A Wise, Outspoken Marine

FIASCO, by Thomas Ricks, introduced me to Marine Corps General James Mattis, esteemed by his peers as the finest soldier our country has produced since the Korean War. The portrait of the politically incorrect General Mattis, drawn by Ricks, brought to mind one of my heroes, Joseph W. Stilwell, esteemed by his contemporaries as "the fightingest General in the United States Army."

General Stilwell often exasperated his civilian overlords with his caustic remarks. Frequently, he was cautioned to to stop referring to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, El Supremo in China, as "the Peanut." Finally, the G-mo wore out FDR's patience. A firm message (a "hot bundle of paprika," according to Stilwell) was dispatched to the G-mo insisting he implement reforms to "increase the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army." General Stilwell memorialized the event with a poem:

I've waited long for vengeance, at last I've had my chance.
I've looked the Peanut in the eye and kicked him in the pants.
The old harpoon was ready, with aim and timing true,
I sank it to the handle and stung him through and through.
The little bastard shivered and lost the power of speech.
His face turned green and quivered as he struggled not to screech.
For all my weary battles, for all my hours of woe,
At last I've had my innings and laid the Peanut low.
I know I've still to suffer and run a weary race,
But, Oh! The blessed pleasure, I've wrecked the Peanut's face.

General Mattis looks like General Stilwell. And he sounds like him, too. The protocol boys had to do back flips trying to anesthecize these remarks in San Diego in February 2005.

It's fun to shoot people. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they don't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

About the fighting in Iraq, General Mattis said it is "almost embarrassing intellectually." Then, he warned,

Don't patronize this enemy. They mean business. They mean every word they say. Don't imagine an enemy somewhere in the future, and you're going to transform so you can fight him. They're killing us now. Their will is not broken. They mean it.

Naturally, the press focused on the colorful bellicosity and political INcorrectness of the "fun to shoot people" part of this quote. The underlying wisdom and criticism of the Bush blood for oil policy went by unnoticed.

The only objective worth achieving in this confrontation with Islamic Fundamentalism is the end of purdah, getting women out into the sunshine. So far, that aspiration, dressed up as a War for Democracy, has been swallowed up in the pretext for an oil grab. Or, it has been lost sight of in a shallow game of opportunism.
During the Soviet regime in Afghanistan, 55% of government employees were women. Unfortunately, for those semi-emancipated women, we saw an opportunity to use the Islamic Fundamentalist rebels to get even with the Russians for their meddling in Vietnam. Our clients won - and the Berlin Wall came crashing down on the women of Afghanistan. They were pink-slipped, sent home and forced back behind the Veil. Those who persisted in modern ways were marched to the new soccer stadium and executed in front of 30,000 cheering men.

We had a chance to redeem ourselves for this crime against the women of Afghanistan. Instead, we left the job half-finished and rushed off to invade Iraq, perhaps the most secular country in the Middle East. Our Saudi masters were calling.

Iraq, like Afghanistan (and Ba'athist Syria) had made great strides bringing women out from behind the Veil. Our ally, Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, was still punishing the women, who, in 1990, had gone out for a drive unescorted.

(In addition, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Osama bin Laden, penniless after his alms-giving mission to the Sudan, relied on a network of Saudi and Gulf States donors to finance al Qaeda.)

We chose to back away from an unfinished mission of redemption in Afghanistan in order to bring down the most secular country in the Middle East, adding the women of Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the list of those betrayed. How pathetic!

The remarks of General Mattis bring into sharp relief the essence of this struggle. The enemy wants the Veil. We don't. That is a fight worth having.

(There is more along these lines in my essays A WINNABLE WAR, THE REAGAN LEGACY, THE FOUR BASIC STRATEGIC CHOICES, and RUMFOORD'S POCKET HISTORY OF IRAQ.)

Writings

I should post a resume for my creative works.

SCREENPLAYS

Vinegar Joe

This dramatizes one of the great adventure stories of World War II. In 1942, U.S. Army General Joseph W. Stilwell was sent to China to "increase the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army." The mission turned sour, failing to turn the tide of the Japanese onslaught in Burma. Stilwell's headquarters command was forced to escape through the worst malarial district in the world into British India. Stilwell was the only person to lead a group out with no fatalities. On other trails, 30,000 people perished.

