More Points on the Board in Iraq

Now that the Iraqi constitution is looking like more than Bush administration wishful thinking,
Mark Steyn
is allowing himself a little thimbleful of celebration. The liberals
said it couldn’t be done, but the Bushies just executed on their strategy and made it happen.

By the way, here’s another reason why Iraq isn’t another Vietnam. Back in the Sixties, the Democrats
never really had a strategy. Nixon did, but he got bounced out of office by Watergate.

Ever since 9/11 the Bush administration has been executing on a strategy, a plan (
yes, the Bushies really do have a plan) to introduce
some sort of democracy in the Middle East and to put pressure on the terror masters, first in Afghanistan,
then in Iraq, and now in Syria and Iran.

Of course, things have gone wrong. They always do. Mistakes have been made. As alway. The whole project
may blow up and end in disaster. The Israelis could be driven into the sea.

But the Bush administration keeps putting points on the board. The reduction of Kabul. The invasion
of Iraq. The interim Iraqi government. The reduction of Fallujah. The January 2005 election.
The buildup of the new Iraqi security forces. The draft constitution. These are not just propaganda and public relations. They
are real, hard-won victories. They mean something.

After 7/7, Brits are Rediscovering Britishness

In the aftermath of 7/7, the Brits are pondering what it means to be British.
Even the Labour government, which has done as much as anyone to erase the
concept of Britishness, is joining in, writes
Charles Moore.
But just what is Britishness or “British values?” How about this:

Take sport. Isn’t it rather interesting and important
that most of the greatest sports in the world - soccer, rugby, golf,
cricket, tennis, racing - began, or first took organised shape, in this
country?

It worked out that way because the British invented the games and the rules
in their own clubs—free from the government. Then there is the joint-stock
company.

Oxford and Cambridge, the ancient universities in Scotland.
Take Scouts and Guides, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, mutual societies,
charities, private clubs, trade unions, and residents’ associations.
Take the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church,
the Royal Society, the Royal Academy, the National Trust,
the Hospice Movement, Battersea Dogs’ Home and - for all I know -
the Royal and Ancient Order of Buffaloes. There is almost no end to
the list of British institutions, some of
them so successful that they have gone global.

You’ll note that most of these institutions were developed by individuals, or
groups of individuals working in a spirit of adventure and voluntary cooperation
with each other.

Even the word “`Britain’ is essentially a political word,
originally revived more than 300 years ago to bind up a populated,
multi-cultural space” that was busy uniting itself into a single United Kingdom.
Britannia, a figure last used in the Roman Empire was dragged into service
as a symbol of the new nation. But recently
“Gordon Brown announced that he was removing Britannia from
the back of the 50p piece and holding
a competition for a design to `reflect Britain today.’”

The left has thought for over a century that the nation state was
obsolete and needed to be retired as soon as possible. The question is, with what
are they going to replace the loyalty that people have
willingly given to the nation state and the sense of belonging that they
have obtained from it?

Will More Money Help?

Democrats seem convinced that they don’t have the resources to get their message out. So
Democratic strategist Rob Stein is putting together a Democracy Alliance of liberal givers
to raise $80 million for a series of liberal think tanks, according to
Thomas B. Edsall.
Stein believes that the Democrats need to replicate the policy think tanks that dominate the right:
The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and the libertarian Cato Institute.

But these Democrats miss the point and misunderstand their position. Their strategic focus
must always be on defending their existing programs, the hundred of billions of dollars that flow
out every year to Democratic voters, from Social Security to Medicare, to the myriad of social services,
to education, to the research community and to the government health system. Next to that, the
need to develop exciting new programs that catch the enthusiasm of the American people is a very
low priority.

Actually, the Democrats already have a magnificent system, with ample funding, that defends vigorously
any and all attempts to “cut” their programs. They’ll find, if they think about it, that constructing
a new layer of Democratic advocacy may just muddy the waters. The one and only thing that Democrats
should concentrate on is defending Democratic programs from the attacks of Republicans.

The trouble is that the great creaking monopoly of Democratic programs is slowly delivering less and
less while gobbling up more and more resources. Eventually, the whole thing will collapse. But why
worry? Any collapse can only happen in the far distant future. Right?

Now Even Vacations are Wired

Progress never solves anything. It only raises the stakes. Reporting from a vacation on
South Carolina’s Outer Banks,
Suzanne Fields
wonders where it will all end, when we even take our electronics on vacation. She writes on her laptop
while her grandsons play their LEGO Star Wars game nearby.

Will the violent XBox first-person shooter games create a generation of violent young men? Will the
chatter of cell phones obliterate the deep waters of long-considered wisdom? And does the
addiction of video games “offering
immediate gratification that makes disciplined study all the more difficult” mean that nobody will be left
that can think a deep thought?

Perhaps the electronification of the world will create an huge nostalgia for quiet and repose. Hunting
survives as a nostalgic male pursuit long after agriculture became the chief means of livelihood. And
the cult of the countryside began immediately upon the removal of the farmers to the city.

But how can we create a still pool of quiet in the middle of the electronic hurricane of bustle and noise and chatter?

Spengler on Global Demographics

Not surprisingly, liberal academicians have hesitated to investigate the consequences of the childless
society that they and theirs have championed. That is why we have
Spengler,
the peripatetic scholar writing at Asia Times.

