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.

So TG and I are taking two weeks starting today to go ride our motorcycles to Canada.

Connectivity will obviously be low – I’m not taking a laptop, because she flatly said she’d shoot me and bury the body in an unmarked grave alongside the road the first time I booted it up – but enjoyment ought to be proportionally high.

We’re doing this trip in the “where do we feel like going today?” style, so we’re not completely sure where we’ll go or exactly when we’ll get there. There are a few folks we’ll make sure to see if we can…

So if you’ve got any suggestions for roads to ride, things to see, or – most of all – places to eat along the small roads between Los Angeles and Vancouver, this is the place to post them. I’ll peek at the site from time to time on my Treo when she’s not watching.

If you see two riders with bright yellow Aerostiches on an orange KTM and a black Kawasaki, wave as we go by…

And, as always, please try not to kill each other or blow anything up while we’re away. See you all on the 18th.

August 31, 2006

By Fax to: (916) 445-4633

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

I’m writing to urge you to veto AB2948 (Umberg), a bill that would radically change the way that Presidential elections are held in the United States.

The bill – through an interstate compact – effectively abolishes the Electoral college and substitutes the results of the popular vote. While many people complain about the process or results involved in our creaky Presidential election process, I’d like to point out a few things and ask you to consider them as you weigh your response to this bill. First, and foremost, that the current system works. We are the longest-lived republic in the history of the world, and the cranky genius of the Founders who managed to build a federal system that manages to keep balancing all the moving parts of our society as it’s changed over the last two and a quarter centuries.

Next, simply, because one of the keys to the success of our system is specifically the balance it strikes between majority power and minority rights. I’ve lived all my life in California, one of the most populated, wealthy, and powerful states. But I have friends who live in New Mexico and South Dakota – friends whose vote for President would be effectively discounted as we moved to a purely population-based election system.

Finally, because a change of this impact and import should not be made without the clear attention, participation, and voice of the public, rather than in a late-session legislative maneuver that has been thinly publicized and is not well-understood.

I’ve heard you speak of the affection and admiration you have for the American system of government. Why risk carelessly damaging something you hold in such high esteem?

Almost thirty years ago, you stopped as you walked through a gym in Santa Monica to correct me as I did situps. I paid attention – as did the audience that gathered around to listen – because you obviously had a history of success in exercise. America has a history of success in politics, and I hope that you will pay as close attention to America’s success as I did to you that night.

Marc Danziger

Guest blogger Daniel Markham posts a followup to his post on The First Media War.

There have been some great books lately on how warfare is both returning to its desultory roots and evolving from Mao’s war to a decentralized trans-national threat. One buzzword is 4GW, which stands for Fourth Generation Warfare. The general idea behind all of these works is that war keeps evolving, and understanding how it is evolving is essential for winning it.

Indeed, “What war are we fighting?” seems to be a popular topic among armchair Generals, and real Generals too. In a recent article in Armed Forces Journal, Major General Bob Scales, Ret, after digging up the ghost of Clausewitz for yet another trip through the briar patch, says it’s World War IV and we need to understand what the “amplifying factors” are. Amplifiers are not “multipliers” or “enablers” in that their influence on the course of war is nonlinear rather than linear; amplifiers don’t simply accelerate the trends of the past, they make war different.

For example, World War I was a chemists’ war in that the decisive strategic advantage on the battlefield was driven in large measure by new applications of chemistry and chemical engineering. The war should have ended for the Germans in 1915 when their supplies of gunpowder nitrates exhausted. But the synthesis of nitrates by
German scientists allowed the war to continue for another three horrific years. World War II was a physicists’ war. To paraphrase Churchill, the atom bomb ended the conflict, but exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum in the form of the wireless and radar won it for the allies. “World War III” was the “information researchers'” war, a war in which intelligence and knowledge of the enemy and the ability to fully exploit that knowledge allowed the U.S. to defeat the Soviet Union with relatively small loss of life.

So what does General Scales and the academic he quotes think is going to be the amplifier in WWIV?

