Iranian Speedboats, US Warships, The Straits of Hormuz

The US has just filed an official protest against Iran for the actions of its coastal patrol speedboats, which are alleged to have crossed the bows of warships passing through the Straits of Hormuz, dropping boxes into the water in front of them. Iran has denied the allegations, said the US videos used footage from an earlier incident, and released its own video, the second attached above. An examination of the videos will find that the US version is irrelevant to its claims legal or otherwise, and the Iranian video provides a clear-cut basis for complaint.

When CNN first reported the story, my impression was the White House was caught flat-footed, with no prompt statement, no press conference, no apparent preparation. If the incident had not been genuine, one would expect much quicker reaction times; perhaps Iran used the occasion of Bush's first visit to Israel to do some buzzing of Navy ships. Over the next days, both the Pentagon and Washington got on the story and pushed it into "harassment," a "clash" and a "skirmish." Opportunism and orchestrated outrage begin to seem more likely. From the videos and counter-claims, a careful viewer can't really tell what happened, how non-routine the behaviors were on either side, or how close it came to acts of war.

With a formal protest lodged by the US, the incident will be taken seriously, yet the case against Iran is a loser. In the second video above, the Iranian patrol boat captain hails vessel 73, which replies to his hail and identifies itself as a coalition warship. The Iranian then requests the vessel's course and speed. The warship replies that it is "operating in international waters," and gives the same reply to repeated requests for clarification of course and speed. The warship's reply is false, since the Straits of Hormuz are only 21 miles at their widest, and much narrower for large-ship navigation. Ships can't pass through there without being in territorial waters claimed by either Oman or Iran under the transit passage provisions of UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In the second video, regardless of time authenticity, the US Navy violated the Law of the Sea. Technically, Iran's territorial water limit extends up to twelve miles off shore, and vessels including warships can take "innocent passage" through it, and the Straits of Hormuz. Yet nations have the right to temporarily suspend innocent passage in specific areas of their territorial seas if doing so is deemed essential for the protection of their security. Therefore, if the coalition warship were on Oman's side of the ill-defined territorial border, it should have answered as such, claiming right of passage granted by Oman; if it were in the very well-defined shipping lanes exercising innocent passage on either Omani or Iranian territorial waters, it should have expressed that right (as it did in the first US video). If the ship were on Iran's territorial waters, transit passage law grants the Iranians every right to demand information on course and speed. Additionally, they could also unilaterally deny innocent passage under UNCLOS, and approach and demand to board vessels inside their territory which they deem a threat to their security.

Given past US actions in its waters, and its recent hostile stance, there's abundant basis for Iran to cite the US as a security threat. On 18 April 1988, the U.S. Navy waged a one-day battle against Iranian forces in and around the strait. The battle, dubbed Operation Praying Mantis by the U.S. side, was launched in retaliation for the 14 April mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58). U.S. forces sank two Iranian warships and as many as six armed speedboats in the engagement. On July 3, 1988, 290 people were killed when an Iran AirAirbus A300 passenger jet was shot down over the strait by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes. There is still lingering controversy about the event, considered among the most controversial tragedies in aviation history. On January 10, 2007, the nuclear submarine USS Newport News, traveling submerged, struck M/V Mogamigawa, a 300,000-ton Japanese-flagged large oil tanker just south of the strait. (Wikipedia credit for links in this paragraph.) The tanker had suddenly slowed before impact, indicating the US submarine was attempting clandestine underwater passage in its prop wash. Hardly innocent transit.

Does legality matter in the Persian Gulf? Not yet, and Iran may have reason to feel contemptuous of the UN's impartiality. Ultimately, however, legality could become very important, and knowing how laws regarding coastal sovereignty are supposed to be handled calls the competing official versions out into clearer, less bullshit-clouded light. Coalition Vessel 73's claim that it was in international waters was intentionally idiotic and insulting. A US Navy spokesman said that the speedboats were "a heartbeat away" from being blown up two days ago, that may be so, and it's impossible to precisely assess what happened in this incident. In contrast, it is not at all difficult to assess that the routine passage of US warships through the straits is an act of war should Iran choose to define it as such, and is inherently dangerous. Iran's daily restraint indicates very high levels of patience and discipline on the part of its Navy and government, as well as on the part of the coalition warship crews. Otherwise, a far worse "clash" would have already occurred.

Pseudoantidisestablishmentarianism: Clinton, McCain Win New Hampshire

The Clintons live to fight another day, the bitter cold of non-inevitability dispelled for the moment in the balmy January weather of the "Live Free or Vote for Mitt Romney" state. As one voter said to an NPR interviewer, "This is New Hampshire! If you tell us we should pick A, we pick B. If you tell us to choose C, we choose D."

The biggest loser in New Hampshire was John Edwards, whose support shrunk to 17%. The biggest winner was John McCain, who had laid off much of his staff two months ago and was a political zombie. He repeated his 2000 Granite State hat trick to beat former Massachusetts Gov. Romney by 7 points in a second-home state. Huckabee surprised with 12% despite barely campaigning and having only $2 mill cash in the bank. If you add his share to McCain's, and to Ron Paul's, Romney was thumped by over half the Pug turnout, which is also clamoring for change. Huckabee now leads national polls for the first time, by 1.5%.

As Lord Wife insightfully observed, McCain took a lot of independents away from Obama, likely the biggest reason he lost to Clinton when having polled by +13 the previous day. New Hampshire, for some reason, is inordinately fond of McCain, and has an open primary where Independent voters with a decidedly Puggish streak are key. Clinton also won relatively more women than in Iowa, and her stronghold amongst over-65 females proved telling. She has reclaimed momentum. For McCain, victory in NH is a delightful, satisfying blip which can't be carried through. Politico.com's exit poll observations on Clinton/Obama:

Here are the groups in which Obama enjoyed a significant margin over Clinton: men; young voters (18-24); voters making more than $50,000; voters with post-graduate education (a good indication of professionals); independents; first-time voters; voters without religious affiliation; men without children and single men; voters who said they were getting ahead financially; voters who thought the war in Iraq was the most important issue; voters who wanted change; and voters who wanted someone who could unite the country.

Here are Clinton's groups: women, particularly married women; voters over 40; voters making less than $50,000; voters without a college degree; union voters; Democrats; Catholics (an important constituency for the Democrats); people very worried about the economy; voters who thought the economy was most important; voters who valued experience; and voters who evaluated candidates on whether they "care about people like me."

