The Thomas Chronicles

Foxnews reported early this month that three senior US military officers are appealing to Europe to intervene against the United States in the case of a possible military attack against Iran. US General Robert G. Gard Jr., US General Joseph P. Hoar and US Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan along with a peace activist organization in Great Britain, called Crisis Action, say that a military solution against Iran would be “highly dangerous”.

The BBC further confirmed Foxnews’ report today and published part of a statement made by the US officers:

… three senior retired US military officers have said that they “strongly caution against the use of military force”. They have called on Britain to play a “vital role in securing a renewed diplomatic push”…

Their statement says: “An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region, collation forces in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions. The current crisis must be resolved through diplomacy.

“There is time available to talk.”

The fact that General Hoar is a former CENTCOM commander-in-chief lends a certain degree of credibility to their collective statements (even if misplaced) and further embarrasses the Bush Administration.

However, some voices within the pressure group diverge from the main consensus of opinion by opposing military action against Iran on legal grounds.

Former British Ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, said:

“There is no legal basis for an attack… The negotiating road is hard but could be improved if Iran was offered a regional security assurance and the United States became more directly involved to reduce the issues between themselves and Iran.”

The difficulties with all these pronouncements from Crisis Action and our former military officers is manifold.

Firstly, what business is it of two former US Generals and one former Vice Admiral to influence the decision-making process on US foreign policy? Even more disturbing is their method. They are appealing to a foreign power (Great Britain) in an attempt to coerce US foreign policy into a diplomatic course with Iran.

Due to the painfully obvious fact that these officers weren’t elected to any position power by the American people, why should their statement carry any weight whatever? It is also painfully obvious that they do not hold a very high opinion of the American people and our system government, since they have taken it upon themselves to cavort with foreign powers and international organizations.

From these actions, one must ask: Where do their allegiances lie, if not with the United States?

Secondly, Crisis Action and these officers make the bold statement that “[t]here is time available to talk.” Do these people have access to vital intelligence materials that would suggest that we have ample time for diplomacy? (We have entered into diplomatic multilateral talks with Iran for over two years and have produced one farce and failure after another.) If they have, where did they obtain their intelligence– our government? Iran’s?

If they haven’t that kind of access, they have no business making such sweeping statements that are both dangerous and disingenuous. Either way, they have much to answer for.

Thirdly, when exactly did it become acceptable for military officers to challenge the judgment of their civilian leaders? Let us not get wrapped around the axle about the fact that these officers are no longer serving in the military. This is only a superficial argument since the only reason their statements carry any weight whatever is because of they wear the uniform.

The fact that they wore the uniform and held the ranks of general and vice admiral makes their actions more reprehensible, not less. Unlike a corporal or a petty officer, these men wielded the power of our military at our behest, and it is impossible that they don’t understand the likely consequences of their actions.

Lastly, Sir Richard Dalton’s objection that such an attack on Iran would be “illegal” presupposes two mythical ideas– that internationalism can actually work as an enforcing entity, and secondly that international law is something other than a series of treaties and agreements, often temporary, between civilized countries (If they are not civilized, treaties would be worth less that the paper its printed on). People have this ridiculous notion that international law exists outside of these agreements and, moreover, that signatories of these agreements are utterly bound by them.

There is no such thing. Purist fiction.

Nations choose to adhere to these inter-national agreements because it is beneficial to their self-interest, and they abrogate them when the agreement runs its full course (i.e. the terms and duration of the treaty has been fulfilled.) or when it is no longer beneficial for their self-interest. Nations also adhere to treaties because the alternative (breaking agreements) would incur stiff penalties from other parties and would generally not be within their interests.

For Sir Richard Dalton, a former ambassador, and others to raise the fiction of a universally binding international law as an argument against war, I would have to assume that he has been misinformed about the nature of nation-states and, thus, ignorant their relationships with each other, or else he’s advocating fanciful myths.

Whatever our ultimate decision on Iran, let it not be made through the influence of obstructing generals nor the adventuring of foreign powers into our own affairs. Let the decision be made through sober reflections on the price of waiting and also on the price of going to war.

