A number of national security problems were on display over the holidays. At Thanksgiving, at least three uninvited guests cracked a Secret Service barrier and crashed a party at the White House. The intruders remained undetected until the next day.

A week before Christmas, the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, attempted to reassure the nation with an editorial celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Intelligence Reform and Prevention Act: "Our nation is becoming ‘safer every day’ (sic) because we are aware that information increases in power only when it is shared."

Several days later an Islamic suicide bomber nearly blew an Airbus out of the sky over Detroit, not because we didn’t know about the threat, but because the “sharing” of which Dennis Blair spoke, failed abysmally. Then on 30 December, an al Qaeda double agent infiltrated a secret CIA meeting in Afghanistan and blew himself up, taking seven American intelligence officers with him. 

To all of these operational blunders the responses have been either; unsupportable reassurances or implausible silver bullets. 

Janet Napolitano, Director of Homeland Security, was the first to assume a defensive crouch on 28 December, claiming “The system worked (sic)” after the aviation near miss. 

Napolitano was followed by Dennis Blair on 7 January: 

"While the December 25 attempt exposed improvement needs and flaws in coordination, it ‘did not expose weakness’ (sic) in the concepts of intelligence reform or suggest that its progress should be redirected. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) and the progress of the past five years will continue to guide our future improvements."

Not to be outdone in the rationalization sweeps, CIA Director, Leon Panetta, took to the pages of the Washington Post on 10 January complaining: "We have found no consolation, however, in public commentary suggesting that those who gave their lives (in Afghanistan) somehow brought it upon themselves because of poor tradecraft." 

All of the apologetics were quickly followed by several rounds of silver bullets, the most ludicrous of which were ‘full body’ scanners. To be effective, such devices would have to be installed in every airport in the world; and even then, scanners would not be able to detect explosives secreted in body cavities.

All the smoke and mirrors deployed in the wake of the holiday security follies obscured an ever widening schism within the Intelligence Community; a growing analytical divide between a politicized group of Beltway threat minimalists which includes Blair, Napolitano, and Panetta and several Military Intelligence realists which include Major General Mike Flynn, chief of Intelligence for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, chief of USAF Intelligence. 

Flynn fired a shot across the complacency bow on 4 January with an intelligence report that was published by the Center for a New American Security. The unusual venue for Flynn’s assessment was probably an attempt to insure that his report did not suffer the fate of a similar report from General McChrystal six months earlier. McChrystal’s summer candor was the source of the great “dithering” debate over Afghanistan troop augmentation. 

Echoing McChrystal’s earlier admonition, Flynn again spelled out a grim warning: 

"Our senior leaders - the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States - are not getting the right information to make decisions with ... The media is driving the issues. We need to build a process from the sensor all the way to the political decision makers."          

In an email of 9 December, General Deptula exhibited similar candor in his assessment of the homeland miasma: 

" The number one cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is the Taliban — not air power. Human Rights Watch has verified that the Taliban kills three to four times more civilians than ISAF air and ground forces combined. More often than not, these deaths are deliberate….It is curious that it appears there is more ink spent on casualties from air attacks than there is on the criminality and violation of the ethical tenets of ‘Islam’ (sic) that occurs daily as a result of Taliban actions."

General Deptula’s bluntness is a beacon of clarity in an administration that seems to have stricken the words Islam, Muslim, or enemy from the strategic vocabulary. Deptula may work out of the E Ring at the Pentagon, but this former fighter pilot surely speaks for every American serviceman in two theaters of war - Islamists, not American GI’s, are the threat. 

A close reading of both generals reveals a clear signal from the field. Military Intelligence is trying to convey a realistic sense of threat and urgency to a national Intelligence establishment that appears to be tone deaf. Political operatives like Blair, Napolitano, and Panetta have the White House ear, yet none of these, including the President, have any experience with Intelligence or threat analysis. As a group, all four seem to be more concerned with Muslim cultural sensitivities than they are with dangers to deployed troops or national security.

Napolitano and Panetta are lawyers by profession, but they made their bones as politicians. Panetta’s national security vita is mostly tenure; nine terms in the House of Representatives. Napolitano, devoid of any national experience, was picked to head the Homeland Security Department as payback for being an early Obama supporter before the last presidential election. Blair is a retired military officer with a distinguished naval career. His preeminent qualification for the top Intelligence job seems to be reliability. 

The politicization of national Intelligence and national estimates has been metastasizing since the Clinton era. George Tenant, former Director of CIA, and Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, might be modern icons for the problem. In the run up to the second Iraq War, they perfected wet finger analysis and redefined objective assessments as the ability to tell either political party what they wanted to hear. 

Yet at this late date, we are still told by Mr. Blair that there is no need to change the vector of Intelligence “reform.” If this is true then those forthright Military Intelligence officers who are expressing concern about the threat and safety of troops in the field may be in for a bumpy ride. The analytical divide between the tactical commanders at the front and the Beltway salons in Washington is growing daily. One pundit captured the dilemma; the problem isn’t “incompetence but incomprehension.” Indeed, we can not defeat threats that we refuse to recognize.

Concerned citizens are wondering about the Media obsession with the late great Tiger Woods, the world’s “greatest” golfer. A day after Thanksgiving, Tiger was party to a domestic disturbance wielding a five iron in the wee hours of 27 November. Our favorite golfer attempted to beat a retreat in his Cadillac when he was hit by a fire hydrant, a tree, and an irate natural blonde. Elin Nordegen Woods then proceeded to “liberate” Tiger from the car wreckage with a few strokes of her short game. As the cops arrived, she was reported to be “hovering” over a prostrate champion. Hospitalization ensued. Tiger has not faced a camera or a golf tournament gallery since. His game, as they say, is on hold. 

Extramarital gaming of a sort provoked the disturbance. When Woods shook that tree, at least a dozen bimbos fell out, giving a new facet to the meaning of “player”. Like his wife, the ladies in question were mostly white, adding a racial twist to the knife. Tiger is often described as a black man, only a half truth; his mother was Thai and his father was an African American. Late night comedians quickly jumped on the biracial bandwagon. Wanda Sykes speculated: “The black in him bought the Cadillac and the Asian in him crashed it.” Sykes went on to characterize Tiger’s wife as “a Viking” expletive deleted – rhymes with witch. 

To date, there’s been some good and a lot of bad news for Tiger. The good news is that our hero seems to have come out of the scrape on the sunny side of Valhalla. The Media blitz is the bad news. That frenzy seems to be trying to do what his wife could not. Conjecture about motives covers all the usual suspects: race, envy, fame, wealth, and character flaws (e.g. arrogance). None of these, individually or collectively, provide a satisfactory explanation of Tiger’s behavior or the Media taste for his blood. Indeed, a single and comprehensive explanation for all that has transpired to date seems to be emerging; the game of golf itself. 

