If you made me the General Secretary of Conservatism and put Stalinist power in my hands, the first people I’d purge would the creation science activists.

Let’s stipulate that people can believe or disbelieve anything they want. If you choose to disbelieve in the theory of evolution and prefer to embrace so-called creation science that’s fine with me. But it’s not fine with me if you try to bastardize science by forcing schools to treat creationism as a legitimate scientific theory, equally as valid as the theory of evolution. Because it’s not a scientific theory: It’s a religious doctrine tricked out with scientific jargon and as such it has no place in the science classroom.

Religious dominations that run their own schools are of course free to include religious instruction in their curricula. But creationists’ periodic attempts to force their doctrine through the doors of public schools are obnoxious in the extreme. We exclude religion as such from public schools for good reasons. Public education serves a pluralistic society whose members embrace a diversity of religious and spiritual beliefs. It’s often said that America is a Christian nation and this may be true in a historical sense. But our government is secular. It neither supports nor oppresses any particular religion. It may also be true that proponents of the doctrine of separation of church and state sometimes go too far, e.g. by attempting to banish all religious symbols from the public square. But the general principle of separation is valid and, indeed, vitally necessary in a country like ours.

Please notice that I’m not arguing for the exclusion of religion from political opinions and political discourse. Religious faith has always been a powerful theme in American history; recall the part played by Christian witness in the abolitionist movement. So if you oppose abortion or support immigration reform on religious grounds, fine. It’s only when you try to get some article of your faith enacted into law that you and I are going to have a problem. And that’s precisely what creationists are attempting to do by getting creationism accepted as real science.

One of the arguments advanced in support of the teaching of creationism as science is that, after all, evolution is not a fact but a theory. So why shouldn’t other theories about the origins of life get equal time in the classroom? This sounds plausible but it’s based on a false premise. A scientific theory is not just an opinion. It’s a conclusion from the evidence that is, as the saying goes, robust. That is, the theory as a whole conforms to reality, the evidence supporting is both solid and extensive, and there is no contradictory evidence that undermines it. In principle, of course, a scientific theory is provisional: If new facts disproving it come to light, out it goes. In practice, however, a robust theory like evolution is taken as a statement of fact.

Creationism has nothing like the scientific solidity of evolution. Thus to treat it as a plausible alternative to evolutionary theory is scientific and educational malpractice. Worse, it’s fundamentally dishonest. Creationists are trying to sneak the Biblical story of creation into the science curriculum. And because they’re mostly conservative in their politics, creationists are giving conservatism as a whole a black eye. Progressive charges that conservatism as a whole is “anti-science” are exaggerated and unfair—but they’re hard to refute when conservative activists are trying to impose a religious doctrine on this or that public school system.

Well, progressives also have their horribles—Michael Moore, for instance, and they’re welcome to him. And, yes, I know, a Stalinist-style purge of creationists would be a bit of an overreaction. They deserve more attention—and plenty of criticism—from other conservatives, though. Our enemies we can handle—but God protect us from our friends!

Posted by tmg110 at 1:00 PM EST

Updated: Thursday, 26 February 2015 1:15 PM EST

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I know it’s one of feminism’s most cherished myths. But if you believe that women are more empathic, inclusive and collegial than men and that they possess superior management and leadership abilities, well, you need to go back to school. High school.

To begin with this claim is a typical example of ideological schizophrenia. Feminists who preach the doctrine of gender neutrality—that there are no essential differences between men and woman—are hardly being logical when they tout female superiority in the workplace. Gender—what an ugly word it’s become!—is supposed to be socially and culturally determined, and to the detriment of women at that. But if women as a group possess the virtues listed above, is that not thanks to socially driven gender determinism? And doesn’t that suggest that society’s gender bias favors women in certain important ways?

