Right Wing Nut House

So Captain Phillips is free and unharmed and the pirates are killed or captured. Good news all around, although I think Michael Shear of WaPo gave new meaning to the phrase “gushing coverage:”

It was one of the earliest tests of the new American president — a small military operation off the coast of a Third World nation. But as President Bill Clinton found out in October 1993, even minor failures can have long-lasting consequences.

Clinton’s efforts to land a small contingent of troops in Haiti were rebuffed, for the world to see, by a few hundred gun-toting Haitians. As the USS Harlan County retreated, so did the president’s reputation.

For President Obama, last week’s confrontation with Somali pirates posed similar political risks to a young commander in chief who had yet to prove himself to his generals or his public.

But the result — a dramatic and successful rescue operation by U.S. Special Operations forces — left Obama with an early victory that could help build confidence in his ability to direct military actions abroad.

Some victory. The US Navy against 4 pirates in 15 foot launch. And by all accounts, the Navy SEAL’s acted in response to the Captain trying to escape - brave felow, him. He no doubt realized once he was clear that the pirates would be toast.

The significance here is not a “victory” but rather that the president proved he can pull the trigger. By authorizing the use of force not once, but twice, the president showed that when American lives are threatened, he will act. That should bolster his reputation somewhat with a suspicious military:

The operation pales in scope and complexity to the wars underway in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Obama’s adversaries are unlikely to be mollified by his performance in a four-day hostage drama.

Nonetheless, it may help to quell criticism leveled at Obama that he came to office as a Democratic antiwar candidate who could prove unwilling or unable to harness military might when necessary.

And as Obama’s Democratic predecessors can attest, a victory — no matter how small — is better than a failure.

Obama’s two Democratic predecessors were notorious for their seeming inability to pull the trigger on military action at times. The question of whether Clinton could have killed Bin Laden will haunt this country for many years while his Haiti operation, where US troops were prevented from landing by a couple of hundred armed irregulars, was seen at the time as an embarrassment. The Kosovo operation suffered from a lack of will to commit ground troops and end the conflict swiftly. For Clinton, a man who headed an administration that Buzz Patterson found first hand to have nothing but contempt for soldiers in uniform (Patterson and other military personnel assigned to the White House were ordered not to wear their uniforms), the inability to give the “go” signal was the result of a Viet Nam era distrust and disgust of the mlitary.

Carter was just plain inept - a dithering, hand wringing Commander in Chief who surrounded himself with pacifists - and his inability to come to a decision about the hostage rescue (it was an on again, off again operation) while previously assisting anti-regime forces in Iran and Nicaraugua to overthrow American allies, emboldened the Soviets at the time to expand their influence dramatically around the world, not to mention invade Afghanistan. The Communists figured correctly they had nothing to fear from Carter.

So our friends on the left will excuse us if we have our doubts about Mr. Obama’s ability to act decisively when the chips are down and American lives are at stake. The manner in which he handled the hostage situation is a good start toward allaying those fears.

Now, however, comes the hard part. It is time for the United States to take the lead and mount a military operation that will wipe out the scourge of piracy. If no one will help, we should do it ourselves although I think it likely that most nations are ready for such a move. And such an operation cannot be simply a raid; from what I’ve read from experts, it must be a sustained campaign that involves not only the navies of the world but also special forces to infliltrate the towns and villages along the coast where the pirates live and destroy their ability to cause trouble. This means destroying their boats, the docks, the gasoline dumps, interdict and confiscate weapons, and take other actions against targets that allow the pirates to operate.

But this situation is not as easy as simply going after terrorists or high seas criminals. Alas, our president will no doubt see the other side of the coin as well; that the pirates are simply acting in “self defense” or responding to unbearable provocations from western fishing trawlers:

This from Crooks and Liars:

I wonder which principled member of our corporate media will point out that, in the big picture, the Somali pirates are acting in self-defense?

Yes - a VERY big picture, fer sure. Meanwhile, the author quotes from a story in The Independent that gives a pass to the pirates due to (wait for it) western imperialism:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Coud this be true? Der Spiegel tells it a little differently:

Somali fishermen have another problem: toxic waste. Initially dumped on land, toxic waste was increasingly dumped at sea after the collapse of the regime of former President Siad Barre in 1991. Because the country has no coast guard, for the past 20 years the Somali coastline has had no protection against European ships dumping waste at sea. Although hard evidence was rare, there have been periodic and mysterious incidents. In early 2002, tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore at Merca, south of Mogadishu. The causes remain unclear.

In the spring of 2004, fishermen spotted two large containers floating in the water near Bosaso. Whether they were deliberately tossed overboard or accidentally fell of a container ship in rough seas is unclear. The Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, which also reached the African coast, unearthed dozens of containers of toxic waste and deposited the waste along the Somali coast. According to a United Nations report, many coastal residents suffered “acute respiratory infections, heavy coughing, bleeding gums and mouth, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin rashes, and even death.”

Experts and environmentalists have long been aware of the problem. In 2006, a team of specialists sent to the region to investigate discovered nine toxic waste sites along 700 kilometers (435 miles) of coastline in southern Somalia.

The UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said last October that the UN has “reliable information that European and Asian companies are dumping toxic waste, including nuclear waste, off the Somali coastline.”

Clearly, there’s problem here and it’s not western imperialism or even grasping capitalism; Somalia has no government. The jackals of the world take advantage of that. And the UN - even though they are aware of the problem - do nothing. And when something newsworthy comes out of all of that, wake me up.

Rapacious businessmen are taking advantage of the chaos in Somalia by bullying the few Somalis who try and make a living as fishermen and dumping toxic waste - including some low level nuclear waste - along the shore where there was already a problem thanks to the Somalis themselves dumping waste on land. There is some evidence that the Mafia are making a killing by contracting with firms to dump their waste off the Somali coast.

Now just to set the record straight, there is absolutely no evidence that 300 Somalis have died of exposure to nuclear waste nor has their been a clear link established between the dumping of any toxic waste and the death of any Somali.

Here’s a Greenpeace scientist:

A senior scientist with Greenpeace Research Laboratories in Great Britain, David Santillo, says while it would be difficult to prove that exposure to industrial waste is the sole cause of such health problems, he believes there is a link.

“It could well be that some of those health effects are a result of exposure to radioactive material and in that case, for some people, regrettably, the prognosis could be very devastating,” he explained. “There could be people who simply would not recover.”

Obviously, the key to ending piracy and the illegal dumping is for Somalia to form some kind of government - a task that has been beyond their capabilities for going on two decades. The UN is in its usual throwing-its-hands-in-the-air- mode of doing nothing and spending a lot of money showing it. If ever there was evidence needed that the UN is not only a useless organization but one that actually makes matters worse, the situation in Somalia is it.

Meanwhile, our intrepid Somali pirates know they have western liberals on their side as long as they can show that the reason they board ships, terrorize people, take crew members hostage, kill with impunity, and barter for ransom is because they are only acting in “self defense” against rancid capitalists and western governments who allow the practice of dumping and illegal fishing with a wink and a nod. This appeals to many on the left who will now see the problem as a question of “fairness” and will agitate that the president forgoe knocking the stuffing out of pirate infrastructure in favor of a “negotiated” solution. Piracy will continue, hostages will still be taken, governments and businesses will still be forced to pay ransom - but liberals will feel better about the whole thing.

Sure, let’s negotiate; just as soon as their isn’t a ship, a dock, or a boathouse left standing in those villages and towns that assist the pirates in their lawlessness. And capturing and hanging a few pirates wouldn’t hurt either.

Does the president have the judgement to pull the trigger on this, a much more problematic operation where civilians are likely to be killed and the loss of American life is probable? That will be Obama’s first real “test” and not some quick thinking by a brave captain and the dead eye marksmanship of our SEAL’s.