Sir Winston Churchill once remarked after Munich, “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.”

Let us pray that such is not the case before us today, but in the choice between terrible appeasement or terrible war against an evil tyranny, there should be no question. Total opposition is what’s called for, for total disaster is what’s at stake, and neither the Cindy Sheehan’s nor the the Neville Chamberlain’s nor the pacifist generals of the world will matter much if (when?) the avalanche begins.

Saint Diana.

Yes, that’s what I said. Saint Princess Diana.

… and that’s enough to turn my stomach.

The Queen is often a quiet reflective movie on the disconnect between the British people and their monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The story traces back those few fateful days just after the death of Princess Diana. It is also a story told largely through the eyes of Queen Elizabeth II, who is played magnificently by Helen Mirren.

Many of us remember waking to the frontpage news of Diana’s mangled car in some nondescript Paris tunnel and the worldwide grief that ensued. It was truly a hideous death. Here was a once member of the royal House of Windsor dying by the roadside pleading for help, coked and drunk out of her ever-loving mind, while the paparazzi stood by snapping their horrid pictures.

The director thankfully omitted those gruesome details from the movie and limited it to the reactions of the Royal Family on the phone and watching TV. I thought then as I do now that this was a tragedy of the first order but not in the way most people think of it.

This is also a movie about the ascension of Tony Blair to the office of Prime Minister and the values of the Labour Party moving to center stage.

The movie lovingly portrayed Tony Blair’s angst over the future of the Monarchy as, with Diana’s death, the British people demanded Queen to come to Buckingham Palace and give Diana a full state funeral.

The Queen, quite rightly, believed that Diana’s death should be borne with quiet dignity— a quality, she said, that the world has always admired in the British people. What is more, since Diana is no longer the wife of Prince Charles, and wife to the heir to the throne of Great Britain, her funeral should be handled by family members as a private affair rather than an affair of state.

The real tragedy exemplified in this movie is how a large portion of the once stolid British people, who once ruled the waves and a fourth of the earth, have become a febrile, hysterical people.

Perhaps this is too harsh to say, but in Great Britain and America, people “touched” by her death behaved like little school children desirous of consolation from an adult. When that adult (the Queen) tacitly chided them to behave more like the adults she believed them to be, they threw a tantrum like the grubby little children they have become.

To illustrate this point, here are a few comments on the movie left by British citizens:

There is nothing about the royals themselves that could be considered worthy of the public respect which they demand. The fact is that we are expected to bow and scrape to them simply because they were born with the name of Windsor or obtained it through marriage. It is part of the culture of deference that is one of the most objectionable features of life in modern Britain. Attitudes to the monarchy demonstrate how deeply the habit of ring-kissing is ingrained in our ‘democratic’ political system. Of course the Tories are true-blue royalists. The striking thing, however, is how willing all of the opposition parties are to kowtow to the Queen.

(I’ll spare those reading this post the more vicious comments, but here’s the link if you want to read it.)

Neither the armada of the Spanish Empire nor the V2 rockets of Adolf Hitler was able to force Britain to lower the Royal Standard from it’s place at the pinnacle of the flag pole. In fact, not once in all of Britain’s history has the flag of the House of Windsor bowed. It took the might of the British people and Tony Blair’s Labour government to commit that remarkable feat. Unlike customs in the United States where we fly our flag at half-staff, the Royal Standard DOES NOT (or did not, anyway) fly or bow. It is the flag of the sovereign (i.e. the Queen does not pay taxes to herself).

True to her oath as Queen of Great Britain, she placed the British people before herself, even though they no longer shared the same values. She came to London, conducted a national address to Her subjects, and gave Princess Diana a state funeral (Unbelievably, it’s the same one prepared by the Queen Mother for herself.). She underwent all these humiliations to appease the British people and their leader, Tony Blair.

Don’t get me wrong. I honor Tony Blair for his staunch support of America at great political costs to himself and his party. When no one wanted to come up to bat for us, he stepped forward. But it seems for his entire political career he played to have it both ways.