Now of course feminists are unfazed by such contradictions. Socially constructed gender roles oppress women except when they don’t. But theories of gender have become so tangled and bizarre that now the snake is eating its own tail. At Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts they’ve banned the performance of The Vagina Monologues—a play that only yesterday was holy writ in the eyes of feminists. Then it was discovered that TVM discriminates against a certain class of women: those not in possession of a physical vagina. After all, if Bradley/Chelsea Manning claims to be a woman, then he/she is a woman. Claims to the contrary based on the observation that Manning is not physiologically equipped for the role are sexist and oppressive. So The Vagina Monologues had to go.

What remains, then, of the claim that women as a group possess certain unique managerial and leadership attributes? Not much. Feminist theory doesn’t really support it and neither does the evidence of one’s eyes. As individuals, men and women display the full range of human virtues and vices. There are men who are bad managers and women who are inspirational leaders. One of the best leaders I encountered in my many years of Army service was a female captain. But in private conversations when they’re being honest many working women will tell you that hell is a workplace with an oversupply of women.

Cliques, tale carrying, grievance mongering, backstabbing, jealously, vendettas—in all too many instances women replicate these high-school vices in the workplace. To take a single example: Women often have a hard time working with or for someone they dislike. Of course no one enjoys dealing with an obnoxious coworker or boss but men tend not to take the situation personally. Women, on the other hand, tend to take it very personally indeed.

The smelly little orthodoxies of modern feminism are mostly concerned with papering over women’s real workplace problems while promoting phony issues like pay equality. It wasn’t always this way. Workplace sexual harassment is a genuine injustice and the women’s rights movement deserves great credit for focusing attention on it. But it seems that as the real barriers to female progress crumble, imagined and exaggerated grievances multiply. Cries of bias and discrimination have only grown louder. But at some point women who want to lead are going to have to stop whining and start leading. “We are what we habitually do,” said Aristotle. Yet even the most cautious and partial suggestion that this must happen, e.g. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is denounced by feminists as “tone-deaf” and “elitist.” Though Sandberg was careful to honor all of the ideological totems of feminism—discrimination, sexism, sexual harassment, gender equality, etc., etc.—her idea that women should strive to earn leadership positions was reviled. We have affirmative action for that!

The best, most effective leaders are those who purge their minds of conventional wisdom and see the world as it truly is. So I would advise ambitious women to shun feminist ideology—and as a reminder of what high school was really like to read or re-read Stephen King’s Carrie.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:33 AM EST

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Liberals, progressives and lefties can say whatever they want about prominent Republicans and conservatives. Remember the leftie line on George W. Bush? He was stupid, a drunk, a fascist, a war criminal. According to Al Gore he “betrayed this country.” There was even a movie made depicting Bush’s assassination—this while he was still president. Supposedly responsible progressive pundits wrote articles that openly proclaimed their hatred of Chimpy McBushitler. And it was all just fine, don’t you know: free speech in action, robust debate, patriotic dissent, etc., etc.

So forgive me if I don’t share the Left’s outrage over Rudy Giuliani’s suggestion that Barack Obama doesn’t love America. It’s phony outrage, it’s one-hundred-percent hypocritical and besides, Giuliani was more or less correct.

The question of Obama’s patriotism—or lack thereof—is an interesting one. There’s not much doubt that our Community Organizer-in-Chief looks askance at the Land of E Pluribus Unum. Why else would he have campaigned for president on the promise that he would fundamentally change America? Obviously he has issues with this country. Nor has he made a particular secret of his attitude. Remember his smarmy little crack about the “bitter clingers”? Remember the hissy fit he threw over questions about his lack of a US flag lapel badge? Remember his, ahem, spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright?

Yet I wouldn’t go so far as to call Obama unpatriotic. He’s not an active hater of Fascist Amerikka, not some leftie loony bird like Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore. Obama is, rather, a typical specimen of the academic Left, a snob for whom such notions as love of country and American exceptionalism are just…tasteless. As a sophisticate with a graduate degree from an elite university he disdains the instinctive patriotism of the proles, the boobs and the bitter clingers. George Orwell once remarked that the average leftist of his day would be less ashamed of stealing money from the poor box than of standing to attention when “God Save the King” was played. Contemporary American progressives of Obama’s type honor that ignoble tradition.