UPDATE

Once again, the fusion of great minds is evident as Ed Morrissey agrees with me:

This should actually be the next mission for the US Navy after freeing Phillips. We don’t need a quarantine and inspection to identify some of the boats and ports in question; I’d bet dollars to donuts we’ve already identified most of them. Our next step after killing the pirates on the lifeboat is torpedoing their ships in their home ports without inspections or even warnings. Somalia’s failed state can’t impose order on these areas, but if the pirates become a liability rather than an asset to these facilities, they’ll get the heave-ho soon enough.

In the future, we don’t need the lawyers and the FBI negotiators, and we especially don’t need to legitimize Somali “elders”, either. Iklé has that right; piracy is not a bank robbery. The entire point of piracy is to capture ships in territory where no nation can claim sovereignty and therefore work outside the civil law. The proper response to that is military, not some notion of cops and robbers. When pirates find out we’re serious, and when enough of them wind up at the bottom of the ocean, they’ll think twice about seizing American or Western shipping.

I’m not so sure the townsfolk have the strength to give the pirates the “heave ho” which is why I recommend taking Ed’s idea and expanding it by sinking all boats, destroying every dock, every business that caters to the pirates. Yes, it is horrible that we would be destroying very poor people’s ability to make a living. Spreading some green as compensation for legitimate boat and business owners would help there. But it has to hit home to everyone in those towns and villages that the pirates are more than a liability.

Here we are in April with Opening Day upon us (for the uninitiated, this used to be a holy day of obligation for followers of what used to be called our National Pastime) and Barack Obama has been president for 10 weeks. It has been an eventful epoch in American history with the president taking unprecedented steps to head off a depression, save our financial system, and remake America into a liberal paradise.

He has made plenty of errors, befitting his rookie status in the major leagues of public policy and national politics. So far, none of these miscues have cost us the game, as it were. (Forgive the baseball analogies but I am rounding into shape for the coming season.) The national government is in a rebuilding mode as veteran players and old policies are either traded away or unceremoniously let go while we give the youngsters a chance to prove themselves.

Some of these policies may indeed pan out and make the cut. The president’s new Af-Pak strategy has its drawbacks but, I believe, holds real promise for progress. And if Europe wants to embrace our new president and if that leads to better cooperation, I applaud it. We need Europe and NATO more now that the president is going to unilaterally and drastically reduce defense spending. The outline of an agreement with Russia on further reducing nukes appears to be pragmatic and not based on looking into Putin’s “soul” to discern what kind of a partner he might be. Trouble is brewing in Asia but that would have happened if John McCain had become president instead of Obama. The North Korean missile launch has scrambled our alliances with Japan and South Korea while making even the Chinese a little antsy. This presents an opportunity rather than a set back - as long as the Administration sees it that way and not as another excuse to placate Kim Il Jung by continuiing talks as if nothing has happened.

Domestically, the recession seems to be bottoming out (not surprisingly, no thanks to the Stimulus Bill) and Washington and the financial community appear to be coming to grips with the banking crisis. Whether the Geithner plan will work is a big unknown but just addressing the problem is a good first step. Other policy initiatives from stem cells to Guantanamo are matters of extreme disagreement with the opposition. Not that it matters. The voting public rejected the Republicans and conservatives and elected an almost supermajority of Democrats. They are in the drivers seat and for the first time since 1964, one party is going to get a chance to implement its agenda without needing to bother with what the political opposition has to say about it. In 1980 and 1994, the GOP had to deal with either a large, powerful, entrenched opposition or a president of the other party. Ronald Reagan worked some miracles to get most of his tax and spending policies made into law while the 1994 Republican takeover in the House saw many agenda items adopted, others not. Today’s political landscape is a Democratic one. All the Republicans can do is howl.

But it is Obama’s current foreign trip that is revealing of what kind of person we have elected as president. No one on the right should be surprised if Obama behaves like a liberal. He made no secret of his plan to exchange the “unilateralism” of the Bush Administration that always put American interests first with the unilateralism of the left that grants concessions without reciprocity (Iran) while subsuming American interests in the name of “cooperation” and “unity.”

Obama is making all the right noises and taken the right attitude - if one supports a liberal foreign policy. He has been apologetic, humble, cognizant of what the Europeans consider our “past mistakes,” solicitous of the sensibilities of our allies who, after all, think they should be running the world and not us (despite making a royal botch of things for 500 years), and respectful of leaders who have shone little but disdain for the US.

He has had a few gaffes but this is to be expected for his first at bat on his first road trip. What I find curious is the lack of coverage of many of these faux pas and liberal websites dismissing them as “distractions” or with the euphemistic “Bush did it too, only worse” meme. What’s interesting is that when Bush was president, they didn’t believe these gaffes to be a distraction but rather huge international incidents. One would have thought the world ended when Bush got too familiar with German Chancellor Merkel or he was overheard saying “sh*t” at a state dinner.

Somehow, now that Obama is president, these kinds of miscues that at one time were incidents that threatened the foundations of international order and indicative of the relative competence and smarts of President Bush have suddenly become “distractions.”

Glad we got that cleared up.

Beyond that, it was nice to see an American president lecture Europe about the “casual” anti-Americanism that occassionally morphs into a kind of nutty, conspiratorial idiocy and contributes to attitudes like believing America is a bigger threat to their country than Iran. That kind of stupidity can only be explained by an unreasoning, illogical, hatred of America. And for Obama - as popular as he is with the Euro-young - to lay it out in such stark terms was refreshing indeed.

Did he have to preface that lecture in Strasborg by referring to the US as “arrogant?” I note the overreaction to this statement on the right and while I understand the emotional response, Obama was doing more than simply playing to his audience as the Dixie Chicks and other high profile Americans have done while overseas. The president saw himself in the role of repairman in Europe. The alliance has been strained over our invasion and occupation of Iraq and the news - both true and false - about our government’s support for torture. Before you can fix anything, you must first identify what is wrong. This is what Obama was attempting to do when he said that past American policy had “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” All of those perjoratives have nothing to do with “America” and everything to do with “Bush.” Nations aren’t arrogant. National leaders are. Nor are nations “dismissive and derisive.”

(Tis a pity our president didn’t give any examples of our “dismissiveness” and “derisiveness.” I can’t recall a single incident the previous 8 years where the US government was “derisive” of anything said by anyone save perhaps the North Koreans and the Iranians. Was he apologizing to them? I hope not.)

I guess the words were meant to convey an attitude recognizing the fact that America isn’t perfect rather than apologizing for specific instances of American derisiveness. Obama as supplicant went over very well with those who want to see America brought down a peg or two. These people hold the same attitude toward America as those who reduced our former Ambassador to Great Britain Phillip Lader to tears on the BBC program Question Time a few days after 9/11 by applauding audience members who said the attack was our fault and mocking Lader when he tried to defend American policy. The myth of European solidarity with the US after 9/11 is a powerful one despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Oh sure, they were shocked and horrified by the nature of the attack and the loss of life. And they certainly felt a sympathy for the American people. But it is laughable to believe that on some level, they weren’t extremely pleased to see American power take a hit.

It worries me that Obama might believe in this legend and will seek to further subsume American interests in hopes that this mythical “solidarity” can be found again - a return to a time that never existed and a relationship that has been romanticized by the left. The fact is, Obama may be popular but America is not - not now and will not likely be in the future - unless Obama completely goes native and hands the keys to American foreign policy to the EU. This won’t happen which means European attitudes toward America will remain basically unchanged - as they have remained the same since the end of the cold war. The EU has been looking for a “counterweight” to American power for a long time and the thought that President Obama can do anything except improve our image and meliorate other atmospherics in our relationship is wishful thinking.

So Obama’s European test rates about a “B-” in my opinion. There is plenty of room for improvement but he accomplished much in the time he was there that I believe will end up being a net good for America. As a rule, I think it unimportant whether an American president is liked or disliked by the Europeans. But considerng the worldwide financial mess, the crumbling situation in Afghanistan, our continuing fight with Islamic extremists, and other issues of vital mutual concern with the EU, it certainly can’t hurt that Obama is well liked and apparently got off on the right foot with our allies and their citizens.

