Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Obama's Libyan Disaster


According to his latest speech (stay tuned, he may change his mind), Obama's "Obama Doctrine" consists of: 1. "It's not my fault, the UN and International community ordered me to take action!"; 2. The US has a "Responsibility to Protect" (accepting that noxious doctrine) and MUST be the UN police force, we must do what the UN tells us, either refrain from intervening or intervening, particularly when populations are at risk. 3. See, #2, the US is the world's policemen, guided by the UN. This is disaster of the highest order, done by an Affirmative Action President who doesn't care and is way in over his head. Who is, lazy to boot.


Obama's Doctrine boils down to a re-run of Clinton's air power alone strategy, the usual Democratic tools (Bill Beckel in particular) were spouting off about this. Air power alone is going to "remove" Khadaffi by creating pressure. And when it fails, as it inevitably and rapidly will, well Obama has the important thing covered: he'll blame the US military (tasked with an impossible mission) and the UN, France, and others. The important thing is that Obama escape blame. His own air cover is the media, which is worshiping him as the God that Walks as usual. He expects them to run their own interference on the whole debacle.

The Clinton doctrine (use air power only) which was a variation of the Bush 1 Doctrine (eject Saddam from Kuwait, run a costly and failing 12 year air power alone effort to contain him) was focused on the "coalition." It did not solve the pressing US problem: how to keep the oil from the Middle East flowing at a price we could afford. All the air combat patrols did for 12 years was keep Saddam out of Kuwait. Bill Clinton could afford that, oil was around $17 a barrel in 1995. It is now upwards of $115 (and likely headed higher).

Obama's doctrine will fail, because it does not solve the problem: keep the Libyan (and other ME oil) flowing at a price we can afford. It is as simple as that. [George W. Bush never grasped this either, to be fair.]

Obama and Dems are allergic to taking any significant amount of US casualties, or killing civilians, or doing anything that would upset in significant ways the Arab Street, the Arab League, the UN, and the NYT. That's a recipe for defeat. Better to stay out, and tell the US to adopt a poverty-driven lifestyle at oil at $200 a barrel or more.

Now the US is headed in that direction, but first with a humiliating defeat in Libya. Air power cannot stop Khadaffi and his mercenaries, sitting on at least $135 billion in gold at the Bank of Libya in Tripoli [Bob Beckel is truly an idiot, he thinks freezing Libyan bank accounts "fixed" Khadaffi and means he has no money, as a Dem shill he reflects Obama thinking. They really are that stupid (and didn't read the Financial Times well). Every dictator now knows to have gold on hand, as a ready stash that Western institutions cannot freeze or seize short of boots on the ground, which they won't do.]

Khadaffi will send mortar and small arms teams, likely on foot or in small groups, to assault rebel strongholds. Probably co-ordinating as in Afghanistan to draw out limited US air assets to one place, and over-run another. Once in the rubble, all the air power cannot winkle troops out. Khadaffi only needs to hold what he has, and wage a war of attrition against the rebels. Who lack good order, any training, or any semblance of military knowledge. He has veterans of the Congo War, and elsewhere, with real first-hand experience, against none at all. He can buy arms and men for a decade or more. He will certainly blow up the oil fields he does not control, first chance. And continually destroy them whenever they are fixed (the rebels being unable to protect them and hold their territory, and the West being unwilling to put soldiers on the ground).

Khadaffi will also send Mariel boatlift waves to France and Italy. His way of saying thanks. A Camp of the Saints seems pretty close at hand, and neither nation has the will or the means to keep a million or five million Arab Muslims and Africans out of their country. This is entirely predictable.

There are two explanations for Obama's actions, neither flattering. The first is that Obama knows all this, and hates America so much (filled with White people … just like the mother than abandoned him) that he wants to destroy it as much as possible, figuring his position as President and First Rockstar is unassailable. This certainly fits the part of his doctrine that says that the UN, and international community, must OK US action, not Congress. That the Constitution is irrelevant (Candidate and Senator Obama said explicitly that Bush MUST notify Congress immediately on any military action per the War Powers Act).

The other is that Obama is profoundly stupid, and can't figure out that losing a Libyan War when George W. Bush won the Iraq War, means he loses the Presidency. That Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, all ganged up on him, and a weak and uncaring and stupid President simply caved and gave them what they wanted. And has been dragged into a war in Libya with no end in sight, no goals, and no way to achieve victory because he was lazy, weak, and stupid.

My own view is that both explanations fit. Certainly Obama is weak, lazy, uncaring, and uninvolved in anything not related to campaigning, Black people (police acted stupidly, etc.) or corrupt Chicago style bargains (GE's taxes). Obama is not very smart, has outsourced ObamaCare to Nancy Pelosi, various other agendas like Cap and Trade, Amnesty, and so on to Harry Reid, and spent most of his time golfing, on vacation, or hobnobbing with big shots. He spent more time on his NCAA brackets than he did explaining to the American people why we needed to bomb Libya. Much less how that would get victory for the US and the ME oil flowing at a price we can afford.

But Obama also hates the United States. When it cost him considerable flack, he refused to wear a flag pin or stand at attention for the National Anthem. Even Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson did so, at the same event (memorably caught on film and tape). What would it have cost to put his hand on his heart? Nothing. What would it have cost to fund, fully, missile defense, or the F-22 (costing 135,000 jobs), or a robust navy, when Obama cares nothing for deficits and military spending is a traditional, Chicago-way of building political support and alliances (not to mention employment)? Only reflexive dislike of the US and nearly all White military explain that choice.

Obama's hard-left, far-left, radical past, including Muslim upbringing, radical "hate Whitey" politics and alliances (including Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Wright), his hatred of his abandoning White mother, his idolizing of his anti-White, anti-American abandoning father, his embrace of folks like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and reflexive identification with enemies of the US (Iran's regime, Syria, Turkey) all point to at least in part, a large desire for Obama to "teach America a lesson" by inflicting a defeat.

Obama is stupid, arrogant, and racially motivated enough to think he can do just that, and get away with it. Defeat will be the military's fault. Or the UN's. Or the Arab League's. Or France's fault. The media will do its worshipful best, the way his high school teachers, and Occidental professors, and Columbia professors, and Harvard Professors, and various White corporate board members, to give him a pass for failure. Accounting him brilliant because he can string two words together without sounding like Bobby Rush or Jessie Jackson (both of whom need translators for average White Americans to understand).

Will Obama get away with it? Yes and no. Certainly the media will not change in their overt worship of him. But even media hype has its limits and backlash. Most men are thoroughly sick of Justin Bieber. All the hype led "Sucker Punch" to a failed, $19 million weekend opening. When, not if, Obama loses in Libya, with bloody chaos, stalemate, oil fields aflame, massacres galore (on both sides), Islamists and AQ on one side, Khadaffi on the other, and mass refugees turning Europe into a Muslim camp overnight, Obama will get the blame from ordinary Americans.

Now, he's not worried about that. Obama clearly plans to fraud his way to re-election, and then find some reason to rule forever, by decree. Eric Holder's dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, and his indignant reply that it was "an insult to my people" to think Whites had voting rights, was part of that. Obama plans massive, Franken-Gregoire style fraud. Coupled with Black Panther voter intimidation and suppression, violent beating of White voters by various Black Bloc/Anti-Fa thugs, SEIU thuggery, and so on, to keep the election close enough to simply "declare" victory (with the help of media biased exit polls and projections). The jihad against Clarence Thomas is to not accept any decision with him on the Supreme Court, and simply claim victory.

Let us consider Obama. Can anyone believe Obama will be what George W. Bush has become, a private citizen, living outside mostly the limelight? Of course not. Obama is not Obama if he is not President. Even should he win a second term, he cannot give it up. Why would he? Wasn't he sent by Allah to be First Rockstar, the International Playboy? Obama is who he is. A man who needs constant adulation, adoration, cheering crowds, celebrity perks, free goodies, and the power of being President and helicoptering and traveling in Air Force One. Obama is simply unable to be an ordinary person again. To be not President would be unthinkable. He'll never relinquish the office. Not ever.

Obama does not care about his approval ratings, or re-election chances. He has no real concerns about winning a second term because he plans to cheat. And stay and stay and stay. Obama is not like any other President. He's the only Black one (and filled with overt and undeniable hatred of Whites, which most Black people share), and the only one raised a Muslim. Obama neither knows nor cares about American traditions, and values. His own doctrine places the UN and international community not the Congress or even President in charge of the US military.

Obama does not care about Libyan defeat because he has no plans to ever give up the office. I supremely hope I am wrong on this account. Nothing would make me happier than eating my own words.
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Why Women Hate Nice Guys (and the Implications)

From Instapundit comes the link of 12 Reasons Women Can't Stand Nice Guys. Well, duh, nice guys are beta males. Which is another way of saying "un-sexy." American and Western society is completely and totally focused on providing the maximum of sexy men to most women. The only problem with this is that it provides no way to produce all the nice things women want, along with sexy men. A safe and secure environment? Nope. An expanding, growing economy? Nope. Ever advancing technology that makes food better and safer and cheaper, medical practices more life saving and life-enhancing, living better in every way? Nope.


