Back of the Envelope

Sluggy Freelance -- It's lemonade stand week on Sluggy.

Day by Day -- Less politics, more personal interaction this week.

It's Walky! -- Walky and Joyce enjoy some peace and quiet, but it doesn't look like anyone else will be having the luxury.

College Roomies from Hell! -- Maritza's missed a few days this week due to computer problems, which is unfortunate, because the story's really good right now. The Mad Doc and Dave play off one another well, and April and Marsha are fighting, as usual.

General Protection Fault -- Dexter gets a chance to try his new dating skills, but things don't go so well.

Schlock Mercenary -- Tagon and Schlock are under arrest while investigators try to figure out what happened. I hope they tell us eventually.

Well, the fundraiser is over. The Liberty Alliance, which I was a member of, came in dead last, but it still raised just shy of $10,000. And if we came in last, you know the other two coalitions did even better, for a grand total of $55,401.83. The results are posted here. Since the challenge is over, I've removed the link at the bottom of every post. If you still want to contribute, you can do so here. The fundraiser may be over, but Spirit of America is still doing good work, and they can still use your help.

Barbara Lerner at National Review thinks that Rumsfeld should have been given a freer hand in the occupation:

A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset — not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.

Rumsfeld's plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.

Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq's new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks — not months or years — and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority — and they remember. The hero's welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border — a losing game, given the length of those borders — but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.

None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld's plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied.

I hadn't heard this before, but it does sound like Rumsfeld's plan may have worked better. In particular, Rumsfeld's method of dealing with Fallujah would have been different than Bremer's, which has Doc Rampage quite upset. While the current solution doesn't look like a good idea to me either, it does conform with my thinking that the idea is to put the Iraqis in charge. The problem is that I don't think they should be put completely in charge yet, at least not until we've taken out the worst of the problem. This may be what is happening, according to the Fox News article, but it does look like we are toning down the offensive, which is a mistake in my opinion.

On Nightline tomorrow, Ted Koppel will take half an hour and read off the names of all the American military personnel who've died in combat in the Iraq war. He's calling it a tribute, but the most telling detail is that he's not reading off the names of any of the people who died in Afghanistan. Given Koppel's previous anti-war activities (saying that the journalist's duty is to show people how awful war is), it's hard to interpret this as anything other than a political statement. I'd probably mind it less if he would just come out and admit it. My prediction is that this won't have the desired result. I think the best way to honor the fallen is to ensure that they have not died in vain, and I think the American people realize that. So while they may watch Koppel's "tribute," they won't be influenced in the way he hopes.

Old Post: The last post on this topic is here.

Everyone's talking about Fallujah these days. Captain Ed thinks we're making a mistake by showing sensitivity while we should be showing strength, as showing sensitivity rather than strength is what brought on 9/11:

For twenty-seven years, going back to Teheran, we have delivered the same message. No one doubts (any more) that we have an overwhelming military advantage in the Middle East and anywhere else, both in personnel and in technology; the three-week fall of Saddam demonstrated that beyond doubt. What we lack is both political will to win a war, and the political will to recognize that we're in a war. Negotiation with terrorists brought us to 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and instead of learning the lessons of the past quarter-century, we seem to be repeating them in Fallujah. This vacillation only communicates a sense of weakness, negating our tactical and strategic superiority, as political weakness always does (see: France, 1939-40).

It's doubly frustrating because Fallujah does not have the tactical disadvantages we face in Najaf, with the Shi'a shrines complicating our ability to attack al-Sadr's militia. Fallujah, in fact, holds the center of the Ba'athist reaction to the Coalition's regime change, and as such makes the case much stronger for direct military action. Instead of acting under a war-time paradigm, the CPA has turned the Marines into a SWAT team with better weaponry, which is a strategy for failure. We cannot be the new police force in Iraq; we must see the war to its conclusion first.

Time to quit fooling around and parleying with terrorists and unreconstructed Ba'athists, and fight the battle of Fallujah from the offense rather than the defense that the past 24 days have brought. The sooner we demonstrate our will to use all of the resources available to us to crush those who would take up arms against us, the sooner other pesky militias and insurgents will recognize that their battle has already been lost. Further delay only gives them hope of outlasting us.

Donald Sensing, as I mentioned in my previous post, thinks that we're pursuing a strategy to isolate the insurgents and we're about to go after them. I hope that Sensing is right, but I'm not sure. This news report from Fox News has me scratching my head:

Coalition officials said they have three or four different negotiation tracks taking place. One of them includes using Iraqi security forces to enter the city under the command of coalition leadership.

Sources said the coalition remains committed to a peaceful resolution to the current standoff in Fallujah.

