Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Army Program Allows for More Healing at Home
Under the Community Based Health Care Initiative, National Guard and Reserve members can recuperate in their comfort zones.

 
 
By John-Thor Dahlburg, Times Staff Writer


OAKLAND PARK, Fla. ? Staff Sgt. Mitch Riviera needs therapy on his left knee and an operation to mend his bad back, enduring and painful consequences of a yearlong deployment in Iraq. But this holiday season, because of a new Army program, the injured National Guardsman hasn't been marooned in a military hospital on some faraway base, but is back home.

"I wake up every day happy," said the 33-year-old mechanic with the 743rd Maintenance Company of the Florida National Guard. "You're just happy to be home."

     
 
 
   
     
 
Under the Community Based Health Care Initiative, wounded or ailing members of the Army National Guard and Reserve are able for the first time to live at home and recuperate while still on active-duty status.

They receive medical care at local Veterans Administration facilities or from healthcare providers authorized by Tricare, the U.S. military's equivalent of an HMO, and are given light duties at a local armory or other military facilities.

The impetus was a public embarrassment for the Army: media reports in 2003 that hundreds of wounded reservists and guardsmen were languishing in barracks as they waited to see doctors or be admitted to overcrowded medical facilities. That was Riviera's experience after his company returned from Iraq in April.

Nearly all members of his unit were allowed to go home, but the staff sergeant said he was kept on base at Ft. Stewart, Ga., for three months, housed in a 16-person trailer as he awaited his turn for medical treatment.

"They were just overwhelmed. They couldn't cope with the wounded people they had," said Riviera, who hurt his back and knee in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, while lugging the heavy tools needed in his job as a front-line mechanic and wearing 80 pounds of "battle rattle" combat gear. At one point, he said, he couldn't walk for three weeks.

"I was disorganized with all the surgery I had to go through" at Ft. Stewart, 400 miles from South Florida, Riviera said. "You're so close to home, but you can't go there, and you can't go off post."

It was his fiancee, Diana Villescaz, 24, of Bakersfield, a legal secretary, who came to his rescue, Riviera said. She heard about the Army's new community-based healthcare program, and sent an e-mail to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asking for help.

Within 48 hours, Riviera said, he received a phone call from an officer inquiring about his case.

Lt. Col. Bruce Cornelison is in charge of the initiative in Florida, which in March became the first state to implement the program. He called it "an absolutely wonderful improvement," in large part because it gets wounded or injured men and women "back to their families and loved ones."

"An individual cures faster if he is surrounded by his support system," Cornelison, an officer in the Army Medical Service Corps, said from the program's Florida offices in Plant City east of Tampa. "Soldiers were so far from their home, and facilities were being overcrowded."

Offices have also been opened in California, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Wisconsin to arrange for and supervise medical care for 1,335 soldiers in 23 states. The initiative was deemed so successful, and demand grew so fast, that the Army has announced that by April, more centers would be opened in Virginia, Alabama and Utah, expanding coverage to all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

A total of $23 million in funding has been set aside, and nearly 800 additional physicians, nurses, clerks and case managers have been hired or mobilized to help, the Pentagon announced Dec. 6.

According to Col. Barbara Scherb of Army Forces Command, the program's overall manager, the innovation is a response to the new realities of today's Army, where active-duty troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have had to be heavily and repeatedly supplemented by part-time soldiers from the Guard and Reserve.

"It quickly became apparent that we might exceed the [medical] capacity at the installations for these folks" if they suffered the same level of casualties as troops in World War II, Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm," Scherb said. "That's why we looked at establishing something that was community-based."

Since active-duty soldiers typically live on or near an Army base, families and friends can be by their side as they are treated in a location familiar to them. The community-based care program extends that psychological and emotional boost to soldiers in the Guard and Reserve, as well as easing them back into civilian life.

"The quality of the care is really the same as it was before," Scherb said. "The quality of life is the thing that is improving, because they are able to get home and get back with their families."

The National Military Family Assn. is still monitoring how the novel program will work in practice, especially for soldiers who live in remote locales where medical resources may be scarce, said Julia Pfaff, the not-for-profit group's executive director. "We're cautious," Pfaff said. "A lot of these individuals are stuck in this Catch-22 of knowing they can be closer to home, but also having healthcare requirements that are enormous and can overwhelm the system."

For Riviera, an 11-year veteran of the Guard with thick black hair and a ready smile, being home has meant being able to buy diamond earrings for Villescaz (they plan to get married in March) and joining his mother and other family members in Tampa for Christmas. Last Thursday, he had an afternoon date to drive his fiancee, who had a cold, to the doctor. Riviera laughed at the irony of it.

Since coming back to Florida in late June, Riviera has been operated on at a Veterans Administration facility in Miami for a torn meniscus in his knee, and he will learn this month what sort of surgery he needs on his lower back. "The lower disk is gone," Riviera said. "They are probably going to have to fuse two lower disks together."

Two times a week, the sergeant, in civilian life a service technician for a cable company, attends physical therapy sessions at the VA's outpatient clinic in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Oakland Park. There, he is treated with ice and electrical stimulation, and does exercises to strengthen his muscles.

"It's painful, but it's getting the job done," Riviera said. "That therapist doesn't let you slack." At his apartment complex in Davie, he regularly walks in the swimming pool, with the water buoying his body so he doesn't put too much weight on his back and knee.

Not all of the wounded or injured who might want to take part in the program are eligible, Cornelison said.

"It wouldn't make any sense to bring someone home who required constant hospitalization," he said. Before going home, the soldiers spend a few days at a program office like the one in Plant City, meeting their case manager, discussing a treatment plan with a physician and arranging for a duty assignment for the time they will remain on active duty.

At 8 a.m. most days, Riviera reports to a National Guard armory near Fort Lauderdale's airport, where he assists military recruiters with administrative tasks. A third-generation military man, he wants to stay in the National Guard. He will continue on active duty in his current "medical hold" status, he said, until the VA treats his medical problems or decides it can't do anything more.

For the moment, Riviera must be careful even when making the simplest of movements ? like reaching for a bottle of milk.

His immediate goals are to get married, buy a house and start a family. Despite the pain and uncertainty about his back, he seems cheerful and upbeat. He'll be happy, the guardsman said, if he can get 90% of his old physical ability back.

"The rest I'll chalk up to life," he said.

THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

Facing Realities in Iraq
December 30, 2004 1840 GMT

By George Friedman

On May 17, 2004, Stratfor published a piece entitled "Iraq: New Strategies." In a rare moment of advocacy ( http://www.stratfor.biz/Story.neo?storyId=232011 ),
we argued that the war in Iraq had evolved to a point where the United States was unlikely to be able to suppress the insurgency.

We argued then that, "The United States must begin by recognizing that it
cannot possibly pacify Iraq with the force available or, for that matter,
with a larger military force. It can continue to patrol, it can continue to
question people, it can continue to take casualties. However, it can never
permanently defeat the guerrilla forces in the Sunni triangle using this
strategy. It certainly cannot displace the power and authority of the Shiite
leadership in the south. Urban warfare and counterinsurgency in the Iraqi
environment cannot be successful."

We did not and do not agree with the view that the invasion of Iraq was a
mistake. It had a clear strategic purpose that it achieved: reshaping the
behavior of surrounding regimes, particularly of the Saudis. This helped
disrupt the al Qaeda network sufficiently that it has been unable to mount
follow-on attacks in the United States and has shifted its attention to the
Islamic world, primarily to the Saudis. None of this would have happened
without the invasion of Iraq.

As frequently happens in warfare, the primary strategic purpose of the war has been forgotten by the Bush administration. Mission creep, the nightmare of all military planners, has taken place. The United States has shifted its focus from coercing neighboring countries into collaborating with the United States against al Qaeda, to building democracy in Iraq. As we put it in May: "The United States must recall its original mission, which was to occupy Iraq in order to prosecute the war against al Qaeda. If that mission is remembered, and the mission creep of reshaping Iraq forgotten, some obvious strategic solutions re-emerge. The first, and most important, is that the United States has no national interest in the nature of Iraqi government or society. Except for not supporting al Qaeda, Iraq's government does not matter."

Most comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam are superficial and some are absurd, but one lesson is entirely relevant to Iraq. In Vietnam, the United States attempted to simultaneously re-engineer Vietnamese society and wage a counterinsurgency campaign. That proved impossible. The United States is attempting to do precisely that again in Iraq. It will fail again for the same reason: The goals are inherently contradictory.

Creating democracy in Iraq requires that democratic institutions be created. That is an abstract, bloodless way of putting it. The reality is that Iraqis must be recruited to serve in these institutions, from the army and police to social services. Obviously, these people become targets for the guerrillas and the level of intimidation is massive. These officials -- caught be tween the power of U.S. forces and the guerrillas -- are hardly in a position to engage in nation building. They are happy to survive, if they choose to remain at their posts.

Even this is not the central problem. In order to build these institutions,
Iraqis will have to be recruited. It is impossible to distinguish between
Iraqis committed to the American project, Iraqis who are opportunists and
Iraqis who are jihadists sent by guerrilla intelligence services to penetrate
the new institutions. Corruption aside, every one of the institutions is full
of jihadist agents, who are there to spy and disrupt.

This has a direct military consequence. The goal of the Untied States in
Vietnam was, and now in Iraq is, to shift the war-fighting burden -- in this
case from U.S. forces to the Iraqis. This can never happen. The Iraqi army, like the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, is filled with guerrilla
operatives. If the United States mounts joint operations with the Iraqis, the guerrillas will know about it during the planning stages. If the United
States fights alone, it will be more effective, but the Iraqi army will never
develop. For the United States, it is a question of heads you win, tails I
lose.

The United States cannot win the intelligence war on the ground level. Its
operations to penetrate the guerrillas depend on Iraqis working with the
United States and these operations will be quickly compromised. The
guerrillas on the other hand cannot be rooted out of the Iraqi military and
intelligence organs because they cannot be distinguished from other Iraqis. Some will be captured. Many might be captured. But all of them cannot be captured and therefore no effective allied force can be created in Iraq. This was the center of gravity of the problem in Vietnam, the problem that destroyed Vietnamization. It is the center of gravity of the problem in Iraq.

Missed Opportunities

There were two points where the problem could have been solved. Had the United States acted vigorously in May and June 2003, there is a chance that the guerrilla force would have been so disrupted it could never have been born. U.S. intelligence, however, failed to recognize the guerrilla threat and Donald Rumsfeld in particular was slow to react. By the summer of 2003, the situation was out of hand.

There was a second point where effective action might have been fruitful,
which was in the period after the Ramadan offensive of October-November 2003, when Saddam Hussein was captured, and the beginning of the April 2004 offensives in Al Fallujah and the Muqtada al-Sadr rising. Those four months were wasted in diffused action in several areas, rather than in a concerted effort to turn Sunni elders against the guerrillas.

It is interesting to note that the attempt to break the Sunni guerrillas in a
systematic way did not begin until November 2004, with the attack against Al Fallujah and an attempt to co-opt the Sunni elders. For a while it looked like it might just work. It didn't. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's jihadists had become too strong and too well organized. Whatever inroads were made among the Sunni elders was blocked by al-Zarqawi's ability to carry out reprisals. The Sunnis were locked into place.

The U.S. military is now carrying out an impossible mission. It is trying to
suppress a well-organized guerrilla force using primarily U.S. troops whose intelligence about the enemy is severely limited by language and cultural barriers that cannot be solved by recruiting Iraqis to serve as intelligence aides. The United States either operates blind or compromises its security.

Unless the Iraqi guerrillas are not only throwing all of their strength into
this offensive, but also using up their strength in a non-renewable fashion,
the Jan. 30 elections will not be the end of the guerrilla war. There will be
a lull in guerrilla operations -- guerrillas have to rest, recruit and
resupply like anyone else -- but after a few months, another offensive will
be launched. There is, therefore, no possibility that the Sunni guerrilla
movement will be suppressed unless there is a dramatic change in the
political landscape of the Sunni community.

There is one bit of good fortune that arises out of another of Rumsfeld's
failures. His failure to listen to Gen. Erik Shinseki's warnings about the
size of the force that would be needed in Iraq after the war meant that the U.S. force structure was never expanded appropriately. In most instances, this is a terrible failing. However, in this case, it has an unexpectedly positive consequence. We do not doubt for a moment that Rumsfeld would throw in more forces if he had them. They would not solve the problem in any way and would add additional targets for the guerrillas. But Rumsfeld doesn't have the needed forces, so he can't send them in.

Facing the Facts

The issue facing the Bush administration is simple. It can continue to fight
the war as it has, hoping that a miracle will bring successes in 2005 that
didn't happen in 2004. Alternatively, it can accept the reality that the
guerrilla force is now self-sustaining and sufficiently large not to flicker
out and face the fact that a U.S. conventional force of less than 150,000 is
not likely to suppress the guerrillas. More to the point, it can recognize
these facts:

1. The United States cannot re-engineer Iraq because the guerrillas will
infiltrate every institution it creates.

2. That the United States by itself lacks the intelligence capabilities to
fight an effective counterinsurgency.

3. That exposing U.S. forces to security responsibilities in this environment generates casualties without bringing the United States closer to the goal.

4. That the strain on the U.S. force is undermining its ability to react to
opportunities and threats in the rest of the region.

And that, therefore, this phase of the Iraq campaign must be halted as soon as possible.

This does not mean strategic defeat -- unless the strategic goal is the
current inflated one of creating a democratic Iraq. Under the original
strategic goal of changing the behavior of other countries in the region, the United States has already obtained strategic success. Indeed, to the extent that the United States is being drained and exhausted in Iraq, the strategic goal is actually being undermined.

We assert two principles:

1. The internal governance -- or non-governance -- of Iraq is neither a
fundamental American national interest nor is it something that can be shaped by the United States even if it were a national interest.

2. The United States does require a major presence in Iraq because of that country's strategic position in the region.

It is altogether possible for the United States to accept the first principle
yet pursue the second. The geography of Iraq -- the distribution of the
population -- is such that the United States can maintain a major presence in Iraq without, for the most part, being based in the populated regions and therefore without being responsible for the security of Iraq -- let alone responsible its form of government.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces west and south of the Euphrates and in an arc north to the Turkish border and into Kurdistan would provide the United States with the same leverage in the region, without the unsustainable cost of the guerrilla war. The Saudis, Syrians and Iranians would still have U.S. forces on their borders, this time not diluted by a hopeless pacification program.

Something like this will have to happen. After the January elections, there
will be a Shiite government in Baghdad. There will be, in all likelihood,
civil war between Sunnis and Shia. The United States cannot stop it and
cannot be trapped in the middle of it. It needs to withdraw.

Certainly, it would have been nice for the United States if it had been able
to dominate Iraq thoroughly. Somewhere between "the U.S. blew it" and "there was never a chance" that possibility is gone. It would have been nice if the United States had never tried to control the situation, because now the U.S. is going to have to accept a defeat, which will destabilize the region psychologically for a while. But what is is, and the facts speak for themselves.

We are not Walter Cronkite, and we are not saying that the war is lost. The war is with the jihadists around the world; Iraq was just one campaign, and the occupation of the Sunnis was just one phase of that campaign. That phase has been lost. The administration has allowed that phase to become the war as a whole in the public mind. That was a very bad move, but the administration is just going to have to bite the bullet and do the hard, painful and embarrassing work of cutting losses and getting on with the war.

If Bush has trouble doing this, he should conjure up Lyndon Johnson's ghost, wandering restlessly in the White House, and imagine how Johnson would have been remembered if he had told Robert McNamara to get lost in 1966.

(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

Issue of 2005-01-03
THE VANISHING

by MALCOLM GLADWELL

In ?Collapse,? Jared Diamond shows how societies destroy themselves.

A thousand years ago, a group of Vikings led by Erik the Red set sail from Norway for the vast Arctic landmass west of Scandinavia which came to be known as Greenland. It was largely uninhabitable?a forbidding expanse of snow and ice. But along the southwestern coast there were two deep fjords protected from the harsh winds and saltwater spray of the North Atlantic Ocean, and as the Norse sailed upriver they saw grassy slopes flowering with buttercups, dandelions, and bluebells, and thick forests of willow and birch and alder. Two colonies were formed, three hundred miles apart, known as the Eastern and Western Settlements. The Norse raised sheep, goats, and cattle. They turned the grassy slopes into pastureland. They hunted seal and caribou. They built a string of parish churches and a magnificent cathedral, the remains of which are still standing. They traded actively with mainland Europe, and tithed regularly to the Roman Catholic Church. The Norse colonies in Greenland were law-abiding, economically viable, fully integrated communities, numbering at their peak five thousand people. They lasted for four hundred and fifty years?and then they vanished.

 

The story of the Eastern and Western Settlements of Greenland is told in Jared Diamond?s ?Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed? (Viking; $29.95). Diamond teaches geography at U.C.L.A. and is well known for his best-seller ?Guns, Germs, and Steel,? which won a Pulitzer Prize. In ?Guns, Germs, and Steel,? Diamond looked at environmental and structural factors to explain why Western societies came to dominate the world. In ?Collapse,? he continues that approach, only this time he looks at history?s losers?like the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Mayans, and the modern-day Rwandans. We live in an era preoccupied with the way that ideology and culture and politics and economics help shape the course of history. But Diamond isn?t particularly interested in any of those things?or, at least, he?s interested in them only insofar as they bear on what to him is the far more important question, which is a society?s relationship to its climate and geography and resources and neighbors. ?Collapse? is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth?s ecosystem?soil, trees, and water?because societies fail, in Diamond?s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors

.

There was nothing wrong with the social organization of the Greenland settlements. The Norse built a functioning reproduction of the predominant northern-European civic model of the time?devout, structured, and reasonably orderly. In 1408, right before the end, records from the Eastern Settlement dutifully report that Thorstein Olafsson married Sigrid Bjornsdotter in Hvalsey Church on September 14th of that year, with Brand Halldorstson, Thord Jorundarson, Thorbjorn Bardarson, and Jon Jonsson as witnesses, following the proclamation of the wedding banns on three consecutive Sundays.

 

The problem with the settlements, Diamond argues, was that the Norse thought that Greenland really was green; they treated it as if it were the verdant farmland of southern Norway. They cleared the land to create meadows for their cows, and to grow hay to feed their livestock through the long winter. They chopped down the forests for fuel, and for the construction of wooden objects. To make houses warm enough for the winter, they built their homes out of six-foot-thick slabs of turf, which meant that a typical home consumed about ten acres of grassland.

 

But Greenland?s ecosystem was too fragile to withstand that kind of pressure. The short, cool growing season meant that plants developed slowly, which in turn meant that topsoil layers were shallow and lacking in soil constituents, like organic humus and clay, that hold moisture and keep soil resilient in the face of strong winds. ?The sequence of soil erosion in Greenland begins with cutting or burning the cover of trees and shrubs, which are more effective at holding soil than is grass,? he writes. ?With the trees and shrubs gone, livestock, especially sheep and goats, graze down the grass, which regenerates only slowly in Greenland?s climate. Once the grass cover is broken and the soil is exposed, soil is carried away especially by the strong winds, and also by pounding from occasionally heavy rains, to the point where the topsoil can be removed for a distance of miles from an entire valley.? Without adequate pastureland, the summer hay yields shrank; without adequate supplies of hay, keeping livestock through the long winter got harder. And, without adequate supplies of wood, getting fuel for the winter became increasingly difficult.

 

The Norse needed to reduce their reliance on livestock?particularly cows, which consumed an enormous amount of agricultural resources. But cows were a sign of high status; to northern Europeans, beef was a prized food. They needed to copy the Inuit practice of burning seal blubber for heat and light in the winter, and to learn from the Inuit the difficult art of hunting ringed seals, which were the most reliably plentiful source of food available in the winter. But the Norse had contempt for the Inuit?they called them skraelings, ?wretches??and preferred to practice their own brand of European agriculture. In the summer, when the Norse should have been sending ships on lumber-gathering missions to Labrador, in order to relieve the pressure on their own forestlands, they instead sent boats and men to the coast to hunt for walrus. Walrus tusks, after all, had great trade value. In return for those tusks, the Norse were able to acquire, among other things, church bells, stained-glass windows, bronze candlesticks, Communion wine, linen, silk, silver, churchmen?s robes, and jewelry to adorn their massive cathedral at Gardar, with its three-ton sandstone building blocks and eighty-foot bell tower. In the end, the Norse starved to death.



