re: "Dreamers"

Sad news that Dr. Jerry Pournelle has passed away peacefully in his sleep.

In his most recent post at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook"), he offered a solution to the problem of the "DREAMers."

"The news is full of the Dreamers. The Constitution says the President must take care to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. Mr. Trump didn’t want to deport the “Dreamers”, particularly those who have integrated into the society, but the law gives him no leeway, and the Presidential Order Obama signed giving them amnesty is unconstitutional. He solved that dilemma by giving it back to Congress who created it. We’ll now see what happens.

I can solve part of the problem. Any volunteer of any age who serves 7 years overseas in Army or Marines gets a Green Card and an application to apply for Citizenship along with his honorable discharge. The Citizenship application and test need not be very difficult and I would expect all who applied to pass it. The swearing should be public and conducted by an officer of rank Colonel or above.

As to girls, we can think of something similar or suitable; they need not join the combat arms. Surgical Assistant comes instantly to mind.

Their parents are a more difficult problem, and it will take ingenuity to find a path that does not offend the legal immigrants who obeyed the law."

Aside from one or two occasions when we crossed paths in various comment threads, I did not know the man personally.  I did have the good fortune to hear him speak at the (posthumous) Smithsonian Institution presentation to Robert Heinlein's widow (Virginia Heinlein) of NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal on October 8, 1988.  He was a gentleman and a thinker and an inspiration to many.  He will be missed.

re: "Negotiations"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor (" The Original Blog and Daybook. ") posted some thoughts on the Middle East and the Occupy movement.

Money quote(s):

"The Israelis have traded 1,000 well treated prisoners for one mistreated sergeant.

I once told then Israeli President Weizman that I didn’t know how to govern his country. Of course that was preparatory to my suggestions on what I thought they were doing wrong. I still don’t know how to govern Israel, nor do I have the stake in the outcome that the Israeli government does, but that doesn’t stop me from suggesting a different course of action.

Were it up to me to negotiate for the return of a soldier kidnapped by Hamas, I would simply ask how many Hamas officials they wanted in exchange for my sergeant. “I need to know the number, because I have Mossad standing by to make up the list of Hamas officials we will have the IDF take as prisoners. The sooner I have the number the quicker Mossad and our special forces can do their work. We can then have the exchange. Please tell me the number.” "

I rather like the way Dr. Pournelle thinks.

"I have some sympathy for those who have a lifelong debt in exchange for some years of their lives acquiring an education that is in essence worthless. They learned no history, no economics, and little else of any real value, and they have little prospect of a job until the economy revives. They saw a $Trillion spent on stimulus and bailouts with not much result other than enormous bonuses paid to people whose contribution to the world is to move money around in circles. Not much of it seems to get down to the levels where they live.

Their view of the world is somewhat distorted but their education didn’t show them how to see it all more clearly."

A university education used to mean (correct me if I'm wrong) at least a core curriculum that should have been grounded in some basic humanities (English lit., composition, world history, Western civilization, &tc.) that would at the very least given college graduates the factual and analytical basis from which to think about things and make more-or-less rational decisions.

The proliferation of hyphen-studies courses crowding out the old-fashioned syllabi have lead to this.

"(I)t does seem a bit odd that the NATO air power including a US killer drone were waiting for the cavalcade out of Sirte. It’s unlikely that they stumbled on it, or that they were maintaining air patrols there. This appears to be a reasonably well planned kill operation. As to whether it conforms to the directive of protecting the civil population of Libya I have no idea. One wonders how the Presidents of Syria and Yemen understand the messages here.

Khaddafi’s body has been subjected to practices not permitted under the Quran, so it is clear that Sharia law does not yet govern Libya.

