"The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie," Klavan writes. "I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace." Amen, brother.

As Klavan notes, modern liberalism is suffused with lies. These are not the lies that politicians or ordinary people tell to gain short-term electoral or material advantage. They are self-deluding lies based on a happy face, utopian view of the world that is largely at odds with reality. These lies are demonstrably false, and the programs that flow from them have been disastrous. But they make liberals feel good, and therein lies their power. For liberals it's all about the process, not the results:

With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power.

You can see this in action when conservative politicians and judges come to Washington. Those who soften their views and morph into "moderates" get praised by the mainstream media for their thoughtfulness and ability to learn. On the other hand, those who remain true to their convictions -- Justices Scalia and Thomas come to mind -- are excoriated as unrepentant knuckle draggers out of step with enlightened opinion. It takes a tough, self-confident persona to withstand this kind of peer pressure.

We like to think that we live in a coarse, brutally frank age. Our elites no longer tour ghettos and battlefields while holding scented handkerchiefs over their noses. But the snobbery and effeteness of our ruling class is as strong as ever. The only difference is that those sweet-smelling handkerchiefs have been replaced with sweet-sounding language.

In his op-ed, titled U.S. can endure an ‘unfavorable outcome’ in the Iraq war, Logan argues that the consequences of a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq have been overblown by the Bush Administration. In particular he claims that a withdrawal would not necessarily damage American credibility around the world and have little impact on the prospects for democratic reform in the Middle East. These arguments make little sense and embody several dangerous assumptions.

Not surprisingly, Logan sees Iraq as another Vietnam. In Vietnam, he notes, “tens of thousands of Americans died in the pursuit not of victory but of saving face.” In other words, they died to preserve American credibility despite arguments made by “wiser voices” within the Johnson Administration that the costs of defeat were manageable. Logan implies that credibility is an illegitimate goal in foreign affairs, something that only vain, egotistical and callous leaders pursue. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As military scholars and historians from Lao Tzu to Victor Davis Hanson have observed, wars are fundamentally about national will. Weapons and tactics are obviously important, but in the end they cannot compensate for a loss of national will. Indeed, the ultimate goal of all warfare is to impress upon the enemy the futility of resistance. When one side loses the will to fight, the war is over.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. was engaged in a global rivalry with the Soviet Union. The Soviets were watching closely to see if we had the stomach to defend our beliefs and our allies, as were other countries around the world. The humiliating pullout of U.S. troops emboldened our enemies everywhere and led in short order to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran four years later. We’re still dealing with the fallout from those events.

Even if the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was “manageable” for Americans, it was a catastrophe for people in the region. The chaos spawned by America’s retreat led to the establishment of a totalitarian regime in Vietnam, mass executions, re-education camps, the boat people and genocide in Cambodia. Not a word about that from Logan.

No one can say for certain what the effects of a similar American defeat in Iraq would be. But they would most certainly be bad for the U.S. and horrible for people in the Middle East. Veteran New York Times reporter John Burns, recently appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show and noted that 3,700 people had died during one recent month in Iraq. He then observed that it the U.S. departed, Shiite death squads would probably execute at least that many people in one night. Logan has nothing to say about this, either.

Logan concedes that the U.S. would lose credibility if it left Iraq. But that’s O.K. with him:

This argument is partially true, as it was in Vietnam. Al Qaeda will indeed attempt to link our withdrawal to a larger narrative that includes President Ronald Reagan's retreat from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and our departure from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" incident. But unless our national leadership allowed our failure in Iraq to call into question other commitments, this damage certainly could be mitigated.

Any administration extricating U.S. troops from Iraq would have to send the message that the U.S. military would now refocus its full attention on al Qaeda. As for other commitments, why would we allow anyone to conclude that our failure in Iraq had any bearing on them? In withdrawing, the U.S. should answer questions of credibility loudly and clearly. Further, demonstrating that we recognize the error of our ways would indicate a seriousness of purpose and a national magnanimity that have been lacking throughout the Bush years.