The Peanut and I

A sequel to Vinegar Joe, taking the story through the Cairo Conference of December 1943. General Stilwell, the fightingest General in the United States Army, was placed in a very sensitive political mission. This script dramatizes all the obstacles to the great General's fulfillment of his mission.

* I plan at least two more scripts dramatizing the Stilwell saga.

Lyon of Missouri

This tells the story of Nathaniel Lyon, a General who saved Missouri for the Union in the early months of the war. Lyon was the first Union hero of the war. Had he survived the Battle of Wilson Creek, he might have been lifted up to command the Army of the Potomac rather than McClellan. This might have shortened the war by two years. The designers of the Civil War game rate Lyon on a par with Stonewall Jackson, in terms of the significance of their deaths.

Lyon was an extraordinary character. The first five pages of this script will make the best actors drool for the part.

Cycling to Paradise

This romantic comedy tells the story of a group of rank amateurs in Denver trying to produce a movie. It is set around my job as a school bus driver.

Rumsfeld's Folly

For this script, I simply imposed a linear structure on Kurt Vonnegut's, The Sirens of Titan, and substituted luminaries of the Bush Administration: i.e. Noel Constant = Bush, Sr.; Malachi Constant = Bush, Jr.; Salo, the cloven-hoofed Tralfamadorian = Cheney; etc.

You can get an idea by scrolling down to the entry "Rumfoord's Pocket History..."

At Summer Solstice with the Ancient Ones

The plot line for A Midsummer Night's Dream set in Mesa Verde during the 12th Century. Sounds pretty dreamy, don't you think?

I have made it through the last scene, but this script is far from finished. The names for the immortals must be changed. Anything indicating ancient Greece must be squeezed out of the script. Almost anything too intrusive upon the religion of the Puebloan peoples must be squeezed out. Etc. A lot of work still to do.

The Love Bubble Man

This is a fictional story worked around a peculiar tangent of the JFK assassination. Two reporters, Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, spent time in Jack Ruby's apartment on the evening of November 22, 1963 (hours after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, and before Ruby shot Oswald in the Dallas police station).

At present, this is a confused script, but, if thinned down, it might work well as a Cold Case episode

The Graven Images of Nationalism

Incomplete, about half finished. A fictional story set around the catastrophe in Iraq. I'm just too angry to contain long soliloquies condemning the war.

STAGE PLAYS

Czar Reed and the Punk

I call this a dialogue between the 19th and 20th Centuries. It is a two man play, minimal set. The historical personage is Thomas B. Reed, a United States Speaker of the House, 51st and 55th Congresses. Speaker Reed was a wonderful character. A simple quote from one of his contemporary opponents across the aisle (Champ Clark, a Democract from Missouri), should suffice. "Speaker Reed ruled the House by the brutality of his intellect. Sometimes he rubbed the skin off. Sometimes he cut to the bone. And sometimes, he crushed in a skull as though it were an eggshell."

Reckoning with Marlowe

This play was conceived as a companion piece to Shakespeare in Love. It is structured around the production of a play. In this case, the play within the play is Tamburlaine, the first play employing blank verse. It made a sensation in Elizabethan London.

This play makes a perfect evening of theater. Despite the serious theme and the depth of the tragedy, there is an amazing amount of humor (thanks, in large part, to Thomas Nashe).

Worcester v. The State of Georgia

Two cases reached the Supreme Court challenging the Indian Removal Act of 1829, the legislative crime which enabled the Trail of Tears. The second case, Worcester v. the State of Georgia, proved a victory for the Cherokees. Unfortunately, a genocidal maniac, Andrew Jackson, occupied the White House at the time. President Jackson refused to implement the Court order. The Trail of Tears followed.

This play dramatizes both Supreme Court cases.

The Humblest Individual

In Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, a remarkable civil rights case reached the Federal Circuit Court. 131 years prior to Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, William Johnson, a State's Rights Supreme Court justice, citing the commerce clause to the Constitution, decided a case in favor of the plaintiff, a person of color.

This case swirls around the Denmark Vesey slave revolt of 1822. The play is quite a window into the times. Unfortunately, the swift pace of the story is completely broken by the actual court proceedings. This defect might not be so noticeable in a screenplay.