I don't know why we'd want a peaceful resolution. I tend to think that the enemy in Fallujah are bad guys, whom we want to either capture or kill, not negotiate with, thus leaving them to fight another day and encouraging others to think violence will get them what they want. I think the real key, however, isn't what we want, but what the Iraqis want. I don't think we were pausing out of sensitivity as Captain Ed thinks, or in order to corral them as Donald Sensing believes, although both of those may have been considerations. I think our primary reason for waiting has been to give us a chance to bring in the Iraqis. Remember, the handover is on June 30th. By then, the Iraqis will have to be able to handle their own problems. Oh, we'll still be there, and we'll still be hunting down terrorists and Ba'athists (assuming there's a difference), but the more the Iraqis do for themselves, the better. They'll look less like US puppets, they'll develop their own sense of mission and pride, and in many ways, they can be more effective in this job than we can. By bringing them in now, while the US is still in control, we're teaching them how to handle the problems they'll deal with later. It's like having the training wheels of American support as they learn to ride the bike of self-rule... Okay, I'll stop now before this metaphor becomes like one of Dave Barry's. Of course, there's still a paradox here: can we develop Iraqi strength without showing American weakness? If they want a negotiated settlement, which is the opposite of what we want, should we let them have it? That I don't know, and as I said below, I'll just have to trust that the commanders in the field know what they are doing.

Old Post: My last post on this topic is here.

Well, it hasn't been a month yet, so my prediction isn't necessarily off, but the Fallujah fighting is still ongoing. Things have actually been pretty slow this past month, more like a siege than an assault, but Donald Sensing thinks the end game is approaching:

Over this month American forces have steadily closed the cordon within the city, reducing the terrain available to the enemy slice by slice. President Bush told the media today that in large areas of the city, life has returned pretty much to normal. More and more Fallujan civilians are reported to be escaping from the rebel areas, meaning that the civilians have seen the writing on the wall and no longer wish to hitch to a weak horse, or the insurgents no longer can stop them. Or both.

What we seem to be doing in steadily forcing the enemy to concentrate themselves into a smaller and smaller area. Not only does this liberate more civilians, it makes future targeting and intelligence gathering much simpler.

Some commentati have said that our self-imposed pause allowed the enemy to fortify their chosen redoubt within the city. No doubt. But it won't matter. The patty-cake of Marines getting into street gun battles with insurgents will not continue. The insurgents' modern Alamo will be futile. Imagine if Santa Ana had possessed a few F-15s, Cobra helicopters and Abrams tanks in 1836.

I hope so. My basic sense of things is that they should just go in for the kill already, but I'm nothing like a military expert and I'll just have to believe that the commanders in the field know what they're doing.

New Post: More above.

The three coalitions have set aside their difference in an attempt to raise a combined total of $50,000 for Spirit of America. To do so, the deadline for the fundraiser has been extended for a day. To contribute, click the link below.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

The Christian Carnival has been posted at Fringe Blog, with a Righteousness and Holiness theme. Featured posts are from La Shawn Barber's Corner, Intolerant Elle, Parablemania, and myself.

Today is the last day to contribute to Spirit of America. Well, technically, Spirit of America isn't going anywhere so if you want to contribute at a later date you can, but it is the last day of the fundraising effort.

Do you support our troops? Prove it by clicking the link below.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

...again! If you haven't given to the Spirit of America, please consider doing so. You have until Thursday to contribute. Click the link at the bottom of the post.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

The Trinity is one of the most difficult Christian concepts to understand, and I think many would-be believers give up when they cannot wrap their minds around it. When I was very young, the Trinity bothered me. As a teenager, I simply decided it was one of those things that man couldn't comprehend, so why worry about it? I was having more serious crises of faith anyway. It wasn't until recently, within the last five years, that I've taken a close look at the Trinity again. To say that I've probed its depths would be hubris of the first order, but I've finally seen beyond the surface to begin to comprehend its meaning. Once you get past the surface, so many of the Bible's more esoteric sayings begin to make sense, and the very nature of God becomes clearer. My investigations have reaffirmed my faith by showing me that once again, God is deeper than I thought.

I adapted the following from an article on MIT GCF's Skeptics Anonymous webpage, which I co-authored with Susan Kern and Cynthia Lo:

Christians believe that the three persons of the Trinity are all one God. Deuteronomy 6:4 states, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" He is a super-person, so to speak, His nature being so much more complex than our own that we cannot describe Him as a single "person." The doctrine of the trinity is perhaps the most difficult and perplexing to explain, since we are trying to describe the nature of the infinite God, which finite human beings are incapable of comprehending.

