There are lots of important topics that I need to address in this space, but I'm taking a break today to talk about something less important to most readers, but more important to me personally.

Today is the 24th anniversary of the day in 1982 when Agnes and I married in a civil ceremony in the Standesamt Zehlendorf in Berlin, Germany, accompanied by our friends Ken and Andrea and our daughter Yasmin. It was the second marriage for each of us - the triumph of hope over experience, as someone once said - but it's worked out marvelously well over the intervening years. I can truthfully say that I'm one of what seems to be a rare breed: a happily married man.

Nowadays, 24 years is quite a long time for a marriage to last. Each day I wake up marveling at how lucky I am to have found such a great lady...and how lucky I am that she hasn't strangled me in my sleep yet. I'm not the easiest person to live with, but Agnes does a marvelous job of putting up with all my quirks, both big and small. If it wouldn't have been for Agnes, I'd never have gotten into ballroom dancing and probably wouldn't have achieved whatever level of success in life I've attained. As she would probably say, behind every great man is a woman, pushing like hell.

So...no deep thoughts for today. Just a shake of the head in wonder at my good fortune in having found such a grand lady, and a happy look forward to the next 24 years. You should be so lucky.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

I was surprised, and a little bit outraged, at an article I read yesterday titled, "Test Nonlethal Weapons on U.S. Citizens, Official Says." The article quoted the Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne, as stating that nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield. The article quoted Mr Wynne as saying that using such weapons in domestic situations would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," he said.

With all due respect to Secretary Wynne, and with full understanding of what he's really trying to say, is there anyone out there besides me who thinks this is stupid?

I ask you: in which other country do the military forces invest millions in technologies designed not to kill? And is moral bankruptcy so widespread in the world that attempts to use weapons that don't kill people can be condemned? And consider the likely outcome in this country of doing what Mr Wynne has recommended: the first time anyone even considered using such a weapon on American citizens, the ACLU and every lawyer within a thousand miles would file a pile of lawsuits a mile high, accusing our government of using dangerous weapons on helpless people. The current wave of lawsuits about police use of Tasers is just a small example of what would likely happen.

Let's face it: those who are spring-loaded to think the worst of America will not be swayed by the fact that we've exhibited an unusual level of moral courage by testing weapons designed not to kill them on our own people.

All that said, I think Mr Wynne has a good idea. Unfortunately, in the goofy world of topsy-turvy morality in which we live, it'll never work.

Too bad.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Back on September 3rd in this space, I lamented how poorly we as a nation present ourselves and our values to skeptical - if not downright hostile - overseas audiences. I argued that our government did a very poor job of street-level diplomacy, and urged that we bring back the US Information Agency to do the work of presenting the American story.

Within the Department of State, there exists the position of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, currently occupied by Karen Hughes. This organization has taken the mantle of the old USIA, and runs an active program of public information, public diplomacy, and outreach to other countries, and you can learn more about it - as I did - by visiting its website at http://www.state.gov/r/.

It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of this organization at this time in our history. When America, despite all the good it does in the world, is the focus of such unreasoning hatred, we must do a better job of presenting our face to the world. We will never change the opinions of those Islamic radicals whose minds have been utterly poisoned by incompetent and intolerant religious leaders. But we must work on those people who can still be reached...who can still make up their own minds and understand that there is a larger and better world beyond the stark black-and-white images thundered in hate-filled Friday sermons.

Ms Hughes, more power to you. Good luck with one of the toughest and most thankless jobs in the US government. I can only hope that a president who has shown himself to be staggeringly incompetent at diplomacy will give you the resources and the support you need to save us from the mess he's gotten us into.

Read Ms Hughes' article titled, Where's the Outrage at http://www.state.gov/r/us/72062.htm, think about it, and forward it to others. It's one of the best of the many pieces of commentary that have appeared in connection with the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Have a good day. More thoughts in the coming days.

Bilbo

I had intended to use this post to talk about my ideas for improving America's public diplomacy, but you'll have to wait for that one - I'd like to talk about something else that came to mind during our visit to the Sugarloaf Craft Festival in Manassas, Virginia, last weekend.

