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DH wants to know what will happen when we go home:

I read your blog fairly regularly, and appreciate most of the points made there. I’m asking the following question in good faith, and not as a “gotcha”, because I don’t think this is a “gotcha” question at all, in fact.

[Background: I like Ron Paul a lot, but there is this issue nagging me]

From Ron Paul’s website: “We can continue to fund and fight no-win police actions around the globe, or we can refocus on securing America and bring the troops home.”

I read that as if he is elected president, he is likely to start an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and as far as I could tell,
that is the position you advocate as well. My question is, what aftermath do you expect from such an action, and also how
do you plan to deal with that aftermath that you anticipate?

I expect the aftermath will be a bloody free-for-all as the Sunnis, backed by Saudi Arabia, fight the Iran-backed Shiites for control of the Iraqi oil that isn’t in the hands of the Kurds in the north. That should keep the jihad busy for at least 3-5 years; our only task will be to prevent the White House and the Congress from granting entry visas to Iraqis who want to escape the warfare and emigrate to the USA.

Iraqi civil war not only isn’t a problem, it is eminently desirable from a Western point of view. Stirring up civil wars outside its borders is one of the best ways for an empire to ensure that it is left alone. There’s no chance the “terrorists” are going to “follow us home” when they’ve got the chance to grab a good chunk of an oil rich country.

There are no good guys over there, that’s always been the fundamental flaw in the Bush strategery. In fact, the only significant problem is the possibility of the Kurds and the Turks getting into a shooting war once the Kurds stop pretending that they haven’t already established their own country in what used to be northern Iraq. But we will likely face that problem anyhow, whether we leave or not, and at least if we leave, that will reduce the likelihood of our troops getting involved in a military conflict against one of our allies.

We are going to be retreating from the Middle East sooner or later, the only question is if we’re going to do it before we lose thousands of our men, or after. One does not “support the troops” by putting them in an untenable strategic position that bears an increasing probability of getting a significant percentage of them killed. If you think the geopolitical ramifications of a retreat now are bad, consider how bad they will be if we cannot successfully extricate them.

Some atheists have argued that the USA’s high rate of infant mortality is a function of its propensity for religion. That’s untrue, it’s actually the result of the fact that vastly superior US natal care allows the USA to count babies born under 1,500 grams as live births, whereas most other nations don’t try to save them and don’t even report these high-risk babies in their infant mortality rates.

A reasonable test of these two hypotheses is to look at the next level up and examine childhood mortality rates; UNICEF released a report celebrating the fact that the number of deaths of children under 5 for every 1,000 live births has dropped to 72, down from 93 in 1990 and 184 in 1960. If the atheist view is correct and the inordinately Christian nation’s health care system is inferior, then the USA’s under-5 childhood mortality rate should be well over 72.

The actual rate is 7 per 1,000.

UPDATE – Jamsco asked about specific countries, especially the four atheist-run nations. Here’s the complete list, as for some selected examples:

07 – USA
05 – Germany
04 – Sweden
06 – UK
18 – Albania
19 – Vietnam
27 – China
55 – North Korea
79 – Laos

“So, how do you feel about those three tainted Super Bowls?” John McConnell asked the Sports Guy. I laughed, I cried, much better than Cats. The mere fact that Bill Simmons felt the need to rush to review the old game recaps in order to defend the Patriots’ Super Bowl-winning performances is amusing enough; my theory is that this is karmic retribution for a) Stealing KG, b) Stealing Randy Moss, c) Bill Belichek’s total lack of graciousness, and d) dumping Pat Patriot and their sweet red pants for the Flying Elvis and generic metallic look of today.

I think the NFL will crack down fairly hard on the Patriots; remember, this is a league that fines players for having the improper amount of white showing on their socks. A hefty fine, a four-game suspension for Belicheck and the loss of two draft picks, maybe a one and a three, seems about right to me.

