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May 31, 2004
Remembering the sacrifice
For those inclined to decorate their Volvos with "War Is Never the Answer" bumperstickers, a reminder: it is because of men far more worthy than you, buried in cemeteries from Normandy to Arlington, that you enjoy the right to be pathetic, ignorant cowards.
I salute the fallen, and the men who answered the call, including my father, 
Petty Officer Second Class Gerald Lief, who served at sea in the Korean War; his father,
Cpl. Harry Wiener Lief, Troop E, 3rd Cavalry, USA, who went to France and fought in the War to End All Wars; and my uncle,
Sgt. Bernard Solomon, USMC, who fought at the Frozen Chosin and never forgot his pals who didn't come home. Semper Fi, Mac!
Posted by Mike Lief at 01:51 PM | TrackBack
May 24, 2004
Jews should be afraid
American Jews -- especially the subset known as Democratus Urbanus Modernus Judaismus -- are fond of proclaiming that fears of anti-semitism are unfounded, revealing more of a ghetto-mentality than reflecting any real threat to the Jewish community.
It's like it's 1938 all over again, as my forebearers insist that they are Germans first; there's no need to flee to America or Palestine.
Then you read about the level of discourse -- I mean vitriol -- present on the campus of tax-payer supported U.C. Berkeley. (Hat tip to Prof. Eugene Volokh)
The East Bay Express has a long story on the subject; here are two particularly striking excerpts:
On the day after September 11, Micki Weinberg walked to the UC Berkeley campus still in shock. At the entrance to campus, facing Telegraph Avenue, huge sheets of blank paper were spread out as an impromptu memorial on which students, faculty, and other passersby were invited to write comments. Glad to have found such a forum, Weinberg scanned the inscriptions. Then he saw one, large and clear, that stopped him dead in his tracks:
"It's the Jews, stupid."
A milder but more instructive glimpse of the hatreds that inflame Cal was on display February 10, the day Daniel Pipes lectured at UC Berkeley's Pimentel Hall. Pipes runs a project called Campus Watch, which through its Web site, CampusWatch.org, monitors Middle Eastern Studies departments at American schools, including Cal. The site keeps dossiers on instructors it believes are biased against the United States, and Pipes writes a steady stream of articles with intentionally provocative headlines such as "When Osama Bin Laden Becomes PC" and "The Muslims Are Coming! The Muslims Are Coming!"
Berkeley Hillel, the Jewish student organization that sponsored the event, had printed fliers calling Pipes "a member of the presidentially appointed US Institute for Peace and a prize-winning columnist." His detractors called him something else entirely. "Racist Daniel Pipes to speak at UC Berkeley," ran an announcement at Indybay.org the day of the lecture, urging readers to protest this visit by a "notable bigot and neo-McCarthyist."
Outside the hall where [Daniel] Pipes was to speak, you could cut the tension with a knife. Protesters had assembled early: young women wearing the hijab; young men clad in yarmulkes or Muslim skullcaps; and, of course, plenty of Cal sweatshirts. One protester hoisted a sign reading, "Israel: Born of British colonialism. Created through Zionist terrorism. Supported by Western imperialism. Sustained by Israeli militarism." Another man circulated silently, bearing a small sign that read, "Another Jew opposed to Daniel Pipes." Female voices ululated.
One flier making the rounds declared, "The neoconservatives and the Jewish Lobby ... planned the Iraq wars. ... Most of the US media ... are Jewish owned." Meanwhile, the largest sign said, "I Want You! to DIE for Israel. Israel sings: 'Onward christian soldiers.'" On the reverse side, in an attempted riff on "Pax Americana," the sign said, "I WANT YOU TO KILL FOR THE AMERA-ISRAELA POX!" Large rakish swastikas replaced the letter "s" in "Israel" on both sides of the sign. The sign-bearer's Uncle Sam hat was emblazoned with another swastika.
