I believe that the root problem is the failure to appreciate the Anglo-American heritage. Once that has been simplified to a few liberal shibboleths about “huddled masses yearning to be free”, it does not seem like such a leap of faith to imagine that everyone wants it. Failure to understand the Arab culture is a serious problem, also, but I think the rootless, vapid modern American with his historical ignorance of his own heritage is primary.

First, our fearless leaders need to learn why the Italians or French or Germans or Swedes would not want “the American way” forced upon them. Then they would understand intuitively, without great knowledge of the cultures of Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever, the unlikelihood of even more incompatible cultures (than these European cultures) desiring to have the American system imposed on them.

While Gibbon’s observations of the character of past Arabs is certainly accurate in describing their decendants today, his remarks on how the inhospitable climate and terrain of Arab lands (the Arabian Peninsula) has in the past materially aided their independance is no longer applicable. A desert an ideal environment for the exercise of air power and for the use of satellite reconaissance. There are few clouds and little vegetation to abscure a region from the cameras of satellites; only seasonal dust storms render space reconaissance temporarially useless. Tanks have replaced the cavalier as the dominant force on land; and the desert, with its characteristic expanses of open nothingness, facilitates mobile warfare, to which tanks are especially suited. Today, few inhabitants of deserts live nomadically; rather, they reside in relatively densely populated cities; this concentration aids the conqueror, for, if he can gain control of the countryside, he need only surround and besiege the cities to gain the submission of their inhabitants. Fighting in a city causes a superior to lose some of his advantages over his inferior; yet, in modern times with arrows long having ceased to be the chief missile weapon and city walls for some time being obsolete, if a foe is surrounded in a city he must inevitably lose. He cannot win militarily; his only hope for victory must be in causing the attacker losses so great that they are politically unsustainable. I suppose that my last sentance must be modified by the U.S. having retreated from Fallujah and having unilaterally declared a cease-fire; the reason given was that in order to defeating the jihadis in the city would require means that would result in an unacceptable amount of civilian casualties. This must be the first time in human history in which a great army has retreated rather than inflict enemy civilian casualties.

The problem with this war is that Bush has a fundamental character flaw that will be his undoing. He can’t ever admit he was wrong. (Neither will Kerry, for that matter. Bush never changes his mind, Kerry never admits he has changed it).
By initially making the spreading of democracy into the Arab world his goal, and by maintaining this as his goal as the war drags on, Bush has set the US up to fail. If he doesn’t set different goalposts, we are going to enter into an utter quagmire that will wear out our military.
Now, if we define victory more modestly, and actually consider realistic goals to set so we can win the war and leave, we should be able to achieve some success in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Bush is determined to believe that Iraq is on its path toward democracy, and he WILL NOT DEVIATE no matter what.
Sadr isn’t the problem. We could take him down easy. We could take down most of his militia easy. But there are a thousand more like him just waiting to fill his place. But Bush won’t believe this.
For that matter, the democrats are no better. Kerry is equally convinced that we need to make democracy flourish in Iraq.
As you can guess, I’m not that hopeful about our current crop of candidates.

In reply to Joshua, can’t Arab terrorism and guerilla-style tactics be seen as a modern equivalent of the desert warfare Gibbon describes? That is, the Arab can strike out at his enemies with bombs or rocket-launched grenades, then fade back into the surrounding population so that he is difficult to defeat.

About the arab, we can borrow a phrase applied to the German fifty or so years ago: he’s either at your feet or at your throat. Bush, probably because of his interaction with Arab elites, sees all Arabia acting out the first scenerio, and simply refuses to admit the second one is a possibility. This man thinks he’s “bwana” or some sort of 21st century version of “Lawrence of Arabia” who will issue orders to the brown masses and they’ll immediately bow their heads, tug their forelocks, and adopt the sweetness and light of American-style democracy.

Nobody in America’s defense or foreign policy establishment has even begun to realize the truth of David Pryce-Jones’ observation about the Arabs in his CLOSED CIRCLE: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE ARABS. Namely, the popular perception of the Arab as the “son of the desert” fails to realize his true function as the “father of the desert”. Anarchic, dwelling in shame and honor, followers of a culture of cruelty, incapable of social discipline or any sort of scientific, social, or economic innovation, the Arab destroys and erodes most all that he encounters.

