A few months ago I suggested to someone that, if you controlled for the number of people walking the earth today, we are living in peaceful times. Which isn’t to say there are not wars going on, but they are small and local compared with centuries past.

I was too busy/lazy to do the research to back up my hunch, so fortunately someone else did. StrategyPage writes:

While the mass media continues to feature wars and terrorism, the overall trend continues away from such unpleasantness. Such stories are anathema to the mass media, because they do not attract eyeballs, and revenue. That’s the way people are, and the result is a distorted view of trends in global violence.

Worldwide, violence continues to decline, as it has for the last few years. Violence has also greatly diminished,  or disappeared completely, in places like  Iraq,  Nepal,  Chechnya,  Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. Even Afghanistan, touted as the new war zone, is seeing less violence this year than last.

All this continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere. The current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies, which are seen as out-of-step with the modern world. Many are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism), that still resonate among people who don’t know about the dismal track records of these movements. 

Thomas Sowell: 

…patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism “high-sounding nonsense.”

Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one’s country with “the idea of cosmopolitan duty.”

Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations’ banners of patriotism.

In France, after the First World War, the teachers’ unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.

Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against the German invaders were called “bellicose” books to be banished from the schools.

Textbook publishers caved in to the power of the teachers’ unions, rather than lose a large market for their books. History books were sharply revised to conform to internationalism and pacifism.

The once epic story of the French soldiers’ heroic defense against the German invaders at Verdun, despite the massive casualties suffered by the French, was now transformed into a story of horrible suffering by all soldiers at Verdun– French and German alike.

In short, soldiers once depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims– and just like victims in other nations’ armies.

Children were bombarded with stories on the horrors of war. In some schools, children whose fathers had been killed during the war were asked to speak to the class and many of these children– as well as some of their classmates and teachers– broke down in tears.

In Britain, Winston Churchill warned that a country “cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors.” In France, Marshal Philippe Petain, the victor at Verdun, warned in 1934 that teachers were trying to “raise our sons in ignorance of or in contempt of the fatherland.”

But they were voices drowned out by the pacifist and internationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and 1930s.

Did it matter? Does patriotism matter?

France, where pacifism and internationalism were strongest, became a classic example of how much it can matter.

During the First World War, France fought on against the German invaders for four long years, despite having more of its soldiers killed than all the American soldiers killed in all the wars in the history of the United States, put together.

But during the Second World War, France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and surrendered to Nazi Germany. At the bitter moment of defeat the head of the French teachers’ union was told, “You are partially responsible for the defeat.”

Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mauriac, and other Frenchmen blamed a lack of national will or general moral decay, for the sudden and humiliating collapse of France in 1940.

At the outset of the invasion, both German and French generals assessed French military forces as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of cards — except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Unlike the left, Bjorn Lomborg is a true “progressive” thinker.

The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.

This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one specific – and inefficient – solution to one particular global challenge. A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about.

Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which Nobel laureate economists analyze new research about the costs and benefits of different solutions to world problems, shows that just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.

Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths in a year.

A dollar spent on heart disease in a developing nation will achieve $25 worth of good. Contrast that to Operation Enduring Freedom, which Copenhagen Consensus research found in the two years after 2001 returned 9 cents for each dollar spent. Or with the 90 cents Copenhagen Consensus research shows is returned for every $1 spent on carbon mitigation policies.

Focusing first on costs and benefits means that we can reconsider the merits of policies that have gone out of fashion.

The unpopular war in Iraq has undermined rich nations’ belief in the success of military intervention as a way of reducing conflict. But Copenhagen Consensus research reveals that a peacekeeping force is even more effective than aid in reducing the likelihood that a conflict-prone nation will relapse into violence.

Four new civil wars are expected to break out in the next decade in low-income nations. Compared with no deployment, spending $850 million on a peacekeeping initiative reduces the 10-year risk of conflict re-emerging to 7% from around 38%, according to Copenhagen Consensus research by Oxford University’s Paul Collier.

Because of war’s horrendous and lasting costs, each percentage point of risk reduction is worth around $2.5 billion to the world. Thus, spending $850 million each year to reduce the risk of conflict by a massive 30 percentage points means a 10-year gain of $75 billion compared to the overall cost of $8.5 billion, or $9 back on the dollar.

Read it all.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Americans have regularly changed their minds in the midst of their ongoing wars — and not just once, but often. War is a volatile enterprise. Tactics, strategies, and commanders must be sorted out amid death and destruction before the proper combination is found to defeat the enemy. In the meantime, the reasons for going to war, the manner in which the war is fought, and the objectives for which it is waged are constantly being weighed at home against the costs of conducting it. As a result, impatient democracies — and Americans are nothing if not impatient — are liable to suffer alternating fits of unrestrained optimism and utter despair.

This volatility has certainly characterized our current engagement in Iraq, but it has been no less true before. In the early days of the Civil War, a confident North was sure of quick victory in a righteous cause. After the slaughters of 1862 at Shiloh, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, the North then fell into collective querulousness and despair. By the summer of 1863, the North was ebullient again as its armies won crushing, near-simultaneous victories at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg. A year later, after the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Lincoln and all he stood for were reviled. Stalemate or concession seemed imminent — until General Philip Sheridan ran wild in the Shenandoah Valley and William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta on September 2, 1864.