What’s wrong with this statement?

Indeed, failure to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, would put the entire world back on the path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, which will lead to a warming of up to 6 degrees centigrade, a rapid rise in sea level, widespread desertification and countless other devastating impacts.

Climate change advocates don’t do nuance very well (nor, for that matter, do the deniers). Unless you believe in catastrophic warming scenarios, you are immediately branded a tool of industry and dismissed outright. Conversely, pushing the theory of global warming brands you as an enviro-nut by some who see a global conspiracy at work in the warming movement.

What has been lost in all of this is a healthy skepticism toward evidence in this debate from both sides - something that good scientists must have in order to maintain the proper perspective so that when contrary evidence comes along (and it always does) it can be evaluated rationally, logically, and free of personal bias.

Scientists, being human, rarely achieve such objectivity. But it is still a regimen that good scientists pride themselves on striving to meet.

The author of the piece I quoted from, Joseph Romm, is someone who wishes to advance his political views using science as a club. He is not interested in the facts. If he was, he would carefully label his bald faced statement that not signing a climate treaty will lead to catastrophe as opinion..

There is not one scintilla of scientific evidence to back up the notion that failing to come to an agreement on his idea of an emissions treaty will end civilization. In fact, there is no evidence - save perhaps common sense - that reducing emissions of green house gasses will solve the problem of climate change at all. How could there be when there is no data to support such a statement? We haven’t reduced emissions enough to create a model that could tell us with any reasonable expectation of certainty about the future.

There are some global warming believers among scientists who say it’s too late already, that even if we stopped emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere right now, catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Others advance the theory that a well managed reduction in emissions will lead to a smaller rise in temperatures and mitigate at least some of the harmful effects on the planet. Still others say the entire process can be reversed. They can’t all be right. All could be wrong.

The point being, climate change treaties like Kyoto are political by their very nature. As such, they will be negotiated and ratified based on the perception that they will achieve what they purport to address; namely, the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and their subsequent effect on rising temperatures. But the world community has a huge perception problem with emissions treaties because they refuse to to account for the number one polluter and emitter of CO2 on the planet; China.

There can be no long term reduction in green house gasses unless China is forced to act like a responsible world citizen and stop spewing CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate no western nation has done since the 1960’s. Burning high sulfur coal for electric power and to run its massive industrial base, China has overtaken America as the world’s emission scofflaw.

And yet, here’s Romme on China:

Talks with China over climate action will probably be the most difficult and most important negotiations in U.S. and world history. I have spoken to a number of experts on Chinese energy and climate policy, who say the leaders of the country understand the nature of the threat that climate change poses to them — including the loss of inland glaciers that provide water for the rivers on which hundreds of millions rely. They say that strong U.S. domestic action, coupled with strong U.S. international leadership, could move China to act. Others tell me China will not agree to emissions reductions anytime soon, since it sees itself as a developing nation with much higher priorities.

In fact, China is in a special category by itself. It has announced plans to spend more than half a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus and infrastructure plan. It is a hyper-developing country, with vast amounts of capital in key advanced technologies, including wind and solar.

China is in a “special category” only because people like Romme - and his views reflect the massive majority in the climate change political community - are too afraid to hold China to the same standard that they hold America on emissions. They know that any insistence on China’s feet being held to the fire on cutting their emissions by a reasonable amount would doom any climate change treaty. Hence, rather than deal with the problem, they seek to finesse it by getting at least one of the two major emission culprits to sign on the dotted line.

They are counting on scaring the American public to put pressure on their elected leaders to do their dirty work for them and force the United States to accept ruinous reductions in emissions while China - one of our biggest economic competitors in the world - gets off scott free. Never mind that such an arrangement would grant a decisive economic advantage to China. Never mind that such a flawed climate change treaty wouldn’t reduce the world’s emissions enough to make any difference whatsoever - not when China can build any old coal fired plant it wants to, massively increase the size of its domestic automobile fleet (without worrying about catalytic converters or fuel composition standards), and generally thumb its nose at every other rule, regulation, and environmental standard set by developed countries.

Why should they get a pass? Because, as Mother Jones explains, “they want to be like us:”

The catch is that China has become not just the world’s manufacturer but also its despoiler, on a scale as monumental as its economic expansion. Chinese ecosystems were already dreadfully compromised before the Communist Party took power in 1949, but Mao managed to accelerate their destruction. With one stroke he launched the “backyard furnace” campaign, in which some 90 million peasants became grassroots steel smelters; to fuel the furnaces, villagers cut down a 10th of China’s trees in a few months. The steel ultimately proved unusable. With another stroke, Mao perpetrated the “Kill the Four Pests” campaign, inducing the mass slaughter of millions of sparrows and a subsequent explosion in the locust population. The destruction of forests led to erosion and the spread of deserts, and the locust resurgence prompted a collapse of the nation’s grain crop. The result was history’s greatest famine, in which 30 to 50 million Chinese died.

Yet the Mao era’s ecological devastation pales next to that of China’s current industrialization. A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Acid rain falls on a third of China’s landmass, tainting soil, water, and food. Excessive use of groundwater has caused land to sink in at least 96 Chinese cities, producing an estimated $12.9 billion in economic losses in Shanghai alone. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning and mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities; of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are Chinese.

The government estimates that 400,000 people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses each year, and health care costs for premature death and disability related to air pollution is estimated at up to 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Four-fifths of the length of China’s rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population—600 or 700 million people—drinks water contaminated with animal and human waste. Into Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, the nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated sewage; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years. Drained by cities and factories all over northern China, the Yellow River, whose cataclysmic floods earned it a reputation as the world’s most dangerous natural feature, now flows to its mouth feebly, if at all. China generates a third of the world’s garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world’s discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.

The idea that China is carrying out this environmental destruction in order to be “just like us” is typical liberal drivel. If they wanted to be “just like us” they would pass the kind of environmental protections we have been reluctantly but steadily putting in place for the last 40 years. It is has cost us much in the way of economic activity (ask Goodyear, US Steel, and the Big Three just how much) but what we have gained is measurably more important: Cleaner air and water than 40 years ago (not as clean as they could be but better than they were and infinitely better than China).

Romme tries to make the medicine about China’s “special category” status in any future climate change treaty go down easier by praising them for their research leadership in wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources. The problem is that implementing those technologies as a substitute for coal would, from China’s point of view, be foolish. All of them are more expensive and employ far fewer people than China’s stupendous coal industry - a fact lost on most China apologists (including Al Gore). Gore, when queried on a History Channel special on Global Warming about the little matter of including China in any emissions regime dismissed the problem saying that “if we set an example” China would follow.

Romme tries some similar sophistry:

The health and well-being of future generations rests on the United States and China ending their mutual suicide pact. China won’t act until we do, and we won’t act if they don’t. President Obama can lead this nation in breaking half of that self-destructive cycle with a strong domestic climate bill. He has repeatedly laid out the targets: returning to 1990 emissions levels by 2020 and then reducing them another 80 percent by 2050. And that’s on top of a major energy bill and green recovery plan that will jump-start the transition to a clean energy economy.

But domestic legislation alone will not make Obama a successful president, let alone a great one. Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents as failures if the world doesn’t stop catastrophic global warming. If Obama wants to be a great president, he will not merely have to put this country on a sustainable path; he will have to help bring China and the whole world onto that path too. And that is almost certainly the single hardest task he faces as president.

He doesn’t make any bones at all about unilateral concessions by the US on emissions, does he? And this is supposed to so shame the gimlet eyed Reds in Beijing that they see the error of their ways and throw millions out of work in their coal fields just to make Obama look good?

Obama said many times during the campaign that he would meet with our worst enemies in the name of world peace. Climate change is a far graver and for more preventable threat to the health and well-being of future generations of Americans than any current national security threat.

During the transition period, Obama should appoint a high-level envoy — paging Al Gore — to engage in direct shuttle diplomacy with China and other key emitters. He should meet with Chinese leaders himself in the first half of 2009. His presidency — and the fate of humanity — depend on it.