TELEPLAYS

The Gold Conspiracy

Beginning in 1949, the gifted Dutch diplomat and Sinologist, Robert H. van Gulik, began writing the Judge Dee mysteries. Taking a hero of Chinese folklore, Judge Dee, a Tang Dynasty official legendary for his rectitude and sleuthing, van Gulik created a series of very entertaining books celebrated by scholars and mystery fans alike.

Van Gulik made creative use of a key feature of ancient Chinese administrative practice, the rule of avoidance. Mandarin officials seldom stayed more than three years in any post, especially if they were doing a great job. They did not want anyone to build up an independent power base. So van Gulik sets his stories in several different places, following the career of Judge Dee.

The Gold Conspiracy dramatizes van Gulik's book, The Chinese Gold Murders. Judge Dee travels from Beijing to his first post at Penglai, in Shandong Province, where he exposes a plot of one of his classmates to manipulate the gold market.

Three Penglai Puzzlers

This script dramatizes three of van Gulik's short stories.

The Willow Pattern

A dramatization of another van Gulik story, the last set in Judge Dee's first post, in Shandong Province.

Obviously, the Judge Dee series would make a wonderful addition to the Mystery series on PBS. There probably would be another 12-15 scripts taking Judge Dee through his entire career.

Aussie Aviators

Afer the Armistice in 1918, the Australian government sponsored an air race from London to Fanny Bay, Darwin, despite the fact that the infrasructure supporting flight did not exist east of Calcutta. All of the aviators involved experienced a unique adventure. However, the team of Parer and McIntosh, flying a dilapidated, war surplus DeHavilland DH9 endured, perhaps, the greatest adventure of the 20th Century. Eight of the twelve episodes envisioned have been written.

"The Armistice and a Peacetime Folly"

In November 1918, John McIntosh began pilot training. After just a few days in the course, the war was over and training ceased. Raymond Parer, on the other hand, was the finest test pilot of the day. This episode dramatizes their meeting and the announcement of the Race.

"Inquest, Sabotage, Espionage, and Death"

Episode two tells the story of the failed teams. The Alliance team crashed into a Surbiton orchard and died 8 minutes after take-off. There was an inquest. The Blackburn Kangaroo team crashed at the gate of an insane asylum in Crete. An oil return hose suspiciously failed, causing the crash. The Sopwith Wallaby team, taking a more northerly route than the other teams, landed in the middle of a revolution in Serbia. They barely escaped execution as spies. The team of Howell and Fraser crashed off the coast of Corfu and drowned in 8 feet of water.

"Dodging Redcaps"

In episode three, our heroes, Parer and McIntosh, depart London in early January 1920, one month after the Smith Brothers, in their state of the art Vickers Vimy, had arrived in Darwin, winning the Prize. Parer and McIntosh did not have clear permission to fly. Technically, they were away without leave and subject to capture by the British military police, the Redcaps.

"Aflame over Forti di Marmi"

Episode Four. After two weeks in Paris repairing the plane, Parer and McIntosh continued on toward Rome. Above Forti di Marmi, a little town in northern Italy, a wing caught fire. Only a rapid descent of 5000 feet averted doom.

"Vented by Vesuvius"

Episode Five. The leg from Rome to Cairo was highlighted by a near crash into Vesuvius when a vent of gas out of the crater created a draft sucking the plane down thousands of feet in a few seconds.

"A Mills Bomb in the Assyrian Desert."

Episode Six. The leg from Cairo to Baghdad was punctuated by a daybreak raid of marauding Arabs on the shores of a lake somewhere near Ramadie.

"Friendly Cannibals"

Episode Nine. The leg from Calcutta to Rangoon included an emergency landing on an island in the middle of a tributary of the Irrawaddy River. The flight would have ended there without the help of a tribe of primitive people.

"Upside Down in the Land Down Under"

In episode twelve, Parer and McIntosh take a victory lap south and east from Darwin, destination Melbourne. The flight ends not far from Melbourne when a gust of wind flips the plane over. Parer saves McIntosh from a firy death, getting him out of his harness and gasoline spills all over the Great Scot.

Bumper Stickers

I have adorned the bumper of my Saturn LS with three stickers: 1) "We are making enemies faster than we can kill them"; 2) "Jesus is a Liberal" and; 3) I'm already against the next war."

