And what influence is he speaking about? Not a single individual jumped in and saved Enron from going under. Not a single penny was offered to bail them out. Sounds to me like Enron has as much "influence" as I do.

Leftoids are all a-buzz because The Nation is reporting Enron Memos a "Smoking Gun". Of course The Nation is still counting votes in Florida so only uninspired read that stuff or believe it to begin with.

Perhaps Mr. Gephardt is referring to the meetings over the energy plan? Would that be something like the NEA getting to undercut needed changes in our Education System, like school vouchers? Or perhaps like trial lawyers getting to chime in to Hypocrats to kill any chance at Tort Reform.

Let’s face reality here. The chances that either Party is going to pass a law that limits the amount of money they can get their hands on is about as likely that they will vote themselves a pay cut.

Oh sure, they may bring up something that sounds like reform, but pennies to dollars you’d be able to drive a Mack Truck through the loopholes.

The Democrats’ Response…

…To the State of the Union, given by Mr. Gephardt, was filled with more than just a slap at the President over Enron, it was also filled with a sufficient amount of B.S. to grow a thousand acres of corn.

He claims to want to work with the President to, among other things, cut wasteful spending. Wait a minute here, who’s this guy think he’s fooling? This is the same individual that calls a 5% increase in spending a Budget Cut.

He once again calls for bi-partisanship efforts. Reality time; to Hypocrats bi-partisan means you go along with what they want. Anything else is partisanship.

And Speaking of…

…The State of the Union Speech, well written, and well delivered by the President.

I’m sorry to say I am disappointed in the continuing expansion and intrusion of the Federal Gov’t into the School Systems of our States. Somehow people just don’t seem to equate the decline of the Education System with the expanded role of the Fed.

I am surprised that the President is "proud" of an Education Bill that ignores the needs of those trapped in the poorer school systems in this Country and ignores their wishes and support for school vouchers, (If THAT isn’t a clear case of paid political influence, (by the NEA), I don’t know what is).

Is there some genetic thing that all Democrats share? Despite gallons of corruption that flowed out of the White House for the 8 years of Bill Clinton’s mal-administration, Waxman is now shocked, shocked that energy companies were consulted in the formulation of the national energy policy. A document which was presented publicly and requires Congressional passage in one for or another. Waxman clearly expects to discover that Ken Lay and Enron not only provided analysis, opinion and suggestions but that the plan was created, not in response to Bush’s call to reduce our dependence on foreign oil but to save Enron. It is clear to anyone with Waxman’s X ray vision that this was merely a device to line the pockets of a small coterie of Houston jacklegs, a pro quo for the quid lavished on the GOP.

What is not surprising about the current folderol over the energy task force meetings is that few Republicans, with the notable exception of Speaker Hastert, have spoken out in defense of the administration. Those GOP politicians who do speak out in support of disclosure, do so with an air of resignation, displaying both a lack of confidence in their President and in the prerogatives of the executive branch. Most of these pols were pretty firm and clear on the need for full disclosure when Hillary Clinton was busily adopting market based medical fascism. Perhaps the fire has gone out in their souls, or they are more concerned with fighting the important battles America faces: the level of soy bean price supports or the relative merits of low interest loans for "empowerment zones".

Chenney and Bush are standing up for an obvious proposition, that the executive branch is entitled to the free and unfettered opinions of a broad range of American interest groups. That it is only common sense to ask energy producers and traders to provide their expert opinion on the efficacy of various policy proposals. Last time I looked, Congressman receive calls, mail and even personal visits from more than just their constituents. Are those contacts subject to full public disclosure? No rational person would deny a Congressman with zero knowledge of medicines the right to contact Eli Lilly about issues regarding drug testing and patents. We expect men and women who are our elected representatives to investigate and research a wide range of issues for which they are not qualified. They should seek the best advice and make logical decisions.

