International Affairs: April 2008 Archives

BBC North American editor Justin Webb reports from Missouri on the tranquility and safety of gun-toting America:

Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.

Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.

They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.

It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquility and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.

What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.

One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.

I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.

It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.

That's the difference between American citizens and British subjects. A free and armed population can police itself.

(HT: Instapundit.)

In what appears on the surface to be a clumsy attempt at espionage, a Mexican official stole several BlackBerries from Presidential aides during a high-level meeting.

Whether he was up to no good or simply desperate to play BrickBreaker, a Mexican press attache was caught on camera by Secret Service pocketing several White House BlackBerries during a recent meeting in New Orleans, FOX News has learned.

Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, whose first name is Rafael, took six or seven of the handheld devices from a table outside a special room in the hotel where the Mexican delegation was meeting with President Bush.

Everyone entering the room was required to leave their cell phones, BlackBerries and other such devices on the table, a commonplace practice when high-level meetings are held. American officials discovered their missing belongings when they were leaving the session.

The Secret Service caught the fellow at the airport as he was preparing to leave the country with his "accidental" loot. Looks like an obvious attempt to steal American secrets, either for the Mexican government or personal gain. Our officials should be more careful with their equipment, and one can only hope that they're using encryption and properly locking their devices when not in use.

Congressmen arguing that Iraq should be spending its own money for reconstruction to ease the burden on America and the Coalition are correct, and I've been arguing similarly for years. It's primarily the Democrats making this point now, but I don't see why Republicans should object. (Am I missing something?)

Democrats plan to push legislation this spring that would force the Iraqi government to spend its own surplus in oil revenues to rebuild the country, sparing U.S. dollars. ...

"Rather, we need to put continuous and increasing pressure on the Iraqis to settle their political differences, to pay for their own reconstruction with their oil windfalls, and to take the lead in conducting military operations," said Levin, D-Mich.

Iraq has about $30 billion in surplus funds stored in U.S. banks, according to Levin.

Iraq is looking at a potential boon in oil revenue this year, possibly as much as $100 billion in 2007 and 2008. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is having to buy its fuel on the open market, paying on average $3.23 a gallon and spending some $153 million a month in Iraq on fuel alone.

This will be a complicated transition, and the Coalition needs to make certain that this oil money doesn't get stolen by a new breed of kleptocrats or wasted by incompetents. Corruption is rampant throughout the region, so this will be no easy task.

I also wouldn't object to direct payments into the American treasury to compensate us for our expenditures thus far. I've mentioned before that compensation for the families of Americans killed in Iraq would build a lot of good-will.

Military historian Frederick W. Kagan has a great piece on the importance of winning wars. Whatever one may think of our war in Iraq -- whether it should have been waged, whether it has been managed competently, whether we are presently winning -- Kagan explains why the costs of losing are far, far higher than the American left is willing to acknowledge.

The hyper-sophisticates of the American foreign-policy and intellectual establishment direct their invective at the whole notion of winning or losing. What’s the definition of winning? If we choose to withdraw from an ill-conceived and badly executed war, that’s not really losing, is it? We can and should find ways to use diplomacy rather than military power to handle the consequences of any so-called defeat. Less-sophisticated antiwar leaders on both sides will ask simply why the U.S. should continue to spend its blood and treasure to fight in “a far-off land of which we know little,” as Neville Chamberlain famously said in defense of his abandonment of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. We have, after all, more pressing problems at home to which the Iraq war is only contributing. As is often the case, there is a level between over-thinking and under-thinking a problem that is actually thinking. Yes, in the world as it is, whatever line we sell ourselves, there really is victory and there really is defeat, the two are different, and their effects on the future diverge profoundly. And yes, the reason we must continue to spend money and the lives of the very best Americans in that far-off land is that the interests of every American are actually at stake.

We will consider below just how much of a diversion of resources away from more desirable domestic priorities the Iraq war actually is, but the more important point is simply this: Unless the advocates of defeat can show, as they have not yet done, that the consequences of losing are very likely to be small not simply the day after the last American leaves Iraq, but over the next five, ten, and 50 years, then what they are really selling is short-term relief in exchange for long-term pain. As drug addicts can attest, this kind of instant-gratification temptation is very seductive — it’s what keeps drug dealers in business despite the terrible damage their products do to their customers. “Just end the pain now and deal with the future when it gets here” is as bad a strategy for a great nation as it is for a teenager.

Maybe I'm cynical, but I think most of the anti-war elite know that a retreat-defeat will hurt America, and they're eager for America's diminishment in the world. It's not fair that America is so rich and powerful! We owe it to the rest of the world to sabotage ourselves for the sake of international equality. Obviously, most Americans would reject such a premise, so the left is forced to argue that they aren't really calling for defeat, and anyway, if they are, the consequences won't be that bad.

I've written quite a bit about Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe over the past few years, and it's heartening to see that he may be on his way out. Let's hope so, for the sake of the former "Jewel of Africa".

Andrew Walden claims that Muslims are leaving Islam in droves, mainly for Christianity or secularism.

Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church. ...

Although al-Qataani points to Africa, there is another phenomenon based on repulsion from Islamist dictatorship, corruption, and terrorist violence. In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years. Pastor Hormoz Shariat claims to have converted 50,000 of them through his U.S.-based Farsi-language satellite ministry. He contrasts the upswing to the efforts of evangelical missionaries in Iran between 1830 and 1979, whose 149 years of work built a Christian community of only 3,000.

Lots more there, with a great many links. Not sure how accurate the premise is as a whole, but it sounds encouraging.

Woopty-doo, a new poll shows that "the world's" opinion of America is improving.

Attitudes to the United States are improving, an opinion poll carried out for the BBC World Service suggests.

The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.

Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.

The poll, part of a regular survey of world opinion, interviewed more than 17,000 people in 34 countries.

Wouldn't the interpretation of these results depend heavily on which countries were polled? That list isn't given in the article. I bet if you asked 34 Muslim countries America would fare pretty poorly. By mixing friends and enemies together, the aggregate results of this poll are nonsensical. I suppose it could be useful to measure what our friends and allies think of us, but shouldn't we be trying to piss off the tyrants and thugs of the world?

I'm certainly no fan of Nancy Pelosi, but I appreciate her stand against Chinese oppression of Tibet. I don't know all the ramifications of her advice, but I hope President Bush considers it carefully.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not want the U.S. to boycott the Beijing Olympics, but she says that President George W. Bush should consider skipping the opening ceremony.

"I think boycotting the opening ceremony, which really gives respect to the Chinese government, is something that should be kept on the table," Pelosi, D-Calif., told "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts in an interview airing Tuesday. "I think the president might want to rethink this later, depending on what other heads of state do."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will not attend the Olympic Games, set to begin on August 8, 2008. Pelosi, meanwhile, has been outspoken in support of Tibet, the site of recent crackdowns on human rights demonstrators by the Chinese government.

In a recent trip to Dharmasala, India, home of the Dalai Lama's displaced Tibetan government, Pelosi said, "If freedom-loving people don't speak out against China's oppression of people in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak out against any oppressed people."

China ruthlessly persecutes Christians, but that doesn't make the news as much as Tibet does because Christians are more diffuse. Keep all the victims of communist brutality in your prayers.