Indeed, we may be witnessing backlash of unprecedented dimensions. A vast network of golf haters seems to be coming out of the rough, onto the fairway, and they’ve got the clubhouse in the crosshairs. It’s not just a venal press that smells blood; golf widows, real athletes, Marxists, and environmentalists seem to be joining the hunt. If irony were a crime, golf would have to answer for many sins. The game is as close as you can come to sport without actually getting any exercise.

The typical golf foursome consists of four fat white guys in two electric carts. Caddies get the exercise. In many country clubs, the go-carts are mandatory. Walking 18 holes is not optional. The idea is to push as many chubby chaps around the loop in a day as quickly as possible. More loops mean more lucre. Only professional players are required to walk 18 holes, creating the illusion that golf is a “sport” - that requires exertion. Elsewhere the ethic is sloth. 

A caddy is mandated at all the best clubs too. He is a combination driver, porter, and personal valet. Caddies worth their divots know the game, the course, and adult beverages on the run. Golf might be the only popular game where the “athlete” rides, the caddy carries, and a bartender helps with the cheating. Yes cheating! Unlike team sports, which presume to build character, the game of golf cultivates liars and cheats. (This may be where Tiger takes a bow.) Never mind the caddy who gets a room for a bimbo, link traditions include stroke shaving with gimmicks such as “winter rules” and “mulligans”. 

Winter rules allow you to reposition your ball should it be encumbered by water, leaves, twigs, geese grease, or gator guano. The game of golf is supposed to have been invented by the Scots, but the mulligan, oddly enough, evokes the Irish. A mulligan is the practice of taking a second or third swing after the ball has been shanked, sliced, or hooked to parts unknown. The mulligan, not only allows a few strokes that do not appear on the score card, but allows a second ball in play. Mulligans are like the carnival game “Whack-a-Mole;” you get to swing until you hit something. 

Golf handicaps are worse still. In theory, a golfer’s handicap is supposed to level the playing field between good players and duffers. A “scratch” golfer has no handicap while a duffer might get to subtract as many as twenty strokes from his score at the end of the day. Handicaps are established by submitting “honest” score cards at the end of every round. In practice a low handicap is good for your ego, but a high handicap is better – for your game and your wallet. 

Golf hustlers all have high handicaps; making golf one of the few games where looking bad is actually good. The rage against golf and icons like Tiger Woods is fueled also by proletarians and tree huggers. Marxists, suffering from class envy, resent the exclusivity and costs of golfing. “Greens fees,” a euphemism for the cost of playing, are exorbitant at many clubs. A permanent membership might be tens of thousands, while a single loop runs to several hundred dollars. High fees keep the hoi polloi at bay and insure the country club set will not be worried by crab grass, dandelions, gnats, mosquitoes, and gophers. 

Indeed, these fees have little to do with political Greens. Environmentalists insist that golf and country clubs are little more than manicured toxic waste sites. There is more than a grain of truth here. A greens keeper is actually a chemical warfare specialist; he labors 24/7 against all manner of vermin and suspicious vegetation. His kit includes insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, and the occasional explosive. If you drop your cigar on the 18th green; you do not put it back in your mouth. 

The film Caddy Shack (1980) is a cult classic where the game of golf is skewered from a caddy’s perspective. Bill Murray plays a warped greens keeper who wages an incendiary war against an insurgent population of gophers. The film ends with a hilarious pyrotechnic convulsion not unlike the one that Tiger Woods’ career and the game of golf is experiencing today. 

In a final and delicious irony, American golf widows everywhere are doing the fist pump. Every woman, who was ever wronged by a mendacious spouse cheating under the cover of golf, is praying for the other shoe to drop. Now that Elin Nordegen has taken Tiger’s ride, will she close the loop and kick him to the curb? Poetic justice cries out for at least one more penalty stroke.

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 The author is a former caddy (Winged Foot Country Club), recovering golfer, and incumbent editor of, and principal contributor to this blog and Anacostia Angst on Blogspot. This essay also appeared in the 1 Jan 10 edition of American Thinker.

 At the risk of abusing a metaphor, we have now embarked on a national strategy that looks for all the world like a fool’s game; and, in the process, ignores rules even a child might understand. The first rule is that one side doesn’t get to make the rules. In Afghanistan, declaring an arbitrary time limit, not only telegraphs punches, but does little but raise the pressure on the home team. 

Set aside for a moment the nonsense about wars of “choice” and wars of “necessity,” we might consider the blowback from Iraq. Having reversed the sectarian poles in Baghdad, might not the “progress” we see there be a kind of prudent economy of force? The Shiite majority may simply wait for the clock to run out now that we have set a date certain for withdrawal. The King of Jordan warns of a Shiite Crescent to the north of Israel. Is he wrong? 

 One side doesn’t control the number of players either. The arbitrary designation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as the “core” of the problem ignores a larger threat with a global reach. Islamic fundamentalism is not limited to Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, the ideology and financing on the Sunni side originates in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, our erstwhile “allies.” The militant threat on the Shiite side originates with Iran – now a nuclear aspirant. If Iraq was a distraction from the real threat in Afghanistan, how is Afghanistan not a distraction from the real threat in Iran? 

 The truth about Iraq is that it was a corrupt totalitarian menace to its corrupt theocratic Arab neighbors. Now Iraq is a corrupt Shiite state that might pursue a sectarian alliance with Iran. The truth about Afghanistan is that it is a tribal, if not feudal, mix beset by naïve Westerners. The truth about Pakistan is that it is a corrupt, if not duplicitous, janissary that might be one bullet away from theocracy. The truth about Iran is that it is the world’s largest Shiite theocracy; a so-called Islamic “republic.” The truth of all of this is that the threat is not a specific terrorist, terror group, state sponsor, or Muslim state. The bloom of jihad and theocracy within Islam world wide is the true threat. This menace is not simply demographics or immigration; it is also political. Theocracy is the goal of Islamists of every stripe; to replace secular law with a religious monoculture. The final and inadmissible truth is the inability or unwillingness of national security specialists, in general, and Western politicians, in particular, to acknowledge any of this. 

Tehran is yet another example in the Islamic constellation where we presume to make the rules of the game; we assume that the Persians can be jawboned or threatened with “sanctions” to relinquish their nuclear ambitions. And now there is a new strategy announced on 1 December by President Obama at West Point. The new course has two major components: moderation and denial. With the moderate approach we are neither “all in” nor “all out” in Afghanistan. We have limited our targets to one leader and one terror organization – and a kind of half-baked “nation building.” 