Providing "sexy men" merely produces a fairly rapid fall into chaos, poverty, and violence. One need only look at how the Black community, which went from (per Juan Williams 2005 WSJ Father's Day op-ed) 24% illegitimacy in the early 1960's, to over 90% in the urban core and over 70% nationwide today. New Orleans in particular carries the shadow of former Black society. Building after building that housed Black Benevolent societies, Black associations of doctors, lawyers, accountants, and the like. New Orleans in Jelly Roll Morton's and Louis Armstrong's day (just listen to the former's Library of Congress Recordings, likely available at your public library and definitely on Amazon, they have been re-released, or the latter's painfully typed out, non-ghostwritten autobiography) had a Black society that worked. True, it was far more violent and chaotic than the matching White one, but it did function. Armstrong may have been placed in an orphanage when his drug and drink addicted mother could no longer care for him, and given a trumpet of a boy who died of tuberculosis (something Armstrong never forgot). But at least Armstrong was not on the streets, the orphanage and everything else run by Blacks for Blacks. White people provided nothing.

Today of course, all that is gone. And the White rates are estimated to be around 20% for the White middle class, and 40% for the White working class (below 4% for all Whites in the early 1960's). The Hispanic rate according to Heather McDonald at City Journal is over 50%.

Sexy men mean illegitimate children. They mean single motherhood, because the bad-boy things that make men sexy, make them totally uninterested and unable to provide for a single women (they are more interested in having the next sweet young thing, and can get them too!) Single motherhood of course, is a poverty factory. Maybe not if you're as good looking (and the son of a famous father) as Freddy Prinze Jr. Or the daughter of a College Professor, whose brothers are all lawyers and doctors (Eliza Dushku). But for those not on the upper one half of one percent of attractiveness or intelligence or both, or with the talent and physique of LeBron James, life as the child of a single mother is poor, violent, and hard. No matter how much welfare is thrown at the mothers and children.

Recently, Mike Huckabee criticized Natalee Portman's Oscar acceptance speech for glamorizing single motherhood. James Carville on CNN made the comment that in Huckabee's apology, he at least "realized" that government support is necessary for single mothers to avoid starvation and poverty. Carville of course did not get it, literally living in 1965.

A few single mothers can be amply and ably supported by a social welfare system that is not under financial pressure, from an ample middle class. A social welfare system under huge pressure from a Black underclass, an exodus of poor Mexicans (and significantly, their descendants), and a growing White working-underclass, is unsustainable.

Hispanic girls tend to start having kids at age 16, having nino after nino, until age 40 or so, with various bad boys. It might be very sexy. But it is not sustainable, because there just are not enough White middle class taxpayers able (much less willing) to pick up the tab. White (to some extent Asian, varying by community/culture/ethnic group) parents generally (mostly, not always) have kids they can afford. White women for the most part still (particularly in the middle class) have only the kids they can afford to have. Asking them, and even worse, their male counterparts to subsidize the family formation of Hispanic girls chasing bad boys at age 16 (and having kids they cannot afford) is simply impossible. There are too many single mothers needing subsidies, and too few taxpayers able to pay for them.

From the article on 12 Reasons Women Can't Stand Nice Guys, the consists of the following reasons:


  1. Nice guys are too nice (translation: not sexy!

  2. Nice guys don't take control and demand "respect" (translation: Are Not Socially Dominant A-holes with lots of other women

  3. Nice guys are predictable (translation: not SEXY!

  4. Nice guys don't need saving (translation: NOT SEXY!

  5. Nice guys don't need to be fixed (translation: NOT NOT NOT! Sexy

  6. Nice guys are genetically inferior and their sperm is unworthy (translation: Very, very, very, very, very un-sexy

  7. Fear of intimacy (translation: NOT! Sexy!

  8. Low self-esteem (translation: Not … sexy dammit!

  9. Sex -- nice guys are not sexy! (no translation needed)

  10. Charm, nice guys are not smooth talkers (translation: or, nice guys are not sexy!

  11. Protection, bad boys are better protection because they are better fighters, doing it so much (translation: a guy beating the crap out of someone else, even a woman (see Rihanna) is sexy!




The article concludes:

Life is about balance. Most men fall into either the bad boy or the nice guy category. The ideal man is neither, but walks that fine line between the two. Until men learn how to do this, more often than not, women will choose the bad boy, until they realize that his bad qualities outweigh his good ones.


Or, perhaps we can turn that around:

Life is about balance. Most women fall into either the sexy stripper or the nice virginal girl category. The ideal woman is neither, but walks that fine line between the two. Until women learn how to do this, more often than not, men will choose (if they are sexy) to screw as many women as possible until they reach their late fifties at which point they'll marry their own Catherine Zeta-Jones, the rest will have occasional sex but find in the main, a used-up cougar to be inferior to a porn subscription. Regardless, women won't get quality men to marry them. And will be left with dregs whom if they do marry, they will resent as "kitchen bitches" and beta males.


There, all fixed!

The problem is that most women, even those of average attractiveness, can have sex with an Alpha male. Tiger Woods women, that of Jessie James, those of John Edwards, and so on, are not exactly Helen of Troy. Women over-estimate their beauty, and their beauty's duration, because they can be just another meaningless play-mate for an Alpha male with little discrimination.

Women find themselves getting old at 29:

Women consider themselves old at 29 – half the age of men who don’t feel over the hill until they are 58, according to a study.

A quarter of women say they felt old as soon as they spotted their first grey hairs.

In contrast men tend to think they are still young until they can no longer perform in the bedroom.


This is just another expression of desire for sexy men. Only the prettiest women can command the attention of the top sexiest men in any social setting. For most women, their looks start to fade fast in their twenties, and the fact of the hottest, bad boy men no longer noticing them can be a shock. Still, women tend to over-estimate how long they can play the field, and underestimate their chances of losing out by not making the best available choice sooner.

If the Duke F-List girl was at all representative, 13 partners in two years is not an extreme outlier. Needless to say, a girl with too many partners, all those bad boys, is a poor prospect for a wife, and any woman in her thirties is going to be fairly undesirable for any man with any options at all (this includes porn). [Women generally don't understand this, I explain below for them.]


Why is so many partners, and particularly bad boys, such a bad thing for a woman searching for a husband? Because the 90% of men who are not Alpha males (the sexy bad boys who can have almost any woman in their social circle) know fairly well that the most intense bonds, shared experiences, sexual pleasure, and memories will be with other men. At best, they are mere shadows of what was, and remains, in a woman's heart, at that age. Even the most beautiful woman in her thirties is less desirable therefore than a fairly inexperienced, un-baggage ridden average looking girl in her early twenties, or late teens. All the Botox, Pilates, Jillian Michaels workout videos, and Nautilus toned body won't change that fact. Only the most desperate, clueless, and lonely men will respond.

This is true even for widows and divorced women. The absent husband, no matter how badly he left, will always be the dominant man in the woman's heart and memories. Porn has the massive ability to substitute for what amounts to indifferent sex (even the most beautiful woman in her thirties loses her appeal, and lets face it Jane Average is not Jennifer Aniston at age 32) and emotionless coupling.

All the "man up" exhortations by writers like Kay Hymowitz can't force men to commit to women after they've chased their share of bad boys. Women can chase the bad boys all they want, but like everything, there is a cost.


Yes, it is true, about 90% of all middle class White guys are beta males. They are not sexy and exciting. They are neither bad boys in the mold of Russell Brand, nor George Clooney. News flash: About 90% of all Middle Class White women are not Jennifer Aniston, at age 40. Let alone beauties like Mila Kunis, or Brittany Snow. Asking about 90% of men to be something they are not is akin to asking 90% of all middle class White women to as beautiful as say, either Ashley Greene or Brittany Snow (to pick at random two Maxim cover-girls). Women's desire for sexy men is an unreasonable as men's desire for most women to look like Maxim cover-girls.

But women can make it, because they unlike most men have the asymmetric ability to sleep with the male equivalent of Brittany Snow (that would be the Russell Brands of the world). They just can't get those bad boys to marry them and support them.

The dynamic is complicated by both gender and racial spoils politics. A good part of the female demand for sexy men is the Hispanic/Mexican girls desire and willingness to start having kids at age 16 with bad boys who cannot support them. Thus inducing a massive welfare burden. A full 83% of Santa Ana Unified School District students receive subsidized/free meals. Obviously about 83%, or so, of SAUSD parents cannot afford to pay for their kids meals. Requiring federal subsidies.