Whatever affection the American people feels for Tony Blair, we should be reminded that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister under whose leadership stripped the British aristocracy to nothing, dissolved the House of Lords into a common political appointment racket, castrated the British military, and forced the Monarchy into nothing more than a figurehead without any real teeth. It is also under Tony Blair’s leadership that the British are becoming more European at the expense of their alliance with the United States. It’s all part of his efforts to “modernize” Britain.

In a word, many of the worrisome attitudes and actions of the British of late can be traced either directly or nearly directly to Number 10 Downing Street.

He ripped the Monarchy into just a figurehead and portrayed himself as the savior of the Monarchy. He touts Britain’s alliance with America while eroding it by joining and catering to the EU.

I am gratified that Mr. Blair chose to support America in our War on Terror, but the backlash against him by the media and his own Labour Party was not unexpected. One cannot suddenly reverse a lifetimes’ position and transform magically into a Winston Churchill.

To paraphrase what the Queen said to Blair at the end of the movie, the media will turn on him and it will come unexpectedly and all at once… and so it has.

To this day I marvel at all the shrines erected in Diana’s name (and they are literally shrines). Her death was tragic and her life was tumultuous to say the least. But this was a woman with severe personal problems.

This should garner our pity, not our adoration.

The true Saint of the latter half of the twentieth century, Mother Teresa, died only a few days after Diana half a world away… and the world shrugged.

Update 2/26/06 10:32 a.m.

In all fairness, however, Tony Blair’s government might be an improvement on Margaret Thatcher’s. I bears reminding that Thatcher’s government was the one who proposed that the national debt be distributed equally among the entire British citizenry without regard to income. This meant that the poorest citizen would take on the same percentage of the national debt as billionaires.

Although I disagree with many, many things that the Blair government has done, not least of which is legislating entertainment to become politically correct (For instance, the BBC banned the Benny Hill Show to suit the feminists; they showed him the door without so much as an apology. The Benny Hill Show is shown exclusively outside of Britain now.), perhaps their censorship, their heavy taxation (people in the country can’t afford to enter London for a holiday for all the fees. I mean really, 20 pence to just use the toliet?)— perhaps all of this benefits the British people as a whole in comparison to the immoderate laissez-faire “let them eat cake” policy of Thatcher’s government.

Who knows what’s going on with Britain? They’ve destroyed centuries of traditions in the name of modernization, and I can’t honestly tell you if they are the better for it.

Only time will tell.

In a remarkable interview with Dan Le Batard of talk radio, CBS4 in Florida reported that former NBA star, Tim Hardaway, blasted homosexuals saying, “Well, you know, I hate gay people… I let it be known I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it.”

In almost the same manner as how most Muslims deny Israel’s right to exist, it is becoming more acceptable here in the United States and in Europe to take the public stance that denies homosexuals the right to exist. Similarly, in defiance of all logic, people such as Sean Hannity are advancing the view that their homophobia is nothing more than an “opinion” rather what it is— bigotry.

It is very eerie how people can condemn an entire segment of the population for whatever reason— race, smoking, sexual orientation, ethnicity, political party affiliation, etc.— it is frightening how people condemn others so casually, as if they are not going to stand before God’s throne to answer for it…

Here’s a video with Tim Hardaway’s comments:

A few days later, after he was banished from NBA-sanctioned appearances for the All-Star weekend and after losing at least one endorsement (and lots of money), Hardaway gave this pseudo-apology:

“I don’t hate gay people,” Hardaway said. “I’m a goodhearted person. I interact with people all the time. … I respect people. For me to say ‘hate’ was a bad word, and I didn’t mean to use it.”

…

“It was like, you know, I had killed somebody. … I never knew that this was going to escalate that high,” Hardaway said.

Rather than actually apologizing, like so many other pseudo-apologies in the wishy-washy modern dictum, all Mr. Hardaway has done is assert the contradiction of his previous remark (”I don’t hate gay people.”) and reassure the public that he really is just a wonderful person (”I’m a goodhearted person…”). Correct me if I”m wrong, but I don’t see an apology.