What is lost in all the sturm und drang is that the President’s energy initiatives are mostly subject to both Congressional scrutiny and approval. If Waxman can successfully divine the caustic influence of Enron in the proposals, then he should stand up and point this out. Not that it will help Enron too much. Even if Chenney and Bush had adopted an energy policy based entirely on Enron’s recommendations, it wouldn’t help Enron much. This is a political fight and political pay back for HillaryCare.

Waxman should at least have the honesty to tell us why he opposes the plans. Disagreement is not un-patriotic. Opposition should be welcomed, it keeps the administration honest. But to dress up a dead corpse (Enron) and drag it to every public forum and display it as some sort of evil totem does a disservice to the nation.

Waxman is nothing more than a disgrace to the Congress. Sadly he’s not the only one.

Certainly there are differences between men and women

But these differences are in tendency, not in moral capacity. The wages of sin is death for women as well as men, and God sends women and men to the same hell. That is the ultimate moral accountability. Men often have the power to so undermine the moral impulse in women that making the right choices is terribly hard, but God does not excuse women on that head, and men cannot protect women from accountability to God. (Likewise, women can undermine the moral impulse in men–but God doesn’t excuse men in this situation either, and He doesn’t want to hear that it was all the woman’s fault.) God has given both men and women the capacity to choose between good and evil. What we have lost sight of today is that we–men and women–need each other’s encouragement, affirmation, and goodwill to exercise our capacity to choose good. We’re not here to make and glorify invidious distinctions between ourselves–I’m strong and smart, you’re not; I’m kind and compassionate, you’re not–we’re here to cooperate. When men and women cooperate, the results are astounding.

I have no argument with male strength

It’s great!–but I do with the idea that strength is exclusively a male attribute. The way men display strength is largely, but not entirely, different from the way women display it. Vive la difference! But men make a terrible mistake when they concentrate solely on cultivating strength in young men, and insist that their distinction from women is precisely this. Life is far more worth living for all of us when women are responsible, honorable, morally courageous, diligent, enthusiastic, and worthy–all of which they have the capacity to be, if taught properly. Men need teaching to develop traits of strength also–they are just more likely to get such teaching from their parents, and particularly their fathers.

Dear friends, don’t neglect to teach your daughters honor! Teach them to make moral distinctions. Teach them right and wrong. Teach them the same things you would teach your sons: that strength is good, but it must be under discipline; that obedience is a choice, not an imposition, and it makes you fit for responsibility; that hard work and diligence pay off, and the easy way is a chimera that will make your life much harder later on; that leadership is service; that your word, once given, must be kept; that justice and fairness start with you, not with the state; that your are accountable for the things you do and the choices you make. Believe in your daughters as morally accountable people, instill high character in them, and you will reap rewards.

Natural man is generally violent, brutish, and irresponsible; natural woman is generally fey, whining, and irresponsible. But Rose Sayer said it best: "Nature, Mr Allnutt, is what we are put into this world to rise above." It will do no good for your sons to rise above it if your daughters do not. The nanny state is inimical to the project of rising above nature in both sexes.

One last comment

Well, two. First, what we call the nanny state–the intrusive state that officiously decides how much of our own reason and judgment we get to use–is a construct of men, is run by men, and has obtained in settled societies throughout much of history. The tendency to seek official capacity over others, and coerce them in small matters, is at least as well developed in men as it is in women.

Second, a political state is a bad thing that we need because we are evil. It is not a standard to aspire to, nor is it a lowest common denominator to live down to. It only becomes either when we, individually, allow it to. I think our Founding Fathers were far clearer on this than we are. The state’s power extends to critically discouraging us by seizing our wealth, but not to preventing us from being strong. Anyone who is waiting for the state to acknowledge his masculine strength would do well to turn off the TV and go be faithful to his wife, strong for his children, respectful to his parents, just with his neighbors, and uncompromising with evil. The state doesn’t acknowledge my strength either–the whole idea of state socialism is predicated on the assumption that I am weak and silly. But that doesn’t make me so.