I enjoy craft shows because I admire the skills many people have that I don't. One of the exhibitors was a lady from Moneta, Virginia, named Susan Loy, who does beautiful literary calligraphy - you can check out her work online at her website, www.literarycalligraphy.com. Susan (a delightful lady to talk with!) takes biblical verses, poetry, and other literary works and turns them into marvelous pieces of calligraphic art. I tend to be a fairly emotional person, and I was literally moved to tears by some of her work, particularly the beautiful Bible passage from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13 that begins, "Love is patient and kind..."

And that got me to thinking...

What are the equivalent verses on love of neighbor in the Koran? We tend to hear the most violent and intolerant parts of the Koran quoted by Muslim extremists, but are there also calls to love and understanding like one finds in the Bible? Yes, the Bible also has plenty of violence and intolerance in it, but over time, Christians have moved away from them and toward the essential message of love and tolerance.

I found an online English translation of the Koran (which, of course, Muslims will say is worthless because it isn't in Arabic), but haven't had the time to read through the over 6,000 verses in search of messages other than violence and hatred.

The Ten Commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." They do not say, "Thou shalt not kill other Christians, but everyone else is okay." In the Muslim world, the tears shed for the victims of terrorism are shed only for Muslims. What does the Koran say?

What is the Koranic equivalent of the beautiful words about love of 1 Corinthians?

I'm really interested in this - ask a Muslim where the calls to brotherhood and understanding are to be found in the Koran, and let me know.

In the meantime, look up Susan Loy at the next Sugarloaf Crafts Festival (or on her website) and be prepared to be impressed by a very nice lady with some marvelous talent.

More thoughts later.

Bilbo

Two posts ago, I began a discussion of how inept we as a nation are at presenting ourselves to the rest of the world. Every brain-dead jihadi with a videocamera and a PC is cranking out CDs and DVDs glorifying the murder of Americans, and morons like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad spend hours ranting to their audiences that everything wrong with the world is the fault of America.

What, one might ask, is the US government doing about this?

I don't think it's inaccurate to say that our government does an abysmal job of presenting our face to the world. There appears to be no efficient and effective office in the State Department (or anywhere else in the government) that works around the clock to explain US values and policies in clear and understandable words to a skeptical world fed a continuous diet of anti-American venom. After all, Mr Bush himself is utterly unable to present a clear, consistent and convincing explanation of his decisions on Iraq to his own people, much less to the rest of the world.

In 1999, the government closed down the US Information Agency, the organization charged with "public diplomacy," or presenting information about the United States to the rest of the world. Many cynics, including those who have written about the USIA in Wikipedia (see the entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agency) believe "public diplomacy" to be nothing more than a kinder, gentler version of the politically-charged term "propaganda," but it's more than that - public diplomacy attempts to present a positive image of the United States to foreign audiences who have plenty of opportunities to hear the negative image presented without challenge. We are defaulting in the game of public relations...allowing our enemies to bombard the world with relentlessly negative stereotypes of our nation and to blame us for every real and perceived problem without challenge. I have never flinched from agreeing that we should admit our mistakes and move forward while trying to do better. But if we allow every would-be religious fanatic or political demagogue to increase his (or her) popularity and avoid censure for his (or her) policies by blaming everything on the evil machinations of the United States, we allow a blind and unreasoning hatred of America to develop unchallenged.

We must do better than this. We must, as a nation, realize that what the rest of the world hears and thinks and believes matters to us in our quiet suburban homes. We must stop reflexively allowing the political demagogues and religious fanatics to set the agenda and claim ownership of the media. The cost of doing so in dollars will be negligible compared to the cost of keeping our heads firmly buried in the sand.

Bring back the USIA and take the fight for hearts and minds to the rest of the world. Don't allow our feckless media to shout down attempts at positive public diplomacy. It's time to start acting like what America could be - the beacon of hope for a world in deep trouble.

Tomorrow, specific ideas for what to do. Until then, have a good day...and don't be afraid to stand up for the honor and dignity of your country.

Bilbo

I had planned to use this space to follow up on my last post, but you'll have to bear with me for a while, because I've found something I need to share with you.

I've just finished reading the book Cobra II, by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor; it's a well-researched, well-written, exciting, and heartbreaking book about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There's a passage near the end of the book that is worth quoting to you and commenting on. Chief Warrant Officer Dave Williams was one of a group of American POWs being held by the Iraqis in a house in Samarra, and he told the authors of the book that...