…In the Korean War, to take another example, Seoul changed hands four times. Harry Truman, who had won support for the deployment of American troops in the summer of 1950 and then lost it with the massive Chinese invasion of December, left office in January 1953 with a 22-percent approval rating. But his successor Dwight Eisenhower, without materially changing American strategy or war aims, mustered fresh support for stabilizing the situation once General Matthew Ridgway had succeeded in restoring an autonomous South Korea below the 38th parallel, and in preventing further Communist aggression.

 Holiday season is travel season. Here’s how to thank the military people you may encounter.

Michael Barone:

The world looks safer, friendlier, more hopeful than it did as we approached Christmastime last year.

Then, we were on the defensive, perhaps on the verge of defeat, in Iraq. The Europeans’ attempts to persuade Iran to renounce nuclear weapons seemed to have failed. Hugo Chavez was using his near-dictatorial powers and the oil wealth of Venezuela to secure the election of opponents of the American “empire” in Latin America.

Today, things look different. And they suggest, to me at least, that the policies of the Bush administration, pilloried as bankrupt by the Democrats after their victory in congressional elections in November, have served American interests better than most Americans then thought.

Start with Iraq. The surge strategy, opposed by almost all Democrats in Congress and the party’s presidential candidates, has clearly worked. Violence has sharply decreased; Iraqi Sunnis have turned against Al Qaeda and toward the Shi’ite-dominated government; bottom-up reconciliation has gone forward in apparently all areas of the country.Polls show that despite minimal coverage in the mainstream media for many months, most Americans are coming to understand that the surge is working.

Senator Joe Biden, longwinded blowhard and longshot candidate for president:

…said Sunday the attorney general should appoint a special counsel to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists. He cited Michael Mukasey’s refusal during confirmation hearings in October to describe waterboarding as torture.

As the Washington Post reported yesterday (two items down), key Democrats were briefed about the use of waterboarding in advance and were all for it (before they were against it.)

Mukasey’s Justice Department and the CIA’s internal watchdog announced Saturday they would conduct a joint inquiry into the matter. That review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted. “He’s the same guy who couldn’t decide whether or not waterboarding was torture and he’s going to be doing this investigation,” said Biden, who noted that he voted against making Mukasey the country’s top law enforcer.

Exactly who couldn’t decide, Senator?

“I just think it’s clearer and crisper and everyone will know what the truth is … if he appoints a special counsel, steps back from it,” said Biden, D-Del.

That view was not shared fellow Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said Congress can get to the bottom of the matter. “I don’t think there’s a need for a special counsel, and I don’t think there’s a need for a special commission,” he said. “It is the job of the intelligence committees to do that.”

Rockefeller knows better because he was included in the 2002 briefing, knew all about waterboarding, and voiced no disapproval.

Rockefeller certainly can’t fault Biden for politicizing the War on Terror, however. After all, it was Rockefeller who wrote the infamous memo on how to do just that.

As for torture, perhaps the Senate can vote that any speech by Biden during judicial confirmation hearings that exceeds three minutes be defined as such.

Shelby Steele’s column, excerpted and linked below, makes a case for opening a dialog with the mullahs in Iran, an idea advanced by Barak Obama.

If Mr. Obama’s idea was born of mushy idealism, it could work far better as a hard-nosed moral brinkmanship. Were an American president (or a secretary of state for the less daring) to land in Tehran, the risk to American prestige would be enormous.

The mullahs would make us characters in a tale of their own grandeur. Yet moral authority would redound to us precisely for making ourselves vulnerable to this kind of exploitation. The world would witness not the stereotype of American bullying, but the reality of American selflessness, courage and moral confidence.

Steele speaks of “the world” as if there exists some unbiased audience of fair minded people who recognize right and wrong. This, in itself, is mushy idealism.

One must ask, who are we seeking to impress with our moral authority?

• Europe? In the 1990s, it stood by and watched the Balkans descend into genocide, leaving the USA to clean up the mess. The anti-Americanism extant in European media is laughable. Alas, much of Europe is a collection of spoiled ingrates whose freedom was paid for by American blood and treasure. Apart from any tactical reasons, why should we care what they think?
• WWII is known as the “good war.” If England had heeded Winston Churchill’s warning about Hitler and took military action to prevent Germany from rearming, it would have been a better war, but one that lacked moral authority.
• Bill Clinton and the UN have never been called to account for standing by as 800,000 Rwandans were macheted to death. Presumably Clinton, by doing nothing, maintained his moral authority — just look at the adoring crowds he attracts.
• In Iraq and Afghanistan, we liberated 51 million people from tyrany and midwifed democracies. Yes, both are fragile. Both cost innocent lives. Both saw our troops misbehave in certain circumstances. But the big picture is positive, yet “the world” affords virtually no moral authority to the endeavor. So what?

In world where Michael Moore can invent dark motives and sell them to a gullible public, where media savvy terrorists can influence the narrative in the US and world media, where conspiracy theories are swallowed whole, exactly what’s the point?

Once Iraq was liberated, Osama bin Laden declared Iraq as the primary front in the war against the west. Because of a stalwart president and our exceptional military, Al Qaeda is suffering a humiliation before the whole world. That defeat will redound to the whole world’s benefit in ways we will never fully know.

And we’ll never get so much as a thank you.

Shelby Steele:

I think of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to preserve a favorable balance of power that is already in place in the world. We fight these wars not to survive but–once a menace has arisen–to discipline the world back into a balance of power that best ensures peace. We fight as enforcers rather than as rebels or as patriots fighting for survival. Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don’t sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.