There isn’t much support in our society for being strong enough to be accountable, and thereby to secure better outcomes in any endeavor. See the Enron fiasco. There is even less support for women than there is for men. Feminism, far from promoting strength in women, is just one long rant against the design of God that penalizes being weak and silly, whether you’re a man or a woman. (So, in fact, are Marxism and modern deconstructionism.) Feminism glorifies weakness and foolishness, which is why so many, many sensible women repudiate it.

There are sensible women out here, and we appreciate you. It’s hard for us to swim against the tide, and men don’t make it easier by assuming away the equal moral capacity we truly do have. We are worth the effort: educate us and expect the best of us; believe in us and acknowledge us when we do it right.

And believe in yourselves, gentlemen. Just Do It. You are here to be strong and to stand up for what is right. No polling result, editorializing, or empty-headed rhetoric can ever change that.

Along with this was the knowledge that you must always have parts on hand in order to keep the manufacturing line going. All sorts of "sciences" were built up around these two notions and they are still followed in many places today. Thousands of people made extremely good livings solely because they understood these two concepts and were able to implement them efficiently.

Then, in the 1980′s, two radical ideas came to us from Japan, Just In Time (JIT) inventory practices and Lean manufacturing. The basic concepts of these two philosophies are that manufacturing companies should have MINIMAL amounts of parts on hand and that deliveries of these parts should be tied to the actual production schedule.

This was BLASPHEMY !!!!!!!!! Any first year college student could explain that you wouldn’t enjoy economies of scale under this method. Unit costs would go up. Production would be spotty due to lack of parts on hand.

Many extremely educated individuals were quick to point out these problems and went to great lengths to explain why JIT and lean Manufacturing JUST COULDN’T WORK.

Now, at this point we could look into the actual details to see why JIT and lean manufacturing actually DO work and why most successful manufacturing companies have switched over, but that will be saved for some other time.

The important thing to realize is that all those really educated people were WRONG in their denunciation of JIT and lean manufacturing. Dead wrong.

Now, how could these educated people have been so far off target you might ask? The answer is simple. They were opinions were based on flawed assumptions that were grounded in the systems that they had spent all of their lives learning about. They were actually focusing on the wrong things when they made all of their calculations.

To illustrate, we will need to look at some specifics (which I said I wouldn’t do). First, cost savings based on economies of scale. True, this lowers unit costs, but it does not take into account such things as storage costs, breakage, obsolescence, or flaws. It also fails to account for the constriction of cash flow or the future value of money (the interest lost by spending money now for something you won’t use for a while instead of investing it.)

When you calculate all of these hidden costs, you will see that you actually LOSE money by buying in bulk quantities.

Ok, time to get back to the smart people and to tie this in to the current war.

Yes, there are some extremely smart retired Generals (and active duty also) who are sitting on television explaining to us that we don’t have enough troops in Iraq. What underlying assumptions or ideas bring them to this conclusion?

For many years, the assumption was that if you are facing an army of X strength, then you need to field an army of Y strength. There is no other way to do it. This method is tried and true and is the orthodoxy that we followed back during the last Gulf War.

But, a new line of thinking has come to light. Say that the army we will be facing is 400,000 men strong. The actual overall number really isn’t that important. The real question lies in WHERE are these troops positioned? And how quickly will they be able to relocate troops to reinforce other positions?

To illustrate the logic here, I must refer back to an old fable concerning the notion that in unity there is strength. Say that you walk through your yard picking up small sticks. They are each about 1/2 in. in diameter and a foot long. You pick up 20 of them. Now, if you put them into a bundle and then try to break them, what will be the result? The result is that you will expend a lot of energy and then reach for a saw to cut them.

But, what happens if you undo the bundle and break each stick individually? You will end up with a bunch of broken sticks fairly quickly.

Tying this back in. If one goes against a force of 400,000 massed, then of course, you need to bring in enough to face them. However, if those 400,000 are dispersed, then you can come in with a MUCH SMALLER FORCE and still do the job handily.

Couple this with an extremely dominant and accurate implementation of air-power, and the table is set for victory.