In Afghanistan, the US aspires to do what the British and Soviets could not. The English used to strap insurgents to the busy ends of cannons and the Soviets used to level villages from the air. American tactics are different; we plan to conquer Islamist fanatics with kindness - moderate on moderate.

As the moderate card is played we should remember what Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan had to say on the subject; “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam….” The second component of the President’s West Point proclamation is denial. “Islam is one of the world’s great religions” we are told. We are led to believe that Jihad, Sharia, cultural irredentism, misogyny, and fifty years of terrorism have nothing to do with Muslims in general or Islam in particular. Never mind that prominent Muslims tell us otherwise so frequently that we can not or will not hear what they say. 

 The modest reinforcement in Afghanistan, constrained by an 18 month timeline, appears to be an attempt to replicate the “surge” strategy of Iraq. Here we should remember what President Obama said about such comparisons, “You never step in the same river twice.” Military Operations Research (MOR) has been looking at counter insurgent campaigns, including Afghanistan, for decades. MOR is an aggregate of disciplines that attempts to size forces and examine the variables that might lead to victory or stability. These disciplines include: statistics, probability theory, game theory, modeling, and simulation among others. Three variants have been applied to Afghanistan and insurgency in general: force to force comparisons, force to population models, and most recently, strategy to strategy comparisons. All three reach similar conclusions; numbers and strategy matter. In Afghanistan alone, 500,000 troops or police might be required; not for victory, just for stability. Or in the words of the RAND Corp. report, “The extremely low force ratio for Afghanistan, a country with a larger population than that of Iraq, shows the implausibility of current stabilization efforts by external forces.” Another analysis, looking at comparative strategy, simply says the insurgents will prevail. 

 These are polite ways of saying there are not enough US or allied troops in the field to do the job – nor is an adequate force likely to be deployed. This kind of candor is rare, indeed, especially for government contractors. The idea that the allies will fight al Qaeda and the Taliban while training and equipping 400,000 competent Afghan cops and soldiers, in 18 months, is nothing short of delusional. The majority of recruits would have to come from the Pashtun tribes, fighters most closely allied with the Taliban and their Arab sponsors. In short, General McChrystal probably underestimated the theater problem to begin with - and President Obama certainly did not give him what he wanted anyway. 

We have to assume that the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the White House are aware of the studies and have chosen to ignore their conclusions. As in “Kick the Can,” numbers matter and we appear to be playing a fool’s game. The allied expeditionary force has no edge or margin of error in South Asia. 

In 18 months, if catastrophe does not end the game early, we will still be asking “what is to be done” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we will still be playing word games with the larger problem in the Muslim world. For the moment, the policy sketched by President Obama at West Point on 1 December can fairly be characterized as an exit strategy with an expiration date.

I woke to the sound of taps on the radio this morning, a world turned upside down for someone who served in the military. Reveille usually begins a soldier’s day and taps ends it. Taps in another time was also the bugle call to signal lights out, literally; or the end of a soldier’s life, figuratively. Before I could unscramble all those images in the morning fog, Anna’s cell phone alarm chirped. I hit “OK” and the text read; “It’s Veterans Day”.

I had forgotten, but she never does. She, who never had a whiff of gun powder, reminds herself to remind me of why it’s important to remember. So here again in another year where sons and daughters are in harm’s way, we should remember and give thanks. Give thanks to those who serve, give thanks to those who have served, and give thanks to “those who sit and wait”. And we say a prayer for those who wait no more; those who went in harm’s way and never returned.

Yes, say a prayer too for those who died or were wounded needlessly at Fort Hood the other day. Men and women who had every right to believe they were safe getting ready to make us safe. The Fort Hood warriors were twice burdened; dying for “diversity” and want of leadership.

Indeed, in this wet cold winter of national uncertainty we should all pray that George Orwell’s tribute to soldiers echoes across every breakfast table; “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men (and women) stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm”.

For this we should all say thank you.

Army General George Casey, set a new standard for flag officer pandering while making excuses for domestic terror on the Sunday talk circuit on 8 November. On three separate networks he seemed to be more concerned with “diversity” than troop safety. Casey you may recall was the failing field commander in Iraq who, like William Westmoreland before him, was kicked upstairs, in the middle of a war, to be Army Chief of Staff. Last Sunday, Casey was seconded by the White House when the president cautioned “against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts”.

This is the same Barak Hussien Obama who had no trouble jumping to conclusions about the Cambridge Police and charging them with “stupidity” for arresting an abusive and uncooperative Harvard professor; a presidential pal .So let’s look at those “facts” about Major Nidal Malik Hasan before we jump to any conclusions.

Hasan was an American citizen of Palestinian descent. He received all of his higher education at taxpayer expense in exchange for a limited tour of duty with the Army. He is a middle aged field grade officer, a doctor, and psychiatrist. He spent most of his military career at the notorious Walter Reed Medical Center, in Washington, DC, counseling combat veterans. He likes to argue with patients, proselytize them, and passes out copies of the Koran. Off duty, he is fond of donning Islamic garb and patronizing a radical mosque five miles from the capitol. He is an outspoken critic of the “war on terror” which he preferred to call the war on Islam – contradicting his commander-in- chief. He is known to have publicly asserted that his first loyalty was to Islam, not America. He, or his name sake, posted defenses of suicide bombers on radical Islamic web sites. He attempted and possibly contacted an iman, a jihad recruiter, linked to al Qaeda. His automobile sported a bumper sticker “Allah is Love!” His bizarre behavior was reported to his superiors to no avail. Other colleagues say they kept silent out of fears that any criticism of Hasan would violate unwritten Army rules of political correctness. Army brass “kicked the can” and transferred Hasan to Fort Hood, Texas where he received orders for his first overseas deployment. In protest, he claimed that he could not kill other Muslims; yet, he apparently had no problem murdering kafirs. On 5 November he shot and killed 13 unarmed fellow soldiers, including a pregnant mother, and wounded 31 – shouting “allahu akbar” in Arabic (God is great) as the massacre progressed.

Consider those facts; but let’s not jump to any conclusions. While you’re at it, consider the litany of false narratives that have followed yet another mass killing in the name of “Allah”. First was the characterization of Hasan as a victim; a victim of trash talk and having his automobile keyed, surely a racist slur. Then there was the post traumatic stress defense (PTSD). When it was revealed that Hasan had never been deployed anywhere near combat; apologists suggested he was stressed by the stress of his patients, stress by association if you will. And then the “lone wolf” defense appeared where solo actors apparently have immunity from being characterized as terrorists.