Barack Obama isn’t patriotic and he isn’t unpatriotic. He’s post-patriotic, a man for whom the puerile slogan “think globally, act locally” is full of meaning. And there’s no room for love of country in the mind of a man who considers himself a citizen of the world. That’s the point that Republicans and conservatives should make to journalists who pester them for statements denouncing Giuliani’s comments. The truth hurts and in this case it's sure to make the average progressive’s head explode.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:04 PM EST

Updated: Sunday, 22 February 2015 1:13 PM EST

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I’m 65 years old, I live in a house with a long, wide driveway in an area of northwest Indiana that’s subject to periodic doses of lake effect snow—and I don’t own a snow blower. I do have a good sturdy snow shovel, purchased at Lowe’s (10% discount for active and retired military members), that has given me faithful service since the winter of 2011-12.

Yesterday the lake effect snow machine was running in overdrive and by two in the afternoon I had a good eight inches of snow on my driveway. I’d been sitting at my desk most of the morning, drinking coffee and watching through the front window as a stiff wind blew the snow around. There’s a peculiar fascination to lake effect snow. You can be standing in your driveway under the sun with what looks like a blizzard in progress a hundred yards down the street. So it went all morning and into the afternoon, the snow swirling as adroitly as a matador’s cloak. Then the wind died down and though it was still spitting snow I decided the time had come to seize my shovel and get to work.

Retirement is the gift of time and it’s very pleasant to wake up with the thought that your day is free. But sometimes it’s good to know that a job of work awaits and so it was for me yesterday. All that morning, into the noon hour, I’d been mentally preparing myself for the task ahead. That driveway had to be cleared—it had to be cleared so that when my wife arrived home from work she’d be able to get her Rav into the garage.

Perhaps you think that I’m dramatizing a mundane task. But I’m 65, remember? At that age shoveling snow is an intimation of mortality. Every winter guys in their sixties check out for good: snow shovel in one hand, grabbing their chest with the other. But never mind—that God-damned driveway had to be cleared. I pulled on my insulated boots, draped myself in cold-weather gear, flexed my fingers in my gloves and ventured forth.

The garage door rumbled up and there it was: a pristine expanse of snow, marked only by the icy fingers of the wind. But now that wind had died down and the sun was in and out, though it was still bitterly cold. I grabbed my shovel, flourished it like a knight presenting his tournament lance and got to work.

Two hours later I was down to the end of the driveway. You take your time with a job like that, not pushing yourself too aggressively, pausing for a warm-up break when you need one—but even so it seems to go quickly. There’s a rhythm to the routine of snow shoveling that’s oddly soothing. Nor is the work—physically but not mentally demanding—any impediment to musing or daydreaming. In fact a troublesome knot in a short story I’m writing came loose as I worked my way down the driveway, flinging snow to the left and right.

But there at the end of the driveway was the snow shoveler’s nemesis: the packed and compacted mound left by the snowplow, winter’s own Maginot Line. You don’t shovel your way through that. No, you hack at it bit by bit, heaving the fragments aside, slowly widening the breach. This is the part of the job that depletes your energy budget. Now the cold really begins to pinch—now you really begin to feel the ache in your thighs and shoulders. The temptation to call it quits grows strongly upon you—but the driveway has got to be cleared. And eventually it is cleared. Mission accomplished. In all, counting breaks, it took me three and a half hours.

Yesterday evening I was really, really tired—bone tired, as the saying goes. My wife, God bless her, let me off the hook for dinner (I’m her executive chef). So for supper I had some cheese, bread, cold sausage and a couple of cocktails, and by seven I was ready for bed. I slept for eleven hours, waking up only once during the night. Today I feel all right—a few aching muscles but for that there’s Aleve. And a good thing, too, because there’s an inch of snow on the driveway this morning and later I suppose I should get out there and scrape it off...

Posted by tmg110 at 8:45 AM EST

Updated: Friday, 20 February 2015 1:16 PM EST

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Something that popped up on my homepage this morning delivered an unsavory reminder of popular culture’s casual cruelty. US Magazine isn’t one of my customary reads but a link to this feature caught my eye: “Stars without Makeup.” It consisted of 254 photos in 127 two-photo sets, each set depicting a female star or celebrity with and without makeup.