Conversely, in wars of survival, like World War II, we fight to achieve a favorable balance of power–one in which a peace is established that guarantees our sovereignty and survival. We fight unapologetically for dominance, and we determine to defeat our enemy by any means necessary. We do not harry ourselves much over the style of warfare–whether the locals like us, where the line between interrogation and torture might lie, whether or not we are solicitous of our captive’s religious beliefs or dietary strictures. There is no feeling in society that we can afford to lose these wars. And so we never have.

All this points to one of the great foreign policy dilemmas of our time: In the eyes of many around the world, and many Americans as well, we lack the moral authority to fight the wars that we actually fight because they are wars more of discipline than of survival, more of choice than of necessity. It is hard to equate the disciplining of a pre-existing world order–a status quo–with fighting for one’s life. When survival is at stake, there is no lack of moral authority, no self-doubt and no antiwar movement of any consequence. But when war is not immediately related to survival, when a society is fundamentally secure and yet goes to war anyway, moral authority becomes a profound problem. Suddenly such a society is drawn into a struggle for moral authority that is every bit as intense as its struggle for military victory.

America does not do so well in its disciplinary wars (the Gulf War is an arguable exception) because we begin these wars with only a marginal moral authority and then, as time passes, even this meager store of moral capital bleeds away. Inevitably, into this vacuum comes a clamorous and sanctimonious antiwar movement that sets the bar for American moral authority so high that we must virtually lose the war in order to meet it. There must be no torture, no collateral damage, no cultural insensitivity, no mistreatment of prisoners and no truly aggressive or definitive display of American military power. In other words, no victory.

Meanwhile our enemy is fighting all out to achieve a new balance of power. As we anguish over the possibility of collateral damage, this enemy practices collateral damage as a tactic of war. In Iraq, al Qaeda blows up women and children simply to keep alive the chaos of war that gives it cover. This enemy’s sense of moral authority–as misguided as it may be–is so strong that it compensates for its lack of sophisticated military hardware.

On the other hand, our great military might is not enough to compensate for our weak sense of moral authority, our ambivalence. If we have the greatest military in history, it is also true that we lack our enemy’s talent for true belief. Our rationale for war is difficult to articulate, always arguable, and distinctly removed from immediate necessity. Our society is deeply divided and there is a vigorous antiwar movement ready to capitalize on our every military setback.

In the world of Big Baloney, there are three kinds of American military:

• poor, uneducated dupes who join out of desperation
• vicious killers who terrorize civilians 
• post-traumatic stress victims doomed to become homeless once state side

Actually, there’s a fourth category: deserters.

Alan Fraser notes at American Thinker:

According to America’s biggest news agency, the United States is facing what amounts to a desertion crisis in its military. Lolita C. Baldur of the Associated Press writes a story headlined “Army Desertion Rate Up 80 Pct. Since ‘03.”

“Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003….While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year….Army desertion rates have fluctuated since the Vietnam War - when they peaked at 5 percent.”

Sounds bad. Bush’s fault etc. But wait:

According to author Rod Powers  (who spent 23 years in the Air Force), the desertion rates per 1,000 for the Army and Marines from 1997 through 2004 are as follows:

ARMY

1997		2,218		4.58 per 1,000
1998		2,520		5.20 per 1,000
1999		2,966		6.13 per 1,000
2000		3,949		8.16 per 1,000
2001		4,597		9.50 per 1,000
2002		4,483		9.26 per 1,000
2003		3,678		7.60 per 1,000
2004		2,376		4.91 per 1,000

Marine Corps

1997		1,375		7.94 per 1,000
1998		1,460		8.43 per 1,000
1999		1,689		9.75 per 1,000
2000		2,019		11.66 per 1,000
2001		1,310		7.57 per 1,000
2002		1,136		6.56 per 1,000
2003		1,236		7.14 per 1,000
2004		1,297		7.49 per 1,000

Look at the above rates of Army desertion in the years just prior to the Iraq war.  Years 2000, 2001, and 2002 (8.16, 9.5, 9.26) show higher rates than we have had during this terrible quagmire of an Iraq war, with its multiple tours of duty. 

Why doesn’t AP correspondent Lolita C. Baldur discuss that? 

Iowahawk brings us a bit of publishing history.

Munro Leaf wrote many books in his 40 year career as a children’s author, but none really topped the success of his first: The Story of Ferdinand. It concerned a little Spanish bull who preferred dreaming and smelling flowers under the cork tree to fighting with other bulls and matadors. When Ferdinand debuted in 1936, some saw the book as a commentary on the Civil War engulfing Spain, or an illustration of the passive resistance methods of the newly famous Mahatma Gandhi. Leaf always maintained the book was  non-political, But there was no denying that Ferdinand’s message of triumphant pacifism was welcomed by an American public anxiously watching events in Europe. Ferdinand became a classic of children’s literature, a popular 1938 Disney short, and remains a staple of story time at schools around the world.

A few months after Pearl Harbor a lesser known Munro Leaf title appeared: My Book To Help America. I happen to have have a copy in my oddball reading stash, which is presented below in its entirety. You may notice that that by 1942 Leaf was no longer an advocate of Ferdinand-style dreamy pacifism.

He’s got the whole book on his site. Here’s the cover.

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

George Orwell

Tigerhawk:

It is a great tragedy that the jihadis feel the need to remind the world how demonic they really are:

Afghanistan’s deadliest suicide attack since the Taliban regime’s ouster killed 59 schoolchildren, while 96 other students were wounded in the blast, the Education Ministry spokesman said Friday.