After work one day, I found a 3X5 note card in my passenger seat which read, "You're a jerk for your bumper sticker." One of Limbaugh's Loonies just had to share his thoughts with me. I don't know which bumper sticker offended him, but I am prepared to defend them all.

Before stating my three cases, it is worth noting that my opponent did not damage my car. Right wing loonies are morally superior to left wing loonies because they respect property rights. Left wing loonies love Humanity... in the abstract. They just hate people. Right wing loonies like people - and respect the property of others. But Humanity gives them the creeps, conjuring an image of hordes of little brown people who must be kept in line with The Whip.

Now, about my bumper stickers.

1) "We are making enemies faster than we can kill them."

That should be painfully obvious to everyone. A friend just returned from New Zealand. Everywhere she went, people expressed their contempt for our President. How could you put such a moronic warmonger in the White House,? they often asked. Imagine! Hated in New Zealand.

The neo-con clowns, so fond of Churchill, should have considered this valuable observation: "The only thing worse than fighting a war with allies, is fighting one without them."

2) "Jesus is a liberal."

The centerpiece of liberal thought is the Separation of Church and State. That thought never crossed the collective Mind of ancient Athens. The Romans never conjured it. The first utterance conveying the notion of separating Church and State was, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Render unto God that which is God's." When Jesus disappeared from this earth, all the push to implement that idea departed with Him. The Catholic Church became the primary obstacle.

Eighteen centuries after the Resurrection, the Founding Fathers, working collectively, managed to implement the idea - into our Bill of Rights - which Jesus had conceived working alone.

How ironic that today's Christians are our greatest threat to the Separation of Church and State.

3) "I'm already against the next war."

The neo-con screwballs are trotting out the same old reductionist logic that plunged us into the Inferno of Iraq. After dismantling the Reagan policy of using Iraq to contain Iran and Hezbollah, they argue that deterrence has failed. In other words, they created this Crisis and now argue that only they can resolve it.
These people are a curse. It's time to send them off to combat in Iraq. Or let the Marines use them for bayonet practice!

Let the Professionals Nominate

I have become a Bill Clinton fan. His return to the White House, as First Spouse, would signal a welcome revival of competence to the Executive Branch. However, like President Reagan, another competent Chief Executive, President Clinton made several grievous errors. Unlike Reagan, whose mistakes were fueled by Ideology, Clinton's mistakes were driven by Expediency.

I will focus on two tragic expedient decisions: 1) the cruise missile attack on Sudan, and 2) signing the Iraq Liberation Act.

In 1997, the Sudanese were tiring of their political and economic isolation. They had gone about as far as they could on alms from Osama bin Laden. They were looking for a bigger alms-giver and began working back channels to the Clinton Administration. They were willing to turn Osama over to us. These diplomatic feelers were rebuffed. We can never know whether the Sudanese were serious. President Clinton chose cruise missiles over diplomacy. One suspects he needed a pyro-technic display to divert attention away from the sex scandal.

(This, in no way, excuses the Republican Congress for the lurid pursuit of impeachment as al Qaeda strengthened. At least President Clinton had his eye on the ball. Meawhile, the Republicans could not take their eyes off his balls.)

General Anthony Zinni urged President Clinton to veto the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. General Zinni clearly foresaw that the neo-Conservative warmongers would later cite that Act as evidence of bi-partisan commitment to topple Saddam. For the warmongers, Clinton's signature was the keystone in their propaganda war, justifying their sick doctrine of pre-emption. President Clinton listened patiently to General Zinni, then disregarded the advice. He chose to kick that can down the road rather than face down the neo-con lunatics.

Senator Clinton's vote to authorize the war is just one more instance of Clinton-style political expediency. Cold analysis of strategic reality fell victim to political triangulation. She must appear tough at all costs, no matter how foolish the policy. Or tragic the consequences. We can expect more of this sort of Expediency if Mrs. Clinton achieves the Presidency.