There were anomalies. Voters who thought the war in Iraq was the most important issue favored Obama, 46 percent to 33 percent, while voters who favored our withdrawing all troops "as soon as possible" favored Clinton 40 percent to 36 percent. That may reflect Clinton's higher rating as a potential commander in chief, or it may just be a statistical anomaly. Clinton's support by 38 percent to 20 percent over Obama on the question of which one of these candidates "cares about people like me" is also interesting and suggests that Obama has a different kind of charisma than Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

For Good Measure: Nut Job Party Fields Wacko Candidate

Warm cinnamon donuts, just out of the oven. Every time Mike Huckabee's name is mentioned, that's the feeling I get. Why? Oh, only because he's on the Republican Party's back like the toothless hillbilly was on Ned Beatty in the famous man-rape scene in Deliverance. And because I just want a little revenge for the last 6 years. Is that so wrong?

I'm thankful for every extra day Huckabee doesn't blow up and bellow "I will destroy you!" at an audience, for another week which passes without him sending a critical reporter one of the three-page long insult-a-thons he's famous for in Arkansas. Every day is a gift. It's like getting up in the morning, opening your door, unfolding your Wall Street Journal and seeing a headline which says, "Nut Job Party Fields Wacko Candidate." How do I describe the wackosity level? I can't. But, Bruce at The River Blog put up a good synopsis written by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

As president, Huck would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion and would give science a back seat to religion. "Science changes with every generation and with new discoveries, and God doesn't," he says. "So I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict." Huckabee's well-documented ­disdain for science was reflected in the performance of the Arkansas school system when he was governor; one independent survey gave the state an F for its science standards in schools, a grade that among other things reflected Huckabee's hostility toward the teaching of evolution.

Huckabee at most times is gentle and self-deprecating in his public address, but when he talks about religion, he gets weirdly combative and obnoxious, often drifting into outright offensiveness. At one appearance, Huckabee — who's been known to make fart jokes in front of the state legislature — said he would oppose gay marriage "until Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain saying he's changed the rules." And he recently scored a rare offend trifecta, simultaneously pissing off immigrants, Jews and the pro-choice crowd when he ludicrously claimed that a "holocaust" of abortions had ­artificially created a demand for Mexican labor.

The D.C. Pug establishment has their undies in, well not even a bunch. Huckabee has them so intensely humiliated they're not wearing undies. See Ned Beatty, above. ("Ah sayed squee-uhl lahhk a peeg!") Every day, they're asking themselves, "How should he die? Let's see here...plane crash? Squashed by a bus? Suicide bomb? Somebody call Richard Perle." The Neo-cons hate him worse than any leading Democrat. For starters, let's compare Huckabee's foreign policy advisors with the other Pug candidates:

Rudolph Giuliani:
Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, Stephen Rosen, Peter Berkowitz, Ex-Senator Robert Kasten.

John McCain:
Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, William Kristol, James Woolsey, Alexander Haig, Max Boot, Bud McFarlane, Brent Scowcroft.

Mitt Romney:
Cofer Black, Mark Falcoff, Roger Noriega, Dan Senor.

Fred Thompson:
Elizabeth Cheney

Mike Huckabee:
Nobody

There isn't enough Prozac to keep the Pugs going. For as long as it lasts, the greatest thing about the gaseous bible-humper is that, not only does he merit his own DSM-IV entry, he's also the logical conclusion of every backward, bad, buggering thing the Republicans have ever successfully mobilized or have pandered to. What they've wrought on our country is finally coming back on themselves.

There's a very real possibility Huckabee will be able to keep the venom of god's wrath bottled up for long enough to take his Party's nomination for the Presidency. In Iowa, where Huckabee got all medieval on Mitt the Mormon, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards each got more votes than he did. I hear banjos twanging in the distance, and every day is gravy.

(Inspirational thanks to Bruce and Jesus.)

Why Do They Not Attack Canada?

Hello, choir. We have a guest preacher in today, who hails from at least three unlikely places: the Republican Party, the US Congress, and Texas. Ron Paul (via Church and Empire):

...9iu11ani saved his most forceful comments for religious extremism in the Muslim world:

"They've perverted their religion into a hatred of us. Our foreign policy is irrelevant, totally irrelevant, if you read what they write, if you bother to listen to what they say, this comes out of their own perverted thinking."

Taking up his repeated role as a thorn in Giuliani's side, Rep. Ron Paul took great umbrage with the former New York City mayor's assertion:

"Why do they not attack Canada," he asked, "why don't they attack Switzerland?"

Giuliani talks about 9/11 so much it seemed time to integrate it into his name: 9iu11ani. He should have the numbers branded onto his head. When I Googled the term, I found that Democratic Underground had already started using it. No good graphic has been done yet, so I Googled "beware" and found the Far Side cartoon above.

More Winning In Iowa

"This feels good. It's just like I imagined it when I was talking to my kindergarten teacher."

-- Sen. Barack Obama, quoted by the New York Observer, on his new status as Democratic frontrunner. Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has claimed that Obama has been plotting a presidential run since he was in kindergarten.

(Pic via Cat in the Bag, on right margin. Quote via Taegan Goddard's political blog.)

Winning In Iowa

Hillary Clinton finished 9 points behind Barack Obama and 1 point behind Edwards. A 30-year old machinist explains why, in bold quotes:

The caucuses marked the culmination of a dispiriting week for the Clintons as a series of polls presaged a possible Obama victory -- so long as a projected massive turnout of young and first-time caucus-goers materialized. And so it did with an estimated 212,000 Democrats showing up to caucus, almost twice as many as in 2004.

The caucus at one northwest Des Moines precinct seemed a microcosm of the political drama that rattled the entire state on Thursday night. Residents of Precinct 9 waited patiently in line to caucus as poll workers were overcome by the sheer scope of the turnout. As the 125 Iowans in the room dispersed into separate groups supporting different candidates, a visibly striking generational gap slashed the room.

With a mixed group of about 25 Edwards supporters in the middle, on the right side of the room sat about 40 mostly white-haired and subdued Clinton adherents. On the left side of the high school classroom, about 60 decidedly much younger, boisterous and ramped-up Obama supporters gathered in noisy clumps. "I've never caucused before but I like everything Obama has to say," said 30-year-old machinist Chris Augustine. Typical of exactly the kind of voter the Obama campaign had hoped to mobilize, he added: "For me, Obama is the un-politician. If it comes down to Hillary Clinton versus a Republican in November, I would rather vote for the Republican. There's nothing Clinton could do to prove she's really different than the same old, same old of the past."

