The Problem With Historical Analogy

David Ignatius thinks we may be able to avoid a "long war" by not creating more extremists. While I would like to believe him, It's also a very dangerous proposition to reason by historical analogy. You may pick the wrong one.

The implication of Sageman's analysis is that the Sunni jihadism of al-Qaeda and its spinoff groups is a generational phenomenon. Unless new grievances spawn new recruits, it will gradually ebb over time. In other words, this is a fire that will gradually burn itself out unless we keep pumping in more oxygen. Nothing in Sageman's analysis implies that America should be any less aggressive in defending itself against terrorism. But he does argue that we should choose our offensive battles wisely and avoid glamorizing the jihadist network further through our rhetoric or actions.

Sageman's focus on the generational arc of violence got me thinking about my recent trip to Iran. The revolutionary intensity hasn't disappeared there, but it is certainly further down the curve than is the Sunni world. When I attended Friday prayers at Tehran University, I was struck by how old the people shouting "death to America" were. I would guess the average age was well over 40. The generation of the Iranian revolution is getting long in the tooth. The only sure way to ignite revolutionary zealotry in the younger generation would be for America to go to war with Iran — something I dearly hope we can avoid.

Believe me, as the father of two sons, one already serving in Iraq, I would like nothing better than to avoid any war. Here is the problem: While the implication of Dr. Sageman's book may be that the phenomenon of Jihadism is transitory, the reality of history says that movements like this spring up from time to time through history. Some are very transitory. Luddites were short-lived.

Some religious movements were not. Neither were some political movements with religious trappings. The Roman and Persian Empires as well as the Ottoman's come to mind.

So the question is, what kind of movement is Islamism? Transitory or a deadly long-term foe. Ignatius chooses to believe the former. I fear it may be the latter.

UPDATE: Tigerhawk notes one particular thing that Ignatius gets dead wrong.

Chafee Wins In Rhode Island

Republican Lincoln Chafee has won the primary in Rhode Island. His opponent, conservative Steve Laffey, has reportedly conceded.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Chafee had 34,042 votes, or 54 percent, to Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey's 29,431 votes, or 46 percent.

Chafee, whose challenge was the latest test of anti-incumbent sentiment and the polarization of politics, told supporters: "Our goal has always been to find the common ground for the common good. … Partisan politics must not prevail."

I think pragmatism won over ideology here.

Encyclopedia Wars

Interesting little discussion between Jimmy Wales, the creator of the Wikipedia and Dale Hoiberg, the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica from the Opinion Journal. It was an email debate, if you will and I think it shows both the strengths and the weaknesses of the two different models - a product of a small group of scholars and the effort of an anonymous group of people with no way to check their credentials.

Jimmy Wales begins: We don't view the open system as inherently superior in all respects; it is different, and it has some major strengths and of course raises some important challenges. The strengths include a much greater timeliness, a much more comprehensive coverage, and the wide range of inputs means a good chance at a more balanced and more neutral coverage. The weaknesses include the possibility of vandalism, and the fact that in the current incarnation of Wikipedia everything is always a work in progress.

We do not believe that any resource tool can be reliable without scholarly input; this is why we so warmly welcome and invite the contributions of experts. It is a longstanding mistake to think of Wikipedia as being anti-elitist. Virtually every top Wikipedian I know is an elitist of the best sort: We love people who know what they are talking about.

Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopedia. This means that we invite anyone to take our work and reuse it freely. You can copy it, modify it, redistribute it, and even redistribute modified versions. Commercially or noncommercially. We believe that encyclopedias should not be locked up under the control of a single organization, but a part of the healthy dialog of a free society.

….

Dale Hoiberg: I agree with some of Mr. Wales's points. Clearly, Wikipedia and Britannica are very different kinds of works. Even Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, a fan of Wikipedia's, says Britannica and Wikipedia are different animals.

But there is little evidence to suggest that simply having a lot of people freely editing encyclopedia articles produces more balanced coverage. On the contrary, it opens the gates to propaganda and seesaw fights between writers with different axes to grind.

Britannica draws from a community, just as Wikipedia does. Ours consists of more than 4,000 scholars and experts around the world who serve as our contributors and advisers. Our system is designed to produce sound, informed judgments that lead to balanced presentations of the most controversial subjects. Longer articles often involve multiple contributors and, importantly, all Britannica contributors are directed to include alternative points of view wherever applicable. We continually revisit controversial articles, and since we publish principally on the Internet we can revise them when we see fit to do that.