The attack in the northern province of Baghlan on Tuesday killed at least 75 people. The dead children were ages eight to 18, said Zahoor Afghan, an Education Ministry spokesman.

Fortunately, the bad guys are ending up on the short end of the stick. The A.P. article tries to push along the narrative that Afghanistan is unraveling, but does manage to put some good news in the bad news paragraph at the end:

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the 2001 invasion. More than 5,700 people, mostly militants, have died so far this year in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials. (bold emphasis added)

So let me get this straight: While this year has been the “deadliest” since United States retaliated for September 11, it has been particularly deadly for people who blow up schoolchildren.

I call that progress.

Jack Kelly:

This month marks the 230th anniversary of the event which, more than any other, is responsible for the independence of the United States of America.

What history calls the battle of Saratoga was really two battles which resulted in the surrender of British Gen. John Burgoyne and his army on Oct. 17, 1777.

Gen. Burgoyne led an army of 9,000 troops in an assault from Canada upon Albany. The Hudson River was then the great highway of America. If the British controlled both ends of it, they could cut off New England from the rest of the colonies, and strangle the infant nation in its crib.

The victory at Saratoga did more than thwart this design. The French were so impressed by it they declared war on Britain. Without French help, the Revolution could not have been won.

The French, in effect, helped midwife democracy at the point of a gun.

The victory at Saratoga was won chiefly through the strategic insight, tactical brilliance, reckless courage and inspirational leadership of one man. There is a statue “honoring” this hero on the field at Bemis Heights, site of the second battle of Saratoga. It is the likeness of a left leg, with no inscription.

That’s because the man, after George Washington, most responsible for winning America’s independence was Benedict Arnold, who is more (in)famous for other things.

Benedict Arnold was the best soldier on either side in the American Revolution (and, of course, on both sides). He was a terrific admiral, too. The year before Saratoga, he had thwarted a British invasion from Canada at the naval battle of Valcour Island. Arnold not only devised the naval strategy for the fight on Lake Champlain, and bravely and expertly fought the battle, he built the fleet, too.

Why did Arnold turn coat?

He was treated badly by Congress. He was concerned about the alliance with the French (which, ironically, was the result of his victory at Saratoga). He was beguiled by the beautiful Tory he married, Peggy Shippen. But the excuses are unsatisfying. There was something missing in this otherwise great man.

In fact, Arnold covered up the incompetence of his superior, Gen. Horatio Gates. Gates was a darling of Congress, who was almost given George Washington’s job when the going got tough.

Arnold got the shaft.

A new treaty (Law of Sea Treaty) governing the seas under consideration by the Senate. John Fonte doesn’t like what he sees:

Let us examine the details. Under UNCLOS, disputes between the United States and other parties are settled by “mandatory” (i.e., forced) arbitration. The final decisions are made either by a permanent International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg or by an ad-hoc court. The Hamburg tribunal consists of 21 judges chosen by member nations, many of them unfriendly to the United States. An ad-hoc court would consist of five judges, two chosen by the U.S., two chosen by the other party. The crucial fifth judge is chosen either by the secretary general of the United Nations or the Hamburg tribunal. The decisions are “final” and “binding” with no appeal.

International-law professor Jeremy Rabkin points out that when the Cambodian communists seized the USS Mayaguez in Cambodian waters in 1975, President Ford responded with military force to rescue American sailors and free the ship. He notes this type of action would be problematic under UNCLOS. For example, if a treaty signatory (e.g., China, Burma) seized a U.S. ship in its home waters, under the terms of Law of the Sea Treaty, the U.S. could not free her sailors by force, but would have to submit to mandatory arbitration by the Hamburg tribunal or an ad-hoc court, where the U.S. could very likely lose the case. In any event, vital decisions over American security and American lives would not be made by Americans, but by foreign judges, many of them unsympathetic to American interests (coming as they often do from third-world regimes or EU legal elites).

In a related story, Robert Kaplan writes in the Atlantic about the decline of America’s Navy.

Beware pendulum swings. Before 9/11, not enough U.S. generals believed that the future of war was unconventional and tied to global anarchy. They insisted on having divisions to fight against, not ragtag groups of religious warriors who, as it turned out, fought better than state armies in the Muslim world ever did. Now the Pentagon is consumed by a focus on urban warfare and counterinsurgency; inside military circles, the development of culturally adroit foreign-area officers (FAOs) and the learning of exotic languages have become the rage. My own warnings about anarchy (“The Coming Anarchy,” February 1994 Atlantic) and my concentration on FAOs and Army Special Forces in recent books may have helped this trend. But have we pushed it too far? We may finally master the art of counterinsurgency just in time for it to recede in importance.

History suggests that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be imperfect guideposts to conflicts ahead. The quaint Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 gave no intimation of World War I. Neither World War II nor Korea prepared us for Vietnam, which was more similar to the Philippine War of 1899–1902 than to its immediate predecessors. The ease of the Gulf War provided no hint of what an ordeal the Iraq War would be. Today, while we remain fixated on street fighting in Baghdad, the militaries of China, India, South Korea, and Japan are modernizing, and Russia has maintained and subsidized its military research-and- development base by selling weapons to China and others. Though counterinsurgency will remain a core part of our military doctrine, the Pentagon does not have the luxury of planning for one military future; it must plan for several.

New York Times: 

In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results.

Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.