Diamond?s argument stands in sharp contrast to the conventional explanations for a society?s collapse. Usually, we look for some kind of cataclysmic event. The aboriginal civilization of the Americas was decimated by the sudden arrival of smallpox. European Jewry was destroyed by Nazism. Similarly, the disappearance of the Norse settlements is usually blamed on the Little Ice Age, which descended on Greenland in the early fourteen-hundreds, ending several centuries of relative warmth. (One archeologist refers to this as the ?It got too cold, and they died? argument.) What all these explanations have in common is the idea that civilizations are destroyed by forces outside their control, by acts of God.

 

But look, Diamond says, at Easter Island. Once, it was home to a thriving culture that produced the enormous stone statues that continue to inspire awe. It was home to dozens of species of trees, which created and protected an ecosystem fertile enough to support as many as thirty thousand people. Today, it?s a barren and largely empty outcropping of volcanic rock. What happened? Did a rare plant virus wipe out the island?s forest cover? Not at all. The Easter Islanders chopped their trees down, one by one, until they were all gone. ?I have often asked myself, ?What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it??? Diamond writes, and that, of course, is what is so troubling about the conclusions of ?Collapse.? Those trees were felled by rational actors?who must have suspected that the destruction of this resource would result in the destruction of their civilization. The lesson of ?Collapse? is that societies, as often as not, aren?t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death.

 

This doesn?t mean that acts of God don?t play a role. It did get colder in Greenland in the early fourteen-hundreds. But it didn?t get so cold that the island became uninhabitable. The Inuit survived long after the Norse died out, and the Norse had all kinds of advantages, including a more diverse food supply, iron tools, and ready access to Europe. The problem was that the Norse simply couldn?t adapt to the country?s changing environmental conditions. Diamond writes, for instance, of the fact that nobody can find fish remains in Norse archeological sites. One scientist sifted through tons of debris from the Vatnahverfi farm and found only three fish bones; another researcher analyzed thirty-five thousand bones from the garbage of another Norse farm and found two fish bones. How can this be? Greenland is a fisherman?s dream: Diamond describes running into a Danish tourist in Greenland who had just caught two Arctic char in a shallow pool with her bare hands. ?Every archaeologist who comes to excavate in Greenland . . . starts out with his or her own idea about where all those missing fish bones might be hiding,? he writes. ?Could the Norse have strictly confined their munching on fish to within a few feet of the shoreline, at sites now underwater because of land subsidence? Could they have faithfully saved all their fish bones for fertilizer, fuel, or feeding to cows?? It seems unlikely. There are no fish bones in Norse archeological remains, Diamond concludes, for the simple reason that the Norse didn?t eat fish. For one reason or another, they had a cultural taboo against it.

 

Given the difficulty that the Norse had in putting food on the table, this was insane. Eating fish would have substantially reduced the ecological demands of the Norse settlements. The Norse would have needed fewer livestock and less pastureland. Fishing is not nearly as labor-intensive as raising cattle or hunting caribou, so eating fish would have freed time and energy for other activities. It would have diversified their diet.

 

Why did the Norse choose not to eat fish? Because they weren?t thinking about their biological survival. They were thinking about their cultural survival. Food taboos are one of the idiosyncrasies that define a community. Not eating fish served the same function as building lavish churches, and doggedly replicating the untenable agricultural practices of their land of origin. It was part of what it meant to be Norse, and if you are going to establish a community in a harsh and forbidding environment all those little idiosyncrasies which define and cement a culture are of paramount importance. ?The Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enabled them to master Greenland?s difficulties,? Diamond writes. ?The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.? He goes on:

 

To us in our secular modern society, the predicament in which the Greenlanders found themselves is difficult to fathom. To them, however, concerned with their social survival as much as their biological survival, it was out of the question to invest less in churches, to imitate or intermarry with the Inuit, and thereby to face an eternity in Hell just in order to survive another winter on Earth.

 

Diamond?s distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two, or assume that biological survival is contingent on the strength of our civilizational values. That was the lesson taken from the two world wars and the nuclear age that followed: we would survive as a species only if we learned to get along and resolve our disputes peacefully. The fact is, though, that we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal. The two kinds of survival are separate.

 

Diamond points out that the Easter Islanders did not practice, so far as we know, a uniquely pathological version of South Pacific culture. Other societies, on other islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, chopped down trees and farmed and raised livestock just as the Easter Islanders did. What doomed the Easter Islanders was the interaction between what they did and where they were. Diamond and a colleague, Barry Rollet, identified nine physical factors that contributed to the likelihood of deforestation?including latitude, average rainfall, aerial-ash fallout, proximity to Central Asia?s dust plume, size, and so on?and Easter Island ranked at the high-risk end of nearly every variable. ?The reason for Easter?s unusually severe degree of deforestation isn?t that those seemingly nice people really were unusually bad or improvident,? he concludes. ?Instead, they had the misfortune to be living in one of the most fragile environments, at the highest risk for deforestation, of any Pacific people.? The problem wasn?t the Easter Islanders. It was Easter Island.

 

In the second half of ?Collapse,? Diamond turns his attention to modern examples, and one of his case studies is the recent genocide in Rwanda. What happened in Rwanda is commonly described as an ethnic struggle between the majority Hutu and the historically dominant, wealthier Tutsi, and it is understood in those terms because that is how we have come to explain much of modern conflict: Serb and Croat, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian. The world is a cauldron of cultural antagonism. It?s an explanation that clearly exasperates Diamond. The Hutu didn?t just kill the Tutsi, he points out. The Hutu also killed other Hutu. Why? Look at the land: steep hills farmed right up to the crests, without any protective terracing; rivers thick with mud from erosion; extreme deforestation leading to irregular rainfall and famine; staggeringly high population densities; the exhaustion of the topsoil; falling per-capita food production. This was a society on the brink of ecological disaster, and if there is anything that is clear from the study of such societies it is that they inevitably descend into genocidal chaos. In ?Collapse,? Diamond quite convincingly defends himself against the charge of environmental determinism. His discussions are always nuanced, and he gives political and ideological factors their due. The real issue is how, in coming to terms with the uncertainties and hostilities of the world, the rest of us have turned ourselves into cultural determinists.



For the past thirty years, Oregon has had one of the strictest sets of land-use regulations in the nation, requiring new development to be clustered in and around existing urban development. The laws meant that Oregon has done perhaps the best job in the nation in limiting suburban sprawl, and protecting coastal lands and estuaries. But this November Oregon?s voters passed a ballot referendum, known as Measure 37, that rolled back many of those protections. Specifically, Measure 37 said that anyone who could show that the value of his land was affected by regulations implemented since its purchase was entitled to compensation from the state. If the state declined to pay, the property owner would be exempted from the regulations.

 

To call Measure 37?and similar referendums that have been passed recently in other states?intellectually incoherent is to put it mildly. It might be that the reason your hundred-acre farm on a pristine hillside is worth millions to a developer is that it?s on a pristine hillside: if everyone on that hillside could subdivide, and sell out to Target and Wal-Mart, then nobody?s plot would be worth millions anymore. Will the voters of Oregon then pass Measure 38, allowing them to sue the state for compensation over damage to property values caused by Measure 37?

 

It is hard to read ?Collapse,? though, and not have an additional reaction to Measure 37. Supporters of the law spoke entirely in the language of political ideology. To them, the measure was a defense of property rights, preventing the state from unconstitutional ?takings.? If you replaced the term ?property rights? with ?First Amendment rights,? this would have been indistinguishable from an argument over, say, whether charitable groups ought to be able to canvass in malls, or whether cities can control the advertising they sell on the sides of public buses. As a society, we do a very good job with these kinds of debates: we give everyone a hearing, and pass laws, and make compromises, and square our conclusions with our constitutional heritage?and in the Oregon debate the quality of the theoretical argument was impressively high.

 

The thing that got lost in the debate, however, was the land. In a rapidly growing state like Oregon, what, precisely, are the state?s ecological strengths and vulnerabilities? What impact will changed land-use priorities have on water and soil and cropland and forest? One can imagine Diamond writing about the Measure 37 debate, and he wouldn?t be very impressed by how seriously Oregonians wrestled with the problem of squaring their land-use rules with their values, because to him a society?s environmental birthright is not best discussed in those terms. Rivers and streams and forests and soil are a biological resource. They are a tangible, finite thing, and societies collapse when they get so consumed with addressing the fine points of their history and culture and deeply held beliefs?with making sure that Thorstein Olafsson and Sigrid Bjornsdotter are married before the right number of witnesses following the announcement of wedding banns on the right number of Sundays?that they forget that the pastureland is shrinking and the forest cover is gone.

 

When archeologists looked through the ruins of the Western Settlement, they found plenty of the big wooden objects that were so valuable in Greenland?crucifixes, bowls, furniture, doors, roof timbers?which meant that the end came too quickly for anyone to do any scavenging. And, when the archeologists looked at the animal bones left in the debris, they found the bones of newborn calves, meaning that the Norse, in that final winter, had given up on the future. They found toe bones from cows, equal to the number of cow spaces in the barn, meaning that the Norse ate their cattle down to the hoofs, and they found the bones of dogs covered with knife marks, meaning that, in the end, they had to eat their pets. But not fish bones, of course. Right up until they starved to death, the Norse never lost sight of what they stood for.

ANOTHER YEAR AT WAR

By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20, 2004 -- AS 2004 draws to a close, our military can be proud. Once again, our troops de feated our enemies, redeemed the mistakes of our civilian leadership and defied the prophets of disaster.
Iraq will shortly hold national elections. Afghanistan is a functioning democracy, despite the critics who claimed the goal was impossible. Islamic terrorists remain on the run, unable to strike our homeland. And the battle with terror in the Middle East has taken a terrible toll on our enemies.

This was a year of major policy errors and deadly challenges. U.S. election requirements conflicted with military necessity. Troop levels were capped too low. Their civilian superiors prevented combat commanders from taking decisive action, fearing that casualties would become a political football. The terrorists and insurgents put down deep roots while our election campaign dragged on.

But our troops always came through for us, no matter the limits imposed upon them. Whenever they were allowed to fight, they won. Our tragic reverses, such as the disastrous First Battle of Fallujah or the initial rounds of fighting in Najaf, resulted from indecision and miscalculations at the highest levels of civilian leadership, not from any military failings.

Throughout the year, commanders and soldiers reinvented warfare under fire. Old doctrine was cast aside in favor of combat techniques suited to a new century. Urban warfare lessons were studied in the field and combat in cities was revolutionized ? the triumphant Second Battle of Fallujah shattered every historical precedent.

Commanders grasped the paramount requirement for speed when war must be waged under the scrutiny of the global media. The traditional importance of mass ? of having the numbers overwhelmingly on your side ? regained respectability. Even civilian decision-makers belatedly recognized that war cannot be waged by garden-party rules.

As a result, an overwhelming, multi-service force won Second Fallujah in a week, with less than 10 percent of the casualties traditional urban-warfare models would have predicted. The major fighting was over before a hostile global media could undercut our efforts ? as al-Jazeera and the BBC did back in April, during First Fallujah.

If any lesson permeated our military experience in Iraq, it was the requirement to speed the kill, to operate within the media cycle. Operations that once would have stretched over days were condensed to start and finish between midnight and dawn.

On a darker note, it became evident that our strategic failure to mount a robust occupation immediately in the aftermath of Saddam's fall allowed our enemies to retake control of the timetable. An occupation that could have gone relatively smoothly turned instead into an ugly unconventional war that tears at the sinews of Iraqi identity.

There's an old military maxim to the effect that it's difficult to recover from "faulty initial dispositions." By failing to use our power aggressively early on, we only strengthened our enemies.

Had the Pentagon's civilian leadership planned thoroughly for the occupation, allocating robust forces and delegating real authority to battlefield commanders, our casualties would be far lower today and Iraq would be a much more peaceful place. For the sake of our troops, we need to hope that the civilians who send our forces into battle have learned the time-honored lesson that you can't do military operations on the cheap.

Even as our troops have done a magnificent job, they've been run ragged. Our Reserves and National Guard are drained, while our active-duty forces are on an endless conveyor belt to and from Iraq. Desperately needed increases in Army and Marine numbers have been blocked by the secretary of Defense. We owe our service members a better deal than that ? we can at least make sure there are enough of them.

It's going to be a needlessly dark holiday season for hundreds of thousands of military families torn asunder by faulty Pentagon planning. And still our troops maintain high morale. Even as the media made the ugly-but-minor mess at Abu Ghraib prison the event of the year, our soldiers were fighting, winning, building a new democracy and refusing to quit, no matter how difficult the conditions.

Whatever errors their leaders may have made, our troops never failed us.

Now, as 2005 approaches, we need to give the men and women in uniform the support they deserve.

First, this means increasing the size of our ground forces so that we don't have to cripple the superb military we've built over the past generation. This is going to be a long war. There is no excuse for temporizing while soldiers and their families suffer needlessly. There are not enough troops in uniform. Fixing that problem should be our nation's number-one military priority.

We also need to support our troops by keeping faith. Too many of the Washington civilians who couldn't wait to go to war now can't wait to bail out of Iraq. But victory belongs to the steadfast. Iraq's elections can't become an excuse for cutting and running. We have to see this one through.

Our troops are willing. They understand the stakes. The least we can do is to give them the support they need, whether additional numbers or sufficient vehicle armor. To quit when we have come this far would be to mock all the casualties our forces have suffered.

Our troops did us proud in 2004. Let's do right by them in '05.

There is more about this incident on our Spanish language forum.  Several of the articles are in English.

Changing subjects, here's this from about 2 miles from my house:
===============

Diners bolt from breakfast to chase down a thief
Police praise two men who were eating at Rod's Charburger on Artesia Boulevard when they ran after a man seen stealing from an "older gentleman."

By Larry Altman
Daily Breeze

Kevin Jeanotte sat enjoying a plate of pork chops and eggs for breakfast Monday morning. And then he took a bite out of crime.  The termite inspector chased a suspected robber in Redondo Beach, tackling him on the sidewalk and holding him until police arrived.

"I saw an older gentleman getting jumped and it's not right," Jeanotte said. "I saw it happen and I took off after him."

Police credited Jeanotte and Redondo Beach street maintenance worker Gosford Tukutau with grabbing the suspect and subduing him. Jose Manuel Jimenez, 19, of Carson was arrested on suspicion of robbery.

"They did an excellent job and I'm sure they can expect some commendation from the city," Redondo Beach police Sgt. Phil Keenan said.

The robbery occurred at 9:30 a.m. outside Rod's Char-burger, 2600 Artesia Blvd., as Nick Kelesidis, 71, left the business with $7,200 in a bag, said police and the restaurant's manager, Dino Fotoulos.  Jimenez pushed Kelesidis to the ground, snatched the money bag and ran, Keenan said.  Jeanotte, 36, of Cypress said he saw the attack through the window, saw the older man fall and leaped from his breakfast table to help.

"I took off after the guy and tackled him about two blocks down the road," Jeanotte said.

Tukutau, who was eating a burrito on his break, saw Jeanotte run, looked out the window and saw Kelesidis on the ground.  Kelesidis said he had been robbed, so Tukutau took off to help Jeanotte.  Tukutau helped detain Jimenez after Jeanotte had tackled him.

"I grabbed him and there were some contractors and they called the cops for us," said Tukutau, a 25-year-old Hawthorne resident.

Jimenez told the men he was hungry, but Jeanotte said he had $100 shoes and a cellular telephone.  

Tukutau said he believed the crime was a set-up.

"We told him if he wanted food, he should have come into the restaurant," Tukutau said.

"We wouldn't have given him money, but we would have bought him a burrito."

Jimenez was held at the Redondo Beach jail on $100,000 bail. Police gave the money back to the restaurant.  Fotoulos, who is Kelesidis' nephew, said his uncle suffered a few scratches but was fine. He appreciated the good work of his customers.

"They are good guys," the manager said.

"I tell them, 'Thank you, I have to do something for you guys.' They said, 'Don't worry. Don't worry.' "

Both men were nonchalant about hero status.

Jeanotte said he was just a man who "tried to help out an old man."

Tukutau said people need to help others when they are in need. He said the thought occurred to him that the thief might have had a weapon.

"But if you think about that you are just going to let him go," he said. "You have to put that out of your mind and do what's right.  What's right is chasing him down."

This thread's title notwithstanding, here's one an armed LEO:

=======================

Police Arrest Deputy U.S. Marshal
Marshal Being Held Without Bond
POSTED: 10:51 AM EST November 2, 2004

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Montgomery County police say a deputy U.S. Marshal has been charged with murder in the shooting death of 20-year-old Ryan Stowers last Thursday in Rockville, Md. Police said 53-year-old Arthur Lloyd was taken into custody about 8:30 a.m., at his Montgomery County home.

They said Stowers and Lloyd argued at the Mid Pike Shopping Plaza on Rockville Pike, shortly after having a traffic altercation on Rockville Pike.
Police said the verbal dispute escalated into a physical altercation and at some point, Lloyd drew his service handgun and fired one round , striking Stowers in his lower right leg.

Detectives said Stowers called 911 using his cell phone, and then got back into his car and began to drive away. Lloyd then fired multiple times, with one round hitting Stowers in the back near his left shoulder, detectives said.

Stowers was taken to Suburban Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Lloyd was taken to a local hospital and treated and released for a broken thumb and other injuries he sustained during the altercation.
Police said Lloyd was off duty at the time and had his family in the car when the incident happened.

Authorities said Lloyd has been charged with first-degree murder, use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence, and reckless endangerment and is being held without bond.
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, Lloyd has been suspended without pay.

Copyright 2004 by nbc4.com. All rights reserved.

Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Russia: After Ukraine
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THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

Russia: After Ukraine
December 10, 2004 1849 GMT

By Peter Zeihan

The Russian defeat in Ukraine is nearly complete.

In presidential runoff elections, the Ukrainian government's candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, won the official ballot. However, protests launched by opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko over alleged election fraud -- combined with strong international pressure -- caused the results to be overturned. New elections will be held Dec. 26, and Yushchenko is widely expected to win. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, in an effort to deny Yushchenko the powers that he himself has enjoyed, succeeded in forcing the Ukrainian opposition to accept constitutional amendments that will transfer some presidential powers to the Parliament, but these changes will take effect only after the next parliamentary elections in 2006 -- elections in which the opposition already is celebrating victory.

But the biggest loser in the election was not Yanukovich or Kuchma -- his
political master -- or even the oligarchic clans that sponsored him. It was
Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not only has the Ukraine Supreme Court made a public mockery of Putin's international proclamations of the election's "fair" nature, but Kuchma and the oligarchic interests supporting him have all but abandoned Yanukovich. That has left Russia as the only serious entity hanging a hope on the now-"vacationing" Yanukovich.

Ukraine is not the only place where Putin has found geopolitical egg on his
face of late; Russian geopolitical defeats in the past four years have come
fast and furious.

Putin's desire not to be a focus of American rage after the Sept. 11 attacks guided him to sanctioning a strong U.S. military presence in Central Asia -- a presence that is extremely unlikely ever to leave. Moscow's efforts to get Washington to label the Chechens as terrorists were successful, but at the price of the United States committing to taking care of the issue itself; there are now U.S. military trainers indefinitely stationed in Georgia. In the background, both the European Union and NATO have expanded their borders steadily and now almost the entirety of the Central European roster of the Warsaw Pact is safely within both organizations -- and out of Russia's reach.

All of this pales, however, in comparison to Ukraine, Russia's ancestral
home. The 10th- to 13th-century entity of Kievian Rus is widely considered to the birthplace of today's Russia. But Moscow's queasiness over losing Ukraine is far from merely the anxiety of emotional attachment.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but without Ukraine, Russia's political,
economic and military survivability are called into question:

* All but one of Russia's major infrastructure links to Europe pass through
Ukraine.
* Three-quarters of Russia's natural gas exports pass through Soviet-era
pipelines that cross Ukraine.
* In most years, Russia has imported food from Ukraine.
* Eastern Ukraine is geographically part of the Russian industrial heartland.
* The Dnieper River, the key transport route in Russia's Belarusian ally,
flows south through Ukraine -- not east Russia.
* With a population of just under 50 million, Ukraine is the only captive
market in the Russian orbit worth reintegrating with.
* The Black Sea fleet -- Russia's only true warm-water fleet -- remains at
Sevastopol on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula because it is the only deep-water
port on the entire former Soviet Black Sea coast.
* A glance at a population density map indicates just how close Russia's
population centers are to the Ukrainian border, and how a hostile Ukraine
would pinch off easy Russian access to the volatile North Caucasus, a region already rife with separatist tendencies.
* Moscow and Volgograd -- Russia's two defiant icons of World War II -- are both less than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.

It would not take a war to greatly damage Russian interests, simply a change in Ukraine's geopolitical orientation. A Westernized Ukraine would not so much be a dagger poised at the heart of Russia as it would be a jackhammer in constant operation.

