The 92% factor

Faughnan's Notes - October 22nd

On October 22nd I had a premononition of what would happen on 11/2/04. I wrote then:

The Washington Monthly: "92% of Americans for whom terrorism is their major concern plan to vote for George Bush."

I am stunned. I wonder if North Koreans, famed for their isolation and media control, are really any more ignorant of the world than we Americans.

Today I heard on NPR that polls showed voters favored Bush over Kerry on security by an 8:1 margin. Were we to rerun the last few months, this would probably emerge as the (impossible?) test Kerry failed -- despite an astonishing fight.

Given those numbers, it is incredible that Kerry got as close as he did. As a colleague of mine noted, this means Edwards was absolutely the wrong choice for VP. We needed a Cheney-equivalent, probably General Clark.

The election for president is not done, but Bush won the popular vote and Republicans gained in the house and senate. It was a huge uphill fight, and Kerry and his supporters fought well. Heck, I fought well.

Now I want to understand why the electorate made its decisions. I'm coming up with three reasons:

1. Social conservatism: This is the anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-feminist, AM radio, power and dominance cohort. They appear to have voted in good numbers.

2. Evangelicals: Overlaps with #1, but a slightly different group. They appear to have turned out in greater numbers than in 2000.

3. Americans appear to have opted for the Bush war. That means fairly severe limitations of civil rights, continued restrictions on immigration, unilateral military action, abandoment of alliances, torture and one-dimensional conflict. It also suggests that a significant majority of Americans are ready for a military draft.

All of these played a role in the house and senate outcomes, but #3 feels to me like the reason we lost Florida and are lagging in Ohio.

These will be the dominant forces in American life for the next four years. Economics, the environment, civil rights, social justice, integrity in government, respect for the law -- all are in retreat. Humanists and rationalists are in retreat.

What will Europe do?

The evolution of the vertebrate (human) eye

Science -- EMBL About Us - News and Communication - Press - Press Release 28 October 2004 - Darwin's greatest challenge tackled: the mystery of eye evolution

By studying a 'living fossil,' Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm that still resembles early ancestors that lived up to 600 million years ago. Arendt had seen pictures of this worm's brain taken by researcher Adriaan Dorresteijn [University of Mainz, Germany]. "When I saw these pictures, I noticed that the shape of the cells in the worm’s brain resembled the rods and cones in the human eye. I was immediately intrigued by the idea that both of these light-sensitive cells may have the same evolutionary origin."

To test this hypothesis, Arendt and Wittbrodt used a new tool for today’s evolutionary biologists – 'molecular fingerprints'. Such a fingerprint is a unique combination of molecules that is found in a specific cell. He explains that if cells between species have matching molecular fingerprints, then the cells are very likely to share a common ancestor cell.

Scientist Kristin Tessmar-Raible provided the crucial evidence to support Arendt's hypothesis. With the help of EMBL researcher Heidi Snyman, she determined the molecular fingerprint of the cells in the worm's brain. She found an opsin, a light-sensitive molecule, in the worm that strikingly resembled the opsin in the vertebrate rods and cones. "When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain – it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution.

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There was a Wired magazine article recently in which a fairly bright geek celebrity argued for intelligent design based on the computational impossibility of evolving anything like a human cell.

That article, as well as most of the "intelligent design" literatrure, perpetuates a deep and common misunderstanding about what Darwin said and about natural selection. Let me correct that misunderstanding in five words. We are not the point.

Or, in other words ...

This discovery demonstrated a starting point, from which it is possible to imagine a series of steps, each of manageable probability, that would lead to the design of the verterbrate eye.

But wait, say creationists -- what are the chances that all those steps would occur? Aren't the odds a bazillion to one?

Well, say the evolutionists, yes they are. A bazillion to one.

That's the point.

Start the game over again, role the 200 sided dice 10,000 times -- you'll get a different sequence of numbers. A very different light sensor. But, that light sensor will also have a plausible path of descent from the same worm brain.

Start over from those early terrestrial cells. Run the simulation forwards. Maybe you'll end up with sentience. Maybe you'll end up with a bacterial soup. Maybe you'll end up with something else. You will never, however, end up with anything that looks anything like us.