Consider also the facts in the unclassified Global Terrorism Database (GTD) maintained under federal contract at the University of Maryland which now contains the gory details of over 80,000 terrorist “incidents”; yes that number is eighty thousand worldwide since 1970. Also consider the unclassified data base maintained by US State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism, which tracks annual casualty figures from terror. Those casualties have grown by a factor of 15 since tracking began. In 2008 alone nearly 60,000 were kidnapped, killed, or injured worldwide.

And before we jump to any conclusions, we, like Senator Joe Lieberman, need the answers to some questions. How did Casey get to be a general? Where did he get the notion that diversity is more important than national security or the safety of the troops? How did Nadal Malik Hasan get a commission in the US Army? Who thought he should be promoted? How does the Army get to play “kick the can” or “pass the buck” with dangerous incompetents? And finally, how much longer do we ignore what Islamists and terrorists so obviously have in common?

Consider all of this before you come to any conclusions. And then add the Fort Hood slaughter to the data bases, those reservoirs of facts we are so keen to keep – and ignore. And then make the number of atrocities we are willing to tolerate, or excuse, eighty thousand and one.

General George Casey repeated the same mantra as he made the rounds on 8 November; “If our diversity becomes a casualty (of the Fort Hood massacre) then that’s worse”. Worse than what, general? We want to know what in the warped world of political correctness is worse than putting a bullet through an innocent pregnant girl and 43 of her innocent fellow soldiers.

Caroline Glick's 15 Oct piece in the Jerusalem Post, ”How Turkey was Lost”, is a cautionary tale about confusing elections with democracy. She describes Ankara’s back sliding since the election of Recep Tuyyip Erdogan, head of the formerly outlawed Islamist AKP. Since Erdogan came to power in 2002, Turkey has given Hamas a reception usually reserved for heads of state, eliminated the visa requirements for Syrian travelers to Turkey, and now cancelled air exercises with Israel and begun joint military maneuvers with Syria.

Glick seems to believe that the Turks have cast their lot with the Shiite Crescent. If what she suggests is true; we now have an Islamist fox in the NATO henhouse. Can membership in the European Union be far behind? Turkey has long been held up as an exemplar of a model Islamic state; secular, moderate, democratic, and collegial. The inherent contradictions of an “Islamic republic” may be coming home to roost - putting the lie to secular, moderate, and collegial.

The irony of elections in a country with an Islamist majority is that it often represents the camel’s nose under the tent; opening the door for opportunists to hold the one election that may be the last. On this score, Algeria evokes hot flashes of déjà vu. Islamists may be fanatics, but they're not morons; they will use Western institutions to undo apostates and infidels. Such are the vicissitudes of democracy.

And such is the dilemma also in Afghanistan; we have a choice between the corruptible Karzai and the incorruptible Taliban, Mullah Omar. Not too many good options in this neighborhood. If Omar ever ran in a UN supervised election; he might win in a landslide. The big problem with Afghanistan, like Iraq before, is its potential for distraction.

The only accomplishment of elections in Iraq was to reverse the sectarian poles – and assist Iraq in becoming the second Shiite nation in the Crescent, another potential ally for theocratic Tehran. Land-locked Afghanistan is not an immediate, or should we say proximate, threat to America or Israel. Afghanistan has six neighbors; five of which are Muslim states, all with a vested interest in neutering the Taliban and al Qaeda. As Bernard Lewis has reminded us so many times; Islamic fundamentalism is more of a threat to dar al Islam (the Muslim world) than it is to us. Elections in Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan may prove to be meaningless.

Another UN supervised circus proves nothing. We should turn nation building over to the natives. If we can't influence electoral probity in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or the Emirates; why do we think we can do it in Kabul? With Turkey now backsliding, the European Union pandering, and the White House apologizing; we have to ask ourselves why another American kid should die in any Muslim backwater to underwrite another election. Indeed, we need to know why we need to save Islam from itself.

The difference between the Bush and Obama brands of Islamic electoral illusion is negligible. Glick's analysis of Turkish irredentism is a cautionary tale. Turkey, on a larger scale, is similar to Algeria; Islamists will use elections to come to power, but their objective is not pluralism or any notion of democracy as we know it.

At the outset, let me explain my bias. I hate gerunds; and, I don’t care much for people who use them, those who take perfectly good nouns or turn them into verbs. Like euphemisms, gerunds obscure rather than illuminate; or worse still, are coined to impress not express. Indeed, many gerunds are nothing more than specialized jargon; code speak among the initiates. The education and psychology professions are especially fond of gerunds, words like “parenting”. We do many things to and for our children; we feed them, we cloth them, we bath them, we play with them, we change their knickers, we train them (as in toilet), we teach them (as in reading, writing, and arithmetic), we try to develop good morals by example, and we pray daily that they don’t grow up to be serial killers or socialists. Pardon any redundancies.

None of this rich context is captured by the word “parenting”. Parenting conveys two meanings; either your plumbing works or you have a good lawyer. Any idiot can be a parent. Adding an “ing” to what you do to your kids will not make you a good one. It doesn’t take a village and certainly it doesn’t take government at any level. Raising children requires the deuce that produced, leavened by common sense. The first full measure of devotion is time – your time. If we must have a verb form, “raise” or rear are much more descriptive terms. Raise suggests that we take something that is less and make it more.

Surely we all hope that all children will grow to become competent, functional adults. Yet, as the need to “raise” suggests, the beginning is not auspicious. Indeed, an infant is a loud, dependant, demanding, inarticulate, mean spirited, pink mass of wet libido – and they don’t smell that hot either. Or if we must use some psychobabble; a kid is Id wrapped in a very annoying ego. They eat, they make noise, they defecate, make more noise; and then, thank God, they sleep. And when they wake up again, they want you to change their napkins. In the naked interlude between wiped and rewrapped, they might pee on you – and laugh. The road from the joys of infancy to butcher, baker, or candlestick maker is lumpy and long. No mammal or primate in the animal kingdom spends more time in the womb or more time tied to apron strings.

Nonetheless, maturity is the process of moving from me to thee. Socialization is the process of going from taking a dump in your diaper, to sending your dump to a treatment plant. Education is the process of balancing your accounts between your ears instead of on your fingers and toes. Culture is the process of being able to distinguishing between Botox and Beaujolais. In life, process contains all the meaning we will ever need; we’re all headed for the same place. How we get there, competence if you will, is what makes us different – that and lipstick. Thank you, Sarah.

All of which brings us to the subject at hand, another “how to” book on raising children; Unconditional Parenting; Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn. We have already dealt with the title now let’s see if there’s any thing to salvage in the subtitle and text.

We might think of the whole process of maturation as a process of diminishing pleasure and increasing pain. No one wants to walk the dog before bed, but it’s less painful than scraping a wet pile off that nice Persian rug in the hall. Here we are talking about the pain for gain or achievement, not necessarily a bad thing in itself. Kohn is not too crazy about any process of rewards and punishments; he thinks such things are about manipulation and control, as if control were a bad thing.