The significance of the loss only magnifies the humiliation. Like the failed
submarine-launched ballistic missile tests of Putin's re-election campaign,
this operation had Putin as its public face. He traveled twice to Ukraine to
personally -- if indirectly -- campaign for Yanukovich, and Kremlin spin
doctors who successfully ushered in Putin's second term provided much of the brains behind the prime minister's political campaign.

Putin has lost more than face; he also has lost credibility at home in his
wider foreign and domestic policy goals. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11
attacks, Putin overruled opposition within Russia's national security
apparatus to align with Washington. The immediate costs included -- among other things -- Russian pre-eminence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Putin anticipated -- and grudgingly accepted -- this loss in anticipation of
having time and U.S. sponsorship to trigger a Russian renaissance. Putin
needed the Americans to get off his back about things such as human rights, press freedoms and Chechnya. The unofficial agreement was simple: Russia would assist the United States in the war on terrorism, and in exchange U.S. criticism of Russian domestic policies would be muted. It is a deal that continues to this moment.

With the United States satisfied, Putin proceeded with his plan, the opening stage of which was to establish himself as the unquestioned leader of Russia as both a state and a civilization.

First, Putin defined the problem. Russia is in decline -- politically,
strategically, economically and demographically. The Commonwealth of
Independent States, the only international organization that Moscow can rely upon to support it (and, incidentally, the only one it dominates) is moribund because of lack of interest. The Americans are in Central Asia, and the other former Soviet republics are squirming out from under Moscow's grasp. Talk of a Russian-led Eurasian Economic Community that would reform the Soviet economy remains largely talk. Everything from Russia's early warning satellite system to its rank-and-file army is collapsing, with 90,000 troops unable to pacify Chechnya even after five years of direct occupation. HIV and tuberculosis are spreading like wildfire, and the death rate stubbornly remains nearly double the birth rate, hampering Russia's ability even to field a nominal army or maintain a conventional work force.

Second, Putin realized that before he could reverse the decline, he had to
consolidate control. One of Boris Yeltsin's greatest mistakes was that he
lacked the authority to implement change. More to the point, no one feared Yeltsin, so the men who eventually became oligarchs robbed the state blind, becoming power centers in and of themselves.

Putin spent the bulk of his first term reasserting control. The once-unruly
(and heavily oligarch-dominated) press has been subjugated to the state's
will. Regional governors are now appointed directly by the president. Nearly all tax revenues flow into federal -- not regional -- coffers. The oligarchs, particularly now that the Yukos drama is moving toward a resolution, are falling over each other to pay homage to Putin (at least publicly).

Putin systematically has worked to consolidate political control in the
Kremlin as an institution and himself as a personality, using every
development along the way to formalize his control over all levels of
government and society. The result is a security state in which few dare
oppose the will of the president-turned-czar.

From here, Putin hoped to revamp Russia's economic, legal and governmental structures sufficiently so that rule of law could take root, investors would feel safe and the West would -- for its own reasons -- fund the modernization of the Russian economy and state. Put another way, Putin was counting on his pro-Western orientation to be the deciding factor in ushering in a flood of Western investment to realize Russia's material riches and economic potential.

Putin's problem is that revamping the country's political and economic
discourse required a massive amount of effort. The oligarchs, certainly not at first, did not wish to go quietly into that good night, and the Yukos
crisis -- now in its 17th month -- soaked up much of the government's energy.  During this time the Kremlin turned introspective, understandably obsessed with its effort to hammer domestic affairs into a more manageable form. Moreover, as Putin made progress and fewer oligarchs and bureaucrats were willing to challenge him, they also became too intimidated to act autonomously. The result was an ever-shrinking pool of people willing to speak up for fear of triggering Putin's wrath. The shrinking allotment of bandwidth forced Russia largely to ignore international developments, nearly collapsing its ability to monitor and protect its interests abroad.

This did not pass unnoticed.

Chinese penetration into the Russian Far East, European involvement in the economies of Russia's near abroad and U.S. military cooperation with former Soviet clients are at all-time highs. As Putin struggled to tame the Russian bear, Moscow racked up foreign policy losses in Central Asia, the Baltics, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan all became U.S. allies. Serbia formally left Russia's sphere of influence, Georgia welcomed U.S. troops with open arms and ejected a Russian-backed strongman from one of its separatist republics, and the three Baltic states and the bulk of the Warsaw Pact joined both NATO and the European Union. And now, Ukraine is about to take its first real steps away from Russia.

In short, Putin achieved the necessary focus to consolidate control, but the cost was the loss of not just the empire, but with Ukraine, the chance of one day rebuilding it.

More defeats are imminent. Once Ukraine adopts a less friendly relationship with Russia, the Russian deployment to Transdniestria -- a tiny separatist republic in Moldova kept alive only by Russian largesse -- will fade away. Next on the list will be the remaining Russian forces at Georgian bases at Akhalkalaki and Batumi. Georgia already has enacted an informal boycott on visa paperwork for incoming soldiers, and the United States has begun linking the Russian presence in Georgia and Transdniestria to broader Russian security concerns.

Once these outposts fall, Russia's only true international "allies" will be
the relatively nonstrategic Belarus and Armenia, which the European Union and United States can be counted upon to hammer relentlessly.

To say Russia is at a turning point is a gross understatement. Without
Ukraine, Russia is doomed to a painful slide into geopolitical obsolescence
and ultimately, perhaps even nonexistence.

Russia has three roads before it.

* Russia accepts the loss of Ukraine, soldiers on and hopes for the best.

Should Putin accept the loss of Ukraine quietly and do nothing, he invites
more encroachments -- primarily Western -- into Russia's dwindling sphere of influence and ultimately into Russia itself, assigning the country to a painful slide into strategic obsolescence. Never forget that Russia is a
state formed by an expansionary military policy. The Karelian Isthmus of
Russia's northwest once was Finnish territory, while the southern tier of the Russian Far East was once Chinese. Deep within the  Russian "motherland" are the homelands of vibrant minorities such as the Tatars and the Bashkirs, who theoretically could survive on their own. Of course the North Caucasus is a region ripe for shattering; Chechens are not the only Muslims in the region with separatist desires.

Geopolitically, playing dead is an unviable proposition; domestically it
could spell the end of the president. Putin rode to power on the nationalism of the Chechen war. His efforts to implement a Reaganesque ideal of Russian pride created a political movement that he has managed to harness, but never quite control. If Russian nationalists feel that his Westernization efforts have signed bit after bit of the empire away with nothing in return, he could be overwhelmed by the creature he created. But Putin is a creature of logic and planning.

Though it might be highly questionable whether Putin could survive as
Russia's leader if this path is chosen, the president's ironclad control of
the state and society at this point would make his removal in favor of
another path a complicated and perhaps protracted affair. With its economy, infrastructure, military and influence waning by the day, time is one thing Russia has precious little of.

* Russia reassesses its geopolitical levers and pushes back against the West.

Russia might have fallen a long way from its Soviet highs, but it still has a
large number of hefty tools it can use to influence global events.

If Putin is to make the West rethink its strategy of rolling back Russian
influence and options -- not to mention safeguard his own skin -- he will
have to act in a way to remind the West that Moscow still has fight left in
it and is far from out of options. And he will have to do it forcefully,
obviously and quickly.

The dependence upon Ukraine goes both ways. While Ukraine's south and east are not majority Russian, those regions are heavily Russofied. Should a Yushchenko-led Ukraine prove too hostile to Moscow, splitting a region that is linguistically, culturally and economically integrated into Russia off from Ukraine would not prove beyond Russia's means.

Also on the Ukrainian front, Russia has the energy card to play. Kiev's
primary source of income is transit fees on natural gas and oil. Russia
supplies about one-quarter of all European consumption. Tinkering with those supplies -- or simply their delivery schedules -- would throw the European economies into frenzy.

Russia could use its influence with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance to make the United States' Afghan experience positively Russian. Sales of long-range cruise missiles in India or Sovremenny destroyers complete with Sunburn missiles to China would threaten U.S. control of the oceans. Weapons sales to Latin America would undermine U.S. influence in its own backyard. The occasional quiet message to North Korea could menace all U.S. policy in the Koreas. And of course, there is still the Red Army. It might be a shadow of its former self, but so are its potential European opponents.

All of these actions have side effects. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan
limits Islamist activities in Russia proper. India is no longer a Cold War
client; it is an independent power with its own ambitions which might soon
involve a partnership with the United States. Excessive weapons sales to
China could end with those weapons being used in support of an invasion of the Russian Far East. Large-scale weapons sales to Latin America require Latin American cash to underwrite them. Russian meddling in North Korea would damage relations with China, Japan and South Korea as well as the West. And a Russian military threat against Europe, if it could be mustered, would still face the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

Such actions would also have consequences. The West might often -- and
vigorously -- disagree within itself, but there has not been a Western war in nearly three generations. The West still tends to see Russia as the dangerous "other," and by design or coincidence, Western policy toward the former Soviet Union focuses on rolling back Russian influence, with Ukraine serving as only the most recent example. Russian efforts to push back -- even in what is perceived as self-defense -- would only provoke a concerted, if not unified, response along Russia's entire economic, political and geographic periphery.

Russia still might have options, but it did lose the Cold War and has fallen
in stature massively. In the years since the Cold War, Western options -- and strength -- have only expanded. Even if Russian efforts were so successful that they deflected all foreign attention from it, Russia would still be doomed. Russia has degraded too far; simply buying time is not enough.

* Russia regenerates from within.

Unlike the United States, which has embraced change as part of daily life,
Russia is an earthquake society. It does not evolve. Pressures -- social,
political, economic -- build up within the country until it suffers a
massive, cataclysmic breakdown and then revival. It is not pleasant; often as a result of Russia's spasms, millions of people die, and not always are they all Russian. But in the rare instances when Russia does change, this is invariably how it happens.

Ironically, the strength of the Soviet period has denied Russia the
possibility of foreign events triggering such a change. Russia, as the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics' successor state, has nuclear weapons capable of reaching any point on the globe. As such, a land invasion of Russia is unthinkable.

That simple fact rules out a scenario such as what happened after World War I. Massive defeat by the Central Powers might have triggered the Bolshevik Revolution, but that did not directly result in the constitution of the Soviet Union. Forging Russia into a new entity took another invasion on multiple fronts. Foreign sponsorship of the White armies during Russia's civil war -- and the direct involvement of hundreds of thousands of foreign troops -- was necessary to instill a sense of besiegement sufficient to make the Russians fight back and create a new country. The "mere" loss of Ukraine during World War I was simply not enough. Russia did not merely need to be defeated, humiliated and parsed -- Russia itself, not simply Ukraine, had to be directly occupied.

As long as Russia has nukes, that cannot happen.

If Russia is to choose this third path, it must trigger its reformation by
itself from wholly domestic developments.

Perhaps it could be done by some sort of natural catastrophe, but to be
effective the catastrophe would need to be sufficient to mobilize the entire
Russian population. Russian society's muted response to the Beslan massacre -- in which Chechen militants killed 350 Russian citizens, half of them children -- indicates that terrorism will not be a sufficient stimulus.
Depopulation caused by HIV might prove a trigger, but by the time the effects are obvious, there would not be much of a Russia left to revive.

That leaves the personal touch of a Russian leader to shake the state to its very core.

Most likely, Putin is not the man for the job. He is, among all else, from
St. Petersburg. He's sees Russia's future in the West, particularly the
European West -- but only on Russia's terms. Of course, this is not how
realignment of civilizations works. Ask the Spanish (who took a leave of
absence from the West during the Franco years), or the Greeks (who have shuttled between West and East), or the Poles (forced separation), or the Romanians (never really in the West) or the Turks (wanting, but not too desperately, to join), or -- in a few years -- the Ukrainians (who really have no idea what they are signing up for). To join the West you must change; the West does not change to join you.

Putin also is a gradualist. Russia cannot even attempt the necessary internal renaissance until such time as the oligarchs are liquidated -- not merely reshuffled, as is happening currently. That necessitates a Russian upheaval on a scale for which Putin does not appear to have the stomach. Putin has been in command for four years, and in that time he has liquidated four oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Rem Vyakhirev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Four oligarchs in four years. Not exactly revolutionary.

Making matters worse, all the assets of these four have either been
expropriated to other private oligarchs or shuffled into the hands of a
growing class of state oligarchs such as Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.

Actually eliminating the oligarchs as a class (which, incidentally, controls
nearly 70 percent of the country's economy) will require a massive national spasm complete with a complete scrapping and reformation of the country's legal structure, up to and including the constitution. Investors who have been spooked by Russia's anti-oligarchic efforts have not seen anything yet.

But just because Putin is not the spy for the job does not mean Russia is not capable. Russian leaders have done this before. Peter the Great did it. Ivan the Terrible did it. Joseph Stalin did it. It tends not to be pretty.

(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.stratfor.com

Straighten Up and Fly Right
How long before Washington's political correcteness leads to new hijackings?

BY HEATHER MAC DONALD
Saturday, December 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

One of the highest priorities for Homeland Security Secretary-designate Bernard Kerik should be to take political correctness and a fear of litigation out of national security decisions. From immigration enforcement to intelligence gathering, government officials continue to compromise safety in order to avoid accusations of "racial profiling"--and in order to avoid publicly acknowledging what the 9/11 Commission finally said: that the enemy is "Islamist terrorism." This blind antidiscrimination reflex is all the more worrying since radical Islam continues to seek adherents and plan attacks in the U.S.

The government antidiscrimination hammer has hit the airline industry most severely. Department of Transportation lawyers have extracted millions in settlements from four major carriers for alleged discrimination after 9/11, and they have undermined one of the most crucial elements of air safety: a pilot's responsibility for his flight. Since the charges against the airlines were specious but successful, every pilot must worry that his good-faith effort to protect his passengers will trigger federal retaliation.

Transportation's action against American Airlines was typical. In the last four months of 2001, American carried 23 million passengers and asked 10 of them not to board because they raised security concerns that could not be resolved in time for departure. For those 10 interventions (and an 11th in 2002), DOT declared American Airlines a civil-rights pariah, whose discriminatory conduct would "result in irreparable harm to the public" if not stopped.

On its face, the government's charge that American engaged in discriminatory conduct was absurd, given how few passenger removals occurred. But the racism allegation looks all the more unreasonable when put in the context of the government's own actions. Three times between 9/11 and the end of 2001, public officials warned of an imminent terror attack. Transportation officials urged the airlines to be especially vigilant. In such an environment, pilots would have been derelict not to resolve security questions in favor of caution.





Somehow, DOT lawyers failed to include in their complaint one further passenger whom American asked not to board in 2001. On Dec. 22, airline personnel in Paris kept Richard Reid off a flight to Miami. The next day, French authorities insisted that he be cleared to board. During the flight, Reid tried to set off a bomb in his shoe, but a stewardess and passengers foiled him. Had he been kept from flying on both days, he too might have ended up on the government's roster of discrimination victims.

Jehad Alshrafi is typical of those who were included in the suit against American. On Nov. 3, 2001, this Jordanian-American was scheduled to fly out of Boston's Logan Airport (from which two of the hijacked planes--including American Flight 11--departed on 9/11). A federal air marshal told the pilot that Alshrafi's name resembled one on a terror-watch list--and that he had been acting suspiciously, had created a disturbance at the gate, and posed unresolved security issues. The pilot denied him boarding. Alshrafi was later cleared and given first-class passage on another flight.

According to DOT, the only reason American initially denied Alshrafi passage was because of his "race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry." Never mind that there were at least five other passengers of Arab descent on his original flight, none of whom had been given additional screening or kept from flying. In fact, on virtually every flight on which the government claims that American acted out of racial animus, other passengers of apparent Middle Eastern ancestry flew undisturbed.

If DOT believes that an air marshal's warnings about a passenger's name and suspicious behavior are insufficient grounds for keeping him off a flight, it is hard to imagine circumstances that would justify a security hold in the department's view--short of someone's declaring his intention to blow up a plane. Given the information presented to the pilot, the only conceivable reason to have allowed Alshrafi to board would have been fear of a lawsuit.

And litigation phobia is precisely the mindset that DOT is hoping to cultivate in flight personnel: 10 days after 9/11, the department started rolling out "guidance" documents on nondiscrimination. While heavy on platitudes about protecting civil rights, they are useless in advising airlines how to avoid the government's wrath. The closest the DOT gets to providing airlines a concrete rule for avoiding litigation is a "but-for" test: "Ask yourself," advise the guidelines, "But for this person's perceived race, ethnic heritage or religious orientation, would I have subjected this individual to additional safety or security scrutiny? If the answer is 'no,' then the action may violate civil rights laws."

But security decisions are never that clear. A safety officer will consider many factors in calculating someone's riskiness; any one of them could be pulled out as a "but-for" element. As American's record makes clear, it is almost never the case that someone gets additional screening based on his apparent ethnic heritage or national origin alone; behavior and no-fly-list matching are key in the assessment. (In fact, about half the complainants in the government's action were not even Middle Eastern. DOT simply assumes, without evidence, that American scrutinized the men because of the mistaken belief that they were Arabs.) A pilot trying to apply the "but-for" test to his own security judgment will inevitably reduce the test to an easier calculus: "Deny passage to someone who is or could claim to look Muslim only under the most extreme circumstances."

In application, the "but-for" test reduces to a "never-ever" rule: Ethnic heritage, religion, or national origin may play no role in evaluating risk. But when the threat at issue is Islamic terrorism, it is reckless to ask officials to disregard the sole ironclad prerequisite for being an Islamic terrorist: Muslim identity or its proxies--national origin or ethnic heritage. (Muslim identity should be at most only one factor in assessing someone's security risk.)

American contested DOT's action, but fighting the government civil-rights complex is futile. In February 2004, the airline, while denying guilt, settled the action for $1.5 million, to be spent on yet more "sensitivity training." American's pilots were outraged. "Pilots felt: 'How dare they second-guess our decision?' " says Denis Breslin, a pilots' union official.





Not satisfied with just one scalp, DOT lawyers brought identical suits against United, Delta and Continental. Those carriers also settled, pledging more millions for "sensitivity training"--money much better spent on security training than on indoctrinating pilots to distrust their own security judgments. And in the government's wake, the private civil-rights bar, led by the ACLU, has brought its own airline discrimination suits. An action against Northwest is seeking government terror-watch lists, Northwest's boarding procedures, and its cabin-training manual. If these materials got loose, they would be gold to terrorists trying to figure out airline-security procedures

The first George W. Bush administration tried mightily not to offend the antidiscrimination lobby. It's time to give up that game. From now on, common sense alone should determine security decisions, the only course which can protect all Americans, Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.

We begin with 2 good examples of why signing up at www.stratfor.com is a good idea.
==================


THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

Finding Russia's Limit
December 03, 2004  1910 GMT

By George Friedman

Most political crises have little meaning in the countries where they occur, let alone internationally or historically. On rare occasion, a crisis comes along that has profound significance far beyond what appears to be the case.

That is the case with the Ukrainian election. We do not like hyperbole and normally try to understate things, but the crisis over the Ukrainian election, and the manner in which it is resolved, can define the future of Eurasia -- and therefore the world -- for generations. This particular crisis might not be definitive, but the issue it presents about the Ukraine will be.

The issue in the election is relatively simple. There are two factions in Ukraine, defined to a great extent by geography. One faction, concentrated in the western Ukraine, favors closer ties between Ukraine and the West. This faction goes so far as to support Ukrainian membership in NATO. The other faction, concentrated in eastern Ukraine, favors closer ties with Russia and wants relations with the West to develop in the context of a primary
Russo-Ukrainian relationship. For many in this faction there is a desire to create a closer relationship, even some sort of federation, with Russia and Belarus.

An election was held for a new president that was, in effect, a referendum on the direction that Ukraine should go. The pro-Russian faction won the election, but it was immediately charged that it did so by fraud. The United
States and European countries supported the claim of fraud and demanded some unspecified solution that would allow the pro-Western faction to win. Russia argued that the pro-Russian faction had won fairly and demanded that the West
not interfere in Ukraine's internal affairs. It was a fairly typical election, save for the enormous interest that outside powers showed in the outcome.

In order to understand the excitement -- and to go beyond the idea that this is simply about helping democracy grow in Ukraine -- we need to consider the geopolitical implications of each side winning. In order to do this, we need to consider the geopolitical condition of the former Soviet Union. There are these essential questions:

1. Will the disintegration of the Soviet Union be followed by a disintegration of the Russian Federation?

2. To what extent will Russia have secure and defensible borders, and to what extent will it be able to claim a sphere of influence in surrounding countries?

3. To what extent will Western institutions, particularly NATO, incorporate former Soviet republics, and to what extent will Western -- and particularly U.S. -- military power intrude into the former Soviet Union?