…controlling amplifier will be human and biological rather than organizational or technological. From his theory we can postulate a new vision of the battlefield, one that shifts from the traditional linear construct to a battlefield that is amoebic in shape; it is distributed, dispersed, nonlinear, and essentially formless in space and unbounded in time. This war and all to follow will be what I would call “psycho-cultural” wars.

The General goes on to say that sociologists are going to be needed in the new war along with scientific psychology “Cultural psychology can teach us to better understand both common elements of human culture and how they differ. An understanding of these commonalities and differences can help gain local allies, fracture enemy subgroups, avoid conflicts among allies, promote beneficial alliances and undermine enemy alliances. ”

I think the general is on to something here. Populations and attitudes play a critical role in our next war, even if it gets a lot hotter. The goal of any war is to make the enemy stop fighting, whether that enemy is one guy on the internet or an entire national command structure. There are obviously roles that culture play, and psychology and the way people think is an important part of all of this.

In short, I think the general is so close it’s a crying shame, as we say in the south. But a war for social scientists and scientific psychology? It seems that the general would keep the Armed Forces the same, and just “smarten up” the way we select and train people, sprinkling some little buzz words from the towers of academia over them as they head off into battle.

I know I’m new to the party, and I don’t have any stars on my collar, but I beg to disagree. Close, but no banana. The general is so close — the answer is sitting right under his nose.

This is not the social-sciences war. Those guys couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. This is the businessman’s war. And it’s a war for which we are overwhelmingly prepared.

Welcome to Transactional Warfare.

Transactional Warfare states that the battlefield is described by messages and options, as I posted earlier. That the side that wins is the side that, by use of options and messages causes the other side to be unable to make any sales.

Sales? That’s right. Sales. TW stipulates that the fight for ideas, for hearts and minds, for psycho-cultural values, is a fight that businessmen have been engaged with for hundreds of years. That we have evolved the tools, separate from the military, to scale a discussion from one person selling a used car to launching a complex product line in a foreign market. We can measure, plan, and fight other ideas in any culture in the world. We can integrate media, messages, options, positioning to maximum benefit. Heck, we’ve even been known to integrate low-level armed conflict into our product campaigns. This is idea warfare, meme warfare, product warfare, and it’s what we know best.

But back to definitions for a minute.

Messages that are relevant to a population can be discovered fairly easily. In business, we call these “Key Selling Points“, “Unique Selling Propositions“, “Value Statements”, or “Political Maneuvers” (one good Clausewitz deserves a Machiavelli. >) In addition, there is a strategic position for any population for any set of messages and options. This relationship of options and messages in the market can be graphed, and opportunities discovered. In fact, a similar process is used for new products that are being brought to market — the goal is to position the product in the market to the maximum degree possible.

Transactions are an exchange of economic value for a change in options and a delivery of messages. This is my column, I get to make the rules. A transaction, by this definition, can consist of a door-to-door salesmen selling vacuum cleaners. It can also consist of a laser-targeted bomb taking out a building where terrorist hide. Yes — it is wooly and it covers a lot of ground, but the new war also covers a lot of ground, if you haven’t noticed. The key concept is that every transaction in a market changes the risk of terrorism in that market.

That is, if I sell a cell phone from a street-corner in Baghdad, I have changed the risk of terrorism, to a very small degree. If I give a hundred dollars to tsunami relief, I have changed the risk of terrorism. If an Iraqi police commando team storms an insurgent hideout, the risk of terrorism changes. If the opposition party in Spain runs TV spots calling to get out of Iraq immediately, it changes the risk of terrorism — transactions are not good or bad based on how they change the immediate risk! Sometimes increasing short term risk might well be worth it in the long term, as in messages and options from the loyal opposition. But each transaction, the options it changes and the messages it sends, changes the war at a tactical level. That must be acknowledged.

In the past, we have concentrated on transactions that work at the bottom of Maslow’s Pyramid — we spend money, the bomb or the solider kills you. The message is that if you capitulate, we stop sending the bombs. This seems like a clean-cut and “honest” transaction for westerners. We like the simplicity. Other cultures, however, view the concept of war in a much more nuanced light. There are all sorts of capitulation, for example. I might not openly take up arms, but do so covertly. I might not take up arms at all, but might support those who do. If we are fighting a fluid, amoebic, and “fuzzy” war, we’re going to need better tools than body counts and exchange ratios.