If the world ganged up on China and punished it for its irresponsible behavior, that might just do a lot more good than simply handing them a decisive economic advantage on a silver platter in the cutthroat competition of international trade. China must be given a choice; either join with the rest of the world in reducing emissions or we will force the reductions by refusing to buy your manufactured goods. That will reduce emissions nicely - and all those idle plants (or the prospect of them) would focus the attention of the Chinese leadership on their responsibilities as a great economic power.

This would be a lot fairer to the US - which is probably why it will never be tried.

We are dealing with absolutely criminal and crazy acts of irresponsible and reckless decision makers, which is on the ground producing dramatic and tragic consequences.” - Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili

Well, that’s one way to describe Vladmir Putin’s naked power grab against Georgia. “Criminal and crazy” certainly fits the Russian prime minister to a “T.” But methinks there may be a method to Putin’s madness.

Putin covets South Ossetia as a way to block western influence in the Caucasus. He also needs the breakaway province as a staging area for his war of nerves with Georgia and its democracy championing president Mikhail Saakashvili. Putin sees Saakashvili as a threat to his iron hold on the caucuses and resents the Georgian president’s attempts to join NATO.

The fog of war is particularly thick since communications are bad to begin with and made worse by the Russians apparently targeting communications hubs. Just how bad things are is anyone’s guess:

Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, called the attack on Gori a “major escalation,” and said he expected attacks to increase over the course of Saturday. He said some 16 Russian planes were in the air over Georgian territory at any given time on Saturday, four times the number of sorties seen Friday.

In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, wounded fighters and civilians began to arrive in hospitals, most with shrapnel or mortar wounds. Several dozen names had been posted outside the hospital.

In a news conference, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Georgian attacks on Russian citizens “amounted to ethnic cleansing.”

Mr. Lavrov said Russian airstrikes targeted military staging grounds. Asked whether Russia is prepared to fight “all-out war” in Georgia, he said: “No. Georgia, I believe, started a war in Southern Ossetia, and we are responsible to keep the peace.”

Actually, there has been a low level conflict in South Ossetia since the province broke away with Russian help in the early 90’s. At that time, Russian “peacekeepers” moved in to, in effect, maintain the status quo. Then, in 2004, Saakashvili was elected on a pro-democracy, nationalistic platform promising to reunite with both South Ossetia and another break away province Abkhazia.

Putin, who appears unstable at times, was reported to have had a carpet chewing episode a la Hitler when he heard of Saakashvili’s election - especially since his hand picked candidate got creamed. He vowed not to give up South Ossetia and has tried to kick Georgia out of the province ever since.

This latest round of trouble occurred when several Georgian policemen were killed by a roadside bomb. Georgia responded by lobbing some mortar rounds into a South Ossetian separatist military enclave and Putin (who is in Beijing himself) seeing the world’s attention on China at the moment, decided to launch what is either going to be a punitive raid or perhaps the big enchilada - full scale military invasion of Georgia. At the moment, anything could happen.

One bit of comic relief has been supplied by the man elected President of Russia who is supposed to be in charge of the army and foreign affairs but who apparently was either kept out of the loop or isn’t calling the shots. If anyone needed any proof who is really running the show in Russia, this military action should dispel all doubts:

The conflict in Georgia also appeared to suggest the limits of the power of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor. During the day, it was Mr. Putin’s stern statements from China, where he was visiting the opening of the Olympic Games, that appeared to define Russia’s position.

But Mr. Medvedev made a public statement as well, making it unclear who was directing Russia’s military operations. Officially, that authority rests with Mr. Medvedev, and foreign policy is outside Mr. Putin’s portfolio.

“The war in Ossetia instantly showed the idiocy of our state management,” said a commentator on the liberal radio station, Ekho Moskvy. “Who is in charge - Putin or Medvedev?”

Putin should stop the charade and just name himself emperor. Or Czar.

Of concern to the west is not only the independence of a democratic Georgia, but also a good chunk of western Europe’s oil supply. The Caspian ports from where that oil is shipped are in danger of being bombed at any time and any interruption in supply will cause the price of oil to reverse its current downward trend and rocket back up into the stratosphere.

On top of all this is the need for Putin to maintain contact with his friends in Tehran. The Caucasus are the back door to the Persian Gulf  and have historically been a vital crossroads in playing “The Great Game” of big powers seeking to control the region where smuggling routes over the years for everything from drugs to blue jeans have meant fabulous profits for those on top. A continuing NATO presence in Georgia threatens Putin’s lines of communication with Iran which is just one more reason for Putin’s bluster in the region.

Chances are this conflict will die down quickly. Georgia can’t afford to go to war with Russia and Putin would rather burrow from within when it comes to taking down Saakashvili. But the real chances for peace lie with the South Ossetia separatists. And they have their own agenda they are following at the moment.

Well, duh.

The last seven and a half years have seen the world in turmoil. Growth pains due to globalization, the rising challenge of China and India, a newly autocratic Russia, an EU increasingly going its own way economically, and related to that, the slow collapse of NATO as a viable coalition, dying a slow death in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.

Oh…did I mention 9/11 and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Those looking for a common thread may be tempted to lump all of these civilization altering changes under the rubric of “Bush’s incompetence” or “Bush’s stupidity.” But seriously now, are you really that shallow and stupid? All of those challenges have been developing for at least a decade or more. The growth and rapid advancement of globalization has resulted in unparalleled economic growth as well as massive economic dislocation. Bush policies have accelerated some of the local effects of globalization - some good some bad. China and India would be on the verge of economic superpower status regardless of anything America could do.

The EU is still trying to emerge from infancy, still unsure of itself politically. It’s economic performance is improving but nowhere near what was promised. Nevertheless, the EU seems willing to strike out on its own and become a separate entity from the US. Europe had always defined itself through its relations with America through NATO. No longer.

And NATO itself is dying. Unable to face the growing challenges in Afghanistan as most of its members refuse to commit combat forces to the fight, NATO’s reason for being is being challenged with no good answers emerging to give justification for its continued existence. It was thought adding former Eastern bloc countries to the organization would reinvigorate it. Instead, it has simply delayed the inevitable.

And then, there is Iraq.

To say that the Iraq War has made America unpopular in the world is something of a misnomer. It would be more accurate to say the war has made us more unpopular. In truth, it is a myth - one generated for obvious political reasons by the left - that post 9/11, the world was on “our side” and that we were an object of affection and that the world was with us.

Poppycock. I’ve been trying to debunk this myth almost since I started blogging. Much more of the planet celebrated the collapse of the WTC than wept. Those that laid flowers at memorial sites or wrote heartfelt missives to America were showing their solidarity with the American people, not our government.

This was made evident less than 48 hours after the attacks when audience members attending the BBC TV show “Question Time” brought the former ambassador Philip Laden to the verge of tears as they blamed America for the attacks:

Mr Lader had been attempting to express his sadness over the attacks when a number of audience members had shouted him down to voice their anti-US opinions. Mr Lader had looked close to tears.

At times, David Dimbleby struggled to control the discussion as voices and tempers became raised.

Some audience members said the US was ultimately responsible for the attacks because of its foreign policy.

William Shawcross, stuck in London following 9/11, reported what happened on the TV program “Question Time” and gave voice to the predominant view on the continent and most of the rest of the world regarding America:

But the response of some of the Question Time audience reveals a darker side and shows the awful truth that these days there is just one racism that is tolerated - anti-Americanism. Not just tolerated, but often applauded. Like any other nation, the US makes mistakes at home and abroad. (I wrote about some of those in Indochina.)

But the disdain with which its failures and its efforts are greeted by some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is shocking. Anti-Americanism often goes much further than criticism of Washington. Too often the misfortunes of America are met with glee, a schadenfreude that is quite horrifying.