BTW, somewhat symbolic of the fiasco of our “liberation” of Iraq, it seems to me, is the leadership of our own armed forces. An Anglo-Saxon general, Tommy Franks, led an efficient blitzkrieg that captured the entire country in less than a month. Since then, we’ve turned the military mission over to a two-headed monster, Abizaid and Sanchez. I cannot imagine worse scenerio: an Arab general, seconded in command by a mexican one.

Mr. Auster asks, “[C]an’t Arab terrorism and guerilla-style tactics be seen as a modern equivalent of the desert warfare Gibbon describes? That is, the Arab can strike out at his enemies with bombs or rocket-launched grenades, then fade back into the surrounding population so that he is difficult to defeat.”

Guerilla tactics (“small war” tactics charcterized by hit-and-run attacks by relatively small forces on a portion of a superior enemy’s force, aided by a superior knowledge of the terrain) are similiar to the the tactics of the desert Arabs as described by Gibbon. Gibbon tells us that the Arabs possessed two main natural advantages over invaders; namely, with their horses and camels, superior mobility and knowledge of the location of springs. Thirst must have turned back many would be conquerors. These advantages no longer obtain for the Arabs; how would guerilla tactics today be more effective in the desert than in any other environment? All this is not to say that that guerilla tactics are little use for the Arabs — the recent ambushings of American convoys in Iraq are examples of the employment of “small war” tactics — but rather that the Arabs environment gives them no comparative advantage in the employment of such tactics.

Discussion of guerilla tactics leads naturally to the discussion of the tactics of the illegal combatant. Guerilla tactics are not illegal but such tactics are often used by illegal combatants, who attempt to hide themselves among the civilian population. Illegal combatants are those who are covered by one of the following categories: 1)Those who do not carry their weapons openly. 2)Those who do not wear a uniform or insignia. 3)Those who no not acknowledge a chain of command. Fighters may place themselves outside of the protections of the customs of war for the purpose of espionage, sabotage, or attack. Attacks against us in Iraq by those operating outside the laws of war (whether they be those who sabotage the oil pipelines, Shiite Sadrist fanatics, or Sunni Al Quaida connected terrorists) is the most serious problem we face in Iraq. Traditionally, illegal combatants, consistant with their status, have been liable to be brought before a court-martial should they be caught and, should they be found guilty, to face the firing-squad or the hangman’s nooce. Besides aiding in the suppression of rebellion or partisan resistance, this custom has the ancilary benefits of restricting the exercise of force to sovereign powers or those powers which pretend to sovereignty and of affording some measure of protection to civilians by discouraging fighters from hiding among them.

I gather Joshua’s answer to my question is no.

Until the Vietnam war the U.S. dealt harshly with illegal combatants; in the Vietnam War, however, the U.S. made the mistake of treating illegal combatants the same as those abiding by the laws of war. Legal precedent still recognizes that illegal combatants are outside of the protection of the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, or any national laws; though the law of the “illegal combatant” is definately unpopular with the press and the legal establishment, who are always solicitous of the rights of individuals, even for most undeserving. Here is a paragraph of the famous Supreme Court decision _Ex Parte Quirin_ in 1942 which arose out of a decision of the Roosevelt Administration to try at a court-martial twelve German saboteurs arrested in the U.S.:

“…the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.” http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=317&invol=1

Other than its failure to strongly inforce immigration law and to lobby Congress for stricter laws (incredibly, Bush has proposed an amnesty for Mexican illegals), the biggest error in the Bush Administration’s strategy in fighting Islamic terrorism is its failure to bring illegal combatants, both Al Quaidaists and Iraqi rebels, before military tribunals.

I have no idea what Joshua’s legal essay about illegal combattants has to do with my relatively simple point about Arabs being difficult to defeat or govern.

Paul C.,

Clearly your Anglo-Saxon general didn’t finish the job. Sanchez was born and raised in Texas. I realize that doesn’t mean anything to you, but the Army clearly thought he was competent enough to do the job. Keep your criticism focused on his tactical and strategic errors and not his heritage.

Item 117’s remark about Sanchez’s competence may have been true at some point in the past, but under the agressive affirmative action policies in place for at least the last 12 years, Sanchez’s abilities would be quite irrelevant to his promotion to general. He would be given his rank simply on the basis of the need to promote “diversity” - a goal which George W.Bush views as trumping the constitution itself.

