In 1980, at the suggestion of a friend, I signed up for a class in “Basic Pistol” at the American Pistol Institute, in Paulden Arizona. My friend was new to shooting, while I thought I pretty much knew what there was to know (in that way I was a typical American male) and so I showed up expecting very little.

What I got was quite different.

The class was taught by Col. Jeff Cooper, who died at his home on the grounds of API yesterday. Col. Cooper, as most people who read his works or dealt with him indirectly – as I did – called him, was a commanding presence. He was loud but not profane, gruff but always civil, and a wonderful combination of earthy and erudite. He represented a certain ideal of American manhood; John Wayne without the mincy little shorts and man-bag. He’d ‘seen the elephant’ and served in the Marines and as a private military instructor in Latin America.

He was also by my standards (and pretty much by any contemporary standards) a racist and sexist, and his conservativism dial was set so far to the right as to be literally medieval.

He codified the body of doctrine and training that became the modern small-arms manual, and served as the center of a loose web of men and women who advance and teach the art of practical shooting worldwide. Our military and police today are taught by instructors almost all of whom learned at or from those who learned at, Jeff’s school.

There I was affectionately – I hope – known as “the hippie” and it was only my knowledge of the 30 Years’ War (a subject he challenged me on out of the blue) and some other random historical facts I managed to dredge out of memory that got him to tolerate me. I was a very good student, if only a decent shot, and managed not to piss off any of the other instructors too badly (except for Clint Smith when he asked me the “Bozo” question).

Col. Cooper had stage presence to burn. He used that presence – all of it – in the service of his teaching and craft, and after hours in wide-ranging discussions in his library with the students who – like all good students of a sensei – gathered around to soak up his mannerisms and wisdom in the hope that they would translate into mastery.

I never became a master, but the things he taught me in that class – and in later discussions – really did become core “truths” for me. I may have completely disagreed with Col. Cooper about female police officers (who he called “copchicks”) and on the root causes of political issues in Africa and Latin America – but he was always willing to engage in respectful argument, and when you’d made a point he couldn’t parry, he’d grunt softly and acknowledge it generously.

I hope to grow into someone with strong opinions and still keep that kind of honesty, and if I got nothing else from the Colonel, I’ll take that.

Col. Cooper and others of his ilk that I have been lucky enough to know represent a real kind of uniquely American ideal that I hope never goes out of style.

His writings – many not for sensitive eyes – can be found here, his Wikipedia entry here, and a good page on him and his works here.

In the middle of a shoot-off (class-ending competition that settled your rank within the class – none of this touchy-feely non-hierarchical learning for him) he stopped two of us, fixed me with a stare, and reminded me that “You can’t miss fast enough to win, Marc.”

Like many things he said, that is still and will always be absolutely true.

Check the update at the bottom.

So this is going to be even less thought out than my usual posts. Deal with it.

I’m back from the Warren Christopher lecture, and I’m seriously having trouble understanding the strength of my own reaction.

Which is flat-out anger. In the car driving down the 110, I was trying to unpack my reaction, and just let my internal editors take a break. And here’s what came out:

I wish I was religious. Then I could believe there was a hell and wish I could send people like him to it.

Which is way over the top by any reasonable measure. but I swear that’s what I was thinking. And it is so far from the midly critical intellectual critique that I walked in the door with that I’m not sure how to react to my own reaction.

And yes, I wondered if I’m just having a bad week (hint: yes, I am. A good friend is in the hospital after a horrible motorcycle crash this weekend that left the other rider – the stupid one riding far too fast on the wrong side of the road – dead, severely injured my friend and bruised and shook his lovely girlfriend. Another friend is just out of the hospital after a horrible bicycle crash that left him needing major surgery to his shoulder).

But there’s something serious here as well.

I doubt that I’ll get to the bottom of it in this post alone, and there will be a longer discussion to follow.

But here’s what pissed me off – a close paraphrase of one of Christopher’s comments:

Why didn’t the Americans attack Iran – maybe we should have. Based on Valentine’s Day thought Iranian govt would solve it. He, Vance, Carter thought keeping the hostages alive would be the priority.

Maybe if forceful action had been used Reagan wouldn’t have been President.
[emphasis added]

Not “maybe we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a major confrontation with state-supported Islamist radicals.” Not “maybe 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, and tens of thousands of people wouldn’t have died.” Not any number of other things involving the United States and our relations with the rest of the world. Ronald effing Reagan’s election is as bad a thing as he can imagine.