In fact, from his own statements, he was shocked that there was an outrage at what he said, as though he “had killed somebody”, implying that he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with his derogatory statements.

His “apology” also begs the question: How real is this apology when he has only apologized for using the word “hate” and not the content of what he actually said?

Perhaps he should have said, “I very, strongly, vehemently, vociferously dislike gay people and don’t want to be in the same city-block as them, but I don’t hate them”?

We all know what would happen if the same thing was said about a black man…

Here is a speech by a Vietnam veteran who is also a U.S. Congressman from Texas. God Bless him.

On February 7th, Reuters reported that China is finally cracking down on Internet piracy. It is well-known that China is the largest source of movie and music piracy for over a decade. Anyone venturing down to Chinatown in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles would be treated to a buffet of pirated movies (some not even released into the movie theaters yet) for the amazingly low price of 15 clams or less.

Normally, one imagines that China’s crackdown on piracy is beneficial and would take it as a sign that China is finally maturing in its respect for intellectual property rights. The author of this Reuters’ article seems to believe so.

China boasts that it investigated 436 cases between September and January with the imposition of fines totaling 705,000 yuan, the equivalent of $91,000. Six of these cases were remanded to court for prosecution, and only “[o]ne of those had led to a conviction”.

By any standard of measurement, China’s actions could only be interpreted as a token gesture, hardly even worth mentioning given the millions of pirated materials– perhaps even tens of millions– that yearly flows from China’s shores.

Reuters reports, “Pirated music, movies and software are sold openly on Chinese streets, a major irritant in trade relations with the United States.” Apparently, whoever wrote this article never took a stroll through New York’s Chinatown and haggled with sidewalk merchants. If he had, he’d notice all the “pirated, movies and software” being sold right on the streets of America– all imported from China and/or from their Chinese sweat-shop equivalent here in the States.

Given all of China’s tools for controlling Internet content, the most famous being Google’s totalitarian friendly Internet software, China could have shut these sites down with very little difficulty at any time. So, what’s the difference between now and then? Why do even this token gesture, which, of course, at the end of the day didn’t even so much as dent the illegal piracy issue?

Reuters also reports that “in one case, all the Internet cafes in Changchun, in the country’s northeast, were found to be linked into a database of pirated films.”

They’re targeting and sifting information flowing through Internet cafes? Is it just coincidence that people who oppose the Chinese communist party communicate with each other through Internet cafes? This token to end piracy offered to Westerners isn’t even a token. Perhaps they’re just doing what they do best— suppressing dissent, which reminds me of what Goering once said, “Please show me a ‘no man’ in Germany who is not six feet under the ground today.”

If this paltry maneuver is supposed to prove that China is ready to join the ranks of responsible nations, then perhaps China holds a really low opinion of the rest of the world.

In this crackdown, one thing is beyond doubt. China is not very serious in halting piracy. Why should they? All industrial nations of the world have made China their darling and no one has really held China’s feet to the fire for all the theft they’ve done to all our industries, intellectual or otherwise.

So next time you get a hankering to watch a newly released movie, why pay the $10 to a crowded movie theater when you can take a leisurely stroll to Chinatown and own the movie for roughly the same price?

Compliments of China.

Update 2/19/07 9:53 a.m.

I was referred to this video from The Politicker.

Yes, this is the same country that manufactures our shoes, our toys, our needful things… and they are almost prepared to mount challenge to us for control of the Western Pacific.

They are already conducting a full-scale cyberwar with us…

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In the 1980’s, the BBC first aired a memorably episode of Yes, Prime Minister where the British Prime Minister, the right honorable James T. Hacker, attempted to manipulate his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, into accepting his tax cuts by threatening him with a heavy increase in taxation of tobacco.

The episode was titled “The Smoke Screen“. One of the brilliant things about this show was that it illuminated the mundane, inane and complex inner workings of government and presented all of it in a humorous way. In this one episode in particular, in the constant war between the Civil Service and their political masters, Sir Humphrey refused the tax cut on principle, since, “traditionally, taxes aren’t raised by measuring the government’s financial needs, but by levying as much as it can before deciding what to spend it on.”