I think that Joshua misses Mr. Auster’s point. Mr. Auster is not saying that the precise context in which the Arabs developed their fighting style is as advantageous to them as it once was. That is, the Arabs do not have advantages from knowing where wells are and that come from being able to move quickly in the desert.
Rather, he is saying that the tactics that they developed from their environment are transferable to the current situation. In other words, the same skills that enable one to fight in skirmishes in the desert (knowledge of secret resources such as springs, the ability to attack quickly and then retreat) are also useful in guerilla fighting in a city.
Moreover, the character this has formed in the Arab populace makes them resistant to the kind of social engineering we wish to do to them.

ttam117,

It’s just a coincidence, then, that an arab general, Abizaid, was chosen to head the military occupation of Iraq? It had nothing to do with HIS heritage? And, btw, when rumors began to suface in the European press that Tommy Franks was of Russian Jewish heritage (in The Guardian, for example), he was hustled out of Iraq as quickly as possible. As Carl states above, today’s US military is more race and sex conscious than at any time in its post or pre segregated history.

Furthermore, I think you make an enormous mistake in dismissing the cultural heritage of our warrior class. Some civilizations, cultures, and peoples are simply better at war than others—in no small part due to those peoples’ ability to organize and discipline their societies in times of crisis. Indeed, America was likely never more fortunate than in World War II, when its generals were primarily from a German or Ulster background. Not to mention that mono-racial armies have a decided advantage in history over imperial forces formed of a hodgepodge of races and peoples.

Paul,

By this criteria we should stop licensing gentile doctors and lawyers because we all know Jews make better doctors and lawyers.

In addition, it seems that the Arab population in Iraq seem like pretty hardy fighters at this time.

Blaming ones inadequacies on the successes of others is pathetic.

The mixture of desert, flat steppe and urban areas in Iraq is not in fact very favorable for any sort of PROLONGED guerrilla warfare — as long as we don’t lose our nerve in the face of what have, by the standards of Vietnam, been rather small losses. Modern guerrilla warfare has only been successful in jungle and mountain terrain, and often not there. Even in Vietnam, we were reasonably successful, if belatedly and at too high a cost, at defeating the Vietcong guerrillas. We just lost our stomach for fighting further and left the South Vietnamese to be overrun by the regular army of the North.
Whether we will lose our nerve, or whether Bush, Rumsfeld and co. can admit that they badly misjudged matters and make the necessary changes in policy, is of course another matter. Like most here, I have no confidence on that point….

Mr. Auster said that my post of 11:02 AM is not relevant to the topic of the thread. I did not relate the issue to the topic at hand so Mr. Auster’s reaction is understandable. This is how I believe the general issue of illegal combattants is relevant:

In order to defeat either Al Quaida-like terrorism or the insurrgency against us in Iraq we must bring those suspected of having committed hostile acts against us in a manner outside the laws of war before military tribunals. If they are found guilty, they should liable for the death penalty. Of course, convicted low-level attackers should be given clemency if they give usefull intellagence. To defeat the Arabs, one must with them be severe.

The reason that we are unwilling to treat the Arabs as unlawful combatants is because we are in their country. I think most people realize that if the US were invaded by a foreign army, we would eschew all notions of “legal warfare” and do whatever it takes to win. Can you honestly say that if China or Russia invaded us, that most Americans would condemn it if some Americans did to their troops (whether public troops or private) what the Fallujans did to ours?
I can certainly say that if a foreign nation invaded us, I would view them all as the enemy and not distinguish between civilians and soldiers.
Certainly, we can argue that this is a necessary procedure, but many people are uncomfortable with us arguing that we have a moral right to do so.
The point is, in order to get us to start executing poeple in the way you suggest, a large segment of the populace has to eschew any notion of universal morality in favor of a utilitarian “do whatever it takes to win” mentality. And we haven’t hit that point yet.

Mr. Levine makes an interesting point, however, I do think that in Iraq, under the current paradigm, prolonged guerilla warfare can continue and remain successful.
Unlike Vietnam, in Iraq we have no central enemy. We can tire out one guerilla force completely, and then a new one appears. The insurgents don’t need coordination. They don’t need a common political goal. All that they need is for enough of Iraqis to rebel at any given time so that they can prevent us from establishing a stable government.
We can defeat all of the insurgents and establish a central government, but in order to do so, what we would have to create would not resemble democracy.

I can’t laugh off Michael Jose’s points in his last comment, but merely point out that if we are sufficiently determined we can still win.
As for Falluja, I should hope that Americans would have better taste than to run around mutilating enemy corpses as the Iraqis did.

Mr. Jose is correct in characterizing my point about Arab traits.

On the ethnocultural makeup of the military, I remember the surprise and relief I felt at the time of the 1991 Gulf War when I saw the high quality of many of the top people in the U.S. armed forces; I had thought that the cultural decay and feminization would already have destroyed all that. And what struck me most about this still-intact military ethos was its Anglo-Saxon cultural character.