I can’t imagine a more insular view of things. And I’m terrified that one of the actual people who shaped events can’t see past the mirrored window of his political party.

A while ago I wrote this:

Which brings me to the final point, and to me the most frightening. It’s an adjunct to the first two, and simply put, it suggests that everything that happens isn’t really about the thing itself – the war in Iraq as an example – but it’s about us; how we feel about ourselves, who has political advantage, who profits and who loses in the courts of power, prestige and wealth.

I’m genuinely afraid that the ruling cohort, and those who enable it by participating in the political process, have so much lost touch with the realities that we face that they are incapable of looking at an issue like Iraq, or 9/11, or the economic straits we have spent and borrowed ourselves into as a nation except as a foothold in climbing over the person in front of them. I imagine a small table of gentlemen and -women, playing whist on a train as it heads out over a broken bridge. The game, of course matters more than anything, and the external events – they’re just an effort to distract they players from their hands.

I was being somewhat rhetorical when I wrote that. The point was serious, and I thought accurate. But tonight I just had it pushed into my face, and somehow it’s not clever any more. it’s enraging.

Secretary Christopher wore a beautiful tailored suit, and his shoes were brilliantly polished. They reflected the crowd; in my Royal Robbins khakis and Timberland nubucks I felt badly underdressed. This crowd was a locus of influence and power here in Los Angeles; a crowd that can Get Things Done.

And I left in fear that they’ve lost the notion that they are getting things done for any reason except for their advantage or the advantage of their own little club. And yes, that pisses me off. A lot.

To end on a whimsical note, the other thing it reminded me of was Terry Gilliam’s great film “Baron Munchausen.” In it, a European town is besieged by the Turkish army; the town is run by a rational leader (Horatio Jackson brilliantly played by Jonathan Pryce) who keeps entering into formal agreements with the Turks – Wednesday, the Turks may shell them without response – because having formal agreements that embody order, and rationality expressed in words are what matters:

Horatio Jackson: Ah, the officer who risked his life by singlehandedly destroying *six* enemy cannon and rescuing ten of our men help captive by The Turk.
Heroic Officer: Yes, sir.
Horatio Jackson: The officer about whom we’ve heard so much.
Heroic Officer: I suppose so, sir.
Horatio Jackson: Always taking risks far beyond the call of duty.
Heroic Officer: I only did my best, sir.
Horatio Jackson: Have him executed at once. This sort of behavior is demoralizing for the ordinary soldiers and citizens who are trying to lead normal, simple, unexceptional lives. I think things are difficult enough without these emotional people rocking the boat.

Here are my notes (via treo, and yes my thumbs were tired):

Warren Christopher 09/25/06

The crowd – judicial insiders…”I need to start getting into private judging; it’s too lucrative to miss out on”.

Talks about setting up the tribunal. Bought a building? Who paid the cost of the tribunal?

Feels Shah could have gotten care in Mexico…wishes we hadn’t let him in, but thinks that doing so was an expression of our values…

Anne Swift decided to surrender the embassy – the Marine guards couldn’t have held the Embassy.

First thing was to go to the UN…

Tried interlocutors to open line of communication.

Maybe we should have detained the Iranian diplomats. Desperate to open line of communication.

Vance & he thought that as long as the Americans were in good health force was not an option.

Reagan election – he said they’d be better deal with Carter. The Algerians said they felt that Reagan had an impact.

Impact of failed rescue mission….it had a negative effect – dispersed hostages until release. May have caused them to disperse nuke facilities today.

Thinks they may have been too focused on it. Lots of senior Administration focus on Iran.
Might have been sounder to delegate and have midlevel folks deal with it.

He got angry on Jan 19 when Iranians walked back on the signed agreement and refused to sign an annex concerning bank transfers…called his pilot to leave. _This_ made him angry…

“Don’t think we violated ‘don’t pay ransom’ but we might have come close…” (exact quote)

Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan impacted by hostage crisis?

Thinks we tempered our reaction to Sov invasion because of the hostage crisis.

Why didn’t the Americans attack Iran – maybe we should have. Based on Valentines Day thought Iranian govt would solve it. He, Vance, Carter thought keeping the hostages alive would be the priority.

Maybe if forceful action had been used Reagan wouldn’t have been President.

