Month: October 2003

Phil Carter was on fire yesterday. First off, this post on radical Islam in prison is fascinating. It’s one of those issues which is obvious after someone points it out, but only then.

Radical black racism often uses Islam as a skin in the United States. Cue Louis Farrakhan. This “Islam” has very little to do with mainstream Islam — but you could say the same of Al Qaeda, and it makes sense for Al Qaeda to recruit inside the prisons of America.

The irony is that Ashcroft is happily engaged in making those prisons fuller.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that the war on Iraq helped Al Qaeda. As predicted, invading Iraq pissed off Muslims, resulting in a recruiting bonanza for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The IISS is “a distinguished group of thinkers,” in case anyone was thinking they were lefty pinko symps. Or at least, that’s what Condolezza Rice says.

Wolfowitz made a nice speech at the Hungarian Embassy today. I shouldn’t really pick on it; it’s a semantically meaningless speech designed to make Hungary feel good. And Hungary should feel good about itself; it’s emerged from some really nasty totalitarianism.

Still, he had one of those quotes, and I can’t resist.

“And, frankly, it is particularly important to have friends who really understand the value of freedom. And I think countries that regained their freedom relatively recently seem to have that sense more strongly sometime than others.”

So I’m guessing he doesn’t mean that France, which finally got rid of their monarchy in 1871, feels the value of freedom more than the United States. Or maybe he means that France, which was under foreign rule during World War II, feels the value of freedom more strongly than countries which were inviolate during World War II? Hard to say, hard to say.

Either way, one might assume that he’s saying England doesn’t feel the value of freedom as strongly as India, since England’s been free for much much longer. There’s something about Britain and India I can’t quite recall, something about their relationship up until 1947. But India’s the country that doesn’t want to send troops to Iraq. Well, maybe they don’t understand the value of freedom properly.

In any case, I’m still really happy for Hungary. It’s a country that deserves its freedom, and it’s a country that fought hard for freedom. We can only regret that America was preoccupied with the Middle East during Hungary’s struggle.

Good for China.

I have two reactions to China’s membership in the manned space club. My first is pleasure. I’m glad there are other countries in the world who are going out there, because we’re sure falling behind. For whatever reason, the United States government isn’t maintaining a serious space exploration effort. That’s one egg I don’t want in a single bucket.

In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather China bring the resources of space back to Earth than nobody. I believe that once we start harvesting the asteroid belt, the value will be so clear that you’ll see an explosion of effort in that direction. But someone’s gotta get there first to make the point, whether it’s China or India or a private American company. I’d be a little worried if it turns out to be China, but in the long term it won’t matter as long as someone does it.

My other reaction, my immediate reaction, is concern. China’s stepping up, and if China gains control of Earth orbit, we’re back to the days of mutually assured destruction. Possibly we never left them, but there was some degree of hope. Mind you, I’m not sure the “mutual” refers to us and China; more likely we’re talking about China and India. And what does Pakistan do if India goes to space? Pakistan can’t buy a space program the way it bought nuclear missiles.

Destablization is inevitable. It’s a fool’s game, pretending that two antagonistic countries with a disputed border can remain at peace for a century or more. We’ve got three there, with India and China and Pakistan, and we had to expect a tipped balance at some point. So I’m not surprised; I’m just concerned.

The source of those “identical soldier letters” came forward: Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo. He claims that every soldier who signed the letter did so after reading it carefully. This means that he’s calling Pfc. Nick Deaconson and Sgt. Shawn Grueser liars. How insulting.

Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric, is putting together a shadow government in Iraq. The Sunni guerilla action, which continues to take its toll, provides excellent cover for the Shiite efforts.