The term trinity describes a relationship not of three gods, but of one God who is three persons. Trinity does not mean tritheism, that is, that there are three beings who together are God, but the word trinity is used in an effort to define the fullness of the Godhead both in terms of His unity and diversity. The term trinity is never used explicitly in Scripture, but the concept is there from the beginning and specific passages such as Matthew 28:19, "baptizing them in the name [singular] of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit", refer explicitly to there being three "persons". All three persons of the trinity make an appearance at Jesus's baptism, as recorded in Mark 1:10-11, "As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'" The "he" who saw this may be either Jesus or John the Baptist, who later testified about this event (John 1:32-34).

The church has rejected from the beginning heresies of modalism and tritheism. Modalism is the denial of the distinction of persons within the Godhead, claiming that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are simply three "modes" of God expressing Himself. Tritheism reaches to the other extreme, that of falsely declaring that there are three beings who together make up God. The term "person" does not mean a distinction in essence, but a difference in subsistence. Jesus is different in subsistence from the Father or the Holy Spirit, but he is the same essence in terms of being. The Christian definition of God asserts that the three persons of the Godhead share the same essence, the same co-eternal existence, and the same will, but not the same mind, the same position, the same role, or the same relationship. All the persons in the Godhead have all the attributes of deity.

The trinity does not refer to "parts" of God and, unfortunately, human analogies fall short. An interesting but imperfect analogy may be found in ourselves, however. Human beings are composite creatures. Physically, we are trillions of cells working together to form the body, billions of neurons firing simultaneously to produce thought, two distinct hemispheres of the brain which "think" in different ways. Psychologically, we are a mess of conflicting emotions and ideas, each vying for primacy in our psyche. Spiritually, we are creatures of both soul and body, an uncomfortable mix filled with the strife between the physical and spiritual parts of our nature. Ultimately, one human person has less internal unity than the three persons of the trinity. And yet we never think of ourselves as more than one being.

The following is a traditional explanation for the roles of the three persons of God, taken from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity:

God is a Being which contains three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube contains six squares while remaining one body. But as soon as I begin trying to explain how these Persons are connected, I have to use words which make it sound as if one of them was there before the others. The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say that the First begets or produces the Second; we call it begetting, not making, because what he produces is of the same kind as Himself. In that way the word Father is the only one to use. But unfortunately it suggests that He is there first--just as a human father exists before his son. But that is not so. There is no before and after about it... The Son exists because the Father exists: but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son.

We must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father--what the Father has to say. And there never was a time when He was not saying it... All these pictures of light or heat are making it sound as if the Father and the Son are two things instead of two Persons. So that, after all, the New Testament picture of a Father and a Son turns out to be much more accurate than anything we try to substitute for it... Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him. He knows that Father and Son is more like the relation between the First and Second Persons than anything else we can think of. Much the most important thing to know is that it is a relation of love. The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father...

The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the "spirit" of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its "spirit" because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving, which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the difference between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.

This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the "spirit" of God. Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two... Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backward. God is love, and that love works through men--especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and the Son.

This explanation helps to illustrate a number of things. For one, the term "Word" applied to the Son in John 1 begins to make sense when we consider the Son as the "self-expression of the Father." Perhaps more importantly, it illustrates what is meant by 1 John 4:8, which declares that "God is love." We tend to minimize this, saying it means that God is loving. But throughout the Bible, the refrain is that God loves us because His very nature is love, and it would be unlike Him not to love us. But before humans and angels, what was there to love? What besides God is eternal? Love requires an object; the word is meaningless otherwise. Love could not be part of His eternal nature if He has not had some eternal object for His love. Instead, it would be something God learned to do once He had created someone to love. Only the trinity offers an explanation of how love can be a facet of the eternal nature of God, since contained in the three persons of the trinity are the subject, object, and expression of love. The three persons of the trinity are defined primarily by the relationship shared among them.

Update: (5/1/2004) I changed the phrasing to make it clear that Susan, Cynthia, and I are responsible for the article on Skeptic's Anonymous, not the whole page. Although... Cynthia as webmaster really is co-author on all of them, and I had a hand in quite a few. Susan may have joined in the debates on some of the other questions, but I don't really remember.

Old Post: To find out what I'm talking about, check here.

I'm 18% of the way through the second revision of "A Pheonix in Darkness." It's slow progress, I know, but the second revision always is.

Old Post: I posted on this over a week ago.

Remember the terrorist plot to attack targets in Jordan with chemical weapons? Well, CNN has finally picked up on it. Most of us knew about it a week ago, but CNN at least has a lot more information about it than we've seen elsewhere:

Officials said there is debate within the CIA and other U.S. agencies over whether the plotters were planning to kill innocent people using toxic chemicals.

