Update 4: Petraeus-Crocker Crock Continues

Barack Obama, Constitution, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, John McCain, Military, War

Petraeus-Crocker crock continues—on all sides.

Clinton mourned that “the longer we stay in Iraq, the more we divert resources not only from Afghanistan, but other international challenges, as well.”

She’d like to deficit spend elsewhere in the world: pursue a better “mission” or “war.”

So Clinton weighing the opportunity costs vis-à-vis Iraq is a dubious thing at best. I did like that she raised the hidden costs, or rather, the costs the general won’t speak of—the same general who by now must be seen as a partisan who supports the administration’s policy, not merely the mission with which he’s been entrusted. Petraeus has crossed over into the political realm.

Some of the hidden costs: “Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress…”

A good constitutional point Clinton raised, and to which the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker responded feebly, was this: the government of Iraq intends to vote on whether to provide the legal authority for U.S. troops to continue to conduct operations in Iraq.

Why in bloody blue blazes doesn’t the United States Congress get to vote on that???

Crocker, predictably, consigned decisions to be rightfully made by “We the People” to the “appropriate” realm under the Bush Administration’s constitutional scheme: the executive branch.

Petraeus had Princeton smarts with which to retort. But he too fell flat with a lot of bafflegab about equations, this or the other co-efficient, “battlefield geometry,” and “non-linear” political progress.”

Updates later.

Update 1: SHIITE FROM SHINOLA. It won’t concern the war harpies readying themselves to can-can for McCain, and sock it to those “Ayrabs,” but I thought the more thoughtful among you ought to know that McCain still can’t tell Shiite from Shinola:

McCain: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view Al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?
Petraeus: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.
McCain: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall?

Al Qaida is Sunni.

Update 2: Watch the way Petraeus, each time he seems about to make a policy recommendation, skillfully pulls back from this unconstitutional abyss. This is not an affirmative action appointee. It goes without saying that Petraeus is defending a pie-in-the-sky policy much more than a viable military mission. The former is beyond his purview. But, then, constitutional overreach is the name of the game for politicians and their pet generals.

Update 3: I note that Barack Obama “repeated his view that the US invasion was a ‘massive strategic blunder.’” Is that all it was? Was the war not also a massive moral blunder? For how else does one describe the willful attack on a Third World nation, whose military prowess was a fifth of what it was when hobbled during the gulf war, had no navy or air force, and was no threat to American national security?

Well, at least someone—Barack—said something bad about the war.

Correctly Obama also noted that “What we have not seen is the Iraqi government using the space that was created not only by our troops but by the stand down of the militias in places like Basra, to use that to move forward on a political agenda that could actually bring stability.”

Obama was on target again by pointing out that the US “should be talking to Iran as we cannot stabilize the situation without them.”

He also tried to thread the needle, so to speak, by cleverly cajoling the Petraeus-Crocker team into conceding that perhaps the parameters used to gauge the appropriate length of the stay in Iraq are unrealistic. Perhaps Iraq today is as good as it’ll ever get. I agree; a democratic peaceful Iraq would necessitate dissolving the people and electing another, to paraphrase Bertold Brecht.

There is no doubt that Obama has the best grip on the war among the unholy trinity. Maybe his dedicated socialism and closeted Afrocentrism are look-away issues given his good sense on the war. What do you think?

Let’s see whether the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr, lives up to Ron Paul on foreign policy and the warfare state.

Update 4 (April 9): “THE WAR IS NOT A CAMPAIGN EVENT.” Michael Ware’s word. Ware, as I’ve long held, is the best war-time correspondent. He happens to work for CNN. Here’s a snippet from his take on the “unreality” of the “made-for-television show” we’ve just been watching:

“Look, in terms of the military and diplomatic picture that was painted by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, by and large, subject to, you know, certain detail and — and different conclusions, it’s a fairly accurate broad brushstroke.

Are they glossing over a lot of things? Yes. Are they failing to admit certain glaring realities? Of course. But this is the nature of warfare. What struck me, sitting in these — in these hearing rooms today, is, if — A, what surprised me was the lack of probing questions, really, from the members of the panel.

And in terms of the three presidential candidates, as they stand right now, I mean, obviously, today was more about their campaigns than actually about the war itself. Now, I have come almost directly from the war. I mean, some people are living this thing. It is not a campaign event.

So, to hear people and see the way people are actually using this, it really does create discomfort in me. And I don’t know how the ambassador and the general feel. I mean, this is the reality of war. War is an extension of politics by any other means. But it still hits home.”

Sullivan Slobbers For Obama

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Media, Neoconservatism

As you know, pundit Andrew Sullivan was one of the failed “experts” who provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.

To be fair, Sullivan distinguished himself from the rest of the nation’s philosopher-kings in that he did recant. Deep in a Time Magazine column he buried an expression of “a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me.” This alone makes him infinitely nobler than most other teletwits who’re shoved down the collective gullet by media, and who were all wrong all along about the invasion of Iraq, and many other grave matters.