As for Logan’s argument that leaving Iraq would free us to focus on al Qaeda, this guy might have something to say about that.

Logan’s other argument is that cutting and running from Iraq won’t impact the prospects for democracy in the region because democracy never had a chance in the Middle East:

The other protest from war supporters is that withdrawal would sound a death knell for the prospect of liberal democratic reform in the Middle East -- a reversed version of the domino theory. But that objection implies that liberal democracy could sweep across the Islamic world if U.S. forces are kept in Iraq. In every location where elections have been held in the Muslim world since the Iraq war -- whether Egypt, the Palestinian territories or Bahrain -- something close to the worst possible result has emerged.

If you want to know more about Logan you can read his bio at the Cato Institute’s web site. He looks like he’s about 24 years old. He’s also a member of something called the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, which describes itself as “a group of scholars, policy makers and concerned citizens united by our opposition to an American empire.” Yet the Star-Ledger chose to feature him at the top of its editorial page.

It’s like this everyday at the Star-Ledger, which makes the Minneapolis Star Tribune look like The National Review. This is what New Jersey voters get day in and day out: a toxic stew of Bush hatred, anti-Americanism and defeatism, served up local coverage of petty criminals and lots and lots of classified advertising. The voters need to shake off these chains and tell their Congressmen that they want victory, not defeat, in this war.

Taxi sex alert on migrants

IMMIGRANTS may have to wait a year to get a taxi licence after police revealed that almost all of the suspects in 24 reported driver sex assaults since June were newcomers to Australia.

The Taxi Council of SA also wants to educate immigrant applicants about "the Australian way of life" before they get behind the wheel, amid fears that cultural differences are linked to the problem.

In the latest incident, a woman aged in her 20s told police she was sexually assaulted by a driver in the city early yesterday. She said she had caught a taxi from Sugar nightclub in Rundle St about 3.30am and had been taken to Waymouth St, where the assault had taken place.

Since June, five drivers have been arrested for sex offences. Officers from Operation Console, established to investigate the increasing number of reports and complaints, are looking at several more cases.

Police also revealed that 90 per cent of suspects had overseas backgrounds. Taxi Council of SA chief executive Peter Johns said yesterday his organisation was considering a proposal that recent immigrants hold an unconditional licence for at least a year before being permitted to drive for a living.

"We are talking to multicultural organisations within the industry so we can get better information to (drivers). They have to be aware of the Australian way of life," he said.

Sexual harassment education is already a mandatory component of driver training courses "but no amount of training or psychological training will determine what an individual will do", he added.

Detective Superintendent John Venditto, of the Sexual Crimes Investigation Branch, said the 24 assaults since June were believed to have been committed by different people. He said media reports of one sex assault that month had generated 86 calls to police, including reports of 11 sexual assaults.

You can bet that the Australian police have these statistics. The problem is that they won’t release them and most media outlets won’t report them. We don’t want to stir up any trouble in multicultural paradise, do we?

Since 2001, Australia has in general been a beacon of sanity in a world afflicted with politically correct madness. But even Australians are not immune to the cultural rot eating away at the rest of the Anglosphere.

Words to live by: If you can’t name the problem, you can’t fix the problem.

Bell is a historian, so he takes the long view of current events.  In the grand march of history, he argues, there are plenty of incidents bloodier than 9/11.  Although Islamic terrorists despise the United States and have sworn to destroy it, they lack the means to do so.  Therefore they do not pose an existential threat to the U.S. The threat they do pose, though serious, has been overblown by right-wingers for political purposes.

Bell’s complacency is astonishing.  “[I[t is no disrespect to the victims of 9/11, or to the men and women of our armed forces, to say that, by the standards of past wars, the war against terrorism has so far inflicted a very small human cost on the United States.” He writes.  “As an instance of mass murder, the attacks were unspeakable, but they still pale in comparison with any number of military assaults on civilian targets of the recent past, from Hiroshima on down.”