Update: See comments by andrewdb and m. takhallus. This is a bipartisan issue. This isn’t remotely a Democratic issue, although I hammer the Democrats about it a lot because they’re my party and I want them to change so they can win. And I push them hard on the issue of foreign policy because we need a real set of debates.

This is an issue involving all the ‘insiders’ who have forgotten why power is worth having.

I’ll emphasize a point takhallus made:

This is why some of us are so furious at the current administration. Not only are they losing, they’re setting the country up for another round of moping self-doubt. That’s dangerous for the entire world.

There is no substitute for victory. Manly chin-jutting and chest-thumping are not victory. Victory is victory. We’re not gaining a victory right now, we’re losing. Just as there’s no substitute for victory there’s no excuse for failure.

The role of women in the Islamic world is an interesting – and possibly critical – one in many ways. I’m currently reading an excellent history: “The Middle East On The Eve Of Modernity: Aleppo In The Eighteenth Century” by Abraham Marcus.

Marcus devotes a lot of the book to the domestic economy of Aleppo – an important trading city in the 18th Century – and explores (among many, many other things) the roles of women, which were wider than I had presumed.

In the modern Middle East, the question of the role of women remains a central one, and one that many think will unlock a path to an Islam that can live within itself. Blogger Ali Eteraz has emailed me a few times to point me at his blog, Eteraz, and after reading it for a while, it’s one that I’ll highly recommend.He has a post up citing a recent oped in Pakistan concerning the potential changes in Pakistani law concerning women and testimony (attention is mostly paid by the media to issues of rape) and there was a kernel of the oped that was too important not to pull up and try and show around.

The essence of the fundamentalist argument is that Islamic law is a specialized science, decipherable only to people who spent many years of study in the subject. The experience of ordinary people, particularly the ordinarily pious or the ordinarily impious person, is irrelevant. What counts is what the truly pious think.

There are two problems with this approach. The first is that piety, especially when it comes to women’s issues, often turns out to be a riotous blend of ignorance and prejudice garnished with a fig leaf of morality. The second is that it excludes anybody who is not a certified and recognised Islamic scholar from having any say as to what law should be.

[emphasis added]

This is a point made in passing that rang like a bell for me as I read it. The foundation of Western society is the notion that the power of the state – codified in the law – is subject at some level to the will and opinion of the common citizen.

A world where that view of Islamic jurisprudence was dominant would be a world where I’d sleep far better at night. Read the whole thing, as well as Ali’s entire post (hell, read and bookmark his entire blog…).

We’re hammering ourselves against a wall, and it’s painful. But cracks and daylight are appearing. Slowly, too slowly, but they are there.

Monday night, I’m going to hear Warren Christopher talk about “The Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal: Implications for International Dispute Resolution and Diplomacy”

I may get a chance to chat with him. My impressions of the US response to the Iran hostage crisis are pretty bleak.

So – what should I ask him? What should I read tomorrow?

So today while I was at a meeting, TG sat in the driveway and sold a bunch of stuff we pulled from the garage attic, as a part of a neighborhood garage sale day.

I helped haul stuff out of the garage early this morning, and was looking at a collection of kitchen tools, outgrown and seldom-used children’s toys, skis that we can’t get the bindings adjusted on any more, and obsolete electronics.

I’m not someone who buys deeply (or at all) into the notion that we should all live in quaint villages in a manner that would have made 19th century Mennonites comfortable, which is I think at the root of much of the ways that people look at Western consumer society.

But I did look at the large pile on the driveway and think for a bit. I have worked by the hour for most of the last 15 years; I’ve made, say, a buck-and-a-half a minute.

So I look at the pile of stuff, and to me it represents wasted time. Half a year of my life, maybe, that I worked to buy stuff that we’re now piling in our driveway to sell for a hundred bucks or so.

Three articles caught my attention today, and I thought I’d pass them along with some quick comments before I have to go outside and grill dinner.

First, Gary Hart – who I like and generally have wished would be one of the most-heard voices in the Democratic party on issues of national security has a – delusional? – post up at Huffpo. His point, simply, is that we ought to expect a US airstrike on Iran before the 06 elections. An ‘October surprise’, as he calls it.

It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.

Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times.