"So what exactly does Daniel Pipes represent to you?" one young protester demanded of a middle-aged man whose point of view she surmised by his refusal to accept a pamphlet. "Are you proud of his racism?"
Two male students, like college guys anywhere, eyed a group of young women whose hair was hidden under the hijab, their blue-jeaned legs and excited voices shivery in the cold. "I wonder how all these women who are supporting the Arabs would feel about being clitorecticized," one of the guys murmured to his friend. By that, he meant the practice of clitoridectomy, which is followed in some traditional Islamic cultures.
Sophomore Sandra Tahani was one of the women wearing headscarves. "Daniel Pipes is trying to incite pure hatred and racism," she said with fire in her eyes. "He wants to shut down the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. I'm with Students for Justice in Palestine. I'm with the Muslim Students Association, too. I'm with everyone that stands for justice. I'm an American." She said her parents are Muslim, although her mother converted from Judaism. "Coming from a Jewish heritage -- she has relatives that died in the Holocaust -- my mom says the Holocaust is being used to justify the Israeli occupation of Palestine." Other young women in headscarves clustered around her, their eyes blazing too.
A hush fell over the crowd as four women protesters in black clothing slowly descended into the plaza. Balanced on the shoulders of each was an armchair-sized papier-mâché head complete with hijab and frozen expression of grief. The women's eyes peered through the gaping papier-mâché mouths. Forming a row, they faced the crowd with gloved hands upraised as if in supplication. A pink-faced man moved somberly from one to the next, symbolically draping limp rag dummies in the shape of dead babies over the waiting arms of each.
"This is worse than the Warsaw ghetto," muttered a Jewish man in the queue.
As campus police assembled at the entrance to the hall and prepared to open its doors, a kaffiyeh-clad protester hoisted a placard that read: "What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct." The quote was attributed to Mahatma "Ghandi" in 1938, albeit a decade before there was an Israel. A silver-haired man, older than most in the crowd, burst out of the line to confront him.
"Do you know what it's like to be on a bus, and to see that bus blow up and see heads roll down the street?" the older man shouted, arms wild at his sides. "I've seen it -- in Israel."
The sign-bearer stood firm. "Well, they should have been killed," he yelled, his voice rising. "They should have been killed! They should have been killed because it wasn't their land! They should have been killed and it should have been more."
"You don't know history," the older man yelled. "You don't know anything."
The protester gave as good as he got: "You can leave. Get your ass out of here and back to Israel." Then, equating Israelis with criminals who have broken into someone else's house, he said homeowners in such an instance have the right to kill. "If you broke into someone's house and stole something . . . you'd deserve to die! The Jews broke into Palestine and stole the land -- so they deserve to die. . . . What's your address? Why won't you tell me? Are you afraid? I'll come break into your house and we'll see if you try to kill me. It's natural." . . .
On the day Pipes made his case in person, no purses or backpacks were allowed into the lecture hall for security reasons. Members of the audience were admonished not to shout, heckle, or hold up signs, at the risk of being escorted out of the building. Campus police patted down each person coming through the door.
The auditorium was full, with protesters occupying several rows on the right flank and scattered throughout the hall. The overhead lights bathed a sea of shining hair, flowing scarves, and skullcaps. One man's olive-drab yarmulke had the words "Israeli Army" embroidered on it. Campus police studded the aisles, five down each side. Dark-suited bodyguards framed the podium as Pipes, looking formal and disarmingly slight, entered the room to a storm of boos and applause.
"It's an unfortunate fact of university life that such security is necessary today," Pipes said. Still, after teaching thousands of students at the University of Chicago and Harvard and delivering nearly a thousand lectures at other universities over the last few years, he could not possibly have been surprised by the response his remarks elicited. Indeed, within moments, the first heckler leapt to his feet and was escorted out. Again and again, as Pipes parsed the difference between mainstream Muslims and "militant Islam," the auditorium rang with both wild cheers of approval and cries of outrage.
"The same people who support militant Islam," Pipes ventured in a butter-cookie voice whose softness seemed a calculated counterpoint to its message, "support suicide bombers and Saddam Hussein."