The key phrase in that last passage is “so far.”  Bell, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins, is no fool.  He knows that in the current conflict any city in America could become another Hiroshima, or worse.  So he hedges his bets accordingly.

But of course, nothing like that is likely to happen, Bell assures us:

[D]espite the even more nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show "24's" nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than knives, guns and conventional explosives. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to World War II and its 50 million dead? Not every adversary is an apocalyptic threat.

Here, Bell confuses means with intent.  It’s true that to date that the terrorists have been unable to launch a WMD attack on the United States and its allies.  But they dearly want to do so, and they are trying, trying.  Furthermore, the means to destroy on a vast scale are becoming easier to obtain by the day.  North Korea and Iran are cooperating closely in the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.  This effort has scared the pants off a number of Sunni states in the Middle East, including Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all of which recently announced a crash program to develop nuclear energy for “peaceful” means.  So there will be more enough nukes floating around the Middle East soon.  And let’s not forget the countries of the former USSR, which continue to leak nuclear materials like a sieve, feeding a thriving black market.  Who does Bell think he’s kidding?

Bell also criticizes the tendency of Americans to view every foreign threat as an apocalyptic menace, which he sees as a legacy of Enlightenment philosophy.  For many Americans, he writes, “the ‘Islamo-fascist’ enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler’s implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy.”  However even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  Islamic terrorists really do pose a mortal threat to the United States, something that wasn’t true of say, the Viet Cong.  It takes a lot of education to blind yourself to a threat staring you in the face.

Actually, the jihad poses a far greater threat to the U.S. than Hitler ever did.  For all his evil, Hitler was the head of a conventional nation-state.  Once we took down Germany, the threat was over.  In addition, Hitler didn’t have the nukes.  He did have chemical weapons, but was deterred from using them by threats of Allied retaliation.  And that’s the point: as ruler of Germany, Hitler had an address.  We knew where to find him when he needed to be stopped.  The terrorists are distributed in many countries.  Also, unlike Hitler and his minions, they view themselves fighters in a religious war.  As an historian Bell should know that religious wars are far more protracted and difficult to conclude than wars between states.

To Bell’s credit, he doesn’t advocate bringing the troops home from Iraq and throwing in the towel on the GWOT:

[A]s the comparison with the Soviet experience should remind us, the war against terrorism has not yet been much of a war at all, let alone a war to end all wars. It is a messy, difficult, long-term struggle against exceptionally dangerous criminals who actually like nothing better than being put on the same level of historical importance as Hitler — can you imagine a better recruiting tool? To fight them effectively, we need coolness, resolve and stamina. But we also need to overcome long habit and remind ourselves that not every enemy is in fact a threat to our existence.

I like the part about coolness, resolve and stamina.  But Bell’s implication that we’ve absorbed the worst the terrorists can inflict is tragically wrong.  And the terrorists are most certainly not “criminals.”  Thinking like that is how we got into this mess.  If we want to win this thing we need to see the terrorists for what they are and steel ourselves for the long and bloody struggle ahead.

All of this is anathema to the Left, which is focused, as always, on gaining power by promising to increase the size of the welfare state.  Democrats mouth pro-war pieties, but fighting for the future of western Civilization is clearly not on their agenda.  As Riehl World View notes, “The Left and the Dems are going to try and do everything they can to minimize the threat from radical Islam, because when push comes to shove, they lack the courage, will and foresight to fight, even in a just cause.”  Their message to Americans, as articulated by Professor Bell, is: go back to sleep.

Warren makes a point that should be obvious: America's first priority in Iraq is to win. That's not the same as "winning hearts and minds," which is what we've been trying to do for the past three years. Winning hearts and minds is pointless if doing so means tip-toeing around the battlefield and being driven out in disgrace by Islamic fanatics.