In this, both White women, and non-Whites, are generally aligned in interests. Their interests are in extracting the maximum amount of money from taxpayers, to fuel children (family as defined as single mom plus kids by various sexy bad boys) and family formation. The catch is that a very significant portion (most of them, in fact) of Middle Class White women are also taxpayers, and don't like the money going to people not like them. Welfare for Hispanic/Mexican single mothers, means ultimately no subsidies for NPR (and jobs there), or federally supported foundations, or paper-pushing "studies" busywork in education, the environment, and so on. All the money increasingly needs to be poured into either K-12 or welfare spent on Mexican/Hispanic single mothers.

So what are the implications of the widespread female demand that most men be sexy (clearly most Mexican men are "sexy" to their female peers, mostly by an uber-macho, combative set of behaviors, particularly including gang membership and criminal violence)?

The first is obviously, a decline in technological advancement. Clearly, outsourcing, in-sourcing, and the export of American manufacturing to China and elsewhere has destroyed American innovation. But in part, this has been abetted by the total demand for sexiness. While nearly all of Aaron Sorkin's "the Social Network" was outright fabrication, what rang true was the total lack of desire (then and now) for billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. Particularly for women with their own money, and earning power, a man must be sexy beyond mere wealth. Wealth alone will not cut it, hence the lack of desire expressed for beta males like Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, no matter how much power and influence they wield. Neither has the smidgen of sex appeal of say, Lamar Odom or Chris Brown. [Good Morning America wants Chris Brown back, despite his temper tantrum of ripping off his shirt and throwing a chair through a window, and trashing his dressing room there. Because their female audience finds him sexy, no matter the beat-down he gave then girlfriend Rihanna. He's a BAD BOY. That means, sexy. For women, in general, all is forgiven as long as a man is sexy. Sexy, sexy, sexy.]

Facebook is not anything new. Its merely a Friendster or MySpace that works. With a few more features. It is not game-changing technology. Steve Sailer wondered, recently, where all the innovation went? "Where are my flying cars?" Well, they went the way of nuclear families formed by pocket protector wearing geeks. Those with that bent had few or no children, as women demanded sexy bad boys who are great in the sack, but cannot produce game-changing technology (like say, a cure for cancer or artificial organs that work, or electric car batteries with the power and weight ratio and range of the internal combustion engine, with comparable refill times). Add to it, the lack of incentive to strive. Those with the current bent for technology not only face a bleak outsourcing, in-sourcing H1-B visa environment, they face a life of sexless monkdom. No wonder they are slackers.

Innovation and change is rarely produced by some great idea borne out by a single genius. Most of the time, it requires an idea, that was fascinating, that was dropped, and then developed a bit later, by someone else, and then someone else and other people put it and other bits together to form a new whole. Something impossible without all the other bits around, done by other people, often in concert.

Sexy men means stagnant or reversing technology. People unable to build or maintain things they were fifty years ago. In 1969, America reached the moon. America has now abandoned even low Earth orbit. Not the least of which is that we lack the technology to make even that happen any more.

Sexy men also means a race to the bottom for sexiness. Women's demand for sexy men does not happen in a vacuum. Men tend to respond. The easiest way to be sexy, as noted by author Lucia, is to thug it up. Be dangerous, fight a lot, smack people around (even your girlfriend, see Chris Brown, or Charlie Sheen). The more violent and dangerous a man is, the more women will want him. Even if he's ugly, or is accused of murdering some other woman. Joran Van Der Sloot cut a wide swath among women in Asia, drawn by his infamy in the Natalee Holloway case (Van Der Sloot has all but confessed to murdering Holloway). Of course, Van Der Sloot killed a young woman in Peru, who unwisely went to his hotel room, drawn by his fame no doubt.

One need only look at the Ghetto and Barrio to see this in action. "Senseless" killings are not, merely the dark side of female sexuality. Since women find bad boys to be sexy, Ghetto and Barrio men make themselves bad boys by ultra-violence. When some little kid, or grandmother, or infant is shot in a drive-by, be assured that somewhere, a gang banger is having sex (if he's not arrested). As Roissy points out, even adjusting for race, criminals have more kids than non-criminals. In other words, comparing White guys to White guys, and Black guys to Black guys, and so on, those locked up or who have been locked up have more kids than those who were never locked up. Despite being, well, locked up for some non insignificant amount of time.

As Roissy points out, Chicks Dig Jerks. And as more and more men become aware of this, they will do their level best to turn themselves into the biggest jerk they can. Bet on it. And once they know it, it is almost impossible to turn them back.

Look at Black Rappers. They make all that money. All that fame and fortune. Or say, Michael Vick, at the time possessing a $130 million contract. Why risk all that money for stupid violence, a shooting in a club, dog fighting rings, etc? Because acting like a violent thug all their life has gotten them the hottest, most desirable women. And more women than they can even remember. Sexual rewards will work on the White middle class, and its men, just as much as they did on Black men in the Ghetto. Or Mexican men in the Barrio.

No, it won't happen overnight. Significant social conditioning, rewards, and so on make middle class White guys more resistant to violence. But certainly, the kids of single mothers will know exactly what turned their moms on: violent, dangerous bad boys. They'll copy those guys, and even provide some "improvements."

The idea that White guys are inherently non-violent and shrink from confrontation (which would have shocked Black and Hispanic men of Louis Armstrong's age) particularly with non-Whites, is going to go out the window. In some respect this will be long overdue, but the cost is basically a nation comprised entirely of Scots-Irish "hillbilly" types. Which simply cannot run a modern economy and will look for fights the way Black and Hispanic men do, because it gets them sex!

So the social implications of sexy men demanded by White women along with Black and Hispanic women, is a very rapid movement, towards decline and violence. Making the wealth struggles to cut the welfare pie off an America with declining innovation and technological power, a declining White middle class, and so on, even more desperate. As the take shrinks, the usual response is to deal people out. Vote them off the Island, so to speak.

All prosperous societies, such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, Switzerland, and Coastal China, tend to suppress sexy men. They tend to limit, in various ways, the ability for Bad Boys to dominate all the desirable women. And on the other hand, limit women's choices. A woman must generally choose fairly early, if she wants a husband (Japan and South Korea's and China's low birth rates currently likely stem from their women rejecting the unsexy men they have on offer). Japan and South Korea, at least, are declining from massive and probably unsustainable population peaks with a well educated and prosperous workforce, with first-class infrastructure for the most part. [China is not so lucky on either front.]

But those societies throughout history and now, that allow sexy men, the dominant bad boys, and women to run things, are typically very violent, and primitive. Male cooperation goes entirely out the window. Why cooperate when you get better sex and reproductive opportunities by constant fighting? The female sexual utopia looks a lot like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. And in some ways that is America's, and the West's, future.

Everything has its price, and the price for Sexy Men for Western women is basically the end as we know it, of Western civilization. With something approaching Dark Ages kingdoms or Mad Max as its replacement.

But at least the men will be sexy!


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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The Failure of American Power

Steve Sailer has written on the 20th anniversary of the Highway of Death, and the awesome power of American air power. Which is undeniably potent. But also an undeniable failure, in achieving American national security goals. Obama's war but not war, against Libya and Khadaffi, and removal but not removal, of Khadaffi from power, is only the latest failure (and possibly the largest one yet) of American power in the Middle East. To put it bluntly, every President from Carter onwards has failed, in different ways, in achieving national security goals in the Middle East. They have failed, because they did not appreciate the need for infantry power, and the limits of American Air power, no matter how magnificent that power might be. It is still, limited. And as such, relying upon it has brought nothing but failure to American goals in the Middle East.


First, what are the American goals in the Middle East? FDR said on Feb 16, 1943, "the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." This doctrine was further articulated in the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter Doctrines. The Carter Doctrine stated explicitly that the US would use military force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf. Now, what might those interests be? Why, the free flow of oil, at prices the US consumer can afford. That is, really, the only interest the US has in the Gulf, and one that goes all the way back to the middle of WWII.

Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush, articulated variations of the Carter Doctrine, as did Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. But the basic outline of the Carter Doctrine has stayed in place. The US would use military force, to shape the outcome of power struggles in the Persian Gulf, to the US national security advantage. Which boils down to the free flow of oil, at prices that at a minimum do not choke off economic activity in the US.

As long as Americans like eating safe, relatively clean, and affordable food, like affordable cooling and heating for their homes, like homes that are affordable and far from crime and violence of the ghetto and barrio, and incomes befitting First World people not Third World slum dwellers, the need to shape Persian Gulf and Middle East politics and power struggles will remain. Oil, and the free flow of it at affordable prices, remain in the US national security interest. You might argue that absent nuclear terrorism or attacks by foreign countries with nuclear weapons, securing the free flow of oil from the Middle East at reasonable prices is the supreme goal of American foreign policy.

There are those who would argue, and have argued, that the best way to secure America's interests is one long apology, followed by withdrawal from the region. That America has "original sin" and only makes things worse, being mostly White, mostly Christian, and thus generates pure hatred. That withdrawing from the Middle East will bring rainbows, unicorns, and rivers of chocolate. And that if it does not work out, well America doesn't need or deserve cheap energy anyway. God must want us punished for being wicked, or something. It is not a serious argument, but one made anyway. As Machiavelli noted about Savonarola, unarmed prophets preaching a new millennium come always to martyrdom and failure.

