Back of the Envelope

Mark Steyn ain't exactly cheery these days (via Instapundit):

But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.

For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

The real question is how much of that will hurt us. Do I really think things are going to be that bad? I hope not, but I just haven't seen a lot of reasons to hope recently. Glenn's covering the debate between the optimistic, the gloomy, and the really gloomy on Instapundit.

From Fox News:

Iran and Syria on Wednesday said they would unite against any challenges or threats to their nations' livelihoods, a move that could raise the stakes in the ongoing international dramas involving both countries.

The announcement came on the same day that a large explosion supposedly rocked the southern Iranian city of Dailam, but details remained sketchy about what happened.

On the alliance issue, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, after meeting with Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari, told reporters in Tehran: "We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats."

Frankly, it's not surprising. They already had a de facto alliance, as there's evidence linking both of them to the ongoing terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere. They are the two biggest state supporters of terrorism in the world. And they're both scared. Syria more than Iran, probably. It's a smaller country and it's surrounded by nations which are not friendly to it: Turkey, the new Iraq, Israel, and an increasingly restive Lebanon. In the event of an all-out war, Iran's help would consist of attacking US forces in Iraq, since it would have a hard time moving conventional forces to Syria through Iraq.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but as state sponsors of terrorism, I think there is sufficient casus belli, and it's more a question of whether it's worth the cost than whether it's right. But right now there is sufficient internal dissidence that I think that support for the democratic forces within and pressure on the governing tyrrany could bring regime change in both countries without any direct intervention.

Update: Oops, forgot the link. It's there now.

I haven't been following the debate between columnist Jonah Goldberg and Middle-East studies professor Juan Cole. But I just read Jonah's summary of it:

Anyway, to sum up the substance of our own spat one more time: He predicted that these elections would be a disaster. After they weren't he dismissed the Iraqi election system as if it was especially flawed or undemocratic even though he seemed to support that system a year ago. Moreover, he deliberately concealed the fact such systems are used widely around the world including in South Africa in 1994. Does he think Nelson Mandela was undemocratically elected? He won't say. He oddly dismissed the election as being more like a "referendum" as if referendums are somehow alien to democracy. This is even more odd when you consider this election wasn't seen as a referendum on a bond for a sewage-treatment plant, but a referendum on Iraqi democracy itself. He suggests I'm a gruesome human being for supporting the war even though he pretty much did too. While dodging the issues he claims I'm unqualified to address the issues because I don't have his credentials. This is simply an extension of the chicken-hawk logic. Without the right paperwork, my ideas cannot be sound. Period.

Admittedly, that's a bit one-sided, so I'll give Cole's initial argument as well:

Jonah Goldberg knows absolutely nothing about Iraq. I wonder if he has even ever read a single book on Iraq, much less written one. He knows no Arabic. He has never lived in an Arab country. He can't read Iraqi newspapers or those of Iraq's neighbors. He knows nothing whatsoever about Shiite Islam, the branch of the religion to which a majority of Iraqis adheres. Why should we pretend that Jonah Goldberg's opinion on the significance and nature of the elections in Iraq last Sunday matters?

Remember my pet peeve, about people, especially experts, stating opinion as fact? Cole's argument seems to be a variation on that. It'd be helpful if his argument were as factually-based and well-reasoned as Goldberg's.

Jonah Goldberg is beating on those liberals who are beating on a dead parrot:

The year is 2456. The human colonies on Mars have been invaded by giant, laser-visioned tree sloths bent on crushing humanity and forcing the survivors to work as slaves in the massive dung mines of the planet Slothnor. In a last-ditch effort to save our species from extinction, the brave humans launch a counterattack on the Sloths' home world. Le New York Times (headquartered in Paris since 2018) blares in a bold holo-headline "Disturbing Echoes of Vietnam Conjured by Earth Aggression."

O.K., I'm kidding. It would probably take a few weeks before the Times actually invoked Vietnam. Perhaps they'd wait until we got bogged down in the actual marshes of Slothnor to start bleating about "quagmire." Who knows?

All I can say for certain is that I am no longer capable of being shocked by the Left's and the mainstream media's capacity to shove pegs of any shape into the round hole of Vietnam. A recent New York Times headline blared, "Flashback to the '60s: A Sinking Sensation of Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam." A cursory search of the Nexis-Lexis database shows that the words Iraq and Vietnam have appeared together nearly 800 articles in the last year — and that's just in the New York Times. The Washington Post: 764. The LA Times: 683. The Chicago Tribune: 526. Time magazine, a weekly publication, ran more articles mentioning Vietnam and Iraq (70) than it put out issues in the last year, and that doesn't even include letters to the editor.

To Liberals, every war is Vietnam. I'm hoping, desperately, that once all the Vietnam-era liberals die out that that will no longer be the case, but I'm not betting on it.

Now this is an intriguing story, first brought to my attention by La Shawn Barber:

A Web site's claim that a U.S. soldier was being held hostage in Iraq is probably a hoax, senior Pentagon officials told FOX News on Tuesday.

The claim, posted on an Arabic Web site frequented by militants, was first cast into doubt when a military spokesman in Baghdad said the kidnapping claim and photo could not be verified, and that "no units have reported anyone missing."

Then later, a toy manufacturer said the figure in the photo resembled one of its military action figures, dubbed "GI Cody."

It is feasible the claim was posted in Iraq, since "Cody" is sold at U.S. bases in Kuwait.

Pentagon officials, who launched an investigation when the abduction claim came to light, believe the image of a hostage on the Web site is actually little "Cody."

The posting included a threat to kill the purported soldier if Iraqi prisoners were not released.

"God willing, we will behead him if our female and male prisoners are not released from U.S. prisons within the maximum period of 72 hours from the time this statement has been released," said the statement, signed by the "Mujahedeen Brigades", a group that has claimed previous kidnappings.

See, these are the sort of stories I miss when I'm at work! I was blissfully unaware of the whole thing while the blogosphere was having a field day. Anyway, if the terrorists are reduced to this, then they've gone beyond pathetic.