The fatal assumption here is utopian. Control is what pack animals do. Civilization is the process of establishing norms; controlling behavior and manipulating the environment. Life is a compromise between what we want and what we need. The end game is simple; do you want your kids to live in your basement with a cell phone, a video game, and an I-Pod or do you need them to get out to the mall like the rest of us? A world without rewards and punishment is a lot like scoreless sports. Indeed, a baseball analogy might help.

Not long ago I watched several kids in front of my house attempting to play whiffle ball; one was an older lad who was here for the summer. The visitor didn’t seem to know much about the rules. When he finally hit the ball, he ran to third, reasoning and arguing that the rules were “stupid” because third was closer to home than first or second. I couldn’t fault his logic. He also argued that a foul ball could not be a strike because you are already punished by not being allowed to run to first. No double jeopardy in his version of baseball.

As the locals became more frustrated, I tried to intervene as an umpire or adult arbiter of the rules, to no avail. That idyllic summer evening ended badly with most of kids muttering their way home while the visiting kid complained loudly that no one liked him, no one wanted to play with him. Clearly he came from a place where argumentation and tedious rationalizations were the order of the day. All interactions with peers and adults were some kind of negotiation where anything arbitrary might be skewered on his brand of logic. By this metric, he was successful. There were no arbitrary rules or restrictions, no give and take – and apparently no friends.

He was born this way, as are we all. His problem now is arrested development. He still thinks he is the center of the universe; someone is still changing his knickers. He has not even started the trip from me to thee. His universe has been padded with acceptance or “unconditional love” and his mind given over to tedious arguments. For him, reason is not just a tool; it is an instrument of torture. Every contact with an arbitrary world requires some semi chaotic confrontation. His ego has been cultivated at the expense of his character.

At the advanced age of eleven, he does not know that life is a team sport. With no boundaries at home; everything outside that bubble is an obstacle. This is Mr. Kohn’s new world, unconditional love and reason triumphant over rewards and punishment. Unfortunately, the fact that you might have unconditional affection for someone or something does not make them loveable – certainly not for the rest of us. The real value of “unconditional” support is when it is granted by peers not indulgent parents.

Kohn’s understanding of reason is another cipher. He seems to confuse it with collaboration, discussion, or consultation – as if these things were synonymous. Reason is rule based thinking, nothing more; philosophers from Aristotle to Pascal to Marx have understood this. Reason is not the discussion of alternatives; it is the application of rules. Balancing your checkbook and calculating the load bearing capacity of a toilet seat are examples. If you believe the rules are arbitrary, you do so at your peril. We live in rule based societies; our language, grammar, laws, science, religion, and even our manners are governed by rules. We do not belch in a quiet church nor do we pick our nose at the sushi bar.

The author also seems to be more than a revisionist on the subject. He not only believes that children can reason, he seems to think that by some magic kids can reason their way to the correct answer with more support and less control. Someone must have slept through Piaget. Almost every society on the face of the earth has some version of a coming of age ritual. The significance of these rituals is the recognition that children are not adults. Kids require experience and training before they are burdened with responsibility and choices. This age varies from place to place, but for the most part, the spread is from eight to fourteen years of age. In many cultures, it is called “the age of reason”. Other echoes of this universal wisdom are legal driving, drinking, voting ages and at least ten years of mandatory schooling? The purpose of all this tradition and attendant controls is the near universal belief that youngsters must learn to follow before they can solo - or be expected to lead. Nobody follows the nitwit who goes to third before rounding first and second. Parents who encourage such misguided independence and mischief ought to be given a time out.

The pee-wee league may give every player a trophy, but in an adult world, rewards are earned. Allowing children to make their own choices, when most are clearly not equipped to do so, is another nugget of new age nonsense. Choice is one of the rewards of success. Achievement, not affection, is the arbiter of choices, for children and adults. If you are good at something, you get to choose all the rewards that success begets. Only an idiot will give a good grade, a place on a sports team, a good job or a promotion just to make you feel better.

Being good at something is more important than feeling good. No kid is well served by parents who worry more about feelings than competence. In the end all losers feel bad about themselves. Love is not enough. And feeling bad about your self is not necessarily a bad thing. No pain, no gain; as the jocks are wont to say. Indeed, regret is the engine of progress. Without regrets no change is possible. If you can’t follow the rules, if you don’t learn to play, the ump gets to say “out” or toss your sorry butt off the field – talk about feeling bad.

Kohn also tells us that “because I said so” is never a good reason to give the rug rats; we must be less controlling and more supportive – less “to them” and more “with them”. To this we should all say balderdash; or maybe two other four letter words would do. Consistency is not just the hobgoblin of little minds; that and repetition is the foundation of all learning. For those who don’t believe in consistency and control, I recommend story time.

Tell or read stories to your children. After a while give them a choice of what they would like to hear. Nine out of ten times kids will ask for their favorite, over and over. Try changing Goldie to a brunette. You will be met with a barrage of indignation; the kid wants to hear the original, not some revision. Ask your children what they would like to eat, if its buttered noodles or macaroni and cheese, chances are he or she will eat it seven days a week if allowed. Left to their own devices many youngsters develop a kind of gastronomic autism, the symptom of which is the ready made litany of things they “will not eat”. Unrestricted choice is the villain behind every autocrat of the breakfast table.

Remember when the little dears learned a new word or sound and you had to hear it a thousand times a day. On such days mothers contemplate the virtues of vasectomies. Kids need controls and they actually seek consistency and predictability; like Linus’s blanket; it’s a comfort. If you don’t give or create sensible boundaries, they will create their own.

I know a guy with two and a half degrees who is still living with his parents and two birds; he’s fifty years of age. Success for this guy will be two dead parents; and the fruits of their labors. He created his own boundaries.

The number of recognized and diagnosable psychological aliments has grown a hundred fold since 1950. Indeed, many practitioners claim the number of autistic kids is one in a hundred and the number of children with a “deficit” disorder of some sort is one in ten. Maybe our kids are catching these things from public toilet seats, or maybe it is something closer to home. Or maybe today’s behavioral problem is tomorrow’s pathology.

This new age epidemic of juvenile neurosis suggests that medical science has given us longer life just so we might be tortured by psychiatry. Yet, the aim of psychology, like litigation, is to keep the ball in play. You may win or lose; therapists and litigators get paid either way. And the pharmacies are doing nicely too, thank you. Those who shun “controls” for their little darlings seldom reject the chemical variety. Indeed, “controlled substance” is now our most infamous oxymoron.