A Decade of Western Moves

In the decade since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Western institutions -- especially NATO -- have intruded or shown intentions of intruding deep into the former Soviet empire. Some central European countries already are members of NATO, and others are lining up. Parts of the former
Soviet Union, like the Baltics, also have been included. In a parallel process, the United States has developed strategic military relations with countries in the Caucasus and in the Muslim states to Russia's south. This process has been accelerating since Sept. 11.

From the Russian viewpoint, these intrusions have gone far beyond the understandings Moscow thought Russia had with the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea of NATO coming into central Europe would have once seemed farfetched and the idea of it coming into the former Soviet Union preposterous. The Russians have reason to believe they had assurances from both the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations on the limits of Western and U.S. expansion. Whatever these understandings were, they have not been respected.

International relations do not deal in sentimentality, and Russian weakness and the need for economic relations with the West made it impossible for Russia to deter the expansion. On the other side, knowing that Russian weakness was not necessarily permanent, the United States saw an opportunity for redefining Eurasia in such a way that the reemergence of a Russian superpower would become impossible. Essentially, the temptation to expand into power vacuums created by Russian weakness has proven irresistible -- as a simple means of buying insurance against the future.

As deep as the intrusion has been, however, one country has thus far not been seriously on the table -- Ukraine. If Ukraine moves into the Russian sphere of influence, Russia has not in any way reversed its massive decline. However, if Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia would have entered an era in which its decline is not only irreversible, but in which the ability of the Russian Federation to survive becomes highly questionable.

Ukraine stretches from the Carpathian Mountains, at the point where Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania converge, east nearly to the Don River in the Russian heartland, a distance of more than 800 miles along the underbelly of
Belarus and Russia. It constitutes the northern coast of the Black Sea. Moscow is less than 300 miles from the Ukrainian frontier; Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is less than 200 miles away.

If Ukraine were part of NATO, Russia would become indefensible. This does not mean NATO would have the intention of invading Russia. It would mean that if
NATO's intentions were to change -- and nations must always assume the worst about the intentions of others -- Russia would find itself fighting along nearly the lines of Adolf Hitler's deepest penetration into the country in World War II. And they would find themselves fighting on those lines on the first day of the war. They would lose the ability to defend themselves conventionally.

Looking at the map more closely, there is a solid NATO salient in the west, growing U.S. influence and presence in the Caucasus and a growing U.S. economic presence in Kazakhstan and the Muslim republics in the south. U.S.
troops already are in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Southern Russia to the Caucasus would be accessible to Moscow only through the 300 mile-wide Volgograd corridor. The ability of the Russians to project credible power into the Caucasus dramatically would decline. The Black Sea would be virtually surrounded by U.S. allies and become an American lake. There would be U.S. naval bases in Odessa and the Crimea. Russian ability to influence events in the Caucasus would evaporate.

Under these circumstances, the ability of Russia to resist centrifugal forces inside the federation would simply disintegrate. It would not be a matter of Chechnya alone. Secessionist movements in the Russian Pacific Maritime
Provinces, Karelia and in other regions would surge. Resistance could prove particularly robust in Russia's titular republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, which incidentally not only provide a sizable portion of
Russia's oil output, but also sit astride the only infrastructure that pumps Siberian oil to the rest of Russia and the rest of the world. Moscow -- and
President Vladimir Putin -- would find itself presiding over the second wave of disintegration. Serious force projection even inside Russia would become difficult, leaving Russia with a nuclear option and not much else. If Ukraine were to move decisively to the west and join NATO, we do not think it too extreme to raise the question of whether the Russian Federation could survive.

The Stakes in Ukraine

For the Russians, the outcome of the Ukrainian elections is a matter of fundamental national security. Russia can tolerate an independent Ukraine. It can tolerate a Ukraine with close economic ties to the West, but this election has posed a further possibility -- the idea of NATO expanding into Ukraine. The possibility was stated as a serious option and not rejected by the United States or Europe. Therefore, from the Russian viewpoint, the defeat of the pro-NATO opposition party was a matter of national necessity.

The United States and Europe responded exactly as the Russians feared they would. They demanded the election go to the pro-Western faction. This is not read in Moscow as simply the West's love of a fair election. Rather, it is
seen by the Russians as a concerted effort to take control of Ukraine and put Russia in an untenable position.

The central European viewpoint is that the historical opportunity to cripple Russia must not be lost. Countries that have drawn close to the United States -- such as Poland -- understand what is at stake and, after half a century of Soviet domination, want more than anything to cripple Russia. The United States would prefer to see Russia in one piece, but has no objection to crippling Russia, as it might give the United States a freer hand in central Asia to wage its war.

The problem is that in the Ukraine, the United States has encountered the Russian limit. The United States and Europe have pushed and probed at Russia for more than a decade without hitting a point the Russians simply cannot live with. With the Ukrainian election, the United States has found that point. It is not clear if the United States is aware it has hit this limit. The United States has become used to a passive Russia and the move into Ukraine seems to be simply another phase in a process that began in 1989. It
seems not to have a cost.

The Russians do not always respond in the region on which they are focused. We find remarks by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warning the United States that its path in Afghanistan is unacceptable to the Russians because
it is too soft on the Taliban -- a statement made while visiting India and asking for renewed strategic relations -- to be a warning to the United States that Russia is capable of causing serious problems for the United States in its war on terrorism, to be an example of this. Russia announcing it was introducing a new class of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) is another example. There will be many more.

Putin cannot possibly give on this and he will not. The issue for Russia is not fair elections but national survival. That means the only way to defuse the Ukrainian crisis is for guarantees on the role of NATO in Ukraine. The
problem is that the West has made previous guarantees to the Russians on other NATO expansions that it did not heed. Credibility is not high.

Putin has begun domestically increasing his power. There is an assumption that he is eager to avoid a confrontation with the West, which is certainly true. He helped U.S. President George W. Bush win re-election by making a
number of supporting comments. He expects to be repaid. If the Bush administration presses hard on Ukraine, we suspect this will be the trigger of a fundamental re-evaluation by Russia of its strategy. Which means Washington needs to either back off or move very fast.

(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

=========================================
 
U.S., Russia: Setting Up the South Asian Chessboard?

Summary

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Dec. 3 on a visit to India, while Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is making a stopover in Washington to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush. Moscow's moves to counter the possible loss of Ukraine to U.S. influence could affect the situation in southwest Asia and the Indo-Pakistani region. The Cold War chessboard could be resurrected if the United States and Russia seek to engage in a geopolitical game, and the regional actors will have a chance to advance their national interests.

Analysis

Two significant and related visits occurred Dec 3. Russian
President Vladimir Putin began a visit to India, while Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a weekend stopover in Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush. Musharraf is on his way from South America to Europe.

The two visits are coincidental and would normally be dismissed as such, but these are interesting times: Russia is preparing to respond to what increasingly looks like the alignment of Ukraine with the United States -- something the Kremlin cannot just accept, given Ukraine's geostrategic importance to Russia. One way in which Putin's government will try and counter growing U.S. influence in what used to be Russia's geopolitical sphere of influence is by creating problems for Washington in south and
southwest Asia.

The Kremlin understands the importance the Bush administration attaches to its military and political objectives with respect to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Moscow will seek to balance U.S. political forays into Ukraine by using its influence on various regional state and non-state actors.

Russia already is involved in the Iranian nuclear program,
helping with the construction of the reactor at Bushehr. Thus far, Moscow has not finalized the deal on the completion of this project because it shares Washington's opinion that Iran should not be able to acquire nuclear weapons. This situation could change, given that Russia is feeling threatened so close to home. It could move Moscow to accelerate efforts to finalize the deal with Iran -- thereby signaling to Washington that it is not without options.

Moving eastward, India is ruled by a Congress-led coalition
government that is not as eager to accommodate the United States as its predecessor, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Instead, the Congress Party traditionally has sought to counter Pakistan's alignment with the United States by forging closer relations with Russia. This is yet another tool at the Russians' disposal -- they can get together with India, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to back Afghanistan's groups aligned against Islamabad, the
Pashtuns and Afghan President Hamid Karzai (and, by extension, the United States). Aiding these groups -- the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara, Turkmen and others -- against Karzai and the Pashtuns would thwart the United States' plans for Afghanistan.

The time for this could not be better. U.S. Ambassador to
Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has worked since late October to accelerate public efforts to co-opt "moderate" Taliban into the political process to strengthen Karzai's -- and, by default, the Pashtuns' -- position. Khalilzad also has been trying to get Pakistan's assistance in this effort -- something for which Islamabad is perfect. It is, however, sure to raise eyebrows with non-Pashtun Afghans and their regional backers in Tehran, Dushanbe, Tashkent and New Delhi -- a development Moscow can take advantage of.

Putin's visit to India might already have the Pakistanis worried, and it is sure to come up during the Musharraf-Bush meeting, where Islamabad will point to the Russian-Indian partnership and try to push for more military and economic assistance from Washington. The peace negotiations between India and Pakistan also have slowed down somewhat, especially on the question of Kashmir. Moreover, both India and Pakistan have in the past couple of weeks engaged in missile tests.

From the U.S. viewpoint, Moscow's movements in south and
southwest Asia could create problems for both the war against al Qaeda-led jihadists and the war in Iraq. This was something that Putin even directly mentioned upon his arrival in New Delhi. He called on the United States to learn from the lessons of the Iraq war in formulating its foreign policy, and added that the differences among the major international players over the Iraq war had adversely affected the war on terrorism.

In response, the United States also has options to offset Russian maneuvers. Washington has the Iraq card, which it can use to forestall Iran's closeness with the Kremlin. Iran will not align with Russia in a bid to advance its nuclear program at the cost of influence in Iraq. As for Afghanistan, the pace of events can continue, as the United States is not faced with an insurgency nor does it have too many troops on the ground. This leaves the Indo-Pak theater, which Washington needs to use toward
dismantling al Qaeda. Enhanced Russian relations with India can slow progress toward that objective.

Russia, shaken by the setback in Ukraine, is adopting an
aggressive political stance toward the United States. This
position not only has ramifications for the world's two leading military powers, but also for the southwest Asian proxies through which Moscow's response and Washington's counter-response will manifest themselves.

(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

 =============
Today's Left Angeles Times, page one

Rivalry Brews in Russia's Backyard
Using its energy resources as leverage, Moscow is angling for influence in its former republics in the face of growing U.S. and NATO presence.
 
 
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer


BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan ? The Cold War may be over, but U.S. and Russian soldiers are expanding outposts in this mountainous former Soviet republic about 3,200 miles east of NATO headquarters in Brussels and nearly 2,000 miles from Moscow.

The U.S. opened its base three years ago as a launching pad for troops and cargo heading into Afghanistan. Two years later, with the Americans showing no signs of leaving, Russia opened its own base. Now, Moscow is quadrupling the number of its troops, while the American garrison is crawling with bulldozers and trucks, as Washington spends $10 million replacing tents with sturdier quarters.

Officially, Russia has welcomed the U.S. presence as a reflection of a new partnership against a common enemy: Islamic extremists. Washington, in turn, has praised Moscow for enhancing cooperative security efforts in this volatile corner of Central Asia.

But the cooperation is limited largely to words. The current U.S. base commander has never met his Russian counterpart, troops are mostly forbidden to venture outside their respective gateposts, and military flights are scrupulously segregated.

The bases here are symbols of a new rivalry between East and West for influence over the lands of Russia's old empire. More than a decade after it ended, the global Cold War standoff has been supplanted by competition for political and economic hegemony along Russia's vast frontier stretching from the Baltic Sea to China.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a weakened Russia initially turned inward and the West moved rapidly into the faded superpower's sphere of influence. But now, armed with $50-a-barrel oil and a determination to protect its interests, a newly confident Kremlin is reasserting centuries-old claims.

The competition extends far beyond Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. also has military bases in neighboring Uzbekistan and has sent military trainers to Georgia, where Russia has two bases. Moscow's Baltic Sea fleet sails from a sliver of Russian territory between two new North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, Poland and Lithuania; NATO planes now patrol the skies over former Soviet republics to Russia's west.

The Caspian Sea basin, with its more than 200 billion barrels of oil, is seen by both Russia and the U.S. as a zone of strategic interest. Russia is using its energy reserves to maintain influence in the small, newly independent countries of the Baltic and Caucasus regions.

And now, the struggle between pro-Moscow and pro-Western forces is playing out in the disputed presidential election in Ukraine, a territory that for centuries has been central to Russia's sense of itself as a great power.

"As a military man, I see that Russia is surrounded. And I can imagine the reaction of the U.S. if our country were all of a sudden to declare the Gulf of Mexico the zone of our vital interests. We're gritting our teeth," said Russian parliament deputy Viktor Alksnis, a former air force colonel.

"On the other hand, they are mistaken if they think Russia collapsed along with the Soviet Union in the 1990s," he said. "For all the 1,000 years of history of our state, Russia has been like a human heart. It squeezes and unsqueezes. And what we have seen recently is that people who should have looked to Russia as a partner in tackling global problems have instead seen a need to drive the Russian bear back into its den."


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In 2000, Boris N. Yeltsin handed over the Russian presidency to Vladimir V. Putin, a former KGB agent whose youth and aura of strength gave his demoralized and chaotic country a badly needed shot of confidence.

While Putin consolidated his political power, Russia also gained a windfall from rising global oil prices. Now, backed by its energy wealth, $100 billion in gold and foreign currency reserves (growing lately at a rate of $2 billion a week) and an upgraded arsenal of 7,800 nuclear warheads, Putin has broadly reasserted the power of the Russian state.

He has blocked the sale of Russia's biggest oil companies to Western conglomerates, sharply centralized government authority and driven democratic forces to the political margins.

And in the last year or two, it also has become clearer how Putin aims to position Russia in the world at large. Quietly, Russia is regaining a semblance of its historic empire.

By locking in energy contracts, controlling pipelines and buying up regional utilities, the Kremlin now holds a near-monopoly in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. Russian businessmen have bought up factories, steel mills and energy companies. Russian interests that back pro-Moscow candidates now represent a powerful political force in nearly every former Soviet republic.

"Until recently, everyone was concerned that Russia, weakened by its internal crisis, was becoming unpredictable," Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said this year. "But now a different kind of Russia is feared: a country which has become stronger and more confident after several years of stability and economic growth."

To some in the West, the scenes now playing out in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltics hark back to the czarist empire's conflicts with other European powers, including Peter the Great's parade through the Baltics; periodic invasions of Poland; and the "Great Game" with Britain for control of Central Asia.

"Some people say this is the new Cold War. It is not. It is much closer to 19th century or early 20th century behavior, where you basically had these feverish qualities sweeping Moscow, when they were off to do something thoroughly stupid and dangerous in Europe," said Bruce P. Jackson, a former Pentagon official who now heads the Project on Transitional Democracies, which has lobbied for democratic reform in the former Soviet republics.

But Russian officials say they are intent merely on protecting their country.

"Our main task is to ensure national security, first of all. It is the creation of a belt of security around our country, and a gradual expansion of our coordination with other states on key world issues. We have agreed to new forms of cooperation with NATO," Igor S. Ivanov, secretary of the National Security Council, said in an interview.

"But all of this does not mean that we have overcome our differences," the former foreign minister said. The U.S. and its allies must keep in mind that Russia is strong militarily and economically, that it retains a seat on the United Nations Security Council, and that it has worked for global stability, he said.

Besides investing heavily in upgrading their strategic nuclear arsenal, Russian officials have signaled that they will use it if necessary: a message that Moscow will not be cowed by the threat of NATO airstrikes.

Putin has tried to use the U.S. presence in the region for his own purposes. Recognizing that Islamic militancy on Russia's borders presents a great danger, he joined the Bush administration's war on terrorism. In his most crucial policy move, he used his influence in Central Asia to help the United States set up bases to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Putin saw an opportunity to forge an alliance with President Bush that would enable him to paint Russia's war against Muslim separatists in Chechnya as part of a common fight against terrorism. The strategy appears to have paid off, to a large degree, as Washington has muted its criticism over allegations of torture and civilian slaughter by Russian troops.

Analysts say Russia also has used the U.S. presence in Central Asia to counter an interloper it fears even more: China.

China's 1.3 billion people and rapidly growing economy, sitting next to Russia's depopulated Far East, engender "vague horror scenarios" of Chinese expansion, said Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Putin has made strides toward cooperation with China, concluding an economic and security pact in 2001 and signing a border agreement in November. Yet Putin also hedged his bets by facilitating a "temporary" U.S. presence, analysts say.

"The idea was, if the U.S. comes, it's a strong counterbalance to China. They don't have deep roots in the region, like China does. The U.S. will leave sooner, rather than later," said Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

Russia may have miscalculated.

Officials at NATO, created in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet threat, say Russia is proving a reliable partner by participating in joint military exercises, helping halt illegal weapons shipments and sharing intelligence on terrorism and drug trafficking.

"There is discussion on all the most fundamental issues: theater missile defense, defense reform. We're discussing issues even where there's political sensitivity. We had an open discussion on Ukraine just a few days ago, and it was a frank discussion, a very frank discussion," said James Appathurai, NATO spokesman in Brussels. "Of course we do have differences of opinion on some issues."

But many in the West question whether Russia is committed to transparency in government, democratic elections and a free press. "That is, in a sense, where the true test of the long-term strength of the relationship will be," Appathurai said.

In an open letter to the European Union and NATO in September, more than 100 U.S. and European political leaders and academics, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former U.S. envoy Richard C. Holbrooke and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), warned that Russia was "breaking away from the core democratic values" of the U.S. and Europe.

"President Putin's foreign policy is increasingly marked by a threatening attitude towards Russia's neighbors and Europe's energy security, the return of rhetoric of militarism and empire, and by a refusal to comply with Russia's international treaty obligations," the letter said.


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The main lines of new military, economic and political competition in the former Soviet republics, an area the Kremlin calls its "near abroad," form a tight circle around Russia.

Although Russia has reminded the U.S. of its pledge that bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are temporary, the pace of construction belies the idea that the U.S. will be leaving soon.

"It will all depend on what the Kyrgyz government will support," said Col. Bradley R. Pray, commander of the U.S. base in Bishkek. "Basically, we'll have semi-permanent buildings here."

U.S. officials scoff at the notion that Central Asian bases represent anything more than a steppingstone to Afghanistan. "In strategic terms, a base in Kyrgyzstan is a dagger in the heart of nowhere," said a diplomat in the region. "What are we going to use it to attack, if not Afghanistan?"

The Kyrgyz government, which faced a significant incursion by Islamic militants from Uzbekistan in 1999, has welcomed both the Russian and U.S. military. American aid to the country has reached $283 million over the last three years.

Kyrgyzstan's deputy defense minister, Col. Zamir Suerkulov, said the Russian base would provide air support to a multinational force to protect against regional Islamic insurgencies.

But some in the country also feel caught between forces beyond their control.

"When the U.S. base came, many people immediately began to accuse Kyrgyzstan of having betrayed Russia and its allies," said Orozbek Moldaliev, head of the SEDEP Research Center, a political think tank in Bishkek. "Then when the Russian base came in as well, some began to fear that a conflict between the Americans and Russians on the territory of Kyrgyzstan was inevitable."

But, he said, "In truth, it's not just a small profit, it's a huge benefit for us. Kyrgyzstan is milking not only two cows, it is also deriving a profit from China. So for most of us, the Cold War has gone from being 'either-or,' to 'and-and.' "

Earlier this year, thousands of miles to the west, NATO expanded into the three former Soviet Baltic republics ? Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia ? but said it did not intend to open bases there. Russian hard-liners are skeptical.

"NATO keeps talking about 'no intentions, no plans.' But we frankly view NATO as an aggressive organization, which is constantly building up its military capabilities and expanding its sphere of operation towards Russia," said Leonid D. Ivashov, a retired Russian general who formerly oversaw his nation's international military cooperation directorate.

The Caucasus, the Baltics, and Ukraine ? arenas of rivalry between East and West for centuries ? are also regions of economic competition in which Russia is wielding its main weapon: energy.

Governments that don't toe the Kremlin line risk steep price increases or having the tap turned off entirely ? as happened to Belarus this year after a tiff with Russia.

Supplies were abruptly halted to much of Azerbaijan and Lithuania as well. Moscow reportedly was concerned over Azerbaijan's increased military cooperation with the U.S.

Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, has bought into several Lithuanian gas companies. In 2003, the state-controlled electricity monopoly, Unified Energy Systems, bought a controlling stake in the utility in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. The firm already has expanded its stakes in half of Ukraine's local electricity providers and has its eye on the market throughout Eastern Europe.

UES chief Anatoly B. Chubais has said he dreams of a "liberal Russian empire" stretching across the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Russia canceled much of Armenia's $90-million-plus debt last year in exchange for the transfer of assets in several key factories, scientific research institutes and power facilities that produce the majority of the former Soviet republic's electricity.