You have to look at all 254 photos to appreciate the willful, almost gloating ugliness of this Us hit piece. A few of the women—mostly the younger ones—looked all right without makeup and one or two of them actually looked better without it. But mostly they looked worse, sometimes shockingly so. As I clicked past photo after humiliating photo, a vague feeling of guilt possessed me. The temptation to linger over the awful non-makeup image of some celeb I’ve never liked was disconcertingly insistent. It was a tutorial in the nature of contemporary celebrity—a sharp reminder that schadenfreude and sadism play a big role in the attention we devote to our Beautiful People.

Of course I’ve always known this—intellectually. Leafing through People at the barbershop or the dentist’s office I’ve often remarked how that magazine likes to print photos of celebrities that are less than flattering. Why? Because the demand is there—the demand for a disreputable but very popular product. This star being busted for a curbside tryst with a hooker, that celeb’s anger management problem, fascinates us because it takes the fair and fortunate down a peg or two. Whether we care to admit it or not, the travails of celebrities supply us with psychological compensation for all that is un-fair and unfortunate in our own lives.

Yes, I generalize. There are plenty of people who pay little or no attention to the celebrity culture (Of the 127 celebs featured in the Us piece, a third to a half of them were completely unknown to me. Who is Iggy Azalea, for instance?) And yes, it’s quite true that celebrities invite the attention that comes their way. No doubt some celebrities—perhaps even most of them—take negative publicity in stride, just part of the job when you’re famous. So why do I care? Why should anybody care?

We should care, I think, because the ritual humiliation of celebrities, though it isn’t as gruesome as gladiatorial combat or cockfighting, derives its popularity from the same source: a secret, atavistic delight in gratuitous cruelty. Celebrities as a group may be thick-skinned but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that tears have been shed over that horrible Us feature. I’ll try to bear that in mind the next time I’m tempted to laugh about some famous person’s weight problem or wardrobe malfunction. It’s an insight that might come in hand for you, too, the next time you find yourself tittering over a worst-dressed list or a squalid tabloid hit piece.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:21 PM EST

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State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf attracted my attention some time ago with a resoundingly dumb comment on some issue of the day. I took to calling her “Propaganda Barbie” (conveniently, she’s blonde) and her serial cluelessness has been the cause of much mirth here at Chez Gregg.

Now she’s done it again, opining during an on-air chat with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that the real problem with ISIS is…lack of gainful employment. “We cannot kill our way out of this war,” Harf explained. “We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…”

Ah yes, those pesky root causes: the Left’s default excuse for doing nothing. Because let’s face it, handing out free community college vouchers and holding job fairs in Pakistan’s tribal territories isn’t exactly a practical proposition. As for actually killing the enemy, that’s just so…bitter clingerish. Which leaves what? SNAP cards for suicide bombers? Head Start for future beheaders? Help us out here, Marie!

Now I grant you that Ms. Harf is an easy target. Defending the Obama Administration’s dysfunctional foreign policy is certainly a thankless chore. But why does she have to make it so easy? Why does she have to say dumb things all the time? I’m sure she’s not, as these things are conventionally assessed, a stupid person. But there she was on MSNBC, the representative of an administration addicted to deadly drone strikes, explaining to Mr. & Ms. Boobus Americanus that, you know, we can’t kill our way to victory.

Maybe it’s not a question of stupidity, though. Maybe it’s a question of attitude. The head honcho sets the tone and that’s Barack Obama, the very model of a supercilious seminar room pedant, and his minions tend to channel him. Thus Obama’s air of studied condescension is replicated, albeit in debased form, by Harf and her boss, the equally risible Jen Psaki. Obama at least sounds intelligent most of the time, even if he’s talking drivel. But Harf and Psaki can’t seem to pull it off. Their attempts at plugged-in all-knowingness make the conversation at a sorority party seem sophisticated by comparison.

