join the "resistance." So far, the Bush Administration has responded with mixed political signals and weak gestures. That's not something that impresses the Assad family, as the Turks found out. But as the Turks found out as well, there are ways to get the message across to this regime.


WSJ: Serious about Syria

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Something Monumental



Click here for AmazonReader Harold Stones works for Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas. Mr. Stones writes:

I have become friends with Chris Phelps, a young Marine officer. Chris emailed me that he was about to be deployed for his second tour of duty in Iraq. He is married, has four sons, all younger than 7. I responded that I doubted his wife, Lisa, was overjoyed and, allthough her parents live nearby, I asked Chris to give her my office, home and cellphone numbers in the event they need anything. I think his message is well worth sharing.


Of course, we agree. Here is the response from Major Phelps that Mr. Stones forwarded to us:

No Lisa isn't happy, and I was just talking to my two oldest sons last night about sacrifice. (Sort of prepping the battlefield, but we've talked about the subject for two years.) I want them to understand the topic and what it means to be an American....really more what it means to stay an American and what citizens of this great country must do to secure that concept. It's amazing how a 6.5 and a 5 year old can really understand it, and actually converse back with an adult on the topic. It's going to be hard on them.

I hope I'm not too naive but this is what's in my head. I continually tell myself and I wholeheartedly believe that if we as a country can confront terrorism and rogue nation-states that support terrorist acts and if we can bring peace, hope, freedoms, and democracy to a country in the heart of the Middle East while at the same time solidifying the security, freedom, and liberties of this great nation then my sacrifice is inconsequential. If I am asked to partake in some small way to accomplish this goal then I say take me before my four sons are confronted with this problem in 20 years and they are forced to clean up a problem that has only festered, become increasingly worse and a problem that we should have confronted twenty years earlier. We are doing the right thing, and America needs to stand united and reaffirm to themselves every now and then that we are in fact doing the right thing. I think I'm a free minded thinker, and I'm not "brainwashed" by the President, Mr. Rumsfield, or some "right wing propaganda conspiracy theory." I really think we're attempting to accomplish something monumental. I guess we'll see.

Mr. Stones, you've been good to my family and so has Senator Roberts. Thank you for that. I look forward to seeing you again.

Best regards,
Chris Phelps
Major, United States Marine Corps



PowerLine: A word from Major Phelps, USMC

Rebuilding Iraq



Click here for AmazonAs its conclusion approaches, there’s still not a single representative from the left side of the blogosphere in the Spirit of America Blogger Challenge. How sad. How typical.

Sarah at trying to grok makes an excellent point:

My old roommate writes poetry to speak out against the war. Atrios’ readers use their filthy mouths to denigrate right-leaning bloggers. But what have they done of substance? If you oppose the war, shouldn’t you support helping Iraqis put their country back together? Regardless of whether Bush looks like a chimp or not, shouldn’t the idea that someone is raising money to help the common people of Iraq be a good thing? If you believe the war was wrong, shouldn’t you believe the people of Iraq were right and thus want to help them?

It’s warmongers and chickenhawks who have raised $62865.72 so far for the people of Iraq. As far as I understand, there’s not a lefty blog among the participants. I find that very sad.

My old roommate writes anti-war poems. I donated to Spirit of America. Which one of us has done more to help the people of Iraq?



Of Money and Mouths

The Cultural Ignorance of the Left



Click here for Amazon...Despite the homage the urban liberals pay to the idea of diversity, you have to live in rural, red state America to experience intellectual diversity.

We hear both sides of the story. On abortion, the environment, gay marriage, war, and taxes, we hear the liberal side from the national media, and we hear both sides in the local media and radio. Sure, we hear the liberal side twice, but at least we hear the conservative side once.

Another reason liberals never hear the other side is that they're such bullies. Intellectual bullies, that is. I'm sure Manhattan has conservatives, but they live in such an intolerant environment, they probably keep quiet.

Things like this are hard to quantify, but you can detect it in how liberals argue their political positions. Consider hate crimes laws. They criminalize thought. We can all agree that things like assault, murder, and theft should be illegal, but only an intellectual bully is interested in whether you had the correct thoughts about those you were murdering or assaulting.

Or consider sex education. Liberals oppose laws requiring abstinence education. These laws don't forbid schools from continuing on with the traditional "we know you're going to have sex, so here's a condom" philosophy, they merely require that schools also inform kids of the benefits of abstinence. Only intellectual bullies would feel so threatened by the idea of students hearing both points of view.

Another trademark of intellectual bullies is that they can't resist calling people names. They honestly think their opponents are evil or stupid. We're homophobes. Patriarchs. Greedy. Fundamentalist. Bigots. Gun-toters. White trash. Bible-thumpers. It's hard to listen to new ideas with these thoughts in your head...

...These city folk are victims of a new cultural hegemony in America. Whenever we turn on the TV or watch a movie, we learn all about life in their little corners of the world. They seldom get a glimpse at us.

I tried to think of current TV sitcoms or recent movies which tell our story. There aren't many. The closest I came was "Northern Exposure," a '90s show about a New York medical school graduate forced to practice in a small town in Alaska. But I ruled that one out. It was about a New Yorker. And towards the end, the story line was hijacked by two gay men who moved to town to operate a bed-and-breakfast and an environmental wacko who lived in an air-tight dome and claimed he could sense releases of toxic gasses thousands of miles away.