The execution of Qadafi was no more than he deserved, and the desecration of his body echoes that of the founder of united Libya, Benito Mussolini." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Iraq will probably break up into its component provinces; almost certainly the Kurds will refuse to accept the sovereignty of Baghdad and the Shia. It is not likely that Baghdad has the means for the conquest of the Kurdish province, which may well proclaim its independence and apply for membership in the United Nations. Libya was united under the Italian rule under Mussolini. Just how strong the union between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania has been forged is not clear. There are plenty of reasons for conflict. The stakes are high, and the US has considerable interest in the matter, but it is not clear that the US has any strong influence over the outcome." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

10/24

re: "Iraq, Libya, and Imperialism"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor (" The Original Blog and Daybook. ") shared his thoughts on NATO's Libyan intervention.

Money quote(s):

"Qaddafi was likely executed by one or another militia faction, or even by a militiaman, possibly for his possessions. He was shot by rebels, which may have been merciful compared to what they might have done with him. It’s hard to say that beating him to a pulp then shooting him out of hand wasn’t justice. Qaddafi wasn’t quite the monster that Uday Hussein was, but he’d done enough to earn his fate, and indeed the US Air Force tried to kill him with TFX fighter-bombers in the 1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon. They didn’t get him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an old fashioned harbor bombardment from the old days of Great Powers diplomacy. Reagan acted in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities after consultation with the Congressional leadership of both parties. Had Gaddafi been killed in the raid the history of North Africa would have been considerably different.

In any event, NATO has brought the tyrant down, which must have been the mission. The official authorization for air NATO air strikes (including US acts of war) in Libya was a UN resolution mandating the protection of civilians from a Khaddafi massacre, but it’s very difficult – for me impossible – to connect an air strike against a convoy fleeing a city just before it falls to the rebels with the mission of protecting civilians. Even assuming that most of those in the convoy were military – and surely some were not since it was a chief of state and his entourage – there were likely to be civilian casualties from the air strikes, not to mention possible massacres in the looting that followed the convoy’s defeat.

And that does raise the question of whether the President of the United States has the authority to order such acts on his own authority. The UN cover mandate didn’t authorize regime change or execution of the chief of state of Libya. The President did tell Ghadaffi to get out (but apparently wasn’t willing to let him get out alive)." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"The Constitution empowers Congress to declare war. The President has the authority to protect and defend the Constitution, but unlike the King of England he has not the power to make war on whomever he pleases (a right that remains with the Ministers who act for the Crown to this day). In England you must go to Parliament to get the financing to pay for a war, but the King along can declare it. That right was specifically and intentionally taken from the President and given to Congress (along with the power of the purse). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who passionately believed that the US ought to be involved in the War in Europe that began in September 1939, understood this very well. He could promise Churchill that the US would come to Britain’s aid, but that was restricted to support until December of 1941 when Germany honored the Axis alliance and declared war after the US and Japan were at war. In those days war was considered a serious event.

The problem with going to the rescue of the Libya rebels without any declaration of war is that the US has little say in what happens next. Perhaps we shouldn’t have any say.

On the other hand, we have spent about $1 Billion on our Libyan adventure, and we don’t know what we have put into power in Tripoli. We do know that one faction claiming to speak for the rebels has said that the basis of law in Libya will be Sharia. It is clear that had we not spent the $1 Billion, Libya would either remain unified under Khaddafi or be partitioned, probably at Marble Arch. Whether that would be a better outcome than unified under Sharia law is not clear to me. It is also not at all clear that the White House thought this through before committing us to borrow a billion dollars from the Chinese in order to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Was this outcome worth the cost?"

It certainly was for someone, but not necessarily the U.S. taxpayers who'll have to pay back the Chinese. With interest.

"I am not much in favor of imperialism as a policy for the United States, but I do favor competent imperialism over the present policies. If we must have an empire, should we not be competent at it? Of course there is the problem that Afghanistan has little to nothing that we want.

I was opposed to extending our Afghan adventure beyond the punishment of the Taliban for harboring out enemies; left to me we’d have been out as soon as Kabul fell to the anti-Taliban forces, with perhaps a billion dollars in bribe money squirreled away to be spent at the discretion of whomever we left behind as resident. Our policy in Afghanistan should have been simple: don’t harbor our enemies, don’t let your country be used as a base for attacks on the US, and apply to the Ambassador if you need anything. Been good to know you. A policy, by the way, that would have been as welcome to the Afghans as to the Legions." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA rather likes Dr. Pournelle's punitive expeditionary model for Afghanistan. Of course, it's much too late for that now.