Look, there are a lot of things to talk about in regards to the appropriate things to do in dealing with that dapper hipster running Iran. Some people – including some of my co-bloggers – think that a bombing campaign as outlined by Hart for the fall sweeps

Therefore, he will announce, our own national security and the security of the region requires us to act. “Tonight, I have ordered the elimination of all facilities in Iran that are dedicated to the production of weapons of mass destruction…..” In the narrowest terms this includes perhaps two dozen targets.

But the authors of the war on Iraq have “regime change” in mind in Iran. According to Colonel Sam Gardiner (author of “The End of the ‘Summer of Diplomacy’: Assessing U.S. Military Options in Iran,” The Century Foundation, 2006) to have any hope of success, such a policy would require attacking at least 400 targets, including the Revolutionary Guard. But even this presumes the Iranian people will respond to a massive U.S. attack on their country by overthrowing their government. Only an Administration inspired by pre-Enlightenment fantasy could believe a notion such as this.

is the best idea since Marshmallow Fluff. I’m on record as thinking it’s a bad idea.

But politically, in the current environment – absent a YouTube video of Ahmadinejad personally machining plutonium hemispheres while pointing to a map of Washington DC – I can’t imagine that the US political reaction would be survivable for the GOP. And that once the Democrats were sworn in in January, that Bush would then be looking at some serious face time with the Judiciary Committee.

So, Gary – what the hell? Do you think Karl Rove is that stupid?

Next, over at American Footprints, another thoughtless post by Eric Martin, who points out that – in the middle of the conflict with the movements behind terrorism, there is more terrorism. This is kind of like saying that GI’s didn’t start to take casualties in Europe until after D-Day. Hint: there is an enemy, and they will fight back. While we’re engaged with them, they’ll fight back harder.

This seems so obvious that I’m puzzled that people keep bringing this point up. It’s part of the fantasy 110-minute war that people envision, I think, when they watch too much television.

In contrast, praktike has a thoughtful and smart post on the interaction between how Islam and the West talk about each other and how they act – including an interesting and first-hand account of the Muslim Brotherhood wrapup to a day of worship.

Go read it, and while you ought to know where prak and I may disagree with his conclusion:

Where I would have written: “If we don’t find a solution to the Palestinian question that Arabs and Muslims view as legitimate, and if we keep backing disasters like Iraq and the recent Israeli war in Lebanon, the decent men and women of the Middle East, most of whom are faithful Muslims, will have a very hard time defeating those who have brutalized and coarsened their culture and religion.”

The problem of course is that there may be no solution to Israel-Palestine that the Arab and Muslim view as legitimate short of the destruction (or such severe strategic disenfranchisement that it is effectively destruction) of Israel? And while we can absorb a lot of terrorism while the decent men and women of the Middle East work to defeat the bad folks – there is a limit, and I think we’ve already absorbed a lot of it.

Having said that, I’ll suggest that I line up closely to prak when it comes to defining the optimal solution – helping those decent people take control of their nations and region.

Now – the question is how?

This morning’s production at Casa Armed Liberal lacked the duration and comic impact of the last classic – “A sandy slope, a cable lock, an Aerostich, and the well-hung stable boy” but it added a certain dramatic intensity and had far better special effects. It’s titled “The long-sitting MZ, the can of starter fluid, and the fire extinguisher”.So the MZ motard – when it’s being used every day – starts like a champ. But if it sits for four or five days, you need racing rollers. My solution, after burning down the battery once or twice, was to invest in a can of starting fluid – basically, ether. Plus I can fantasize about using it to sedate people who annoy me…

So after leaving the MZ sitting for three weeks, I rolled it out of the garage, popped the seat off (which opens the air box), grabbed the starter fluid, and sprayed a little on the foam air filter.

Usually, it’ll start right up, die, and then start again and stay started. The hardest part is getting the three d**n Dzus fasteners back in to fasten the seat.

Today – well, today went a little worse.

I hit start and it fired immediately, and then backfired and died. A big cloud of white smoke filled the airbox, and then “whomp!” caught fire.

My initial – somewhat panicked – estimate had the flames three or four feet high, but on calm reconsideration, I’d say six or ten inches. I flapped my hand at them, and quickly realized that it’d take a little more to get this problem dealt with…

We usually have a fire extinguisher in the garage…look, look, crap!! … we’ve got to do a garage cleanup…

Don’t see it.