The reason that I believe these generals are mistaken is that they are stuck in the orthodox methods that they were schooled in and they fail to understand that the paradigm has changed. Just the same as many out of work inventory managers who failed to understand the benefits and ramifications of JIT and Lean Manufacturing.

Just as a little background let me say I served over 13 years in the Army. I served during the early 70′s while there was still a draft. I served after the draft ended and VOLAR began. So I have seen a good number of changes of how the Military operates.

Yesterday, thank God, a 19 year old young lady, Pfc. Jessica Lynch by name was extracted from capture by Special Forces. Ms. Lynch was a very, very lucky young lady.

She hails from a small town in W. Va., where the local economy is depressed and the unemployment rate is around 15%. But she had a dream to become a teacher and needed money to attend college.

She felt the Army was her best choice to make her dream come true. She certainly received an education, but not the one she was saving or planning for.

I would never try and talk anyone out of serving their Country. I in fact encourage it, but I encourage doing it for the right reasons.

So this is my little bit of advice, for what it’s worth, to the parents of children coming of age or of age and to those who are of age or coming of age that happen to read us here.

Like everything in life there are right and wrong reasons for doing things. Joining the Service for education funds is not necessarily a wrong reason, but my advice is to think really long and hard on which service you pick to do that.

There is much more to being part of the Service than a nine to five job, as we all see these days on our TV’s. The risk aside, it takes something a bit special and more of a reason to join and serve than the money.

Duty to ones Country is something that should ring in at the top of the list for reasons. We all owe a certain amount of service to our Country, in my humble opinion, and a duty to honor those who went before us to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today.

Military Service takes a large toll on everyone that joins, again in my humble opinion, what makes that toll easier to accept is remembering why you are there in the first place.

Faint hearts and half-measures get yourself and/or other people killed.

Before you think about the bennies think about the cost. Talk it over with parents and others who have been there and weigh carefully the balance of Service. Be sure you have more in mind than an escape from something or a profit motive.

Frankly those who don’t have duty, honor and Country on the top of their list of reasons, in my experience, are those who have the hardest time and cause others a lot of grief. This by no means says that there aren’t exceptions, but my years of service does tend to show it as the rule.

God Bless all you youngsters that do sign on, that serve, that protect us, and as now, strive to free people we don’t even know.

In the truest sense of service before self, there you are and we and those who follow us owe you all more than just kind words or a few dollars.

May God protect every one of you.

"His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or heard of, and stating as fact certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers. Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed accounts of German women found chained to machine guns in the Argonne forrest and who could not comprehend, or were barred by their patriotism from interest in, any German machine gunners who were not chained, were not thrilled by his stories."

Jack [Bumby] Hemingway is credited with being the first OSS officer to parachute into occupied France with a fly rod. It was his home country. Jack was captured and presumed dead until he was found in a German POW camp. All Americans know what German POW camps were like. Colonel Hogan cracked wise and made fun of his captors. Klink and Schultz were dolts. The war presumably ended and everybody lived happily ever after including the Nazis.

By now, everybody has some idea of what Vietnam era POWs suffered. 1] Five years in the box with broken legs at the Hanoi Hilton like John McCain. 2] Months in a half-submerged tiger cage with intermittent games of Russian Roulette like the boys in The Deer Hunter.

This week Americans extracted ten Coalition POWs from and around a ‘hospital’ in Iraq. Thankfully, one was alive. This gracious nineteen-year-old endured hard duty.

She was kept alive by her murderous captors as a trophy. Her survival and rescue is a miracle story. God bless her. The events surrounding her capture and captivity, one may assume torture given her condition upon extraction, remain unknown. They may be classified. Left to her own, I suspect Private Lynch would tell a true and unembellished account of her ordeal. This would be welcome to some but would disappoint many. The press, never satisfied with facts, credited her [torture, broken bones, watching mates tortured and killed before her eyes and kryse-nose what else being insufficient] with taking multiple Kalashinkov rounds [there would be no other kind] and being stabbed in close-quarters-battle before submitting to capture. Oh, and only after she exhausted her ammunition slaying Death-Squadders wholesale, much in the manner of Ralphie Parker dispatching Black Bart and his gang from his kitchen window by shooting them all in the rumps with his Red Ryder Daisy BB gun [with a compass in the stock] until they all lay in his back yard with Xs where their eyes would be. Many back here in CONUS are already awarding her Hero status inluding a Silver Star. Blogger LT Smash envisions a MOH.