Of course, the media is every bit as mired in moral and intellectual confusion as the pundits they feature . If they exposed their failed experts, they’d be exposing their own moral and intellectual flabbiness. They’d be beaching themselves, which is how they all ought to end up—beached.

The same Sullivan, wrong for so long on such a crucial matter, appeared on Meet the Press, April 6, intoxicated—drunk with love not for war, this time, but for Obama. Bami is absolutely sincere about everything he says, Sullivan almost sobbed. Thankfully, a wry Christopher Hitchens was there to provide a counterweight to Sullivan’s emotional effusing.

“Richly revealing was the way Obama tarred his maternal (white) grandma with the taint of racism,” not once, by mistake, but repeatedly. You’ll all agree that was quite something to behold. Hitchens certainly thought so. He smiled and said something to the effect that never before had he seen put into practice the expression throwing granny to the wolves. Or throwing granny under the bus. Obama’s outing of his infirm, 86-year-old grandma as a racist, fit to be lumped with the vile Rev. Wright—that was a first for to Hitchens. (And to me; most good people show respect to their grandparents.)

In response, Sullivan oozed denials, the sum total of which amounted to, “Leave him alone, you nasty man; Bami didn’t mean it that way.” Andy dominated the remainder of the conversation with “arguments” of a similar caliber.

I paraphrase the gist of what Dr. Thomas Szasz once said to me: Hitchens may be wrong on many issues, but at least he’s highly intelligent.

And what a conversationalist!

Back to my main point: Crunchy con Sullivan should not be listened to when he prostrates himself at the feet of Obama and asks that we do the same. For too long he’s dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage on some pretty defining issues. Isn’t it time his status as “experts” for whom public goodwill runs eternal be revoked? At least Hitchens, unlike Sullivan, didn’t vow that he had looked into a candidate’s eyes and seen his soul.

Update 2: ‘Genius’ In Contemporary America

America, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Logic, Music, Reason, The Zeitgeist

With the death of objective standards, the assessment of everything from cultural products to moral nature has become near impossible.

Consider: According to author Richard Reeves, classical liberal John Stuart Mill was “learning Greek at three, taking in Plato and Sophocles at ten, and turning, at eleven, to the mastery of Aristotle’s logic.” Indisputably a genius. Genial too, I believe—which goes against the romanticized notion whereby true genius involves eccentricities and crazy behavior. It seldom does.

The slow Morley Safer of “60 Minutes” has repeatedly provided examples of the difficulties fin de siècle America has in assessing genius.

Some time ago, Morely headed over to Julliard, if I recall, to feature a young man touted as a musical prodigy. The boy was full of affectation and acted eccentrically, as he obviously believed a young man of his “abilities” ought to.

Over the course of this most mundane hour, it became obvious that what you had here were pushy parents and their cocky, narcissistic son, who’d managed to eliminate along the way any opinion contrary to theirs with respect to their son’s designation as a musical genius.

One old school Russian master, who was of the opinion that the lad was not particularly good, was subject to complaints, and promptly dismissed. The rest at Julliard simply fell into compliance with the genius designation out of ignorance and pseudo-intellectualism.

Suffice it to say that to listen to the lad’s compositions was to know right away that he had very little to offer. Passion was remiss, other than for himself. Technique was non-existent. He had, however, watched a lot of Leonard Bernstein footage, as he emulated Lenny’s antics. Thing is, the prodigious Lenny, as repugnant a persona as he was, delivered. I myself am inspired to leap up in the air and land as did Lenny when listening to his recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrushka. Great fire and precision in that interpretation. (Actually I do leap in the air to Petrushka.)

Particularly amusing to this music lover—Bach, any Bach, and chamber music, in particular—was this goddamn-awful self-styled genius’ insistence that, like Bach, he never needed to erase the music he wrote down. I’m not sure this is fact or folklore, but it is said that Bach Senior wrote without having to erase.

Stupid Safer found this very convincing. I found this an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy:

The moron had read that J. S. Bach never corrected the music he wrote. He concluded therefore that if he never erased the crap he transcribed he’d be in his right to lay claim to Bach-like genius.

Listening to this lad’s self-reverential, introspective, crappy, choppy compositions was all one needed to conclude that decades of tutoring with an exacting master would be required to produce a solid piece.

The revolting reality was that the pandering parents and pedagogues surrounding this lad partook in the charade.

Update 1 (April 6): Since it seems some readers have not understood what is meant by post hoc logic, let me try again. If A then B is correct in logic. In Bach’s case: his abilities (A) led to his not needing to rewrite what he wrote (B). The proof was in the pudding too, i.e., the music is heavenly; assessed by objective standards, Bach’s music epitomizes genius.