"The Iraqis had a hard time understanding something (about their American prisoners). Shoshonna is Panamanian, Edgar is Hispanic, Joe is Philippine, and Patrick is from Kansas. The Iraqis could not conceive how we could all have been in the same army and not fight one another. One Iraqi said to me, 'You no fighting each other? Why?'"

Why, indeed?

In my post of July 25th, I wrote about the observation in the book Revolutionary Characters that the United States is a country founded on the basis of a set of beliefs, rather than on a common ethnicity, religion, or culture. Because of that, we have managed to avoid the kind of sectarian violence that plagues much of the rest of the world, and have created a society which welcomes people of every race, creed, religion, and color with the opportunity to cooperate in building a shared dream of freedom and prosperity. Perfect? Of course not. But how many other countries have an enormous problem with people frantically trying to get in? When last I looked, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, and most other countries didn't have much of a problem securing their borders against hordes of people trying to break in.

For all of our problems, we have built a nation that is the envy of the world...and we have done it by working together according to shared ideals expressed by a group of visionary people more than 225 years ago. Much of the rest of the world may shout, "Yankee, go home!", but the next few words are usually, "...and take me with you!"

Be thankful for the country in which you live. I am.

In the next post, I'll continue my discussion about how we as a nation present ourselves to a skeptical world. Until then, have a good day.

Bilbo

One of my close friends, Bakr, is an Egyptian-born doctor, now an American citizen who came to this country as an adult and now serves as a Colonel in the Air Force. I have spent many hours arguing and discussing the situation in the Middle East with him, and if you are looking for a well-educated and erudite presentation of the Arab position on the issues, you can't do better than asking him. It can be frustrating, but he does give you a perspective that you don't often hear from our government and media.

But Bakr is very even-handed, too, and recognizes that the Arabs are often their own worst enemy. He has often shaken his head and moaned that "We (the Arabs) are so stupid!" And while I generally agree with that assessment, I must also admit that we Americans are equally stupid, albeit for different reasons.

As a country, we are staggeringly inept at presenting to the world our values and our position on vital international issues, and almost unbelievably hard-headed about making the changes that are necessary in a new world of instantaneous, 24-hour news reporting and the Internet.

Consider this: insurgents in Iraq often send out video crews to film the murder of American soldiers by roadside bombs or ambushes, and then within days - if not hours - are distributing professionally-made DVDs with music and narration crowing about what they've done. But when the US government (in an admittedly clumsy effort) tried to pay Iraqi media outlets to run stories showing some of the good news efforts in that unhappy country, the howls of outrage from the American media could probably be heard on the moon.

Consider this, too: whenever disaster strikes, anywhere in the world, the first country on the spot with millions of dollars in emergency aid, is the United States. The rest of the world ignores this, focusing instead resolutely on our real and perceived evils. Why is the US government not vigorously presenting our side of the story? Why are we not flooding foreign media outlets with good news stories, and offering government officials for interviews - in the local language - with the foreign media to present the American side of the issues?

There are many reasons, and I'll discuss what they are, and what we ought to do about them, in the next few posts. In the meantime, ask yourself why the Ugly American is so inept at improving his image...and you might agree with some of my comments.

More discussion of this issue tomorrow. For now, have a good day and a good week.

Bilbo

In a recent article titled, "Lessons So Far," commentator Ralph Peters spelled out a number of lessons that have been learned from (or confirmed by) the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two of Mr Peters' observations are of particular importance, and I want to discuss them together. They are: "Never underestimate your enemy;" and, "Can we win "Eastern" wars with Western values?"

As regards the first lesson, I believe we have severely underestimated Radical Islam as a threat. The reason lies in our Western values, as Mr Peters implies in his second observation.

I don't believe we can win this "Eastern" war and still hold true to our Western values. The Eastern (radical Islamic, in this case) worldview and fundamental concepts of life, death, and faith are utterly alien to our Western ones. The jihadi who believes with all his heart and brain that killing infidels is God’s will, and that he is headed for paradise if he gets killed in the process, will be a tenacious and suicidally ruthless fighter who will have to be killed to be neutralized. At the risk of trivializing a critically important point, he's like the Terminator: He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until you and I are either dead or converted to Islam.