The Russian steel giant, Severstal, has bought a controlling stake in Estonia's major oil terminal. And in Latvia, Russia abruptly cut off oil shipments to the port of Ventspils last year in what some Latvian officials complained was an attempt to starve the Baltic nation into selling the facility at a bargain-basement price.

Putin made it clear how important the energy lever was to Russia when he announced last year that it regarded the Soviet-era pipelines that carry its petroleum products to market to be its responsibility ? "even those parts of the system that are beyond Russia's borders."

"This is a huge claim, and frankly a colonial claim ? 'Even though the assets are on your soil, they belong to us,' " said Jackson, the former Pentagon official.

The political turmoil in Ukraine is the latest and largest example of the competition for political influence in the former Soviet republics.

In Georgia, the U.S. is supporting President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempts to regain control over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ? territories that Russia has used to maintain a foothold in the southern Caucasus and destabilize a key new transit route for Caspian Sea oil to the West. Russia has gone so far as to offer citizenship to residents of the two regions.

Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas was removed from office in April, in large part because of his connections to a Russian businessman who contributed $400,000 to his campaign in 2003.

In Ukraine, the Kremlin poured more than $200 million into this fall's presidential election, in part to protect economic ties worth up to $10 billion a year. Putin made two trips to Ukraine before the election to boost the candidacy of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, and huge billboards around Moscow urged Ukrainian expatriates to support Putin's choice. His opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, is a strong advocate of Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union.

The reason for the interest is simple. As Vladimir I. Lenin once said, "If we lose Ukraine, we lose our head."

Ukraine, with a population of 48 million, is the second-largest country in Europe and transports 90% of Russian gas to Europe. Many of the decisive battles of European history have been fought on its fields, and a westward-tilting Ukraine could sever Russia's access to its Black Sea Fleet, which is currently under a lease agreement with Kiev.

Moreover, Ukraine is the key to Russia's hope of establishing an economic coalition of former Soviet nations as a front against Europe. Belarus and Kazakhstan are also part of a pact initialed this year.

For both East and West, Ukraine always has been a "pivotal state" in what former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski describes as the "Grand Chessboard" of geopolitics. That is especially true for Moscow, he said.

"Its very existence as an independent country helps transform Russia," Brzezinski said. "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."

The dispute in Ukraine also could have implications for Putin's grip on power. The techniques that have enabled the Kremlin and its allies to determine election outcomes in Chechnya and Belarus are on the brink of failure in Ukraine. Most analysts say that would inevitably encourage Russia's own democracy advocates and threaten Moscow's elite.

The U.S. and its allies are reluctant to talk about Russia as a military adversary. "Nothing we know about Russia, nothing we see and feel in the cooperation that's going on, would suggest we should see Russia as anything but a partner of NATO," an alliance spokesman said.

But military planners, perhaps on both sides, remain prepared for the possibility that one day, a leader more aggressive than Putin will take the reins of a reinvigorated Russia. This is not unimaginable in a country in which polls show that the 1970s, when Leonid I. Brezhnev led the Soviet Union, are regarded as a golden era.

In an address to the Senate Intelligence Committee in February, former CIA Director George J. Tenet listed Russia, along with North Korea and China, as a "pivotal state."

"The Kremlin's increasing assertiveness is partly grounded in a growing confidence in its military capabilities," Tenet said, noting that although the Russian military remained at "a fraction" of its former strength, training rates and defense spending were increasing.

Russia's updated military doctrine makes it clear that the Kremlin, like Washington, is prepared to use preemptive strikes against other nations to protect itself, and also to resort to nuclear force if gravely threatened.

The installation of NATO military infrastructure in the Baltics would prompt Russia to "conduct its policy and military planning based on the principles of self-defense," Defense Minister Ivanov warned in a visit to Washington in April.

Russia's newly beefed-up nuclear weapons also provide the Kremlin with an important political tool.

"Clearly, nuclear weapons are a shield against potential U.S. sanctions, military or otherwise," said Trenin, the Carnegie official who has written a book on the Russian military. "The U.S. will not attack a nuclear power."

Both sides have thought through the logistics, if only theoretically.

In a report prepared by the Rand Corp. for the U.S. Army this year, one scenario explored the possibility of a conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics. The report referred to "an assumed decline in Russian-NATO relations in the period after 2007," and weighed how hard it would be for NATO to respond if Russian troops speedily overran the Baltics and dug in to wait for negotiations.

The report, analysts say, measures military capabilities; the chance of Russia invading the Baltics, most agree, is nearly zero.

Russia, for its part, conducted a military exercise in 1999 that envisioned "enemy" forces taking over Kaliningrad, the wedge of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania that is the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet, and striking nuclear power plants and other targets inside Russia. As part of the exercise, a pair of Tupolev bombers simulated nuclear cruise missile strikes on the U.S. East Coast and Europe.

Nikolai Sokov, senior research associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, wrote in a report this year that Russia appeared to be using the possibility of limited nuclear strikes as a deterrent against political and military pressure.

But Russian officials say it is a mistake to confuse Moscow's assertion of legitimate interests with a return of empire-building.

"It is wrong to interpret any of this as Russia's attempts to impose its influence," said Igor S. Ivanov, the National Security Council secretary. "In these countries, all the generations of people, although they are people of different nationalities, lived in one state. They had common culture, common education, they worked together, they developed their economies together. If you please, common thinking was formed. Naturally, these are not some artificial ties, these are real ties that connect us."

At the same time, Russia's reemergence as a player is not to be discounted, they warn.

"Whereas American interests extend thousands of miles, and to many continents, let's accept that Russia has natural interests in the former Soviet states. Let's have a dialogue about this," former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in an interview.

"I think we have a unique chance to create a new quality of relations with the West. But we don't want to be beggars. We don't want to be treated by the EU or by the United States like we are down; that is something we will not accept," he said. "Russia will not be scared. Russia will not be intimidated."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming Monday: Russia is increasingly relying on nuclear weapons to ensure its security.

An Open Letter to Europe by Harold E. Meyer

Hi. Are you nuts?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I?m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds. One of Britain?s largest newspapers ran a headline asking ?How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb??, and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word ? bizarre -- to explain the election?s outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that ?Bush belongs at a war tribunal ? not in the White House.? And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as ?stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.?

Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren?t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you?re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso ? and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world?s finest universities and five or six of the world?s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world?s most vibrant economy, are the world?s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars ? may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses ? and thus create jobs ? with a minimum of government interference. We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we?ve got.

If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn?t. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe ? you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and ? not coincidentally ? ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes.


Europe is Dying

It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture quickly goes from being ?un-religious? to anti-religious. Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope?s heroic efforts to the contrary.

Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of abortions in Europe is at an all-time high. Indeed, your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying. And of the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in stable, two-parent households.

Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it just about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed ? except by fleeing to the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.

And your armed forces are a joke. With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves. Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness. You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization. It?s worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each other. Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on the outside and from our own selfish hedonism within. It?s going to take all of our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull through. So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don?t change course. And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA?s National Intelligence Council. His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization is a nationwide best-seller.

Its getting REALLY bad when the Left Angeles writes an editorial like this:
===============

EDITORIAL
Hopscotch? Well, Maybe ...
 
Now that the nation's schools have perfected the instruction of math, English, history, social studies and all the sciences and have taught all youngsters the manners and health rules they may have missed at home, it seems that reformers are headed out to the playground for some creative banishing. There, they are taking aim at a number of unacceptably rough games that might brutalize tender egos.

Schools in such states as California, Maryland and Texas are finally banning outrageously brutal games like tag, dodge ball and any activity involving physical contact. About time, eh? Footballs may be tossed, but running, tackling and blocking are out. Pulling and pushing? Gone too. No more crack-the-whip. On a swing? Create your own momentum. No pushing allowed there, either.

This kind of thing makes many adults glad they grew up when play hadn't yet been outlawed.

True, all generations experience playground unpleasantness. Someone always gets picked last. Teasing can hurt. It was embarrassing to catch a dodge ball in the butt too early in a game. Yet getting eliminated in a meaningless game was a lesson that conceivably could help sometime during later life. Other play lessons: You don't always get what you want; life isn't always fair; it takes all kinds; sportsmanship matters.

Originally, school recess and lunch-hour playtimes were designed for youngsters to stampede outdoors and be creatively active physically, to relieve the stress of long division and coloring within the lines. One or two adult monitors policed the place ? and bullies ? with vigilant eyes and stern whistles.

As children do when left alone, they invented their own games and rules, forged teams, alliances, friendships and tactics and even resolved conflicts. They learned cooperation, how to be gracious winners (cheering briefly is OK, taunting the losers isn't) and, more important, how to lose gracefully. If someone played too roughly too often, justice might be administered next time out.

Now, free play is giving way to activities like relay races organized by adults to avoid hurt feelings or singed self-esteems. Everyone is included. Everyone gets praised. Just as in life. Not! This also helps address the perceived threat of costly lawsuits hanging over schools like thunderclouds.

Schools are under tremendous pressure today to teach even nonacademic lessons like honesty, consideration and responsibility, things once taught in homes. It's a challenge, especially if parents are inattentive or unsupportive. Whether prohibiting cops-and-robbers and tag is a valid lesson plan seems dubious, given the more important teaching left unfinished. Where's that stern whistle when you need it

In Oklahoma, a Ban
On Guns Pits State
Against Big Firms

Weyerhaeuser Fired Workers
Who Had Weapons in Cars,
And Legal Dispute Unfolds
By SUSAN WARREN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 26, 2004; Page A1

VALLIANT, Okla. -- In late summer of 2002, Steve Bastible put three bullets into a dying cow at his ranch, threw the emptied rifle behind the seat of his pickup and forgot about it.

A few weeks later, the rifle cost him his job of 23 years.

That Oct. 1, in a surprise search, Weyerhaeuser Co. sent gun-sniffing dogs into the parking lot of its paper mill here. Mr. Bastible and 11 other workers were fired after guns were found in their vehicles. The timber company said the weapons violated a new company policy that extended a longtime workplace gun ban to the parking area. The fired workers said they knew nothing of the new rule.

The firings outraged many in this wooded community in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains. In rural Oklahoma, carrying a firearm in one's car is commonplace. "In Oklahoma, gun control is when you hit what you shoot at," says Jerry Ellis, a member of the state legislature.

 
Now, the dispute is reverberating beyond the borders of tiny Valliant, located in the southeast corner of the state. In response, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law giving Oklahomans the right to keep guns locked in their cars in parking lots. But just days before the law was to go into effect this month, several prominent companies with Oklahoma operations, including Whirlpool Corp. and ConocoPhillips sued to stop it. A federal judge put the law on hold pending a hearing.

Meanwhile, several of the paper-mill workers have filed wrongful-discharge lawsuits against Weyerhaeuser and its subcontractors, which employed the workers. "This is a heck of an injustice that needs to be fixed," says their Tulsa lawyer, Larry Johnson, 72 years old, who has spent a lifetime studying the second amendment.

On one side, companies are trying to keep guns away from the workplace, driven by real-life horror stories of disgruntled employees on the rampage, stalking the hallways and shooting down bosses and co-workers. On the other side are employees who argue that guns help keep law-abiding workers safer.

The debate transcends partisan politics. Nearly 90% of voters in the county are registered Democrats, and yet 66% of county voters cast ballots for George Bush for president, in part because they viewed him as more pro-gun.

The new law was sponsored by Mr. Ellis, a Democrat from McCurtain County. It passed unanimously in the Oklahoma Senate, and on a 92-4 vote in the House. "I just didn't think the state should be dictating weapons policy to property owners," says J. Mike Wilt, a Republican from Bartlesville who was among the four voting against the law.

Mr. Ellis, a former mill worker himself, counters: "These are good, hardworking, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. I just wish these big companies could understand that these people are not a threat to anybody."

Guns are part of everyday life in McCurtain County, where many residents hunt and ranch, and houses are miles apart. In the local gun and pawn shop in the county seat of Idabel, worker David Brakebill spreads out a map on the counter and points to the green blotches representing vast expanses of tree-covered wilderness. "When you call the police," says Vicki Luna, an owner of the gun store, "they don't get there for 30 minutes -- if they can find your house."

The Weyerhaeuser paper mill has been the largest employer in town for more than 30 years, providing about 2,500 jobs in the area and contributing more than $55 million annually to the local economy in taxes, payroll and community donations, according to the company. The whole gun flap actually started with an apparent drug overdose at the plant. Plant manager Randy Nebel hired a security company to bring in four dogs to search for drugs and guns in the parking lot. The dogs didn't find any drugs but zeroed in on several vehicles containing firearms.

The company then ordered the workers to open the suspect cars so that they could be hand-searched. A dozen workers, four Weyerhaeuser employees and eight who worked for subcontractors, were suspended for having rifles, shotguns or handguns. A couple of days later, they were fired as part of Weyerhaeuser and its subcontractors' zero-tolerance policy for major safety violations, the companies say.

Jimmy "Red" Wyatt, a 45-year-old father of five who worked his way up from the factory floor to supervisor in his 22 years at the mill, says he often carried his rifle to scare off coyotes threatening the cattle he raises in his spare time. A shotgun also found was left over from bird hunting with his sons the day before.

Mr. Nebel says that firing Mr. Wyatt, a model worker, was difficult. But after clearing the parking lot of guns, "I believe the plant is safer," he said.

The plant manager said the new gun rule had been in place since January 2002 after reversing a previous policy that had allowed workers to leave their guns locked in their cars. The company says it told workers in writing and during "team meetings" of the new policy. "It was well known this would be dealt with severely," said Mr. Nebel. Mr. Wyatt and the other fired workers say they never were told of the changed rule.

 
Hearing of the case, the National Rifle Association referred the workers to Mr. Johnson, a longtime gun-rights advocate. Mr. Johnson contacted Mr. Ellis, and together they crafted what was to become the new law. In a recent brief supporting the law, Mr. Johnson sprinkled his legal arguments with historic quotes from poets and philosophers. "I even quoted Christ," he says, reciting a snippet from the Book of Luke in which Jesus admonishes his followers, "Let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one."

In fighting the law, Oklahoma companies are walking through a community-relations minefield in what is known as an NRA stronghold. The Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce normally supports the NRA. But it says it joined the lawsuit opposing the law because it believes companies should be able to exclude weapons from their premises.

"Things happen at work that make people mad: They don't get a raise," explains attorney David Strecker, who is representing the chamber. "If a gun is handy, someone might use it, and that's just something employers don't want to risk."

In a surprise move at a hearing on the law in U.S. Chief District Judge Sven Erik Holmes's Tulsa court Tuesday, Whirlpool withdrew from the case, leaving ConocoPhillips and Williams Cos. to lead the lawsuit. Mr. Johnson, who has joined Rep. Ellis in calling for a boycott of Whirlpool and the other companies involved in the lawsuit, said he believes Whirlpool succumbed to worries it might be punished by pro-gun rights consumers. "People are taking it very, very seriously," he said. "Look at how politicians have suffered when they get on the wrong side of this issue."

Whirlpool responds that it had only been seeking clarification on the law, and that it believes a recent brief by the Oklahoma attorney general gives them the green light to maintain their no-gun policy, resolving their concern. A spokesman for Attorney General Drew Edmonson, however, said he didn't agree with that interpretation. Neither did Steven Broussard, the Tulsa attorney for Conoco and Williams. "We feel that nothing has changed and it's very important for us to get a resolution of this," Mr. Broussard said.

The law remains on hold as the legal dispute unfolds in court.

Write to Susan Warren at susan.warren@wsj.com

Today's Left Angeles Times
========================

Marines Offered Reenlistment Bonuses
Personnel with combat experience and training can get up to $30,000. The goal is for them to keep current jobs or shift to other vital posts.
 
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer


CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. ? With the prospect of continued fighting in Iraq, the Marine Corps is offering bonuses of up to $30,000 ? in some cases tax-free ? to persuade enlisted personnel with combat experience and training to reenlist.

The plan is working, officials said. Less than two months into the fiscal year, Marine reenlistment rates in several key specialties are running 10% to 30% ahead of last year.
 
For example, officials are confident that by midyear, they will have reached their target for encouraging reenlistment among riflemen, the "grunts" who are key to the Marines' ability to mount offensives against insurgent strongholds such as Fallouja.

In most cases, young Marines are agreeing to stay in their current jobs for four years. In others, they are allowed to transfer into jobs considered equally vital: recruiters, embassy guards and boot camp drill instructors.

"No amount of money is too much to retain combat experience in the corps, rather than starting over," said Maj. Mark Menotti, assistant head of enlisted retention for the Marine Corps.

Giving bonuses to encourage Marines to reenlist is not new. But this year's bonus schedule marks the first time that "combat arms" specialties have received the largest bonuses. A year ago, the top bonus for a grunt was about $7,000.

Along with riflemen, machine gunners and mortar men, specialties also receiving sizable bonuses are those critical to success in Iraq ? including intelligence officers and Arabic linguists.

Lance Cpl. Matthew Jee, 21, of Borrego Springs, Calif., received a bonus of $19,000 to reenlist for four years. An assault man with expertise in firing the Javelin rocket, he planned to shift to the intelligence field.

"They need a grunt's view of what kind of intelligence you need when you're out there on the street," Jee said at Camp Pendleton, where he recently returned after seven months in Iraq.

Sgt. Joey W. McBroom, 30, of Lafayette, Tenn., a rifleman, said he had planned to reenlist even without the bonus, but the $28,039 "helped my wife to agree to my reenlisting."

In an e-mail from Iraq, McBroom said he planned to put 40% of the bonus in a mutual fund, 30% in an account for his children's college educations, 15% in savings and the remainder for "a nice wedding ring for the wife, finally."

Another rifleman, Cpl. Anthony Mazzola, 23, of Fort Worth, has more immediate plans for his $21,700. "I plan to take all of my money to Vegas and have a crazy weekend," he e-mailed from Iraq.

The Marine Corps has earmarked $52 million in bonuses for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, up $1 million from the prior year.

Two-thirds of the bonus money will go for Marines reenlisting for a second hitch. One-third will go to enlistees signing up for a third or fourth tour. Officers ? except in particularly difficult-to-retain specialties such as aviation and law ? are not eligible.

The amount of the bonus is determined by a formula involving the length of reenlistment, how early the Marine makes the commitment and a multiplier determined by the commandant of the Marine Corps. Among other things, the multiplier involves a statistical analysis of how much money will be needed to ensure that enough Marines reenlist in a particular specialty.

Take, for example, a sergeant trained in tank warfare.

If the sergeant reenlists for four years, his bonus is determined by multiplying his monthly pay ? $1,817 ? by four. That figure then is multiplied by four, a rate set by Marine officials for his skill. The highest skill multiplier is five. For the sergeant, the bonus computes to $29,072. If he reenlists while in Iraq, his bonus, like his regular pay, is tax-exempt.

For grunts, the bonuses are also a sign of recognition.

Cpl. Steven Forrester, 22, a machine gunner from Centerville, Tenn., said he was "glad they finally realized our job is dangerous." He received $22,796.

Cpl. William Stoffers, 22, a machine gunner from Redding, said the size of the bonus for his specialty was a pleasant surprise:

"I think it's fitting to have this amount because we are put through more stressful things than a normal Marine," e-mailed Stoffers, who is in Iraq; his total was $21,000.

Among combat veterans, there is a sense that they are being paid for having learned things that cannot be taught at the school of infantry. Many are eager to pass that knowledge to others.

Cpl. William Jones, 22, of Tulsa, Okla., a rifleman, received a bonus of $19,000 and now wants to teach Navy corpsmen how to handle combat. "The more Marines we have who've been over there, the better off the corps is going to be," he said. "It's going to cost money, but it will save lives."

Sgt. Deverson Lochard, 23, from Lakeville, Mass., a machine gunner who received a bonus of $23,000, wants to become a drill instructor and, after he becomes a U.S. citizen, an officer.

Like Jones and Jee, Lochard, who was born in France, was in combat at Ramadi and is now back at Camp Pendleton.

"I want to teach junior Marines how to go into combat and come back alive."

AAFES Gift Certificates
http://www.aafes.com/docs/homefront.htm
The Army and Air Force Exchange Services is where most servicemen and women do their shopping. You can purchase gift certificates for those in Iraq and those hospitalized.

Adopt a Platoon
http://www.adoptaplatoon.org/
Adopt a Platoon has several ongoing projects to ensure that every soldier overseas does not walk away from mail call empty-handed.

AnySoldier
http://www.anysoldier.us/index.cfm
Any Soldier is a non-profit organization that helps people send care packages to members of the armed services in Iraq.