America was generally lucky, in the years following 1943 to 1979. America had allies, scared out of their wits by the Soviets and their sponsoring of Arab Nationalism, of a secular character. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the Persian Gulf States, the Shah of Iran, and later Sadat's Egypt all looked to the US for support against Soviet subversion. This stable set of affairs (for the Middle East anyway) was blown apart by the Iranian Revolution, and direct confrontation in the Persian Gulf over control of its oil. By the Mullahs of Iran, who sought out actively a confrontation with the United States.

Carter of course failed miserably, not the least of which he was constrained by post-Vietnam desire to avoid casualties at all costs. Which led to a disastrous reliance on air power alone. Operation Eagle Claw was only the first in a set of disasters. Ronald Reagan was chased out of Lebanon by Iran and Hezbollah bombing the US Marine Barracks and US Embassy. An overt act of war that caused the Gipper to retreat, in panic. Desultory attempts to use the USS Iowa to shell Lebanese villages with its 18 inch guns had no real effect. In order to either rescue the hostages, or control valuable real estate in the Eastern Mediterranean, the US needed to commit ground troops and accept some considerable measure of casualties. Air power alone, cannot hold ground. It cannot take cities, rescue hostages, or defeat militias. Only troops on the ground can do these things. And inevitably, doing these things cause large amounts even with Western advantages, of casualties. A price no President save George W. Bush has been willing to pay.

This failure only accelerated in the Gulf War. While Sailer correctly notes how devastating the attack on the Highway of Death was, from Saddam's viewpoint he won the Gulf War. He was still in charge of Iraq. Air power failed to dislodge him from power. So he lost a good part of his army? So what? They were replaceable from his point of view. So his people suffered? So what? They existed merely to serve him, from his point of view. His army could be rebuilt. Sanctions endured and then evaded. And the experience of Iraq, and the thirteen years from the end of the Gulf War to the start of the Persian Gulf War, perfectly illuminates the failure of Air Power alone to achieve US objectives.

The US objective in fighting Saddam in the first place was to secure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, at a reasonable price. The flow of oil at a reasonable price being the key to America's economic security. Kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait did not achieve that objective. Saddam could always come back, and this time drive all the way to Yemen, taking Saudi oil fields. Only constant, grinding, combat air patrols over Iraq, kept Saddam on a leash. Not truce agreements, United Nations resolutions, various informal agreements, all of which Saddam signed and soon reneged upon. Bill Clinton had to launch Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 in response to Iraq failing to comply with various UN disarmament resolutions and Saddam kicking out arms inspectors. Of course, constant combat air patrols and periodic bombing campaigns against Saddam required extensive use of Saudi airbases, itself something sensitive and cited often by Osama bin Laden as "justification" for jihadi attacks against the US and certainly US civilians inside America.

Just as important, however, was the manifest failure of US airpower. Osama and other Jihadis studied the results carefully, and as Lawrence Wright wrote in "The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," argued persuasively that Saddam, not the US, had won the Gulf War. Won it by surviving, and staying in power. That in the opinion of Osama bin Laden, the US was a paper tiger, with no staying power, that could be safely attacked in any form, provided that the attackers were willing and able to shelter, take some acceptable level of casualties, and then advance to their goal once America tired of the effort.

This argument won the day, particularly after the debacle of Somalia, and the fairly impotent US response. The US did not level Mogadishu (which would have been the response of an Arab leader) nor did it kill masses of Somalis. The deadliness of the US defense (about 3,000 estimated Somalis killed in exchange for the roughly 19 Americans killed) did not register. Clinton's fairly impotent cruise missile response to the 1998 African Embassy bombings, and non-response to the assault on the Cole, only increased the view among jihadis, and Muslims world-wide generally, that the US lacked the will and the ability to impose its will upon the Middle East, and that the US and its interests could be safely attacked provided the attacker was willing to take some casualties like Saddam, and hunker down until the US got tired.

For those wondering why the Taliban ever agreed to Osama's plan to attack the US on 9/11, this is why. More importantly, this perception also colors the Iranian response. Iran did try to blockade the Persian Gulf, with its Navy, and mining efforts. Resulting in Operation Preying Mantis, which showed US air power was decisive in destroying targets at sea and in port. Naval warfare is not the same as guerilla warfare on land. Iran has been careful not to repeat the experience, and has put most of its assets into a nuclear ICBM program and paramilitary operations (principally Hezbollah) which operating on land can employ the Saddam strategy: hunker down, take casualties, outlast the Americans as they get tired.

After 9/11, George W. Bush tried a different strategy. US Air power proved decisive in defeating the Taliban in concert with the Northern Alliance and small groups of US Special Forces. US Air power again proved decisive in allowing US ground forces to dominate and destroy the forces of Saddam Hussein. Pre-War predictons of a "battle of Baghdad" rivaling that of Stalingrad or Berlin proved nonsense. US casualties were very light.

But occupying Iraq to achieve the US national security aims: providing the free flow of oil to the world market at a reasonable price, proved far more difficult. Iraq's broken, and tribal society proved a perfect setting for massive bloodletting. America expected US Air and armored warfare dominance to be matched by infantry dominance, and was angered when it was not, with (light by historical standards but) casualties they found simply too high. Bush never explained in any way the interests of the United States in securing Iraq's oil, and territory (against the Iranians and AQ) to further the free flow of oil on reasonable terms to the world and thus US markets. It was a simple proposition. Blood for oil. The point being that only some limited amount of US bloodshed could secure the oil, without which the US economy would grind to a massive halt, with widespread poverty due to sky-high energy prices. And that the territory of Iraq needed to be secured, lest Iran use it against us to disrupt the flow of oil. Iran having a built-in desire to jack up oil prices sky high. [To pay for their thug-security army.]

Bush never made this simple explanation, was appalled at the suggestion of "blood for oil" (well, of course) and behaved like the mainstream, JFK-style liberal the man was and remains. Bush simply stopped explaining or defending his policies, much less challenging critics on how they would secure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf at reasonable prices, to secure the US economy and provide growth.

And as casualties mounted, the Taliban and AQ in Afghanistan learned how to cope with US airpower. Mounting time-limited attacks (often no more than fifteen minutes, timing the distance and availability of US aircraft to provide close air support). Using IEDs as equalizers, and using attrition style ambushes aimed at political defeats at home, not decisive victory against the US. Whose ability on the ground also grew, as US forces became better as well in infantry fighting.

Which leads us to Libya. It is in the interest of the US to secure the oil from Libya, to the global markets, as quickly as possible. Unrest in Nigeria, delays in bringing Iraq's oil to market, and unrest in the Persian Gulf have left markets without much spare capacity. Japan will need diesel generators for years on end, to provide power to a significant portion of its population. Driving up oil usage. Libya provides ten percent of the global market, and its oil unlike the Saudis is relatively free of sulfur and other impurities. Making it easier and cheaper to refine.

It is also in the interest of the United States to demonstrate its power to remove a troublesome leader. This is because the Middle East and Persian Gulf in particular, is unstable, and new leaders can quickly arise who are hostile to the US. It is useful to remind such men that the US has powers if it chooses to use them, that can greatly aid in the removal of such men.

It is further in the interest of the United States that Libya not become an embarkation point for mass migration of North Africans and Africans to Europe, nor a Disneyland resort for Al Qaeda and other jihadis, nor Somalia upon the Mediterranean. These are important, and complementary goals of the US. To achieve one, it is required to achieve them all.

At this point, Air Power alone cannot achieve them. Air Power used against Khadaffi three weeks ago might have defeated him, as his regime was reeling, he had many desertions, and he appeared to be on the outs. Now that he has a mercenary army, quickly assembled, and paid by with gold held personally in the Bank of Libya in Tripoli (Khadaffi was not stupid, and observed the seizure of assets in Switzerland and other countries of such leaders as Pinochet, Charles Taylor, and Kabila). Khadaffi has reportedly, enough gold to pay his army for years.

The rebels are a rabble incapable of military order or much of anything. They are untrained, undisciplined, and refuse to listen to anyone with military experience on the need for good order, conservation of ammunition, hygiene, conservation of water, and so on. Even with US air power, about all that can be accomplished is a de facto partition of Libya, with the oil out of the world market for decades, Libya likely turning into a Disneyland for AQ and other jihadis (in Khadaffi's and the rebel's partitions) and Somalia upon the Med. With a cherry upon top of US defeat, yet again, and visible defeat. To embolden America's enemies in the Gulf, intent on interfering with the free flow of oil at a reasonable price.

To achieve US goals, US military forces on the ground, including considerable amounts of infantry and armor, will be required to drive upon Tripoli, and oust Khadaffi. This means casualties, bloodshed, and US pain. It will require money, and a military occupation of Libya that is costly and painful and divisive.