Why not? It would be a gas for many to see it, if only to see Shrub salute her. Don’t get me wrong. She certainly deserves much. I will be interested to see what she accepts.

In late Summer 1997, my buddy Brian enhanced his employment worth by 80% and took a job up in Concord, NH. From his office window he can see a Revolutionary War cemetery. His old office was vacant. It was rumored that an old codger from Orlando was coming down to take his accounts and work out his time until retirement. When the old codger arrived, his named turned out to be John and he reminded me of nobody as much as my Maternal Grandfather [30 years before]. John is a wizard stock-picker. I would join him for lunch in the company lounge each day. John worked to keep his hand in and to fill up the days. One day at lunch he gave me a typical inegmatic tip.

"Inflation," he said.

"How so?" I asked.

"Paper and Oil. Both up."

"Stock price? Or paper and oil themselves?"

"Paper and Oil prices themselves."

Before an hour had passed, Bloomberg announced inflationary trends on the crawl.

Turns out John is a Veteran. Korea. He told me a lot about it. Unremembered are the Korean War Vets and the story of their POWs is shameful. Now. Some of we GIGOers may rent, or even own, a copy of The Manchurian Candidate. This does not help. The very real truth is that returned and returning Korean POWs found life complicated by the usual problems of re-adjustment. [Rent and watch the WWII era "The Best Years of Our Lives."] Korean War POWs were shunned, unemployable and viewed through the Cold War prizm of suspicion. Each was presumed to be a Brainwashed sleeper Communist who could not be trusted with letter-openers or decks of cards. [Not to mention the company till.] Each was presumed to be walking around awaiting a subliminal key to trigger a post-hypnotic suggestion which would cause them to subvert and quite possibly kill and maim. See the "I Spy" series episode "Wherever I Hang Myself is Home" which [incidentally?] features the great actor Henry Silva again as the Bad Guy.

What a Country!

Happy we are that PFC Lynch is alive and in the USA. I will sit on my hands and see how this shakes out. I hope that her simple modesty sustains her and she is not ruined by events to come, especially as she has survived so much already.

Now I will be the first to agree that the United States is not a perfect country, nor is anything in life always fair. However, some of the bases of these accusations of unfairness are more than technically inaccurate — they are absurd.

Having read the original article by M. Warren, and all of the responses made, there is one paragraph in particular that caught my attention: "We can dismiss the first, as the US is anything but honourable and fair. Were they honourable and fair, they wouldn’t have left the Iraqis to be slaughtered after the previous Gulf War and they’d be fighting using the weaponry as the Iraqi military (as that would be an "honourable and fair" way of doing battle – technological superiority is anything but fair)."

Mr. Warren makes a good point about the Iraqis after the Gulf War. We made the mistake of allowing Saddam to retain helicopter overflights in the no-fly zones, and he used them to devastate uprisings in the Basra, Mosul, and Kirkuk regions. It is the second part of this paragraph that leaves little to be desired.

Under the thesis proposed by M. Warren, we made an ethical and moral mistake when we failed to apply to Russia for old T-55 and T-62 battle tanks before going to war with Iraq. In place of precision guided munitions, it was our moral obligation to have launched Scud missiles and Chinese Seersucker missiles into downtown Baghdad, causing countless more civilian casualties than were inflicted in either Gulf war. In the name of fairness, instead of our M1A1 battle tanks and M2/M3 armored vehicles, we should have had taxicab drivers and pregnant women blowing themselves up at Iraqi checkpoints. In lieu of our ‘Thunder Run’ drive into downtown Baghdad, we should have loaded vans with women and children, and sent them flying at full speed into units of the Special Republican Guard.