To really defeat an enemy like this, we must be able to fight with a degree of ruthless violence alien to our cultural sensibilities. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines can learn that (as they learned to kill fanatical Japanese troops in WWII), but I doubt that our political and social leaders and media elites will be able to set aside our Judeo-Christian ethics which regard life as sacred. At least, until it’s too late.

Think about it. More thoughts coming in the next few days.

Bilbo

Well, the shooting has stopped - temporarily, at least - in Lebanon, and both sides are declaring victory. In reality, of course, everyone lost: the Israelis lost the aura of their army's invincibility against Arab foes, Hezbollah lost many of its fighters, and the Lebanese lost much of their country, pounded to ruin because of the fanatical hubris of Hezbollah. Of course, none of the Arabs see it that way (can you spell Pyrrhic Victory?), but they are just proving yet again the depths of their own stupidity.

But not all of them.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) today posted on its website a translation titled, "Libyan Reformist Writer Dr. Muhammad Al-Huni Criticizes Abuse of the Term 'Resistance' in Arab Political Discourse." It's an amazingly frank and clear-eyed look at what passes for rational thought in the Arab world, and it's worth your time reading. In a series of devastating examples, he illustrates the moral and intellectual depravity of the Arabs as exemplified by their use of the term "resistence" to justify their actions. Here are a few quotes from Dr Al-Huni's article:

"When Shi'ites kill Sunnis and Sunnis kill Shi'ites in Iraq merely for their [sectarian] identity, it is called 'resistance.'"

...

"When year after year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad extinguish any spark of peace which can end the suffering of the Palestinian people, it is called 'resistance.'"

...

"When Hizbullah takes an entire people hostage and refuses to obey the elected [authorities], dragging Lebanon into destruction, it is called 'resistance.'"

...

"Establishing television channels like Al-Jazeera, which misleads the Arab public and causes [the Arabs] to wager repeatedly on the victory of the losing side - is called 'resistance.'"

...

"When Muslim religious scholars issue fatwas permitting murder, suicide, and slaughtering of brothers and compatriots, and when [these scholars] condemn every rationalist idea as 'stupid'... and show contempt for modernity, it is called 'resistance.'"

...

"Bombing hotels in Amman and killing the bride and groom, and anyone [else] who tries to celebrate in these sad killing fields, is called 'resistance.'"

You can read the entire article at http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD125306, and I encourage you to do so. Read some of the other articles, too, to get an idea of what hideous racist and quasi-religious drivel our enemies hear - and believe - every day.

One of the few things President Bush has said recently that I agree with was his characterization of our enemy as "Islamic Fascism." "Fascism" may not be the best word, but it sums up what we're up against.

Know your enemy. He doesn't know about you, and doesn't care to...all he's interested in is either forcing you to convert to Islam, or killing you.

Learn all you can, and take a stand against violent and intolerant people who would return to the seventh century...and drag you along.

Have a good day, and appreciate the fact that you live in a country that doesn't force you to worship in a particular way.

Bilbo

I tend to be a pretty optimistic person, but I have officially given up on the Middle East in general, and the Arab/Muslim world in particular.

Consider the murderous lunatic Hassan Nasrullah, who would rather destroy Lebanon and cause the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people than make a peace that would let Arabs and Israelis alike live in dignity and prosperity. It’s long been clear that the Arabs aren’t really interested in any peace agreement that includes the survival of an independent Israel, and their support of Nasrullah, whether implicit or explicit, is clear proof.

Consider the foolish Muslims in the United States, who came here for the peace, security, and opportunity they could never find at home…and who repay the nation that took them in by supporting Hezbollah – which offers only death, destruction, and hate.

Consider the Imams who, fortified with their 7th-century religious education, preach the most vile racist hatred...and are unchallenged by the civilized world.

I’m no particular fan of the Israelis, but they have built a vibrant and prosperous nation in a tough neighborhood. Compare them to the surrounding Arab Muslim nations, who have driven themselves into poverty and backwardness and blame everyone for it but themselves, and you will find there’s no comparison.

Read Victor Davis Hanson’s damning indictment of the pathetic Arab Muslim world at http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson080706.html, and see if you don’t agree with my solution to the problems of the Middle East: build a 100-foot high wall around the region, fill it up to the top with sand, and start over.

I just can’t be an optimist any more.

More thoughts later.

Bilbo