"There is no way that we could leave US troops in Iraq subject to the tender mercies of the Iraqi courts. US troops are not going to be subject to Iraqi law. But can you imagine the Japanese making that sort of demand as part of their surrender in 1945?

The result of the Iraqi war? We have removed Iran’s worst enemy. We have installed a Shiite government in Iraq. We have succeeded in changing the Middle East beyond Iran’s fondest and wildest dreams. This is the result Iran has worked toward since we invaded Iraq. They have their goals. Now we go home." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA)

10/23

re: "Khadafi's Box; Climate Change Experiment: anyone want to bet?"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor (" The Original Blog and Daybook. ") expressed his misgivings about the U.S., er, NATO waging of war against Libya.

Money quote(s):

"They are now displaying Khadafi laid out on a child’s mattress stuffed into a freezer in a mall. Sic semper tyrannis, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, but it does raise some problems of International Law.

The UN mandate to NATO and the US strike forces was to protect the civilian population of Libya from Kadaffi and his sons and his mercenaries and his tribal supporters and the Libyan fascisti who found his rule congenial. I don’t understand how shooting up his 40 vehicle convoy fleeing his home town was any larger threat to the civilian population of Libya than the 42 vehicle cavalcade in which President Obama is riding. Surely Qadafi wasn’t driving through shooting everyone he saw. Surely he was no threat to the civilians?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

The "responsibility to protect" figleaf seemed to quickly transmute into acting as the rebel militia's air force (and navy) in order to perform decapitating strikes and otherwise disrupt the dictator's command, control, and communications capabilities.

Nothing disrupts one's C3 ability like being dead, of course.

"Now of course I do not mourn Khaddaffi and his sons. But I do mourn blows to the Constitution of the United States, which clearly gives the Congress the power to declare war. We understand that the war powers are and must be ambiguous – particularly so in the thermonuclear ear. During the Cold War the President had the power to order the release of thousands of nuclear weapons in retaliation for an incoming strike to the United States. One of the problems I worked on was how to structure the chain of command – now just organizationally but physically – so that the counterstrike could happen without putting the power to begin Armageddon into the hands of a bored Captains and Lieutenants sitting in concrete bunkers in bases out near the end of nowhere; and how to train those Captains and Lieutenants to make it credible that they would, at need, launch those birds at need."

Not just captain and lieutenants, but staff sergeants and privates first class, as CAA has reason to recall.

"All those war and peace decisions in which a mistake could wipe out a significant portion of humanity — Herman Kahn asked, “Will the survivors envy the dead?” – all those decisions might have to be made in minutes. There wouldn’t be time for a Congressional debate or even to summon Congress into session. I do not believe that is true of Khadaffi, It seems to me that if we wanted to wage war on Khadaffi – and I certainly argue that shooting up his convoy, killing his sons and bodyguards, is close enough to war as to make no never mind – if we are to wage war on Qadhaffi then let the President go the Congress and explicitly say so. That is what the Constitution demands." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA doesn't believe in standing too much on ceremony when it comes to declarations of war; it's not like there's a "e-Form" that can be completed online and then sent electronically to Congress. Any format and font will suffice so long as Congress tallies the yays and nays.

"I do not mourn the tyrant, and he go not more than he deserved, and less than he meted out to others. His sons were not such rapacious monsters as the Sons of Saddam Hussein are reliably said to have been, and I know those who argue that had power passed from the Colonel to one of his sons the result would not only have been good for Libya, but better than the Libyans will now get; but I do not know that my opinion is worth much. I do know that the tyrant of Syria must be frantically casting about trying to buy at least one nuke from North Korea. If he isn’t, he hasn’t thought out the situation."

Countries with their own nukes get respect; said "respect" being defined as not-invaded-or-attacked-by-other-nuclear-powers.