Can it be done? Certainly? Should it be done? On balance, I would argue yes. Obama's stated reasons for bombing Libya, that the UN "responsibility to protect" civilian populations from massacres by their own leaders, is laughable. The Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sudan, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and East Timor have all either recently experienced this, are experiencing it now, or will likely experience it again in the future. And no one seriously suggests that the UN can order the US military, which cannot refuse the order, to protect these people. Nor does the UN have any role in ordering the US military, at all, either to permit it to do something, or not, or order it to do something. This madness is Obama's one-world anti-Americanism, reflexively at work.

This madness does not mean that the US has no interests in Libya. Quite the contrary. Nor does it mean that the US should shy away from any and all confrontation. Nor does it mean that the US cannot or should not ever engage in military action in pursuit of its national interests. What it does mean, is that it needs to clearly define, in terms every average citizen can understand, what is the national interest. Not abstruse concepts of "Muslims yearn for freedom" or such liberal garbage (something that George W. Bush had in common with JFK, which is why Liberals loathe Bush so much, he is basically a liberal heresy). But rather, the US depends on cheap global oil, which allows us to keep places like Florida and California clean of oil rigs, and the inevitable oil spills, and still have a good quality of life and an economy that functions and grows.

This means, use of military force, basically combined arms of naval forces, infantry, armor, and air power together, to remove regimes that threaten the free flow of oil, at a reasonable price, when the opportunity for success is at hand, being aware that an occupation will be likely more costly and bloody than the overturning of the regime itself.

This is not the end of the world. This is neither invade the world, invite the world (Sailer's catch phrase for Bush's policy) and does not mean intervention in say, the Ivory Coast to put its cocoa production back into the market. It does not even mean intervention to remove regimes hostile to America's goal of free flow of oil at reasonable prices at every turn. It does mean, however, re-running Iraq at some point. Because the US has no partners to off-load fighting to, on the ground. And therefore must do it, itself. Which means casualties and bloodshed and treasure all spent.

Everything costs. Ike was able to rely on scared, and compliant Arab regimes to do the dirty work of ground fighting and policing, without a global Jihad network. The cost of that was a constant, hair-trigger nuclear standoff between the US and the USSR. Which led Ike to pull the plug on the French-UK-Israeli attempt to overthrow Nasser and retake the Suez canal. The US then relied upon the Saudis, and later Egyptians, in what amounted to a swap for the Shah of Iran, to police much of the Middle East.

The ability of these regimes to police the Middle East for us, is now an open question. They remain precarious and unstable, even those that seemed invincible: Khadaffi, Mubarak, and Ben Ali. Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, and Clausewitz all advised against outsourcing military campaigns, or even any part of it, to others. The American people will have to be told, and required to choose, if they want to be poor, and live poorer lives, to avoid entanglement in the Middle East, or if they like living in nice houses, driving nice cars, eating nice and affordable food, buying nice and affordable clothes? If the latter, then the price is periodically, the US using combined arms to achieve a fairly quick victory over unstable regimes, and policing the tribal populace afterwards so that oil interests are not interfered with. Understanding that there is no cheap and easy way to set up an occupation and transition to self-rule, without some considerable level of American casualties.

Or the US could abjure such measures, and live substantially poorer lives, even with drilling in the US, and the inevitable spills and oil pollution of the beaches and oceans, and inland waterways, and destruction of fragile habitat. Even with substantial US oil production at home, there simply is not enough oil to make the global market (oil is traded globally, as the critical resource) affordable. There just isn't enough US oil available at prices that can sustain long term economic growth (oil at roughly $50-$60 a barrel at today's prices).

This is a case that an American President or candidate must make to the American people. That there is no free lunch, that there is not something for nothing, that US prosperity rests on cheap oil which means periodically US military personnel fighting and dying in ugly Middle East lands, to remove threats to the free flow of oil at reasonable prices. Not every threat, at every time, but periodically when the US must intervene to keep oil prices down or remove threats that cannot be put off any longer.

Libya, under these circumstances, meets none of these criteria. Obama is sure to create a total disaster in Libya, an ignoble, and stupid American defeat. Khadaffi remaining (which is victory for him), constant fighting, degeneration into Somalia "plus" and an open invitation for AQ and other jihadis to shelter there, with either Khadaffi or the rebels. Obama is unable and unwilling to lead America to victory, which requires boots on the ground, American forces, and a clear explanation of what victory looks like: the oil flowing, a pro-American regime in power. Instead we are likely to get the worst possible outcomes. Obama is an incompetent Affirmative Action President and his people are even less competent than he is, something shocking.

Very disappointing is Hillary, who had an up close view of Clinton's failure to unseat Saddam or gain permanent compliance with US objectives. Rice and Power acted as one could expect, and Biden was, well, he was Joe Biden. A man long believed to be mentally impaired due to a brain aneurism. If he did not have one, there would not be any functional difference.

The only "good" thing to come of this is the experience in France and Britain, of how unreliable American power has become, how unserious, and how exposed they are to regional threats (principally North Africa imploding and sending masses of refugees onto their shores ala Camp of the Saints). If either government, and people, in either country, has a brain or a clue, they will rapidly ditch austerity budgets, and re-arm like crazy, particularly with naval and air forces, to maintain control of the seas around them. There is no reason Britain and France cannot each have six air craft carriers each, for a total of twelve, plus support ships. Construction of which, on an emergency basis, along with fighter planes, and other ancillary aircraft, could put nearly all their unemployed back to work, immediately, and stimulate Eurozone demand. True Keynesian economics at work. America has shouldered far too much of Europe's defense burden, and the Europeans must come out of their post Suez, "America and the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal make us irrelevant" funk. The Europeans have real enemies, intent on really occupying their lands.

True, they are mostly an illiterate, Muslim rabble from North Africa and Africa, but that does not make them any less dangerous. Far easier to build a whacking great Navy and keep them in North Africa than deal with five, ten, twenty million refugees in a tidal wave on their own shores. America's very rapid (Obama is already looking for the exits) process of leaving France and the UK holding the bag, will prove instructive. America is unwilling to use its power, instead believing in Unicorns and Rainbows.

As Mark Steyn noted:

As he told a gathering of high-rolling Democratic donors in Washington last week: "As time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States. But we should never take it for granted. I hope that all of you still feel that sense of excitement and that sense of possibility."


America bet everything on unicorns and rainbows. On the excitement and sense of possibility that a man named Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States. That having a Black guy with a Muslim name will magically make the world love us. Obama certainly hasn't forgotten. He believes himself to be Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, and Allah all combined. He really does think he walks on water, with unicorns prancing in the background. That he really is a lightworker. That:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.


Largely, this is the sort of person around Obama. Who believes as they did yesterday, that Obama is the racial redeemer and "New and Improved" Jesus come to save the sinful America and restore the world's place on top of the sinful nature of America. This sort of President, who clearly believes in his own worship and hype, is not able in any way of projecting military power in defense of America's interests. Why would he? All he has to be is Mr. Wonderful himself! Nor are his people capable of finding their behinds in the dark with a flashlight and a map.

The complete disappearance of America up, basically, its own asshole, has serious consequences for Europe, which they are now finding out. It will have serious consequences for America too, as most of America will find out once the worship of the media is no longer able to keep the lights on.

The dialog at the end of "Three Days of the Condor" is instructive. America has been living on luck and seed corn, for decades. The argument between Higgins (Cliff Robertson) and Joe Turner (Robert Redford) turns on invasion plans for the Middle East:

Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!


Obama, and the media, asserted that Obama being so wonderful, a lightworker, and a man with a Muslim name, and Black to boot, would make every Muslim and Muslim nation love us. So that there would be no fighting, no war, no conflict, no sacrifice needed, no bloody call to duty, to keep the lights on, the power running. To keep people who have never known hunger from being hungry. All of that is about to end, and the total Libyan debacle will be part of that.

Eventually, out of pure necessity, America will adopt some form of the Carter Doctrine backed up by infantry forces. As the limits and failure of air power alone to remove regimes and install friendlier ones comes apart with sky high oil prices. Oil is already over $100 a barrel. It will go far higher. Sadly. This alone should prove the failure of American Air power alone to gain our objectives (look at the prices!) but sadly Americans and American elites will require being hit over the head with reality until they are bloody before reality sinks in.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

CBS Wants Charlie Sheen Back!

Les Moonves wants Charlie Sheen back on Two and a Half Men. I knew it! Sheen still pulls in attention, ratings, and has enough Alpha credibility, still, through the sheer number of followers on Twitter and his sold out shows, that even manifest mental illness can't keep the potential audience away. Rumors have flown that Scot Baio, or Rob Lowe, would take over from Sheen. But like or not, on that particular show, Sheen is irreplaceable.


According to a source, Les Moonves was determined to bring the show back and was in discussions with Warner Bros. Television, which produces the show and which fired Sheen earlier this month, in an attempt to rebuild the numerous bridges burned between the ranting actor and the California-based program staff.