All of these concerns pale in comparison to the opportunity cost of nominating Senator Clinton. If the nomination were in the hands of the professionals, as in the good ol' days, the ticket would be Gore/Obama. Though I am not terribly enthusiastic about Al Gore, the simple fact is that such a ticket might get 60% of the vote against any Republican ticket. Such a landslide would marginalize the right wing loonies for two or three decades. They are a pestilence. We must innoculate ourselves from them if we want to reverse ourselves in the War on Terror and start winning. (Jim Webb as Secretary of Defense, Anthony Zinni as head of the National Security Council, and Richard Holbrooke as Secretary of State would be huge strides in the right direction.)

If the Democrats fail to seize this opportunity, they must be accounted part of the disease and not the cure.

A Paean to Republicans

Years ago, I wrote a play about Thomas B. Reed, Republican of Maine, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in the 1890's. One of Reed's associates once described him by saying he had the "strongest intellect crossed on the best courage of any man in public life." Another associate, describing that powerful intellect, wrote: "Sometimes he rubs the skin off, sometimes he cuts to the bone, and sometimes he crushes in a skull as though it were an eggshell." All in all, a colorful figure.

Reed once remarked that, "Incorporated man has the courage sublime to put Unincorporated man to shame. Unincorporated man is satisfied to be paid once. How many payments would satisfy incorporated man, human experience has yet to decide."

Life and the marketplace have afforded many opportunities to observe the wisdom of this aphorism. Most recently, the Service Department at my Saturn dealer instructed me on corporate greed.

Over the last two years, I have spent about $3500 on car repairs. Given that I had bought the Saturn for reasons of economy, I was growing impatient with the steady assault on my pocketbook.

At the beginning of August, I took the car in because the air conditioner was working only on the freeway. After an hour, the service specialist gave me a list of things the car needed done - new struts, new coolant hoses, a windshield washer motor, etc. totalling at least $1200. The air conditioner, awaiting diagnosis, would be more, of course. Perhaps a lot more.

Fortunately, it was too late in the day to get on with all that, so I drove home. They expected me on the following morning.

The following morning, I went over to Strickly Ray's, the neighborhood mechanic. At the end of the day, Ray told me that the hoses have tens of thousands of miles more life left - and that there is no problem with the struts.

No charge. (He didn't have time to diagnose the air conditioner.)

Incorporated man has numbers to reach and quotas to fill. Unincorporated man is a free agent. Incorporated man looks upon customers as a means to an end. Unincorporated man looks upon the customer as a fellow free agent - an end in him/herself.

Democrats may be as forthright as Republicans in their social relationships. But can those who believe in a closed shop bring the same integrity to the marketplace? Is it not true that their many schemes to engineer a perfectly just society require the incorporation of us all? What happens to Ray Strick in that perfect world?

A Winnable War

(This was written at the end of September 2004)

Al Qaeda recruitment must be up. The President sounded downbeat, opining that the War Against Terror is unwinnable; that containment is the best we can hope for. I feel his pain. But the war is winnable.

This war, fundamentally, is all about Legitimacy. Terrorists take no responsibility to govern territory. Though Islamic terrorists may distribute alms to the poor - as a religious duty - that hardly constitutes taking up the full responsibility of governing. To set up shop, they need a failing state, a stretch of earth teeming with potential recruits.

When it became apparent that Pakistan had become a haven for al-Qaeda, the Bush Adminstration quickly forgave billions of dollars of debt and ended trade sanctions. Afghanistan, a total basket case teeming with terrorists, became the subject of an international donor's conference. A Democratic administration, certainly, would have implemented the same policies. Under the present (essentially anarchic) system of competing nation-states, the best hope for a failed state is to get on the list of "havens for terrorists."

Three out of every ten human beings goes to bed hungry at night. 90% of humanity must eke out an existence in bribery economies - failed or failing states. They are desperate and under the present system, terrorism pays. No wonder bin Laden is a hero to millions, perhaps a billion people worldwide. The Islamic fundamentalists, led by the Jihadists, hold a trump card given to them by the G8, a vast and growing gap between the developed and developing world.

The Nation-State has served its historical purpose. Humanity cannot stand still. We can either go back to the days of competing patriarchal theocracies or forward to an elected, representative and sovereign United Nations.