Run into the house and look above the dryer where we usually keep the one in the kitchen…look, look, crap!! “TG, where the f*** is the fire extinguisher??” She says that’s a sure sign that the morning is going to be an interesting one.

I peek at the pile of boxes under the kitchen bar and grab the extinguisher from there (we’ve been working on the house…) and run outside.

Pull the pin, point the nozzle at the flames (burning quite happily, thank you), press the lever and “whoosh!!” my most burning problems were solved. I’ve always wanted to actually put out a fire with one of those things…

I owe Blackfive a book review (tonight), and was going to give him grief for his little faux pas when I wrote it.

But I think, out of respect for both of our fragile egos, I’ll let it go today.

My state Senator, Debra Bowen is deeply focused on “honest election” issues. She has two bills that passed the California legislature this session, and are sitting on Gov. Schwartzenegger’s desk. I’m supporting both, and would like to encourage you to as well.

Debra’s initiative reform bill, SB 1598, provides greater transparency in the process for gathering signatures on initiative petitions. First, it requires signature gatherers to disclose whether they’re paid or are volunteers. Second, the bill requires that petitions include a list of the top five contributors to the initiative campaign right at the top in large type.

The second bill, SB 1235, expands the use of hand recounts in California elections to gauge the accuracy of our voting systems. Current law, which Debra authored last year, requires that the 1% manual recount of randomly selected precincts include the paper trail from electronic voting machines. This year’s bill expands that recount requirement to include early voting and absentee votes — which by themselves represent as much as 40% of the votes cast in a typical California election — and requires that the result of this audit be made public.

Debra authored both of these bills to help restore public confidence in California’s elections process. We need more transparency in the funding of initiative campaigns, and we need to strengthen the auditing requirements of our elections to make sure that they are accurate.

Click here to go to a page on Bowen’s website and send a message to Gov. Schwarzenegger asking him to sign the bills.

So obviously, the main issue (other than “what’s for lunch”) that I thought about while riding on my trip was the war. In my mind, it is centrally the broader “war” between an aggressive sect of Islamic radicals and the governments that have a symbiotic relationship with them. The battlefield in Israel and environs, Iraq and Afghanistan is the most visible front in the war – today.

What I want to do it set out in a fast pass the issues that I’ve been chewing over, and then try and return to the key ones in greater depth to talk about them – hopefully with my thinking and questions amplified by yours. It’s obvious that this is a time that requires more than a bit of serious thinking for people on all sides of the issue, and none more than folks like me – those who supported the invasion of Iraq and must now step back and look at the situation – which is neither as good as we’d hoped nor, I still believe, as awful as it is painted in some corners – and think hard about where we stand today.

So I want to start with questions and sketches of answers. Note that the answers may well be contradictory – it’s definitely true that I am conflicted and that I hope in my blogging in the next little while to dig into those contradictions.1. Why does the war matter? Does Islamist terrorism deserve the high level of attention and concern that many people are showing?

Contra Glenn Reynolds, who says at Instapundit:

To read some blogs today, you’d think that this was the 9th century, with camel-riding Jihadis ready to descend on helpless American towns, swinging unstoppable scimitars. It’s not that way; it’s more like the Ghost Dance or similar movements borne of frustration at losing, movements that do their damage all right, but that are doomed to fail. I don’t mean to understate the threat, which is real enough. But it’s not on the order of the Cold War, you know, and we won that one.

Not so much, Glenn. I believe that state-facilitated terrorism does potentially present a serious enough risk to the health of the US – to our global primacy politically and economically – that it fully justifies the level of concern. This isn’t just a symbolic war – it’s one with real material risks that we must confront.

Let me divert for a moment to talk about what I mean when I say “state-facilitated terrorism,” above.

To me, it is the difference between Oklahoma City and 9/11 – a difference of scale so profound that it becomes a difference in kind. As I’ve written before, the psychological/philosophical reaction to modernity that I call “Bad Philosophy” is certainly present in the West, and we will certainly feel flashes (maybe literally) of pain from it. But the scale of attack that is likely to be mounted by a domestic terrorist group is substantially smaller than the one that could be mounted by a terrorist group with state support – which implies larger amounts of money, easier access to weapons, a place where they can be housed or train without fear of arrest or attack, and the ability to manage or forge identity.

The next post will set out some scenarios which I believe could be plausibly carried out by a cadre of 10 committed terrorists with 20 – 50 ‘helpers’ and a reasonable amount of cash. From my point of view, the risks they impose are strong enough that they deserve to be treated as far more than a nuisance.