Appreciate Our Troops
http://www.appreciateourtroops.org
Purchase a Support Our Troops mug and a free personalized mug will be given to a current or former service member.

Blue Star Mothers
http://www.bluestarmothers.org
The Blue Star Mothers was founded by service members' moms during World War II. Any mother with a son or daughter in the military can join.

Books For Soldiers
http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/
Help the troops escape boredom by donating some books. You can also donate DVDs and CDs requested by soldiers.

Camp Doha
http://www.campdoha.org/
Camp Doha provides valuable information for those about to deploy, their friends and families and anyone who wants to support the troops.

Cell Phones for Soldiers
http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/pages/1/index.htm
Donated cell phones are recycled and turned into cash. The cash is used to purchase calling cards for soldiers in Iraq.

Defend America
http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html
Thank any service member stationed throughout the U.S. and the world with an e-mail.

Fisher House
http://www.fisherhouse.org/
The Fisher House Foundation donates comfort homes, built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one during hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

Freedom Calls
http://www.freedomcalls.org/
The Freedom Calls Foundation is helping families videoconference with their loved ones in Iraq. You can donate money to help keep this project going.

Groceries for Families
http://www.commissaries.com/certificheck/
The men and women who lay down their lives for us are terribly underpaid. Help a family by purchasing gift certificates to the commissary.

Homes for Our Troops
http://www.homesforourtroops.org/
Homes for Our Troops assists injured veterans and their immediate families by building new or adapting existing homes with handicapped accessibility.

Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund
http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/foundation_heroesfund.html
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund provides grants to the families of servicemen and women who died in Iraq. You can donate online, through mail or by calling a toll-free number.

Military Moms
http://www.militarymoms.net/index.html
This site provides support to all of the moms out there who has a son or daughter in the military.

Operation Air Conditioner
http://www.operationac.com/
Operation Air Conditioner provides not only air conditioners but space heaters (the desert is cold in the winter) for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Operation Call Home
http://www.platoonphone.com/
Operation Call Home's mission is to provide each platoon with their own satellite phone.

Operation Dear Abby
http://anyservicemember.navy.mil/
The U.S. Navy and Dear Abby have teamed up. Their site allows you to send e-mail messages of support to service members.

Operation Give
http://www.operationgive.org/
Operation Give provides toys, clothing and school supplies primarily to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Operation Hero Miles
http://www.heromiles.org/
You can donate your unused frequent flier miles to help soldiers travel on emergency leave. They are also used to help families fly to hospitalized soldiers.

Operation Iraqi Children
http://www.operationiraqichildren.org/
Many soldiers are rebuilding schools in Iraq and scrounging around for school supplies. Help by donating a school supplies kit.

Operation Military Pride
http://operationmilitarypride.org
Operation Military Pride is a volunteer organization that sends cards letters and care packages to troops.

Operation Uplink
http://www.operationuplink.org/
Donate money to Operation Uplink. The money is used to purchase phone cards so servicemen and women can call home.

Soldiers' Angels
http://www.soldiersangels.org/heroes/index.php
Become some soldier's angel by adopting a service member.

Treats for Troops
http://www.treatsfortroops.com/
Treats for Troops helps get you provide packages to your loved ones overseas. If you don't know anyone, the Foster-A-Soldier Program matches you with a registered soldier by branch of service, home state, gender, or birthday - or you can choose to sponsor a group of soldiers.

USO Cares
http://www.usocares.org/
You can sponsor care packages provided by the USO with a $25 donation.

Voice from Home
http://voicesfromhome.org/home.html
Voices From Home allows military members and their families and friends to send and receive immediate voice e-mail messages in remote locations around the world.

Fallen Marines
November 25th, 2004


I want to share with you my most recent Air Force Reserve trip. I had decided to go back into the Air Force Reserves as a part time reservist and after 6 months of training, I have recently been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and have been fully mission qualified as an Aircraft Commander of a KC-135R strato tanker aircraft.

On Friday of last week, my crew and I were tasked with a mission to provide air refueling support in order to tanker 6 F-16's over to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.  We were then to tanker back to the states, 6 more F-16's that were due maintenance.  It started out as a fairly standard mission - one that I have done many times as an active duty Captain in my former jet - the KC10a extender.

We dragged the F-16's to Moron Air Base in Spain where we spent the night and then finished the first part of our mission the next day by successfully delivering them to Incirlik.  When I got on the ground in Turkey, I received a message to call the Tanker Airlift Control Center that my mission would change.  Instead of tankering the F-16's that were due maintenance, I was cut new orders to fly to Kuwait City and pick up 22 "HR's" and return them to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

It had been a while since I had heard of the term "HR" used, and as I pondered what the acronym could possibly stand for, when it dawned on me that it stood for human remains.  There were 22 fallen comrades who had just been killed in the most recent attacks in Fallujah and Baghdad, Iraq over the last week.

I immediately alerted the crew of the mission change and although they were exhausted due to an ocean crossing, the time change and minimum ground time in Spain for crew rest, we all agreed that it was more important to get these men back to their families as soon as possible.

We were scheduled to crew rest in Incirlik, Turkey for the evening and start the mission the next day.  Instead, we decided to extend/continue our day and fly to Kuwait in order to pick up our precious cargo.  While on the flight over to Kuwait, I knew that there were protocol procedures for accepting and caring for human remains, however, in my 13 years of active duty service, I never once had to refer to this regulation.  As I read the regulation on the flight over, I felt prepared and ready to do the mission.  My game plan was to pick up the HR's and turn around to fly to Mildenhal Air Base in England, spend the night, and then fly back the next day.  This was the quickest way to get them home, considering the maximum crew duty day that I could subject my crew to legally and physically.  I really pushed them to the limits but no one complained at all.

I thought that I was prepared for the acceptance of these men until we landed at Kuwait International.  I taxied the jet over to a staging area where the honor guard was waiting to load our soldiers.  I stopped the jet and the entire crew was required to stay on board.  We opened the cargo door, and according to procedure, I had the crew line up in the back of the aircraft in formation and stand at attention.  As the cargo loader brought up the first pallet of caskets, I ordered the crew to "Present Arms."  Normally, we would snap a salute at this command, however, when you are dealing with a fallen soldier, the salute is a slow 3 second pace to position.  As I stood there and finally saw the first four of twenty-two caskets draped with the American Flags, the reality had hit me.  As the Marine Corps honor guard delivered the first pallet on board, I then ordered the crew to "Order Arms" - where they rendered an equally slow 3 second return to the attention position.  I then commanded the crew to assume an at ease position and directed them to properly place the pallet.  The protocol requires that the caskets are to be loaded so when it comes time to exit the aircraft - they will go head first.  We did this same procedure for each and every pallet until we could not fit any more.

I felt a deep pit in my stomach when there were more caskets to be brought home and that they would have to wait for the next jet to come through.  I tried to do everything in my power to bring more home but I had no more space on board.  When we were finally loaded, with our precious cargo and fueled for the trip back to England, a Marine Corps Colonel from first battalion came on board our jet in order to talk to us.  I gathered the crew to listen to him and his words of wisdom.

He introduced himself and said that it is the motto of the Marines to leave no man behind and it makes their job easier knowing that there were men like us to help them complete this task.  He was very grateful for our help and the strings that we were pulling in order to get this mission done in the most expeditious manner possible.  He then said -" Major Zarnik - these are MY MARINES and I am giving them to you.  Please take great care of them as I know you will." I responded with telling him that they are my highest priority and that although this was one of the saddest days of my life, we are all up for the challenge and will go above and beyond to take care of your Marines - "Semper Fi Sir" A smile came on his face and he responded with a loud and thunderous, "Ooo Rah".  He then asked me to please pass along to the families that these men were extremely brave and had made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and that we appreciate and empathize with what they are going through at this time of their grievance.  With that, he departed the jet and we were on our way to England.

I had a lot of time to think about the men that I had the privilege to carry.  I had a chance to read the manifest on each and every one of them.  I read about their religious preferences, their marital status, the injuries that were their cause of death. All of them were under age 27 with most in the 18-24 range. Most of them had wives and children.  They had all been killed by an " IED" which I can only deduce as an [improvised] explosive devices.  Mostly fatal head injuries and injuries to the chest area.  I could not even imagine the bravery that they must have displayed and the agony suffered in this God Forsaken War.  My respect and admiration for these men and what they are doing to help others in a foreign land is beyond calculation.  I know that they are all with God now and in a better place.

The stop in Mildenhal was uneventful and then we pressed on to Dover where we would meet the receiving Marine Corps honor guard.  When we arrived, we applied the same procedures in reverse.  The head of each casket was to come out first.  This was a sign of respect rather than defeat.  As the honor guard carried each and every American flag covered casket off of the jet, they delivered them to awaiting families with military hearses.  I was extremely impressed with how diligent the Honor Guard had performed the seemingly endless task of delivering each of the caskets to the families without fail and with precision.  There was not a dry eye on our crew or in the crowd.  The Chaplain then said a prayer followed by a speech from Lt. Col. Klaus of the second Battalion.  In his speech, he also reiterated similar condolences to the families as the Colonel from First Battalion back in Kuwait.

I then went out to speak with the families as I felt it was my duty to help console them in this difficult time.  Although I would probably be one of the last military contacts that they would have for a while - the military tends to take care of it's own. I wanted to make sure that they did not feel abandoned and more than that appreciated for their ultimate sacrifice.  It was the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life.  I listened to the stories of each and every one that I had come in contact with and they all displayed a sense of pride during an obviously difficult time.  The Marine Corps had obviously prepared their families well for this potential outcome.

So, why do I write this story to you all?  I just wanted to put a little personal attention to the numbers that you hear about and see in the media.  It is almost like we are desensitized by the "numbers" of our fallen comrades coming out of Iraq.  I heard one commentator say that "it is just a number".  Are you kidding me?  These are our American Soldiers not numbers!  It is truly a sad situation that I hope will end soon.  Please hug and embrace your loved ones a little closer and know that there are men out there that are defending you and trying to make this a better world.  Please pray for their families and when you hear the latest statistic's and numbers of our soldiers killed in combat, please remember this story.  It is the only way that I know to more personalize these figures and have them truly mean something to us all.

Thanks for all of your support for me and my family as I take on this new role in completing my Air Force Career and supporting our country.  I greatly appreciate all of your comments, gestures and prayers.

May God Bless America, us all, and especially the United States Marine Corps.

Semper Fi

Maj. Zarnik, USAFR

HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY

By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 24, 2004 -- UKRAINE remains an indepen dent state. For now. But last week's shamelessly rigged presidential-election results were engineered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's security services.
Exit polling, opinion polling, international election observers, Ukrainian local authorities and the people agree that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-Western Democrat, won. But the pro-Moscow government of Ukraine claims that the spectacularly corrupt incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych received the major ity of votes.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to Kiev's streets in protest. Even Yanukovych has been wary of declaring his own victory. Yet Putin immediately extended his congratulations to the nervous "victor."

The Kremlin poured massive funding into the election campaign. The pro-Russian mafia that has a bully's grip on the Kiev government stuffed ballot boxes, manipulated absentee ballots, extorted votes and then simply changed the numbers to give Moscow's man a 49 percent to 46 percent lead.

This is the biggest test for democracy on Europe's frontier since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia always seemed fated for a hybrid government ? part elections, part strongman rule ? but Ukraine could go either way. Especially in the country's west and center, Ukrainians have struggled for freedom for centuries.

But Russia regards Ukraine as its inalienable possession, stolen away as the U.S.S.R. collapsed.

Fatefully, the ties were never severed between the successors of the KGB in Moscow and Kiev. Now the grandchildren of the Russian thugs who mercilessly put down Nestor Makhno's Ukrainian revolt against the Bolsheviks, who slaughtered Ukraine's prosperous peasantry and murdered Ukraine's intelligentsia are back at work.

This election may have been Ukraine's last chance.

The tale begins almost a millennium ago. Converted to Christianity, Kiev was the jewel of the north, a magnificent city of churches and piety; Moscow was a shantytown. Then the Mongols came, destroying "Kievan Rus." Muscovy slowly expanded to fill the vacuum left by the destruction of the great Slavic civilization of the Steppes.

For centuries, Ukraine's Cossacks resisted Polish and Russian attempts to rob them of freedom. But by the end of the 18th century, Russia finally broke the Cossacks, dragooning them into its own military forces.

Subjugated, Ukraine responded with a 19th-century cultural revival. The Bolsheviks put an end to that. The first and greatest victims of Lenin and Stalin were the people of Ukraine.

Finally, in 1991, after six centuries, Ukraine regained its independence. Putin intends to take it away again.

With its declining population and threatened Far-Eastern territories, Russia desperately wants the additional population and strategic position of Ukraine back within its own borders, beginning as a "voluntary" federation. An ethnic-Russian population in eastern Ukraine serves as a fifth column.

Disgracefully, the international community appears ready to give Putin a free hand in subverting the freedom of a sovereign, democratic state. President Bush values his relationship with Putin, although Putin hasn't hesitated to undermine Washington's policies.

While constructive cooperation makes sense, there are times when the United States must draw a line ? unless we intend to make a mockery of our support for freedom and democracy.

This is one of those times. President Bush should not let a bunch of gangsters in Kiev and the sons of the KGB in Moscow destroy the hopes of a major European state. Ukraine isn't Russia's to steal.

The people of Ukraine who went to the polls to elect Viktor Yushchenko as their president, who want to be democratic, Western and free, need to hear from the White House. So does Mr. Putin.

If we allow Ukraine's freedom to be destroyed without so much as a murmur from our president, we will have betrayed the ideals we claim to support at home, in Iraq and around the world.

Ralph Peters worked as a Russia expert during his military career. (Colonel)

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The fighting has been incredibly close inside the city.  The enemy is willing to die and is literally waiting until they see the whites of the eyes of the Marines before they open up.  Just two days ago, as a firefight raged in close quarters, one of the interpreters yelled for the enemy in the house to surrender.  The enemy yelled back that it was better to die and go to heaven than to surrender to infidels.  This exchange is a graphic window into the world that the Marines and Soldiers have been fighting in these last 10 days.

I could go on and on about how the city was taken but one of the most amazing aspects to the fighting was that we saw virtually no civilians during the battle.  Only after the fighting had passed did a few come out of their homes.  They were provided food and water and most were evacuated out of the city.  At least 90-95% of the people were gone from the city when we attacked.

I will end with a couple of stories of individual heroism that you may not have heard yet.  I was told about both of these incidents shortly after they occurred.  No doubt some of the facts will change slightly but I am confident that the meat is correct.

The first is a Marine from 3/5.  His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager's grandson).  As the Marines cleared and apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door.  As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out.  The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg.  He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway.  Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover.  As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway.  Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety.  The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in.  He immediately entered the room following the second explosion.  He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine.  You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled.  Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in.   Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.  

The second example comes from 3/1.  Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader.  He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them.  As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm.  Cpl Mitchell  told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound.  When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting.  There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines.

It is incredibly humbling to walk among such men.  They fought as hard as any Marines in history and deserve to be remembered as such.  The enemy they fought burrowed into houses and fired through mouse holes cut in walls, lured them into houses rigged with explosives and detonated the houses on pursuing Marines, and actually hid behind surrender flags only to engage the Marines with small arms fire once they perceived that the Marines had let their guard down.  I know of several instances where near dead enemy rolled grenades out on Marines who were preparing to render them aid.  It was a fight to the finish in every sense and the Marines delivered.

Troops in Fallujah
Are the Best
Since World War II
November 19, 2004; Page A16

The amazing, perhaps historic, battle of Fallujah has come and gone, and the biggest soldier story to come out of it is the alleged Marine shooting. There must have been hundreds of acts of bravery and valor in Fallujah. Where will history record their stories?

Maybe it's just a function of an age in which TV fears that attention spans die faster than caddis flies, and surfing the Web means ingesting information like a participant in a hot dog eating contest. By contrast, Michael Ware of Time magazine has a terrific account this week of one platoon led by Staff Sergeant David Bellavia ("We're not going to die!"), fighting its way through the snipers and booby traps of Fallujah: "A young sergeant went down, shrapnel or a bullet fragment lodging in his cheek. After checking himself, he went back to returning fire." Amid mostly glimpses this week of telegenic bullet flight paths and soldiers backed against walls, I wanted more stories like this. More information about who these guys are and what they were doing and how they were doing it. The commanders in Iraq praise them profusely, and by now maybe that's all these young U.S. soldiers need -- praise from peers.

But the American people, many of them, have been desperate for some vehicle that would let them actively lend support to the troops, or their families back in the States. The Bush administration, for reasons that are not clear, has never created such an instrument. Had they done it, a force would have existed to rebalance the hyperventilated Abu Ghraib story. The White House seems to have concluded that the American people would support a big, tough war almost literally as an act of faith. And they did, but just barely. Neglect of the homefront almost cost George Bush the election.


In service, in Fallujah

 
The election's one, ironic nod to the nature of the troops in Iraq was the controversy over the draft. Michael Moore traveled to 60 college campuses saying Mr. Bush's opposition to restarting the draft was an "absolute lie." Shortly after, a senior saluted the jolly Hollywood misanthrope and wrote a column for Newsweek denouncing the draft. "We have no concept of a lottery," she wrote, "that determines who lives and who dies." But not to worry, dear. The military brass, to the last man and woman, doesn't want you. Not ever.

The draft ended in 1973. What has happened to the all-volunteer military in the three decades since ensures that no draft will return this side of Armageddon.

Post-Vietnam, the military raised the performance bar -- for acquired skill sets, new-recruit intelligence and not least, self-discipline. The thing one noticed most when watching the embedded reporters' interviews last year on the way into Iraq was the self-composed confidence reflected throughout the ranks. And this in young men just out of high school or college.

It was no accident. Consider drugs. In 1980, the percentage of illicit drug use in the whole military was nearly 28%. Two years later, mandatory and random testing -- under threat of dismissal -- sent the number straight down, to nearly 3% in 1998.

Today recruits take the Armed Forces Qualification Test. It measures arithmetic reasoning, mathematics knowledge, word skills and paragraph comprehension. The current benchmark is the performance levels of recruits who served in Operation Desert Storm in 1990. The military requires that recruits meet what it calls "rigorous moral character standards."

After his August report on Abu Ghraib and U.S. military detention practices, former Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger told a writer for this page: "The behavior of our troops is so much better than it was in World War II." And more. Unit cohesion, mutual trust in battle, personal integrity and esprit all are at the highest levels in the nation's history, right now, in Iraq. Indeed, the U.S. armed services may be the one truly functional major institution in American life.

Some fear the creation in the U.S. of a military caste, disassociated from the rest of society, or worry about the loss of civic virtue. The bridge across, I suspect, is narrower than many suspect. A 2002 Harvard Institute of Politics survey of college students found that if their number came up in a new draft, 25% would eagerly serve and 28% would serve with reservations. The draft itself is quite irrelevant today. But contrary to the last election's confusing signals about the attitudes of the young, most of them, it seems, are willing to "do something" to protect their country, if asked. It is their elders' job to find a way to ask. The military writer Andrew Bacevich has summed up our current situation nicely: "To the question 'Who will serve?' the nation's answer has now become: 'Those who want to serve.'"

At a ceremony on Nov. 13 at Camp Taji, Iraq -- with Fallujah raging elsewhere -- Army Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli presented 19 Purple Hearts for wounds in the battle of Najaf, the big battle before Fallujah. Gen. Chiarelli remarked that George Washington created the Purple Heart in 1782, for what Gen. Washington himself described as "unusual gallantry . . . extraordinary fidelity and essential service."

Essential service. After 20 months of it in Iraq and two hard weeks of it in Fallujah, "service" -- an old idea in a world too busy to take much notice -- is a word worthy of at least some contemplation.

Send comments to henninger@wsj.com

Daniel Pipes

One cannot emphasize too much the distinction between Islam-plain Islam-and its fundamentalist version. Islam is the religion of about one billion people and is a rapidly growing faith, particularly in Africa but also elsewhere in the world. The United States, for example, boasts almost a million converts to Islam (plus an even larger number of Muslim immigrants).

Islam's adherents find their faith immensely appealing, for the religion possesses an inner strength that is quite extraordinary. As a leading figure in the Islamic Republic of Iran maintains, "Any Westerner who really understands Islam will envy the lives of Muslims." Far from feeling embarrassed about its being temporally the last of the three major Middle Eastern monotheisms, Muslims believe that their faith improves on the earlier ones. In their telling, Judaism and Christianity are but defective variants of Islam, which is God's final, perfect religion.