The New York Times > Opinion > Bob Herbert: Days of Shame

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Days of Shame

Also mind-boggling is the attempt by Republican Party elements to return the U.S. to the wretched days of the mid-20th century when many black Americans faced harassment, intimidation and worse for daring to exercise their fundamental right to vote. A flier circulating extensively in black neighborhoods in Wisconsin carries the heading 'Milwaukee Black Voters League.' It asserts that people are not eligible to vote if they have voted in any previous election this year; if they have ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation; or if anyone in their family has ever been found guilty of anything.

'If you violate any of these laws,' the flier says, 'you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.'

In Philadelphia, where a large black vote is essential to a Kerry victory in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, John Perzel, is hard at work challenging Democratic voters. He makes no bones about his intent, telling U.S. News & World Report:

'The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down.'

That's called voter suppression, folks, and the G.O.P. concentrates its voter-suppression efforts in the precincts where there are large numbers of African-Americans. And that's called racism.

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If you're a Republican who can't stomach voting for a democrat, vote for McCain this year. If George Bush disapproved of these maneuvers, he'd have spoken out against them.

I pledge allegiance to .... Herr Bush?

One Nation Under Bush - At a campaign rally, Republicans recite the "Bush Pledge." By Chris Suellentrop

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States.

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Arms aloft eh? With elbows bent, or straight?

Bush did wear something

Salon.com News | NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate

I've mostly been ignoring this, but now I'm curious. I'd put it at a 50-50 chance Bush was wearing something at the first debate. I've no idea what it was and the article really doesn't address that.

Republicans for Kerry 2004

Republicans for Kerry 2004 - dKosopedia

An extensive list of well regarded Republicans who will not vote for Bush. Some will vote for Kerry, some will write in McCain or George Bush senior.

Bob Smith, a right wing NH republican, joined this group today.

Yesterday The Economist endorsed Kerry.

Go Sox Go.

Kay (the weapons inspector guy) on Qa Qaa (via CNN)

The Talent Show: An Expert Opinion

Well, at least with regard to this one bunker and the film shows one seal, one bunker, one group of soldiers going through and there were others there that were sealed, with this one, I think it is game, set and match.

There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken and quite frankly to me the most frightening thing is not only is the seal broken and the lock broken but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean to rephrase the so-called (UNINTELLIGIBLE) rule if you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security....

...Iraq had, and it's a frightening number, two-thirds of the total conventional explosives that the U.S. has in its entire inventory. The country was an armed camp.

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Bush can blame the soldiers. Who else can he blame?

Butterfly ballots -- what a nation

Pandagon: Follow The Rules, You Will Lose

I've never seen a butterfly ballot. These are astounding. We don't deserve this nation.

Yoo-hoo, don't forget me ...

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Bin Laden video threatens America

So he's not dead. Too bad, I thought he might be.

I don't think he's trying to seriously influence the election. If I can't figure out how this spins I doubt Zawahiri can.

I think either:

1. It's a signal for havoc
2. It's a sign of bin Laden's infamous vanity

We'll find out soon enough about the first. If nothing happens it suggests al Qaeda does not have much threat left in it -- at least for the US.

The Lancet: 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'

... Violent deaths were mainly attributed to coalition forces - and most individuals reportedly killed were women and children.

Dr Les Roberts, who led the study, said: "Making conservative assumptions we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most of the violent deaths."

He said his team's work proved it was possible to compile data on public health "even during periods of extreme violence".

The sample included randomly selected households in Baghdad, Basra, Arbil, Najaf and Karbala, as well as Falluja.

Lancet editor Richard Horton said: "With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error."

He went on: "Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths not fewer. This political and military failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants."

He urges the coalition forces to rethink their strategy to "prevent further unnecessary human casualties".

"For the sake of a country in crisis and for a people under daily threat of violence, the evidence we publish today must change heads as well as pierce hearts," he said.

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I wouldn't bet on piercing hearts. I suspect many soldiers already have pain in their hearts at the civilian deaths, but for most Americans it's an annoying astraction.

100,000. That's a city. It's much more than all the people I know. If the average victim weighed 60 lbs, than's 6 million pounds of person.

If the average victim was 12 years old, that's at least 5,000,000 lost years of life. Five million years ago we didn't even have Homo Erectus.

