Theophrastus Blog

[Colin Glassey] This blog has a New Home

This blog is going to continue at a new web site: www.teleologic.com. I will have the old content there at some point in the future. This blog will cease to be operational in less than a month.

See you there!

[Colin Glassey] North Korea Reconsidered

A typically good essay from Den Beste about what not to do about North Korea. He lays it out: there are no good solutions. We aren't willing to pay the price of fixing North Korea. So, we let the situation stay the way it is.

I agree in that I don't see any viable alternatives at this time. All we have are bad choices.

BTW: This blog is going away. Check out Teleologic.com my new blog home.

[Colin Glassey] What is Fascism?

This is always hard for me, one might think, having read history for 30 years, that I would know what Fascism is. Michael Ledeen of the National Review has a new essay which talks about Defeating Fascism, Again.

Here is an interesting quote from Ledeen:

...one of fascism's most vexing paradoxes [is] that while the political doctrine emphasized individual creativity, the actual practice of fascist regimes imposed a monotonous conformity, enforced in the name of the collective, whether it be nation, race, or people.

I have a hard time seeing the difference in real terms between Fascism and Communism. Yes, their ideas were different and they surely treated private property differently (Fascist said private property was OK, Communists opposed it) but in real terms, how do they differ? Its always about the veneration of one man as the supreme authority on earth, the glorification of the military, and the designation of some group as the hateful other who needs to be eliminated by any means.

One can argue that the U.S.S.R. after Stalin died was still communist but not a dictatorship. The same thing happened after Deng died in China. China is still nominally communist but it is not dictatorship. I don't know how to describe China today, Mr. Ledeen says some are calling China a the world's first mature fascist state.

As to the article, is Khomeini best described as a clerical fascist? Certainly Castro is and Kim Il Sung of North Korea. And Assad of Syria was a fascist, just like Saddam. But Khomeini? A radical Shiite. A religious dictator. But a fascist? I'm having problems seeing fascism in religious terms. Its true Khomeini is something new by Shia standards but he is hardly the first religious dictator.

[Colin Glassey] History May Not Repeat but Criticism of America Does

You will not believe this article, first published in Life Magazine in January, 1946 by the famous novelist John Dos Pasos called Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe. Mr. Dos Pasos makes a critque about our handling of Europe since the end of the war and you litterly can't see the difference between this attack of what is now universally recognized as a huge success and our handling of Iraq. This is NOT a parody.

Here are some priceless quotes:

Have you no statesmen in America?

60 years later, having destroyed Saddam's evil, monsterous, tyranny we see the exact same arguements about how America is doing such a bad job. Really? And I suppose our occupation of Germany in 1945 is now regarded in the same light as the Russian occupation of East Germany?

OK, now for the truth. Germany was litterly bombed into the earth by the time Hitler committed suicide in April of 1945. We took over half of Germany, the British assumed control of about 20% of the country and we had our hands full trying to fix things. Germany was in very bad shape for many years after the war, the ruined buildings had to be cleared away (on the Russian side, some buildings were still in ruins when the Berlin wall fell in 1989!), the roads had to be rebuilt, the factories had to be repaired, the many, many refugees had to be settled and fed. The problems of Iraq don't even compare to the problems we faced in Germany in 1945. Yes Germans went hungry in the years that followed, yes our soldiers looted a fair amount of objects from the Germans, and yes we weren't really ready to rebuild Germany once we took it over. In fact there was real debate about doing ANYTHING to help the Germans after the war. But as we know from history, what we did worked. West Germany became a hugely successful country by any rational standard within 20 years. So all these people who are shouting about how Iraq is a disaster area, they should learn some history. Nation building takes time and money. Time is most important. We can't be expected to fix everything instantly. We live in the real world.

[Colin Glassey] Standing Next to Fat Person is Bad for Your Image

I'm not joking. This from an English study (also from today's CNN):

The volunteers took a quick look at one or the other of the pictures and then were asked their opinion of the man. They rated him from 1 to 5 on 50 negative adjectives -- called the "fat phobia scale" -- that people often use to describe obese people.

The man with the big woman was rated 22 percent more negatively than the same man with the thin companion. When seen with the large woman, he was more likely to be described as miserable, self-indulgent, passive, shapeless, depressed, weak, insignificant and insecure.

"It shows that people project negative attitudes associated with obesity not only on the obese but all those who associate with them," Halford said. The study also found that students who were themselves overweight were more likely than usual to rate the man harshly when pictured with the obese partner.

So, if you want to look good, don't even be SEEN in the company of a fat person. Is this fair? No. Is it instinctive, it sure seems that way.

[Colin Glassey] Fat is Medically Recommended

Most experts are totally baffled by this study (from CNN today):

The study was unique because all the food was prepared at an upscale Italian restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so researchers knew exactly what they ate. Most earlier studies simply sent people home with diet plans to follow as best they could.

Each afternoon, the volunteers picked up that evening's dinner, a bedtime snack and the next day's breakfast and lunch. Instead of lots of red meat and saturated fat, which many find disturbing about low-carb diets, these people ate mostly fish, chicken, salads, vegetables and unsaturated oils.

"This is not what people think of when they think about an Atkins diet," Greene said. Nevertheless, the Atkins organization agreed to pay for the research, though it had no input into the study's design, conduct or analysis.

Everyone's food looked similar but was cooked to different recipes. The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat. The rest got 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 30 percent fat.

In the end, everyone lost weight. Those on the lower-cal, low-carb regimen took off 23 pounds, while people who got the same calories on the lowfat approach lost 17 pounds. The big surprise, though, was that volunteers getting the extra 300 calories a day of low-carb food lost 20 pounds.

"It's very intriguing, but it raises more questions than it answers," said Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania. "There is lots of data to suggest this shouldn't be true."

Greene said she can only guess why the people getting the extra calories did so well. Maybe they burned up more calories digesting their food.

Dr. Samuel Klein of Washington University, the obesity organization's president, called the results "hard to believe" and said perhaps the people eating more calories also got more exercise or they were less apt to cheat because they were less hungry.

Any questions? Lots. Does the Atkin's diet work? Based on this really, really good study, yes it does. Wow.

[Colin Glassey] Sex is medically recommended

This article from Forbes.com is just filled with various studies which all suggest sex is not just good fun but good for you. Who would have guessed?

I can't resist linking to this post by Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries. Its all about various attitudes towards dating Hong Kong (and other Asian) women. The comments section was pretty humorous.

I do have an opinion on this subject. The following is a vast over-simplification. European-American women in my limited experience were somewhat off-putting due to their lack of ability to explain what they wanted out of a relationship. My wife did not have this trait. I knew she wanted a family, a loyal husband, and honesty in her life within a week of meeting her. My job was to convince her that I was the best man with the best family for her. I thought we were perfect for each other, both middle children, both loners with a love of reading. I've known my wife for more than 20 years now (I met her on the Berkeley Campus in September, 1983) and I was right.

[Colin Glassey] Val Dorta on Who the Enemy Really Is

Val Dorta has a very insightful essay on who our enemy really is. Val says our enemy is not terrorism (a means of conflict), or terrorists (those who use a means of conflict) but rather Islamic Fundementalism. Until we clearly identify our enemy we will not be able to create a rational, coherent military or political response.

Val's article is very long and he quote Clauswitz, accurately. I'm still amazed at the degree to which Clauswitz is still the ultimate authority on the nature of war. Anyways, I recommend Val's essay.