To the accompaniment of cheers and cries of outrage, a red-haired female protester became especially vocal and was escorted out.
"This is an ideology like fascism and like Marxism that seeks to impose views on its subjects," Pipes said, calling it a "totalitarian ideology which we must seek to destroy."
From among the protesters, a voice shouted: "You guys are Nazis!"
"Why was the World Trade Center attacked?" Pipes asked. "What was the reason?"
"Zionism!" someone yelled.
When Pipes proposed that global unrest can be addressed only "when we call it what it is: not a war on terrorism but a war on militant Islam," a chanting chorus erupted: "Ra-cist! Ra-cist!"
"Let him speak!" came a strangled yell. "Freedom of speech!"
"Ra-cist! Ra-cist!"
"It's so satisfying to see one's theoretical points proven so quickly," Pipes said in his best butter-cookie voice.
When he went on to call for Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence, hisses swirled in the hall like steam. "No!" shouted many in the crowd.
"Death to Zionism!" proclaimed a voice.
"I thought this was an institution of higher learning," Pipes said, baiting his hecklers.
"You racist Jew!" cried the protester who had been hoisting the Gandhi sign.
"Ra-cist! Ra-cist!"
Pipes asked what race had to do with anything: "I haven't mentioned race."
He reserved the evening's harshest criticism for "my colleagues in Middle Eastern studies," among whom he decried "a significant element of incompetence. The field is adversarial, intolerant, and my colleagues consistently get the facts wrong." This met with laughter from the crowd, half in gleeful accord and half in derision. By exercising what he called "abusive power over students," Pipes said Middle Eastern studies instructors "too often coerce students into taking a party line, at the same time intimidating and penalizing those who don't."
"End, end the occupation! Free, free Palestine!"
Another sign waved in the air and another protester was escorted out. "Go blow yourself up," someone yelled at the protester's departing figure.
"I don't think my colleagues are doing a good job," Pipes continued. "If I think my colleagues in Middle Eastern studies aren't doing a good job, why don't I have the right to say so? Why do I get called names?"
"Because you're a racist Jew!"
"These scholars know better," Pipes continued, "but they're hiding what they know."
"Racist Jew!"
"My, my," he said, looking up with a wry smile from the microphone. "Don't we have elevated discourse at this university."
After the lecture, attendees filed out of the hall to discover that the protesters had massed so as to allow only a narrow passage between themselves and a retaining wall. In effect, all those leaving the lecture were forced to walk a gauntlet. Some ducked their heads, others set their jaws in anger, squeezing past the dozens of assembled faces chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" as fists pumped the air in unison.
A young woman in a kaffiyeh screamed up at a Jewish student significantly larger than herself. Her lips were wet with fury. "If I don't agree with you, then you call it anti-Semitism!" she shouted, as friends arrived to support her. The young man was surrounded. "You call it anti-Semitismmm!" she raged. "Why can't you tolerate anti-Semitismmm?" . . .
I wonder if this is how it felt in the 1930s, as the world began its slow-motion descent into hell.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:34 AM | TrackBack
May 20, 2004
Psst! Wanna See True Courage?
You've got to read this compelling first-person account of a battle for survival in Iraq, penned by Trooper Jarob Walsh. The following is just a taste; read the whole thing.
Next he started pulling my ankles to get me out of the truck. I kept yelling at him to get down but he wouldn’t listen, so finally I kicked him in the chest with my left foot, and in the face with my right. As I kicked him in the face, he fell backwards. Before he hit the ground, blood splattered all over his face. I thought he had gotten shot, I thought "d*** he’s dead and now I’m alone." But he fell back on his behind and just sat there. I thought, "that’s weird he’s not dead." I was sure he had been shot in the face, but then his eyes got big and he said, “oh my G** you’ve been shot, I’m going to die I’m going to die.” I looked down and didn’t see any bullet holes. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I looked at him and said, "Lay the f*** down and do not get up," just to keep him safe." Then I stood up to get out of the truck. My right foot hurt so bad I thought it was broken. I looked down and there was blood all over my foot. Then I realized the blood on his face was from my foot - when I was kicking him I got shot! I found out later that two of my toes had been shattered. Looking down and seeing the injury, I realized how badly it hurt. But there was so much adrenaline pumping through me that I could still stand. I looked back towards the rear of the truck to see if it was on fire. There was about a six foot hole in the tanker trailer, fuel was spewing out everywhere, and a small fire was building inside the trailer and on the tires.