10/21

re: "A mixed bag for the New Year"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") provided a historical snippet:

"The first Congress declined to appoint anyone from the US an ‘ambassador’ on the grounds that this was a royal title; the lack of that title meant that the US representative was always last in precedence."

So our representatives abroad were credentialed as "ministers," which certainly derogated their status and precedence in protocol.

We still have "ministers," but in general they work for ambassadors.


1/3

re: "Magic 43%; Citizens and soldiers"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") approaches the civil-military nexus with the long view of an historian.

Money quote(s):

"One effect of the Fluke affair has been to draw attention to just how onerous Obamacare is even in its early phases. It is becoming clear that the government is expecting the general population to pay for more and more services through their taxes, and it is slowly becoming obvious that putting the cost onto insurance companies and employers merely masks the fact that nothing is free: the companies required to give entitled services must pay for them somehow. They raise rates, or they ask for subsidies, or, probably both."

TANSTAAFL,* as some of you will already know.

If you're getting something for "free," that means either someone else is paying for it or you're over-paying for something else.

"Kandahar

.... professional citizen soldier was deployed four times in his eleven years of service. I doubt they will find any warning signs – particularly in comparison to the warning signs displayed by the Muslim psychiatrist.

Incidentally, the official Pentagon description of the Fort Hood murders is “a workplace act of violence.” The word massacre is used in the Kandahar murders. Again, the international implications are considerable here. but one wonders if the top layers of the military understand just what is happening here.

The typical tour of duty in Viet Nam was 12 months, with various incentives given to those who would voluntarily extend their tour. Many of the extensions were taken by personnel in positions that put them in heavily fortified enclaves where they were relatively safe. Of course no place in country was completely safe, but after the end of the Tet offensive campaign of 1968 the native Viet Cong effectively ceased to exist, and the rear areas and much of the countryside in the south was statistically not particularly dangerous and nearly all casualties outside those actual combat areas were due to the same factors that affect people of military age anywhere including in the US. Indeed, accident fatalities were lower in Viet Nam than in many parts of the US due to the superior medical capabilities there. That has not been the case in Iraq or Afghanistan."

No. It certainly hasn't.

"Through history there have been many kinds of armies. There are armies of citizens in arms, literally armed men, often peasant farmers, who turn out to fight at need. That was the army of the Roman Republic for most of its history. The Legions were raised by conscription and served for the duration; but they were not paid except for rations and the like, and they expected to go home when the war was over. This lasted until the Gallic invasions caused Marius to raise armies of non-citizens and slaves, who became long term professionals who, if they survived, might hope to be given a patch of land and a chance to become a peasant and citizen, and whose children might be citizen soldiers. In fact, though, the era of the citizen soldier was just about over, and after Marius came the civil wars, the Cataline conspiracy, Caesar, and then Caesar Augustus. The citizen army was lone gone by then; the Legions of the Principate were paid professionals.

Over time the differences between citizen soldiers and long term professional soldiers has been closer or looser depending largely on wars and deployments. Some professional soldiers became palace guards, citizens in all but name and sometimes in reality, even though their units had begun as imported mercenaries. Sometimes the professionals were kept in barracks when not actually deployed, in part to keep the citizens safe from them, but also to protect them from the citizens. There were the periods in the late middle ages and renaissance when mercenary soldiers dominated. Machiavelli argued in favor of citizen soldiers with conscription.

Professional armies, he argued, could ruin you by losing a battle, or by looting the paymaster. France developed a three tier system, with the Foreign Legion that would never set foot in European France, a professional army of long term service, and conscripts. Switzerland kept the professional component of its army small by rigidly enforcing universal male conscription and requiring a very long term of compulsory reserve service after conscription. Sweden employs much the same system to this day (as does Switzerland with some modification).

Between the World Wars the United States had regular forces, but the troops were generally kept in barracks and not expected to mix in with the general population; and of course the regular army was small. In World War II the entire nation took arms for the duration of the war, and quickly disbanded when it was over. Conscription continued until after Viet Nam.