By the standards of the Iran-Iraq war, Rwanda, and the Congo, of course, it's a small number. It may yet be dwarfed by the deaths of a future Iraqi civil war.

By the standards of a civilized society ...

There are times when I would say war is unavoidable. (I might be wrong.) If it must be done, then do it with maximum care and the least harm possible. Treat children, at the least, as we would treat our own children.

We did not have the forces to invade Iraq "responsibly". We did not have the support of the world needed to find a way to get out of Iraq quickly. Rumsfeld was either delusional about the consequences of his choices, or he made an evil choice for evil ends. Bush did not fire Rumsfeld, evidently he approved.

If this were a just world they would be tried for crimes against humanity. Any educated adult, capable of reading and thinking, who votes for Bush November 2nd is also indicating they approve as well.

Wag the Dog

Shrillblog: Ex Bush Ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz Is Shrill!

According to Herskowitz... Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars. The revelations on Bush’s attitude toward Iraq emerged recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion of a variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized biography of Bush’s grandfather, written and published last year with the assistance and blessing of the Bush family. Herskowitz also revealed the following: -In 2003, Bush’s father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son’s invasion of Iraq. -Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been “excused.”... -Bush described his own business ventures as “floundering” before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light....

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”

Bush’s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: “They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.”...

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There's more. Follow the link. If he'd stopped with Afghanistan, and done that properly, he'd be ahead by a mile now.

With great anguish and pained reluctance, The Economist endorses John Kerry for President

Economist.com | America's next president

This won't much difference to the electorate. The readers of The Economist are not likely to be undecided. It will, however, sting deeply at the White House. Are they sure the WSJ will really endorse Bush?

Some background. The Economist is probably the most influential periodical in the world, with the WSJ and NYT a close second. It's said to be the only periodical Bill Gates reads. It's historically been Liberal -- as in 19th century secular humanist Liberal -- with a strong libertarian bent.

Over the past 10 years the US circulation has grown sharply and the influence of the GOP has also risen. I've long suspected they were getting too many WSJ alumni.

Over this time they abandoned much of their historic legacy and began to track republican doctrine. Their attacks on Clinton has an amazing component of right wing moralizing -- in no way libertarian or liberal. Their endorsement of Bush was amazingly vacuous, and their editorial pages have sought every excuse to support him.

Meanwhile, in the back pages, a rebellion has simmered. A recent very positive review of Seymour Hersh's book is a case in point.

So this is a revolution. They'll lose a LOT of readers with this one, but keep others. Some excerpts from a fairly backhanded, agonizingly reluctant endorsement. At least they avoided the coward's choice of endorsing no-one.

The incompetent or the incoherent?
Oct 28th 2004

With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd.

YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be wrong. This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.

Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to protest that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking our noses in other people's politics. Translated, this invariably means that protesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect a lack of awareness about our readership. The Economist's weekly sales in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus, as at every presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful for us to say how we would think about our vote if we had one.

The case against George Bush

That decision cannot be separated from the terrible memory of September 11th, nor can it fail to begin as an evaluation of the way in which Mr Bush and his administration responded to that day. For Mr Bush's record during the past three years has been both inspiring and disturbing.

Mr Bush was inspiring in the way he reacted to the new world in which he, and America, found itself. He grasped the magnitude of the challenge well. His military response in Afghanistan was not the sort of poorly directed lashing out that Bill Clinton had used in 1998 after al-Qaeda destroyed two American embassies in east Africa: it was a resolute, measured effort, which was reassuringly sober about the likely length of the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the elusiveness of anything worth the name of victory. Mistakes were made, notably when at Tora Bora Mr bin Laden and other leaders probably escaped, and when following the war both America and its allies devoted insufficient military and financial resources to helping Afghanistan rebuild itself. But overall, the mission has achieved a lot: the Taliban were removed, al-Qaeda lost its training camps and its base, and Afghanistan has just held elections that bring cautious hope for the central government's future ability to bring stability and prosperity.

The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of them to the American base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a legal limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America's own legal system. That act reflected a genuinely difficult problem: that of having captured people of unknown status but many of whom probably did want to kill Americans, at a time when to set them free would have been politically controversial, to say the least. That difficulty cannot neutralise the damage caused by this decision, however. Today, Guantánamo Bay offers constant evidence of America's hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation. The White House's proposed remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds the problem.