While Wikipedia may welcome scholars, all the reports I've seen suggest that most of the work is done by individuals who, though very dedicated, have little or no scholarly background.

On the question of editorial control, I hardly think having an encyclopedia published by one organization undermines healthy dialog, since in a free society there are many voices. A reliable and well-written reference work helps keep the quality of the debate high.

Please read the whole thing if you'd like to see a debate from the "old guard" and the "upstart". Both, I think, have their places. I use the Wiki often because it is quick and easy (you also have to take any article with a grain of salt and realize it may change before anyone opens a link to it that you embed in a post). I am also a longstanding Britannica fan. I actually own a copy of the 11th edition of the Britannica, the one that is considered almost legendary. It is the compact edition, not the full size, but it is extraordinary. What is sad about this debate is that one thing becomes apparent:

Almost 100 years from now, nobody will be able to hold a 2006 edition of the Wikipedia or the Britannica in their hands as I can with my 11th edition. We have gained much with the internet, but we have also lost something.

The End Of The Road

The UN is rapidly reaching the end of whatever usefulness it had in the world. In the concerted effort to undermine the United States, the UN, despite its general support for many thuggish regimes throughout the world, appears to be getting caught in the same net. When a genocidal regime like the one in the Sudan starts accusing Kofi Annan of being an American puppet, the end of the road is in sight. (Incidentally, keep in mind that the New York Times cheerfully carries advertising for Sudan while Actively trying to undermine the American government). The genocide will continue while the bureaucrats in the UN wring their hands.

A senior Sudanese parliamentarian accused UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of spearheading a US-engineered conspiracy against Khartoum following a stark warning issued by the world body and Washington over the situation in Darfur.

"Annan is spearheading a conspiracy engineered by the US against the Sudan," senior parliamentarian Ismail Haj Mussa told the official Omdurman radio.

Backed by the United States, Annan has been pushing for the deployment of UN peacekeepers to replace an ill-equipped cash-strapped African Union force that has failed to stem the more than three-year-old bloodshed.

"Thanks to Kofi Annan, there is no longer an independent UN but only a section within the American state department," Mussa charged.

The UN Security Council two weeks ago adopted a resolution urging the deployment in Darfur — an arid territory roughly the size of France — of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers.

The Sudanese government has consistently rejected the option of a UN deployment in Darfur and instead dispatched its own forces to the western region, sparking fresh clashes with holdout rebel factions.

"The fighting started yesterday morning in Umm Sidr," some 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Al-Fasher in North Darfur, National Redemption Front spokesman Ahmed Yusef told AFP.

"Seven fighters were killed and 10 others wounded," Yusef said, adding that the government used helicopters in its latest offensive and also lost "several" forces in the fighting.

There was no immediate comment from the Sudanese military or government on the latest bout of fighting in Darfur.

Meanwhile, our homegrown "internationalists" will shrug their shoulders at the situation. As will the dedicated left of Europe. Most won't even notice Sudan - it's off the radar when they are hunting their really big game: George Bush.

AL GORE LEANS RIGHT!

An important, if exceedingly inconvenient, truth. Via Tim Blair. (Definitely worth all caps shout).

On Enabling Behaviors And Useful Idiots

Or: The trouble with asshats. Because of the lies, distortions, stupidity and vitriolic hatred that the 9/11 "truthers" are spreading worldwide, we as a nation are becoming less and less safe. As this mass psychosis spews its infectious pus like a lanced boil across the rest of the world, those who hate us are emboldened. By enabling these enemies, the useful idiots raise the world's anger and hatred against us.

Chavez did not specifically accuse the U.S. government of having a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks, but rather suggested that theories of U.S. involvement bear examination.

The Venezuelan leader, an outspoken critic of U.S. President George W. Bush, was reacting to a television report investigating a theory that the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives after hijacked airplanes crashed into them in 2001.

"The hypothesis is not absurd . . . that those towers could have been dynamited," Chavez said in a speech to supporters. "A building never collapses like that, unless it's with an implosion."

"The hypothesis that is gaining strength . . . is that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens of all over the world," Chavez said.

"Why? To justify the aggressions that immediately were unleashed on Afghanistan, on Iraq."

Chavez has said the U.S. launched those wars to ensure its political and economic power.

The U.S. government says al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"A plane supposedly crashed into the Pentagon, but no one ever found a single remnant of that plane," Chavez said, citing a television program he had seen on Venezuela's state television.