Here in the United States, President Bush is touted as a decisive leader. A great number of people do not care whether those firm decisions are also wise. There is a reason for that indifference. A big chunk of the Republican base are evangelical Christians - people who were disappointed when Y2K failed to bring on the Rapture. They pray for a Day of Judgment. Prod them on Iraq, point out the lies and manipulations, and they remain unruffled. It is Prophecy, they say: Armageddon. To them, President Bush is a divine instrument. They do not care whether American credibility is obliterated overseas. They do not care how many foreign countries are turned into playgrounds for terrorists. It is Prophecy. America is the instrument of divine retribution. And, since the Day of Judgment is coming, they are indifferent about the multi-trillions of dollars of debt this administration has racked up. It is an investment in death, part of God's plan to destroy the world.

(Less robust souls seem to buy into the deficit as a form of suicide. It is almost as if the Administration has cut a psychic deal with bin Laden: "If we commit suicide, will you promise not to attack us? Pretty please!")

This death wish, to a certain degree, is shared by at least 23% of the rest of us. In a starving world, nearly one quarter of the American population is clinically obese. Adolescent boys today consume nearly four times as much soda pop as my generation. Girls don't drink milk. Schools around the country have prostituted themselves to the fast food and soft drink industries. Imagine the number of diabetics there will be two decades from now.

Bush Republicans don't care about unfunded entitlements. Bush Republicans don't care about Halliburton raiding the Treasury. They don't care because the future is unreachable - just as the War on Terror is unwinnable. They just want to be the last to die, so they invest their tax rebates on panic rooms in walled, gated communities.

A fundamental reality of Capitalism - price-factor equalization (manifested as 'out-sourcing') exacerbates the terrorist crisis. Californians want to keep the Punjabis, Bengalis and other Indians out of Silicon Valley. They want to keep Hewlett Packard out of Bangalore. Will this solve the problem? Of course not. Capitalism will always find the most willing, able, productive, and profitable hands. Today, those hands are in China and India. If HP fails to put those hands to work, someone else will. Do the technology workers of the developed West expect their counterparts in the developing East to politely starve?

American credibility in the Middle East has been eroding ever since the CIA installed the Shah in Iran five decades ago. The present Administration has utterly blown whatever little credibility remained. It is ironic that people calling themselves conservatives have nailed us into this coffin. Traditional conservatism postulates that tax-averse citizens, by their stinginess, limit the capacity of Government to implement foolish policies. They once understood, better than liberals, that our power far exceeds our wisdom. How ironic that those old-fashioned xenophobic isolationists are the ones who would have prevented us from discrediting ourselves abroad by denying us the means of prosecuting foreign adventures. No future administration will ever restore the credibility they would never have lost.

So - the factors determing whether the War on Terror is winnable are:

1. The Nation-State system is only as good as its weakest link. Thus, it has failed.
2. Structural deficits and high tolerance of cognitive dissonance is evidence that the United States is in a self-destructive swoon.
3. American military power vastly exceeds the wisdom of the Electorate, resulting in the final erosion of American credibility - the rock on which postwar security has been based.
4. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the greed of weapons manufacturers worldwide has brought about an unlimited supply of lethal weaponry.
5. Price/factor equalization is a tremendous opportunity for the developing world.
6. Into the future, the entitlements programs of most developed countries are insolvent.

This mixture will ferment. The future is indeed perilous. Our stratetic margin of error narrows monthly.

There are two basic paths to a livable future. One is Fortress America. The other, its opposite, is Globalism, a forward strategy. I'm afraid we must choose.

Fortress America, in this new world, would be a constellation of ideas associated with Patrick Buchanan - Protectionism, Isolationism, and Nativism (anti-immigration policies). To that, I would add a Jeffersonian embargo - to demonstrate our sincerity to the Islamic World and other traditional societies. They are deeply offended (and destabilized) by the filth (movies, music, fashions, idolatry and pornography) we export. Imposing an embargo would demonstrate our sensitivity to the disruption we cause in traditional societies.

Historians generally agree that Jefferson's embargo failed. I disagree. It helped keep the United States neutral during the Napoleonic wars. (In fact, we were able to exploit Napoleon's desperate need for cash and purchase the enormous Louisiana Territory for 3 cents an acre!) It does not matter whether embargoes completely choke off all exports. It matters that we make a sincere effort to so choke. The world may be unstable for awhile as Europe and China take up the burden we have shouldered for half a century. But, both of those civilizations have taken up the responsibility of stabilizing their respective regions in the past. They have experience. They are mature civilizations. The world may well breathe a sigh of relief that America will no longer project our collective un-wisdom outward. And, the world market will no longer be a dumping ground for our excess capacity.