They included the "Men" co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre, who Sheen deemed a "contaminated little maggot" before hitting him with a $100 million lawsuit, and its staff, described by the former movie star as "trolls."

"Moonves wants to get the show back on the air. He's all for it," the insider said. "He says certain people need to forget anything and everything Charlie's done recently and just move on with the business at hand."

The source added, "The core issue is, as he put it, the volatile relationship between Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre. He believes that if CBS and Warner Bros. TV honchos can find a way to get Chuck and Charlie to speak again, cooler heads will prevail."


While Warner Bros TV may want to make Chuck Lorre happy, as he produces a number of their shows including "the Big Bang Theory," Les Moonves has to deliver ratings. His Monday night schedule looks like junk, on toast, without Charlie Sheen. Rob Lowe or Scott Baio are not going to deliver viewers like Sheen will, even if Sheen is half-crazed most of the time. CBS affiliates are on the warpath, demanding something be done. If Sheen can be propped up by cranes, pills, and on-set doctors, for another two years or so, he will be.

Don't be shocked if Warners and Chuck Lorre come to a parting of the ways. It has happened before. Lauren Graham, star of "Gilmore Girls" (yes, you are saying "who?") got the show-runner and creator (one Amy Sherman-Palladino) fired because she did not like the creative direction of the show (a romance between her character and a beta male character, one she thought "unworthy.") Kiefer Sutherland got "24" creator and producer Joel Surnow fired, out of PC creative concerns. [Surnow wanted more conservative themes, Sutherland is quite liberal.] On TV, stars generally rule. People don't tune into see producers. Replacing the actor who originally played "Darren" on "Bewitched" was nearly fifty years ago. In todays fragmented TV audience, a star is even more valuable.

Even if he's a walking time bomb. Which Sheen is, undoubtedly. Don't be surprised if Sheen ends up back on Two and A Half Men, and Lorre is given his walking papers. There's a lot of money involved, I don't see CBS continuing Two and A Half Men without Sheen. Warner Bros. TV must make Moonves happy. Moonves in turn must make shareholders, his bosses, and affiliates happy, which means ratings. Which means, Charlie Sheen. Sheen may be crazy. But he knows who has the most power, between him and Chuck Lorre. It's not Lorre.
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Monday, March 21, 2011

The Power and the Vulnerability of the West

The standard narrative by most commentators looking at Western vs. non-Western conflicts is either Steyn-ian demographic doom or Sailer-esque insouciance. Sailer wrote on the 20th Anniversary of the "Highway of Death" and the Western air dominance over Libya, asserting that the West can always dominate adversaries as long as it does not occupy them. Mark Steyn notes that differential birth-rates among non-Europeans both inside and outside Western nations promises to transform the West into basically, variants of non-Western nations peopled almost exclusively by non-Western people. That the demographic freight train is unstoppable. The future for America being Mexico, for Europe, Islam. In reality, things are not so simple.


It is not that simple because the West has advantages the non-West lacks. Which is, basically an open-ness to change, including fairly radical social change, driven by technology. At least in part, this has historically been driven by the West being relatively depopulated compared to rival civilizations, and therefore having fewer institutional and mass population centers of resistance to technological change. The compass, gunpowder, paper money, were all invented in China but took hold in the West. Being constantly improved in the West while they languished in China. The fate of the Zheng He's fleet (burned to the waterline by the Court Eunuchs) contrasts with the voyages of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and others in the West. Where constant improvements in navigation or firearms or money meant increased wealth all around, particularly those who could provide better tools. If nothing else, Western society was small enough so that it did not have massive centers of resistance to social change.

The Western medieval knights, were rapidly abandoned even before the gunpowder advent, with the superiority of the pike square. A bunch of peasants using pikes (and archers in the center) were certainly cheaper than mounted, armored knights, who would require an entire estate to maintain. Later, harquebus and musketeers were even cheaper. And far more deadly. While Europe was radically transforming its military to ever deadlier, ever cheaper versions, Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate, used muskets to beat its rivals, and then outlawed firearms. Fearful of the social changes making peasants more deadly than the samurai would bring. This led to the domination of the Black Fleet under US Commodore Perry. And the wrenching modernization undertaken, as the shock of Western superiority led to hurried efforts to catch up to Western superiority. The Japanese found they had nothing in their arsenal that could even touch the ships of Perry's fleet in Tokyo Bay.

Two recent maps, from a paper recently published, hat tip Slashdot, shows the top science cities in physics and chemistry. One can see the physics maps here and the Chemistry maps here. The more green a circle is, the more top quality research (as measured by the paper, including originality and new understanding) is done. The more red the circle, the more second-rate, low quality (basically merely copying other research) the city has produced. Larger circles denote more research, and smaller circles less volume of research.


The visualization tool from Google maps is stunning. It shows the dominance, of the East Coast of America, a few institutions on the US West Coast (Stanford, then Berkeley, then UCLA/USC), and then secondarily Western Europe, in the UK, Northern Europe from Northern France, Switzerland, Northern Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Norway, in both Chemistry and Physics research. The highest quality of research is done in these locations (with the US leading) and the most volume. [The map above right is of the top Physics locations]


Almost no research of any kind, is done in Latin America or Africa, and that which is done is mostly red (low quality). Russia puts out high volume, but low quality research, and the same is true for China. Japan and Singapore are the only non-European/American nations that puts out high quality and high volume of research in chemistry and physics. [The map above right is of the world chemistry research.]


While there is much to criticize about the US higher educational system, and recent efforts as noted by Steve Sailer to push women into dominance in science at places like MIT put US dominance in science at risk, the US lead is overwhelming. But it is also vulnerable. Just a few locations in the US, MIT, Columbia/NYU, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Sandia Labs, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA/USC, account for most of the high quality research done in the US. Destroy those cities with nukes, and you kill the entire research advantage of the West. The ability of the West to come up with new, and more deadly technology: better, autonomous UAVs that cannot be jammed, micro UAVs that can observe jihadis without being seen, even small ones with weapons able to kill individual jihadis when opportunities arise. Or the ability to sniff out explosives, with tiny portable devices, or drugs, or other contraband (smuggling of which helps fund jihadi networks). [The map above is of US Physics research output by city]

Just as importantly, advances in chemistry and physics allow Western nations to generate material advantages. The holy grail of electric cars is a self-charging (via powerful solar arrays) system that can store massive amounts of electricity. Both depend on significant advances of chemistry (battery and solar array technology) and physics. Other advances could include networked UAV-based anti-ICBM systems using powerful lasers (which would require advances in chemistry and physics), negating the advantage of nations like North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, which possess or will soon, considerable amounts of ICBM nuclear missiles. The play of these failed nation-states has been to use WWII technology (the V2 and nuclear warheads) together to act as a shield against US or other Western nation reprisals, with the threat of nuclear annihilation of those nations (say, Denmark) that don't fall in line with Islamist domination, and lack significant nuclear forces or protection of their own. Even Denmark could put together an array of satellites orbiting around with lasers powerful enough to blast ICBMs out of the sky during launch phase. The way the Holy League defeated the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto, despite the Papal States, Genoa, Tuscany, the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and Venice being by European standards, second raters (only Spain was a major power).

The decisive hinge therefore of Western and non-Western fate will be, the ability of Western nations to respond to the obvious targeting of major cities, and the ability of ancillary research universities to replace those lost to nuclear or biological or chemical weapon terrorism. It is pretty unlikely that the jihadi networks will target research universities, the lure of major population centers being irresistible. But many major research universities sit in major population centers. MIT is located in Cambridge, near Boston. Stanford sits in the Bay Area, as does Berkeley. Columbia and NYU are in New York City. London is the site of many of the UK's leading universities. Germany, France, and Switzerland have more dispersed universities, and the US's key research institutions of Urbana-Champaign (University of Illinois), Sandia National Laboratories, and Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh) are located in second, third, or lower tier cities and towns.

The non-Western world has nothing like the US/European/Japanese university research system, government supported, doing basic research in physics, chemistry, and other areas that supply potential Western advantage. Muslim, Mexican, and African societies have failed, almost entirely, in even establishing research universities. Those in Russia and China do mostly derivative, low quality work though they do have a lot of volume. But as in WWII, technological advances in things like RADAR, computers, bombsights, aircraft design, and crucially, primitive ground proximity fuses (the key American artillery advantage) can make up for disastrous early defeats, poor generalship, and bad tank designs. The American ability to explode artillery shells directly overhead tanks, or advancing infantry, was the great killer of German troops in the West, along with fighter-bombers like the P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang. And on the other side, the German advances in jet engine technology and small arms (the assault rifle prototypes) came too late and in insufficient numbers to beat back the US tide in the West, despite better tanks and artillery.

What in particular, Muslim societies have bet on, against the West and China, is jihad backed by massive amounts of manpower and fanaticism. This has been the traditional way of Muslim warfare, and the uprisings all around the Muslim nations, provoked by food shortages and crisis, are at least in part aimed at restoring Muslim dominance by traditional mass jihad.