Finally, in place of our helicopters and anti-tank missiles, it was our ethical duty to have loaded pickup trucks, school buses, and sport utility vehicles with explosives and suicide drivers, and sent them charging into the sides of Iraqi T-55 and T-62 tanks.

Mr. Warren’s thesis becomes even worse as applied to Al Qa’ida:

Instead of attacking Al Qa’ida with precision missiles, special forces, the 10th Mountain Division, and the United States Marines, we should have hijacked a civilian airliners with box-cutters, and sent them screaming into downtown Kabul.

We did not do these things for two specific reasons:

1. Such tactics are effective at causing terror, but not winning war. By bombing Baghdad with Scuds, for instance, we might have caused a lot of damage, but this would not have brought about a quick and desirable end to the war. The resulting damage to lives and material would have been much higher under the terms of your proposed thesis, and I very much doubt anyone seriously considers that this would been ‘fair’.
2. We are not our enemies. We do not, for example send pregnant women and children to blow themselves in the name of Allah. We, as Americans value life, and we treasure and defend those that bring new life into this world. When waging a war against an evil and oppressive dictatorship, we go to lengths to avoid civilian casualties that no one else in the world is even capable of, and we accomplish this by use of our superior technology. Superior technology, incidentally, that Mr. Warren denounces…

It occurs to me that in his article, Mr. Warren confuses two separate and distinct issues:

1. The issue of the fairness and/or justness of the war itself;
2. The issue of whether or not we wage that war in a just and fair manner.

Without addressing at this time the issue of the over justness of the cause of Operation Iraqi Freedom, most people would agree:

• war is waged ‘fairly’ when the Geneva Conventions are upheld in the practice of war; and
• a war of ‘fair conduct’ is waged when everything possible is done do avoid the instance of collateral damage to the lives and property of non-combatants.

In Operation Iraq Freedom, the United States and its partners did these things. We captured thousands of Iraqi prisoners, and to each of them, we provided food, water, sanitation, and medical attention. With respect to collateral damage, it happened, as it always happens in war. However, the historical record will reflect that our armed forces went to lengths never before seen in warfare to avoid minimize such instances.

The important thing to observe here, is that the definition of a fair conduct in war, is precisely the opposite of what Mr. Warren proposes. His argument would be the substance of high comedy, were it not tragically pathetic.

Note to Gray 6, on the topic of Iraqi Debt:

It seems to me, sir, that for anyone to hold the new Iraqi government accountable for the debts of a brutal dictator, is legally similar to attempting to hold the government of the United States of America accountable for the debts of the Confederate States after the Civil War. It didn’t fly then, and I would hope that it doesn’t fly now.

"On a nearly party-line vote, the House passed a budget that includes $1.4 trillion in tax cuts, $726 billion of which are protected under Congress’s "reconciliation" process. To make a long story short, the protected tax cuts will in principle be easier to pass because Democrats will not be able to filibuster them in the Senate.

The GOP budget also includes $265 billion in cuts for veterans’ programs, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and a slew of other matters"

Now I haven’t seen the bill, but I am almost willing to lay money on the fact that there was not a single CUT in the budget package.

I’ll bet that in fact spending was increased. It simply wasn’t increased by 10 or 15% so to liberal socialist like Dionne, the social spending received a "cut".

He claims that the GOP attempted to slide this through under the fog of war. I saw it reported elsewhere, so it wasn’t too much a slide and even if it was, it’s better than the out right lie that Dionne puts in his Article.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot.

"Kerry said that, after talking to foreign diplomats and world leaders recently, he had concluded that "it will take a new president" to repair the damage Bush has done because other leaders are not "going to trust this president, no matter what."

"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States," Kerry said"

I notice that Kerry declines to name these "foreign diplomats". I want to know just who these Countries are, if they actually do have this trust problem.