Despite the fact that the assertion of no wreckage at the Pentagon is a complete and utter bald-faced lie. As can be seen here on a site that has photos of the airplane wreckage from that day. I am thoroughly disgusted by these "truthers". I am extremely angry that they are endangering all of us with their insanity and mendacity.

False Advertising

So this guy thinks he is going to be the next sensation in the music industry. Bigger than the Beatles and Elvis put together. He's a street performer in New York City who says he's making a comfortable living just busking.

Bare busking to be precise.

NEW YORK - After eight years of playing guitar in nothing but cowboy boots, a hat and a pair of briefs (crudely marked "Naked Cowboy," to point out the obvious), Times Square's most famous street performer is taking his naked ambition to the next level. He's working on a debut album as part of his plan for "dominating the commercial landscape of the world."

The disc, which he's hoping to push out next year — he's not yet hooked up with a record label — is a "little bit country, little bit rock 'n' roll," the Cowboy (real name Robert John Burck) said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

"There'll be blues, R&B down the line and Naked Cowboy — it's its own genre of music," he added.

Some of the tracks have eyebrow-raising titles, the most printable, perhaps, being "Get Your Ass Kicked by a Man in his Underwear."

"Every major record label is gonna compete to be the one to represent this project. Once again, Beatles, Elvis Presley, Naked Cowboy," boasted the Cowboy, calling success "guaranteed."

The problem, of course, is that he is indulging in false advertising. He is by no means naked, despite his billing. I think someone should inform Elliot Spitzer at once that there are some headlines to be grabbed by prosecuting this man at once.

Everybody knows a cowboy is never naked as long as he has his hat.

Dems Accuse Bush Of Politicizing 9/11

By politicizing 9/11. This is kind of ridiculous on the part of the Democrats. The usual suspects swoop to a microphone with the usual comments. Some people did not like his speech, I thought it was pretty good. But it was hardly what the Democrats are calling it either.

“The president was not making partisan remarks,” Tony Snow, the chief White House spokesman, said at a briefing. He said the president’s address, marking the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, was “not a speech designed to single anyone out for partisan reasons.”

Mr. Snow was responding to questions about Democrats’ response to the 17-minute speech in which Mr. Bush envisioned a fight to the finish against terrorists, and said that “a struggle for civilization” would be decided in part by the course of the war in Iraq.

Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Charles E. Schumer of New York, who heads the Democrats’ Senate campaign drive, denounced Mr. Bush’s speech almost immediately.

Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Bush “should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning” to justify his Iraq policy, while Mr. Schumer said, “You do not commemorate the tragedy of 9/11 by politicizing it.”

And Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, sharply criticized Mr. Bush today. “On the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, President Bush continued to try to justify the invasion of Iraq by drawing nonexistent links to the 9/11 attacks,” Ms. Pelosi said. “To try to make partisan gain out of such tragedy dishonors all those we lost on Sept. 11.”

The White House, correctly, points out that the terrorists themselves are calling Iraq the central front in the war and that an American withdrawal from there would be a disastrous defeat.

In rejecting Democratic criticism today, Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush could hardly have avoided talking about Iraq. If he had, Mr. Snow said, Americans would have been entitled to wonder, “What is he doing?” Moreover, Mr. Snow said, terrorists themselves now agree with the president that Iraq is indeed the central front in the war on terror.

Osama bid Laden himself has said that “victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s defeat and disgrace forever,” Mr. Snow said at a second briefing this afternoon. “We are in Iraq. It is now seen as the central focal point of the war on terror by the very people who mounted Sept. 11.”

This is what the people on the left simply do not appear to care about. This would be a disaster for the country - it would not be a political blow to Bush alone. It would cripple the US. We have got to stop this insane level of disarray we are projecting. There are ways to disagree with policy without appearing this bitter and this bitterly split.

James Bond Film Star To Be Stuffed!

If Roger Moore knows what's good for him, he'll run like hell now that this precedent has been set! One of the biggest stars - literally - of the 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die (the first one Moore starred in) passed away on September 4th. He is in the hands of taxidermists as we speak.

Poor Big Boy.

Big Boy, three metres (nearly ten feet) long, appeared in the 1973 movie "Live and Let Die", which featured British spy Bond running over the backs of alligators in a pool infested with them.

Born in Louisiana in the United States, Big Boy also turned up in television commercials and 1980s BBC comedy "The Young Ones" before spending his retirement at Beaver Water World in Kent, southeast England.