“We’re looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist’s perspective,” he said. “We’re not focused on the enemy. We’re focused on bringing governance down to the people.”

In September, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since early September, five new teams have been deployed in the Baghdad area, bringing the total to six.

But some academics hate the idea, natch.

Christopher Hitchens writes about a young American soldier, Mark Daily, who was inspired to join the fight in Iraq after reading Hitchens. He was killed by an IED at age 23.

Victor Davis Hanson, recently in Iraq:

Almost all the Marines and Army units I visited from Ramadi to Taji to various hot spots in Baghdad and Diyala believe there has been a sudden shift in the pulse of battlefield. Sometimes without much warning thousands of once disgruntled Sunni have turned on al Qaeda, ceased resistance, and are flocking to join government security forces and begging the Americans to stop both al Qaeda and Shiite militias.

Commanders in the field are cautious. They know that if the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad stays vengeful for decades of past suffering at the hands of Sunni Baathists, the reconciliation will fail. So thousands of American officers are desperately pressuring ministries to start distributing the vast wealth of Iraq’s $80 a barrel oil revenues to Anbar and Diyala before the Sunni revert back to insurgency.

The U.S. military

The brilliance of U.S. army and marines officers has not been fully appreciated. I met scores with PhDs and MAs, from Majors to Colonels, who are literally all at once trying to defeat al Qaeda gangs and Shiite militias, rebuild government facilities, arbitrate tribal feuds, repair utilities and train Iraqi army and police. As was true of the last trip to Iraq, I am left with three general impressions about the military.

(1) Our army and marines are far too few and overextended. The United States must either radically increase the size of these traditional ground units or scale back its commitments in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Through constant rotations, we are literally burning out gifted officers and lifetime professionals— and will lose their priceless expertise if they begin, as I fear, retiring en masse due to the sheer exhaustion.

(2) There is more optimism about success among the battlefield soldiers than present with analysts in Baghdad. The sudden decrease in violence has left many units stunned that Iraqis who used to try to kill them are suddenly volunteering information about terrorists and landmines, and clamoring to join the joint security force. Usually those behind the desk are the optimists, the soldiers who die the pessimists. But instead there is genuine feeling on the front that after four frustrating years of ordeal, at last there are tangible signs of real, often radical improvement.

(3) As a supporter of some four years of the now unpopular effort to remove Saddam and leave a democracy in his place, I continue to have only one reservation, albeit a major one. The U.S. soldier in the field is so unusually competent and heroic that one comes to despair at the very thought of losing even one of them. As a military historian I know that an army that can’t take casualties can’t win, but I confess after spending 16-hour days with our soldiers in impossible conditions one wonders whether the entire country of Iraq is worth the loss of just of these unusual Americans. I understand both the lack of logic and perhaps amorality in such a sweeping statement, but feel it nonetheless out here.

Mark Krikorian at the Corner:

So, our worst ex-president joins Desmond Tutu on a trip to Darfur. When Carter tries to make a detour, his Sudanese government minders tell him he can’t, so he erupts:

“We’re going to anyway!” Carter angrily retorted. “You don’t have the power to stop me.”

But of course, they did have the power to stop him, because guns trump sanctimonious hand-wringing every time. If people are really worried about the vulnerable women of Darfur, they ought to give each one of them an AK-47 and the training to use it. You’d be surprised how quickly the rapes stop.

Robert Kaplan writing about Blackwater:

Mention private military contractors to many civilians, especially to liberals, and they’ll think of red-state good old boys working for a firm like Halliburton—the Texas-based corporation formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney—who appear to constitute a rogue, mercenary element favored by a Republican administration.

In fact, the former Halliburton subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) consummated its veritable marriage with the  U.S. military during the Clinton administration, when the firm’s logistical capabilities were indispensable to the Balkan interventions that many liberals supported. The KBR-designed military bases in Bosnia and Kosovo became templates for those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rather than mercenaries who will fight for the highest bidder, private contractors like KBR and Blackwater are composed mainly of retired American noncommissioned officers (NCOs), working alongside the same military to which they used to belong. Just as other professions tap the wisdom and expertise of retirees, so does the American military. Indeed, some contractors, like Triple Canopy, are known to hire veterans of the most elite Special Operations units in the U.S. military. “I’m hiring the elder statesmen of the combat arms community,” one Army colonel told me, referring to some private contractors he was taking on to supplant his uniformed troops in a noncombat capacity. “They won’t have to go through any sniff test when they arrive in the field as consultants. They’ll be instantly looked up to.”

Using exclusively active-duty sergeant-majors and master sergeants of the quality and numbers that this Army colonel required would have drained the Army of some of its best NCOs. The most-seasoned people can’t be produced overnight. Meanwhile, there is a ready-made retirement pool from which to draw, courtesy of the private sector. In the case of this colonel, the contractors were to be under the operational control of active-duty personnel; they would be allowed to fight only in their own self-defense.

The quasi-privatization of war has a long history and is consistent with America’s efficient capitalistic economy. The idea of a large American military presence anywhere without contractors is now unthinkable. Without firms like KBR, the support tail in Iraq would be infinitely longer than it is, with tens of thousands of more troops required to achieve the same result. Buildings need to be maintained; chow halls have to be run; showers and restrooms need to be cleaned. Mundane activities like these account for the bulk of what private contractors do. Of course, that raises the question of bidding fairness: Precisely because only a few such firms, including KBR, can handle massive logistical operations in sync with American military guidelines, taxpayers need to be protected from what are, in the absence of real competition, essentially no-bid contracts.