2. If Islamist terrorists are such a big risk, why not just go to war and conquer or kill them?

Well, first and foremost because it would be flatly wrong (to launch a full-scale war with the Islamic world) at this stage of the conflict. There are too many paths that lead to a less-violent (note that I don’t say nonviolent) solution, and we have the moral and practical imperative to use the lowest level of violence that we can. The risks I outline in 1) above are just that – risks, not prophecy.

We have to live in the world, and like it or not, as I tell my sons, that means you have to accept that you are sharing the table with people you may or may not like or be happy with.

That doesn’t imply that they can stab you with their dinner knives with impunity. But it does suggest a more-tolerant vision than I think many of the “bomb Iran now” advocates may have of our role and place in the world. That tolerance is our strongest weapon, and we should be using it to wage ‘soft’ war to go with the ‘hard’ one our troops are fighting today.

The basic principle is well-set out by Abu Aardvark:

A smart campaign against al-Qaeda and the jihadist fringe should drive a wedge between them and mainstream Muslims. It should demonstrate the absurdity of al-Qaeda’s claims about a Crusader war against Islam. Even today, the vast majority of Muslims reject al-Qaeda’s theology, tactics, and goals. We should be trying to keep it that way instead of trying to do al-Qaeda’s work for it.

This is a good variant on my favorite Clint Smith quote…

“You better learn to communicate real well, because when you’re out there on the street, you’ll have to talk to a lot more people than you’ll have to shoot, or at least that’s the way I think it’s supposed to work.”

The post after the scenario one will set out what I think are the shortcomings of what we’ve done to date in this sphere.

3. If you want to “talk” with the Islamists, doesn’t that undermine point 1., above? Aren’t you denying the real risk we face?

No, I don’t think so. Look, the goal of war is the bend the enemy to our will – not necessarily to kill him or enslave him. We want the Islamic world to behave well – to pursue national, racial, cultural, and religious goals in the time honored way that the gentle nations of the West have done so for – decades – since World War II. Seriously, we want to change the behavior of a variety of states and change the direction of a large number of people in several societies.

And winning – bending them to our will – implies a mixture of seduction and threat. The threat is simple, and present always – we could if we chose, follow Duncan Black’s prescription in which

…it’s you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!

The problem is that until we decide we’re willing to kill “them” all – or kill enough of them to cow the rest into submission, we’re left needing to convince them that making peace with us – on terms acceptable to us – is worth their while. That something is in it for people on the other side.

Wouldn’t we rather sell people on rights, laws, freedom, and prosperity – on ‘democracy, sexy, whiskey!’ then fight them?

We’ve done a truly crap job of that selling, and to me that more than anything else is the core and abject failure of the Bush Administration.

Why aren’t we trying to seduce them with what the West has to offer? What are we doing to win the average person in Egypt over to our side? Hell, what are we doing to keep the average person in Des Moines on our side?

Doesn’t it seem – when we have the weapons at hand to confidently state that we can demolish their societies and reduce the survivors to sustenance in a weekend – that we have the responsibility to try and talk them out of committing ‘suicide by war’??

4. So how’s that Iraq thing working out for you, then?

Obviously badly. Worse strategically, I think than tactically – in that I remain convinced (admittedly with little evidence except my own perception of how we are being told what is going on and a sparse overlay of demographic facts) that things are brutally tough in Iraq right now – but not horrible.

The numbers of deaths don’t approach the levels of the Lebanon civil war, and aren’t vastly (they are 3 – 4X) above the peak murder rates we saw in California in the 1990’s. Again – that’s not good news – but neither is it a scene of ongoing pitched street battles with massive casualties.

But even as I’m somewhat optimistic tactically, I am a total pessimist strategically. My justification – and I believe, under all the layers, the justification of the Administration – was to shock the other governments and actors in the Middle East, primarily the Iranians and Saudis, into modifying their behavior and support for the Islamist movement. We hoped that Iran would act like Libya did.

Didn’t happen, unfortunately. There are a lot of reasons that are no one’s fault, and a lot of blame to parcel around for the reasons that are. It was clearly not a risk-free move. By threatening, we risked hardening the positions of those who weren’t afraid of us.