Then there’s the wonderful air of frivolity with which they conduct themselves at grave moments: selfies, hashtags, mugging for the camera—yeah, right, that’ll impress Putin and ISIS and Boko Haram and the Iranian ayatollahs! It would be funny—it would put SNL and the Onion to shame—if it wasn’t an honest-to-God day at the office for two senior officials of the US Department of State. Whose salaries are paid by Mr. & Ms. Boobus Americanus, i.e. you and me.

Years from now when I look back—not fondly—at the Obama Administration’s stewardship of US foreign policy, the image that will come into my mind is Propaganda Barbie at the State Department podium. If we’re lucky between now and then, that image will make me smile.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:51 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 18 February 2015 2:00 PM EST

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Considering the regularity with which its validity is demonstrated it’s surprising that the Law of Unintended Consequences continues to be disregarded. Or perhaps not; such is human nature.

In response to recent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Europe the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called upon European Jews to “come home” to the Jewish state. This has been roundly condemned as a nefarious political stunt by his political enemies at home and by the anti-Israeli Left in Europe and America. Other criticisms of Netanyahu’s call were more moderate and logical. The Danish chief rabbi opined that such a decision should be governed by love of Israel, not fear of bigotry, and he had a point.

But as a matter of fact a rising tide of anti-Semitism has driven increasing numbers of European Jews to choose aliyah: emigration to Israel. From France alone 7,000 Jews immigrated to Israel in 2014 and over the next few years some 50,000 Jews—10% of the country’s Jewish population—are expected to leave. And this is indeed an irony, since contemporary anti-Semitism parades itself as care and compassion for the downtrodden Palestinian Arabs. But as usual the self-proclaimed friends of the Palestinians are actually doing them dirt. Every piece of Nazi graffiti, every desecrated Jewish cemetery, burned synagogue, dead Jew is an argument for the Jewish state and against Palestinian nationalism.

Why Jews resident in Europe should pay the price for the alleged crimes of Israel is a question seldom asked. That the outrages directed against them lead more and more European Jews to choose Israel, thus reinforcing the Jewish character of the Jewish state and boosting its legitimacy and necessity in Jewish eyes is a fine demonstration of the Law of Unintended Consequences in action.

I doubt whether Europe’s Jew-bashing Israel haters realize that their words and actions make the case for the Jewish state. That they are also providing Prime Minister Netanyahu with a powerful talking point is a consequence surely unintended by the “Death to the Jews!” mob. But of course, bigotry and racism are not only malicious and evil but stupid.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:54 AM EST

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Irony can be delicious and one of the ironies that I savor most is the annoyance and boredom that results from regular exposure to progressivism.

In their commercials for themselves progressives pose as the sharp, edgy, forward-leaning, open-minded, free-spirited heralds of the Radiant Future. Having broken the shackles of tradition—variously religious, cultural, social and political—they stand for the liberation of the human spirit. And so on.

Symbolic of this self-image is a man who recently announced his retirement from a long-running TV gig: Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. From the reaction in progressive circles you would have thought that Stewart was not a TV comedian but a senior statesman. Sharp, edgy, forward-leaning, open-minded, free-spirited, possessed of a rapier wit—that’s John Stewart in the eyes of his many fans. Really of course he’s nothing more than an accomplished comedian who perfected a neat double game. On his show Stewart indulges in wide-ranging political commentary, mostly devoted to skewering Republicans and conservatives. In the frequent cases where he goes over the line or is just plain wrong, he protests that hey, I’m just an entertainer! Say what you want about Rush Limbaugh, who in the course of a long career has committed some notable gaffes, but he has never fallen back on that disingenuous defense.

But the thing about Stewart that really strikes me as I think about him and his influence is just how untypical he is of his fan base. The guy actually is sharp, edgy, funny—which on the whole progressives are not. I suspect, indeed, that they seldom get the joke and laugh along with Stewart merely because he said something nasty about Sarah Palin or the Tea Party.