This has been tried before. It was quite successful against the Byzantines, the Eastern Roman Empire, taking away Christian North Africa, Spain, the Middle East, Sicily, Southern Italy, and Southern France with ease. Requiring a slow, centuries long effort in Spain, and several hundred years effort in Sicily and Southern Italy, and France, coupled with constant vigilance and escape from Muslim raids. Muslim jihadis were raiding Rome and the Vatican as a matter of course, until the 1400's.

Against the main force of the West, it has been mostly failure. The siege of Vienna failed twice, as massive amounts of Muslim manpower ran up against European fortifications in the gunpowder age, and better quality of gunners. Against more modern forces, particularly the Second Barbary War against the US, Muslim forces failed. Muslim forces cannot put up modern air combat planes into the sky. They do poorly with tanks, and artillery. Muslim forces do best with irregulars, aiming to dominate by numbers. Against forces with superior technology, and a will to use that technology to slaughter them in great numbers, they fail. Kemal Ataturk's famous epiphany came at the slaughter of Ottoman forces at Meggido, as Allenby's combined arms of aircraft, mechanized vehicles, and artillery slaughtered the ill trained, and substantially larger Ottoman forces.

Achieving military dominance, as Victor Davis Hanson points out in "Culture and Carnage," is not something that is the mere matter of copying Western technology. Because Western nations are willing to upend their own social systems in the pursuit, generally speaking, of material commercial and military advantage, by adopting ever more efficient technology. Technology that makes each man, either in the workforce (machine tools, computerized machine tools, and new materials) or on the battlefield, more efficient. It is the civilizational response of a people facing strategic threats all around them, who are few in number.

The most likely outcome, therefore, is a collision of cultural strategies between Europeans and Muslims (to a lesser extent European descended peoples in the Americas and those of mestizo origin). The Muslim strategy is to conquer by birth rates and mass jihad, in various forms. The European strategy is to dominate by technology that is ever more efficient at both creating wealth and battlefield dominance. The key is the shortage of much of everything, driven by China's emergence on the world stage, and insatiable demand for raw materials.

The easiest way for Europeans to keep their welfare states, which they like, is to kick out all non-Europeans. Which, one way or another, the will do. Perhaps not all, and some European states might fall under Muslim domination, leaving European neighbors to conquer them in the name of eliminating threats. No one thought much of Germans prior to Bismarck -- the Germans were the dis-united, kicked around afterthoughts of Europe. But the ability to leverage advances in chemistry and physics, and combine that with a small but disciplined fighting force, made them formidable by the time of the Franco-Prussian War.

Conflict, therefore, is inevitable. For their part, an impoverished Muslim mass of people in North Africa and the Middle East (including Turkey) see their only way out of poverty through what amounts in one way or another, mass jihad. An exodus in one way or another, into Europe, which is rich and poorly defended. For their part, Europeans (Sarkozy is instructive here, demanding and acting on the demand that Khadaffi go, because he fears Khadaffi sending millions of his people, all Muslims, to France eventually) do not want an influx of Muslims. Their PC/Diversity leaders to the contrary, they want the Muslims and non-Europeans they do have to leave. For nothing else, the preservation of the Welfare state. Which is fundable if they continue to make technological advances and do not have to support a massive Muslim population unsuited to a technology dominated society.

For their part, Muslim jihadis are likely to continue to target iconic buildings and cities in the West: London, Paris, Rome, above all New York City. With perhaps serious damage to research institutions housed in these cities. Attacks on urban centers, regardless if done Bombay Style, or through weapons of mass destruction (airliners loaded with jet fuel, chemicals, biological weapons, and or nukes) are likely to decentralize Western society as attacks on critical centers have in the past. The danger here is that the West would possibly lose some margin of research edge, which is realistically its only hope in competing against manpower-driven rivals.

Contra Richard Florida, wealth comes not from trust-fund reliant urban hipsters, but the sort of folks who founded Hewlett-Packard, or Apple Computer, or MicroSoft, or Intel Corporation. Entrepreneurs and businessmen reliant upon a large pool of technically trained people, and basic research coming from technology and science driven universities. University of Texas at Austin, for example, is no better than LSU, while the University of Chicago, and University of Michigan, outweigh them both. But Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT seemed to have produced the most companies out of the basic research in science and engineering.

This makes Western cities far more productive, than Muslim or Mexican ones, but not in the way most pundits think. Antique stores, tragically hip tend-setters, gays, entertainment/fashion people, do not create wealth. They merely sip at the froth of the wealth created, by pocket protector wearing engineers and scientists. Who in turn create research only in stable institutions, located in middle to upper class income cities, that are livable and not third-world style hell-holes (sorry Tulane University and New Orleans), with a critical mass of colleagues, students, and potential employers.

This makes Western cities, such as San Francisco, Berkeley, Cambridge and Boston, New York City, London, Geneva, Zurich, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, and Chicago vulnerable not just to dirty bombs, nukes, and chemical attacks, but demographic transformation. California could spend all its wealth in a vain attempt to educate immigrants from Chiapas, and their children and grandchildren, to levels of White and Asian achievement, and destroy the ability of the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University to continue cutting edge research into physics and chemistry. Destroying in turn the ability to innovate and create new industries and new jobs. Demographically, the transformation of California from 80% White in 1960 to 40.1% White today, is a serious and probably mortal threat to California's technological dominance.

You cannot sustain world-class research in physics and chemistry with the population of Mexico. Which California has been transformed from, the state of the Beach Boys and Apple Computer to Chiapas and Cuidad Juarez North, in the space of two generations. Long term, Stanford and Berkeley are finished, because all available money in California will be spent on basic K-12 education, and Affirmative Action at the University level for Chicano Studies and so forth. The same fates await the University of Chicago, and Urbana-Champaign, as Illinois transforms into majority-Mexican. This will move the center of research power to Boston and New York, and the surrounding areas, which are becoming Mexican majority the least rapidly. "Whitetopia", the area defined by Black Author Richard Benjamin, basically Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, have significantly no real research universities and no real output in physics or chemistry. Second-tier White states, with significant Black populations but miserable economies that don't attract many Mexican immigrants, such as Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi have at best, lower level (both shade of green and volume) research universities, but that is better than the basically none at all (confined to Washington and Oregon, what little there is) of Whitopia. Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina all have significant research universities, whose output while second-tier, is respectable. However demographically, they are somewhere between Texas and California (doomed to Mexican majority) and places like Alabama (poor, likely to remain Black and White only).

The advantage European states have, is the ability for some of them to kick out immigrants, particularly places like Germany and Italy and Switzerland (there is less will in the UK or France to do this at present) and so spend most of their education money on things (research on physics, chemistry, and other science/engineering subjects) that create wealth, power, jobs, and advantages. Instead of pouring money down a rathole of attempting to make Muslim, or Mexican, or African immigrants into respectable, bourgeois, science-minded Europeans. To some extent, power is likely to pass, from the US, back to Europe, because their demographics are more favorable, if they act now to kick as many non-natives out. This would mean in practical terms, technological innovation over the next thirty years is likely to come from Europe, not America, and not China (which has volume but little original research).

In the US, technological power and thus wealth creation, is likely to pass to the East Coast again, specifically Boston and New York City. Both of which have remained White enough to attract and maintain world-class researchers at world-class universities. Both of which also seem to have enough of a middle class tax hinterland to support research, instead of what amounts to variations of "University of Phoenix" or Devry Institutes. This certainly sets up a conflict, between a mostly Scots-Irish population ethnically cleansed out of California and the Southwest and parts of the South, and the old Puritan-Progressive population of the Northeast. It is worth noting that while the technological base of the US military depends almost entirely on work done at the basic research level at the few East and West Coast Universities, the manpower of the Military is drawn almost exclusively from West and South White populations.

In the end, we are likely to see over the next thirty years, a nearly total confrontation in all spheres, between a very thin population, almost exclusively White, relying on ever changing, and more powerful technology, and manpower based swarming strategies, designed to overwhelm while not exposing a mass to firepower. Against a backdrop of shortages of almost everything, driven by Chinese demand. While manpower is not a power to be dismissed, against shortages of almost everything, technology often wins. Not every time, but most of the time.

The power given by something as simple as Google Maps shown by the research paper, to visualize data, is likely to be more decisive over time, to a population no matter how small, attuned to use it. Technology is value neutral, except for one aspect. Those who are willing to change their societies and persons, to use more and better technology, succeed more than those wed to a way of life, above all else. Successful use of technology requires its total embrace. Not elevation of God, Allah, or racial characteristics (La Raza, Ubermenschen, etc.) above all else. Instead a constant, restless seeking of advantage.

At any rate, the multicultural, diverse world of today and tomorrow hardly resembles Disneyland's "It's a Small World" Ride of handholding, singing children. Rather, a fairly Hobbesian war of all against all.
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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Demographics in Action: Alexandra Wallace Leaves UCLA

As part of demographics in action, Junior Alexandra Wallace has left UCLA. According to the NY Daily News, this was due to a torrent of death threats against her and her family.