Contrary to what Kohn and others suggest; rewards, punishments, and controls for children are good things. Indeed, they are pillars of civilization. Flooding a child’s world with choices is not a good thing; most kids do not have the experience or maturity to deal with too many options. And choice and freedom are not synonymous; true freedom comes from success. Indeed, success equates to options. Feeling good is a really a function of being good – at something. An immature kid, with too many choices and no controls, can only become one thing; a lord of the flies.

Dr. Gordon Hahn’s analysis of the Caucuses Jihad in the Moscow Times (27 Apr 09) is a timely addition to the literature on a growing world-wide movement. Unfortunately, he is preaching to the choir. The Russian government and the Russian people seem to have a realistic contemporary and historical appreciation of the threat. The current American administration and American Press do not share that view. Hahn’s thoughts would probably not see the light of day in the United States. Such assessments are not politically correct.

The Obama administration and a compliant domestic Press have officially proscribed such terms as jihad, Islamist and terrorist. Our overseas combat fronts are now to be known as “overseas contingencies” and the enemy is not to be associated with Islam, the religion of “peace”. As everyone knows, the theology and culture that most terrorists share has nothing to do with what they have in common. These Orwellian contortions suggest that the US crisis management team thinks they can jawbone their way out of the gathering storm. Surely this is a great comfort to the jihad clergy and their many “fringe” followers.

Russia and America may cooperate on the reduction of nuclear weapons stocks, but this will be driven by mutual strategic and economic self-interest. Indeed, we both have enough weapons for overkill. We do not need to make the “rubble bounce”.

The Islam bomb is another kettle of fish. The Sunni sect already has the weapon and Pakistan is one bullet away from theocracy. The Shia sect already has the theocracy and Iran is a few tests away from a bomb. Both factions have targets in common; the first ground zero for either would be Israel. I see no evidence of a strategy of “mutual assured deterrence” in Arabic or Islamic literature. The prospects for any meaningful cooperation between Russia and America on theocratic or emerging nuclear threats are dim as long as America believes the hazard comes from an insignificant “fringe group”.

Our current dilemma reminds me of Blaise Pascal’s gambit; a risk assessment method that should be applied to national security. If we overestimate the threat and it does not materialize; we lose nothing but treasure and possibly some credibility. If we underestimate the threat, we could lose everything. Underestimates are always dangerous and frequently fatal.

Bernard Lewis at Princeton, arguably America’s most prominent Islamic scholar, has said that a “dark future” awaits the world if it fails to deal with the spreading threat of militant Islamic theocracy. Dark indeed! That future of which Dr. Lewis speaks is a return to a medieval world, a second Dark Age.

Another dinosaur just bit the dust. After nearly a quarter century with the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr., like Ben Bradlee before him, has been kicked upstairs with a sinecure. Old editors never die; they just become vice presidents without portfolio. Downie has been making the rounds on the gas bag circuit to flack his first mystery novel. The real mystery here is why ageing journalists think they can make the transition from advocacy to art on the 19th hole.

Inevitably in these soft ball sessions, the subject of journalism gets more play than the book promotion. And so it should be. What editors say or permit others to say every day is ultimately more important than any permanent seduction by fiction.

Downie (and his colleague Howard Kurtz) express a heliographic view of the state of print journalism in general and his tenure at the Post in particular. Like Bradlee before him, Downie seems to be incapable of reflection about his profession or his performance at the top of the fish wrap food chain. Hal Raines at the NY Times suffered from similar delusions before he got fired. These guys presided over the collapse of journalism as we knew it. In less than a generation, the ‘mainstream’ has flushed itself downstream. This is a reality that they choose to ignore, or minimize.

Instead, they celebrate those Pulitzers and gold medals; overlooking that these media prizes have become incestuous; a kind of Special Olympics or T-Ball for the politically correct. Even Janet Cooke has a Pulitzer. Jason Blair, Stone Phillips, and Dan Rather weren’t far behind.

The daily circulation of the Post is down to a half million and their daily on-line hits are less than that. Other urban dailies like the NY Times and the Los Angeles Times are suffering similar losses. Network and Public Television news have comparable woes. No network news broadcast makes the top 20 of most watched television programs. Indeed, reality retreads like American (nee British) Idol have more than five times the daily viewers of any prime time news broadcast.

Yet in the news and commentary business not all the news is bad. A small college broad sheet (six to eight pages) called Imprimis has a circulation of nearly two million. The Fox Network and the Excellence in Broadcasting (EIB) Network are expanding exponentially as the “mainstream” slides into the crapper. Fox News appears to be up 26% since November of 08’. Indeed, a single daily broadcast of Rush Limbaugh now reaches 15-30 million listeners depending on which statistics you trust. Even Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says that Limbaugh’s numbers may have doubled since the last presidential election. Limbaugh’s ratings are even more astounding because his mid-day broadcast would hardly qualify as “prime time”.

If you listen to Mister Downie and others you would think that the decline of traditional Media was due to some  vague amalgam of digital competition, ad revenue flight and cultural flux. The explanation that the dinosaurs are unwilling to explore is the possibility that rust bucket journalists are trying to sell us a product that nobody wants to buy anymore. For traditional scribblers and broadcasters, denial is still a river in North Africa.

There are only two reasons for people to support any public institution; trust and regret. Without trust, no relationship is possible; without regret, no progress is possible. Mainstream journalists have lost our trust because they are biased, incestuous, and lazy.

Let’s start with bias. According to Ben Bradlee, John Kennedy’s dangerous liaisons with gangster gals and Hollywood bimbos was not news, yet according to Leonard Downie, a single vintage Bob Dole affair made the grade. According to Howard Kurtz, Senator Bob Packwood’s fanny pinching was news but Bill Clinton’s sexual exploitation of an intern could be defended as private behavior between consenting adults. For the Post, Dick Cheney’s use of the “F” word was news, but the Obama campaign’s use of the “C” word to describe Sarah Palin was ignored. Don Imus was run out of Dodge for using the expression “nappy ho’s” while Senator Byrd’s use of the expression “white niggers” hardly merits any ink no less editorial indignation.

More currently, the recent blitz of euphemisms from the White House has been reported and repeated uncritically. Debt and deficits are now “investments”; pork and earmarks are “stimuli”; war is an “overseas contingency;” and the enemy is now to be called “a radical fringe” not terrorists or Islamic theocrats. This is the Sally Quinn school of Journalism at its worst. Only fawning sycophants would not hold such Orwellian nonsense up to ridicule. Yet many Press spokesmen still claim that Media bias is a “myth”. Indeed! A myth is not something that does not occur so much as it is something that happens over and over again.