I turned and looked towards the front of the truck, down the bridge. But before I turned my head all the way toward the front, something hit me in the chest. It hit so hard it felt like Sammy Sosa hitting me with a bat. It knocked me off of my feet, back into the truck. As I laid there, I looked down and saw a round (bullet) buried in the vest on my chest smoking. It smelled awful. I pulled it out of my vest and it burnt the hell out of my hand. I pulled myself back up and got out of the truck. I looked down the bridge in front of my truck and saw two little kids on the bridge, about a hundred to a hundred-fifty meters away. They both had AK-47s; one kid was about ten years old and the other was about seven. The seven-year old was holding his weapon upside down by the magazine, and the ten-year old was firing three rounds at a time at me. His first round hit the driver's side windshield on the truck - right next to my head. I turned around to grab my gun, and when I did, he shot me two more times in the back; the rounds went through me and into the cab of the truck.
Did I mention you should read the whole thing? Lest you think this is yet another urban legend -- you cynical bastards! -- you can also read the write up on the local ABC news affiliate's home page. The last few 'grafs are awesome:
Walsh spent two days in a hospital in Iraq, before he was taken to Germany, where he remained hospitalized for a week. He was then shipped back to Washington, D.C., before returning home to Illinois. He said he will fly back to Washington, D.C., later this month for possible surgery on his foot.
What he wants, though, is to return to his unit, which he estimates will be in Iraq another 10 months.
"I left a lot of friends behind," he said. "I'd like to go back to be with them."
Where do we find these brave men?
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 18, 2004
Quitcherbitchin'!
Dad, I love ya, but . . . .
You and your friends need to take a deep breath, and then shut the hell up about the price of gas.
Adjusted for inflation, gas costs LESS now than during the 60s. Yes, tracking long-term trends, the prices of oil, gas and electricity are falling, not rising.
As a matter if fact, if prices were adjusted for inflation since the 1920s, we’d be paying more than $10 a gallon. Don’t forget, unless we adjust for inflation, everything is more expensive than in days of yore. Did you know that adjusted for inflation, TVs and refrigerators are substantially cheaper than in the 1960s? To discuss the price of anything without adjusting for inflation is a meaningless exercise.
Gasoline prices paid at the pump have been on a steady decline since the 1920s, with the obvious exception of the 1970s, when we faced an OPEC embargo and gasoline lines. In 1920 the real price of gas (excluding taxes) was twice as high as today. Electricity prices were about three-times higher 75 years ago.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the all-time highest price for gas was in March 1981, when prices at the pump shot up to the equivalent of $3, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran War.
Further, as with all manufacturing processes, there are costs associated with making a product.
The reality is that demand for gasoline had increased over the years, even with the increase in average mileage of passenger vehicles, mainly due to an increase in the number of cars on the roads — a function of the increase in population.
So, more drivers, requiring more gas.
Demand goes up, so manufacturers increase production to meet demand, right?
Except that due to a combination of EPA regs and NIMBY-assed kvetchers, the number of new refineries built in the U.S. in the last 20 years is. . . .
Wait for it. . . .
Zero.
We have done everything we can to ensure that demand outpaces supply.
And while we’re talking supply, we’re sitting on top of HUGE oil reserves that Congress refuses to tap.
And to make it even more expensive to make gasoline, we have a patchwork of environmental regulations, requiring different formulas of gas from state to state.