Kobayashi Maru:

I don’t usually opine on arcane details of bills in Congress. Others do it much better. One of those is Hugh Hewitt [note– this was actually written by Duane R. Patterson on Hugh’s blog].

In this post, he lays out the details of Section 1070 of the Senate Defense Appropriations bill, a bit that got its own vote late Wednesday night. Here’s the meat of it:

It is the sense of the Senate–

(1) to reaffirm its support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, including General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq;

(2) to strongly condemn any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and

(3) to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.

The Moveon.org ad in question ran prior to and during General Petraeus’ testimony (the timing is important) pre-emptively calling him an unrepentant and across-the-board liar, without using the actual word.

It is one thing for an activist group to say what it wants–as reprehensible as that position may be. It’s quite another for Senators to endorse such a position while saying the exact opposite (i.e., “we support the troops”) and while pretending to listen to and take seriously the man to whom they unanimously gave the authority to bring back frank analysis from the front.

How did the vote go down?

72 yea, 25 nay.

One quarter of the U.S. Senate does not support the man they unanimously approved only a few months ago. Why? Pure politics. One quarter of the U.S. Senate does not support the U.S. Armed Forces–anywhere, anytime, anybody, doing anything. Note carefully that the bill does not say anything at all about supporting or opposing the war in Iraq. That’s key. Do you support the U.S. military? No. Well, at least that’s as plain as it gets. As Dennis Prager likes to say: clarity is better than agreement.

But still… unbelievable. One wonders whether these Senators still go to parades back in their districts. One wonders whether they still visit military bases. One wonders whether they take seriously letters and e-mails from military personnel in their districts. One wonders… well… one wonders many things that this vote makes nearly unfathomable.

Bottom line: Hillary voted against it. That’s absolutely huge. In Hewitt’s words:

“If she ever wanted her public image to be that of a moderate, it’s gone now with this vote… she just tipped her hand that she shows more respect to the radical fringe of her base than she does to the country’s top general prosecuting a war that she originally supported.”

Obama showed up on the Senate floor, heard what the vote was about, and promptly left without casting one. Courageous. Not.

I don’t bother with trifles such as the Emmys, but apparently Sally Field — being brave and bold before the assemblage of liberals — declared that:

“If mothers ruled the, ruled the world, there would be no [G-word] wars in the first place.”

To which Don Surber comments:

Many of the soldiers fighting in Iraq are moms. How does Miss Field explain that?

She cannot. All moms are not like her anymore than all dads are like me.

In her column this week, Michelle Malkin wrote, “Motherhood and peace-making are not synonymous. Motherhood requires ferocity, the will and resolve to protect one’s own children at all costs, and a life-long commitment to sacrifice for a family’s betterment and survival. Conflict avoidance is incompatible with good mothering.”

Which is quite true. As Mrs. Malkin observed, there are lion moms and sheep moms. Sheep moms require sheepdogs. Lion moms do not.

Women have led some of the bloodiest wars. Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth come to mind. Of course, neither was a mother. But Cleopatra, Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria presided over a few wars when they ruled their nations. So Miss Field is inaccurate.

But let us be charitable and attribute the statement to hyperbole. Rather than no wars, perhaps Miss Field meant fewer wars. Again, the evidence shows this is not the case. Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher, mothers both, led England to victory in the Falklans.

Golda Meir, a mom, led Israel in the Yom Kippur war.

In nature, as Mrs. Malkin alluded, predators kill not only to eat but to protect their progeny. Female bears and female lions are deadly whenever a human nears their cubs. Males, they could care less. In fact, male lions are the pimps of the animal kingdom, sending out their ho’s to hunt down the zebras.

Among humans, societies usually divvy up the workload with women ruling the house, men ruling outside the house. To conclude that if the roles were reversed that the outcome would be improved relies on a belief that women — excuse me, moms — are superior to everyone else.

That is both chauvinistic and comedic.

This might shed some light on the Israeli ”excursion” into Syria. 

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane’s Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas.The factory was created specifically for the purposes of altering ballistic missiles to carry chemical payloads, the magazine report claimed.Reports of the accident were circulated at the time, however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.The report comes on the heels of criticism leveled by the Syrains at the United States, accusing it of spreading “false” claims of Syrian nuclear activity and cooperation with North Korea to excuse an alleged Israeli air incursion over the country this month.

No comment has been forthcoming from Dennis Kucinich.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden writes:

Good news. Dozens died in Syrian-Iranian chemical weapons experiment.  

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane’s Defence Weekly report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.

That’s beyond good news.  That’s infotainment. The bad news?  Here we go again, having to convince the handwringers of this world there are actual bad people who would do evil with illegal weapons, and need to be killed.  Good news, Israel’s on it. A little of that can go a long way.

Der Spiegel:

It used to be that France would respond with a predictable “non” to any saber-rattling coming out of the US. Now, though, Paris seems eager to lead the way and has taken clear aim at Iran. The bellicosity is making German commentators nervous.

Sometimes it’s not the message, but the messenger who delivers it. After spending much of this decade going head to head with the US over its invasion of Iraq due to nuclear weapons suspicions, France seems to be joining (more…) American bellicosity when it comes to those same suspicions about Iran. On French radio on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that it is time to “prepare ourselves for the worst” and indicated that he was talking about a possible war with Iran.