[Colin Glassey] Saddam DID have Weapons of Mass Destruction

This is from Andrew Sullivan's blog

The administration claimed that Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had hidden materials from the United Nations, was hiding a continued program for weapons of mass destruction, and that we should act before the threat was imminent. The argument was that it was impossible to restrain Saddam Hussein unless he were removed from power and disarmed. The war was legally based on the premise that Saddam had clearly violated U.N. resolutions, was in open breach of such resolutions and was continuing to conceal his programs with the intent of restarting them in earnest once sanctions were lifted. Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. This war wasn't just moral; it wasn't just prudent; it was justified on the very terms the administration laid out. And we don't know the half of it yet. Absolutely right. The interum report proves it. Sullivan has a lot more on his site right now.

[Colin Glassey] Steven Den Beste on the Tragedy of the Commons

Here is another brilliant essay by Den Beste on the Tragedy of the Commons. Really nice read, lots of good examples. I already knew them but it was still fun to read.

[Colin Glassey] An Idea of Mine Becomes Real

I just found a web site that tries to create a database of the world's population. It can be found at One Great Family.com. Back in 1997 when I was working at Broderbund on the Family Tree Maker product I had this same idea, one giant hypertext database for all human family data. I tried to convince the vice presidents of this idea but they were not willing to move in that direction. Since I knew what the ideal solution to the problem of vast isolated geneological work looked like, it was hard to keep working on the inferior PC-based product.

So I quit.

But I am very pleased to see that a former Novell engineer had the same idea and actually implemented it. Every geneological software product is now obsolete. Welcome to the 21st century!

[Colin Glassey] The French Finally Discover Their Game is Over

Best sellers in France this month plainly say that the French efforts over the last year to stab the U.S. in the back and to try and bend the E.U. to their own needs have essentially failed. Boo hoo.

For its intellectuals, France falters
by John Vinocur - Thursday, October 2, 2003 (International Herald Tribune)

PARIS A growing sense of France's decline as a force in Europe has developed here. The idea's novelty is not the issue itself. Rather it is that for the first time in a half century that the notion of a rapid descent in France's influence is receiving wide acknowledgment within the French establishment. At its most hurtful and remarkable, and yet perhaps its most honest, there is the start of acceptance by segments of the French intellectual community that French leadership, as it is constituted now, is not something Europe wants - or France merits.

Several current books, three on the bestseller lists, have focused discussion on the country's incapacities, rigidities and its role, they say, in the context of the Iraq war, in dividing the Western community and fracturing notions of Europe's potential unity. The books, with titles that translate to phrases like "France in Free Fall" or "French Arrogance," are merciless in their accusations of the fantasy-driven ineffectualness of French foreign policy and the extent of the country's economic breakdown. Or they more specifically target what one of books, "Le Pouvoir du Monde," by Bernard Poulet, regards as the implosion of the newspaper Le Monde, mirror of the French establishment, from one-time symbol of rectitude to self-appointed "universal mentor and Great Inquisitor"; or what another, essentially a short essay, called "Au Nom de l'Autre" by Alain Finkielkraut, contends is the rise in France of a new kind of anti-Semitism in proportions greater than anywhere else in Europe.

Together, they project the image of a decadent France, adrift from its brilliant past, incapable of inspiring allegiance or emulation and without a constructive, humanist plan for the future. Of all the books, the current No. 2 on the bestseller list of L'Express, "La France Qui Tombe," by Nicolas Baverez, has been the focus of unusual attention.

Baverez, a practicing attorney and economist who has a strong place in the Paris establishment, argues that France's leadership hates change. Rather, it "cultivates the status quo and rigidity" because it is run through the connivance of politicians, civil servants and union officials, bringing together both the left- and right-wing elites. They are described as mainly concerned with preserving the failed statist system that protects their jobs and status.

Although he has little patience with the American role in the world (it is branded unilateral, imperial and unpredictable, yet flexible and open to change) Baverez charges that the failure of French policy on Iraq and Europe - resisting the United States with nothing to offer in exchange, and attempting to force the rest of Europe to follow its lead - "crowns the process of the nation's decline" and leaves France in growing diplomatic isolation everywhere.

Over the past year, said Bavarez, "French diplomacy has undertaken to broaden the fracture within the West, and duplicate American unilateralism on the European scale by its arrogant dressing down of Europe's new democracies. It has sustained a systematically critical attitude that flees concrete propositions in favor of theoretical slogans exalting a multipolar world or multilateralism."

As for Europe, Bavarez maintains that France has been discredited by its reticence to transfer any kind of meaningful sovereignty to the central organization, its resistance to giving up its advantages in the area of agricultural policy and its disregard for the directives and rules of the European Union executive commission.

He does not stop there. Of a united Europe, Bavarez said, France has "ruined what might have remained of a common foreign and security policy, deeply dividing the community and placing France in the minority." His country was at the edge of marginalization in Europe and the world, he claimed, because of its "verbal pretense of having real power" that is "completely cut off from its capacity for influence or action."

In a real sense, none of this is new. But this time, the provenance is a respected establishment figure talking, so to speak, from the belly of the beast. The echo has been striking within in national debate. Over the years, foreign journalists, free of establishment pressures, have made Bavarez's points one by one without denting French public discourse. Talk circulated during the presidential election campaign last year about French decline, coming largely from Jacques Chirac, but it was basically dismissed as political taunts aimed at the Socialist government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Now, in response to the Bavarez book, there is public rage from the Chirac camp, which the Bavarez book charges with having neither the courage nor the competence to confront the basic problems. But the density of Bavarez's factual argumentation, bolstered by the presence of the other books, all treating France's pride-of-rank and French conceits with brutal disrespect, have given the notion of French decline a legitimacy, reality and currency that it lacked before in public debate.

Alain Duhamel, perhaps the most consensual of France's mainstream political commentators, has praised Bavarez for launching "a legitimate debate on a subject that merits one: French decline." He said it touched "a sensitive point in the national subconscious that set off an intellectual hullabaloo." An ardent advocate of limited surrender of French sovereignty so that the EU can become the vector of French worldwide ambitions - he too has written a new book whose title translates to France in Disarray - Duhamel acknowledges that France no longer pulls Europe along behind it, although he insists Europe will not advance without France.

Indeed, Le Monde, which normally makes French ambitions, or distress about their failures, synonymous with Europe's, made some rare admissions this week about the French descent in Europe's eyes. Daniel Vernet, a former senior editor of the newspaper, wrote, "We often irritate our partners because too frequently we have the tendency to want to impose our views, or only to consider as truly European those positions that conform to a French vision, however much in the EU minority it may be." That resulted in a dilemma without an obvious exit, Vernet said. "The European partners don't want to hear about European policy independent from the United States," he wrote. "So, either France acts alone, and, regardless of what's claimed, its influence remains limited. Or it seeks a common denominator with its partners and it has to give up its ambitions."

Even Chirac may have given a sign that he understands the changing vision of France's real possibilities. In two major speeches on world affairs since the end of the summer, he dropped any references to multipolarity, the French notion of a world of competing poles with Europe set up as a rival pole to the United States.

In the sense that they project the picture of a country that has lost its way, the other books complemented the Bavarez thesis and set the tone of discussion. In "Ouest contre Ouest," by Andre Glucksmann, one of the few leading French intellectuals to challenge the country's position on the Iraq war, France is described as a nation, with others in Europe, that fled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States in panic and attempted to set up a sterile biosphere away from the world's realities.

The book, also a bestseller, maintains that this flight from confronting trouble carried with it an attempt to create two opposing notions of the West: a serene Europe, sheltered from terrorist kamikazes, and a warlike, imperialist, autistic United States. Glucksmann wrote that the central question of the future was not hegemony or multipolarity, the key French terms illustrating the Chirac government's seeming obsession about the United States and its desire to counter the Americans, but civilization versus nihilism, and whether the West together could make a fight to protect civilization.