(via HuffPo)

Psyche's News Roundup

Iowans are about to start caucusing, consorting, or something one hour from now.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | This is the most important election of our lifetime

20080103_032258_IOWA_caucus copy.jpg

New York Times Blog: Two-Buck Huck (driving the royalists crazy)

caustic acrostic | MetaFilter: The Iowa Scam

Iowa’s Undemocratic Caucuses - New York Times

Where the Iowa caucuses went wrong. - By Jeff Greenfield - Slate Magazine

Geek About » Top 17 Most Bizarre Sights on Google Earth

A Death in Edmonds - Features - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush | The Smirking Chimp

Move to Impeach Cheney Gains Support in Congress - Salem-News.Com

Oil Futures Rise to $100 a Barrel: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

Clinton errs on Pakistan - Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com (not sharpest knife in the drawer)

Hullabaloo: Divisive Dems (Obama running against his own party)

A Can Of Worms (Dems complicit in war crimes - Pelosi knew about waterboarding in '02)

Iraq, Then And Now: The Evolution Of A Revolt

Then...T.E. Lawrence writes from the perspective of a successful Iraqi insurgent against the Ottoman Empire:

"It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts. It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent. active in a striking force, and 98 per cent. passively sympathetic. The few active rebels must have the qualities of speed and endurance, ubiquity and independence of arteries of supply. They must have the technical equipment to destroy or paralyse the enemy’s organized communications, for irregular war is fairly Willisen’s definition of strategy, “the study of communication” in its extreme degree, of attack where the enemy is not. In fifty words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain."

Now...PFC Damien Corsetti, nicknamed "The King of Torture" and "The Monster" by his compatriots for his enhanced interrogations in Kabul, gave an interview to the Spanish paper El Mundo, describing part of the repertoire:

"They tell them they are going to kill their children, rape their wives. And you see on their faces, in their eyes, the terror that that causes them. Because, of course, we know all about those people. We know the names of their children, where they live, we show them satellite photos of their houses. It is worse than any torture. 98% of the prisoners had nothing to do with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban. In Abu-Ghraib and Bagram they were tortured to make them suffer, not to get information out of them."

T.E. Lawrence was tortured and sodomized in Daraa, Syria while in Turkish custody there. His claim has been disputed by people focused on his unknown sexual practices, yet the treatment he reports was commonplace. Lawrence said his captors were so inept and and sadistic they didn't realize his significance, and let him go. He later assaulted the Turkish-held port of Aqaba from the rear, capturing it in 1917, then was instrumental in throwing them out of Damascus in 1918. He was given every medal in the Empire, but refused a knighthood.

The map pictured above is of Lawrence's personal design, submitted by him to the British War Department at the end of World War One. It hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London. It was drawn with the subtle realities of local topography, history, tribes, trade routes, and cultural peculiarities uppermost in mind. Armenians have their own state, for example, and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria are given to Feisal, Irak to Abdullah, with a second Arab state to Zeid. Things might have worked out differently had the Brits paid any attention to it.

The Face Of A Terrorist

Cute women from Iceland want to destroy our Homeland.

Erla Osk Lilliendahl, pictured above, flew first-class to New York City with her girlfriends before Christmas, "to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life." Sure, lady...sure. Just like Mohammad Atta went to a strip club and ordered champagne with his co-terrorists the night before 9/11.

Back in 1995, Erla came to the US and went undercover, out-staying her visa by three weeks, then coming back the next year to case the joint further. But this time Homeland Security caught the fugitive potential murderer at passport entry in JFK. After babbling incoherent lies about those fateful missing weeks 12 years prior, she was taken away, handcuffed, chained to a wall, interrogated, and left in detention to cool off for awhile. Later, she was marched through the airport in chains, driven to a shit-hole jail cell in New Jersey, shaken or shouted awake when she tried to sleep, and given no food or water. That'll teach her!

She took a longer vacation than was allowed by law, and that required justice. But you see, some of these foreign terrorist women are uppity. After being held for a mere 24 hours and deported back to Iceland, a.k.a. The Axis of Evil Farm Team, Lilliendahl wrote a blog post about her Big Apple caper and called it "the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected." She then complained to the Icelandic Foreign Minister, who met with some minor U.S. ambassador to demand an apology.

The DHS was forced to announce a fictional investigation to "review its work procedures" and to express "regrets." Now, why did she have to go and do that? What a spoil-sport! And she wasn't even tortured. Maybe next time.

Eine Kleine Bush Bashing

Live Free or Vote For Mitt Romney. I was once in New Hampshire in the thick of a wedding party. It had reached the ungodly hour of 10 PM when the wait-staff started asking for my ID and cautioning people against dance. Then, at about 10:45, we were warned to not make too much noise, as we were only two miles from an expensive private liberal arts college. (My ID? Sure. Here ya go. Sorry, I just shat myself. What about Alzheimer's do you not understand?)

Yet in New Hampshire, after midnight, the voting polls are simmering. Certain recalcitrant, bark-eating towns already started at 12 AM Eastern Time. It's time for perspective, a good Bush Bashing, and looking to the Bright Side. Contained in the YouTube vid above is a "best of" from the Berlin Wall of Bush Malapropisms. And even if Mitt the Mormon becomes Prez, we'll still not have to suffer verbal fratricides like this:

"As yesterday's positive report card show, childrens do learn."

More Wag, Less Bark, And How To Beat Al-Qaeda

Happy 2008! Here's to looking forward to a change in direction by this November, one which will see the world's woes begin to mend. Far from being a utopian sentiment, it's still possible to defuse worse war to come by wise accommodation, application of Realpolitik, and perceptive leadership. As Machiavelli would say, "when my people yield I push, when my people push I yield."

BushCo and Al-Qaeda have a lot in common. They both are condemnatory of the West, and believe its institutions, philosophies, and societies are morally bankrupt, even doomed. Selling Western ideals short is tempting, but the world's future may well not boil down to a binary game of social darwinism vs. theocracy. I'd put my money on Plato over BushCo or even Osama Bin Laden any day, and honoring social contracts, treaties, and binding accords, if such can be accomplished with former friends and enemies, is a far more efficient repository for faith.

First, a state of the current affairs: Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in the military fortress city of Rawalpindi in 2007, on a Wednesday evening in December, presumably by those who wish to re-establish a Muslim caliphate. For the past 10 years, the United States has fed a stunt-man in Pakistan billions of dollars to keep things like this from happening, and suddenly, it feels shortchanged. Predictably. Yet predictability is no consolation from having to witness more brutal ineptitude in the short-sheeted Global War On Terror (GWOT), US policies characterized by wooden-headedness, crash-and-burn ignorance, and unswerving arrogance.

"Muslim Domino Theory" analysts are now publicly defining Pakistan as the front line against Muslim extremism (can they say, "Duhhh?"), and the US is sending Special Forces units to train 'Frontier Corps' to keep the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in line. It should be obvious how viscerally sick about 75% of the 160 million Pakistanis are of the US, and how disastrous further efforts to violently meddle in their internal affairs will be. It's like putting out a campfire with gasoline, and the flare of Bhutto's death was the 'whoosh.' She shouldn't have been there in the first place, the assassination was nearly certain to occur, as was the violence and chaos which has followed.