On Tuesday, I sat watching television numbed by the grief, wondering if anyone I knew had been murdered. Since then, I have been devouring newspapers, attempting to learn more and more of the details. Every day, the agony gets worse. The more details we read of the last phone calls, the emails, the relatives watching those they loved as they died on television, the more personal and intimate this catastrophe becomes - and the more the victims, their families and their society deserve our sympathy.

But I have an awful fear that the solidarity with the US expressed at the United Nations and in Europe this week will not last long. Fundamentalist anti-Americanism will again rear its head, as it did on Question Time. Philip Lader behaved with extraordinary dignity on saying, with tears in his eyes: “I have to share with you that I find it hurtful that you can suggest that a majority of the world despises the US.”

And the Wall Street Journal (”The Myth of Squandered Sympathy“) ices the case that the world was never “with us” after 9/11 with this scathing look at the French and the famous newspaper headline “We are all Americans” which was actually an anti-American editorial:

Thus are legends born. For the solidarity ostentatiously displayed in the title of Mr. Colombani’s editorial is in fact massively belied by the details of the text itself.

By the fifth paragraph, Mr. Colombani is offering his general reflections on the geo-political conditions he supposes provoked the attacks:

“The reality is surely that of a world without a counterbalance, physically destabilized and thus dangerous in the absence of a multipolar equilibrium. And America, in the solitude of its power, of its hyperpower, . . . has ceased to draw the peoples of the globe to it; or, more exactly, in certain parts of the globe, it seems no longer to attract anything but hatred. . . . And perhaps even we ourselves in Europe, from the Gulf War to the use of F16s against Palestinians by the Israeli Army, have underestimated the hatred which, from the outskirts of Jakarta to those of Durban, by way of the rejoicing crowds of Nablus and of Cairo, is focused on the United States.”

In the following paragraph, Mr. Colombani went on to add that perhaps too “the reality” was that America had been “trapped by its own cynicism,” noting that Osama bin Laden himself had, after all, been “trained by the CIA”—a never substantiated charge that has, of course, in the meanwhile become chapter and verse for the blame-America-firsters. “Couldn’t it be, then,” Mr. Colombani concluded, “that America gave birth to this devil?”

So much for “solidarity.” The world may have pitied our people. But the record is crystal clear that anti-American feelings were hardly dampened by the attacks on 9/11.

The fact is, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has replaced Russia as the superpower foreigners love to hate. Given all of this, it should come as absolutely no surprise that Barack Obama, according to a massive study by Pew, is favored overwhelmingly by the peoples of the world.

Unfortunately for Barack Obama, citizens of Australia, Japan, Spain and Tanzania won’t have a vote in the November election.

A new survey of 47,000 people in 60 languages by the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that around the world, people who follow the US election view Obama more favourably than Republican nominee John McCain.

The survey in 24 countries confirms Obama as the candidate of choice among those not entitled to vote in the November election.

From gleeful villagers in his father’s native Kenya to a troupe of hula dancers in Obama, Japan, the international community has embraced the Illinois senator in a way unseen in past presidential elections.

While the US electorate is divided about evenly between the two candidates, with Obama currently enjoying a slight lead over McCain in recent polling, 84% of Tanzanians who have been following election news say they have confidence in Obama, while 50% say they have confidence in McCain. Seventy-four percent of Britons expressed confidence in Obama, while only 44% do in McCain, according to the survey.

Those results are reflected in every other country surveyed save Jordan, where 23% surveyed have confidence in McCain, compared to 22% for Obama.

There are many reason why Obama is more popular than McCain. His race gives hope to many. Then there’s 8 years of Bush and Republicans that have soured the GOP brand even overseas.

But the major reason given for preferring Obama is that he will “change American foreign policy.” In fact, Obama is the perfect candidate if you hate America. Not that Obama hates America, just that his policy proposals will enable the America haters around the globe.

It’s no accident that the Iranians, Hamas, Syrians and others who hate the United States prefer an Obama presidency. Obama promises a more compliant America, a less bellicose America, a more deferential America, and a more cooperative America. Some of these changes would be welcome. Others, not. But what has Iran and Syria salivating at the prospect of an Obama presidency is a lot less pressure placed on them by the US to act like responsible international citizens and not the brigands and thugs they wish to be.

Obama - a good and honest liberal - would work within the confines of the United Nations to resolve the various crisis at large in the world today. Bush, in his second term, has tried this and has a spotty record. The biggest failure for the UN in the last few years has been Lebanon where UN forces - UNIFIL - were supposed to stop the resupply of Hizbullah and enforce Security Council resolutions which included the disarming of the terrorist militia.

The result? Utter, total, complete, and embarrassing failure. Same goes for Darfur. The same goes for any and every problem the UN insists it must address with the US in a subservient role.

The world can hate us all they want. Only little children and liberals believe that to be important. What matters is are threats to the peace dealt with or swept under the UN rug? Obama would give it the old college try at the UN but run into the same anti-Americanism, the same bureaucratic inertia that has made problems like Darfur, Lebanon, and the Congo unsolvable. So the choice is America standing in the way of the designs of Syria and Iran (and North Korea) virtually alone or as a “partner” with the UN. Since Obama has been making all the right noises about “multi-lateralism” - not as a policy but almost as religion - the world breathes easier. They can all go back to doing nothing and letting problems like Darfur fester and genocide occur.

Obama would be the perfect post-Bush president - for a large segment of the Anti-American world. Not that it matters. Americans don’t vote for a candidate because of how he is perceived overseas. But perhaps we would do well to ask why our enemies are so anxious to see Obama as president?

It would be in the name of “peace,” of course. Either John McCain or Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton for that matter) will most likely be faced with a choice at some early point in their administrations.

Do we continue our policy of isolating Bashar Assad’s gangster regime or do we engage them in a dialogue as part of a Syrian-Israeli peace deal? And if we engage, do we give Syria the only thing they want from us - our pledge not to interfere in Syria’s campaign to re-occupy Lebanon?

As Lebanon Daily Star editorial editor and contributor to Reason Magazine Michael Young points out, those are the grim choices that will face the next US President:

Is it really in the U.S. interest to engage Syria in this context, when its major Arab allies are in the midst of a conflict with Iran they view as vital? In fact, I’m not at all convinced that asking Arab states to change Syrian behavior through “more robust interactions and investments in the country” would work. The Arabs have repeatedly tried to change Syrian behavior through more congenial means, most prominently at the Arab League summit in Riyadh last year. The Syrians have ignored this. Why? Because they know the price for their return to the Arab fold would be to give up on a return to Lebanon. They’re not about to do that, because only such a return, one that is total, with soldiers, would give Syria the regional relevance it lost in 2005, when it was forced out of Lebanon.

It would also allow Syria, from Beirut, to undermine the Hariri tribunal, which threatens the future of the Syrian regime and which will probably begin operating next year. In this, Syria has the full support of Hezbollah, which realizes that without a Syrian comeback, the party will continue to face a majority in Lebanon that wants the party to disarm. I find it revealing that Jon failed to mention Lebanon once in his post. That’s because advocates of engaging Syria realize that the only way you can bring about an advantageous dialogue with Damascus is to give it something worthwhile. That something can only be Lebanon, the minimal price Syria would demand to offer positive concessions in return.

And that, gentle reader, is the bottom line. Obama can talk about meeting with Assad all he wants and it won’t advance the cause of peace with Israel one damn bit unless he’s willing to betray Lebanon.

Lebanon is not only the key to Syrian influence in the region it is also the key to Assad’s survival. Some may be unfamiliar with Syria’s role in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the formation of a tribunal (now under UN auspices due to Lebanon’s political paralysis) to try and convict the perpetrators.

The ongoing UN investigation has shown that 4 Lebanese army generals (now in custody) in cahoots with Syrian intelligence, carried out the car bombing that killed Hariri. The prosecutors have also uncovered evidence that the subsequent political assassinations of several leading government parliamentarians, journalists, and other anti-Syrian figures was also masterminded by Syrian intelligence as well as leading members of Assad’s regime - including Assad’s own brother in law Assef Shawkat who became head of intelligence 30 minutes after Hariri was killed.