Glucksmann believes that France's leadership has wanted to bring Russia into its project to counter the United States, with France promising in the bargain a return of Russia's lost rank and prestige. "What does France gain?" he asked. "The possibility to continue its siesta. It would be up to Russia to counterbalance America, and keep the Islamist and Eastern hordes away. It would be the United States' job to chase down all the worldwide risks that we want to avoid. Paris, in all this, gives itself the role of directing the world by proxy. Once the Euro-Asiatic bloc is cemented through the inspiration of the Elysée Palace, Washington, put in its just place and counterbalanced, will conform."

These messages converge with that of "L'Arrogance Française," by Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, whose chapter and section headings - How France Lost Europe or Narcissistic Blindness - well sum up a book that holds that French foreign and European policy is guided by "obsessive concern with its standing, and terror in the face of its decline."

France's essential arrogance, the authors suggest, is in continuing to act as if the world community and its European partners do not comprehend that for the French leadership, the "EU serves as the means for France to recover its influence and to reconquer its lost power."

In this light, although the writers of "L'Arrogance Française" do not say so specifically, it is possible to see French policy in relationship to Iraq as a temporary instrumentalization of Germany in an effort to recapture European primacy - an attempt understood and foiled by the vast number of its NATO and EU partners.

Months later, the fact is, after Sweden's rejection of the euro (in part because of France's refusal to conform to the economic performance standards it set up itself for the currency's credibility), and the likely splintering of the EU into groups of several speeds without any semblance of a unified foreign or defense policy, France has come up empty.

The sum of the messages of the books, in French to the French, is that this vision of the country's current circumstances is not a French-bashing invention from afar, but a home truth. For Bavarez, France is threatened with becoming a museum diplomatically and a transit center economically. To do anything about it, it must revive itself internally first, getting away from what he calls its "social statist model." To advance, it must end the dominant role of a "public sector placed outside of any constraint requiring productivity or competitiveness." The reform of the rest of French policy, based on genuine integration into Europe, should follow, he argues.

He recommends what he calls shock therapy, a forced march toward modernity that involves the risk of a clash among French interest groups and an end to the "sinister continuity" that unites the presidencies of François Mitterrand and Chirac in a kind of angry immobility. But for Bavarez, and most of the other writers now gaining the nation's attention, the present reality is harsh for France.

"Overtaken by the democratic vitality and technological advance of the United State," Bavarez concludes, "downgraded industrially and challenged commercially by China and Asia, the decline of France is accelerating at the same rhythm as the vast changes in the world."

People here in the U.S. have been saying this for more than a year. That France was trying to play with the major powers in the world "on the cheap". I'm glad the total failure of their efforts has come to haunt them so soon. Maybe there is hope for actual change in France. Simply reading these books isn't going to be enough. The people of France actually have to DO something about their government. I'm not holding my breath about that happening.

[Colin Glassey] The Real Nature of Suicide Bombers

This interview was published on the Discover Magazine web site (October, 2003). Interesting read. Certainly fits with the profiles of the terrorists we have gathered so far.

The Surprises of Suicide Terrorism - It's not a new phenomenon, and natural selection may play a role in producing it - Interviewed by Josie Glausiusz

Scott Atran fell in love with anthropology in 1970 when he went to work with Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and found himself surrounded by a collection of thousands of skulls. He has spent the intervening years studying human cultures all over the world, dwelling among the secretive Druze sect in Israel, documenting conservation customs among the Maya of Guatemala, and analyzing the evolution of religion everywhere, a topic he explores in his book In Gods We Trust (Oxford University Press, 2002). He is based both at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and at the University of Michigan. His recent work has focused on suicide terrorism. He has marshaled evidence that indicates suicide bombers are not poor and crazed as depicted in the press but well-educated and often economically stable individuals with no significant psychological pathology.

Q:You recently chose to write about the genesis of suicide terrorism in the journal Science. Why should suicide terrorism be the object of a scientific investigation?

A: Within a few days of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I started listening to the stuff that was in the media and from the administration--for example, President Bush's speech on September 11th and the next he gave on September 20th before Congress. I thought, "What utter nonsense"--this idea that these people were crazed or they're doing it out of despair or hopelessness. The whole history of these kinds of acts goes against this. I decided to write an article and get it into the scientific press, because governments, I believe, would take up what their scientists tell them, since there is a huge respect for science.

Q: Why do you regard the popular stereotype of the suicide terrorist as nonsense?

A: The CIA released a report in 2001 on the psychology and sociology of terrorism, and they basically said these people are perfectly sane. If you look at the history of these kinds of extreme acts, they're pretty much directed by middle-class or higher-middle-class intellectuals. They always have been. Never have they been directed by wacky, crazed, homicidal nuts. The Japanese kamikaze of World War II were, by the way, extremely intelligent guys. If you read their diaries, they were German romantics, reading Goethe and Schiller, and quite conscious of the efforts of the state to manipulate them.

Q: What sort of scientific research indicates that suicide bombers are sane?

A: Some of the earlier research was by Ariel Merari, who is a psychologist at Tel Aviv University and also a terrorism expert. He interviewed suicide bombers--survivors who were wounded and didn't die or whose bombs didn't go off--as well as their families or recruiters. Like most psychologists in the 1980s, he thought that this was individual pathology, like the idea that racists come from fatherless families or have a history of family trouble. He made a 180-degree turn and found out that no, the bombers span the normal distribution and were slightly above it in terms of education and in income.

Nasra Hassan, who is a Pakistani relief worker working in Gaza for a number of years, interviewed about 250 family members, recruiters, and survivors, completely independently. She was not aware of Merari's work, and she found exactly the same thing. Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, has done long-term studies with Hezbollah and Hamas. His research shows that not only are suicide terrorists significantly more educated than their peers, they are also significantly better off. According to Krueger, although one-third of Palestinians live in poverty, only 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers do; 57 percent of bombers have education beyond high school versus 15 percent of the population of comparable age.

The Defense Intelligence Agency also gave me profiles of all these people they were interrogating at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. They divide them into Yemenis and Saudis. The Yemenis are sort of the foot soldiers. And they found that the Saudis, their leaders especially, are from high-status families. A surprising number have graduate degrees. And they are willing to give up everything. They give up well-paying jobs, they give up their families, whom they really adore, to sacrifice themselves because they really believe that it's the only way they're going to change the world.

Q: So what's the root cause of suicide terrorism?

A: As a tactical weapon, it emerges when an ideologically devoted people find that they cannot possibly obtain their ends in a sort of fair fight, and when they know they're in a very weak position, and they have to use these kinds of extreme methods.

Q: What's the typical profile of a suicide terrorist?

A: Generally, it's not someone who is off the wall. They can't be effective killers. Usually it is someone who is smart, who shows a willingness to give up something, who is patient, who is quiet. Competent people who don't draw attention to themselves, and who are perfectly willing and able to meld into society.

Q: How on earth does anyone sane work up the gumption to blow himself up, together with what is often hundreds of bystanders?

A: Exactly the same way that you get soldiers on the front line of an army to sacrifice themselves for their buddies. What these cells do is very similar to what our military, or any modern military, does. They form small groups of intimately involved "brothers" who literally sacrifice themselves for one another, the way a mother would do for her child. They do it by manipulating universal heartfelt human sentiments that I think are probably innate and part of biological evolution. In fact, I think most culture is a manipulation of innate desires. It's the same way that our fast-food industry manipulates our desires for sugars and fats, or the way the pornography industry manipulates people to get all hot about pixels on a screen or on wood pulp.