The Bush Administration had brokered a "power-sharing arrangement" between Bhutto and dictator Pervez Musharraf, sending her back (to be greeted by a huge car bomb in Karachi) earlier this Fall. It appears Musharraf forcefully declined the shotgun marriage, and the Wahabist sympathies of his junior officers denote strong complicity. Like chess neophytes, BushCo led and imperiled their queen too early. Neither neo-cons nor realists have any viable option to regain a semblance of control, and they have no Plan B but to send in Negroponte and the death squads. To "bring the evil-doers to justice," as His Lowness monotonously observed, will be next to impossible in 'Afghakistan,' nothing like it was in El Salvador or Guatemala. Attempting to do so will fracture an already fissured country.

So how to prevail, in Pakistan and elsewhere? First, governments wishing to blunt the effects of a strong socio-religious movement would not wave red flags in front of its nose, and would not idiotically attempt to bomb, occupy, and torture its innumerable adherents into submission. Aside from morality, the sheer scale precludes effective use of force. A government or coalition wanting to win would follow a simpler, time-tested course:

1) Understand
2) Parlay
3) Bribe
4) Marginalize
5) Splinter

What is known as "Al-Qaeda" is simultaneously a very deep-rooted revivalist and nascent protestant movement. It was seeded by long Western occupations and militarization of the Mid-east, nurtured by Muslims reading and interpreting the Koran for themselves, and triggered by internet-age communications. In historical significance and effect, Al-Qaeda is akin to Luther in Leipzig when he kicked off Protestantism, hanging up broadsheets stating that commoners had a right to read and think about the Bible, the existing Church was corrupt and incorrect. Like Luther and his supporters, the Muslim reformers want a return to spiritual purity of thought to exist in their religion's original form, and to reject the grossly abusive, sclerotic theocracies which currently claim authority. Trying to repress these urges is like plugging a pressure cooker.

The Catholic church tried to force the genies of Lutheranism back into their pressure cooker, plunging Europe into a hundred raging years of "Long War" during which it suffered defeat. The Church could instead have chosen to co-opt Luther's movement, dilute his power, and wait for the internal inconsistencies of his philosophy to take hold. Given time, revolting bishops would interpret the Bible differently from Luther and each other, a hundred groups waiting to bicker, splinter, and war. Luther was no stand-in for the authority of a Pope, and the Catholic church might well have prevailed over the Reformation through mere patience. Instead, it hoisted itself, and many but not nearly enough heretics, on its own petard. As a new central spiritual authority and commoners reading the Bible were natural enemies then, so are a caliphate and commoners interpreting the Koran now. They will fall asunder, all the faster by granting them a measure of credence in the meantime.

Just as the Catholic Church was unwilling to accept less absolute control over Europe in exchange for continuing primacy, the US refuses to accept loss of control and pursue a multipolar future. Pakistan represents loss of control, and it will continue to thwart the empire's will. The welcome mat has been taken inside, and much of the islamic world will take its cues from that symbol. America can't stop the looming civil wars there, and can't stop any future national wars against Afghanistan, Iran, or India. Power vacuums get filled, and there's plenty of stuffing already in and around Pakistan.

Rather than fighting a 'Long War,' the US and the West should meet with the Taliban, should parlay with Al-Qaeda, and should make reparations. The Guantanamo detainees should be released, shown kindness, and their families should be lavishly compensated. Troops should get out of Iraq before it gets hot again. George W. Bush should be scapegoated and, at his blessed departure, take upon his head the blame shared by many others, be they Democratic, Independent, or Republican.

Yes, this clean slate approach is a "perfect world," but it is also strategically sound. Al-Qaeda's propellant isn't "hating us for our freedoms," but annoyance at having Western-made spiked cleats on their necks for a hundred years. Moving even conservatively in the direction of Jiu-Jitsu will erode Al-Qaeda's prime impetus, and that erosion spells victory for all sides.

Feist: I Feel It All

Leslie Feist strikes again, this time on Jimmy Kimmel Live, singing with her band on a commuter bus. She draws on the marimba, snapping fingers, an acoustic guitar, an unused sax horn, a guy blowing on a cross between a bagpipe a waterpipe and a keyboard, and lots of greek chorus vocals in the background. It's really on a bus, with the driver's head bobbing up and down to the groove. The suspension must've been pretty good, and transmitted a stream of an artist's past consciousness:

"No one likes to take a test, sometimes you know more is less, put your weight against the door, kick drums on a basement floor, stranded in a fog of words, loved him like a winter bird, on my head the water pours, Gulf Stream through the open door, oh fly away, just fly away, to what you want to make."

The full lyrics to 'I Feel it All:'

I feel it all, I feel it all
I feel it all, I feel it all
The wings are wide, the wings are wide
Wild card inside, wild card inside

Oh, I'll be the one who'll break my heart
I'll be the one to hold the gun!

I know more than I knew before
I don't know what I knew before
I didn't rest, I didn't stop:
Did we fight or did we talk?

Oh, I'll be the one who'll break my heart
I'll be the one to hold the gun!

I love you more, I love you more!
I don't know what I knew before,
but now I know, I wanna win the war

No one likes to take a test
Sometimes you know more is less
Put your weight against the door
Kick drum on a basement floor
Stranded in a fog of words
Loved him like a winter bird
On my head the water pours
Gulf stream through the open door
Oh, fly away, flay away,
To what you want to make.

I feel it all, I feel it all
I feel it all I feel it all
The wings are wide, the wings are wide
Wild card inside, wild card inside.

Oh I'll be the one to break my heart
I'll be the one who'll break my heart
I'll be the one who'll break my heart
I'll end it, though you started it.

The truth lied!
The truth, it lied,
Oh, and lies divide.
I'll guess we'll meet again,
but lies divide.

We Don't Need More Heat In Washington, We Need More Light

The best peacemakers can hit the hardest when they need to. Barack Obama was elected as editor of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, the first and only black to win that post. He was a second-year student with a second-hand wardrobe living in a basement apartment in Somerville who wanted to go back to community activism on Chicago's south side. Every other Harvard Law Review editor over the past 30 years went on to clerk for a Supreme Court justice, become a corporate counsel, or work for an investment bank. His Law Review victory was ground-breaking, more significant than later becoming a Senator.

Obama is remembered as an even-handed peacemaker who routinely kicked both liberal and conservative ass upwards to better things in the vicious, petty agenda-debates common to law schools. "A lot of people at the time were just talking past each other, very committed to their opinions, their point of view, and not particularly interested in what other people had to say," said classmate Crystal Nix Hines. "Barack transcended that."

Obama rocked the Dims hard with straight, sharp jabs in Iowa, six days before its primary.

On the Clintons:
"The real gamble, the risk, the real risk in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same players and expecting a different result. (Two weeks ago Bill Clinton warned a national TV audience that Obama would be a "roll of the dice," offering Hillary as a Sure Thing.)