The remarks are simply the most recent indication that France under new President Nicolas Sarkozy is turning its back on the almost reflexive anti-US stance of his predecessor Jacques Chirac. And they have not been universally well-received. On Monday, the UN’s head nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei (more…) blasted Kouchner, saying that diplomacy is still the best route and warned against “hyping” the issue.

“There are rules on how to use force,” ElBaradei said “and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”

For one, 700,000 is a fabricated number. Two, Saddam killed an estimated 400,000 Iraqis without anyone at the UN even blinking. And far from a “suspicion” Saddam flagrantly indicated he had WMD to the point even his top generals believed it.

As for Germany, there is some hope:

Conservative Die Welt, which in recent years has often seemed like the only German daily to support US foreign policy, falls all over itself with glee on Tuesday:

“The most recent surveys of the German Marshall Fund show that 56 percent of Germans think that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten Europe. But only 22 percent of those asked could imagine military action against Tehran. The result is that all German politicians are relying on negotiations in the hope that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will collapse under the wall of words.”

“If he doesn’t, most here seem to hope that Germany will retreat into the background. … But this time it will be more difficult. Contrary to last time, with the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it’s not just the Americans (Republicans as well as Democrats) who are pleading for an uncompromising position against Iran … .”

The German government recently notified the Bush administration it was ending discussions of further economic sanctions because it was bad for the German economy.

Donald Kagan writes about the Copperheads, the peace-at-all-costs contingent in the US during the Civil War.

As late as 1864, after three years of fearful casualties, victory for the Union forces was not in sight. Lincoln was determined to continue the fight to restore the integrity of the Union and to abolish slavery. Original opponents of the war were joined by great numbers who were simply weary, and others who were ready to seek peace at any price, which was for some the persistence of slavery and for others the dissolution of the Union. One English friend of the Union cause expected such politicians to compromise with the South in order to take it back, slavery and all. Such an event would be shameful, he said, but still “it would leave the question to be settled by a similar process of blood by another generation.” (Civil War quotations are from Copperheads, by Jennifer L. Weber.)

In 1864 Lincoln changed generals, and undertook a more aggressive strategy, but the war continued to drag on. A hostile newspaper, wrote, “that perhaps it is time to agree to a peace without victory.” Like Pericles, Lincoln was assailed by attacks on his policies and by personal vituperation. At the Democratic convention in August 1864 a speaker told a crowd in the streets that Lincoln and the Union armies had ‘‘Failed! Failed!! FAILED!!! FAILED!!!!” The loss of life ‘has never been seen since the destruction of Sennacherib by the breath of the Almighty and still the monster usurper wants more men for his slaughter pens.”The Democratic convention was dominated by the anti-war faction whom the Republicans called “Copperheads,” after the poisonous snake. According to their best historian, they were “consistent and constant in their demand for an immediate peace settlement.

At times they were willing to trade victory for peace. One persistent problem for [them] was their refusal or reluctance to offer a realistic and comprehensive plan for peace.” Pressed by the Copperheads, the Democrats nominated a rabidly antiwar candidate for vice president and adopted a platform that called the war a “failure,” and demanded “immediate efforts” to end hostilities….” Their platform statement would permit abandonment not only of emancipation, but of the most basic war aim, reunion. Even New York’s Republican Party boss declared that Lincoln’s reelection was widely regarded as an “impossibility…The People [were] wild for Peace.”

At the end of August defeat for the Republicans and the Union cause seemed inevitable, but Lincoln refused to seek peace without victory, saying that he was not prepared, to “give up the Union for a peace which, so achieved, could not be of much duration.”No one would have predicted that within a matter of months the war would end with a total victory for the Union forces, slavery abolished and the Union restored, but events took an unexpected turn. A series of Union military victories changed the course of the war. The Democrats, having declared or predicted defeat were, as one historian has written: “Tarred as traitors, regardless of their actual positions on the war, Democrats were … roundly thrashed in November. In fact, the stench of treason clung to the Democrats for years; nearly a generation would pass before another Democrat, Grover Cleveland, occupied the White House.”

Does this sound familiar?

In the minds of the Copperheads, the abolitionists held the place now occupied in the minds of today’s defeatists by the neoconservatives. What prevented peace, the Copperheads insisted was the influence of that small but unduly powerful corps of ideologues known as the abolitionists. It was, they further insisted, “fanatical abolitionism” that started the war. Lincoln, they thought, had become its captive and deceived the people into an unnecessary and unwise war. Now he refused to abandon that war, ostensibly fought to preserve the Union, but really the result of an abolitionist plot to end slavery. In the summer of 1864 the defeatists gained control of the Democratic convention and adopted a platform that charged the Republican administration with violating the Constitution, claiming that it had been “disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down [and] the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired.” “It accused them of using “extraordinary and dangerous powers” “not found in the Constitution. They called the war a “failure,” and for “immediate efforts” “to end hostilities.”

Fascinating history — read it all.

Shrinkwrapped:

As Washington awaits General Petraeus’s report on 9/11, and the late, unlamented Osama bin Laden promises a new video as part of al Qaeda’s psychological war against the West, several lessons are becoming clear about the Long War.  Most importantly, lessons from Iraq and the Palestinian Territories (especially Gazastan), reveal the intimate relationship between the Islamists and the West that can either marginalize or nurture them.  In every front in this war, Jihad exhibits a profound and dynamic dependency on the Western world that is determinative.