Warren writes:

What the older “just-war theorists” knew, or learned (starting with St Augustine, if you read his successive prescriptions for dealing with violent schismatics), is that war is ruthless. The very humane Clausewitz taught, that the war leader unprepared to be as ruthless as his enemy does not bring peace. He creates a quagmire, and his hesitations lead finally to defeat. The chemo-therapist does not negotiate with a cancer, nor grant it the benefit of the doubt. He does not weep for all the hairs that will fall out. [emphasis added]

If the proposed plan doesn't specify how we will kill the forces opposing us in Iraq and stop Iran and Syria from waging a proxy war against us, it's useless. We need to do what it takes to win this war or go home.

What we are witnessing right now is a colossal failure of leadership. While President Bush acted correctly by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, he has been unable to explain to the American people why we need to stick it out and win. This has allowed the Left, both in the U.S. and abroad, to rush into the rhetorical breach and define the War on Terror as a "quagmire." It's beginning to look like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A true leader would resolve to do whatever is necessary to win, and let the chips fall where they may. He would use the bully pulpit to rally the people to his side and instill in them a firm resolve to achieve victory. That's what Lincoln, Roosevelt and Truman did. That's why they are remembered today as great presidents.

It's clear at this point that Bush is not a great president. He is a patriot and admirably stubborn in his beliefs, but he's no war leader. America will have to wait until at least 2009 for such a leader. By coincidence, that's just about the time Iran will go nuclear. Say your prayers, because it's going to be a very close thing.

..

Reporter Dante Chinni has a piece in today's Christian Science Monitor that offers grudging respect for Roggio's work. Chinni notes that Roggio frequently embeds himself with troops in Iraq, giving him special insight into the risks and challenges the troops face every day. On the other hand, Chinni can't resist getting in a few digs. Here's how he begins his piece:

In recent months, the gruesome images and stories emanating from Iraq have hardened the public's perception about the conflict there. The war is increasingly viewed as a grim, chaotic mess.

Voters made their disappointment in the war known a month ago in the midterm elections, according to exit polls that showed the issue was an important vote driver. Official Washington sanctioned that view last week when the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, wrote in its report that the situation on the ground was "grave and deteriorating."

But for those who troll the blogosphere for news, there is a distinctly different view of the Iraq war available. In this version, the United States is "winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas," but "losing the information war."

Translation: Roggio is a wingnut who engages in biased reporting to score political points. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses, Mr. Chinni. Also, I don't remember "Official Washington" ceding authority to the Iraq Study Group, a self appointed group of retirees, lobbyists and jurists with little expertise in foreign affairs. Then there's this:

His bias can be overwhelming at times - his posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories. When he's not filing stories from a war zone, he likes to take issue with the mainstream media's reporting of events, such as The Washington Post's recent report on the dangers of Anbar Province. He often sees Al Qaeda as the hand behind most of what's going on in Iraq, such as the Thanksgiving bombings that killed more than 200.

Those views are not in the mainstream and many people, including Iraq Study Group cochairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton, do not subscribe to them. But while some might discount Roggio as a journalist who lets his patriotism and ties to the military get in the way of his work, there is value in his reportage.

The Christian Science Monitor notes that Chinni "writes a twice-monthly column on media issues." No doubt while sipping a nice latte in the comfort of his Boston loft. I'll wager that there's more value in Bill Roggio's reporting from Iraq than in all the columns on "media issues" that Chinni has ever written.

Update: In his most recent post, Bill notes that his writings on Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan and even Iraq don't often sound like government talking points. "I fail to see how saying we lost western Pakistan to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Somalia to the Islamic Courts, and failed to subdue al-Qaeda in Ramadi and Muqtada al-Sadr, are government talking points. In fact, I've made some people in the government very uncomfortable."

As Barry Rubin notes in the Winter 2007 edition of The Middle East Quarterly, Arab rhetoric today is no different than it was 40 years ago. "Both the United States and Israel are demonized," write Rubin. "There is expectation of imminent revolution and unprecedented Arab-Muslim unity. As there is also no victory but total victory, diplomatic compromise is treasonous. Conspiracy theories blaming 'the Zionists' and 'arrogant powers' run supreme."