It’s almost certain that if this conversation took place it was with the Coalition of the Unwilling, i.e. France, Germany…etc. If it is the case that the weasels are the ones with the complaint, then Kerry is doing nothing more than telling us what we already know and could care less about. BTW Mr. Kerry, if you’d been paying attention for the last few years they don’t the US no matter who is in charge. Actually it’s more a case of envy than it is a matter of trust.

But to call the Administration a regime, and use it in the same sentence as Saddam’s regime, is about as uncalled for and low down as one can get.

Kerry may have once wore the uniform, but he’s certainly forgotten why he did so.

Sounds Fishy to Me.

I saw a good piece last weekend on how the Bottlenose dolphins are helping to clear mines so humanitarian aid can reach those in Iraq that need it. These dolphins can dive and return at depths that would give humans the bends and they are better at finding the mines than our equipment is. So far dolphins have found 22 mines. They drop markers near the mines so humans can either blow them or disarm them. Sounds like a great deal and cooperation between trainer and dolphin.

The first thing I told my better half was "Watch, bet PETA is complaining about this in a matter of days". I know, easy bet to win. Just like PETA, a no-brainer.

Sure enough, yesterday PETA complained to the Sec. Of Def to stop being cruel to these animals. These people are morons, (and if the membership claims aren’t inflated, I mean all 750,000 members are morons). It signifies to me that 750,000 people need a job, a life or both.

Can you imagine were man would be if these idiots had been around since man began? We’d still be walking around naked, eating nothing but berries, nuts and roots.

It’s enough to make you wish that a MOAD could go off course and land on their headquarters. Idiots, socialist and communist, the world would be a better place with them.

"If we have a look at deontological theory, Locke would say that we’ve already violated our ethical position through killing people without just cause. A "pre-emptive defense" is immoral, as it deprives people of their god-given right to life. If they had actively attacked us first, such an action may be considered moral, depending on the circumstances. However, it cannot be considered moral if they have not attacked first. End of story."

This example is NOT accurate when it is applied to a state or nation. First, innocent people will die in war. That is a given. Under this doctrine then, war would NEVER be permissible. What actually occurs is that the STATE takes actions which will result in it’s citizens being deprived of their God given right to life.

This can be easily demonstrated. Assume for the sake of argument that Iraq DID attack us. Is there any way to be sure that our fighting back will NOT lead to the death of someone who was innocent of the attack? No, of course there isn’t, but the war would still be just.

Now, we have to look at the current situation. The government is tasked with the protection of the people. The act of self defense does NOT require you to be hit first. If someone throws a punch at you, you are well within your rights to counter and hit them first. It is the intent of the attacker that justifies your defensive actions.

In a conventional setting, we would see a country massing it’s troops or firing a missile. At some point along this line, we would determine that their actions are hostile and we would be morally correct to defend ourselves even to the point of launching a preemptive attack to defend ourselves. This is justified both philosophically and by international law.

Now, with the introduction of bio-chemical weapons and the use of terrorists, the paradigm changes subtlety but profoundly. We KNOW that they are going to attack us at some point, we just don’t know where they will attack, or when they will attack, or exactly how they will attack or who will actually do the attacking. What we do know (as best we can) is that Iraq is developing the weapons themselves and they have ties to groups who would use them against us.

As they don’t officially declare war against us or stick to military targets, then it is a justifiable defense to prevent them from being able to attack us. We MUST do this simply because there is NO OTHER WAY to defend against such an attack. If a country masses troops, we can bring up our own forces to deter them.

What deterrence is there against a small group of people smuggling Ricin into New York and releasing it in the subway system? The only way to prevent the attack is to go after those that would enable the action. That would mean you go after the terrorist groups and those countries that support them. And yes, it IS a just war from a philosophical perspective.

We gave Saddam TWELVE years to comply. All he had to do was to demonstrate that he had no WMD’s. The South Africans flew in and tried to show him how to comply. He chose not to. According to Oriental philosophy (not sure which one precisely) taking no action is itself an action. By this, Saddam’s actions predicated our response which was one that we HAD to do in order to protect ourselves.