Q: Wood pulp?

A: Yeah, paper in a pornography journal. I mean, it has no adaptive value. In the case of something like Al Qaeda, you've got these people in groups of three to eight people, for 18 months, isolated from their family, getting this intense and deep ego-stroking propaganda. You do that to anyone, and you'll get him to do what you want. There are all these studies that psychologists have done of torturers on all sides of the political divide. A very famous one is on ordinary Greeks who became torturers during the military junta of 1967 to 1974. They found they were perfectly ordinary--in fact, above-average intelligence. They'd get them to be torturers by indoctrinating them, by showing them how necessary they were for their societies, and getting these people to believe it.

Q: You seem to be suggesting that natural selection may be playing a role in generating the feelings that enable people to become suicide terrorists, but blowing yourself up is hardly a good strategy for propelling your genes into the next generation.

A: Natural selection gives us all sorts of dispositions and desires that were adaptive in ancestral environments. Now, our cultural milieu picks certain of these adaptations or their by-products and is able to trigger them to produce behaviors that have nothing to do with what they originally evolved for. Kin altruism (the theory that individuals are willing to sacrifice their lives to save closely related kin) evolved through natural selection. If you listen to most political and religious discourse in societies, it's always done for a brotherhood--brothers and sisters. So you create a fictive family. How else are you going to get people to die for one another when they're non-kin-related? You've got to trick them into believing they are kin-related somehow.

Q: Why does it matter whether we understand the making of a suicide terrorist?

A: Huge amounts of money were being offered, at least on the horizon, for science-related defense research, most of it going to things like bioterrorism prevention. There were all these harebrained schemes--they're still around--to have a Radio Free Arabia. They're going to bombard these people with information about how good our society is, our goals, and that's supposed to win the war on terrorism. If you look at the February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, you'll see they plan to introduce programs against poverty and illiteracy. These ideas seem to me just completely wrong. First, the people who carry out terrorist acts are already educated. Second, they're not poor, so reducing poverty isn't going to do a thing.

Q: So what's your strategy for combating suicide terrorism?

A: I think it has to be a multilayered strategy. You've got to be able to--and this I'm all for--go after the guys who operate the cells. Take them out. Get rid of them. Jail them or kill them, because they are not willing to compromise. What do you do with somebody who says, "All Americans and Jews have got to die"? The point of talking to such people has passed. Whatever the grievances were that caused such people to have such ideas, if they show that they're willing to implement them, then you've just got to make a decision whether you want to see this guy survive or you and your people survive.

Q: What else?

A: Another thing is, yes, protect some of the vulnerable targets, but I think that actually is less important than trying to stop this phenomenon from becoming adopted, like a sort of virus, by these populations. How do you prevent the ideology of suicide terrorism from attaching itself to the populations that support it? How do you get the people themselves to stop harboring the suicide terrorists? You've got to talk with them. You've got to address their grievances. Not the grievances of Al Qaeda, but the grievances of these people. Then there's got to be support for moderate groups. Alan Krueger in his last study looked at poverty and civil liberties as two factors in suicide terrorism. He found that poverty is not an appreciable selection factor but that the lack of civil liberties is a predictor of where you'll find suicide terrorism. When you don't give these people any political space to express themselves, they become radicalized.

Q: In your book In Gods We Trust, you call religion an evolutionary riddle. Why?

A: Think about it. All religions require costly sacrifices that have no material rewards. Look at the Egyptian pyramids. Millions of man-hours. For what? To house dead bones? Or the Cambodian pyramids. Or the Mayan pyramids. Or cathedrals. Or just going to church every Sunday and gesticulating. Or saying a Latin or Hebrew prayer, mumbling what are to many people incoherent words. Stopping whatever you're doing to bow and scrape. Then think about the cognitive aspects of it. For example, to take alive for dead and weak for strong. I mean, what creature could possibly survive if it did these kinds of things systematically?

Look at the things that religion is said to do. It is said to relieve people's anxieties, but it's also said to increase their anxieties so that elites can use them for political purposes. It's supposed to be liberating. It's supposed to encourage creativity. It's supposed to stop creativity. It's supposed to explain events that can't be explained. It's supposed to prevent people from explaining them. You can find functional explanations, and their contraries, and they're all true.

Q: Why then has religion survived in so many cultures?

A: Because humans are faced with problems they can't solve. Think about death. Because we have these cognitive abilities to travel in time and to track memory, we are automatically aware of death everywhere. That is a cognitive problem. Death is something that our organism tells us to avoid. So now we seek some kind of a long-term solution. And there is none. Lucretius and Epicurus thought they could solve this through reason. They said, "Look, what does it matter? We weren't alive for infinite generations before we were born. It doesn't bother us. Why should we be worried about the infinite generations that will be after us when we're gone?" Well, nobody bought that. The reason that line of reasoning didn't work is because once you're alive, you've got something that you're going to lose.

Another problem is deception. Look at society. If you've got rocks and stones and pieces of glass and metal before you, and you say, "Oh, that doesn't exist," or "That's not really a piece of metal," or "That's not really a tree," someone will come along and say, "Look, you're crazy; I can touch it; there's a piece of metal there; I can show you it's a piece of metal." For commonsense physical events, we have ways of verifying what's real or not. For moral judgments, we have nothing. If someone says, "Oh, he should be a beggar and he should be a king," what is there in the world that's going to convince me this is true? There is nothing. If there is nothing, how are people ever going to get on with one another? Especially non-kin. How are they ever going to build societies, and how are they ever going to trust one another so they won't defect? One way that humans seem to have come up with is to invent this minimally counterintuitive world developed by these deities, who are like big brothers who watch over and make sure that there will be no defectors.

Q: Do you think science will ever replace religion?

A: Never. Because it doesn't solve any of the problems that religion solves, like death or deception. There is no society that survives more than a generation or two that isn't religiously based--even the Soviet Union, where half the people were religious. Thomas Jefferson's unitarian God fell by the wayside. The French Revolution's neutral deity also fell by the wayside. People want a personal God, for obvious reasons, to solve personal problems.

Q: What have you learned about conservation from studying the Maya people of the Petén?

A: We took three groups that live in the same place--native lowland Maya, the Itza'; highland Maya, the Q'eqchi' that are forced down into the lowlands; and ladino immigrants that come up from all over Guatemala. We found that the group that actually preserves the forest, the Itza', is the one that has no institutions to speak of. The people don't monitor anything. They fight with one another constantly. They're extremely individualistic. And yet they protect the forest. The people with the strongest communal institutions, the Q'eqchi', who monitor one another in the forest and punish violators, they're destroying it at five times the rate of the others. They see the forest as a commodity, and they think it's open-ended. They don't think it needs protection. They don't see it as a threatened system. For them, it's relatively open jungle.

Q: What do the Itza' do differently?

A: They don't treat the forest as a commodity. They treat it as a relational item, like a friend or an enemy. There is no objective utility metric, like money value, that can be attached to it. We also found that the men who go out into the forest have this notion of what the spirits are doing, and they are scared to death of violating the spirit preference. They're real believers. Then we found that what the spirits prefer--not what the people think is important but what they think the spirits think is important--actually predicts species distributions.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Those trees most valued by the spirits--the Brosimum alicastrum, or "breadnut," and the chicazapote, the tree that yields the resin that is the natural base for chewing gum--are actually those trees with the widest distribution, which produce fruit all year round and which have the largest number of ecological relations with other animals. We're able to predict, just on the basis of the Itza' spirit preferences, all sorts of ecological things happening on the ground. What I think is going on is that these spirits represent human preferences built up over generations.