So, the bottom line is that the price of gas is NOT unreasonable, when adjusted for inflation, and we need to build more refineries and drill more oil.
Or, reduce the number of cars on the street (and hence the number of drivers) by building more rapid transit (too expensive to build, and Americans don’t want to ride the bus), or by limiting the number of people driving, by enforcing mandatory family size limits, ala China (yeah, that’ll happen), or by cutting off immigration (yeah, that’ll happen, too!).
Folks, to borrow a phrase from the late, great, Robert Heinlein, TANSTAAFL!
There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 11, 2004
Why we fight
The American media obsession -- mirrored in the hallowed halls of Congress (ack) -- with the actions of a few maroons guarding Arab prisoners grows even more ludicrous with the murder of Nick Berg.
Yeah, making an Arab wear panties on his head is JUST like sawing a man's head off, while taping it for the evening news.
When you consider the latest depravity, carried out to shouts of "Allahu akbar!" coupled with the pictures of Palestinians holding bloody body parts of dead Israeli soldiers, it makes you realize that Americans really may not have the stomach to do what needs to be done.
That would be, kill people and break things. Repeat. Again. And again. Until those who want us dead are either dead or willing to surrendur.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of Nick Berg, Sgt.-Maj. Edron Amar, 20; Sgt. Eitan Newman, 21, Aviad Deri, 21, Kobi Mizrahi, 20, St.-Sgt. Ofer Gerbi, 20, and Sgt. Jacob Marvizi, 26.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:47 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 08, 2004
The Constitution is not a suicide pact
The always interesting Donald Sensing -- retired career army officer, member of the clergy -- has a post about the Iraqi prisoners abused by their U.S. captors. While I agree heartily that the idiots responsible need to be treated harshly, I'm afraid Sensing has gone off the tracks with his categorical denunciation of torture and rejection of its appropriateness in the ticking timebomb scenario.
I posted the following as a comment on his site.
Donald, I'm afraid you've lost me on this one. To dismiss the ticking time bomb scenario so easily is . . . shocking.
Life forces us to make choices. One of them is that some things are worth fighting and dying for. Things like our friends, our families, our nation, liberty and freedom, and defeating despots.
And as a result of there being things worth fighting and dying for, it follows that there are things worth killing for.
Why is it acceptable, moral, ethical and necessary to kill an enemy on the battle field, where he is trying to kill you -- on the micro level -- and trying to kill your nation -- on the macro?
We *are* agreed, aren't we, that such killing is appropriate?
Well then.
If the same man, who could legitimately suffer death at your hands for trying to kill *you* was instead trying to kill not just you, but your platoon, your company, your friends and family, and everyone living within a 2-mile radius from ground zero, how then can you say that it is never, ever, justified to use torture to prevent the bomb from being detonated?
Pierre's point is valid, don't you think? If we had Atta in custody on September 9, and we knew his organization intended to carry out an attack within 48 hours that would kill as many as 100,000 people (assuming the WTC were at capacity), by what calculus do you say that the moral choice is to allow the attack to proceed while Atta remains in a state of physical grace?
If you are not a pacifist, then the question is when are you going to use a level of force appropriate for the threat you are facing?
It doesn't need to be a nuke. What about a man who has buried a child alive? Who sits across the table from you in interrogation room three, smiles, and says, "I'll tell you where she is *after* her air runs out."
What if you learned of a plan to release Sarin and VX gas at a high school graduation, but didn't know at which school? Or what about the recently-foiled plot to detonate multiple bombs at a soccer match in England, in a stadium with 60,000 fans?
The Atlantic Monthly ran an article last fall dealing with this subject. There was an incident involving a bomb planted -- I think in or near a bus station -- set to go off at rush hour in a third-world nation. The police had two hardened terrorists in custody, who refused to talk. The interrogator explained that the station would be filled with civilians, men, women and children, who were innocent. He could understand attacking the government, soldiers, police, but surely they understood that these victims did not deserve to die.