By squabbling – by overtly acting out within our political class and our public intellectuals – we make it transparently clear to the enemy – who does read our media – that we’re not so sure about this fighting thing.

And so those who oppose us are made stronger both because we aren’t doing as Abu Aardvark suggests and driving wedges within the Muslim world (meaning we aren’t seducing people away to join our side), and because while our soldiers are steadfast and resolute, our polity isn’t (which gives our enemies the clear impression that we can be defeated).

So the “undecided” Muslim populace and leaders see a brutal enough West to be repellent – but one insecurely questioning it’s own brutality enough not to be terribly frightening.

5. Why bother? Why not just sit down and work something out that makes the other side happy?

Because I don’t see that as being very easy, for good reasons and bad ones.

The alternative to changing their behavior is that we change ours – by tolerating their primacy in a number of areas. Thucydides talked about that a bit:

Again, your country has a right to your services in sustaining the glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you all, and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its honours. You should remember also that what you are fighting against is not merely slavery as an exchange for independence, but also loss of empire and danger from the animosities incurred in its exercise. Besides, to recede is no longer possible, if indeed any of you in the alarm of the moment has become enamoured of the honesty of such an unambitious part. For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe. And men of these retiring views, making converts of others, would quickly ruin a state; indeed the result would be the same if they could live independent by themselves; for the retiring and unambitious are never secure without vigorous protectors at their side; in fine, such qualities are useless to an imperial city, though they may help a dependency to an unmolested servitude.

I would rather bend the Islamic world to our will then bend to theirs, for the simple reason that I like ours better. They fly use our hospitals, not vice versa. The life of the poor here – or even of the stained middle class – is far better than the life enjoyed there. We don’t – as a state – execute gays, teenaged girls who are raped, or force women into servitude.

People here can question authority – rather vigorously – and don’t get thrown in jail. We can worship – or not worship – as we please.

It isn’t just because I am an American or a Westerner that I support one side in this conflict, and don’t see myself as impartial. It is because I genuinely believe that the values of the West are better, and worth defending.

I don’t delude myself enough not to believe that many people see our Western power as tyranny – and in some ways it has been and it is.

But the choices offered are not between the tyranny of Western values and institutions and an idealized freedom, but between the tyranny of MTV and Citibank that of the burqua, public stoning, and the Ministry For The Protection Of Virtue.

Our side – and yes, there is an ‘our side’ – is more than worth defending. The question is, as always, how.

I’ll close with two more Clint Smith quotes:

“You know the last words most [killed on duty] street cops ever say? ‘I’m gonna go in there and kick his ass!’ The word for that is suicidal aggressiveness.”

“If you carry a gun, people call you paranoid. That’s ridiculous. If I have a gun, what in the hell do I have to be paranoid about?”

The point, to hammer it home, is that right now we are equally at risk from suicidal aggressiveness and passivity. And that we are carrying guns (lots of them) and so what the hell do we have to be paranoid about? Calm assessment of the threats and the appropriate reaction to them makes a whole lot more sense.

So we’re back home – actually were back home from the motorcycle trip Thursday night, and then turned around and left Friday morning for our annual 10-family camping trip on Catalina Island with Littlest Guy.

Not a lot of connectivity over any of those days…

But I got to think a lot, see a lot of the country (some like Yosemite quite familiar, some – like Eastern Oregon – completely new to me), have fun with TG and interact with a fair number of people – people we knew, like Michael Totten and Gerard Vanderleun, and TG’s cousin Yaeko – and lots of people we didn’t, who we met in scenic overlooks, gas stations and restaurants, all places where we seemed to spend a lot of time.

There’s something about travelling by motorcycle which changes the interaction you have with the people you meet while on the road. Maybe they presume that because you are more accessible to the elements you are more accessible to them as well, and so they walk up and approach you with very little hesitation. I think that’s great.

I’ll write more thoughtful things over the next week, about what we saw and who we met as well as things I thought about. But the overall impression is of the essential goodness and kindness of everyone we met – they were just nice and decent people who went out of their way to be helpful to us without expecting anything in return.

Our gear – my KTM 950 Adventure and TG’s Kawasaki Ninja 650, our Aerostich suits, Shoei helmets, etc. etc. all served us very well.

And the riding was great. We discovered a new favorite road pretty much every day.

And I got huge chunks of time with just TG, which reminded me why it is that I’m so darn lucky to be married to her.