[Colin Glassey] Max Boot on the New American Way of War

Great essay by Max Boot which does an early analysis on the U.S. Iraq War of 2003. Mr. Boot wrote a book last year about the U.S. Military, he knows what he is talking about. Bottom line: the U.S. military really has figured out a new way to fight. The impossible is now possible for us. But there are still ways we can improve and we need a larger army. Also, both the Air Force and the Navy need to rethink what they are spending their money on. Supporting the Army should be far more important to them.

Phil Carter of the blog Intel Dump has a nice set of essays. I liked his summary of problems for Donald Rumsfeld.

Germany backs down, looks like they might be allies after all. I missed this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Prime Minister Schroder. He says:

In addition to its current military involvement in Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere, Germany is willing to provide humanitarian aid, to assist in the civilian and economic reconstruction of Iraq and to train Iraqi security forces.

Sounds like a back-down to me. Looks like we were right to treat Germany differently from France.

[Colin Glassey] Gregg Easterbrokes New Blog

Gregg (creator of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, now on ESPN's web site) has a new blog at: Gregg's Unnamed Blog. I like Mr. Easterbrook a great deal.

This is my favorite quote about 9/11, its by Mr. Easterbrook, from September 25, 2001:

Our side will win. The margin of victory will be large.

That sums it up for me. FDNY and the NYPolice are heroes to me. They proved it.

[Colin Glassey] John F. Burns on Media Corruption in Iraq Before the War

You can not find a more devestating portrait of media gone bad than this commentary by John F. Burns (of the New York Times) in Editor and Publisher.com

Burns pulls few punches accusing many, if not all, of his fellow journalists of lying about Saddam's Iraq so as to stay in Baghdad to "get the story". The reporters in Baghdad lied about how bad things were in Iraq. Quote:

We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. Saddam's Iraq was such a place, and nearly all the world's media, from CNN to Al Jazeria lied about how bad it was. It is clear to me that "big media" is not trustworthy. The quest for ratings has corrupted the profession of journalism. They will say anything just to stay in a "hot spot" and get "flashy video".

[Colin Glassey] Rebuilding Germany in 1945 was no picnic

People have very little historical memory. The facts are: we bombed most large German cities back into the stone age. Millions of civilians were killed or injured, the basic infrastructure of transportation, power plants, even water distribution, destroyed for huge cities like Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin. Germans were litterally starving to death in the months following Hitler's death.

This is what Doug Sanders writes in the Globe and Mail:

Washington seemed unwilling to pay the enormous bill for reconstruction, and the president didn't appear to have any kind of workable plan to manage the transition to democracy. European allies, distrustful of the arrogant American outlook, were wary of co-operating. To many, it looked like the victory had been betrayed, since the American values of democracy, equality and well-being seemed unlikely ever to emerge.

That's how it looked in Germany in November, 1945. In our memories, history tends to become compressed: There was V-E Day, then the American soldiers were cheered by the people of Berlin, then the president announced that hundreds of millions would be spent on the Marshall Plan, then Germany became the prosperous and democratic place it is today.

That is not how things unfolded. The United States has always been good at removing dictators from power, but the tedious, dirty work we now call "nation building" has never come naturally, or quickly. The enormous success of European and Japanese reconstruction did not even begin to emerge until long years of pain and disorder had passed.

Six months after V-E Day, The New York Times reported that Germany was awash in "unrest and lawlessness." More than a million "displaced persons" roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities. The heavy-handed presence of American soldiers was deeply resented by many Germans, especially young men, who had come to believe that the G.I.s were stealing their women.

... The Marshall Plan, in which the United States spent the equivalent of 100 billion of today's dollars rebuilding Europe, was not passed until late in 1947, more than two years after the war's end, and did not deliver a penny to Germany until 1949. It faced harsh political opposition from Republicans in the United States. The other great instrument of postwar reconstruction, the World Bank, did not begin handing out money until 1947 either.

It took two years for the United States to begin taking its nation-building responsibilities seriously. Those two years hadn't passed well. By 1947, Germans were dying of starvation. In some cities, the ration had dropped to 750 calories. And the aid may never have arrived had it not been for the threat of communism and the promise of profits: The Marshall Plan was sold to Americans as a trade and marketing opportunity for U.S. business, and as a firewall against the Soviets. But whatever the motives, it was the cornerstone of today's Europe, a stunning success

Yes, it would be nice if Iraq was a happy peacefull place immediately after the war ended. Yes our army could be bigger and we could have another division in Iraq doing useful things like securing the border. But the truth is, rebuilding a country is hard work. We are better at it than just about any other country in history, but we still aren't good at it compared to the ideal. Sorry, but we live in the real world.

[Colin Glasey] What the BBC Did Wrong

The following is a brilliant editorial by a writer for the Daily Telegraph (based in England). It refers to the recent war between the BBC and the Government of Tony Blair. I personally think the BBC is completely in the wrong, and for the reasons expressed in this editorial.

The BBC is playing at power games - By Janet Daley - (Filed: 03/09/2003)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/09/03/do0302.xml

There can be little question now that David Kelly was sacrificed - in the vulgar phrase, "hung out to dry" - by all the principal players in this great public drama.

The question that remains is, at what point did the chain of events become inexorable? When did this appalling process take on the inevitability that made it the stuff of high tragedy, rather than simply misadventure?

First, Andrew Gilligan created a story out of their private conversation that Dr Kelly found (as he told everyone, with stunning consistency, from the foreign affairs select committee to his own daughter) virtually unrecognisable.

Gilligan then effectively unmasked him as the source of Susan Watts's account and therefore of his (Gilligan's) own, in an email to David Chidgey, a Liberal Democrat committee member, whose party was sympathetic to the anti-war position.

Then Dr Kelly's employers at the MoD participated in his exposure, despite having given him explicit assurances that they would not do so.

Was this under pressure from Downing Street that, apparently ruthlessly, demanded that his identity be made public? Almost undoubtedly. But given what had transpired, how could the Prime Minister's office have done otherwise?

The charge that the Gilligan story had made against Tony Blair and later, by name, Alastair Campbell, was the most serious allegation that it is possible to make against a government. What was being claimed was that the country had been sent to war, and British lives had been lost, on the basis of a lie.

This is practically tantamount to accusing the Prime Minister of murder. It is far more grave than any accusation of financial corruption or even criminal misdemeanour in office.

To make such an assertion was effectively to say to every British family that had lost a serving soldier in Iraq: your son, or brother, or husband, died on false premises, to serve the vanity of a deceitful political leader.

It is absolutely inconceivable that this could have been allowed to stand as a story having the imprimatur of the BBC. It is vital to note this point.

Had Gilligan simply published his piece in the Mail on Sunday, the whole farago could have been dismissed as tabloid sensationalism. But because it was broadcast on the BBC and never retracted, it flew round the world, and became the substance for a million queries of the Government's veracity in the run-up to war.

It is appalling, but almost irresistible, to conclude that, if Gilligan had not broadcast his original report and if its implications had not then been picked up and spun out by the media - especially the BBC itself, which led its news coverage for weeks on "the suspicious case of the WMD that haven't been found" - Dr Kelly might still be alive.

But most crucially: if the BBC had agreed promptly to some sort of correction or retraction of its earliest version of the Gilligan story, the entire train of events would have been stopped in its tracks.

There is some degree of mystery as to why the BBC did not do this. A newspaper caught in a similar position - that is, with a story it cannot stand up - would certainly be advised by its lawyers to print a correction and an apology.