He died on September 4 aged 45 at the zoo and reptile rescue centre, following an illness.

"He was immensely popular always, he was a real character," said Stella Quayle, the Beaver Water World curator, adding that flowers and cards had been left at his enclosure since his death.

"He really did have a sense of humour," she said.

Now frankly, we always thought Moore's acting indicated that he'd been stuffed at some point, but that's because we firmly believe Sean Connery is the only real James Bond (in a movie sense, of course).

Dirty Tricks

A recording of a private staff meeting of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was stolen and leaked to the press by his Democratic challenger's campaign. The incident, which caused Schwarzenegger to have to issue an apology to a California politician for remarking that she had a "very hot" personality, has been under investigation by authorities.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic rival acknowledged Tuesday that it downloaded — and leaked to the media — a recording of a private meeting in which the governor described a Hispanic legislator as having a "very hot" personality.

But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor's Web site.

"No one hacked," Calfo said at a news conference to address the role played by the Angelides campaign, first reported by The Sacramento Bee. "They accessed information that was available to the public."

However, Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said Monday that the sound files were stored "in a password-protected area of the governor's office network computer system."

Hoch said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating how the files became public.

Calfo said the Angelides campaign believes two of its staffers provided the audio clip to the Los Angeles Times, which made the governor's comments public last week.

"I'm looking into this I'm not happy," she said.

She said Angelides did not know about the file being provided to the newspaper.

Uh, sorry. Breaking into a password protected area without authorization is the definition of hacking. That was a really stupid political dirty trick that backfired rather badly.

UPDATE: Captain Ed is pretty harsh on this one, too.

They Took Away Pluto’s Name!

The International Astronomer's Union has assigned Pluto an asteroid number at the Minor Planet Center. It is no longer officially Pluto. It is now the Artist Formerly Known as Pluto, number 134340.

On Sept. 7, the former 9th planet was assigned the asteroid number 134340 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the official organization responsible for collecting data about asteroids and comets in our solar system.

The move reinforces the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) recent decision to strip Pluto of its planethood and places it in the same category as other small solar-system bodies with accurately known orbits.

Pluto's companion satellites, Charon, Nix and Hydra are considered part of the same system and will not be assigned separate asteroid numbers, said MPC director emeritus Brian Marsden. Instead, they will be called 134340 I, II and III, respectively.

Pluto, we hardly knew ye.

Ooo! Ooo! Can I Join, too?

The editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics magazine, James Meigs, has a column in the New York Post today that simply debunks a few of the 9/11 conspiracies and shows what massive frauds these people really are. He stats the article like this:

ON Feb. 7, 2005, I became a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for world domination. That day, Popular Mechanics, the magazine I edit, hit newsstands with a story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs - which calls itself the "9/11 Truth Movement" - was aflame with wild fantasies about me, my staff and the article we had published. Conspiracy Web sites labeled Popular Mechanics a "CIA front organization" and compared us to Nazis and war criminals.

For a 104-year-old magazine about science, technology, home improvement and car maintenance, this was pretty extreme stuff. What had we done to provoke such outrage?

Research.

I think I must be part of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for world domination myself now, since I've been pretty harsh with the "truthers". Which is a massive misnomer, of course. It would be more accurate to use the correct term: "liars".

Here's one example: Meyssan and hundreds of Web sites cite an eyewitness who said the craft that hit the Pentagon looked "like a cruise missile with wings." Here's what that witness, a Washington, D.C., broadcaster named Mike Walter, actually told CNN: "I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, 'This doesn't add up. It's really low.' And I saw it. I mean, it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon."

We talked to Walter and, like so many of the experts and witnesses widely quoted by conspiracy theorists, he told us he is heartsick to see the way his words have been twisted: "I struggle with the fact that my comments will forever be taken out of context."

Here's another: An article in the American Free Press claims that a seismograph at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory picked up signals indicating that large bombs were detonated in the towers. The article quotes Columbia geologist Won-Young Kim and certainly looks authoritative. Yet the truth on this issue is not hard to find. A published Lamont-Doherty report on the seismic record of 9/11 says no such thing. Kim told Popular Mechanics that the publication's interpretation of his research was "categorically incorrect." Yet the claim is repeated verbatim on more than 50 Web sites as well as in the film "Loose Change."