The grim earnestness with which our self-appointed moral and intellectual elites approach the most trivial issues is a dismal spectacle indeed. The current craze for the hunting-down and condemnation of “microaggressions” is a good example. If you believe in microaggression theory, the most common and innocuous turns of phrase and figures of speech are actually sending “denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership” ( but not if your “group membership” is Male, White, Heterosexual).

It’s amusing to recall the rapture with which the Occupy Wall Street movement was greeted in progressive circles, the soaring claims that were made on its behalf and the expectations that were raised by it, when you remind yourself of its fundamental stupidity. Though OWS did raise a couple or there legitimate issues, e.g. college costs and student-loan debt, the movement never rose above the level of a dorm room bull session. When adolescent tantrums, call-and-response posturing, property destruction and poor personal hygiene failed to change the world, the movement simply vaporized.

As the boomlet for “microaggression” suggests, the progressive project involves the politicization of everything, from the candidates we vote for to the food we eat, the words we use—even the thoughts we think. And what could be more boring that that? That deadly boredom is well conveyed by the language employed by progressives when they’re in full ideological mode. Check out the Microaggression Project Facebook page, for example, where you can learn among other things “6 Ways to Respond to Sexist Microaggressions in Everyday Conversations.” Nor have you racist white folks been neglected: “The Whiteness Project hopes to bring everyday white Americans, especially those who would not normally engage in a project about race, into the racial discussion—to help them understand the active role their race plays in every facet of their lives, to remove some of the confusion and guilt that many white people feel around the subject of race and to help white Americans learn to own their whiteness—and everything positive and negative it represents—in the same way that every other ethnicity owns its ethnic identity.”

It seems to me more than doubtful that “everyday white Americans” will be flocking to participate in a “discussion” framed in these supercilious, condescending terms. 

The distemper exhibited by so many committed progressives may derive from the realization, impossible to suppress completely, that their actuality is far removed from their self-image—that they represent, indeed, a new strain of Puritanism, rendered all the more obnoxious by its access to mass media and social media. That is a delicious irony indeed.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:18 PM EST

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“Tell us, Governor, do you believe in evolution?”

Another presidential campaign season is upon us, and the above question or a variant thereof will inevitably be put to every Republican candidate. In the eyes of progressives and therefore in the opinion of the mainstream media the answer to that question, of “no,” means that the candidate is an enemy of Science (capitalization deliberate) and, therefore, unfit for the presidency.

Scott Walker, GOP governor of Wisconsin, was asked this question during a recent visit to London and he “punted” (his own word), opining that there are some issues, evolution being one of them, that a politician should avoid. I’m inclined to agree with him there but the real problem is the premise of the question: that a layman’s opinion about a scientific theory is of any interest or relevance at all. Let’s suppose that Walker had answered, “Yes, I do believe in evolution.” No doubt that would have been the launch pad for dozens of “news analysis” pieces about his problems with Evangelicals, conservative Christians, bitter clingers, etc. and so forth. And if he’d answered, “No, I don’t believe in evolution,” well, you know how that would have been received.

Either way, what the media would not have done was ask the logical follow-up question: “How do you know?”

People believe in many things—the Virgin Birth, the divine authority of the Quran, the dangers of vaccination, the evil of GMO food crops. But for the most part these beliefs are based on faith, sentiment, prejudice or some other emotion, not on logical analysis. Millions of people believe in evolution, but only a tiny fraction of them are scientists who have studied evolutionary theory in depth and actually understand it. In nine out of ten cases, therefore, the statement “I believe in evolution” is based on nothing more than faith in scientific authority.

Even to say that one “believes” in a scientific theory is somewhat problematical. In scientific parlance evolutionary theory is “robust,” i.e. backed up by copious evidence and, so far as anyone can tell, incapable of being falsified. But in principle any scientific theory is provisional. The empirical method on which science is based demands that we go where the evidence, not our faith, leads us. So if new evidence refuting evolutionary theory were to emerge, that would be it for evolution.

Thus “Do you believe in evolution?” is the wrong question. Scott Walker should have been asked “What do you know about evolution?” And his honest answer would, probably, have been “Not much.”