The Sports Guy is right to note that for much of NFL Nation, the Colts and Patriots have become the Yankees and Red Sox, at least for the moment. People are starting to get sick of them and if it weren’t for Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl win in Rothlisberger’s rookiesecond year, they’d really be leaping at the chance to tear down the Patriots. Of course, it’s not Belicheck’s fault that so many coaches and general managers are totally clueless; I still can’t believe that Green Bay, Kansas City, Jacksonville, San Diego, Seattle and Minnesota didn’t go hard after Randy Moss this offseason, even though Seattle and San Diego are the only places that would have made sense from Moss’s perspective.

The fact that it was totally unnecessary just indicates what a perfect psychopath Belicheck is. You’ve got a much better team and coaching staff, you’ve reloaded at your weakest point, the other quarterback is hurt… so naturally what choice do you have but to cheat?

Is it really that big a deal? No, not really. Is Roger Goodell going to let it slide? No way. And should we enjoy tormenting everyone riding the Patriots bandwagon for the rest of the season? Oh yeah!

And sooner or later, they usually end up deciding that it’s necessary to kill large quantities of people.

Jill reads this article by Daniel Engber that suggests that Americans—who are the most massive per capita polluters on the planet, mind you—cut back on our births to one or none to save the planet. She dismisses the idea on the theory that there lies the path to coercion. I’m going to disagree. First of all, dismissing coercion out of hand in a situation as dire as ours concerns me. Not that one should conclude that coercion is the best bet, but desperate times should at least allow for the consideration of desperate measures.

Betrand Russell, Adolf Hitler, Sam Harris, Vladimir Lenin, Hillary Clinton, Saloth Sar, Amynda… what do they all have in common? A deep-rooted belief in coercion as the fundamental right and responsibility of government. There is no such thing as a “right-wing” fascist, as I have pointed out for years, the political spectrum properly runs from totalitarian to libertarian.

Of course, like all leftists, Amynda is only interested in furthering her program, not in the most effective way to achieve the desired results. Simply sterilizing 50 percent of the female population at birth – preferably the feminists and ugly ones, if that’s not redundant – would work much better than a one-child policy; if the straits are so dire, why isn’t she calling for that? It’s certainly more practical and efficient than the Chinese Communist measure she’s defending.

One of our Hell-bound heroes is just tickled pink to hear a D-List comedienne blaspheme:

The off-color remark was to say, “Suck it, Jesus.”

I thought it was funny. If I ever win an Emmy (do you have to be on TV to win that, or something?), I hope to remember to say something similar. It is, of course, ridiculous to censor someone for denying the influence of an invisible phantasm, but I guess the usual suspects got huffy.

I’m not offended by Kathy Griffin’s reported remarks, after all, mindless yapping is just what tiny little dogs do. I find it rather more interesting to learn that in the unlikely event Dr. Myers is ever successful on television, blasphemy and insulting the supposedly nonexistent will be his immediate priorities.

How eminently rational!

93 Cranberry Bogs
69 Village Valkyries

83 Masonville Marauders
48 W.C. Silver Spooners

74 East Mesa WhiteTrash
55 Winston Reverends

67 Black Mouth Curs
38 Burns Hausfraurers

61 Greenfield Grizzlies
44 Mounds View Meerkats

Never trust the projections. All three of my keeper RBs, Willie Parker, Maurice Jones Drew and Reggie Bush, combined for 3 points this weekend. You just can’t win that way. The White Trash put up impressive points considering how Chicago kept LDT from running wild, which is scary, while the Bog got huge performances out of Kitna and their three WRs. The Hausfraurers, on the other hand, might as well have started Carson Palmer and sat everyone else, and losing Brandon Jacobs for a month isn’t going to help either. But then, bad luck is overkill when you’re starting Devin Hester at WR in Week One.