Every 9/11 conspiracy theory we investigated was based on similarly shoddy evidence. Most of these falsehoods are easy to refute simply by checking the original source material or talking to experts in the relevant fields. And yet even the flimsiest claims are repeated constantly in conspiracy circles, passed from Web site to book to Web site in an endless daisy chain. And any witness, expert - or publication - that tries to set the record straight is immediately vilified as being part of the conspiracy.

The only thing is: Who knew the pay would be this lousy for being part of such a massive conspiracy? Anyway, here's my contribution to the debunking: The yield strength of structural steel is reduced by 80% at 600° C. No office building can withstand losing 80% of it's structural integrity. Here's a link to a handy-dandy point by point rebuttal of the whack-job's theories. And, as always:

Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change, Loose Change,

Space Construction Going Well

The first spacewalk planned for this shuttle flight appears to have gone extremely well. The originally scheduled task of getting a new solar array up and running finished well ahead of schedule, so the two astronauts started work on other tasks that had been set for a second spacewalk.

The installation of a 45-foot (14-meter) structural truss, which contains a new pair of power-producing solar panels, took less time than planned, leaving six-time spacewalker Joe Tanner and his rookie partner Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper with more than an hour to spare for extra jobs.

Before the pair left the station's airlock, Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean used the station's robotic crane to lower the 35,000-pound (16 metric tons) girder into place on the complex's port side.

Automated bolts locked the $372 million addition into place, ending the nearly four-year hiatus in station construction that followed the 2003 Columbia accident.

Shuttle Atlantis and its six-member crew arrived at the station on Monday for a week-long stay.

"Let's get this show going," Tanner said, preparing to leave the station's airlock.

"OK. I'm out of the hatch," Stefanyshyn-Piper replied. "Oh wow, Earth's pretty."

The astronauts had a long list of tasks to bring the truss segment to life. Before its power can be tapped by the station, it needs to be able to draw power generated by the existing pair of arrays to maintain proper temperature in the extreme heat and cold of space.

Tanner and Stefanyshyn-Piper hooked up 17 cables and lines for power, data and cooling, and removed dozens of bolts, thermal covers and other items that had been installed to protect the arrays during launch.

The only problem was a spring-loaded bolt that popped free and was lost. Atlantis is scheduled to return on September 20th.

Good For Him

Kevin Costner slammed the British made-for-television suff porn film Death of a President.

Movie fans reportedly sat in stunned silence at the end of Range's screening, which featured doctored images of Bush getting shot, and Costner, who wasn't in the audience, isn't happy with what he's heard about the film. He says, "It's awfully hard if you're his children, his wife, his mother, his dad; there's a certain thing we can't lose as human beings, which is empathy for maybe the hardest job in the world. "Whether we think it's being performed right or not we can't, like, wish… or think that's even cute."

Good for him for speaking out against this. Meanwhile, the distribution rights to the film in the US were acquired for a reported $1 million dollars by Newmarket Films. That's a pretty low figure by any standards these days. But then, it's a pretty low film.

Revenge Killings Take A Strange Turn

It appears that people in Eastern Australia have taken to killing stingrays. At least ten of them have been found killed and mutilated since the death of Steve Irwin in a bizarre accident involving a stingray. Some people believe it may be related to Irwin's death.

At least ten stingrays have been found dead and mutilated on Australia’s eastern coast in the last week in what conservationists believe could be revenge attacks for the death of Steve Irwin, the popular naturalist and television personality.

Irwin, known by his fans as the "Crocodile Hunter", was killed last Monday when a stingray barb pierced his chest as he filmed a new TV programme off the Great Barrier Reef. His death triggered an outpouring of grief in Australia and among thousands of admirers worldwide.

But now it is feared that fans' mourning has taken a new focus: stingray rage.

The dead stingrays have been discovered on two beaches in Queensland state, where Mr Irwin lived and ran his popular wildlife park, Australia Zoo. Two of the unfortunate rays, discovered today, were retrieved with their tails lopped off, according to local fishery officials.

Michael Hornby, a friend of Mr Irwin and executive director of his conservation group Wildlife Warriors, said he was concerned that the rays, which are usually docile creatures, were being hunted and killed in retaliation for Irwin's death, which he said, would go against everything that the television star had stood for.

"It may be some sort of retribution, or it may be fear from certain individuals, or it just may be yet another callous act toward wildlife," he said.

I guess the only thing that really needs to be asked here is how many dead stingrays turned up on average before Irwin's death? They admit later in the story that this sort of thing has happened before. If people are doing this to avenge Irwin, they really didn't understand his message, did they?