For a brief time during the 1990's, following Saddam's defeat in Kuwait and the apparent success of the Oslo peace process, there was hope that Arabs might reject the mistakes of the past and develop a genuine civil society. But the region quickly sank back into its old groove when the Palestinians rejected peace with Israel and launched their intifada. Then came September 11, the suppression of internal reform movements and the electoral victories of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. Today the Arabs remain obsessed with preserving their "honor" by destroying Israel and driving the U.S. out of the Middle East, sentiments that local dictators like Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah are happy to promote.

"There are four major factors that repeat" in Arab thinking, according to Rubin. "[F]irst is the concept of resistance against foreign powers; second is self-deception about the adversary's strength; third is the belief in a political superhero who will lead Arabs and Muslims to victory; and fourth is the new 'resistance' axis which promises easy and quick solutions, albeit through large-scale bloodshed. Why compromise if total victory is achievable?" Why indeed?

These ideas have led to defeat upon defeat. Yet the Arabs soldier on. In that respect they resemble the leaders of the old Soviet Union, who insisted that despite repeated disasters communism was on the horizon. Somewhere along the way the Commies forgot the definition of "horizon": an imaginary line that recedes as you approach it.

The Arabs are not stupid. Rather, they're in thrall to powerful dictators who perpetuate these behavior patterns in a cynical bid to preserve their regimes. In addition, radical Islamist groups find the language of "resistance" and martyrdom useful for gaining new recruits. In this murderous environment moderates are few and far between.

The left in the United States has relentlessly mocked President Bush for his efforts to create a civil society in Iraq and promote reform throughout the Arab world. Granted, these efforts are idealistic. But what's the alternative? If the U.S. effort in the Middle East fails, the violence, dictatorship and repression there will continue for generations, and probably come back to bite us. Is this really what the so-called "realists" want?

We're all familiar with photographs of humans in utero.  But seeing developing animals in such detail is something new.  Watching a 250 pound baby elephant grow over 22 months from an egg smaller than a grain of sand is awe inspiring.  Whether you view the process as God's handiwork or the end result of a billion years of selective evolution, the complexity and perfection of the process is humbling.

I don't expect that these pictures will have a significant impact on the abortion debate.  That would be too much to hope for.  But they also serve as a powerful reminder of how closely humans are related to the other creatures on this planet, and indeed, how all life on Earth is interconnected.  Understanding this will be crucial for humanity's survival in the centuries ahead.

Related: Colin Bower at New English Review offers a stinging rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court and all the feminists who claim to know when a fertilized egg becomes a human being.   The money quote:

Discarding for a moment the view which has it that the actual life of a newly fertilised egg is already human life, or the even more extreme position that the potential life of an about-to-be-fertilised egg is also already human, and assuming that you cannot call a fertilised egg human life, but you can call the baby that issues from the womb some nine months later human life, and knowing that most of us agree that the gratuitous taking of human life is murder, the moral challenge of abortion should be easy to adjudicate. Decide at what point non-human life becomes human life, and let that be the moment critique before which abortion is abortion, and after which abortion is murder.

Of course, the problem is that we can’t. At some stage on its journey through time from being a single celled zygote to being a multi celled foetus, an organism becomes a human being. We can’t say when, nor will we ever be able to. We are defeated not by moral complexity, but by metaphysics.

On the other hand, my Jewish grandmother does know when a fetus becomes viable: when it graduates from medical school.

“Within the next half century, perhaps even within a decade or two, a nation might be vanquished -- not by a foreign terrorist organization or by the military strength of a foreign power, but by a small group of domestic evildoers ruthlessly using weapons of mass destruction against their own country,” Ikle writes. In the ensuing chaos, those behind the attack and their political allies could sweep into power with promises to restore order, much as Lenin and the Bolsheviks did when they seized control of Russia in 1917. Hitler also used this tactic in 1933, when he used the burning of the Reichstag as an excuse for declaring a state of emergency and expanding his dictatorial powers.