I’m not worried about my roster yet despite the underwhelming performance. The Pittsburgh and Jacksonville running games will surely pick up and my receivers actually look better than I’d hoped – Tom Brady isn’t going to throw to Randy Moss all year – my only real concern is my defense(s). Before the season started, Oakland and New England both looked like potential top five defenses, now Oakland looks fragile and New England is missing both Harrison and Seymour. But as the Football Outsiders point out, Week One is all about the overreactions, so I’ll give it some time and see how things shake out. If the Patriots can keep the San Diego offense in check this week, they should be all right until the big dogs get back, but if Oakland can’t dominate an anemic Denver offense this week, they’re history and Al Davis may be looking at a second straight number one pick.

Rod Dreher notes that Republicans got suckered by the Bush administration. Again.

The Senate Republicans hold the key to forcing a strategy change, and it looked not too long ago as if they were going to reach the end of the road when Petraeus reported. Sen. Mitch McConnell indicated as much earlier this year. Well, here it is September, and there is Petraeus reporting some success in stanching the violence, and there is Crocker reporting minimal success on the political front — the very point of the surge. And there are independent government assessments indicating that Iraq is a politically hopeless place.

Where are the Republicans, though? As far as I can tell, still in the tank with George W. Bush. As George Will indicates in his column today, we are continuing this policy based on a flimsy rationale. Honest to goodness, how much longer can the Republicans allow themselves to be strung along by this administration and its proxies? We’ve heard time and time again over the past few years that we’re just about to turn the corner in Iraq. The insurgency is in its last throes. The elections are going to turn things around. Capturing Saddam is going to turn things around. Killing Zarqawi is going to turn things around. The surge is going to turn things around.

None of it has panned out. And yet, here we go again. Here we go again. Remember this when the Republicans go marching to their well-deserved doom on Election Day 2008.

The surge hasn’t worked. In fact, every professional and amateur military strategist knew it wouldn’t, and knew it was little more than a political stunt. This is all Mao 101; when the enemy sends in reinforcements, fade back and attack elsewhere, avoiding the reinforced positions. So, the surge has been predictably “successful” by stabilizing Baghdad, but this is just a temporary measure which will only last as long as the extra troops stay there. Once they are withdrawn, the attacks will begin again in Baghdad.

The commanders know it, the insurgents know it and the administration knows it. A few of the more intelligent members of the media have also figured it out. About the only ones who haven’t are the Republican politicians who are walking the plank again for Dear Leader.

I’m really starting to suspect that George Bush derives sadistic pleasure from stabbing his allies in the back. It’s almost as if he’s addicted to it.

I’d say this summary is about as accurate as it gets:

See, what happens is, as kids the bright don’t fit in. They don’t have much in common with anybody. They dress funny and get made fun of. They can’t dance. They don’t get laid much, or at all. This warps their heads. They retreat into isolation with others like them, become contemptuous of everyone else to get even, and deal in abstractions because it’s all they know…. In short, a large IQ is an infallible predictor of emotional inadequacy.

I’m not sure if it’s infallible, but it certainly is a reliable one. High IQ individuals do tend to have significant trouble finding emotional stability; if you ever want to know true craziness, try dating a woman with an IQ over 150. And I’ve noted the apparent connection between atheism and social autism before myself. Intelligence, obviously, is a component of that. It’s not a coincidence that many atheists, especially the most vehement ones, inform us that they became atheists when they were children. My father tells me that I first told him that I didn’t believe that there was a God who answered prayers when I was five.

Fred didn’t intend it this way, but his diagnosis explains one reason why the highly intelligent are so contemptuous of God. They are in effect blind, but they don’t realize that they are blind; one can’t reasonably expect the emotionally crippled to perceive a God whose relationship with humanity is based on His love. So they fumble about, feeling the elephant and describing it based on their abstract notions, never understanding how silly their descriptions look to those who are perfectly capable of seeing the beast.

I fit Fred’s profile very well as a child; to this day I possess an unusually high level of indifference to both my would-be peers and their opinions because I had no choice but to get by without them during elementary school. I was fortunate that my athletic ability and physical appearance happened to increase my social status during my high school years, thus causing me to miss out on the painful social abuse that leaves its mark on so many geeks, nerds and other losers, but by then I was already too detached from the flock to take the pecking order or the peckers engrossed in it very seriously.