As for the validity of mentioning the ethnic background of generals, I agree with Carl’s point. Racial preferences to achieve a representative ethnic diversity in every important profession and area of life is a governing fact of the polity that America has become. Remember that several senior retired military officers submitted an amicus brief in the Grutter case pleading that the military needed affirmative action to obtain a sufficient ethnic diversity among officers so that the officer corps would seem “legitimate” in the eyes of enlisted men, and that Justice O’Connor in the Court’s decision in Grutter included that concern among the necessary reasons to have racial preferences. Given these facts, every black, Hispanic, Arab or other minority in a high position in American life must be prima facie assumed to have been chosen for that position because of his ethnicity.

And let us not forget that even Condoleezza Rice, who ten years ago won my admiration when said she was a Republican because the GOP, unlike the Democrats, treated her as an individual and not as a black, made a big statement last year supporting racial preferences, thus betraying the principle she had said she stood for.

So that’s the reality. Our society cannot have systematic racial preferences, _and_ tell us not to notice the race of the people who get promoted to top positions.

Mr. Jose wrote: “The reason that we are unwilling to treat the Arabs as unlawful combatants is because we are in their country.”

True enough perhaps. Not long ago I picked up a documentary on the Waffen SS. I noted with interest that as the American forces moved into Germany on the western front the orders were, “Take no SS prisoners.” Yet we were in _their_ country! (The SS might as well have been considered unlawful combatants.)

What’s the difference? That the SS were only white men? That Germany didn’t have oil we needed? That our leaders today are so emasculated by modern PC liberalism that they can’t do what needs to be done? (That UN crats wouldn’t like it?…)

I won’t bother getting into Dresden. (Fallujah…) The only question remaining on Mr. Jose’s comment is: Just what WILL it take?

We should not overlook Xenophon’s Anabasis, or The March Up-Country, describing the treachery and barbarism of the inhabitants of the region now known as Iraq in the early 4th century BC. It also shows how a few well organized Westerners, the Greeks, working with almost nothing, and after their leaders had been murdered at a dinner to which they were invited, ran roughshod over everything that was thrown against them.

“What’s the difference? “

Well, if I were convinced that the Iraqi insurgents were all Baathist die-hards who used to work for Hussein, then none.
But I think that it is becoming increasingly clear that a lot of the people who are attacking us just see us as foreign occupiers, and attack us for that reason alone.

Remember, in this war there is a distinction between the Iraqi people and the Iraqi state. There was no such distinction when fighting the Nazis. The Germans were portrayed as the enemy, not as the beautiful wonderful people who despoerately want us to liberate them.

As for Dresden, I don’t necesarly see that that actually helped us win the war, it probably made reconstruction more difficult, and I think it was probably criminal.

In truth, a lot of our actions in fighting Nazi Germany required a level of amoral rationality, so I won’t say that all of our actions in WWII are inherently more justifiable than in Iraq. We were just better able to callous our consciences. The reason we were more willing to suspend our conscience on some issues in WWII was because Germany had just recently been in possession of a whole lot of foreign countries and we had spent a whole lot of men liberating them. Saddam, on the other hand, has not attempted to conquer another country since 1990-1991 and had been relatively contained for 12 years. This makes our position much more that of the aggressor than in WWII, and so makes it much harder to psychologically view the Arabs in the way we viewed the Germans.

A few more comments for Mr. LeFevre:

How do we know that we are not prosecuting Iraqis as enemy combatants? Such trials could be held in secret, and so there is no way of knowing about them.

As for what will it take for us to adopt a “do whatever it takes to win” mentality: Barring a horrific terrorist attack on the US that stirs up a general hostility toward all Arabs, or some sudden attack on US troops in Iraq that kills thousands of them, there will not be any single event. We will simply become increasingly brutal over time. I believe that in one city, we have now declared that any Iraqi seen in the street with a gun is to be shot on sight.
As we lose more and more troops, and as troops are forced to give up larger and larger portions of their lives to extended deployments in order to maintain or increase our force in Iraq, hatred and resentment of the Iraqi people by our troops will grow. If you are upset that we have not escalated the war, have a little patience. We will.

“I can’t laugh off Michael Jose’s points in his last comment, but merely point out that if we are sufficiently determined we can still win.”

Define “win.” If “win” means imposing democracy, then the only way top be sufficiently determined is to slaughter most of the Iraqi population and replace them with immigrants from a more democracy-friendly country.