On Change:
"We cannot wait to fix our schools, we cannot wait to stop climate change, we cannot wait to get universal health care... and we cannot wait to bring this war in Iraq to an end."

More on the Clintons:
"We don't need someone to work the system better because the system doesn't work for us. We don't need someone who says, ' I know how to work the game,' because the game plan isn't working."

On Edwards:
"Some people say, 'Well, Obama talks a good game, but he's not angry enough, he's too conciliatory.' I don't need lectures about how to bring about change because I've spent my life bringing about change. I turned down the big jobs to do community organizing in Chicago. I turned down the big money law firms to be a civil rights lawyer. I took on the lobbyists in the state legislature in Illinois."

On The United States:
"We don't need more heat in Washington. We need more light."

In Defense Of Christ & Advent Calendars

Someone sent Isabelita, she who blogs in Wallingfjord at Learning To Sequence, an Adventskalendar. Even though neither she nor the sender are Christian. This, like Christmas itself, is weird. Now, if you don't know Adventzkalendars, they are funny-strange mnemonic devices devised by sadistic Germans to build up the Christmas suspense, turning up the pressure a little every day, each little paper door a port-hole to fresh horrors. Sick, hyper-competitive bastards. ("Twelve days of Christmas? Tscha! Eat our socks, you English. In Germany we get all 25!") Ok. I'm not doing a good job defending the calendars.

Whether you go in for the Nativity or the North Pole, or both (or not), if you speak English as a first language there's always plenty of fertilizer coming at you this time of year. Iz wishes, quite practically, that there was more chocolate in her Advent's calendar, and is turned off by the fictions about the baby jebus waiting behind each door. Christ, were he still cracking wise, would nail the whole concept of Christmas. He would point out how Christmas occasions all manner of evil, and he wasn't born then anyway. And say what you want about evils, but they're almost impossible to avoid.

Therefore, most of us here have to roll with the reindeer shit, and for those with young children there are few courses open outside of Buddha, Moses, and Mohammed but bowing to convention. Then suddenly you find yourselves standing in line for over an hour, outdoors in the freezing wind. Waiting for something useful, maybe, like free food? Coffee? A concert? No. You wait to see a complete stranger inexplicably dressed up like a murderous freebooter, as red as drenched from head to toe in fresh blood, all to put your little one onto the lap of this seasonal worker of questionable origins who you really hope isn't a child molester.

Then, when it's almost your turn to stop freezing and fork over 30 bucks so Santa can cop a feel (Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus. Run!), some officious elf sticks her head out of the faux North Pole workshop and intones, "Santa goes on break in three minutes!" You're three places away from Santa's Gate, you've been looking at the Apple store not 75 yards away for 75 shivering minutes, and now you're auto-scanning your whereabouts for weapons and thinking: "If you try to close that gate, little elf, I'll rip the points off your ears."

Ah, the ghosts of Christmas future. What the hell are we thinking? I mean as a whole culture, one which has gone alarmingly insane and tells lies to our children, lies which don't even bother to have a purpose. The pagans who ran Samhain and went in for sacrificing Tiny Tim around the solstices, at least they had a plan. We've got sales and toys so frigging complicated you wonder if it's China taking a little prevenge on us for the opium wars. ("What? A 9-volt battery? Required to power a treaded race-bot that climbs walls? Sure. Got it right here. In my ass.") When I lost the Leatherman with the phillips-head screwdriver while surrounded by wires, styrofoam, cardboard boxes, those twisty cables you can't unwind and have to cut, and the 500 pieces of interlocking plastic (sorry to not be exaggerating) which have to go together somehow, first a panic, then a depressive funk, ensued. Lord Wife found the Leatherman after determined searching and we were like, "Christmas is saved!! Pass the Xanax."

I realize this is all sick, very sick. The best part is, there are children on their way here who think that chasing a Jack Russell terrier around the house with a rectal thermometer is the height of folly. A tradition, I kid you not, established last year. How do I get out of Christmas, or give it a purpose? I know it's supposed to be about giving, about Christ's birth, but maybe it should be more about holding back, and taking the lies about Christ out of it. Christ doesn't have a goddamned thing to do with Christmas. (Catholics, don't even try any of your weak Pope-ninja bullshit on me. I've been to midnight mass in Nuremburg's town square, Christmas headquarters, and Jesus was emphatically not there.) Maybe it should be about practical forgiveness, as in, "You know, you really got on my nerves this past year, and a couple times there I wanted to effin' kill you. Here! Have a Cuisinart, and let's treat each other better." Forgiveness. A way to start. First base to the home plate of not killing people.

Iz asked what Christianity was all about, given the crap they tried out on her in Episcopalian Sunday schools, not to mention the other religions with fraud and hypocrisy, i.e., just about all of them. Being an ex-missionary for Jesus, I'm supposed to still know. So I was provoked into a post-modern "Yes, Virginia" exchange. Here's part:

No, I don't mean Christ actually said anything. It could've been a mere construct, and there is no telling proof otherwise.

Yet if you look at the historical context, there are many (of his) quotes that don't fit preferred contemporary Jewish revolution or nascent Catholic/pagan order fantasies, and this seems to indicate actual statements of at least one provocative personality leaked through unexpunged. They are problematic for any organized religion, and largely ignored, yet they were left in. (Only a guess, but Jesus may have been an Essene, philosophers who traveled and studied in the East. Someones who came close to answering the desperate Jewish need for a Messiah who would deliver them from Roman occupation. But not close enough.)

Organized religions completely ignore quotes that don't neatly fit their purposes, but the Jesus texts are far more prolifically radical than Sunday schools acknowledge. For example there was not a word from the Jesus character about fire, nor brimstone, so Episcopal simply isn't "Christian" on that score.

It really doesn't matter if Jesus was a man, many men, or a god, the message was to reject the revenge-based mindset of Judaism and embrace a philosophy of self-actualization and positive action. Human desire for hiearchical control purposefully obscures the philosophy.

Jesus comes straight out and tells people, at one point, that if they wish to live immortally with god-capital-G, they all have to pick up and carry their own cross. No way around it, no easy answers, no blame, no Santa Claus. Here's Isabelita's reply, about as well put as can be:

I could accept that message, even in a religious context, if more so-called christians acted on it.

Amen, sister. I'll try to act more better, and hope you found more chocolate in that last Advent box.

Christmas Cheer Returns To Bethlehem

Even if it's hokey, it's still cool. I get all verklemmt when people stop shooting each other, for even a little bit:

West Bank (AP) - Hundreds of Christian pilgrims celebrated Jesus' birth on Tuesday in the West Bank town where he was born, in an atmosphere made markedly cheerier by the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after years of bloody conflict.

By midday, the ancient Church of the Nativity was packed with tourists waiting in line to see the grotto that marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

The visit to Bethlehem was a first for Kiel Tilley, 23, a science teacher from Charlevoix, Mich.