However, I’m still far more interested in abstract notions than people, what has made a real difference in my adult outlook is that my religious faith now forces me to acknowledge the intrinsic value of all of God’s creatures, even if they are no more my intellectual peers than are my dogs. For example, I now look on the sort of simple man I would have previously scorned as virtually subhuman and see an individual to be admired for his powerful faith, his deep personal commitment to his church community and the genuine warmth of his heart. I can now see that in some respects, I am his inferior and that I would do well to learn from him.

This is why secular human philosophy is so important for the rational materialist, the fundamental problem is that secular humanism is no more rational than conventional religious faith while being less emotionally compelling than any religion at the same time. The reason atheism will never be popular is that even in the absence of Christianity, most people will turn to paganism and spiritualism in preference to the lifeless doctrine of rational materialism.

Reason is a useful tool, but it can no more be a substitute for faith than it can be for love or hope.

A Ron Paul supporter on Digg is a little bit too sensitive:

WND usually posts it’s articles for at least two days then moves down the page. I have seen Russo’s, Fred’s and NAU news on the site for 1-2 days. I have not noticed the same news on the site after 3 days. My POINT: This article DOES NOT APPEAR on the HOME PAGE nor the SECOND PAGE of WND. So not only does Vox offer a great article it appears WND is more suited to appeal to fake conservatives who have ruined our party and not even post the article for common visitors to even see.

It does appear that WND is afraid to enlightened the GOP party with a dose of truth and this is why I shared my point. Do you conclude the same point?

No, I don’t. You see my columns only appear on the editorial page, partly because they are op/ed pieces and partly because I tend to send them in about an hour before the Monday editorial page closes. You may notice that my columns are almost never headline columns, this is mostly because the editors like to make those decisions several days before I’ve even written my column.

Since I am one of WND’s most popular weekly columnists – usually number three behind Ann and Pat – they have no reason to bury my columns. If I was more professional about it, I’d turn my columns in earlier… of course, if I took the whole thing seriously, I’d also submit them to a syndicate, get an agent and accept the various radio and television interviews that I am regularly offered. But since it’s neither a job nor a career, so I simply do whatever I want. They put up with my idiosyncracies, I try not to write anything too terribly crazy and everybody wins.

I’m extremely pleased with how the Vikings looked in their season opener. I was upset that they didn’t go out and draft a quarterback, but Adrian Peterson looked very impressive indeed and Tarvaris Jackson showed that although he might look like a Cunningham-Stewart-Vick clone, he’s capable of doing a pretty good Trent Dilfer impersonation and making sure that he doesn’t give the game away. I’m still concerned about his accuracy, but his judgment is better than I’d expected thus far. And it’s already clear that Sydney Rice can hold onto the ball, which is a step up from Troy Williamson in his rookie year.

The defense was stout against the run, but what was different yesterday was that the line generated a decent pass rush and blitzing linebackers actually made it to the quarterback on occasion. There was even a coverage sack towards the end, something that hasn’t been seen in the Metrodome for years, at least not when the defense was wearing purple. The six sacks recorded yesterday equal 19.3 percent of their TOTAL sacks in 2006. The only thing that was worrisome was their continued inability to get off the field when faced with third-and-long; when excellent special teams play puts the other offense deep in their own red zone, you simply can’t let them march out the hole like they did in the first half yesterday.

I still don’t think the Vikes can seriously be considered playoff material, but they look as if they’re capable of taking a big step towards becoming one next year. 8-8 would be a successful year, while anything less than 6-10 bodes ill for the continuation of the Childress era.

As for the rest of the league, I’m not at all surprised at Randy Moss’s resurgence. He’s still a great player, but he has always been a front-runner, not a die-hard competitor. New England is a great situation for him and I expect him to do very well there. The only real surprise was Detroit. I expected them to get hammered by the Oakland defense, but even if he’s a B-level quarterback, John Kitna is a high quality human being and it’s nice to see him get off to a good start.

What did you think of your team’s performance?