“As for Falluja, I should hope that Americans would have better taste than to run around mutilating enemy corpses as the Iraqis did.”

Perhaps. I am not arguing that we shouldn’t respond to their actions, just that I can’t work up the same sense of total outrage and righteous indignation that Joseph Farah and Kathleen Parker have. I do, however, agree that such behavior is unacceptable and that for the sake of order, we must punish those responsble.

Of course, Thucydides’ remarks on Xenophon’s account of the march of the ten thousand are not really apropos, since the inhabitants of Babylonia were neither Arabs nor Muslims in the fourth century B.C. The success of the retreat of the Greek mercenaries does seem to have inspired the Greeks to go on the offensive against the Persian empire, leading to the conquests of the region by Alexander and the successful implantation there of Greek language and civilization (though not democracy!) until the arrival of the Arabs.

Mr. Auster,

Is there any evidence that our current commanding generals in any way benefited from any sort of racial preferences? You seem to be jumping to the conclusion that because of their racial heritage and because of the positions they hold today, then ipso facto they must have benefited in some way. You seem to be making the mistake of first examining their heritage rather than taking a close look at their resumes. Can we assume that if they were incompetent they would have reached that level and flattened out a long time ago. Racial preferences make get you in, but in my experience they rarely get you to the top.

The question posed by “ttam 117” is not pertinent to my earlier comment. I did not say there is any evidence that any particular general was promoted because of his ethnicity/race. I said there is systematic racial preferences in all areas of life including the military, that this is now the trumpeted ideology of America, and therefore that it’s logical to assume, in the absence of countervailing evidence, that a general of ethnic minority heritage got that position because of his ethnicity. Since racial preferences are a fact of reality (and at all levels, not just the entry level), the burden of evidence is not on those who assume racial preferences in any given case, the burden of evidence is on those who would deny it.

Also, I would like to ask “ttam 117” to adopt a recognizably human pen name so that the rest of us can address him as a human with a name, not an entity designated by a meaningless string of letters and numbers.

A friend, who often writes on the subject of racial diversity, comments:

“This might be a new twist. It used to be that you were making up for past discrimination and all that, and thus had to have quotas, and you were supposed to make yourself believe that they were really qualified and that the quotas were only overcoming the discrimination that would otherwise have stood in the way of their getting something they were well qualified for. Of course that was very hard to do when all the facts came in and it was clear they were not as qualified as the whites being rejected. But now, the very reason that is given for their presence is DIVERSITY, so now it’s open and up front, they are there for their race!”

Regarding Mr. Auster’s post of 3:08 PM: There are two big reasons for the diversity-quota nonsense: (1) Lewis Powell’s opinion in the Bakke case said that the state could not claim a compelling interest in righting the wrongs of the past at the expense of the rights of individuals today. However, he left the quota-mongers an out by claiming that it was certainly possible that the state would have a compelling interest in promoting diversity in its educational institutions and elsewhere. Overnight, the reparations crowd became the diversity crowd, even if they had not given the supposed benefits of diversity one second’s thought before they read Powell’s opinion.

(2) The question lurking in the back of everyone’s mind about quotas is: How long will these go on? Given that the welfare state has been making various quality-of-life statistics decline for blacks over the last 40 years, it is becoming obvious that the answer cannot be “only until economic equality is reached”, as everyone will know that that is not going to happen within the lifetime of anyone living today. But if the goal is diversity, then we can all stop asking when the quotas will end, and stop confronting the unpleasant truth about the unlikelihood of economic equality, because the quotas will obviously go on as long as diversity is sought, i.e. forever.

Developing the diversity justification was necessary to shoehorn groups OTHER than blacks into the “reverse discrimination” game. The original justification for affirmative action, for blacks, was that it was compensation (probably temporary) for the unique history of discrimination they had suffered in the past. It cannot be argued that any other group had been treated so badly, still less that recent immigrants deserved some sort of recompense. The alleged benefits of “diversity” had to be discovered to justify the metastasis of affirmative action.

I agree with Mr. Auster that it was the quota crowd that shoved the issue of race into everything, but I am not sure that we should necessarily follow their example and assume that Abizaid and others were beneficiaries of affirmative action. For that matter, it is possible to argue that, in the particular case of Iraq, having a commander with more familiarity with Arab culture is actually a good thing, and if not for the horrible ethnic manias that have developed over the last few years we would be delighted to have Abizaid in this particular job.