I have seen no reference to any advice the BBC's lawyers may have given, in any of the material released thus far to the Hutton Inquiry. Instead we see the minutes of meetings with the BBC Board of Governors, in which doubts about the soundness of the Gilligan story are buried under an avalanche of rather puerile defiance of "government pressure".

The chairman of the governors, Gavyn Davies, seems to have interpreted the furious demands by Mr Campbell on behalf of the Government for an explicit correction as illicit political pressure that threatened to compromise the BBC's independence.

In an email to the members of the board, he writes: "I remain firmly of the view that, in a big picture sense, it is absolutely critical for the BBC to emerge from this row without being seen to buckle in the face of government pressure."

This was in spite of the fact that the Today programme had itself decided to change the substance of that early contentious report. Indeed, the question of the truth of the Gilligan story seems to fall right out of the picture in this round of mud-wrestling with the Government.

One BBC governor, Fabian Monds, rises to Mr Davies's call to arms with the extraordinary statement that any doubts about the Gilligan account should be deliberately overlooked: "There does appear to be some uncertainty of the claim by Andrew Gillgan's source. But this is less important than responding vigorously to the extravagant accusations of lying from Alastair Campbell and others." (My italics.)

The truth of the story is "less important" than that the BBC should be seen to stand up to government pressure? What kind of journalistic standards are these?

And government pressure to do what? Simply to admit what you have already done - which is to say, change the story as it went out on later broadcast reports. And, given the gravity of the charge, were Mr Campbell's accusations against the BBC "extravagant"?

Did the governors - while they played out their power game with Downing Street - have any conception of the gravity of what the corporation had done?

It would seem not. Mr Davies, in his testimony to Hutton, wondered why Mr Campbell had not simply taken his dissatisfaction to the BBC complaints unit. (Presumably he should have rung the duty officer at White City and filed his complaint in the usual way.)

The arrogance - not to say, the amateurishness - of it all is simply breathtaking.

The key to me in this issue is that the BBC, when it was attacked for pushing a story which accused the Blair government of lying to the people, choose to circle the wagons and defend vigorously, rather than try to figure out if the story was true! The BBC no longer considers itself to be a news organization, instead it seems to be a quasi-government, more concerned with standing up to the British government than saying what is true and what is false. The directors of the BBC themselves were not sure if the story was true but rather than admit some doubt, they felt it was necessary to deny the government had any reason to be upset. I personally don't trust the BBC any longer.

[Colin Glassey] Why the Iraqi Army Failed in 2003

This is an article from the L.A. Times which basically confirms what was predicted before the war: chaos, confusion, and a widespread disinterest in dieing for Saddam.

By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer (8/11/2003) - BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein and his son Qusai crippled the Iraqi military through a multitude of erratic orders and strategic miscalculations, while its fighting units barely communicated with one another and were paralyzed from lack of direction, according to detailed interviews with more than a dozen former Iraqi commanders and servicemen. These woes — compounded by incompetence, poor preparation, craven leadership and wholesale desertions of thousands of soldiers unwilling to die for Saddam Hussein — contributed to the Iraqi military's quick and stunning collapse against invading U.S. forces in early April, the former fighters said.

Typical of the erratic orders were those imposed by Qusai upon a Republican Guard unit outside Baghdad. As American forces approached the city in late March, the unit received a new order every morning to reposition its tanks. Each order contradicted the one before, infuriating local commanders, Col. Raaed Faik recalled. But the orders had to be obeyed. They arrived by courier on slips of paper signed by Qusai, Saddam's younger son and commander of the Republican Guard.

Every time the tanks were moved from their bunkers, Faik said, a few more were exposed and destroyed by coalition air power. Meanwhile, he said, another commander was ordered to disable all three dozen of his tanks for fear they would be captured and used by Kurdish militias hundreds of miles north. "These were the orders of an imbecile. Qusai was like a teenager playing a video war game," Faik, 33, said in the cool reception room of his Baghdad home, gesturing to his teenage son banging away on a computer combat game.

In the end, Saddam and Qusai were reduced to issuing commands from a convoy of civilian vehicles that retreated as U.S. tanks rolled into the capital, the former fighters said. Iraqi troops were largely without radios and maps. Field commanders dropped their weapons and fled. And soldiers waited in bunkers for orders that never arrived — in many cases, unaware even that Baghdad had been invaded, the fighters said.

Before the invasion, Saddam Hussein's forces had been expected to put up a fierce defense of Baghdad, and U.S. officials warned that the Iraqis might even use chemical or biological weapons. Instead, the former Iraqi fighters said, orders to use chemical or biological weapons were never given because no such weapons existed.

Iraqi forces, who did not anticipate Americans would use tanks in urban combat inside the capital city, were largely unprepared for the ensuing armored onslaught. An eventual guerrilla war — now being waged by remnants of Iraqi forces and other Arab fighters — wasn't planned for because Hussein didn't think it would be necessary, the former Iraqi servicemen said. And tactics that could have slowed U.S. forces, such as the mining of roads leading into Baghdad, were not employed because Hussein was confident his forces would repel the Americans. "We should have mined the roads and bridges. We should have planned a guerrilla war," said retired Gen. Ahmed Rahal, 51. "We were crippled by a lack of imagination."

The command structure was confused from the start. Hussein was wary of concentrating power in one military force in case it might launch a coup, so he had created a number of jealous rival fighting groups — including the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and the Fedayeen Saddam militia — that never spoke to one another.

While the elite units were well armed and well paid, many regular army infantrymen were poorly paid and given just a single magazine of ammunition, former soldiers said. Regular army commanders schemed to undermine elite units, hoarding information and avoiding confrontations with U.S. forces. And many units were segregated by tribe or ethnic group, inhibiting coordination. "We were like 10 different armies fighting their own private wars," said Nabil Qaisy, 31, a Baath Party militiaman who said he spent the battle cowering in a north Baghdad bunker, unaware that combat was raging in the city center a few miles away.

The military's limited communications — only special units received reliable phones or radios — fell apart early on, the soldiers said. Cut off and confused, commanders resorted to sending out soldiers in vehicles to scavenge scraps of information — usually from other hopelessly uninformed units. One officer's car was crushed by an American tank on such a mission, one commander said.

The entire military was plunged into chaos. Just before the U.S. assault, soldiers said, some officers ordered military vehicles spray-painted in civilian colors, intending to drive them home for personal use after deserting. A Republican Guard unit fleeing the city descended on a regular army camp and stole its vehicles, they said. And a Republican Guard unit armed only with automatic rifles was sent to confront U.S. tanks and "was absolutely slaughtered," Col. Faik said.

Desertions soared. As U.S. forces sped toward the capital, soldiers requested — and were granted — leaves to visit their families. Units listed on paper as full strength actually were less than half that, soldiers said, and many ceased to exist overnight. "I woke up on the morning of April 5 and an entire battalion was gone. They had become vapors," said Maj. Jaffer Sadiq, 38, a special forces commander who said desertions depleted his company from 131 men to 10 between April 2 and April 5.

After being ordered April 2 to rush to Baghdad from the northern city of Kirkuk, Sadiq said, he was told that he would be joining 4,000 Republican Guard troops defending a site in central Baghdad. But when he arrived, he counted fewer than 1,000, he said, and most had deserted by the time the first U.S. tanks cut through southwest Baghdad three days later.

In several cases, soldiers said, they were ordered to desert. On April 4, they said, a Republican Guard tank brigade commander was told to abandon his tanks south of Baghdad and have his men change into civilian clothes. Minibuses took them to the northern city of Mosul, their home base, where the soldiers simply quit and went home.