The Tribunal - if allowed to function fully and properly - will no doubt indict people very close to Bashar Assad himself. This would spell catastrophe for Assad and Syria which would come under severe sanctions by the US and the United Nations. Since Syria’s forced withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, the economy has taken a nosedive thanks to the drying up of “protection money” and other means by which Syria milked the Lebanese economy to benefit the regime. The pressure to get rid of Assad would be intense. There would probably also be calls for regime change from both Arab and western governments.

In short, most analysts agree that the number one priority of the Syrian regime is to get back into Lebanon and try and derail the Tribunal. No deal with the Arabs or the west about Iraq, about WMD, about the Golan, or about their relationship with Iran will take place without a quid pro quo involving Lebanon.

And what of Syria’s main ally in Lebanon, Hezbullah? Clearly, Syria would be keen to have Hezbullah become politically ascendant in Lebanon if they were to move back in while simultaneously diminishing Sunni influence. The Christians, under Hezbullah ally Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement party would also share in the spoils of a Syrian re-occupation. So much for Lebanese democracy. So much for Lebanese independence.

The sad fact is that either a President Obama or President McCain will be under enormous pressure to bring Israel and Syria together, believing quite rightly that the best chance to avoid a regional war is to resolve the serious outstanding issues that exist between the two countries, especially Israel’s continued occupation of the Golan and Syria’s support for Hezbullah and their murderous rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. The price of a deal will almost certainly include giving Syria a free hand in Lebanon.

Would either or both be willing to pay that price? Almost all terrorism analysts agree that bringing peace to the Middle East is important to the War against Islamic extremism. And key to that process is making peace between Syria and Israel. Would both presidents see an overriding national interest in helping make peace between Israel and Syria at the expense of Lebanon? Michael Young again:

We are in a regional struggle for power, and Syria happens to stand at its nexus point. It is a weak link that some persist in wanting to strengthen by advocating U.S. engagement of it. But what are the conditions of such engagement? If it is that Syria must surrender Lebanon, Hamas, and Hezbollah to find its salvation in a better relationship with the United States, then be assured that Asad won’t accept such a patently bad deal. He prefers to take his chances with a fight, with Iran on his side. If there are those in the United States willing to give up on Lebanon’s independence, however, and by extension allow Syria to further bolster Hezbollah, then fine. But I again fail to see how that would be in the long-term U.S. interest.

It is impossible to see whether the short term gains made by engaging Syria would ultimately come back to haunt us. But the betrayal of Lebanon for the second time in a generation would be a blot on our history and a blow to our standing as a champion of freedom and independence.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic - that’s me, alright. Despite the fact I have long since left the Church, God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost (changed to “Spirit” in my youth; so much for the immutability of the divine), organized religion, and the idea of the supernatural altogether, I am still a Catholic.

I think like a Catholic. My worldview has been shaped - though not dominated - by Catholicism. In this, the nuns, the priests, the brothers, and probably a monk or two have left their mark on my intellectual, social, and spiritual development. And I will thank them for it till my dying breath. There is great beauty to be found in the strands of logic and insightful, penetrating analysis of humanity by Catholic thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and other Catholic theologians and philosophers.

Conversely, this makes me a lousy atheist. I don’t hate people of faith although making fun of them is sometimes too much of a temptation to resist. Nor do I see religion as “an opiate of the masses” as Marx and Barack Obama (”Religion is the sigh of the oppressed…”) view this all too human phenomena. Belief in a supreme being does not disqualify someone from engaging in rational thought otherwise, although the contradictions can get hairy at times. To this day, Catholic thinkers have, for the most part enriched our inner dialogue as we struggle with the most basic questions of right and wrong.

After 12 years of Catholic education, it is hard to slough off habits of thought that force me to see the world through a prism shaped by my Catholic upbringing. My parents were what used to be called “good Catholics.” They went to church every Sunday with their 10 children in tow (drawing little amazement from the other boomer families made up of 5,6,8, or more kids). They gave us a Catholic education through high school and college if desired. We followed Catholic rituals and practices. (To this day I will not eat a fish stick thanks to meatless Fridays during Lent.)

They say you can always tell what a man believes and how he thinks by going through his library. I challenge anyone to make that adage good in my father’s case. It would be hard to glean anything specific of my father’s politics or religious beliefs from the astonishing breadth of philosophical tracts that lined the shelves of his 3,000 book library. In this, he did the 10 of us a favor by not foisting any particular political or moral view of the world on us. Free to explore ideas from Marx to Martin Neimoller, the Moran children grew up free thinkers - just as my parents intended.

That said, as I grew to adulthood and rejected organized religion, I nevertheless still thought like a Catholic even though I didn’t live like one. In fact, I trace my conversion to conservatism based largely on the fact that in many respects, Catholic teachings line up very nicely with conservative principles although the Jeffersonian ideal of liberty doesn’t translate very well. But in the establishment of a moral and just society - one being just as important as the other - conservatism and Catholicism seemed to me a match made in, well, heaven.

That is why I feel it necessary to defend the Pope and to some extent the Catholic faith from this kind of attack:

“Whenever a cult leader sets himself up as God’s infallible wing man here on Earth, lock away the kids,” said Maher, comparing the Catholic Church to the polygamist cult authorities raided in Texas last week.

“I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult,” Maher said. “Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats.”

That was Bill Maher speaking shortly before the Pope came to the United States in case you missed it. Maher continued to put his foot in it:

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Bill, you shouldn’t be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy Texas cult.” For one thing, altar boys can’t even get pregnant. But really, what tripped up the little cult on the prairie was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands, all over the world. Cults get raided, religions get parades. How does the Catholic Church get away with all of their buggery? Volume, volume, volume!

If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re BearStearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the BearStearns of organized pedophilia — too big, too fat. When the current pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul’s Dick Cheney, he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the Statute of Limitations ran out. And that’s the Church’s attitude: ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,’ which is fine, far be it from me to criticize religion. But just remember one thing: if the Pope was — instead of a religious figure — merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of day care centers, where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he’d be arrested faster than you can say ‘who wants to touch Mr. Wiggle?’

Now Maher is paid to be a clown so perhaps we should ascribe his outburst more to the fact that he was just doing his job shocking the sensibilities of his bourgeoisie audience who are titillated when an anti-establishmentarian like Maher sticks it to an icon like the Catholic Church.

Maher was forced to apologize about the Nazi crack - a patently untrue charge that anyone with a passing familiarity with the battle in Nazi Germany between the Church and Hitler would never have made. The Pope, as a young Joseph Ratzinger, was forced by law to join the Hitler youth despite Hitler’s signed assurances (the Concordant of 1933) that the Catholic Youth Organization would remain an option for families who did not wish their children to join a secular group.

Predictably, Maher was unapologetic about his other “charges” including his weird interpretation of the letter sent by Ratzinger to all the Bishops of the Church when he was Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Maher grossly misrepresented the contents of the 2001 letter then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote to the bishops. He did not tell them to “keep the sex abuse of minors of State of Limitations ran out.” The letter clarified that the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had jurisdiction according to the Church’s law (canon law) to try clerics concerning abuses of the sacraments, and also, as the letter put it, a “delict against morals, namely: the delict committed by a cleric against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue [thou shall not commit adultery] with a minor below the age of 18 years.”

What Maher’s criticism fails to take into account is that not everywhere in the world where the comedian’s attitude toward Catholics dominates is the Church protected by a document like the US Constitution. In fact, Ratzinger’s concerns that the Church be allowed to deal with pedophile priests only in extremely narrow circumstances was protection for the Church in those places where authorities share Mr. Maher’s less than expansive view of religious freedom. There are dozens of countries in the world that would take Mr. Maher’s supercilious suggestion that the Catholic hierarchy should be locked up to heart and use either real or trumped up charges of abuse by priests as an excuse to destroy the independence of the Church from government.