In response to Michael Jose’s remarks of last night: I personally would consider a friendly Iraqi government run by somebody comparable to Kemal Ataturk a victory. I quite agree with Mr, Jose that democracy, in the near future at any rate, is probably too much to expect. In a generation or so of reasonable moderate authoritatian rule— as in Turkey from 1920-1950 — maybe.

Thank you Mr. Levine for your support of my position in giving Generals Abizaid and Sanchez the benefit of the doubt. It is cynical to think that the only way they achieved their high positions is as a result of affirmative action. Given President Bush’s resume I can only assume he gained his position by WASP affirmative action i.e. his heritage and family contacts.

About Sanchez and the rest of the PC generals in charge of Iraqi occupation, David Hackworth has noted:
——————————

Yes, Iraq proved in spades that we have outstanding warriors who made a bad plan work and deserve every accolade bestowed upon them. Not so for many of the brass – who need to lose the kinder, softer Clintonesque approach before they do unto the line side of the Army what they’ve already done unto Jessica Lynch’s service and support side.

“I know that these new combat units have good leaders and troops,” says a senior sergeant who has been in Iraq for 10 months. “But the higher-ups are pushing them to be passive and not take the fight to the enemy. The rest of the bad news is what we call the ‘Colonel West Syndrome.’ For example, the other night when we were conducting a raid, a target was standing behind a steel door as our guys breached it, and the door smacked him in the face and messed up his head. When we turned him into the detention center, the MPs there accused us of abusing this clown, kicking off an investigation that got pretty ugly.”

“Gen. Sanchez tore up my very-squared-away battalion commander for not wearing his Hummer seat belt,” says another sergeant who’s now finishing up a tour with a parachute brigade – the famed 173d Airborne – that made a hairy night-combat jump into Bashur at the beginning of the war and has been in the thick of it ever since.

“Hello? Where has this general been?” asked the sergeant. “The terrorists over here have a bad habit of shooting at us – we have to be able to unass our vehicles in a hurry.”

No question that battling guerrillas requires an exceptionally disciplined force and that parade-ground regs don’t extend longevity on a guerrilla battlefield. The brass need to get down and talk to their fine noncoms quick smart. The sergeants know how to keep up the initiative – while keeping U.S. casualties down.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=60&rnd=244.58909459816542

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Paul,

Now you are leveling legitimate criticism for the way they do there jobs. That is fair. It is unfair to assume they got those jobs based on factors non-relevant factors.

It would appear matt117 is unable to face the truth about the racial preferences regime in place in the US military. To quote him: “It is unfair to assume they got those jobs based on factors non-relevant factors. ” On the contrary, it is manifestly fair to make such an assumption in light of the system which has been in place for the past 12 years, if not before. The burden of proof is upon matt117 and other idealists or supporters of what can only be described as a profundly corrupt and unjust racial spoils system. Paul C’s comment would tend to prove that Sanchez and others in the upper brass are there for no other reason than the “compelling state interest” for “diversity” - not because they are actually capable, competent soldiers.

Once again, we have yet another sorry example of the alleged consrevative George W. Bush standing by and promoting minions and stooges of the previous administration, which can be charitably characterized as the most relentlessly corrupt in the history of the republic.

Is it unfair to assume that minorities in high positions in the present American regime were the beneficiaries of racial favoritism? I have long tried to give each individual the benefit of the doubt, but it can hardly be some act of irrational racism when someone calculates the odds and reaches a conclusion that is far more likely to be true than false. Is not that thinking process the epitome of rational life?

If we see a black student at a law school or other graduate school at a selective university, should we assume that he is one of the minority of blacks who got in under lower standards, or is it the majority of such blacks who got in under lower racial standards? In other words, a rational person tries to know which is more probably true.

Thomas Sowell, a very intelligent and educated black man, has researched “affirmative action” and other such euphemisms all over the world for decades, and sees pretty much nothing positive about any of it. Sowell presented these findings on page 176 of his excellent work, “Race and Culture: A World View”:

“A score of 650 or above on the quantitative portion of the Graduate Record Examination is common at the top-rated American graduate schools, in either the physical or the social sciences, but there were fewer than 150 black students in the entire country who met this standard in 1978-79. For top American law schools, a common threshold was a score of 600 on the Law School Aptitude Test in the 1970s and a college grade point average of 3.25. Only 39 black students in the country met those standards in 1976. [93]”

[93] Robert Klitgaard, “Choosing Elites,” New York: Basic Books, 1985, p. 175.