When the United States went to an all volunteer service there were diverse opinions about its makeup. The old British regular army consisted essentially of long term volunteers – at one point two four year terms ending with an invitation to a further 12 year hitch. Britain had an empire to govern, and it needed all kinds of soldier."

And so the British supplemented their (relatively) small regular army with militia (essentially what is now the "Territorial Army"), colonial troops, native troops, and other sorts of auxiliaries. Folks like Dr. Pournelle and Col. Kratman have suggested, from time to time, that we do something similar.

"Students of military history have always understood that Republics, which typically had short and intensive wars interspersed with long periods of relative peace, need a different kind of army than does an Empire, which needs Legions, but most of the fighting is left to Auxiliaries. The US had such need during its imperial periods following the Civil War and particularly during the Philippine pacification.

It takes a different kind of soldier to withstand long periods of war and danger in hostile places, as opposed to the long term citizen soldier who lives among the population and is often indistinguishable from the citizen. Machiavelli was generally correct, citizens make the best soldiers for a Republic, but he also knew that the professional condottieri and their troops – such as the English Sir John Hawkwood who saved Florence in exchange for a memorial stature – could be very effective. Some like the Sforza became the leaders of the state and made the office hereditary. Hawkwood was unusual in that he was a man of his word. (Florence determined that while it was grateful for Sir John’s service, it could not afford a bronze or granite statue, and Sir John had to settle for a painting of his statue on the wall of the local cathedral. It’s still there.)

The Kandahar massacre will and should be punished; but it was predictable. Of course the Afghani will ask for the head of this soldier."

They may feel free to not hold their breath, as there are considerably more Afghani heads owed to us, and to themselves, that should be surrendered first.

"The ability to endure long term service in a hostile environment under constant danger is not often coupled with the temperament of the citizen soldier, long term husband and father and expected to take part in civic life. Professional soldiers may in theory know they may be deployed four times in eleven years in hostile and unpleasant environments, restricted in action by rules of engagement imposed by bureaucrats over the objections of their officers – they may in theory know that when they volunteer, but few think it can or will happen. When it does, some of the best will crack. It is inevitable." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

It's not that our citizen-soldiery is broken, but there's a lot of wear and tear on organizations and individuals.

"This kind of war is not the kind of war that can be fought by a long term professional citizen army. Conscripts won’t do it well, but conscripts in a Republic have political means of protesting the situation. The Constitution of the United States never really contemplated the kind of service that we have been demanding of the troops since we ended conscription. We had no business sending a large army into Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, just as we had no real mission in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The United States was fortunate to have good results following World War II, in which our occupation armies were citizen soldiers, most of them volunteers but not long term professionals; but the circumstances were very different. We have forgotten the horrors of our Korean occupation in the period after the Japanese surrender and before the invasion of the Inman Gun in 1950, and few Americans will remember that period. For the most part the occupations elsewhere went well because the occupied countries had been thoroughly defeated, we had trained companies of military government specialists, and the Cold War soon threatened occupiers and occupied alike with something a lot less pleasant than a US constabulary."

That last is something I'd never heard mention of before, and bears some investigation.

"We were not prepared for the kind of war that we undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we never did prepare for it. Our citizen soldiers did wonders considering the enormity of the task. It is a wonder that we have not had many more instances of horror.

We have lost a citizen soldier. The Afghans have lost women and children. There are no winners here."

Too true. And some will try for gain from this nonetheless.

* TANSTAAFL: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch."


3/13

re: "The Republican Debate; Assassinations; and more"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") spoke of the shadow world.

Money quote(s):

"They’re not calling it an assassination yet, but it sure looks like one. The son of an important Iranian official has been found dead in a Dubai hotel. It’s all remarkably similar to what happened to a Hamas official not all that long ago. It’s possible that this wasn’t a strike by Mossad, but I sure wouldn’t bet much money on it.

Note that this happens as there is news of explosions in Iran at bases connected with the Iranian nuclear program."

Not that high energy physics or explosive-related facilities or bases might not have a tendancy to go 'splody all one their own, but this seems to go beyond the normal distribution curve, even when factoring in for the Third World.