Of course, an al Qaeda-style attack out of the blue is always possible. But any group that is serious about gaining political power would have to lay the groundwork first. Ikle argues that this could be accomplished through what he calls the “dual power” stratagem. Basically, “an aspiring dictator implants some of his political followers in the incumbent government -- for example, by forming his own legitimate party that gains a minority status in the parliament. Meanwhile, his more brawny followers can be trained to help with the forcible overthrow of the incumbent government.” The dual power stratagem is a time tested method of seizing political power, as the Bolshevik Party in Russia and the Hitler's National Socialist Party demonstrate. Other terrorist groups, such as the ETA in Spain and the IRA in Great Britain, have attempted the dual power stratagem with less success.

Countries with large Muslim populations, particularly those ruled by authoritarian leaders, present special risks. Because of the quasi-political nature of Islam, Muslims in countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan -- as well as Russia – don’t necessarily need to create formal political parties. A sufficiently charismatic imam (think Muqtada al-Sadr) can amass a large group of followers outside of the traditional political system. If the capital of one of these countries disappeared in a nuclear attack, the imam and his followers might stand a good chance of seizing power.

In Ikle’s view, decapitating a democracy is more difficult. That’s especially true for the United States, which has time-tested methods for political succession and a citizenry imbued with deep respect for the Constitution. Nevertheless, such an attack would undoubtedly cause widespread paranoia and fear, particularly if the culprits remained unknown. One shudders to think of what might happen next:

We also know from history that even the best and the brightest often lose their moral compass during times of war or during periods when nations fear a devastating surprise attack. The confrontation with wanton carnage, deception and cruelty summons the Furies of revenge, who can convert peace-loving, liberal-minded elites into promoters of genocide. During World War II, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who frequently articulated ethical values that resonated with liberals, wanted to spray Strontium 90 (a baleful carcinogenic element) on Germany. According to Joseph Rotblatt (a nuclear scientist from the era of the Manhattan Project), Oppenheimer wrote in 1943 to Enrico Fermi, who was in charge of the first reactor in Chicago, that he should not begin the project until he could produce enough Sr-90 to kill half a million people.

Fortunately, there are steps we can take to reduce (but not eliminate) the growing threat. Foremost among these is the development of what Ikle dubs an “Ultimate Emergency Plan.” Such a plan would involve redoubled efforts to design and deploy a new generation of nuclear bomb detectors, as well as steps to ensure the continuity of the U.S. government. While senators killed in a sneak attack could be replaced in most instances by the governors of their states, members of the House of Representatives would have to be replaced by special elections in their districts. This would take months, time the nation would not have during a national crisis. This issue has been studied endlessly and several workable solutions have been proposed; what’s needed now is political leadership to resolve it.

Ikle also notes that the United States desperately needs to revise its immigration and asylum laws, which make it absurdly easy for terrorists to enter the country. “In times of domestic upheaval as well as in wars between nations, a country's sovereign territory is the decisive arena,” Ikle writes. Somehow we’ve lost sight of this elementary fact.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the current state of affairs. Ikle is particularly critical of the misguided “Atoms for Peace” program launched by President Eisenhower in 1953, which spread nuclear technology around the world under the guise of “peaceful use.” At a deeper level, however, humanity simply cannot handle the ever-accelerating stream of discoveries produced by the scientific revolution:

Science and technology do not have a final goal. They pursue a continuing conquest of nature in which disproved theories are replaced by new knowledge. But political endeavors have finite goals. Marxism did not aspire to be followed by capitalism, Islam does not seek to be replaced by Christianity, America’s propagation of democracy does not strive to be succeeded by autocratic governments. ... The widening divergence in human culture might overwhelm the political order of the world in a way that endangers the survival of all nations.

This is the key issue driving international affairs today. Anyone who wants a better understanding of this dilemma and where humanity is heading needs to read Fred Ikle’s book.