One’s opinion about evolution does, however, lay down a cultural marker—and that was the point of the question that Walker was asked. Progressivism’s professed belief in Science is actually rather dubious, as its addiction such fads as organic food and herbal therapy make plain. In progressive circles the pledge of allegiance to Science is actually a pronouncement of the anathema against religious faith. It’s not that the common or garden progressive is scientifically literate or understands how science works. In many cases the converse is the case. But Science proves that the universe wasn’t created in seven days, so there! And thus by extension anyone who disbelieves in evolution must be a boob. And if a Republican presidential candidate says he disbelieves in evolution—well!

Scott Walker should have answered that he has no informed opinion on the subject one way or the other—which no doubt he doesn’t. And he might have gone on to note that governors and presidents have enough to do without takings sides in the debate over evolution—a debate largely conducted on both sides by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:26 AM EST

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President Obama’s request for authority to wage war on ISIS hasn’t exactly advanced on Congress in thunder and in lightning, like a Jove. Instead it landed on Capitol Hill with a thump, rather like an unwanted phone book deposited at one’s front door. Replete with dubious assertions, vague language and timid qualifications it seems very unlikely to intimidate the Islamofascists now running amok in the Middle East.

There are critics of the President who think that widening the war against ISIS is a bad idea and others who complain that he hasn’t got a winning strategy. Register me as a member of the latter camp, with the caveat that I don’t believe that Obama has a strategy at all.

Here’s where an acquaintance with Clausewitz comes in handy. In his classic treatise, Vom Kriege, the Prussian philosopher of war taught that military planning begins with a war aim and the formulation of a set of objectives. Let’s say that you want to strip a neighboring country of a certain piece of territory. That’s the war aim. How to achieve it, though? Well, you could invade and occupy the desired territory. But maybe that’s not possible for geographical reasons—many river lives, rough terrain, lack of good roads. So perhaps what you should to is seize some other bit of territory that for economic or political reasons is important to the enemy, then offer to trade it back for the land you want. Or you could seek battle, defeat the enemy’s main army and dictate peace terms that give you what you want. But however you decide to do it, you must scale your military effort to your objective.

So what is Obama war aim regarding ISIS? Well, he says that the aim is to “degrade and defeat” that unsavory band of Islamofascists. Fair enough. But it appears, alas, that he has no real strategy, no military blueprint, to “degrade and defeat” ISIS. Recall that until quite recently Obama was content to fiddle with petty domestic politics while the Middle East burned. He abandoned Iraq to its grisly fate without a qualm—and even praised himself on that account. After a few idle threats, he washed his hands of Syria. Only when ISIS began beheading Western hostages, Americans among them, did the President embark, very reluctantly, on his current course of action. It was a profile in pusillanimity: fear of the consequences of intervention trumped by fear of appearing weak and ineffectual.

“Weak and ineffectual” also describes the bombing campaign that resulted from Obama’s volte-face. There’s no strategy behind this strewing of munitions here and there, unless it’s a vague hope of striking fear in the heart of the enemy. But it’s Obama who’s truly fearful, as the faculty lounge verbiage of his request to Congress makes clear. The President’s desire to strike down ISIS takes a back seat to that fear In the final analysis it’s a fear that he’ll be seen to be mounting his high horse, to be behaving like George W. Bush.

Obama’s request to Congress is comical in its anxiety to reassure people of what the United States will not do and it comes at a time when he and his claque have been insisting that the threat of, er, violent extremism is greatly exaggerated. This may be sending a mixed message to the American people but the message to ISIS is clear: No problem! No doubt the Islamofascists were relieved to hear that the US has no intention of doing what’s necessary to destroy them and that it will all be over in three years in any case.

Never mind for the moment whether you think that America should fight ISIS or just stand aside from the conflict. I think it has to be admitted that by temporizing in this manner Obama is storing up big trouble for the future. A policy of half-measures designed to placate critics on both sides of the issue won’t deliver victory, nor will it enable this president or his successor to disentangle America from the Mideast mess. It’s Strategy 101, and Barack Obama gets an F.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:08 PM EST

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