On Monday, the student newspaper reported she contacted police after she received numerous threats. And as news of the video continued to spread, the threats did as well. Her political science professor, Phil Gussin, told the Daily Bruin that he was working with her to make alternative plans to take her finals - because of the nature and volume of the threats.



Meanwhile, the Orange County Register says to its readers, don't fear population shifts. After all, diversity and multiculturalism are a wonderland of fun!

Would an Asian student who made derogatory (and accurate) remarks about Whites have been the target of death threats (along with her family?) What about a Black student, posting a Youtube video filled with derogatory (and accurate) views about White students? [Every ethnic/racial group has habits and behaviors on average that are dysfunctional, that is part of being human, being flawed.] The answer of course is no, and the power of demographics, with Whites in the numerical minority, give a powerful lesson to all.

As one poster in commenting on Alexandra Wallace's experience noted, Ms. Wallace may not have graduated from UCLA, but she received a lesson. A lesson nearly all observant Whites have not failed to grasp. Any criticism, no matter how unthreatening or innocuous the speaker, of a non-White group by a White person, will be met with credible threats of violence that the authorities will do nothing about. Whites are as numerical minorities in California, second or third class citizens.


Really, does this woman look like someone who merits death threats? She's not exactly physically or intellectually threatening. That her Youtube video, after her groveling apology, generated so many genuine death threats against her and her family that she had to withdraw from UCLA, speaks to the irrational rage and unchecked power of non-Whites. Rest assured that any White student or person making death threats against a non-White and her family, would have been summarily arrested. Yet from the story, nothing was done against those making the threats, which are in fact criminal offenses (but not enforced when made against Whites).

The Orange County Register, meanwhile, makes the statement:

The Register also found: "The only thing different in Orange County was the size of the numbers. The county lost about 15 percent of its white population (about 226,000 people) but gained nearly 80 percent more Hispanics (nearly 450,000 people) and more than 120 percent more Asians (more than 290,000 people) since 1990."

Although some people pound their desks worrying about these demographic shifts, they don't bother us. For one, nothing can be done about it. For another, Orange County seems just as pleasant as it was in 1990 or earlier. Why do we generally get along so well?

For us, the key factor always is individual liberty – to judge persons as individuals, not as members of groups. We believe that freedom is so contagious that it can take root anywhere, anytime, be it here or Asia or North Africa. The desire for liberty is written on every human heart.


You can see how demonstrably false this is, by examining what happened to Ms. Wallace. It is unarguably true that many Asian students and Asian people found offense in what Ms. Wallace said. This is quite natural, and "diverse" societies where one racial/ethnic/religious group does not dominate to the tune of 85% or more, will always and always, give offense constantly to different groups. Absent a Tito, a Stalin, or a Sultan, to crush regularly all who oppose him, and promote favored groups over others. This is the lesson of history. At no time have different ethnic, religious, racial, and other groups all gotten along like a Disneyland "It's a Small World" ride.

Ms. Wallace and her family got death threats because she was judged as part of a group. One that had little power and ability to deflect credible threats of death against her and her family. Rule of law simply ceases to exist, as Ms. Wallace's case illustrates, when different racial and ethnic groups exist, without one being so dominant it maintains absolute control. As Eric Holder recently said, the idea that Whites have civil rights is an insult to "my people."

Diversity means, in effect, Whites as second class or worse, citizens, with no real legal rights, no protection of their rights from government, a "free fire zone" against Whites who give offense to any non-White. The lesson of Ms. Wallace is not lost on observant people. UCLA offered her no protection, from death threats. Nor did law enforcement.

White flight to all-White areas will only accelerate as part of this "diversity" but in the end flight is limited. There are few places to go and non-Whites like to live in wealthy White areas as well. Eventually this will bring a crisis. Because there is no possibility of the Orange County Register's view of treating people as individuals. It has never happened, it is not happening now, and will not happen in the future.
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

China's Weaknesses

The Wall Street Journal pointed out some uncomfortable truths about China's oil vulnerabilities. China became the biggest importer of crude oil from Saudi Arabia in 2009, surpassing the US. Most of China's crude comes from Saudi Arabia:

The Middle East provides 2.9 million barrels of oil a day to China, more than half its total imports, and Saudi Arabia alone accounts for about 1.1 million barrels a day.

Chinese officials say they want to boost trade with Saudi Arabia by about 50% to $60 billion by 2015, further increasing Beijing's dependence on the kingdom.



China realizes its vulnerability, and has been doing what it can, mostly increased military spending and overt political alliances with Saudi Arabia, to decrease its vulnerability by gaining power. China's aircraft carrier program is aimed directly at gaining naval power and dominance over the Gulf, to assure the oil keeps flowing.

"Asia has been something of a bystander in the Middle East and importantly, in the case of China, an increasingly anxious bystander," said Andrew Shearer, director of studies at Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy.

That anxiety comes from the economic implications of possible major disruption to energy supplies coming through the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz and Beijing's unease that the calls for democratic change sweeping across the Middle East will set an unwelcome precedent at home. According to Mr. Shearer, the U.S. still has the military capability to intervene if the flow of oil from the region was threatened.

In an extreme scenario, U.S. troops could seize control of oil installations in the region, leaving China and most of Asia dependent on the goodwill of Washington to guarantee their supplies. In such circumstances, "the oil would follow the gray naval ships" of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Shearer said.

China may be racing to catch up. It has increased defense spending by almost 13% and is developing its own aircraft carriers. But its ability to project power beyond the South China Sea remains limited. Beijing sent one of its latest and most powerful warships, the Xuzhou, to help evacuate its nationals from the fighting raging in Libya, but this effort was dwarfed by the rapid U.S. navy buildup off the North African coast. "China has naval aspirations but they're still a long way from realizing that," said Mr. Shearer.


China remains hobbled by a fiscal system that is a mess. As the WSJ reports:

More important, the banks were relieved of their bad loans by what Messrs. Howie and Walter accurately describe as "accounting legerdemain."

In 1998, the People's Bank of China—the state's central bank—reduced the Big Four's reserve requirement. This freed up reserves for the banks to acquire a special-purpose treasury bond issued by the Ministry of Finance. The loan proceeds were then used to recapitalize the banks. Beijing also created asset-management companies to buy the nonperforming loans from the banks at face value. In exchange, these repositories of toxic credit issued notes to the banks. (When these notes became due in 2009, they were extended for another decade.)

For the financial magicians' next trick, in 2005, other nonperforming loans were put into a "co-managed account" with the Ministry of Finance, which in return issued IOUs to the banks that were to be repaid through a combination of loan recoveries, bank dividends, sale of bank shares and tax receipts from the banks. To make matters even more convoluted, in 2009 the banks started acquiring large stakes in the asset-management companies that were still sitting on nonperforming loans from the previous decade.


As noted in the article (the review of "Red Capitalism" by Carl E. Walter and Frasier J.T. Howie), what this has done is given Chinese banks a guaranteed spread, between borrowing costs (artificially low) and what they charge for borrowing (high), but at the cost of artificially low rates on Chinese consumer bank accounts, aka "financial repression." Chinese have to save, save, and save, because they get in effect negative real returns on savings accounts. This accounts for all sorts of destructive bubbles in real estate, and the like. Empty apartments in Shanghai and elsewhere that Chinese families have purchased as investments, desperate for returns. Household deposits have financed the industrial banking system and export driven economy. Making Chinese domestic consumer consumption a joke (and a bad one on Western companies betting on it).

Bad loans are routinely hidden, and the various local, provincial, and special district liabilities for bad loans, often connected to White Elephant projects like high speed trains that will never recoup their investment costs, is probably on several orders of magnitude larger than the US state/local/county levels of indebtedness.

China is a formidable country with many advantages, but they are not world-beating supermen with no flaws. Their interior remains dirt poor and functionally illiterate. They have massive ethnic/racial/religious tension and separatism. [Tibet and XianXing Uighurs and Hui Muslims on the coast.] China has huge gaps between rich and poor, massive gender imbalance (roughly 30-40 million young men will never marry.) China is hideously vulnerable not just on its own sake for oil, but cheap Chinese goods rapidly increase in price if oil increases, by trans-Pacific transportation alone. Let alone cost of production. And as noted, its financial system is a shaky house of cards continually propped up, driven by insolvent State Owned Enterprises that must be continued to keep employment up (and the social safety net which is tied directly to employment, including schooling and welfare.)

China has been lucky, propping up its broken financial system. Betting on luck forever is not a wise move. It may well be that Japan's earthquake exposes China's weakness, as Japanese companies pull back from Chinese investment to focus on reconstruction at home and Japanese led export growth (to pay for reconstruction). Japan is highly indebted, aging, and with very little growth domestically. The only way for Japan to reasonably pay for reconstruction is export-led economic growth, in direct competition with China.
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