At issue is the presence of a large quantity of sulfuric acid among the tons of chemicals seized by Jordanian authorities. Sulfuric acid can be used as a blister agent, but it more commonly can increase the size ofconventional explosions, according to U.S. officials.
...
The plot was within days of being carried out, Jordanian officials said, when security forces broke it up April 20.

In a nighttime raid in Amman, Jordanian security forces moved in on the terrorist cell. After the shooting stopped, four men were dead. Jordanian authorities said. They said at least three others were arrested, including Azmi Jayyousi, the cell's suspected ringleader, whom Jordanian intelligence alleges was responsible for planning and recruiting.

On a confession shown on state-run Jordanian television, Jayyousi said he took orders from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected terrorist leader who has been linked to al Qaeda and whom U.S. officials have said is behind some attacks in Iraq.
...
Jordanian authorities said the attack would have mixed a combination of 71 lethal chemicals,which they said has never been done before, including blistering agents to cause third-degree burns, nerve gas and choking agents.

A Jordanian government scientist said the plot had been carefully worked out, with just the right amount of explosives to spread the deadly cloud without diminishing the effects of the chemicals. The blast would not burn up the poisonous chemicals but instead produce a toxic cloud, the scientist said, possibly spreading for a mile, maybe more.

The Jordanian intelligence buildings are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area.

"And there is no one combination of antidote to treat nerve agent, choking agent and blistering agent," the scientist said.

There are some inconsistencies, as the first reports, like this one from Newsmax, indicated that the trucks were captured earlier, and that some of the arrests were as early at April 1st. I'd guess there were ongoing operations to catch all of these guys for the whole month. I can't say whether or not this is the last of it. I'm not even fully convinced that they've managed to foil the operation completely. I'm not qualified to comment on the chemical weapons, but if it was such a diverse mixture of chemicals, I'm surprised that we're still uncertain as to the nature of the attack. Surely with some of the chemicals we'd be able to say, "Yes, that's a chemical weapon all right," even if there were questions about others. Unless, that is, the Jordanians haven't found all the chemicals allegedly involved yet.

Update: Letters from Babylon also noticed the CNN article. CNN's new information came from the confessions of those captured. I'm not really sure whether CNN got the news first, it's just the first place I saw it, but other news organizations have the same information now. I should point out that as Jordan's ideas about the rights of the accused are very different from the US's, the confessions should be taken with a grain of salt.

The Christian Carnival is soliciting entries. If you'd like to participate this week and submit a post you think others might enjoy, e-mail Fringe Blog with the following information by 8 PM on Tuesday night:

Name of your Blog
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I haven't blogged much about politics recently. I don't like beating a dead horse, and by now everyone's noticed Kerry's free-fall in the polls. When the New York Times and ABC News are both questioning the Democratic presidential candidate's honesty, you know he's in trouble. Bush isn't invulnerable, but it sure doesn't look like Kerry's going to be the one beating him. Now if they'd only apply the same standards to him that they did to Bush and provide some real scrutiny into his other actions in the VVAW. Frankly, it might be a smart idea from the Democratic partisan point of view. It's becoming clear that the more people learn about Kerry, the less they like him. The only vote he gets will be the anybody-but-Bush crowd. The best chance the Democrats have is a last-minute substitution, which can only be done, as far as I understand it, by forcing Kerry to resign in disgrace. Then they can replace him with someone electable (Hillary?). Frankly, a relative unknown seems to do best against Bush, although I'm not sure how well that will hold right around the election.

It's not too late to contribute to Spirit of America. Click the link below.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

Rosemary, the Queen of All Evil, has just started her blog. Even though it's brand new, I'm sure she's getting ten times the traffic I get (I can see that she's getting ten times the comments). That's not so surprising given that she's married to Dean Esmay of Dean's World. I predict that she'll be Instalanched within a week. Dang, I need to marry a high traffic blogger. Wonkette's single, right?

Here are my major posts from this past week. It's been a little slow, but I haven't been entirely negligent. (The timestamp on this post is 12:01 AM on Sunday, which is half a day off. As this post is not time-critical, I set this timestamp in order to ensure that this post is at the bottom of the page in the archives.

Time to panic -- I wonder why people aren't more worried about al Qaeda's attempt to use chemical weapons in Jordan.

The nail-scarred hands -- A passage from Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew which touched me.

First revision done -- A quick report on my progress on the short story.

Quantum Cryptography -- I explain how quantum key distribution works.

The war has begun -- The blogwar to raise money for Spirit of America has started. I'm part of the Liberty Alliance, which is losing badly. To contribute, click on the link at the bottom of this post.

Blogging Gerard Alexander -- I blog Gerard Alexander's talk at tht University of Rochester.

Why I believe in God: His Name -- The name of God has been a powerful influence on my life.

Update: (4/26) I edited the last entry to reflect a change to the title of the post.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.