"It's very powerful and meaningful to me," Tilley said. "It's very moving to visit a place which I always read about in the Bible."

The relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at a U.S.-sponsored conference last month reassured him before his trip, he said.

"I'm always in fear something would happen," Tilley said. "But the peace process made me feel safer."

Hundreds of people from all over the world crowded the church's dark interior. Some stopped to look at part of the original floor about two feet below the current one, exposed in a fenced-off section in the middle of the church.

Some of the tourists inside the church wore Santa hats, and one carried the national flag of Indonesia, a country whose population of 235 million is nearly 95 percent Muslim.

The church, first built in the 4th century, looks like a fortress. Two rows of columns line each side of the long, narrow central hall.

Vendors mingling with the crowd in Manger Square hawked rosaries, handcrafted bags, popcorn, steamed corn and Turkish coffee.

According to Israeli border police, who monitored the entry of visitors into Bethlehem, 22,000 tourists had crossed over by midday, including about 7,000 Israeli Arabs.

Merry Christmas.

Charlie Wilson's War & The Beauty Parlor Reaganites

Former Reagan officials are angry about the new Tom Hanks movie, Charlie Wilson's War. They say it aggrandizes how much a mere Texas Rep, a Democrat!, helped the Afghanis to forcibly eject Soviet occupiers. They dispute how much credit "the Avocado," CIA agent Gust Avrakatos, deserves for devising effective insurgency tactics. They claim Wilson and Avocado actively resisted sending Stinger missiles to the tribes, finally being overruled by Cap Weinberger, certified Cold War Hero. A blog called "Libertas" is one of many piling on the trope:

Sorry, Hollywood, THIS (Ronald Reagan) is the man who won the Cold War you wanted us to lose, not some cocaine-snorting, whore-mongering, alcoholic liberal… It was this man, the people who served him, Pope John Paul, Margaret Thatcher, the people in Eastern Europe who rose and followed the likes of Lech Walesa, our brave military, and a man named Ollie North who also sent covert arms to freedom fighters, but there will be no movies about him…

I'd love to see a movie about Ollie North! One which depicts a moral compass Heinrich Himmler would've loved, although of course the pic would have nothing to do with defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. That's why there's a movie about a cocaine-snorting, whore-mongering alcoholic liberal who delivered enough money to a wholly insubordinant, down-and-dirty CIA agent to blow up every Russian in the country, an agent whom the Republicans hated, feared, and tried to get rid of. At one point, Avocado controlled 70% of the CIA's discretionary budget for the entire world. On top of that, Wilson and Bill Casey got the Saudi government to match the US funding buck-for-buck.

The bad liberals begged for Stinger missiles to give to the mujahedin, and it was the Reagan Administration which wouldn't send them. It was the Reagan Administration which held up the shipment of sniper rifles for nearly 5 years on fears they would be used to target Russian generals. (Finally the rifles were sent, but without the night vision goggles needed to make them effective.) It was the Reagan Administration which held back the good stuff, fearing it would offend Gorbachev.

Wilson and Avrakatos were flawed bit players who thought up a solution and pursued it with single-minded determination. Just pawns, really, of Zbigniew Brzenski's 1980 plan to stick Afghanistan up the same Commie ass which took his native Poland and killed family members and friends. (Z-Big was Carter's national security advisor.) Still, the grasping and whining from people widely praised for engineering a "Morning in America" (which, if it existed at all, was made possible by hard policies of their predecessors), is beyond unbecoming. It's yet another unfortunate confirmation that duplicitous, perpetually insecure glory-whores rarely change. Reagan's whores claim the movie is liberally biased, a low blow to conservatives because the screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin, the creator of two Liberal Wet Dream White Houses portrayed on television series "The West Wing" and in Michael Douglas movie "The American President." Clearly, Aaron Sorkin wants all Republicans to be lined up against a wall and shot, ergo speaks with forked tongue.

That the Reaganistas are not remembered for treating Afghanistan like a snotty Kleenex while basking in political glory is too bad. Once the Russians pulled out, the Tough Guys were too timid and dim-witted to maintain any presence and funding. In their stupidity, they did not rebuild Afghanistan, preferring to create a power vacuum into which were sucked the spores of the Taliban. Kool-Aiders will claim stability wasn't their responsibility, they couldn't have known it would go bad, the Cold War was won anyway, the Taliban wasn't formed until the Clinton years, yadda yada. Of course, that's also saying ignorance of basic statecraft is wonderful. In keeping with Republican style.

Meanwhile, after the Russkies hauled ass, a rich Saudi national named Osama bin Laden (OBL) stayed on in Afghanistan to build roads, dams, and schools, to further promulgate the Muslim reformation (Al-Qaeda), and to build a network so loyal to him that he hasn't been turned in despite a $40 million reward. Again, the tropes proclaim no connection between the CIA and bin Laden, that he never got any direct US funding, and the events in Afghanistan and Pakistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The rabid Puggies don't seem to realize the dreaded librul Sorkin adapted the bothersome movie's screenplay from a book, one funnily enough called Charlie Wilson's War. And they're missing the central plot point:

What if, instead of Osama bin Laden, we were the ones who stayed on to build the roads, dams, and schools?

Barack Obama Only Democrat To Defeat All Republicans In Zogby Poll

It's just a poll, but it confirms metrics and instincts that Barack Obama is the most electable presidential candidate. He's claiming more mindshare.

In a Zogby International poll, Hillary loses by 4 and 5 percentage points to Republican candidates Giuliani and Huckabee, respectively. Not good. Whereas Barack Obama performs a net 13 and 10 percentage points better against each, beating Giuliani by 9, Huckabee by 5. The numbers resound in terms of electability measures, and should cause further state-by-state coalescence of Party support around Obama.

Amongst voters declared Independent, Obama beats Giuliani by a crushing 56% - 31%, whereas Clinton trails Giuliani amongst Independents by 43% - 42%. Not even the swing voters go Democrat under her nomination, which is probably the most damning number in the poll. Winning candidates must attract swing voters. Hillary does edge a Romney race by 2, beats Thompson by 6, but loses to limping soldier McCain by a depressing 7. There must be hope in McCainville tonight.

Huckabee is the strongest candidate amongst the Republicans, but he probably can't win more than 1 or 2 small coastal states vs. Obama, whose United Church of Christ bona fides make him competitive in states like Tennessee, Missouri, Arizona, Georgia, and his mother's birthplace, Kansas. The Zogby results in full are here.

Likeability & The Presidency

A couple of recent articles have come out regarding candidate likeability, and it's about time. If Tom Hanks ever decides to run for President, he'd probably win, because he maxes out surveys on the most liked personality. I mean, look at him. You feel like you know him, and how could you not vote for him?