The Catholic Church operates in a world that is by and large not very friendly to it. But clearly the abuse scandals here and abroad as well as the actions of individual bishops to cover it up, pay off the victims, stonewall secular authorities, allow pedophiles to continue their abuse from posting to posting knowing their propensity to “sin,” - all of this dark chapter in the Church’s history must be aired out and exposed (with due diligence made to respect the privacy of victims) before the breach that has opened up between the hierarchy and the congregation is closed.

Does this validate Maher’s over the top, exaggerated, hateful rant? As any good satirist, Maher has taken the germ of truth and blown it up into impossibly overstated and wildly embroidered bombast - all for a few laughs and the notoriety that comes to those who deliberately offend people in order to get attention; much like a 5 year old who tells his parents he hates them.

Perhaps Mr. Maher believes religion should be regulated by government. He doesn’t say so outright but the threat inherent in his diatribe is clear. Is that simply part of his shtick? Or does this angry atheist actually believe that government should find a way to “regulate” against these sorts of outrages?

To place those institutional sins in the context of the modern Church is difficult. The Pope, in his visit to the US has tried to reconcile the Church’s interests with those of the victims - pleasing some and not others:

It is in the context of this hope, born of God’s love and fidelity, that I acknowledge the pain which the church in America has experienced as the result of sexual abuse of minors,” Benedict said.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse. It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.”

During the Mass, the pope said the church has worked “to deal honestly and fairly with this tragic situation” and to ensure that children are safe.

That last has come to pass only recently and ignores the years of neglect prior to the last few years of the John Paul II pontificate and Benedict’s ascension. This doesn’t erase the problem and much more needs to be done. But it does make a start that any fair minded person would have to admit that while long overdue is a necessary and vital step on the road to reconciliation.

I have expressed my admiration in the past for this Pope and his remarkably supple intellect with its subtlety and depth. But this is a case where the Pope needs to show leadership and compassion - a test he has passed to this point. What he does when he returns to Rome will determine whether his American flock continues to distrust their bishops. They certainly have reason to - a fact not lost on this Pope who will seek to heal the breach caused by the abuse scandals and make the Church whole again.

Even a rabid sports fan like myself recognizes the Olympics for what they are - a plot by starry eyed one worlders, striped pants internationalists, filthy rich do-gooders, and anachronistic royalists to take over the world and force their saccharine sweet, brotherhood of man crapola on the rest of us.

I’m kidding, of course - mostly. The part about filthy rich dilettantes with nothing else to do, putting on an athletic extravaganza for their own amusement is not far from the truth. The International Olympic Committee has shown through the years that the fake European royalty, the decadent descendants of fabulously wealthy European commercial houses, and the group of genuine shady characters who are the real power in that body believe they have a gold mine and plan on milking the games for all they’re worth.

And to give the lie to the very idea of an “Olympic spirit” that the IOC and the “Olympic Movement” try to foist upon unsuspecting rubes and leftists the world over, the entire point of the games has been lost - gentleman (and gentle lady) amateurs competing in an atmosphere of competition free from politics and other mundane considerations.

The Olympic torch relay is part of the lie. Forced by the prospect of thousands of pro-Tibet protestors who might get violent, San Francisco authorities changed the route of the relay at the last minute, running the relay through streets empty of onlookers thus defeating the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place.

That didn’t stop one enterprising American athlete from ruining the day even more for the Chinese:

A New Yorker bearing the Olympic torch staged a rogue anti-China protest Wednesday even as cops took extreme measures to thwart demonstrators in San Francisco.

As she ran with the flame, Majora Carter, 41, a South Bronx environmental activist, whipped out a small Tibetan flag to condemn China’s human rights abuses in the Himalayan province.

Carter, who hid the flag in her sleeve, was quickly hustled off the route by surprised police who seized the torch.

The image of American police stifling free speech at the behest of communists made Allah’s blood boil:

[O]ne of the American cops shows her how they do it in Beijing, giving her a gratuitous shove into the crowd to keep her away from the communist propaganda pageant she was momentarily a part of. She’s wrong on the law, to be sure; her free speech rights don’t entitle her to violate the contract she signed before participating. But watching U.S. cops enforce Chinese policy is so disgusting, Newsom should have simply canceled the event lest he be forced to do it.

Free speech is one issue that makes the Olympics a cesspool of corrupted ideals. How about the idea that the athletes should compete solely for the thrill of the competition with no thought of renumeration?

The fact that almost all the western athletes who will be competing are being paid by their home grown sports federation (which usually receives its money from the nation’s Olympic Committee) means that the very meaning of the word “amateur” has been corrupted beyond recognition. And from the beginning of the revival of the games in 1896, politics has been a constant companion.

When Eastern European athletes began to outshine the west due to superior training, a drug regimen that built superior bodies, and the fact that their athletes were given make believe jobs by the state so that they could train full time, the US and other western countries decided to change the way they approached the Games.

While athletes from the west were previously struggling to combine training and making a living, most western Olympic Committees made a decision to adopt the communist model. Of course, the state didn’t give the athletes make believe jobs. It was corporations who, in return for hiring top flight athletes they could feature in commercials, paid the US Olympic Committee so that the company could become an “official sponsor” of the games.

The point being, of course, that these guys are about as amateur and pure as a hooker on Welles street in Chicago. These days, the Olympics don’t even require the fig leaf. They openly encourage professional athletes to compete. Most of the world class track and field athletes have been making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and a gold medal will set them up for life. Olympic soccer uses professional league players on the national teams. Others who participate in lesser known sports receive a healthy stipend from their sport’s governing body in order to train constantly for the big show that occurs every 4 years.

As a sports fan, I could care less if they pay the players or not. But as a former hopelessly incurable romantic, there was something to be said for an event that brought the world together for a fortnight to celebrate athletics and compete peacefully. One of the most cherished memories of my youth is watching American Dave Wottle on TV round the last turn of the track in the 800 Meter finals in Munich and with a spectacular final kick in the last 25 meters, overtake the Russian to win an improbable gold medal.

Those were the Olympics marred by the death of 11 Israeli athletes who were kidnapped and murdered at the hands of Black September. In spite of pleadings from many around the world, the crotchety head of the IOC at the time, Avery Brundage, declared that the show must go on.

And the show has gone on despite boycotts, corruption (bribe taking in connection with the 2002 Winter Games), and the discovery that the East German teams that garnered such an extraordinary number of medals featured not only blood doping and steroid use, but also taking the transgender revolution to new heights by turning women into men, feeding their female athletes steroids when they were as young as 11. Two coaches were later found guilty of giving steroids to athletes and not telling them what they were (they told them they were “vitamins”).

All of these issues with the Olympics pales in comparison to the straitjacket the IOC puts athletes in so that any expression of individual political thought is forbidden. The most famous example was at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics when two black American athletes - John Carlos and Tommie Smith - who medaled in the 200 meter dash, raised their clenched fist salute to black power during the playing of the national anthem during the medal ceremony.

One might question the gesture but to punish them by sending them home and stripping them of their medals was so foreign to our idea of freedom of speech that it raises the question of why we should participate in such a hypocritical and oppressive event.

And that goes double for the Olympics in China:

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.

Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him to keep politics out of the Games.

Riddle me this: How is it possible that competitors are “free to express their political views” but will get kicked out for displaying the Tibetan flag? This kind of doublespeak is worthy of the communists and poor, naive, earnest Mr. Rogge - who actually believed the Chinese would improve their human rights if their Olympic bid was successful - is tying himself into an intellectual pretzel in an attempt to reconcile these two radically different notions:

Addressing concerns about free speech, Mr Rogge described the scenario of a Spanish athlete doing a lap of honour in the Olympic stadium with Spain’s national flag and his provincial flag as “perfectly legitimate”.

He said: “We have had many examples of mixed flags where the athlete is proud of that. Is there a will to demonstrate propaganda or is it a desire to demonstrate joy in his victory?”

Apparently, if your political views don’t offend anyone - most of all the host country - then you are perfectly free to express them. (I wonder what Rogge would have said if that same Spanish athlete had grabbed a Basque flag instead of a “provincial” one?)