The terrorists were unmoved. The policeman drew his pistol, and told them that he couldn't allow this attack to proceed, and that unless they told him where the bombs were, he was going to kill them.
The terrorists refused to speak, secure in the knowledge that the cop would never fight by their rules.
The policeman raised his weapon and fired, and one terrorist fell over backward, dead. His compatriot, spattered with the blood and brains of his former conspirator, promptly told where the bombs were located, and they were disarmed.
How *awful* that the cop didn't allow the bombs to detonate. A shame that he sacrificed his moral purity, really. Hundreds of dead civilians would be a small price to pay for his being able to say to the families, "But at least we didn't sink to their level."
You say there are no "buts." I've read you long enough to hope that you are being flip.
I'm always stunned when I see stuff like this. Abraham Lincoln said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." Sensing is, in effect, saying, "Yes, it is."
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:37 PM | TrackBack
May 07, 2004
Don't you dare question their patriotism!
I can't tell you how sick I am of people showing by word and deed that they hate hate HATE America, and then hide behind the First Amendment while shrieking that they're being oppressed by the jack-booted thugs of the Amerikkkan facist regime.
Then, of course, they fall back on their weapon of last resort: "Don't you question my patriotism!"
Ack.
From John Kerrey to Jeanine Garafalo, to countless un-named morons on college campuses from sea to shining sea, people are engaged in distorting the meaning of language itself, so that they can say that Americans are war criminals; Bush is worse than Hitler or Saddam; more American troops NEED to die, so we'll flee Iraq faster; and we deserved 9-11.
BUT, don't you question the patriotism of those spewing this venom, 'cause, doncha see, they love this country, man, love what it could be, if only we could rid it of those fascist neocon, Israel-loving, militaristic GOP stooges.
If you haven't seen it yet, let me give you an amazing example of the depths to which these people will sink.
There's a "cartoonist" named Ted Rall. He's syndicated, appears on TV, and is a darling of the left. He was recently moved by the sacrifice, patriotism and courage of Pat Tilman to draw the following cartoon. Go ahead and click on it for a bigger version.
Yeah, I know. It still makes me want to break things, makes me so angry it brings tears to my eyes.
Rall had another one even worse than this, so vile that MSNBC pulled it from their website, sending Rall and his supporters into shrieking paroxysms of moonbat paranoia and "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed"
But Rall is a polymath, able to impugn the honor of American GIs in essays, too. Check out his latest entry at his website:
AN ARMY OF SCUM
Or, We're Looking For a Few Good Homosexual Rapists
NEW YORK--Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS. Like the Germans during World War II, they cordon off and bomb civilian villages to retaliate for guerilla attacks on their convoys. Like the blackshirts who terrorized Europe, America's victims disappear into hellish prisons ruled by sadists and murderers. The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers.
. . .
Abu Ghraib, you can bet your bottom dollar, is merely the tip of the iceberg. Our military is structurally corrupt. Beginning in Afghanistan during the weeks after 9/11, civilian command yielded to the amoral gangster mentality of the arrogant intelligence officers of Army Special Forces and the CIA, who stand accused of massacring thousands of captured Taliban prisoners yet have never faced a real investigation. The new tone of lawlessness comes all the way from the White House, directed by a commander-in-chief who starts illegal wars without justification, strips captured prisoners of their rights under the Geneva Convention and whose smirky fingers-crossed response to the prisoner abuse scandal--"I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated...Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people"--sends a wink and a nudge to our uniformed torturers. Keep it up, boys. Keep those broomsticks busy.
Yeah, humiliating prisoners is EXACTLY the same thing as what the Nazis did.
It's pretty clear that Rall and his ilk want us to lose the fight in Iraq. I daresay they want us to abandon the war on terrorists. They loathe our military, hate religion, spit on patriotism, honor and sacrifice.
But don't you dare question their patriotism.
By the way, are you shocked to learn that Rall is a Kerry supporter?
I didn't think so.