Incest is also part of the problem. Media stars and political pimps are interchangeable; as if you could be a political hack one day and then an objective journalist the next. The so called “journalists” in this category are legendary; Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, George Stephanopoulos, Dan Rather, and Tony Snow – just to name the celebutantes.

Distaff journalists are the worst. Daytime television may have lowered the collective IQ of American women by twenty points in the last ten years. One day Katie Couric or Barbara Walters is interviewing a psychic or a transvestite and then the next evening we are to take them seriously as they report real news? Oprah, the doyenne of bimbo television, recently hosted a segment on an eight year girl who was having sex with dogs. The line between information and entertainment is not obscured; it’s gone!

Incest is evident at almost every news round table, all unalterably populated by the same politicians who say nothing and the same pundits who will say anything – usually all at once. The hosts of the venerable Meet the Press actually boast about how often the same guests appear, as if repetition were a virtue. Most journalists who pose as commentators have little or no expertise, yet they pontificate with abandon on almost anything. Your panel gets extra points if it recruits an androgenous, bi-coastal, cross dressing member of an approved racial minority who limps or votes Republican.

The final nail in the mainstream coffin is inertia. A less generous synonym might be sloth. Newspaper editors and network producers are too lazy to seek new voices or real expertise or real diversity. The first hired, usually an idealistic Liberal, is the last fired. The  cold dead hand of tenure lays on all decaying enterprises. Editors seem to behave like pollsters; it’s always easiest to go back to the people who answer; or better still, give the answers you like to hear. Janet Cooke and Dan Rather could be poster children here.

The internet has had a profound impact on print and broadcast media. Folks like Bradlee, Downie, and Raines can no longer cook the books without lighting up an indignant blogosphere. Guys like Downie have been poor stewards because their editorial judgment is on a par with their business acumen, or lack of it. On the one hand, the NY Times and the "wannabe" Washington Post claim to national newspapers of record. At the same time their staff, editorial, and story selection policies pander to liberal urban elites and the larger entitlements lobby. The excluded middle hasn't stopped reading, they have been abandoned; they have been gifted to the Right.

Ironically, while loopy Left leaning editors and producers are putting traditional Media outlets in the toilet; they have at the same time created a this new phenomenon on the Right. If there were any justice, Rush Limbaugh would send a sympathy card to Leonard Downie Jr. and thank him and his colleagues for their services to the EIB Network. Say what you will about the thunder on the Right; none of these guys are dumb enough to patronize, insult or abandon their audience.

This discussion of Fascism and the American Left reminds me of Bill Clinton squirming under oath; trying to parse his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Everyone pretty much knew what happened but we wanted every salacious detail. Ironically, the microscopic scrutiny and clinical detail eventually backfired and made the pathetic sympathetic - a villain morphed into a victim.

The parsing of Fascism and Totalitarianism in the wake of Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, is starting to reflect a similar if not tedious potential. The danger for conservatives is two fold; the arguments are a distraction from the real threat and perceived rhetorical excess makes it look like conservatives might be adopting the tactics of the Left. The wrong label is often accurate, correct and counterproductive at the same time.

The late great semantic squabble over the word Islamofascism is illustrative. There may be similarities between fascists and orthodox Islam but this pairing is more notable for differences. Theocracy is not just another variant of Fascism. There are many kinds of Fascism which might be considered more benign than malignant; the Roman, Spanish and Argentine types come to mind. There are no benign Theocracies (see Taliban). Sharia is a modern synonym for Medievalism; theocracy is the polar opposite of Democracy.

Neither National Socialism, nor Communism, nor secular Fascism is a growth business. Even the ascendant American Left eschews these labels. In contrast, Islam and many of its many medieval sects are growing like wildfire. Comparing Islamists to old school villains is not just a semantic problem; it is not simply a distraction. Indeed, it is dangerous!

Every competent national security estimate has some degree of prudent inflation. The rationale is simple. If you overstate the threat and it does not materialize, you have lost nothing but treasure and some credibility. If you underestimate, and the worst comes to pass, you could lose everything. Indeed, all sensible national security analysis should contain a political version of Pascal’s Gambit. The expected value of belief should always outweigh the potential return of skepticism.

The real threat today comes from within and without. Domestically, democratic capitalism is under siege. Democracy and capitalism are not the same things, yet one is impossible without the other. Internationally, we are at war with theocratic Islamists. To call the enemy Fascists or, worse still, a “fringe group” doesn’t just miss the point; it changes the subject. Underestimating your opponents is a chronic if not fatal disease.

The most worrisome development is convergence. The American Left and the Islamic Right seemed to have joined forces – if their targets provide any clues. Both movements have democratic, capitalist, Judaic-Christian and European/American law and values in their cross hairs. We need to keep our eye on them and the ball.

On the battlefield, the deadliest threats come from within or over the horizon. More soldiers are laid low by bugs than bullets. And when the bullets fly; the greatest danger comes from an unseen enemy; mines, artillery or bombs - airborne or remote controlled devices. We seldom see or hear things that wound and kill. Too often the last thing a modern warrior hears is silence – or the shout “incoming”!

The internal and external threats facing America today require more than a shout. Internally, if we can believe the ‘experts’, we are faced with the prospects of immediate economic collapse or a slow and painful hemorrhage. Indeed, we have exhumed Karl Marx and Maynard Keynes to orchestrate the assault on prosperity. Our strategy, as Daniel Hannan so aptly put it, seems to be to ‘spend our way out of recession and borrow our way out of debt;’ squeezing the productive and engorging the ‘needy’ in the process. The tactics include vilifying Wall Street and industry while funding the invective and ire of the angry and underemployed. If we had to give this political strategy a name we could call it piñata politics; rewarding every frivolous constituent whim with public monies and justifying them as “investments”.

Class warfare is the only way to describe the rapidly escalating economic struggle on the home front. With one Party in control of the legislative and administrative apparatus, the domestic outlook is grim. Their internal tactics include a kind of entitlements blitzkrieg where every social need, real or imagined, is to be funded as rapidly as possible before any opposition can mobilize. So called “shovel ready projects” will be the first to benefit; no matter that those shovels will not be carried by Americans.

So far these shock tactics are working; a Democrat Congress is plowing money off Capitol Hill before the authorization bills can be read. Instead of letting markets do what they do best, all moral hazards have been cast aside. The federal government has gone into the business of buying businesses. In the process, white collars are set against blue collars; insurance and financials are too important and too well connected to fail while blue collar auto workers seem to be disposable. How an incontinent government oligarchy could possibly manage a swirling private economy has yet to be explained. The politicians who created this mess are fingering all the usual suspects while granting immunity to them selves. “Mismanagement” of the previous administration is the mantra du jour. Heretofore; big government was merely a problem; now it looks more like a fatal disease.