As a leverage on his proposed tax cuts, Hacker threatened to accept the anti-smoking lobby’s proposals to ban all tobacco advertisements and dramatically increase the taxes on tobacco. While acknowledging that the Treasury would dismiss the proposal out of hand, since the revenue from tobacco taxes are about £4 billion a year, he nevertheless made Sir Humphrey believe he’s going forward with the proposal.

Sir Humphrey counter-reasoned as follows (Wikipedia):

If those who die of smoking were to live to an advanced age, then it has been proven that they would cost the Treasury more in terms of pensions and benefit payments than it currently pays out in medical expenses. So in financial terms, he argues, it makes sense that they “continue to die at about the present rate.”

For the audience watching the show in 1986, all this talk was a moot point. Everyone knew that if you went after the tobacco interests, you were committing political suicide. Neither the government nor the people wanted to stop smoking. To do so was to halt the flow of billions of pounds (or dollars).

You can opt for short term increases in revenue by taxing smokers into oblivions until they stop puffing away, or you can let smokers continue to smoke and collect the revenue.

As we sit here in 2007 and with events playing out in reality remarkably like the proposals in this show, it seems the government never made a clear choice between the two options above. Our government crusaded against the “immortality of smoking” (the argument’s dubious at best) while fully expecting to receive large revenues from smokers.

The argument declaring the “immorality of smoking” is so trite as to be embarrassing.

“You are killing yourself,” they declared, even as many people douse their innards with poison every chance they get (it’s called alcohol).

“You’re killing others with second-hand smoke,” even if standing behind a car with the engine running is many times worse, and if the welfare of others is really your concern, then perhaps you should drive the speed limit and stop “aborting” babies.

“You’re making the tax payers pay for you when you get cancer and die!” even as people consume unhealthy amounts of sugar, making them a diabetic down the line; even as people dosy-do with many sexual partners heedless of the STD’s floating about— if we live long enough, there’s a cozy tax-paid hospital bed waiting for us all, that is unless you’re affluent or dirt poor.

So, I think the honest reason for imploring people to quit smoking is that doing so would make them feel better physically over the long haul (I quit just last year for this reason.). And the other honest reason for wanting people to quit is that anti-smokers hate the way it smells. Most arguments beyond this are people wanting to vent they bigotries on others, since neither race, sex nor sexual orientation is popular anymore as acceptable reasons for bashing someone.

Yahoo News reported this week that states have twisted themselves into a bind regarding their anti-smoking laws.

On the one hand state governments are pressured to outlaw smoking in everything but name by anti-smoking lobbies, other other hand state governments are being squeezed financially by the steady decrease in revenue by people quitting. Minnesota expects a drop of 1 percent in revenue a year, roughly $4-5 million a year– “and that is does not even take into account the potential effect of a statewide smoking ban.”

According to Yahoo News, “in 2005, tobacco taxes contributed $13 billion to state budgets,” and this doesn’t take into account the federal taxes levied.

Now as the gravy train starts to dry up for state and federal governments vis-a-vis tobacco, I have long speculated with friends what would be the next target, what else are they going to taxed into blithering submission? From recent legislation in New York regarding trans-fats, it increasingly looks like greasy foods are next on the menu.

This debased depravity in reasoning that allows people to indulge their intolerances against socially unacceptable behaviors such as smoking and eating MacDonald’s makes me wonder: Who’s on next? Who will the collective next turn against?

Or as Sir Humphrey Appleby said:

Sir Humphrey: Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

Hacker: Perhaps I can have a précis of that.
Sir Humphrey: There’s nicotine on your hands.

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Michelle Malkin posted a video put together by Spc. Andy Johnson of the 10st Airborne. I thought the song by Johnny Cash was an especially good touch…

We should be ashamed of ourselves that our boys are over there getting shot at, and we’re here in America roughly 4 years later still debating and undermining them… shameful.