When Mr Bush decided to frame his foreign policy in the sort of language and objectives previously associated with Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, he was bound to be greeted with cynicism. Yet he was right to do so. To paraphrase a formula invented by his ally, Tony Blair, Mr Bush was promising to be "tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism", and the latter he attributed to the lack of democracy, human rights and opportunity in much of the world, especially the Arab countries. To call for an effort to change that lamentable state of affairs was inspiring and surely correct. The credibility of the call was enhanced by this month's Afghan election, and may in future be enhanced by successful and free elections in Iraq. But that remains ahead, and meanwhile Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guantánamo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned.

Invading Iraq was not a mistake. Although the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been shown to have been flimsy and, with hindsight, wrong, Saddam's record of deception in the 12 years since the first Gulf war meant that it was right not to give him the benefit of the doubt. The containment scheme deployed around him was unsustainable and politically damaging: military bases in holy Saudi Arabia, sanctions that impoverished and even killed Iraqis and would have collapsed. But changing the regime so incompetently was a huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral probity.

If Mr Bush had meanwhile been making progress elsewhere in the Middle East, such mistakes might have been neutralised. But he hasn't. Israel and Palestine remain in their bitter conflict, with America readily accusable of bias. In Iran the conservatives have become stronger and the country has moved closer to making nuclear weapons. Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have not turned hostile, but neither have they been terribly supportive nor reform-minded. Libya's renunciation of WMD is the sole clear piece of progress.

This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To succeed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect opportunity to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and declare a new start, he chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as if they were a low-level, disciplinary issue. Can he learn from mistakes? The current approach in Iraq, of training Iraqi security forces and preparing for elections to establish an Iraqi government with popular support, certainly represents an improvement, although America still has too few troops. And no one knows, for example, whether Mr Rumsfeld will stay in his job, or go. In the end, one can do no more than guess about whether in a second term Mr Bush would prove more competent...

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They go on to slander Kerry to cover themselves. I agree with much of their critique of Bush, but they're only scraping the surface. They know better, but probably feel they've risked enough.

They will pay dearly for this endorsement, but, in the ultimate test, they have redeemed themselves.

A completely unverified soldier's tale -- as related to an airline passenger

The Washington Note Archives

Excerpts here, emphases mine. Read the whole story at source.

I JUST SAT NEXT TO A VERY TOUGH SOLDIER FROM THE 82ND AIRBORNE on a flight back from Europe. I have been thinking for two days about how to share some of the things he told me without compromising him.

This guy I met is not one prone to talk; he was very serious, very mellow -- and comes from a family of enlisted military men. His dad was in Vietnam.

He has had one rotation in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. He is now in Germany but will soon be transfered back to Iraq. He was at Tora Bora and has seen a lot of Iraq, Afghan, and American dead....

...I asked him what he thought happened at Abu Ghraib and the handling of prisoners in general. He blamed both the people in the prison and their superiors. He says that everyone knows that the adrenaline rush and completely new experiences these young Americans are having lead to scary behaviors. He also stated that it is well known among the troops that al Qaeda takes (or keeps) no prisoners.

Early in the Afghanistan incursion, he said that he was on one of the last helicopters out of a very scary incident in which about ten U.S. soldiers were killed in a well-planned diversion and ambush by al Qaeda and the Taliban. He was at a fueling station between Kandahar and Shkin, very close to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. A group began firing on U.S. soldiers at the fueling station, and some choppers and soldiers went after them. From behind, from the mountains on the Pakistani side, a massive number of al Qaeda and Taliban forces were streaming down behind the Americans -- and the soldier I was talking to could see this from the air in the chopper he was in.

Black Hawks were called in -- and the Taliban took out one or two -- but basically everyone just retreated. According to him at least ten soldiers surrendered to al Qaeda, and they were found later. One of the soldiers had had his penis castrated, and then this was stuffed in his mouth (sorry for the graphic detail, but it's important). The other soldiers were all shot in the head. Several others were "cut up," he said. To him, it was clear that they had been tortured.

He said that these experiences have been repeated in other encounters with al Qaeda -- and thus many of the soldiers who feel on the front lines of a war they don't understand and can't figure out -- have them so incredibly on edge that it's not surprising that they could come undone in a prisoner-holding situation. What he said though is that all of the officers know this to be the case and probably expected this kind of behavior from the soldiers and MPs.