So what is terrorism, anyway? Isn’t it the decision by a person or persons to hurt other people? A decision to use stealth to deliberately attack civilians in order to change political realities? In effect, a “sale” has been made by the opposition. All throughout their life, this person heard messages from both sides of the debate, finally choosing where to put their money (life). Their understanding of the messages of both sides, and their understanding of what options are available to them, directly contribute to the sale.

>From a population standpoint, the risk of a single person becoming a terrorist is very similar to the risk of a single person getting cancer, or dying early, or having an accident. Insurance companies manage these risks all the time. We have plenty of tools and methodologies for measuring and managing risk in a population. Why aren’t we using them?

Each transaction changes the risks, to a small degree. If we understand that ALL transactions have this effect, and we understand that we can measure risk before and after groups of transactions, then it follows that we should group transactions together into coordinated efforts to change the risk of terrorism. We should measure, promote, and coordinate those groups of transactions that do us the most good.

I’m not trying to be mushy or soft. Killing a terrorist with a sniper is a perfectly good transaction to reduce the risk of terrorism. The larger point, however, is that we need a management and planning structure that easily scales up from transaction groups that give free water bottles to villagers to small unit tactics. We need a philosophy of warfare that encompasses fatwas as well as sneak-and -peeks. We need an integrated command, planning, execution, and measurement environment. Else everybody — all of our allies, all of our departments and agencies, all of our NGOs — goes their own way, and we loose the synergy that would otherwise be available to us.

We have some clear models for terrorism that we can use. Terrorism is a risk in the population that can be measured and tracked. We have industries and experts that know how to do this in the private sector. The marketing and sales of terrorism, (or acts of terrorism) is also a concept that we can track and plan for. We have the best experts in the world at motivating people to make decisions, and better yet, we have management and planning structures to do this. Key Selling Points can be determined and plotted against market share. Finally, opportunities can be identified and projects put together to maximize economic return in the Long War. Start-ups and new product lines each day, all over this country, are identifying holes in mind share and market share and pinpoint targeting products to go into those spots.

None of this is anything new. If you were to ask, say, Coca-Cola to sell blue soda in Pakistan, within a few weeks they could tell you who the thought leaders were in the market, where the market was strategically and tactically, where the other products were, and what overall strategy would work best. They could tell you how much money it would cost, how the media and ground campaign would come off, and what type of return they would expect. Do you think a presidential candidate tries out any new platform without an almost exact understanding of where it will move the electorate? To be more provocative, if Baghdad asked BlackWater USA, the best PR firm in the Mideast, and a civil engineering firm from Jordan (note the combination of options and messages) to secure some city in Iraq and turned them loose to do it — would that be more or less effective than what is going on now? I understand that some of this is art, but there is also much science. Moving people to action is something we in the commercial sector have been working on for centuries. And better still, we have lots of examples of it working or not working all around us.

Why not use them?

USA Today has an intreresting column today about the real – as opposed to perceved – impact of blogs.

Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.

But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he’d still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator’s fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman’s still the man to beat in the general election.

If this wasn’t enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America’s noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office.

Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer’s big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes’ distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie’s rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.

But all that clapping and yapping couldn’t put enough fannies in the seats. Ticket sales for Snakes’ debut barely topped those of Talladega Nights, which was already in its third week.

I’d go read the whole thing…as a blogger, I’m a big believer that blogs and bloggers are having an impact.

But it’s important to have a sense of what that impact really is, and to put it into scale against the rest of the world. Or, as Kluger says:

Lieberman’s boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace — and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter — enthusiastic, but not necessarily the national mindset.

…

And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it’s easy to be seduced by one’s own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a “www.” Now it’s time to play catch-up ball. Lamont’s handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail; New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That’s the way the blog bounces.

Blogs are useful as an indicator and as a tool – but don’t mistake the world inside blogs for anything but a narrow slice of the world outside them. We may be big fish in our little ponds…but there are much bigger ponds out there.