Externally, where those real bullets are flying, the outlook is worse. We are now told that we “are not at war with Islam” and the war, if there is one, should be called “overseas contingency operations” (nee War on Terror). Beyond abusing the English language, these euphemisms don’t just beg the question, they are designed to change the subject. If we are not a war with orthodox Islamists, who or what is the enemy? So far the specifics amount to a vague target called “fringe ideology”, not further defined. If “fringe” is supposed to imply small, let’s do the math.

The Muslim population world-wide is approximately 1.6 billion. If the radical fringe is only five percent; that’s 80 million people, or a number equal to 25 percent of the US population. If the radical fringe is only one percent; the number of potential combatants is still 16 million; that would be a figure at least ten times the size of the US military. Opinion surveys in the Muslim world consistently show a majority of Muslims are sympathetic to terrorists as long as the targets are the Western democracies. These surveys also reveal that this same population is overwhelmingly anti-Israel if not anti-Semitic. If this were the only sentiment the Muslim “fringe” had in common with fascists; it’s enough.

Anti-Semitism may be the least of our worries. The majority Muslim population does not share our core political or cultural values. The great divide is the separation of church and state or more precisely, the lack of separation. The anti-democratic preeminence of religious law is not a “fringe” belief among Muslims; Sharia is a threat to internal apostates and foreign infidels alike. The notion of a secular Islamic society is an oxymoron. So-called secular Muslim governments, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan for example, serve at the whim of generals and warlords; such societies are always one bullet away from theocracy.

In the cultural arena, the issue of human rights for women is not a divide between East and West; it’s a chasm. Do we need to review the long list of atrocities; gang rapes, genital mutilations, girl school massacres and female suicide bombers? All committed in God’s name. Suffice it to say that “honor” killings, where the victim is usually female, have now moved as far west as Michigan. Misogyny is more than the moral equivalent of racism. Even if a majority of Muslim women are resigned to their fate, is this a justification democracies should live with?

President Obama’s declaration that “we are not at war with Islam” is a rhetorical strawman, a distortion of reality. A significant portion of the Islamic world is at war with us. Their targets include apostates (i.e. Islamic collaborators), Israel, the European democracies and the United States, also known as the “Great Satan”. Obama’s Muslim “fringe” and their supporters make such declarations routinely. This Jihad is political, cultural and lethal. Call their strategy “cake and eat it”. So-called ‘moderate’ Islamists ritually condemn violence and terror on the one hand, and with the other hand provide financial, political and moral support to the bomb throwers.

Stalin used to speak of American Communists as “useful idiots”. Islamists probably have a similar belief about the American Left. The Muslim religious Right and the American political Left are now joined by strategy and target. The targets include capitalism, secular democracy, Israel and American exceptionalism. Internally, democratic capitalism is not just under siege but the domestic crisis has provided the cover for creeping Socialism to become a communal stampede.

Externally, the shooting war with “fringe” Muslims has been relegated to second chair by a blizzard of euphemisms; new ways to mask an ugly fight; a war that’s likely to get worse. A premature withdrawal from Iraq and an imprudent escalation in Afghanistan is not a formula for military success on either front – just to fulfill a campaign promise. This is the kind of change that only “fringe” fanatics and social “activists” can believe in.

There is no industry, except maybe women’s cosmetics, that makes more false or misleading claims than the food industry. The most egregious are the words natural and organic. The first has no useful meaning and the second is has more to do with ideology than nutrition. The ‘natural’ train left the station when our ancestors turned from hunting and gathering to herding and farming.

Since then we have been altering plants and livestock to give us the most productive food economy in the history of history. The first requirement for any government is to create the conditions for the marketplace to feed the populace. This is the baseline definition of national security. After Uncle puts a chicken in every pot then things like panty hose, public television, Viagra, U Tube and Sally Quinn are possible.

There are many nouns that might be adorned with the adjective ‘natural’; rats, bubonic plague, ticks, lime disease, cockroaches, mosquitoes, yellow fever, poison ivy and snake bite - just to name a few. ‘Organic’ is pretty much an extension of the natural nonsense. The problem with the organic movement is twofold; there’s no way to prove or monitor what they claim; and then there’s the suspicion that ‘organic’ is just another word for higher price. Food chains have already jumped on this gambit. Yet, even with a home chemistry kit, there is no practical way for consumers to distinguish between that which is raised organically and that which is not. This food fad exploits our insecurities about pollution; the real science of organic is “trust me”.

At the moment, the organic community is at war with itself; industrial organic (Whole Foods) versus boutique farmers and neighborhood vendors. This is a classic “holier than thou” food fight. By comparison, religious dietary law is a testament to experience and common sense – cause and effect, if you will. In the not too dismal past, pork and shellfish that fed and bred in an unsanitary environment were dangerous to eat. Long before modern science, pesticides, and hygiene; observant (pardon the pun) leaders recognized the threat. Rabbis and priests couldn’t alter the behavior of pigs or lobsters, but they could alter the law. The purpose of all law, after all, is to protect the flock.

Surely no sensible person who eats or drinks celebrates pollution. Yet, the idea that the world will be fed without genetic engineering, chemicals or pesticides is just as threatening if not nihilistic. A country with a free market and a free press tends to correct any excess; moderation in all things, including moderation.

The charge of the natural and organic zealots is that somehow traditional food producers and processors have failed us. There is some truth to this; but their sins have more to do with taste than toxins. Indeed, food has been engineered to improve appearance and shelf life at the expense of flavor. Taste and nutrition is reason enough to patronize small farmer’s and their markets. But, all this blather about natural and organic is just another marketing gimmick.

Food quality fights are just an extension of the quality of life debate. For most of us, this ship has sailed. Ignorance and indifference are soul mates; we don’t know much about food or how it’s produced and as long as enough is available, we don’t care. This apathy is the divide that separates urban and country life styles.

Farmers don’t like arrogant urban yuppies; and city dwellers sneer at denim clad bumpkins. Urbanites who presume to lecture farmers about toxins and pollution are often the same folks who allow their children to graze at McDonald’s thrice a week; all the while thinking that the odd foray to the farmer’s market or Whole Foods balances the scale.

Ironically, it was farmers who made cities possible. Agriculture was the death knell for nomads, hunters and gatherers. Some anthropologists also argue that when primates started eating meat and vegetables, the die was cast. Omnivores don’t need as big a stomach as vegetarians and do not need to spend that much time looking for a meal, thereby clearing the way for a larger brain. Indeed, we might amend the Cartesian adage “I think therefore I am” to “I eat therefore I think”. Unfortunately, too much thinking seems to be as big a problem as too much bad food.