The only forces that stood and fought, soldiers said, were Fedayeen Saddam militiamen and 4,000 to 5,000 guerrillas recruited from other Arab countries, who were armed chiefly with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Some of these fighters detained — and threatened to shoot — deserting Republican Guards, soldiers said.

These fighters, along with former Baath Party militiamen, are behind most of the ongoing attacks against U.S. forces, according to the former soldiers. They said the current guerrilla campaign was not planned but emerged as these fighters regrouped after Baghdad fell. At times in early April, these elite units went to great lengths to project a facade of invincibility — even as they were going down in defeat.

After U.S. tanks smashed through southwest Baghdad on April 5, killing nearly 1,000 Iraqi soldiers according to U.S. commanders, Fedayeen militiamen claimed victory and celebrated downtown. They displayed charred corpses they claimed were bodies of U.S. soldiers, Faik said.

"I looked closer and saw they were Republican Guards, still in their uniforms with insignia," Faik said. "I spent 12 years in the Republican Guards. I know the difference between a Republican Guard soldier and an American soldier. I was appalled."

When he returned to headquarters an hour northeast of the capital and told fellow commanders that American tanks had penetrated Baghdad, Faik said, they called him a liar. Rumors swept through Iraqi units that the Fedayeen were hoisting American corpses on bayonets and that Qusai had been presented with severed heads of U.S. soldiers, commanders said.

But the truth was becoming inescapable. By April 7, according to two former soldiers, Saddam and Qusai Hussein had been reduced to commanding the military from a roving convoy of vehicles trying to stay one step ahead of American tanks pouring into the city center that morning.

A former Republican Guard general and division commander said he met with Saddam and Qusai at the 14th of July Bridge in central Baghdad early on April 7. The two leaders were in separate gold, four-wheel-drive Toyotas, said the general, who answered questions relayed by an aide on the condition that he not be identified, saying he feared arrest by U.S. occupation forces.

At that moment, the general said, the two leaders realized that most Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard soldiers assigned to defend the main palace complex had deserted.

Told that U.S. tanks were advancing on the strategic Jumhuriya Bridge, the general said, Saddam Hussein ordered 12 pickup trucks of Fedayeen to the bridge to hold off the column. "Imagine — a few pickup trucks against two battalions" of American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the general said. Later that morning, the general said, Hussein changed cars, getting into an orange-and-white Nissan taxicab.

Harith Ahmed Uraibi, 24, an archivist at the Republican presidential palace who was also a Baath Party militiaman, said he fled on foot when U.S. tanks overran the palace early April 7. He stumbled upon Hussein's convoy in front of a falafel restaurant near Jumhuriya Bridge. He said the president shouted at him: "What's going on at the palaces?" "I told him, 'Mr. President, everything is finished,' " Uraibi said. "He didn't say anything. His convoy just took off across the bridge, away from the palaces and all the tanks." Most top officers knew nothing of Hussein's whereabouts, commanders said. And those who remained at their posts rarely received orders of any kind.

"The only order I got was to dismantle my airplanes — the most idiotic order I ever received," said Brig. Gen. Baha Ali Nasr, 42, an air force commander who said Iraq's entire fleet of MIG-23s, MIG-25s and Mirage fighters was ordered taken apart and buried. Dirt and grime in the pits and berms where the planes were buried ensured that they would never be airworthy again, he said.

The few commanders who realized how desperate the situation had become were afraid to relay honest battlefield assessments up the chain of command. "It was well known that President Hussein did not care to receive bad news," one former general said.

Others were deluded by the regime's own propaganda. Many commanders said they actually believed Hussein's hapless minister of information, Mohammed Said Sahaf, who brazenly denied that U.S. forces had entered Baghdad on April 7 and described the slaughter of Americans.

Talal Ahmed Doori, 32, a burly Baath Party militia commander and former bodyguard for Hussein's older son, Uday, recalled turning a corner in his car early April 7 and coming face to face with an American M1A1 Abrams tank posted next to a tunnel in central Baghdad. "I was absolutely astonished," Doori recalled. "I had no idea there were American tanks anywhere near the city." When he slammed on his brakes, a vehicle behind him smashed into his car, Doori said. Both he and the other driver sped away as the tank swung its main gun toward them.

After the information minister claimed that Iraqi forces had retaken the Baghdad airport from U.S. troops, two former commanders said, Republican Guard Gen. Mohammed Daash was dispatched to check out a rumor that four or five American tanks had survived the Iraqi counterattack. Daash returned to his headquarters in a panic. "Four or five tanks!" the commanders quoted Daash as telling his fellow generals. "Are you out of your minds? The whole damn American Army is at the airport!"

Nasr, the air force general, said that many commanders refused to believe the situation was dire until April 7, two days before Baghdad fell. When a terrified courier arrived at his Baghdad headquarters that day and described U.S. tanks overrunning Saddam Hussein's palace complex, he said, "the looks on the faces of the officers were like each one had just discovered his parents had died."

Because each rival fighting force responded only to orders from the regime leadership, commanders were paralyzed with indecision. "Initiative was discouraged," the former Republican Guard general said. "No one dared make a decision." In retrospect, commanders said, it is easy to see how overconfidence and erroneous assumptions about the U.S. battle plan left the Iraqis unprepared for the assault on the capital.

Hussein, convinced that Republican Guard units posted south of Baghdad would repel American tanks, had decided not to mine highways or blow up bridges leading into the capital, commanders said. The infrastructure was left intact so that it could be used by Iraqi forces mounting counterattacks. But entire Republican Guard divisions were ravaged, first by coalition warplanes and then by tanks approaching the capital.

Hussein also was counting on high American casualties and captured U.S. soldiers to turn the American public against the war, commanders said. Video crews and interpreters were standing by to interview any captured Americans, said retired Gen. Juwad Dayni.

Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons. Iraqi military planners assumed that Americans would dare not send tanks into an urban area and did not anticipate a direct tank assault on the capital, retired Gen. Rahal said.

Several commanders said that American casualties inflicted by Somali fighters in 1993 convinced the Iraqi leadership that U.S. forces had no stomach for a prolonged urban fight — apparently overlooking the fact that the U.S. had no armor in Somalia. The Iraqi leadership prepared instead for an airborne assault on selected regime targets, building a network of defensive bunkers and trenches. "We weren't prepared, but it didn't matter because the tank assault was so fast and sudden," said Gen. Omar Abdul Karim, 50, a regular army commander. "The Americans were able to divide and isolate our forces. Nobody had any idea what was going on until it was too late."

In fact, Karim said, he did not realize the regime had collapsed until looters attempted to break into his headquarters April 9. The former Republican Guard general who spoke on condition of anonymity was told by Qusai Hussein at the 14th of July Bridge on April 7 to retreat with other senior commanders to a secret, prearranged site in Baghdad to await instructions. Some generals waited there until the 9th, he said, then decided to go home. The general said that he and a few others remained. At 4 a.m. April 10, the day after Baghdad fell, Qusai arrived. He told them to await orders for a counterattack, then sped away in a convoy. "I never heard from Qusai again," the general said.

Today, the former soldiers say they are humiliated and ashamed. They spend their days brooding at home, adrift and unemployed. Those with the rank of colonel and above are ineligible to join the new Iraqi army now being trained by the U.S. Col. Faik, wearing jeans and sandals, said he passes most days playing with his two sons and daughter in the capital's middle-class Yarmouk district. He said he is proud of his 12-year Republican Guard career but feels betrayed by his leaders. "Professional soldiers can't fight without orders and inspiration from their leaders," he said. "But we had clowns for leaders. This is our tragedy."