For more: Josh Manchester, the host of the blog The Adventures of Chester, interviewed Ikle last month. You can listen to a podcast of the interview here.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who has called for discussion of Japan's non-nuclear policy, also asserted that the pacifist constitution does not forbid possession of the bomb.

"Japan is capable of producing nuclear weapons," Mr. Aso told a parliamentary committee on security issues. "But we are not saying we have plans to possess nuclear weapons."

Of course, Aso was only stating the obvious. Japan has long had the technical ability to build a bomb. It also has an extensive nuclear energy program, which supplies about 20 percent of the country's energy needs. In addition, the country has spent years studying the use of fast breeder reactors for the production and reprocessing of plutonium.

In practice, Japan relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter foreign attacks. And Article 9 of Japan's Constitution states in part that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." On the other hand, Article 9 also says that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained," but that hasn't stopped the Japanese from building up it's land, sea and air forces.

Strictly speaking, these forces are viewed as extensions of the national police force, to be used solely for maintaining law and order. However, many Japanese politicians have advocated amending Article 9 by adding a clause that would authorize the use of military force for the purpose of "self-defense." The problem, of course, is that actions taken in self-defense can be viewed differently by other countries. For example, if North Korea was preparing to launch a missile in Japan's direction, would Japan be acting in self-defense if it attacked first?

So far the consensus in Japan has been to leave Article 9 alone. But Aso's comments are a clear warning to North Korea and its patron, China: provoke us at your peril.

Oddly enough, Rangel believes that remilitarizing society is the best way to keep America from getting involved in future wars. "There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel recently told the Associated Press.

Well, maybe. But we had a draft in the 1960's and that didn't stop U.S. politicians from getting involved in Vietnam. One could argue that having a few million extra troops on hand and ready for combat would make a future president more likely to engage in foreign policy adventures, not less. The actual impact of a draft would depend on the circumstances.

One thing is certain: most legislators view the draft as political poison. When Rangel introduced a draft measure in 2003, the House defeated it 402-2. Don't expect the vote on Rangel's latest draft proposal, which he plans to introduce early next year, to be much different. That's a shame because the United States needs a draft badly.

The last draft ended in 1973, when the U.S. began relying an all-volunteer military. This pleased everyone: the military got high-quality troops while America's elite, safe from the threat of the draft, quickly lost interest in the vagaries of American foreign policy. To date the all-volunteer military has acquitted itself well in several small wars and police actions. However, sometimes numbers matter. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as smaller actions around the world have severely strained the military. There are serious questions about whether the U.S. has enough troops at present to fight a conflict with say, North Korea or Iran, not to mention China. This knowledge emboldens our enemies.

For the past 30 years, the U.S. military has attempted to use technology to compensate for reduced troop levels. This line of thinking led to the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) doctrine promoted by recently-ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

In Rumsfeld’s RMA, there would be no more wars like those of Korea, Vietnam, or even the Gulf War. As Army General Tommy Franks, a true believer in the RMA who devised the Iraq invasion plan, states in his memoirs, “The days of half-million-strong mobilizations were over.” Rapid maneuver, highly accurate firepower, and attacks from many directions, all empowered by new technology, were supposed to substitute for large numbers of troops and equipment.

It hasn't quite worked out that way. Our enemies responded to the invasion of Iraq by launching a guerrilla war, killing innocent civilians, stoking ethnic divisions and picking off our troops with snipers and roadside bombs. This type of asymmetric war can only be defeated by boots on the ground and human intelligence, not B-2's and spy satellites.

In the near future, events may well demand that the U.S. attack and occupy several additional countries in the Middle East. And by "attack" I mean "reduce to rubble," the way we dealt with Japan and Germany in World War II. Once U.S. cities start going up in smoke, Americans will have neither the time nor the inclination for expensive, touchy-feely nation-building exercises. When that day arrives, it would be best if we had a large army of conscripts already in place.