But Rogge, the Chinese, and the rest of the whole bloody Olympic “movement” just doesn’t get it. They have no clue what “free speech” might be. The point is that any display of nationalism is by definition propaganda and that there is no difference in making a political statement about your own country or someone else’s - not to anyone who cares a tiny bit about “free speech.”

Going back to 1968, no one complained a few days after the Carlos-Smith protest when George Foreman, after winning his gold medal in boxing, grabbed a miniature American flag and walked around the ring celebrating. The fact that Foreman’s political statement was a response to a political gesture by others made Foreman equally guilty of disseminating propaganda. But it was nice propaganda, the kind that the American Olympic Committee (who pressured Brundage to seize the gold medals of Carlos and Smith while kicking them out of the Olympic village) heartily approved.

It is this kind of rank hypocrisy that makes the Olympics such degrading venue for Americans. If it were up to me, I’d pass out Tibet flags to every single athlete marching under the American flag during the opening ceremonies and force the Chinese to kick them all out. The Olympic boosters - corporations, sports federations, and especially governments - who harp on the “spirit of brotherhood” present in the games are selling a poisonous idea; that freedom is separate from the notion that we are all equal and that therefore, we should all get along in peace.

 I’m all for that. Just don’t expect me to kowtow to any government that oppresses its people and then tries to use the Olympic games as a perfume to remove the stench of their rotten human rights policies. The athletes should feel that way as well which is why perhaps we should be handing out those Tibetan flags to anyone and everyone who sides with freedom against tyranny.

Such a move might ruin the Olympic games. But it would be one helluva statement of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world and would usher in an era of true “brotherhood” for the Olympics.

The progress of the Olympic torch which snakes its way around the world after being lit in Greece to end up in the host country and carried into the stadium at the opening ceremonies where it is used to light the Olympic flame for the duration of the games is followed with great interest by many around the world. It is a symbol of the Olympic spirit and ideally, should not be extinguished from the time it is lit to the end of the games.

The Olympic torch relay was disrupted Monday by protesters in Paris demonstrating against the Chinese government, causing authorities to twice extinguish the flame and put the torch on a bus, according to The Associated Press.

The torch was being carried by a wheelchair athlete when it was halted and extinguished for a second time due to demonstrators shouting, according to AP. Backup flames, also lit from the birthplace of the ancient games in Olympia, Greece, are on call with the relay at all times to relight the torch.

Agencies report that the relay has now resumed.

The incidents came one day after human-rights activist demonstrators made the torch’s journey through London more like running the gauntlet than a journey of celebration, with UK police making more than two dozen arrests

This is an enormous embarrassment to the Chinese government. The progress of the torch is supposed to be triumphal. Instead, it is turning into a constant reminder of the government crackdown on the Tibetan people and their continued occupation of the tiny country.

Paris police have conceived a security plan to keep the torch in a safe "bubble," during its 17-mile (28 km) journey, with a multi-layered protective force to surround the torch as it moves along the route.
 
French torchbearers will be encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on rollerblades and on foot. Chinese torch escorts will immediately surround the torchbearer, with Paris police on rollerblades moving around them.
 
French firefighters in jogging shoes will encircle the officers on rollerblades while motorcycle police will form the outer layer of security. The relay route in Paris is also significantly shorter than that in London Sunday.

Police rollerblading around the torchbearer is probably not the visual the Chinese government would wish to see carried around the world when reporting on the progress of the Olympic flame.

There have been attempts made to disturb and sabotage the Torch Relay by a small number of "pro-Tibet independence" activists.

The Olympic Torch Relay embodies the Olympic spirit and represents the earnestness and excitement with which the world awaits the Olympic Games. A small number of "pro-Tibet independence" activists have attempted to sabotage the event. During the Greece leg of the relay, a few activists attempted to stop the relay by lying on the street. In London, a few protesters planned and carried out several destructive actions. One "pro-Tibet independence" activist tried to grab the torch and another attempted to extinguish the flame when well-known U.K. television presenter Konnie Huq was carrying the torch in northwest London. Their actions were stopped by local police, although Konnie Huq sustained a slight injury. During a lunch break, several "pro-Tibet independence" activists got past security in an attempt to clash with torchbearers and disturb the relay. The British police were successful in preventing these efforts.

Local people in London strongly opposed the attempt to sabotage the Torch Relay. And the behavior of "pro-Tibet independence" activists has aroused resentment and received condemnation in London.

Press reports had thousands of protestors in the streets of London and Paris while little in the way of condemnation has come their way - except from Chinese officials. But the above is what the Chinese people are seeing and reading about the torch and its torturous passage through the free countries of the world.

Organizations that oppose China’s human-rights record said Tuesday that they’ve been denied demonstration permits at large outdoor gathering areas on April 9, the day of the torch relay.

They will instead be forced into certain areas, possibly far from the main torch route. City officials said that the restrictions are necessary to ensure security at the event but that those precautions shouldn’t limit the protesters’ rights to gather, a right guaranteed in the First Amendment. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected, organizers said.

The event will be open to everyone, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, including "those who want to see this as an opportunity to raise the flag of concern about issues of disagreement with the Chinese government. That is something that is sacrosanct to us." But that opportunity will be limited in ways uncommon for the city that hosts myriad rallies and protests.

Protesters will be restricted to "areas set up for First Amendment rights issues," according to Sgt. Neville Gittens, spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department.

Maybe they should have asked President Bush to carry the torch. You can bet Newsom and his crew would have bent over backwards to make sure there were tens of thousands of protestors following the flame then.

Our guys can outblade the French any day of the week.  

This blog post originally appears on The American Thinker

Perhaps gunning down unarmed monks can be added as an Olympic sport. The Chinese, so concerned about the games later in the summer, could solve their “image problem” by simply including the practice in the Olympic program. This would result in a sure gold medal for the home team.

A small village high in the mountains was the scene of what can only be called a massacre by Chinese police. The authorities entered a monastery and began confiscating pictures of the Dalia Lama - photos of whom have been banned since the 1990’s. Then the police deliberately incited a reaction by throwing the pictures of the Lama on the ground which was considered a sacrilege by the monks.

One old monk protested the affront to his god-king and was arrested. This was a bad move by the police because apparently, the ancient monk was very well regarded by the villagers as a man of wisdom and piety.

That brought both villagers and monks to the camp of the police with predictable and tragic results:

About 6.30pm, the entire monastic body marched down to a nearby river, where paramilitary police were encamped and demanded the release of the two men. They were joined by several hundred local villagers, many of them enraged at the detention of the elderly monk, who locals say is well respected in the area for his learning and piety.

Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama”, “Let the Dalai Lama come back” and “We want freedom”, the crowd demonstrated until about 9pm. Witnesses said that up to 1,000 paramilitary police used force to try to end the protest and opened fire on the crowd.

In the gunfire, eight people died, according to a local resident in direct contact with the monastery. These included a 27-year-old monk identified as Cangdan and two women named as Zhulongcuo and Danluo.

Eight people were reportedly gunned down with many more injured. Predictably, the Chinese government spun the massacre as a “riot” with an invisible “government official” getting beat up:

State-run Chinese media confirmed that the police resorted to force but insisted that it was only after a government official was attacked and seriously wounded by protesters.

“Local officials exercised restraint during the riot and repeatedly told the rioters to abide by the law,” they reported. The use of live rounds was a last resort, the Xinhua news agency said, without specifying how the Tibetan demonstrators had injured the official. It said: “Police were forced to fire warning shots and put down the violence, since local officials and people were in great danger.”

Perhaps the Chinese could tell us how 8 people were killed by “warning shots?”

If the Chinese keep this up, the games themselves will be in trouble as western nations contemplate a full boycott in response to the crackdown. At the moment, such a move would not be popular. But if the Chinese government continues to use the people of Tibet as targets for the police, most decent nations will probably find it impossible to send their athletes to participate in games hosted by this murderous regime.

This blog post originally appears at The American Thinker