He said that at night, when they are moving people or supplies, or making deliveries, they are scared -- and drive at 80 or 90 miles an hour with their lights off. He said lots of innocent people are killed by this night-driving and while the troops are supposed to report any damage or harm they do, almost none do -- no one wants to stop. This confirms an anecdote about the same kind of killer-driving that Seymour Hersh recently shared with me.

Interestingly, he said that all enlisted men or officers in command positions have orders not to talk about their war experiences with the junior and fresh troops. He refuses -- and tells those people under him everything he knows because he thinks it will help save their lives. When he went to Afghanistan at the beginning, basically nothing was told to them; he kept repeating "nothing." And he said that their basic training in North Carolina was 180 degrees opposite of what they really needed to know for this kind of combat.

He said morale is very low among the troops and that they all want out -- few believe in the war or Bush, and he thinks that many of these troops' negative feelings are being transmitted back to extended family networks that have traditionally been supporters of the Republican Party, like his own family.

He shared quite a bit more, including that his military commanders are planning for at minimum an eight year deployment in Iraq, maybe longer. He also shared an interesting anecdoted that about a year ago, certain commanders in the 82nd Airborne had been told to prepare for a quick incursion into Cuba. I was stunned.

He said, "Yep, we couldn't believe that on top of everything else, Bush thought he could go take out Castro." The Navy Seals were going to go in and do the dirty work, he said, and the "82nd was going to go in for clean-up." He said that he never heard more about it but that the orders clearly didn't go forward -- but they were prepared for that possibility and told that "Bush just wanted to take out Castro."

Another thing he shared was that after this incident at Shkin, mentioned above, the Navy Seals were sent in to go find the al Qaeda and Taliban troops hiding in the Pakistan mountains. He said that they were all through those mountains in Pakistan and what he told me was probably classified. But they found nothing, packed their bags, and went home.

... He said that in contrast to Vietnam where U.S. soldiers were killing other U.S. soldiers and officers whom they didn't like -- that is not happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. But he said people are getting depressed and disillusioned. They don't know what their objectives are -- and they see lots of dead children, dead innocent men and women, grieving families, whose early appreciation for Americans has given away to profound hate and resentment.

He said that if he were one of the Iraqi citizens experiencing what an occupying force was doing, he'd be fighting too. He said that the only way to win is to get out of there -- let the Iraqis resolve the issues they need to resolve internally. Give them money, give them resources, give them advice if asked -- but get the U.S. troops out.

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This is completely unverified, but it contains absolutely no surprises -- except the oddball Cuba scenario (exception: the alleged treatment of captured US soldiers has not been widely reported -- however it is consistent with al Qaeda ideology and behavior). It puts into one personal scenario what's been reported and verified elsewhere.

It's noteworthy that US soldiers are holding up pretty well under incredible burdens -- fragging is not yet occurring and massacres of non-combatants does not appear to be common. However these are early days in a projected 8 year occupation.

Cut, run and contain may be among the least bad of a terrible set of alternatives. If this were a just world Rumsfeld and Bush would be drafted into the infantry. Perhaps Bush might complete his missing term in the National Guard?

George Bush, American Calvinist. It's as bad as Susskind said.

The New York Times > Opinion > ROBERT WRIGHT: Faith, Hope and Clarity

Robert Wright is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values and the author of "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny." He wrote this piece for the NYT. It adds new details to Susskind's famed NYT Magazine article on 'The Power of the Will' -- Bush's faith-and-will based approach to altering reality. By Bush's own words he's a devotee of Oswald Chambers.

Bush is the American Calvinist, and the world is trapped in his beliefs -- and delusions. Emphases mine.

October 28, 2004

... there is a way to get a clearer picture of religion's role in this White House. Every morning President Bush reads a devotional from "My Utmost for His Highest," a collection of homilies by a Protestant minister named Oswald Chambers, who lived a century ago. As Mr. Bush explained in an interview broadcast on Tuesday on Fox News, reading Chambers is a way for him "on a daily basis to be in the Word."

Chambers's book continues to sell well, especially an updated edition with the language tweaked toward the modern. Inspecting the book - or the free online edition - may give even some devout Christians qualms about America's current guidance.