Those plots are really about Hollywood life, not ours...

...I think the TV series "Roseanne" was set in a red state, hence the blue staters' belief that we're mostly fat, poor, and stupid. It's very hard to think of a recent movie or TV show which sympathetically portrays our lives. "The Waltons," "The Andy Griffith Show," and "Petticoat Junction" were set in red states, but they're all set in the past. A few movies, like "A Walk to Remember," are sympathetic portrayals of contemporary rural American life, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule. If you want to see a small-town southern preacher who is wise and compassionate, watch this movie. You won't see it again soon.

But every election day, our stories and our values count just as much as those in blue states. And for just a little while, they notice us.


Alan Aker: The Cultural Ignorance of the Left

Monday, December 13, 2004

No More Tyrants, Please



Click here for AmazonAn excellent piece by former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky: Palestinians Do Not Need Another Tyrant.

Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world and most of Israel was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian “fear society” would always pose a grave threat to Israel and would never prove a reliable peace partner. It was Andrei Sakharov, the foremost dissident in the Soviet Union, who taught me that regimes that do not respect the rights of their own people will not respect the rights of their neighbors.

The link between the nature of a regime and its external behavior is not always understood. Democratic leaders, whose power is ultimately dependent on popular support, are held accountable for failing to improve the lives of their citizens. Therefore, they have a powerful incentive to keep their societies peaceful and prosperous.

On the other hand, the power of dictators is not dependent upon popular will. For them, staying in power is a function not of bettering the lives of their subjects but rather of controlling those lives. To justify the degree of repression necessary to sustain their illegitimate rule, dictators need to constantly mobilize their people against external enemies.



LGF: No more tyrants, please

Dowd-eriffic



Click here for AmazonI really didn't think Maureen Dowd could sink any lower into the fever swamp. And, remarkably, she has. Her latest is not only a laughably feeble attempt at a partisan hack-job and intellectually dishonest to boot -- nothing new for her -- but is also of such patently inferior quality that it likely was authored by Maureen's pet monkey, Shrub.

Someone, please, save Maureen and the Times before it's too late. I hear the Tehran Times needs a new op-ed columnist.

Maureen Dowd is drowning in the fever swamp

Sunday, December 12, 2004

The Motivation of the Enemy



Click here for AmazonThe Washington Times' Sam Harris details the nearly unspeakable implications of the Iraqi insurgency. Read the whole thing (hat tip: JihadWatch).

However mixed or misguided our intentions were in launching this war, we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people.

Despite the numbers of Iraqi dead and the travesty of Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi insurgents know that we did not come to their country to rape their women or to kill innocent civilians. Every thinking person in the Muslim world understands that if our goal had been to kill Iraqis and steal their oil, millions of Iraqis would now be dead and their oil would be flowing. The terrible truth about our predicament in Iraq is that even if we had invaded with no other purpose than to remove Saddam Hussein from power and make Iraq a paradise on Earth, we should still expect tomorrow's paper to reveal that another jihadi has blown himself to bits for the sake of killing scores of innocent men, women and children.

The Iraqi people have been traumatized by this war and by decades of repression. But this does not explain the type of violence they wage against us on a daily basis. War and repression do not account for suicidal violence directed against the Red Cross, the United Nations, foreign workers and Iraqi innocents. War and repression would not have attracted an influx of foreign fighters willing to sacrifice their lives merely to sow chaos.

We are now mired in a religious war in Iraq, and elsewhere. Our enemies, as witnessed by their astonishing willingness to slaughter themselves, are not principally motivated by political or economic grievances...

...Anyone who imagines that terrestrial concerns account for terrorism by Muslims must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They, too, suffer the ordeal of the Israeli occupation. Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers for that matter? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal than any we or the Israelis have imposed on the Muslim world. The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific doctrines about martyrdom and jihad that directly inspire Muslim terrorism.


Washington Times: Sam Harris on the War

Let... it... go.



Click here for AmazonThe always insightful Polipundit web site points us to this unintentionally hilarious story of a few lonely Democrats that can't seem to get over the... well, I guess we can call it as we see it... mandate. This effort has all the compelling drama of a gridiron contest between the Cedarville Junior High School Cylones and the New England Patriots, only with more certainty of the outcome.

Clifford Arnebeck won’t let it go. He can’t let it go. Not, he says, while America refuses to recognize that John F. Kerry was elected president Nov. 2.

Arnebeck, a Democratic lawyer here and co-chairman of a self-styled national populist alliance, is petitioning the state’s highest court to throw out official results that favor President Bush and instead hand Ohio’s 20 electoral votes — and thus the White House — to Kerry. Or, at least, order a revote.

The bid appears quixotic, to put it politely, as Bush has been officially declared the winner by 119,000 votes and Arnebeck is arguing before a Republican-dominated Supreme Court in Ohio. Nor is the Massachusetts senator helping him out, said Arnebeck.

"I can’t for the life of me understand why Kerry isn’t fighting harder for this. Maybe it’s some secret Skull and Bones tradition, where you’re not supposed to show up the other guy," Arnebeck said, referring to the Yale secret society of which Bush and Kerry were both members...


Stubborn and stupid is no way to go through life, son