Faik said soldiers used to hear Hussein say in speeches: "Saddam is Iraq and Iraq is Saddam." So in the end, he said, "when the time came to fight for this guy who sends us unprepared to fight a superior American military, no one was willing to die for Saddam." Karim, the regular army commander, fears the 30 years that he served have been negated by the way the military capitulated. Yet still on display in his comfortable home in central Baghdad is a framed photo showing him as a young lieutenant receiving an award from then-Vice President Saddam Hussein.

When the end came April 9, Karim recalled, he simply got into his car and drove home, still in his uniform and still carrying his rifle. Along the way, soldiers who had stripped off their uniforms shouted at him: "Take off your uniform! It's over!" He refused, he said, clinging to his professional pride. Now, sitting on a sofa, an air conditioner rattling behind him, Karim said he cannot stop thinking about how the army he loved had been so humiliated. "It happened so fast," he said, his head in his hands. "I think I'm still in a state of shock."

Sorry Mr. Karim, Iraq's army was not a professional army. The top leadership of the army, including the people quoted in this article were cowards, and yes-men. Proof of that is self-evident: they were top officers and they are alive today. A real professional army with real military leaders would have been a threat to Saddam's stupid and evil leadership.

[Colin Glassey] The Buggy Professor

A good blog with some interesting, if rather long-winded, essays on various topics of economics, politics, and philosophy. Thanks to Porphyrogenitus for the link.

[Colin Glassey] Schwarzenegger for Govenor?

Well, up until yesterday I was going to vote against the recall of Govenor Davis but with Mr. Schwarzenegger in the race, I've changed my mind. Try this message (as construed by blogger Omphalos: Gray sold California to the special interests and I'm here to take it back. I don't care what you do in your private life, and I don't want to impose my values on you. I want a state government that works and doesn't break the backs of the average taxpaying citizen, and a society that offers opportunity and hope as it did to me as a humble but legal immigrant.

Schwarzenegger has been one of my favorite actors ever since he made Conan. He is, by any reasonable standards, a political moderate. Lately that seems to have been a sure ticket to failure in the Primaries (look at Riordan's campaign from last year). So this recall campaign is the moderate republican's big chance to get into the office. I voted against Bill Simon last year and would do so again. Richard Riordan, former mayor of Los Angeles, was a good cantidate but at age 73, he is getting a bit old to take over California in this time of trouble.

BTW: Dan Weintraub (columnist for the Sacramento Bee) thinks Schwarzenegger will win the race

[Colin Glassey] The Visible Earth

I found a great site run by NASA called The Visible Earth. I was looking to find out the context behind the news that a new dam is going to be created to save the northern part of the Aral Sea. This image is from October of 2002 and it gives a very good idea of how much of the sea is gone. The Aral Sea is now predicted to disappear completely by 2020. With the possible exception of the northern part which might be saved by this dam.

Back in the 1960s, the plan was to reverse the course of some of the great Siberian rivers so that they would flow south into the Aral Sea, instead of north into the Artic ocean. That plan was ended by Gorbachov in the mid-80s. Too bad for Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, they were using up all the river water which used to flow into the Aral Sea to grow intensive-water-using crops like cotton. It was obvious in 1985 that this wasteful water usage had to stop if the Aral Sea was to be saved. But they didn't. So here we are, 20 years later and a terrible ecological disaster is happening and no one is doing anything to stop it. I guess the Uzbeks don't really care, after all, the Aral Sea isn't in their country. This excuse doesn't hold for the Kazakhs, I guess you have to blame a failed system of government which lets this happen.

[Colin Glassey] The Chinese Movie Hero

This film seems to me to have been made in part because of the success of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. While it shares many good qualities with the famous Ang Wang film, "Hero" is not successful as a coherent film.

Hero has many beautiful scenes, it seems to have been created by a painter as different scenes are dominated by one color then another. However, to my eye it seemed far too formal, to arty. For me, Ang Wang's fight scene staged in the bamboo forest works, while Hero's fight scene at a lake just left me unmoved.

While parts of the film are enjoyable to watch, the film has many flaws. Among these are (spoilers ahead):

1) Jet Li's character is uninteresting. He is called "Nameless" and he has no past, no loves, no hates. There is almost nothing to explain him or his behavior in the film. Jet Li is a an actor with almost no emotional range but I thought he did well in this film, he just had almost nothing to work with.

2) The army of the soon-to-be Emperor of China attacks a town by shooting arrows at it. This is really, really, silly. You use arrows to harass and kill enemy soldiers, you don't "shell" a town with arrows because it won't do any harm and arrows are expensive and time-consuming to make. You don't waste them by making pin-cushions of wooden buildings.

3) We see Flying Snow stab and seriously wound her (former?) lover Broken Sword three times. Once as Jet Li tells it, once as the soon-to-be Emperor imagines it, and once again as Jet Li tells it (supposedly the truth this time). This is too many times. It didn't mean much the first time, it meant less the second time and the third time the director showed the event I couldn't have cared less.

4) The most interesting character turns out to be Broken Sword who actually has a change of heart as a result of fighting the future Emperor and chooses not to kill him when he had the chance. This pivotal event takes place in the past and we only learn of it near the end of the film. Broken Sword's change of heart is really the emotional heart of the film (since Tony Leung really CAN act). By the end of the film I wished the film was about Broken Sword, not Mr. Nameless.

5) Mr. Nameless's story turns out to be a tissue of lies, his skills are largely unknown, all his fights are "fake" and by the end of the film I had no interest in his fate. What a terrible choice it was to make Mr. Nameless the main character of the film.

6) The first emperor was, by all accounts, a ruthless monster. It is no accident that the ruling power in China (nominally the Communist Party) supported this film. Just about the only tangible benefit they brought to China back in 1948 was unification. Millions dead, decades of economic failure but at least they united the country. In the film this human monster is presented as a misunderstood noble idealist. Dream on...

Now I understand why this film was never released in theaters in the U.S.

[Colin Glassey] Freeman Dyson on the Global Biosphere

Mr. Dyson, a man who gets my vote for best mind in America (now that Feynman is dead), has another brilliant book review in the New York Review of Books. This time he is reviewing The Earth's Biosphere by Vaclav Smil. Dyson points out very carefully how much we don't know about the earth's biosphere.

Take a look at this paragraph on so-called global warming:

The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger. Also, local changes in rainfall, whether they are increases or decreases, are usually more important than changes in temperature. It is better to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" to describe the physical effects of carbon dioxide. Freeman doesn't point out the fact that Alaska has seen a warming trend that extends back to 1970. Nor does he mention that 65 million years ago Alaska was forested and ice-free, just like Antartica. In these two paragraphs, Dyson contrasts the two views on man's relation to the biosphere:

Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits

I couldn't have said it better. I'm a humanist. And I'm willing to express the heretical view that global warming is a good thing.

[Colin Glassey] Good set of Posts from the Belmont Club

The Belmont Club is a new blog to me but they have a good set of posts lately. Here is one I agree with and it echoes a post by Donald Sensing.

The bottom line is: to have a successful political effort you need to defeat or otherwise control the radicals who will not settle for anything less than total success. I'm reminded of the fact that the Irish government in 1921 had to fight a civil war to defeat and kill the radicals that wanted nothing less than the total control over all of Ireland.

The Palestinians need to do the same thing, NOW. They need to fight a civil war and destroy the radicals who are following a plan which is going to fail. If they don't, then ALL the Palestinians are in danger of being forced out of the West Bank and into Jordan.