Spengler wonders whether there is a statistical correlation between childbearing and religious
belief. Since no social science professionals have been doing any serious statistical study of the problem,
Spengler recently volunteered his amateur services as a temporary substitute for
serious scholarly study of the problem.

Having found no academic research that specifically measures the impact of
religious belief on fertility controlling for these factors, I have done some
calculations of my own using a cross section of data for 174 countries. My analysis,
preliminary as it is, supports the conclusion that religious belief strongly influences
fertility after controlling for wealth and education. There are lies, damned lies, and
statistics, of course, and results of this kind should be viewed with caution.
Still, this analysis passes the first cut of tests for rigor.

He finds that by far the biggest predictor of family size is literacy, but that religious belief
is also a strong predictor. All this is to support his feeling that:

Underlying the demographic crisis of the industrial world, I believe, is a spiritual
crisis. If the above analysis has any merit, the issue is not wealth, but rather the desire of men
to continue to inhabit this planet. Secular ideologies - socialism, positivism, and so forth -
promised a world free of bigotry and hatred,
and an unending vista of peace and prosperity.

And religious belief, he believes, is necessary to populate the planet because

Humankind cannot abide the terror of mortality without the promise of immortality,
I have argue in the past... In
the absence of religion human society sinks into depressive torpor.

Then Spengler turns to a
review of Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,
a book that attempts to explain the fall of societies as a consequence of environmental folly. Why should a
tale of environmental extinction appeal to a mass audience?

Diamond’s books appeal to an educated, secular readership, that is,
precisely the sort of people who have one child or none at all. If you have fewer
than two children, and most of the people you know have fewer than two children, Holmesian
deductive powers are not required to foresee your eventual demise.

Spengler things that these secular readers should look in the mirror if they want to think about
the cause of collapse.

In fact, the main reason societies fail is that they choose not to live.
That is a horrifying thought to absorb, and the average reader would much rather delve into the
details of obscure ecosystems of the past than reflect upon why
half of Eastern Europe will die out by mid-century

Of course, the real question facing the west is the Muslim demographic invasion of Europe.
They had better get on with it, Spengler
writes. Although Muslims are having lots of children compared to secular Europe, their
birth rate is falling faster. If they want to conquer Europe, they had better do it in the next
30 years, or it will be demographically too late.

In the Productivity Explosion, Government is Left Behind

In a piece published for India’s Independence Day,
Subir Gokarn
wonders why the public sector in India, from ministers down to the lowliest intern,
has not participated in the productivity explosion that is going on in the
private sector.

The unfortunate economic reality today is that the state, far
from being a partner and facilitator in quest for faster growth and
productivity gains, imposes an extra load on the system.

Precious resources that could be used in far more productive ways have
to be deployed by the private sector to offset the weaknesses in public
delivery.

In fact the way to make money in India is to enter sectors where
the government reigns incompetently supreme and deliver replacement product. He explains:

Equipment for private supply of electricity — generators,
inverters, and so on — are needed to compensate for the inadequacies of
the larger system.

As the guy says in the movie Monsoon Wedding when the lights go out:
“This is India’s Big Problem!”

Private security makes up for the perceived failure
of the state security apparatus.

Private education at every level continues to surge, while public
institutions sink. And, while access to publicly-provided drinking
water eludes an increasingly large proportion of the population, the
number of brands and the sales volumes of bottled water continue to climb.

As the little girl said: “Why is that, Daddy?”

“Er, well, that is something you will understand when you get older.”

What Reenlistment Problem?

Back in the spring, the MSM was trumpeting the news that the U.S. Army was way behind in its recruitment goals. They didn’t say so, but you could read between the lines the awful prospects: understrength units sent to fight in Iraq, plunging morale, humiliating pullout, plunging poll numbers for President Bush.

But a few months later, everything looks hunky-dory, according to Ralph Peters. It turns out that the Army will meet and exceed its recruitment goals after all.

The standout results are the re-enlistment numbers. You could say, if you were a liberal, that continued first-time enlistment was due to the naivété of poor innocent young boys from underprivileged homes who didn’t have any other option but to serve themselves up as cannon fodder. Actually, first time enlistments are right about on quota. But the real story is in re-enlistments. And it is the elite combat units that are really turning in the numbers.

Every one of the Army’s 10 divisions — its key combat organizations — has exceeded its re-enlistment goal for the year to date. Those with the most intense experience in Iraq have the best rates. The 1st Cavalry Division is at 136 percent of its target, the 3rd Infantry Division at 117 percent.

Among separate combat brigades, the figures are even more startling, with the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division at 178 percent of its goal and the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Mech right behind at 174 percent of its re-enlistment target.

How could this happen? It’s going to take quite a bit of explaining away. But don’t worry. After the MSM has gone through its silence phase on the topic, we will start to see explanations. It’s not what you think, we will read. Things are really going badly. Some specialties are suffering such poor re-enlistment rates that it will soon affect combat readiness.

The truth is that, in the aftermath of Vietnam, the U.S. armed forces have spent a generation learning how to create soldiers according to the pattern advocated by the brilliant German General von Seeckt: “self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility.” You could call the process making a band of brothers.

That is what the U.S. armed forces have learned to do, and that is why re-enlistment rates are sky high.