Fortress America, sensibly, accommodates the worries and fears of traditional societies. It is important to recall that we are not so removed from ignorance and misogyny. During the 19th Century, overworked women were often diagnosed with "neuralgia." One of the recommended treatments - a clitorectomy - is better known as female emasculation. Misogyny ran deep in our culture. In 1848, a court in New York state upheld the right of a clergyman to whip his wife once every month - essential to her "better instruction" according to his theology. So, we have little right to jump on our high horse and beat our breasts about the backwardness of the Islamic World.

Yet, that is precisely what I urge with the forward strategy - Globalism.

Mankind must now dump the Nation-State. That system, a liberating force during the 18th and 19th Centuries, is now a curse. While 1/3 of humanity goes to bed hungry, the populations of wealthy countries dispute silly, self-absorbed nonsense like gay marriage. While 90% of humanity must find a way to keep body and soul together in bribary economies, the populations of wealthy countries fret over their entitlements. Why are those 90% NOT entitled? Do you really think we are more beloved of God? Small wonder there is an endless supply of suicide bombers eager to die for bin Laden. Only an elected, representative, and sovereign United Nations - a necessary institution awaiting birth - can act legitimately to dry up that pool.

The Nation-State, morally, died on June 28, 1914. We are still squandering resources trying to revive the corpse. Nine decades of investment and what do have to show for it? World War I. World War II. Proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam. Genocide in Rwanda. Communal terror in the Holy Lands. Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans (again! right where the first shot was fired!). And now the transformation of Iraq into a terrorist playground.

Resuscitation has failed. The stinking, festering corpse of the Nation-State is spawning lethal maggots - bin Laden and his disciples. Incinerate the corpse and the maggots will die. Or, would you rather die with the corpse?

In my opinion, Fortress America would be more investment in resuscitation - throwing good money after bad.

When Tropical Storm Bonnie struck Florida, I predicted that 2004 would be the worst hurricane season in that state's history. I predicted that landfall for one of those hurricanes would be Palm Beach County. Instead, two hurricanes hit where the 2000 election was stolen. In September 2001, I predicted that for every year the world delays amending the Charter of the United Nations, there will be five years of war. By my reckoning, this war will last well into the third decade of this millenium.

Do not regret the end of the Nation-State, even our beloved United States of America. The Bible told us this day would come.

"All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity." Isaiah 40:17

Grooving the Nuclear Option

Dear Mr. Carlson,

The media - and especially conservative media - is grooving debate on Iraq into a rut to make it seem we have no choice but to support the surge or expand the war into Iran. Conservative media - and most of the so-called "liberal" media, as well - lament Iranian support of Shi'a insurgents, making it seem we have no choice but to strike Iran. Nobody in the conservative media - and damn few "liberals" - mention that 50% of Sunni insurgents in Iraq are Saudis. Why do you all ignore that fact? Are you owned by Aramco?

And - you all keep framing the "al Qaeda in Iraq" issue exactly as President Bush wants it framed. You really want us to believe - that if we leave Iraq - that al Qaeda will just march into Baghdad and take over, unopposed. Do you really think a bunch of Sunni sectarian bigots will be greeted as liberators in a country with a Shi'a majority? In a country with mobilized Shi'a militias? Will Hezbollah idly stand by while al Qaeda takes over? The only thing uniting the sectarian lunatics is the competition to see how many of us they can kill. With us gone, they will have only each other to immolate. That inferno should keep them busy for a long, long time.

It's a pretty shameful thing we've done - light-heartedly and light-mindedly bringing this catastrophe upon the peoples of Iraq. But the surge cannot reverse the insurgency. Counter-insurgency specialists talk of an immobilization ratio of 10-1. Irregular/Guerrilla/Insurgent forces outnumbered 10-1 by conventional forces can achieve stalemate. Defeating an insurgency - and Malaya in the 50s is the gold standard of counter-insurgency - requires at least a decade and a 30-1 advantage. Those are the numbers. Read them and sober up.