Even back when the terms "branding" and "image alignment" only concerned livestock and mapmaking, likeability was key in who finally made it through the flaming hoops which guard the Oval Office. Candidates remain fond of saying, "For once let's keep the debate to the issues. Let's focus on policy, the challenges facing us, and who's best qualified to lead the country." Sure. That's the cue for Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh to jump in from their respective sties, noting that Hillary's face is wrinkled up like a 60-year old woman's, Barack's lips are the color of chicken liver, and Dennis Kucinich can't be elected because he wears funny ties.

It's always been a popularity contest. Scrolling down the post-WWII list points out how crucial the Like Quotient has been:

Eisenhower : I Like Ike
Kennedy : Camelot
Johnson : Screw Likeable! I Killed To Get Here
Nixon : Me, Too! And Don't Make Me Kill You
Ford : Who Am I, And Why Am I Here?
Carter : I Will Never Lie To You
Reagan : Just Win One For The Gipper
Bush One : Gosh-Darnit, There He Goes Again
Clinton : I Feel Your Pain
Bush Too : Preznit For Dummies

Those Presidents above with poor Like Quotients (Johnson, Nixon, and Ford) all got into office via the exceptional circumstances of assassination, resignation, impeachment, and succession. (Quick Aside: Was Ford Nixon's way of intentionally flipping the bird, his way of saying, "All right, Congress. Ok, America. You want to impeach me? Fine! I'll inflict the human equivalent of an Irish Setter on you. And I already wrote my own pardon for him."?) If I take a look at the corresponding list of losing candidates for these presidencies, it reads like members of The Society for Social Stiffness: Robert Taft, Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey (likable, but stiffened by LBJ baggage), George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry.

The Media Age amplifies human traits in the electoral process, egging on the gossip-driven attention to trite details, raising the effort required to assemble an overall impression. There are simply more bases which candidates must cover, and no longer can a John Quincy Adams or a Warren Harding become President just because Congress or a political machine knows he's a Good Man whose time has come. A fairly long get-to-know-you period came to be required to engage common opinion, commencing long before the plebiscite occurs courtesy of often gag-inducing media forced feedings.

The new "medium is the message" dynamic in politics made its grandest entrance on September 26th, 1960, when Dick Nixon and Jack Kennedy engaged in the first televised presidential candidates' debate. Nixon, just out of two weeks in the hospital, refused makeup to cover his pallor and five o'clock shadow. Kennedy was fresh and tanned from time in California, and didn't need any. On substance, the pundits declared Nixon the debate's clear winner. Subsequent polls of the 70 million viewers, however, showed a large majority thought Kennedy had won.

Perhaps his good looks, impeccable grooming, good humor, optimism, polished delivery, and articulate answers compared favorably to Nixon's obvious discomfiture, harsh demeanor, and complete lack of charisma. Enough people got past their issues with Catholics and the Irish to get Kennedy in, and he remains the only American President who was not an Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Likeability can overcome prejudices and unfamiliarity. Outside of Arkansas, who had heard of Bill Clinton? Or Mike Huckabee?

Ignoring a candidate's likeability is political suicide. Dubya may have a low approval rating, but he's more likeable than John Kerry, even on one of Kerry's best days, which are reported to occur once a decade. Vote fraud may have been technically responsible for Kerry's defeat, but Dubya's gee-shucks, Preznit For Dummies schtick was still working its mojo well enough to ward off the obvious. Let's face it, enough voters already hated Bush, the election shouldn't have even been close. Kerry's personality, reminiscent of a sheet of unfinished plywood, screwed it up.

Barack Obama is genuinely likable, particularly apparent when you see him in person as Lord Wife and I did last week. (Not much of a political blogger, am I? Took a week to get this post up.) Although Obama's extremely smart, he's able to be smart in a charming way, so he doesn't have to hide himself behind a mask. When he listens, he listens. When he responds, his brain and his mouth are both engaged. He's prepared, of course, talking points at ready, but the points are clothed with the real weave of his visions, ones which include people's obvious desires, realistic knowledge of what's doable, and intrinsically high standards. All without taking himself or others too seriously, still managing to seem "loose," comfortable within.

Hillary does the same thing, really, only when she does it, she comes off as a "cold, calculating bitch." One can more fairly deliver that label as "competent, brilliant woman," which she most certainly is. You could add "most determined, hardest working." The woman busts her ass. Yet something about her laudable efforts rings false, and she rightly fears admitting who she really is would scare us too much. Obama doesn't have that problem, so he comes off as likeable where Hillary comes off as deceitful.

We'll see if Obama's high Like Quotient can overcome Fears of a Black Planet as it previously got past fears of crippled leaders (FDR) and fears of papal control (JFK). This is a special-needs election, so it probably can. Huckabee's extremely high Likeability Quotient on the other side may transform this election into an epochal national crucible, one which decides not just the country's direction, but its fate. If both win their Party's nominations, it would make the symbolism complete; it's as if America has to choose once again between the bright yet unsure possibilities of Emancipation and the staid security of the Klan.

Psyche's News Roundup

Daily Kos: 272-142. No Strings Attached. Again. | Daily Kos: The Democrats Who Support George Bush's War

MediaBloodhound: Story of the Day: NY Times Buries Dodd's Filibuster Threat Victory

Glenn Greenwald - Salon - Media hostility toward anti-establishment candidates

WaPo: Froomkin: The Tell-Tale Stall

Democracy Now! | "The 2004 Election Was Stolen… Finally We Have Irrefutable Confirmation"

Another Milestone on the Road to Serfdom

Campaign for America's Future :: Conservative Minority Rules by Filibuster, Preventing Up or Down Vote on a Record Number of Bills

Daily Kos: White House confirms the following records destroyed in the 3rd floor fire: with UPDATES

Media Matters - Bill Clinton is right (and my wager for Al Hunt) (our corporate and insider media is killing America)

Discussion Forum on Bankruptcy and Foreclosures | TPMCafe

German Wikipedia Outranks Traditional Encyclopedia's Online Version -- Wikipedia -- InformationWeek

Wikipedia: COO wanted | MetaFilter (Carolyn Doran)

Original Research: Uh, what? (see above)

OPENhulu - Watch TV Shows for FREE! This is the new TV-Links! Watch Hulu Videos without an invite!

"Invasigration," Or How Rome Really Fell

We've all heard how Rome was sacked and burned by Teutonic armies. You may not have heard how angry, unpaid migrant farm workers took it over. How the last Roman rulers welched on their deals with Alaric (whose name in old German means "Ruler of All"), why he was Rome's protector and besieger, and how he mysteriously broke through the impregnable strongpoint of Porta Salaria in AD 410, which stood firm until urban renewal claimed it in the late 1800s.