If B then A is wrong in logic. It is exactly the case of the stupid kid. He refuses to rewrite (B) and improve despite the opinion of people greater than he that this is indeed what is required of him if he is to improve. From the act of not rewriting (B), he and his accomplices have reasoned backwards and concluded that his abilities are Bach-like (A).

Reasoning backwards is an error, illogic, bogus. What this means it that there are many other reasons for his not rewriting. Hubris being one.

What had happened is that the lad had imbibed the story of Bach not rewriting, and concluded that if he did not rewrite (B), he indeed did not need to rewrite (A). That the music doesn’t approach reasonable standards in complexity and beauty certainly suggests that scrapping it and trying again is the first order of the day. That other fine—and thus so fired—teachers have suggested that a great deal of learning and rewriting is what’s required if an improvement is to be attained suggests that there are, if anything, good reasons to rewrite and rewrite a lot.

I’ve explained the post hoc error laboriously. If you fail to get this distinction, I can’t help much more that I already have.

Update 2: I’m delighted that Barely A Blog’s resident musician (settle down ye humorless; that was meant to sound pompous), Professor Ira Newborn, has dilated on the topic of the modern-day genius with his usual flare.

Ira is a well-known, highly-accomplished composer. He may be known more for his popular “motion picture soundtracks,” but I’ve heard some of his more serious compositions. Yeah, baby: those made me leap up in the air too, as does Lenny’s Fire Bird and Petrushka. I only wish the tracts where available to the public. How about it, Ira? How sad that the bad (Wonder Boy) pushes out the good (Ira).

Also, sample Sean Mercer for some of the hottest guitar playing you’ll hear with tight arrangements to match technical skill. The recording, which Sean engineered, is a little dated, but it holds up.

Updated: In Defense Of The Fence

Constitution, Crime, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Private Property

Here’s an excerpt from my new WorldNetDaily column for Friday, April 4:

“[T]he Department of Homeland Security [has] proceeded to waive certain environmental laws for various project areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, so as to begin completing, this time apparently in earnest, the 700 miles of fencing mandated by the ‘Secure Fence Act.’”

“The Act was forced on the ruling class in 2006 by a passionately non-partisan American public, sick and tired of the farce on the southwest front. Naturally, after the primping and preening that accompanies the signing of a bill into law just prior to midterm elections, the politicians promptly side-stepped the popular will…”

“That the government has used its discretionary waiver authority to temporarily suspend a few of its countless ‘land management’ laws, never vetted by voters, is no tragedy. In fact, government should waive more superfluous regulations if this means fulfilling its one constitutionally mandated function: defending the nation’s borders…”

Read “In Defense of The Fence” here (or on WND, where we lead the Commentary Page).

Update: In reply to some of the hysterical yelps of “tear down this wall”:

“If you really want to see an immigration liberationist rise on his hind legs, mention a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. … Irrational minds have transformed a defensive wall à la the Emperor Hadrian’s, intended to keep the ‘barbarians’ out, into the Iron Curtain or the Berlin Wall, constructed to keep people in.”

A fence is the quintessential non-aggressive method of defense. You don’t attack, arrest, or otherwise molest undesirables, you keep them at bay, away. This is why it’s so dishonest of libertarians to protest the fence. Other than utopian solutions that’ll never come to pass, there is no other option. Libertarians are not that stupid. They know this, which makes their position all the more callous. Even sicker do such people make me when they protest Israel’s security fence. It has cut by over 80 percent the number of Israelis maimed and murdered by suicide bombers.

“Other barriers that fail to move the ‘tear-down-this-wall’ humanitarians to do their St. Vitus Dance are those separating India and Pakistan, Botswana and Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyztan, Thailand and Malaysia, and Turkey and Syria (this one is mined).” And, as Joseph Farah points out in his latest column, Egypt is erecting a fence to keep the bad-tempered Gazans from hurting Egyptians.

I suspect that the kind of person screaming bloody murder about a barrier would change his tune if his property was being traipsed by trespassers day-in-and-out. Here’s the left-liberal Time magazine on the ordeal:

“When the crowds cross the ranches along and near the border, they discard backpacks, empty Gatorade and water bottles and soiled clothes. They turn the land into a vast latrine, leaving behind revolting mounds of personal refuse and enough discarded plastic bags to stock a Wal-Mart. Night after night, they cut fences intended to hold in cattle and horses. Cows that eat the bags must often be killed because the plastic becomes lodged between the first and second stomachs. The immigrants steal vehicles and saddles. They poison dogs to quiet them. The illegal traffic is so heavy that some ranchers, because of the disruptions and noise, get very little sleep at night.”

Or if his beloved fell pray to a member of a group so well-represented among the criminal class:

“Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens.” In 2000 nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners were foreign-born. In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants are for illegal aliens. In 1995, already 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California was illegal. In the Mecklenburg County, where the sheriff recently broke with the country and began to enforce immigration law, “1,200 foreign-born people have been arrested since April, on charges ranging from traffic violations and trespassing to sex crimes, and nearly 600 have been found to be here illegally.”