The lesson may be clearest in Iraq, specifically in Anbar province.  By losing Anbar we set the stage for our current success, which would never have been possible, no matter how many troops we had in Iraq, if we had not first lost the battle for Anbar.  No proud people will long tolerate an occupation if they have the means to resist.  The Sunnis quite understandably experienced the American troops as occupiers.  They had no real experience of America and the American military beyond their own propaganda (importantly accentuated by the propaganda efforts of the anti-war MSM, efforts that were voraciously ingested and amplified by the anti-American Arab media) and not unexpectedly, their violent resistance led to the effective surrender of Anbar province to the Jihadis.  Once entrenched in power, the Islamists did what every fanatical group has done throughout history: They used terror to maintain their rule.  They instituted their cramped, vicious version of Sharia and terrorized, terrified, and alienated the very population whose forbearance they required in order to thrive.  Once the subject population recognized that they had escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire (sometimes quite literally), the stage was set for the American troops to be warily welcomed as the lesser of two evils; only after the true evil of al Qaeda was evidenced could the Sunnis offer the time and space for the American military to show they could be “no truer friend.”  Our success in Anbar, and now in Diyala, absolutely depended on our first losing.  An argument can also be made that a similar trajectory in Afghanistan was a pre-requisite for the relative ease with which our military overthrew the Taliban.  (And, despite almost daily news stories touting the resurgence of the Taliban, the fact is that they have been thoroughly marginalized and their only successes are the murder of innocents, further alienating the population who comprise the sea they must swim within.)

As top Democrats shrug, “Who us?” when reminded of the bloodbath that followed their decision to leave South Vietnam defenseless, let’s hear from one of their own: Senator James Webb (D-VA).

This Congress was elected in November 1974, only months after Nixon’s resignation, and it was dominated by a fresh group of antiwar Democrats. One of the first actions of the new Congress was to vote down a supplemental appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese that would have provided $800 million in military aid, including much-needed ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies.

This vote was a horrendous blow, in both emotional and practical terms, to the country that had trusted American judgment for more than a decade of intense conflict. It was also a clear indication that Washington was abandoning the South Vietnamese even as the North Vietnamese continued to enjoy the support of the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern bloc nations. The vote’s impact was hardly lost on North Vietnamese military planners, who began the final offensive only five weeks later, as the South Vietnamese were attempting to adjust their military defenses.

Finally, the aftermath of Saigon’s fall is rarely dealt with at all. A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia, the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. Two million Vietnamese fled their country — usually by boat — with untold thousands losing their lives in the process. This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam’s long and frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam a million of the South’s best young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more than 50,000 perished while imprisoned, and others remained captives for as long as 18 years. An apartheid system was put into place that punished those who had been loyal to the United States, as well as their families, in matters of education, employment and housing. The Soviet Union made Vietnam a client state until its own demise, pumping billions of dollars into the country and keeping extensive naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay.

Read his full article on his website.

President Bush touched a nerve with a Vietnamese commie by observing that, when the Democrat-controlled Congress cut off funds to the South Vietnamese, leaving them defenseless, a bloodbath ensued.

“Doesn’t he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?” said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. “Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn’t prolonged except Bush.”

Nobody they left alive, that is.

For another perspective from the North Vietnamese side, there is Gen. Bui Tin, who received the unconditional surrender from the South.

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, “We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.”

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?

A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q: How could the Americans have won the war?

A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

Q: Anything else?

A: Train South Vietnam’s generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.

Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?

A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don’t, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.

UPDATE: Essential reading is Getting Vietnam Right:

In the past week, the criticisms swirling around the President’s VFW speech have provided much less insight into the President or the speech than into the critics. Rather than address the speech’s central issue — the 1975 debate over the ramifications of abandoning Vietnam — these individuals have tried to push their own views on Iraq by mentioning other aspects of Vietnam. Emblematic of the attackers was Senator John Kerry, who said that the President’s comparison of Vietnam with Iraq was “irresponsible” and “ignorant of the realities of both of those wars.” Kerry explained that in Iraq, as in Vietnam, “more American soldiers are being sent to fight and die in a civil war we can’t stop and an insurgency we can’t bomb into submission.” Senator Ted Kennedy, another opponent of both wars, backed this interpretation with the comment that the United States lost the Vietnam War because the South Vietnamese government “lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people.”

Kerry and Kennedy missed key facts about Vietnam, some of them long obvious, others newly emerged from historical studies. The New York Times and NBC News and CNN and so on missed them, too, because they chose to rely on outdated historians or their own prejudices. The insurgency in Vietnam was dead by 1971, thanks to South Vietnam’s armed forces, America’s forces, and a South Vietnamese civilian population that overwhelmingly viewed the South Vietnamese government as legitimate. During 1972, after all American combat units had departed, South Vietnamese forces defeated a massive North Vietnamese invasion with the help of American air power. The so-called Christmas bombing of 1972 bombed North Vietnam into submission, resulting in a peace treaty. Had the antiwar Congress not slashed aid to South Vietnam and prohibited the use of American aircraft over Vietnamese skies, the South Vietnamese probably could have repulsed the North Vietnamese when they violated the peace treaty in 1975.

Michigan Republican Pete Hoesktra sent a scathing letter to NYT executive editor Bill Keller, detailing what Hoekstra called the Times’ “…recklessness in repeatedly disclosing highly classified intelligence programs to enemies who seek to attack our nation,”  and the Times’ coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Act amendments. 

If you want to know what how the new NSA law works, read the whole thing here.