Contributing to this internal confidence is the memory of outstanding achievements during Islam's first six or so centuries. Its culture was the most advanced, and Muslims enjoyed the best health, lived the longest, had the highest rates of literacy, sponsored the most advanced scientific and technical research, and deployed usually victorious armies. This pattern of success was evident from the beginning: in A.D. 622 the Prophet Muhammad fled Mecca as a refugee, only to return eight years later as its ruler. As early as the year 715, Muslim conquerors had assembled an empire that extended from Spain in the west to India in the east. To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization. Muslims, not surprisingly, came to assume a correlation between their faith and their worldly success, to assume that they were the favored of God in both spiritual and mundane matters.

And yet, in modern times battlefield victories and prosperity have been notably lacking. Indeed, as early as the thirteenth century, Islam's atrophy and Christendom's advances were already becoming discernible. But, for some five hundred years longer, Muslims remained largely oblivious to the extraordinary developments taking place to their north. Ibn Khaldun, the famous Muslim intellectual, wrote around the year 1400 about Europe, "I hear that many developments are taking place in the land of the Rum, but God only knows what happens there!"

Such willful ignorance rendered Muslims vulnerable when they could no longer ignore what was happening around them. Perhaps the most dramatic alert came in July 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Egypt-the center of the Muslim world-and conquered it with stunning ease. Other assaults followed over the next century and more, and before long most Muslims were living under European rule. As their power and influence waned, a sense of incomprehension spread among Muslims. What had gone wrong? Why had God seemingly abandoned them?

The trauma of modern Islam results from this sharp and unmistakable contrast between medieval successes and more recent tribulations. Put simply, Muslims have had an exceedingly hard time explaining what went wrong. Nor has the passage of time made this task any easier, for the same unhappy circumstances basically still exist. Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom-whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, human rights, health, longevity or literacy. Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia who now languishes in jail, estimates in The Asian Renaissance (1997) that whereas Muslims make up just one-fifth of the world's total population, they constitute more than half of the 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty. There is thus a pervasive sense of debilitation and encroachment in the Islamic world today. As the imam of a mosque in Jerusalem put it not long ago, "Before, we were masters of the world and now we're not even masters of our own mosques."

Searching for explanations for their predicament, Muslims have devised three political responses to modernity-secularism, reformism and Islamism. The first of these holds that Muslims can only advance by emulating the West. Yes, the secularists concede, Islam is a valuable and esteemed legacy, but its public dimensions must be put aside. In particular, the sacred law of Islam (called the Shari'a)-which governs such matters as the judicial system, the manner in which Muslim states go to war, and the nature of social interactions between men and women-should be discarded in its entirety. The leading secular country is Turkey, where Kemal Atat?rk in the period 1923-38 reshaped and modernized an overwhelmingly Muslim society. Overall, though, secularism is a minority position among Muslims, and even in Turkey it is under siege.

Reformism, occupying a murky middle ground, offers a more popular response to modernity. Whereas secularism forthrightly calls for learning from the West, reformism selectively appropriates from it. The reformist says, "Look, Islam is basically compatible with Western ways. It's just that we lost track of our own achievements, which the West exploited. We must now go back to our own ways by adopting those of the West." To reach this conclusion, reformers reread the Islamic scriptures in a Western light. For example, the Koran permits a man to take up to four wives-on the condition that he treat them equitably. Traditionally, and quite logically, Muslims understood this verse as permission for a man to take four wives. But because a man is allowed only one in the West, the reformists performed a sleight of hand and interpreted the verse in a new way: the Koran, they claim, requires that a man must treat his wives equitably, which is clearly something no man can do if there is more than one of them. So, they conclude, Islam prohibits more than a single wife.

Reformists have applied this sort of reasoning across the board. To science, for example, they contend Muslims should have no objections, for science is in fact Muslim. They recall that the word algebra comes from the Arabic, al-jabr. Algebra being the essence of mathematics and mathematics being the essence of science, all of modern science and technology thereby stems from work done by Muslims. So there is no reason to resist Western science; it is rather a matter of reclaiming what the West took (or stole) in the first place. In case after case, and with varying degrees of credibility, reformists appropriate Western ways under the guise of drawing on their own heritage. The aim of the reformists, then, is to imitate the West without acknowledging as much. Though intellectually bankrupt, reformism functions well as a political strategy.

The Ideological Response

The third response to the modern trauma is Islamism, the subject of the remainder of this essay. Islamism has three main features: a devotion to the sacred law, a rejection of Western influences, and the transformation of faith into ideology.

Islamism holds that Muslims lag behind the West because they're not good Muslims. To regain lost glory requires a return to old ways, and that is achieved by living fully in accordance with the Shari'a. Were Muslims to do so, they would once again reside on top of the world, as they did a millennium ago. This, however, is no easy task, for the sacred law contains a vast body of regulations touching every aspect of life, many of them contrary to modern practices. (The Shari'a somewhat resembles Jewish law, but nothing comparable exists in Christianity.) Thus, it forbids usury or any taking of interest, which has deep and obvious implications for economic life. It calls for cutting off the hands of thieves, which runs contrary to all modern sensibilities, as do its mandatory covering of women and the separation of the sexes. Islamism not only calls for the application of these laws, but for a more rigorous application than ever before was the case. Before 1800, the interpreters of the Shari'a softened it somewhat. For instance, they devised a method by which to avoid the ban on interest. The fundamentalists reject such modifications, demanding instead that Muslims apply the Shari'a strictly and in its totality.

In their effort to build a way of life based purely on the Shar'i laws, Islamists strain to reject all aspects of Western influence-customs, philosophy, political institutions and values. Despite these efforts, they still absorb vast amounts from the West in endless ways. For one, they need modern technology, especially its military and medical applications. For another, they themselves tend to be modern individuals, and so are far more imbued with Western ways than they wish to be or will ever acknowledge. Thus, while the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was more traditional than most Islamists, attempted to found a government on the pure principles of Shiite Islam, he ended up with a republic based on a constitution that represents a nation via the decisions of a parliament, which is in turn chosen through popular elections-every one of these a Western concept. Another example of Western influence is that Friday, which in Islam is not a day of rest but a day of congregation, is now the Muslim equivalent of a sabbath. Similarly, the laws of Islam do not apply to everyone living within a geographical territory but only to Muslims; Islamists, however, understand them as territorial in nature (as an Italian priest living in Sudan found out long ago, when he was flogged for possessing alcohol). Islamism thereby stealthily appropriates from the West while denying that it is doing so.

Perhaps the most important of these borrowings is the emulation of Western ideologies. The word "Islamism" is a useful and accurate one, for it indicates that this phenomenon is an "ism" comparable to other ideologies of the twentieth century. In fact, Islamism represents an Islamic-flavored version of the radical utopian ideas of our time, following Marxism-Leninism and fascism. It infuses a vast array of Western political and economic ideas within the religion of Islam. As an Islamist, a Muslim Brother from Egypt, puts it, "We are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims"; a Muslim of old would have said, "We are neither Jews nor Christians, but Muslims."

Islamists see their adherence to Islam primarily as a form of political allegiance; hence, though usually pious Muslims, they need not be. Plenty of Islamists seem in fact to be rather impious. For instance, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, Ramzi Yousef, had a girlfriend while living in the Philippines and was "gallivanting around Manila's bars, strip-joints and karaoke clubs, flirting with women." From this and other suggestions of loose living, his biographer, Simon Reeve, finds "scant evidence to support any description of Yousef as a religious warrior." The FBI agent in charge of investigating Yousef concluded that, "He hid behind a cloak of Islam."

On a grander level, Ayatollah Khomeini hinted at the irrelevance of faith for Islamists in a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev early in 1989, as the Soviet Union was rapidly failing. The Iranian leader offered his own government as a model: "I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system." Khomeini here seemed to be suggesting that the Soviets should turn to the Islamist ideology-converting to Islam would almost seem to be an afterthought.

Contrary to its reputation, Islamism is not a way back; as a contemporary ideology it offers not a means to return to some old-fashioned way of life but a way of navigating the shoals of modernization. With few exceptions (notably, the Taliban in Afghanistan), Islamists are city dwellers trying to cope with the problems of modern urban life-not people of the countryside. Thus, the challenges facing career women figure prominently in Islamist discussions. What, for example, can a woman who must travel by crowded public transportation do to protect herself from groping? The Islamists have a ready reply: she should cover herself, body and face, and signal through the wearing of Islamic clothes that she is not approachable. More broadly, they offer an inclusive and alternative way of life for modern persons, one that rejects the whole complex of popular culture, consumerism and individualism in favor of a faith-based totalitarianism.

Deviations From Tradition

While Islamism is often seen as a form of traditional Islam, it is something profoundly different. Traditional Islam seeks to teach humans how to live in accord with God's will, whereas Islamism aspires to create a new order. The first is self-confident, the second deeply defensive. The one emphasizes individuals, the latter communities. The former is a personal credo, the latter a political ideology.

The distinction becomes sharpest when one compares the two sets of leaders. Traditionalists go through a static and lengthy course of learning in which they study a huge corpus of information and imbibe the Islamic verities much as their ancestors did centuries earlier. Their faith reflects more than a millennium of debate among scholars, jurists and theologians. Islamist leaders, by contrast, tend to be well educated in the sciences but not in Islam; in their early adulthood, they confront problems for which their modern learning has failed to prepare them, so they turn to Islam. In doing so they ignore nearly the entire corpus of Islamic learning and interpret the Koran as they see fit. As autodidacts, they dismiss the traditions and apply their own (modern) sensibilities to the ancient texts, leading to an oddly Protestant version of Islam.

The modern world frustrates and stymies traditional figures who, educated in old-fashioned subjects, have not studied European languages, spent time in the West, or mastered its secrets. For example, traditionalists rarely know how to exploit the radio, television and the Internet to spread their message. In contrast, Islamist leaders usually speak Western languages, often have lived abroad, and tend to be well versed in technology. The Internet has hundreds of Islamist sites. Fran?ois Burgat and William Dowell note this contrast in their book, The Islamist Movement in North Africa (1993) :

The village elder, who is close to the religious establishment and knows little of Western culture (from which he refuses technology a priori) cannot be confused with the young science student who is more than able to deliver a criticism of Western values, with which he is familiar and from which he is able to appropriate certain dimensions. The traditionalist will reject television, afraid of the devastating modernism that it will bring; the Islamist calls for increasing the number of sets . . . once he has gained control of the broadcasts.

Most important from our perspective, traditionalists fear the West while Islamists are eager to challenge it. The late mufti of Saudi Arabia, 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin-Baz, exemplified the tremulous old guard. In the summer of 1995, he warned Saudi youth not to travel to the West for vacation because "there is a deadly poison in travelling to the land of the infidels and there are schemes by the enemies of Islam to lure Muslims away from their religion, to create doubts about their beliefs, and to spread sedition among them." He urged the young to spend their summers in the "safety" of the summer resorts in their own country.

Islamists are not completely impervious to the fear of these schemes and lures, but they have ambitions to tame the West, something they do not shy from announcing for the whole world to hear. The most crude simply want to kill Westerners. In a remarkable statement, a Tunisian convicted of setting off bombs in France in 1985-86, killing thirteen, told the judge handling his case, "I do not renounce my fight against the West which assassinated the Prophet Muhammad. . . . We Muslims should kill every last one of you [Westerners]." Others plan to expand Islam to Europe and America, using violence if necessary. An Amsterdam-based imam declared on a Turkish television program, "You must kill those who oppose Islam, the order of Islam or Allah, and His Prophet; hang or slaughter them after tying their hands and feet crosswise . . . as prescribed by the Shari'a." An Algerian terrorist group, the GIA, issued a communiqu? in 1995 that showed the Eiffel Tower exploding and bristled with threats:

We are continuing with all our strength our steps of jihad and military attacks, and this time in the heart of France and its largest cities. . . . It's a pledge that [the French] will have no more sleep and no more leisure and Islam will enter France whether they like it or not.

The more moderate Islamists plan to use non-violent means to transform their host countries into Islamic states. For them, conversion is the key. One leading American Muslim thinker, Isma'il R. Al-Faruqi, put this sentiment rather poetically: "Nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous and rich continent [of North America] turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar [God is great]."

This contrast not only implies that Islamism threatens the West in a way that the traditional faith does not, but it also suggests why traditional Muslims, who are often the first victims of Islamism, express contempt for the ideology. Thus, Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel Prize winner for literature, commented after being stabbed in the neck by an Islamist: "I pray to God to make the police victorious over terrorism and to purify Egypt from this evil, in defense of people, freedom, and Islam." Tujan Faysal, a female member of the Jordanian parliament, calls Islamism "one of the greatest dangers facing our society" and compares it to "a cancer" that "has to be surgically removed." ?evik Bir, one of the key figures in dispatching Turkey's Islamist government in 1997, flatly states that in his country, "Muslim fundamentalism remains public enemy number one." If Muslims feel this way, so can non-Muslims; being anti-Islamism in no way implies being anti-Islam.

Islamism in Practice

Like other radical ideologues, Islamists look to the state as the main vehicle for promoting their program. Indeed, given the impractical nature of their scheme, the levers of the state are critical to the realization of their aims. Toward this end, Islamists often lead political opposition parties (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) or have gained significant power (Lebanon, Pakistan, Malaysia). Their tactics are often murderous. In Algeria, an Islamist insurgency has led to some 70,000 deaths since 1992.

And when Islamists do take power, as in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan, the result is invariably a disaster. Economic decline begins immediately. Iran, where for two decades the standard of living has almost relentlessly declined, offers the most striking example of this. Personal rights are disregarded, as spectacularly shown by the re-establishment of chattel slavery in Sudan. Repression of women is an absolute requirement, a practice most dramatically on display in Afghanistan, where they have been excluded from schools and jobs.

An Islamist state is, almost by definition, a rogue state, not playing by any rules except those of expediency and power, a ruthless institution that causes misery at home and abroad. Islamists in power means that conflicts proliferate, society is militarized, arsenals grow, and terrorism becomes an instrument of state. It is no accident that Iran was engaged in the longest conventional war of the twentieth century (1980-88, against Iraq) and that both Sudan and Afghanistan are in the throes of decades-long civil wars, with no end in sight. Islamists repress moderate Muslims and treat non-Muslims as inferior specimens. Its apologists like to see in Islamism a force for democracy, but this ignores the key pattern that, as Martin Kramer points out, "Islamists are more likely to reach less militant positions because of their exclusion from power. . . . Weakness moderates Islamists." Power has the opposite effect.

Islamism has now been on the ascendant for more than a quarter century. Its many successes should not be understood, however, as evidence that it has widespread support. A reasonable estimate might find 10 percent of Muslims following the Islamist approach. Instead, the power that Islamists wield reflects their status as a highly dedicated, capable and well-organized minority. A little bit like cadres of the Communist Party, they make up for numbers with activism and purpose.

Islamists espouse deep antagonism toward non-Muslims in general, and Jews and Christians in particular. They despise the West both because of its huge cultural influence and because it is a traditional opponent-the old rival, Christendom, in a new guise. Some of them have learned to moderate their views so as not to upset Western audiences, but the disguise is thin and should deceive no one.

Professor Assails Anti-Bias Program
An unlikely critic says his new study shows that affirmative action hurts black law students.
   
By Stuart Silverstein, Times Staff Writer

UCLA law professor Richard H. Sander, author of a controversial new study concluding that affirmative action hurts black law school students, generally seems an unlikely candidate to challenge a leading liberal cause.

Sander, 48, is a soft-spoken former VISTA volunteer who for years has studied housing discrimination and championed efforts to fight segregation in Los Angeles. A self-described "pragmatic progressive" who supported John Kerry for president, Sander also promoted a local program in the 1990s to help the working poor win more federal aid.
 
Yet Sander's latest research, to be published this month in the Stanford Law Review, already is drawing widespread criticism from liberal backers of affirmative action and is roiling law schools around the country.

His study asserts that law school affirmative action programs often draw African Americans to tougher schools where they struggle to keep up, leading many to earn poor grades, drop out and fail their state bar exams.

"The big picture is that this system of racial preferences is no longer clearly achieving the goal of expanding the number of black lawyers," Sander said in an interview. "There's a very good chance that we're creating such high attrition rates that we're actually lowering production of black lawyers, and certainly we are weakening the preparation of the black lawyers we are producing."

Affirmative action opponents have made similar arguments about racial preferences in the past, but Sander's research provides new statistics on academic performance. He reports that, in his national sampling, nearly half of first-year black students received grades placing them in the bottom tenth of their classes. In addition, he found that among all students who entered law school in 1991, 45% of black students graduated and passed the bar exam on their first try, while 78% of whites did so.

Sander, who now favors scaling back affirmative action, argues that racial preferences often create an "academic mismatch" that puts black students into competition with white students with stronger credentials. He contends that if the same black students went to less selective law schools, they would earn higher grades, raising their chances of graduating and passing the bar exam.

Some critics who have read a draft of the paper say Sander is probably understating the rate at which blacks pass the bar exam. They also argue that his explanations for black students' lagging performance are based on sweeping, unproven assumptions, and they say that he fails to recognize affirmative action's far-reaching benefits.

"If we look at our society today compared to what it was before we had affirmative action, I think almost everybody would agree it's much better today," said David Wilkins, a Harvard law professor writing a critique of Sander's paper. "And the very fact that we had affirmative action is a big part of why."

At the same time, Sander is widely regarded as a serious, independent-minded academic. Alison Grey Anderson, a friend who has taught at the UCLA law school since 1972, said she admires his intellectual integrity. "If he believes something is true, he's going to say it, and he's really not going to take into account the political consequences," she said.

Amid the controversy these days, she said, "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes."

Sander, director of the Empirical Research Group at the UCLA law school, said one of his guiding principles is "the idea that policy changes have to be empirically evaluated before we do them, and that we need to take advantage of social science so we don't throw away political capital on things that aren't going to work."

Likewise, Sander said, affirmative action "needs to be subjected to the kinds of cost-benefit evaluation that we would apply to any social policy."

He said he knew his research would ignite controversy. But Sander, who lives in Los Feliz with his two children and wife, Caltech astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, said family issues prodded him to move ahead.

One factor, he said, is the educational future of his 14-year-old son, Robert. University affirmative action could play a role in Robert's life because his racial background is mixed: Sander is white and Robert's mother, Sander's first wife, is black.

Sander's other child, a 19-month-old daughter named Erica, has a terminal disease. Her illness, Sander said, reminded him of life's fragility and left him with "a sense of urgency." He said he didn't want to "leave important things unsaid."

Sander, who grew up in rural Indiana, earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard. After graduating, he served as a VISTA volunteer with a community organization in Chicago for a year.

Later, he went to Northwestern University, earning both a doctorate in economics and a law degree. In 1989, he moved to UCLA as a law professor.

In Los Angeles, Sander served as president of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California and helped start a public interest law program at UCLA.

Yet even before his latest study, Sander's research occasionally antagonized liberals.

In the 1990s, he was hired by the city of Los Angeles to study a living wage ordinance to boost pay for employers of city contractors, and he provided an opinion supporting the measure. But later, when he was retained by employer groups to study a living wage measure for Santa Monica, he came out on the opposite side, saying it would cost jobs without helping the families who most needed it. The difference, he said, was that the Los Angeles costs would be borne by city government, whereas Santa Monica's proposal would have placed a high minimum wage directly on businesses.

Sander also stirred controversy when he wrote an op-ed piece for The Times last year criticizing the UCLA and UC Berkeley law schools, along with the University of California system, for "back door" programs that sidestep the state's ban on affirmative action. The column expressed his growing concerns that affirmative action "allows us to pretend that our racial problems are simpler than they really are" while avoiding addressing "real problems," such as poor inner-city schools and urban segregation.

His new Stanford Law Review study includes data from the Law School Admission Council on 27,000 students who entered 160 U.S. law schools in 1991.

Critics say Sander vastly underestimates the role affirmative action plays in persuading blacks to go to law school, especially when it means attending a top-tier school near home.

Partly for that reason, a group including two University of Michigan law professors who are drafting a response to Sander's paper estimate that eliminating affirmative action would reduce the number of blacks entering the legal profession by 25% to 30% annually. Sander, by contrast, estimates an increase of about 9%.

Critics also contest the notions that affirmative action is the only reason for poorer law school performance by blacks and that African American students would earn better grades at less selective schools. They say students admitted into more challenging schools often learn more, in part because of greater expectations and resources.

In addition, critics say, the connections made at elite law schools may push up their earnings more dramatically later in their careers, a possibility that Sander's study didn't address.

Sander said he hasn't been rattled by the criticism and maintained that it has become easier to discuss affirmative action thoughtfully since the U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld the practice in college admissions so long as it is considered in a "flexible, non-mechanical way."

Sander plans to follow up with studies on Latino and Asian law students and to investigate how affirmative action at law firms affects black attorneys. He said he is concerned that blacks at such firms are stigmatized and consequently don't as often get the experience they need to move up to partner status.