And some of them probably have snakes in them…

Ann Coulter sends out an email bulletin periodically.

Her latest one is headlined:

“THEY SHOT THE WRONG LINCOLN“

And proceeds to roundly criticize Republican Lincoln Chaffee.

Look, she’s a source of amusement to a lot of people, but I’ve got to say – I’m not amused, I’m disgusted. She’s not a random comment troll at DU, she’s a best-selling author. What exactly does she have to do to get shunned? How far does she have to go?

Will someone let me know, please?

I wrote below about the passing of our friend Michael. If you liked his pictures, or admired his courage, please consider making a small donation in his name.

In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate contributions in Michael Richard’s name be given to:

The Los Angeles Braille Institute

or

The Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco. The Lighthouse is also hanging 15 of Michael’s photographs as a memorial tribute
to him.

No, really. that’s the button CAIR activists gave to Mearsheimer at his recent presentation in Washington DC. His response?

“I like it,” he said, beaming.

Go read Dana Milbank’s account of this event in the Washington Post.

Then go back and read Lee Smith’s takedown of their original paper (I linked to it in a post called “Fat, Drunk, and Stupid Is No Way To Run The Kennedy School“).

And finally go back and read Benny Morris’ evisceration of their historical analysis (originally at TNR, reprinted at Jeff Weintraub’s).Then back to the Post:

Walt kicked off the session with a warning that we face a “threat from terrorism because we have been so closely tied to Israel.” This produced chuckles in the audience. Walt allowed that this was “not the only reason” for our problems, but he did blame Israel supporters for the hands-off position the Bush administration took during the Lebanon fighting.

“The answer is the political influence of the Israel lobby,” Walt said. He also hypothesized that if not for the Israel lobby, the Iraq war “would have been much less likely.”

Right. If it only wasn’t for those pesky Jews…and their habit of defending themselves.

This line of argument could be considered a precarious one for two blue-eyed men with Germanic surnames. And, indeed, Walt seemed defensive about the charges of anti-Semitism. He cautioned that the Israel lobby “is not a cabal,” that it is “not synonymous with American Jews” and that “there is nothing improper or illegitimate about its activities.”

But Mearsheimer made no such distinctions as he used “Jewish activists,” “major Jewish organizations” and the “Israel lobby” interchangeably. Clenching the lectern so tightly his knuckles whitened, Mearsheimer accused Israel of using the kidnapping of its soldiers by Hizbollah as a convenient excuse to attack Lebanon.

It’s funny, we’re just back from watching Suicide Murders, about which more in a bit. And having watched the interviews with the failed bombers – and their happy willingness to go bomb again (in every case but one), and watched the interviews with the parents who raised them believing that killing Jews is the highest calling, and seen the streets of Gaza – lined with billboards glorifying murderers. I’m a lot more sensitive to these kinds of arguments then I might have been this afternoon.

And it looks like Alwaleed’s $20 million gift to Harvard may be paying off. Oh – sorry, that wasn’t mentioned in the original study, so it must not really count.

Back in January, I wrote about our friend Michael Richard – a musician who, when he lost his sight, became a photographer.

A malignant tumor in his one good eye cost him his sight, and he found out two weeks ago that he had cancer elsewhere in his body. This weekend, his health collapsed, and this morning he died.

The LA Times covered Michael’s work back in January – and I talked about what I saw about Michael that I thought was so admirable.

TG and I have watched Michael and his wife Patrice as they faced the hardships and anxiety that came with Michael’s illness. And I have been filled with admiration for their resilience, determination, and optimism.

Michael and his band played at our wedding, and he told me he was happy to be a part of our day of joy. Today, I’m happy to read such a public acknowledgement of his deserved success.

I’m thrilled that he knew that success, had time with Patrice, and that his end was not protracted and painful.

I can only comment on the courage – the physical and moral courage – that he displayed every day. Every time we talked he was positive, excited, and hopeful; ready to take on any challenges the day might bring.

I’ll try and carry that around with me and hope that my memories of him bring me some of his courage.

You can see some of his photos here.