... the theme that dominates "My Utmost": committing your life to Jesus Christ - "absolute and irrevocable surrender of the will" - and staying committed. "If we turn away from obedience for even one second, darkness and death are immediately at work again." In all things and at all times, you must do God's will.

But what exactly does God want? Chambers gives little substantive advice. There is no great stress on Jesus' ethical teaching - not much about loving your neighbor or loving your enemy. (And Chambers doesn't seem to share Isaiah's hope of beating swords into plowshares. "Life without war is impossible in the natural or the supernatural realm.") But the basic idea is that, once you surrender to God, divine guidance is palpable. "If you obey God in the first thing he shows you, then he instantly opens up the next truth to you," Chambers writes.

And you shouldn't let your powers of reflection get in the way. Chambers lauds Abraham for preparing to slay his son at God's command without, as the Bible put it, conferring "with flesh and blood." Chambers warns: "Beware when you want to 'confer with flesh and blood' or even your own thoughts, insights, or understandings - anything that is not based on your personal relationship with God. These are all things that compete with and hinder obedience to God."

Once you're on the right path, setbacks that might give others pause needn't phase you. As Chambers noted in last Sunday's reading, "Paul said, in essence, 'I am in the procession of a conqueror, and it doesn't matter what the difficulties are, for I am always led in triumph.' " Indeed, setbacks may have a purpose, Chambers will tell Mr. Bush this Sunday: "God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as his saint to get you in direct contact with himself." Faith "by its very nature must be tested and tried."

Some have marveled at Mr. Bush's refusal to admit any mistakes in Iraq other than "catastrophic success." But what looks like negative feedback to some of us - more than 1,100 dead Americans, more than 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians and the biggest incubator of anti-American terrorists in history - is, through Chambers's eyes, not cause for doubt. Indeed, seemingly negative feedback may be positive feedback, proof that God is there, testing your faith, strengthening your resolve.

This, I think, is Mr. Bush's optimism: In the longest run, divinely guided decisions will be vindicated, and any gathering mountains of evidence to the contrary may themselves be signs of God's continuing involvement. It's all good.

... Chambers himself eventually showed some philosophical flexibility. By and large, the teachings in "My Utmost for His Highest" were written before World War I (and compiled by his wife posthumously). But the war seems to have made him less sanguine about the antagonism that, he had long stressed, is inherent in life.

Shortly before his death in 1917, Chambers declared that "war is the most damnably bad thing," according to Christianity Today magazine. He added: "If the war has made me reconcile myself with the fact that there is sin in human beings, I shall no longer go with my head in the clouds, or buried in the sand like an ostrich, but I shall be wishing to face facts as they are.

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If only Bush would move on to read the later Chambers, post WW I. Or if only Bush were a preacher or writer rather than President.

There are good reasons to vote for GWB. If you believe preventing abortion is the overwhelmingly important thing in the world, worth sacrificing thousands of adults and children to the pyre of war and chaos, then vote for GWB. If you believe he has been appointed by your deity to rule, then vote for GWB. If you seek the end of human civilization (radical green? millenialist), then vote for GWB.

I can't think of any other reasons.

Abu Ghraib -- lies and more lies

The New York Times > Opinion > Editoral: Abu Ghraib, Unresolved

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first broke, the Bush administration struck a pose of righteous indignation. It assured the world that the problem was limited to one block of one prison, that the United States would never condone the atrocities we saw in those terrible photos, that it would punish those responsible for any abuse - regardless of their rank - and that it was committed to defending the Geneva Conventions and the rights of prisoners.

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We know now what we suspected then, all of the post-Abu Ghraib statements by the Bush administration were lies. The editorial goes on to refute each point, without using the L word.

Some Americans consider Abu Ghraib just fine with them. They favor more extensive torture and humiliation of the enemy. Most have put it out of memory.

As for me, it is a terrible thing by itself, but even worse as a sign of what else this administration has done and will do. The evidence suggests it is only a small part of a grim picture.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, it has alienated our historic allies far more than most Americans realize. If Bush is reelected, foreigners will (justly) conclude that Americans approve of Abu Grhaib. They will behave accordingly. Putin will be comforted, Europe will seek its own defense.