The attention generated by his current paper, Sander said, has been gratifying.

"What you least want is to write articles that just collect dust," Sander said. "What you most want to do is to get people to think, and this is definitely doing that."

..................
Geopolitical Diary: Monday, Nov. 15, 2004
November 15, 2004   0714 GMT

The last major stronghold in Al Fallujah appears to have fallen. That does
not mean that the fighting is over, however. Guerrillas remain in the city,
bypassed by the main body of U.S. troops. Operating in small teams, these guerrillas will strike at softer targets, such as supply vehicles and
isolated foot patrols. They will be difficult to find. The rubble provides
excellent cover. They will become visible when they launch attacks, so U.S. forces will now configure themselves so as to be able to rapidly reinforce troops that have come under guerrilla attack. The game of hide-and-seek can be a long and brutal experience. The guerrillas will have to be killed, induced to surrender, or manage to exfiltrate the city.

Nevertheless, the main battle is over, and more quickly than we expected. It was our expectation that the United States would draw out the assault as in An Najaf, in order to avoid major casualties and to permit the battle to serve as the backdrop for the critical negotiations taking place between Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the United States on the one side and the Sunni leadership on the other. But that wasn't the way the United States played it out. The basic outline is in place, but the U.S. goal is clearly more ambitious than we thought.

As the battle in Al Fallujah quieted, U.S. leaders began publicly speaking
of dealing with other guerrilla strongholds in other cities. Rather than
using Al Fallujah as the backdrop for negotiations, the United States has
clearly decided on a much broader canvas. Officials are looking at the
entire Sunni triangle, and all the cities within it, as sequential targets
until the Sunni leadership turns on the guerrillas.

The picture the United States is now painting is of a broad sequential or
even simultaneous campaign directed against city after city until the
guerrilla movement has suffered overwhelming attrition and the Sunni
leadership capitulates to American political demands.

It has undoubtedly been noticed by the Sunnis that the attack on Al Fallujah has brought a very muted response in the United States. The Democratic left is so dispirited by the defeat of John Kerry that it has hardly been noticed, in spite of casualties in Al Fallujah. Equally interesting has been the quiet from Europe. France and Germany clearly don't want to tangle with President George W. Bush at this point. Equally important, the killing of a Dutch filmmaker who had criticized Muslims has had a chilling effect on Europeans in general. The broad public has been shocked and is rethinking its views on Muslims in Europe and, therefore, on the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Events in Amsterdam have caused the Europeans to view Iraq through a different prism.

More than at any point since the Iraq war began, the United States is free
from constraints. Neither U.S. public opinion nor European diplomacy is
shaping U.S. war plans. Based on Vietnam, there has been a belief among many that a guerrilla insurgency cannot be defeated. This thinking is true if by "defeated" you mean completely eradicated. If, however, what you mean is reducing the guerrillas so they no longer threaten the regime or basic stability, guerrilla movements can, in fact, be suppressed -- and have been.

In Vietnam, the communists deployed hundreds of thousands of troops, with secured sanctuaries in neighboring countries and a robust logistical
pipeline -- the Ho Chi Minh Trail -- supporting them. Iraq has thousands of guerrillas, probably less than 10,000. There is no sanctuary, and there is no robust supply line. They survive through the support of the population, and that support depends on the Sunni elders. At the moment the elders decide the price is too high, the insurgency will rapidly degrade.

The United States is trying to show the elders just how high the price will
be. We expected Al Fallujah to last for weeks. It has lasted for days, and
new operations are already being planned. The United States is now in a
position to carry out a ruthless campaign designed not only to root out the guerrillas, but to impose a massive cost on the Sunni communities. The United States is not constrained politically and has the necessary force to carry out this campaign. On the other hand, it cannot afford to take too long in carrying out this campaign.

In short, the United States is trying to back the guerrillas against the
wall by splitting them from the Sunni elders, and to do it much faster than we had expected it to happen. We now have an extremely dynamic situation developing in Iraq, where the most likely course is a re-evaluation by the Sunni elders of their prior position, and potentially, a civil war among the Sunnis as one result. The outcome is far from certain, but the war is certainly now taking a dramatic turn.

Copyrights 2004 - Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.stratfor.com

From the DRUDGE REPORT today:
 
FORMER HEAD OF CIA'S OSAMA BIN LADEN UNIT SAYS THE QAEDA LEADER HAS SECURED RELIGIOUS APPROVAL TO USE A NUCLEAR BOMB AGAINST AMERICANS
Fri Nov 12 2004 12:02:34 ET

Osama bin Laden now has religious approval to use a nuclear device against Americans, says the former head of the CIA unit charged with tracking down the Saudi terrorist. The former agent, Michael Scheuer, speaks to Steve Kroft in his first television interview without disguise to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 14 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Scheuer was until recently known as the "anonymous" author of two books critical of the West's response to bin Laden and al Qaeda, the most recent of which is titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. No one in the West knows more about the Qaeda leader than Scheuer, who has tracked him since the mid-1980s. The CIA allowed him to write the books provided he remain anonymous, but now is allowing him to reveal himself for the first time on Sunday's broadcast; he formally leaves the Agency today (12).

Even if bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably wouldn't have used it for a lack of proper religious authority - authority he has now. "[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik...a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans," says Scheuer. "[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans," Scheuer tells Kroft.

Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by some Muslims for the 9/11 attack because he killed so many people without enough warning and before offering to help convert them to Islam. But now bin Laden has addressed the American people and given fair warning. "They're intention is to end the war as soon as they can and to ratchet up the pain for the Americans until we get out of their region....If they acquire the weapon, they will use it, whether it's chemical, biological or some sort of nuclear weapon," says Scheuer.

As the head of the CIA unit charged with tracking bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer says he never had enough people to do the job right. He blames former CIA Director George Tenet. "One of the questions that should have been asked of Mr. Tenet was why were there always enough people for the public relations office, for the academic outreach office, for the diversity and multi-cultural office? All those things are admirable and necessary but none of them are protecting the American people from a foreign threat," says Scheuer.

And the threat posed by bin Laden is also underestimated, says Scheuer. "I think our leaders over the last decade have done the American people a disservice...continuing to characterize Osama bin Laden as a thug, as a gangster," he says. "Until we respect him, sir, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary, yes. He's a very, very talented man and a very worthy opponent," he tells Kroft.

Until today (12), Scheuer was a senior official in the CIA's counter terrorism unit and a special advisor to the head of the agency's bin Laden unit.

Developing...
==================

Politics and Policy
Homeland Security's Counterweight
Inspector General Takes
Politically Risky Steps
In Serving as a Watchdog
By ROBERT BLOCK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, the harshest critic of the administration's homeland-security efforts wasn't John Kerry or the Democrats. It was one of President Bush's own -- Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin.

A Texas Republican and Houston native, Mr. Ervin is a longtime ally of the Bush family, having first worked for former President George H. W. Bush. He became Homeland Security's top cop for internal waste, fraud and abuse in a recess appointment nearly a year ago. The question now is whether he will be reappointed when the new Congress convenes in January.

During his tenure, Mr. Ervin has issued three reports critical of the department's sky-marshal and airport-screening programs and has lashed out at the department's "failure of leadership" in creating a single database of terrorist suspects. He attacked the Transportation Security Administration for throwing a $486,000 party, including outlays of $81,767 for award plaques, $1,500 for cheese buffets and $1,486 for balloons. He concluded that federal inspectors aren't up to the task of detecting weapons of mass destruction in shipping containers. And he has even gone so far as to describe the government's antiterrorism efforts on the whole as "ad hoc" and "uncoordinated."

Long for the Job?
Clark Kent Ervin is the outspoken Inspector General of the Homeland Security Department

Born: April 1, 1959

Raised: Houston

Education: B.A. in Government, Harvard College, 1980; Master&s, Oxford University, 1982; J.D., Harvard Law, 1985.

Family: Married to Carolyn Harris, a Democrat and consultant with the Heinz Center for Education and the Environment.

Public Service: 1989-91, White House Office of National Service; 1995-1999, Assistant Secretary of State of Texas; 2001-03, Inspector General, State Department.

Texas Ties: Went to the same Houston area secondary school as President Bush; won Republican primary but lost general election bid for Congress in 1991.

Source: WSJ research
 
"I stand by that," he says in a recent interview.

It is an extraordinary comment by an official in an administration not known to publicly air problems or disagreements. Mr. Ervin has turned heads in the media and on Capitol Hill with his candor and made enemies in the new department where he is criticized as uninformed about fighting terrorism. His detractors in DHS and on Capitol Hill also have complained that he talks too much to the media -- something Mr. Ervin admits to proudly, noting that the only thing he has to bring force to his reports is "the bright light of congressional attention and the press."

Like Superman, the alter ego of his namesake, Mr. Ervin seems impervious to the brickbats. "It's my job to call it as I see it and let the political chips fall where they may," says Mr. Ervin, a 45-year-old lawyer.

Where those chips are going to fall is unclear. By law Mr. Ervin's appointment expires at the end of this Congress. For him to continue in the job, the White House must reappoint him next year at the start of the 109th Congress. Neither the White House nor Senate leaders are saying whether Mr. Ervin will return to the post.

His first nomination to the job languished in the Senate for a year until Mr. Bush finally appointed him during the congressional recess in December 2003. According to Mr. Ervin and congressional staffers, the Senate didn't act on his nomination because of concern that he failed to investigate accusations of wrongdoing while he was inspector general at the State Department. He says that he did investigate the matter, but found that he had no jurisdiction. All sides refused to discuss any details.

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), chairwoman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement last week that if Mr. Ervin were nominated again, he would be considered carefully, "as the Governmental Affairs Committee considers every nomination."

About six weeks before the election, when Mr. Ervin issued perhaps his most scathing report, on the government's failure to forge a viable database of terrorist suspects, a White House spokeswomen said Mr. Bush had complete confidence in Mr. Ervin and was "grateful for his service." Since Mr. Bush's re-election, the White House has been more circumspect when discussing individuals on the president's team.

But Mr. Ervin is no stranger to fighting for survival. He was born a month premature, and his struggle to live touched his brother Art, 11 years old at the time and a huge Superman fan. When it became clear that the baby would be fine, Art begged his parents to name him after his hero. They agreed. "I love it," Mr. Ervin says. "It's I who insists on signing my name in full. Otherwise no-one would know what the "K" stands for."

Growing up the third son of a bricklayer in Houston's poor, black Third Ward, Mr. Ervin was pushed by two teachers to apply to the city's elite Kinkaid School, President Bush's alma mater. He was the first African-American boy to attend the school. He excelled at music, becoming an accomplished pianist, and was obsessed with politics, developing into one of the nation's top high-school debaters.

Mr. Ervin's friendship with George W. Bush started in 1988, when a mutual acquaintance recommended Mr. Ervin for a job in the first Bush administration. The younger Mr. Bush wrote a note recommending Mr. Ervin, who eventually landed work in George H.W. Bush's Office of National Service, which fostered volunteer projects. Later, when the younger Mr. Bush became Texas governor, Mr. Ervin joined his administration as an assistant secretary of state under Alberto Gonzales, who was named earlier this week to succeed John Ashcroft as Attorney General.

Mr. Ervin returned to Washington in 2001 as the State Department's inspector general after being personally recommended by Secretary of State Colin Powell. A year later, Mr. Powell suggested he take on the same role at the new Department of Homeland Security.

Despite his close ties to the Bush family, Mr. Ervin hasn't pulled his punches. His investigations have led to arrests of allegedly corrupt customs officials, embarrassed DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, and challenged the White House.

When President Bush created the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in May 2003, effectively duplicating Homeland Security's intelligence-analysis responsibilities, Mr. Ervin said the move risked undermining the department. At the time, Mr. Ridge insisted the move wasn't a threat to his department.

Asked about the conflicting views on PBS's "NewsHour," Mr. Ridge said the inspector general's conclusion suggested that Mr. Ervin was "not as aware as he should be" of the department's activities.

Mr. Ervin says he has only had positive feedback from the White House and Senate, and if the department is displeased with him, it is only natural. "Criticism, even though it's constructive, is not easy to take," he says.

Mr. Ervin says the department wants a break because it is new. "My response is that's precisely when we should be involved, before money is wasted, before a program is too far out of the block that it basically can't be corrected and you have to start all over. This mission is too important for it to fall victim to politics."

Asked if he thought there was a political risk in his attitude, he plays with his college ring from Harvard and shrugs. "Common sense would say there is. But on the other hand, I know the president well enough to know that he wants every person in his administration to do the right thing."

He adds: "My hope is that I get to stay. I want to stay. I think the record suggests that I should be able to stay."

Write to Robert Block at bobby.block@wsj.com

Col. (ret) Ralph Peters:

FINISHING FALLUJAH

By RALPH PETERS

November 9, 2004 -- THE most decisive battle since the fall of Baghdad has begun. Thousands of U.S. Marines, Army units and Iraqi government forces have moved into Fallujah. Now we need to finish the job swiftly, no matter the cost in death and destruction, before the will of our civilian leaders weakens again. Stopping even one building short of the annihilation of the terrorists and insurgents would be a defeat. Al-Jazeera will pull out the propaganda stops, inventing American atrocities. The BBC will pressure Tony Blair to rein in our president. Iraqi faction leaders will press Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to accept a cease-fire for "talks."

The weight of the free world is on the shoulders of our Marines and
soldiers - and on the backs of our Iraqi allies. They've got to wrap up
major operations in a week.

We can do it. Our troops are the best in the world. The early phases of
combat last night showed solid intelligence work and adept planning. The
terrorists spent months preparing defensive traps, but our combat
engineers - key members of the team - blew right through the roadside bombs and barricades. We're off to an impressive start.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are attacking on multiple axes, keeping the terrorists off balance. Key sites within the city already have been seized - including a hospital that cared more about propaganda than its patients. Iraqi national forces have performed solidly thus far. A win in Fallujah will mark the birth of their new nation - one that never really existed in the past, when Iraq was held together only through oppression.

Significantly, the main assault began after darkness fell. Following months
of preparatory airstrikes and unpublicized raids by U.S. special operations
forces, the night attack instantly put the terrorists at a disadvantage.
Although our enemies may have acquired a few night-vision devices, our
troops are superbly equipped and trained as night stalkers.

In the irregular wars of the past, the guerrillas owned the hours of
darkness. Not anymore. G.I. Joe is the Midnight Master.

Expect 'round-the-clock ground and air operations that give the terrorists
no rest and deprive them of the initiative. Our troops know how important
this battle is. They'll fight ferociously. The Marines, especially, are
itching for revenge after being deprived of victory for political reasons
last April. They only need to be allowed to do the job right this time.

It's up to President Bush not to let them down. No matter what happens, no matter who complains or balks, no matter the false accusations from
Al-Jazeera and the BBC, our president needs to stand firm until the job is
done. By quitting in April, we created the terrorist city-state of Fallujah.
Now we need to shut it down for good.

Meanwhile, be prepared for media monkey business. No matter how well things go, we'll hear self-righteous gasps over the inevitable U.S. casualties. The first time a rifle company consolidates a position long enough to bring up ammunition, we'll hear that the attack has bogged down. If commanders on the ground decide to shift forces from one axis of advance to another, we'll be told that our troops couldn't make progress against "dug-in terrorists."

If four Iraqi units out of five perform well in battle, but one outfit fails
or flees, we'll be bombarded with reports insisting that our training
program hasn't worked, that the Iraqis aren't really with us, that the
interim government has no grass-roots support (sort of what the Dems said about George W. Bush).

And if Operation Phantom Fury goes miraculously well, we'll be criticized
for waiting too long to go in, for exaggerating the threat and for knocking
over a stop sign with a tank.

The global media lost the U.S. presidential election. They'll do their best
to win the Second Battle of Fallujah for the terrorists.

The truth is that war is cruel. And difficult. And complex. It's never as
smooth as it is in a film or a video game. In real life, heroes get killed,
too - sometimes by friendly fire. Mistakes are made, despite rigorous
planning. The enemy shoots back. And sometimes the enemy gets lucky. Tragedy is war's inseparable companion.

We cannot foresee all the details of the combat ahead. The fight for
Fallujah may prove easier than we feared, or tougher than we hoped. Time will tell. Meanwhile, don't let your view be swayed by the crisis of the hour. Have faith in our troops and their leaders.

In return, I can promise you one thing: If we don't fail our troops, they
won't fail us.

Our best Howl of Respect to our troops in Fallujah (and elsewhere):

While driving along today in peace and tranquility I thought of our troops going into battle today in Fallujah.

I take this moment to thank them, and all the others elsewhere in this struggle, for what they do for all of us.

Crafty Dog of The Unorganized Militia
====================================

Summary

Shortly after its opening strikes, the assault against Al Fallujah moved into a phase in which U.S. and Iraqi troops gained a tactical advantage. The capture of several key points within the city would make it possible for the coalition troops to push insurgents into a corner or, at the very least, divide the city and restrict the guerrillas' movements. The pace of the attack as it continues will reveal the political climate surrounding the military maneuvers.

Analysis

The joint U.S.-Iraqi assault against Al Fallujah has begun. After a lengthy preparation, troops moved quickly from the operation's opening strikes into what seems to be their main thrust into the rebel-held city.

The coalition forces' moves have put them in a position to back the insurgents into a corner. The next maneuvers in the operation depend on whether the insurgents will give up any further ground -- and the rate of those maneuvers will depend on the political climate in the city.

U.S. forces have taken two key bridges over the Euphrates River at the western end of the city. Between the entrances of those bridges is Al Fallujah's largest hospital, which U.S. and Iraqi forces have captured. The hospital has several tactical advantages. As one of the tallest buildings in the city, it provides a good observation point -- especially for troops to watch travelers on the main road through town or on the bridges on either side of the hospital. The capture of the hospital also made it unavailable to insurgents as a base of operations and as a medical facility. Al Fallujah's citizens -- guerrillas and civilians alike -- will have to depend on three smaller hospitals that remain in rebel hands inside the city.




Click here to enlarge the image.


The bridges and hospital were secured, along with a key railhead to the north of the city, just before U.S. and Iraqi forces thrust into two neighborhoods in the city proper -- the northwestern Jolan district and the northeastern Askari district.

Whether U.S. forces intended this effect, the maneuvers they have conducted thus far will put them in a very tactically advantageous position. After seizing the two key bridges -- thereby blocking off the westbound Baghdad Highway -- and pushing south with two assault heads from the northeast and northwest, the U.S.military can push insurgent forces toward the Baghdad Highway running from east to west through the center of Al Fallujah.

That highway is wide enough that close air support assets, such as A-10 attack planes and AC-130 gunships, could be used with little danger of collateral damage. The highway makes a perfect track for strafing attacks against those who attempt to move south across it. There have been reports that during the preparation for the U.S.-Iraqi attack, Al Fallujah's insurgents established a tunnel system in the city -- possibly under the main roads and possibly to avoid just such an air assault.

The scenario of a U.S. "flush maneuver" designed to drive the insurgents south into a "kill zone" -- the Baghdad Highway -- hinges on one simple thing: whether the insurgents can be made to give up their ground and be driven toward the highway. If the insurgents dig their heels into the neighborhoods throughout northern Al Fallujah, they could either repel the U.S. assault or be killed where they stand.

If the military cannot drive the insurgents toward the Baghdad Highway, then it will likely control the highway with air support in an attempt to bisect the city and effectively split the defending insurgents' strongholds. This would help the U.S. forces keep the guerrillas from moving their manpower and heavy weapons from the north to the south and vice versa.

There have not been reports of troops in the southern half of Al Fallujah -- as there were when U.S. troops pushed in from the southeast during the April assault against the city. This does not mean there is no activity in that area; it only means there have been no official statements or other reports about troops in that area. If there is something going on in southern Al Fallujah, it will be some time -- possibly not until the end of the entire operation -- before the activity is made public.

At this point, the initial assault against Al Fallujah is not over, nor has the fighting reached its apex. As of this writing, it seems U.S. forces are maintaining their tactical initiative against the insurgents. However, reports of counter U.S. thrusts or insurgent attacks have not filtered in -- other than an unconfirmed report from Al Jazeera that an Apache helicopter was shot down -- and thus the picture remains incomplete.

The momentum of the maneuvers in Al Fallujah should be noted. The speed at which the assault continues will indicate the nature of the operation's political tactics. A slower assault with more pauses for logistics and rest will indicate more willingness to continue negotiations with leaders in Al Fallujah as the fighting goes on. An aggressive, fast-paced campaign will indicate the opposite -- that Washington and Baghdad are no longer interested in negotiations but want a military victory over the insurgent hotbed of Al Fallujah.