Wanting to write something for Gigo today, last night I took out the hornbook to see what Prof. Bailey had to say about Casto in his Third Edition (1966). One page. Plenty on the Missile Crisis. Here it is. All of it. Three paragraphs.

"Soviet propagandists had meanwhile been making alarming inroads among our hemispheric neighbors. The Latin Americans were resentful at our lavishing billions of dollars on Europe while doling out only millions to the poor relations to the south. Liberals were outraged by our willingness to support – even decorate – bloody dictators who would insure the scarcity of dollar investments. And the American recession-depression of 1957-1958, combined with the Yankee tariff barriers, further tightened the screws.

"The ill-timed ‘good will’ tour of Vice President Nixon through South America in 1958 reaped a harvest of ill will. Communist agitators and others became increasingly violent. After being stoned, spat upon, and shouted down in Lima (Peru), Nixon narrowly escaped serious physical injury at Caracas (Venezuela). Decent Latin Americans were apologetic, but one of them explained that since the masses could not vent their anger by spitting on the United States, they spat on the Vice President of the United States.

"Most ominous of all was the Communist beachhead in Cuba. The iron-fisted dictator Batista had encouraged huge investments of American capital, and Washington in turn had given him some support. When the black-bearded Dr. Fidel Castro engineered a revolution in early 1959, he denounced the Yankee imperialists and began to expropriate valuable American properties in pursuing a land-distribution program. Washington, finally running out of cheeks to turn, released Cuba from ‘imperialistic slavery’ by cutting off heavy imports of Cuban sugar. Castro retaliated against this ‘imperialistic aggression’ with further wholesale confiscation of Yankee property, and in effect made his left-wing dictatorship an economic and military satellite of Moscow. Further deliberate affronts prompted Washington to break diplomatic relations with Cuba early in 1961."

Wow. So. Let’s see what Prof. Bailey chose to include from contemporary writers:

• (Suez) – Stevenson Blames the Adminstration
• (Little Rock Schools) – Eisenhower Sends Federal Troops
• (Little Rock Schools) – The Arkasas Democrat Protests (1958)
• (Little Rock Schools) – A Negro Newspaper Praises Courage (1958)
• (U-2) – Lodge Defends Overflights (1960)
• (Landrum-Griffin Bill) – Meany Fights ‘Union Busters’ (1959)
• (Kennedy/Pope) – Kennedy Faces His Accusers at Houston (1960)
• (end of Chapter 47)
• (Chapter 48)
• (Medical Care for the Aged) – Kennedy Pleads For Aid (1962)
• (Medicare) – The Medics Oppose Medicare (1962)
• (Medicare) – Medicare Is Temporarily Shelved (1962)
• (The Steel Crunch) – Kennedy Is Outraged (1962)
• (Race Riots) – The Harassment of Meredith (1962)
• (U. of MIssissippi) – Meredith Outlines His Goals (1963)
• (Race) – Murder in Mississippi
• (Missile Crisis) – Kennedy Proclaims a ‘Quarantine’ (1962)
• (Missile Crisis) – Khrushchev Proposes a Swap (1962)
• (Missile Crisis) – Kennedy Advances a Solution (1962)
• (Missile Crisis) – The Russians Save Face
• (end of Chapter 48 – Chapter 49) – Johnson And The Great Society

Wow, again. I seem to remember… I’ll let it go. My Google/Yahoo! search reveals that Prof. Bailey was slouching around Stanford as late as 1997 and his text (Eleventh Edition) is now college textbook – American History being no longer taught in high school.

Perhaps I’ll mosey over to UM library and see what he chose to include about Vietnam or perhaps the tears he wept over the Berlin Wall.

I must tell you that Geoff Pietsch was a straight teacher of American History. He had plenty to say about Vietnam but to know his personal politics, you had to speak to him privately.

He retired in 1999 and lives in Gainseville, Florida not far from where Bruce Fraleigh paints.