Anyone who has lingered on history's frigid shores and recorded its tides like baseball scores will speak of the strange and spiny forms they poked upon in its slow-draining pools. It's uncomfortable in those places, but it's where you get the chance to know better. In 406 AD, after too many bitter winters, failing harvests and plagues, the Rhine froze solid over. Impoverished western Goths, tiring of a steady diet of starvation and fighting desperate Huns from the East, walked over the ice and headed to the ancient equivalent of California. Human floes made towards Rome, the source of power, engine of growth, the marvelous marketplace which could absorb all labor. At least it always had. Life may not have been grand for the lowest ranks there, but subsistence was delivered in its bounty, and if you worked hard, you could send some money home.

One empire is Before, another is Since. Precedent to conflagrations, their Falls are fertilized by economic refugees attracted from afar, by star-struck servants, by burrowing bureaucrats mumbling low, by slaves abundantly provoked. The classic imperial paradox lies in keeping one's gates open enough to attract brilliant influxes of diverse talent while closed enough to dilute your native-born middle classes slowly into overtaxed transparency. Empires must burn bright and preach perpetual motion, until in their final stages they start applying the salves and ointments of public relations perpetually to their burns, but provide neither self-interest nor integrity with fresh basis for vitality. Capital flees to a better engine, or at least to the next-best, and the torch is passed, most often by means of victory in battle. Sometimes, rare as Rome, there is no compelling substitute, no victory. Merely unending chaotic strife which achieves no order.

Empires are like prolonged, successful chemical reactions. They must expand until, facing hard choices of retreat or dispersal, they rapidly contract, or fall as hopeless romantics into entropy's embrace. Or perhaps: empires are more like families. To paraphrase Tolstoy, every happy empire is the same, every failed empire unique. Rome, for its part, fell after its Promise was over-extended and betrayed, hyped and hollowed into a gilded cage. What did Christian and slave mothers whisper to their Christian slave children? Even they must have whispered of deliverance from marauders, starvation, desolation, and wolves. Of bread. The Promise of Rome was prosperity and cooperation, feasts for the senses, security through Res Publica, some blessed separation of religion and state. The Romans were so like us it hurts, and it seems their self-image was nearly the same. Exceptional.

Even so, the erudite Western versions of Rome's final acts, the officially endorsed and hagiographic Historical Facts, they were rolled up in forgiving horse feathers. The Romans wrote their dramatic history to their own liking, and haven't been much taken to task. True, the decline and fall happened four or five centuries anno domini, yes, it was complicated, and yes, plenty of Germanni (in colloquial Latin, "spear-chuckers") applied to central casting for the role of Barbarian Horde. Yet far more tectonic fundamental forces than the Teutons and the Goths, forces which surpassed the control and comprehension of the actors, were the reasons Rome was burned in rage. It's strange how seldom, if at all, those factors are examined.

A tale was spun of Vandals and Visigoths, superhuman barbarians with big hands and feet who swept down irresistibly to dismantle all that was great and holy, bloody savages who couldn't be stopped. Then of course, capable of nothing else, they ushered in the next thousand years of the incompetent, illiterate, illegible Dark Ages. This is the central myth, the murkiest fallacy of Rome's demise. Easy enough to blame it on the Germanic tribes, who beat Julius Caesar himself into resigning to leave them to their wilds "east of the Rhine, north of the Danube."

Of these bloody savages, apologista wrote in language strangely akin to what we can hear in our times: "It wasn't our fault. No one could have imagined that jets. Would be used as missiles. To fly into buildings." As sins are still swept up and girdled into the guts behind cummerbunds, the Romans were cheerfully exculpatory, and contemporary historians do, after all, have to eat. Other empires less elegantly excused themselves gigantic stunning helpings of rapine, blindness, and incompetence. Spain had its blood-slathered conveyor belt of gold to worry about, Holland its water, wind, and java, the South its irreplaceable slaves, England its lethal appetite for coal. The Land of Burger King has had its equals in the fine art of threat conflation, and our trees are at home in all these forests. But are we Rome? Are we similarly doomed, standing likewise at the edge of a dozen centuries of darkness, about to be beaten by the great unwashed? There is much evidence to support a case for "yes." Let's examine some trees and forests.

Trees: Burger King upper classes over the last 50 years have entirely washed their hands of the military. To reinvigorate the services at their lowest post-Vietnam point, President Reagan attacked the Caribbean spice island of Grenada with full regalia. As if planned by Marius, our volunteer armies now increasingly attract disadvantaged and foreign conscripts who see a quicker path to benefits and full citizenship. Vigorous and wise military leadership is more likely to be passed to foreigners in the future, nicely congruent with Rome, whose legions were increasingly staffed and then commanded by the very Germans they so feared. Corruption is rampant, tax evasion for the rich is enshrined in law, the currency is devaluing. As each deck chair is frenziedly rearranged, the band plays on, because its musicians are being heavily tipped.

Forests: Our leaders do not understand the threats they face, nor do they even want to. Practical stances such as those sully carefully cultivated Beautiful Minds, through which pass timeless thoughts like these: "The Scythians, they're the rotters to worry about. They may rally in Honduras and strike at the heart of the Republic. My friend's company was vandalized in Asia. It was terrible, and the risk insurance may not pay. The vandals breed like lice, yet they make unreliable workers. They harness their women as oxen. They eat their peas with forks. Their spies walk free in our streets even as they take our charity. We must, we must extract more information. We're sorry if they go insane from pain, and we'll apologize someday. But we're scared. Oh! How could I forget the murderers of Samarkand? They hate us, and we must crush them. Again." These are the worries which distract from little problems like Global Climate Destabilization, drenching the planet in poisons conveniently absorbed through the skin, from screwing and killing people so badly for so long that their dearest wish is to strangle you to death with their own looped entrails. These were the thoughts of Caesars and their Senators.

Would the exceptional succession of fine Roman leaders in the second and third centuries have been able to deal with a huge, incipiently hostile human migration looking for shelter, warmth, food, and jobs? This was Alaric's source and base. It's very doubtful Rome could have absorbed millions of refugees, but if it had, yet more would have come. Even if the Romans had absorbed the Goths and pushed back the Huns who drove them, they could not have changed the Continent's climate, which for some reason had destabilized. It was the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The problem was systemic, dwarfed possible solutions, and leaders were overwhelmed by hordes almost without regard to the quality of either.

Speculating on the specifics of an ancient weather disaster is dicey, but it's not going too far to observe--if the Rhine froze over and the climate so shook the Germans they left their ancestral homes, one can imagine how bad it must have been for the steppe-borne Huns who pressed south upon them. Climate was the precipitant or dominant actor in Rome's fall. As Burger King's military corrodes, as yet more economic refugees become immigrants, as the polar ice caps melt with what we're told is irreversible rapidity, we may do well to ponder the inequities of Mexico, the needs and desires of Central and South America. They're all much closer than Rome was to Germania.