"As to what’s going on:

Iran has long had a policy of providing strong incentives – positive and negative – to its smartest kids to study nuclear engineering and go into the Iranian nuclear program. It has long been thought that one way to make sure there is no nuclear program is make sure there aren’t any really bright nuclear engineers.

This rather drastic policy has been applied in the past, and neither Syria nor Iraq ever got nuclear weapons. Note that hostility toward Iran having nuclear weapons is universal in the Arab world with the single exception of Syria. The obvious author of the Iranian explosions and the death of the smart young man in a Dubai hotel is Mossad, but Israel is not the only country happy with these recent events, nor is Mossad the only intelligence agency capable of using these techniques. Welcome to the shadow world."

When look for those with motive, the operative question must always "come from the Latin." To wit: cui bono or "to whose benefit?" Dr. Pournelle gives a nice precis, although he thoughtfully omits the U.S. from those who might have a claim check in this particular dead pool.

11/13

re: "Kandahar"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") examined unintended longterm consequences.

Money quote(s):

"The average Army deployment is supposed to be one year, but the effective deployment period has been 15 months since 2007. That is a long time to be in a combat zone. In World War II once one was sent overseas it was generally for the duration, but there were some periods of relief from combat: not just R&R away from the front – there was, after all, a front – but in transport between operations. There were some secure zones in Italy and later in France, because by that time USAAF had established effective air superiority, and the civilian population wasn’t hostile. In Iraq and Afghanistan even our fortresses and enclaves are not really safe. Being in one of our enclaves is not quite the same as being in a trench in the Battle of the Sarne, but it is certainly more stressful than being in operations out on some lonely atoll during our Pacific war in 1943.

Stress and its results are among the costs of long wars fought with professional soldiers. Conscripts in a democracy generally can’t be kept deployed that long. Volunteer troops can be and are. Long term deployments in danger zones are stressful."

"But they volunteered!" is not an answer, nor does it cure the ills to which the flesh (and the mind) is vulnerable.

"I note that one of the answers given to Congressional inquiry on justifications for deployment of US troops without a formal declaration of war is international authorizations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zNwOeyuG84 Of course this has been true since the Korean War.

The American way of war has been all-out effort after a war is declared. That view was reinforced after our experiments in the Philippines – a nation building effort that was partially successful, but at a very high cost. “Let him never dream that his bullet’s scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.” We returned to the American War (sic) of War after that, but the return was eroded after Korea under what was perceived as the new international condition. The Cold War continued, but when it ended we found ourselves in the Balkans, with the troops unable to know who were the good guys, who the bad, or what the devil we were doing over there, and why the United States. We widened the gap with Russia, but for what object we never knew.

President George H W Bush rightly understood the costs of a long term involvement on the ground in the Middle East. I thought the first Gulf War a mistake – better we should spend the money developing our resources and winning independence from the Middle East – but at least we got in and got out again.

Then came the second Gulf War and the occupation of Iraq, followed by victory in Afghanistan and following that quick victory a long expedition without clear objectives." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Go big or go home.

This has been CAA's concern about Afghanistan (and Iraq) since before the Second Gulf War began: that the U.S. would engage in a long-term "nation building" effort in either or both places for which it simply does not have the national or political attention span to see to a successful conclusion.

3/12

re: "Voodoo Science; Praetorians; borrowing to pay bunny inspectors; missed opportunities; and more."

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") dealt with several topics of interest.

Money quote(s):

"(T)the Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies to military and policy organizations, particularly in peace time; it’s not quite so visible or severe because the standards for admission to the organization can and often are kept high, and the Mamelukes and Janissaries and Praetorians do not admit fools and cowards to their brotherhood; but of course that may change in peace time.

We live in a Republic founded by political leaders who were very much aware of Roman history, who had read their Plutarch, who seriously debated the working of the Venetian Republic – in 1787 the longest surviving Republic in the history of mankind, not yet ended by Napoleon and the bayonets of the French Army – and who were quite familiar with the careers of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Octavian, Marius, and Sulla, the Gracchi – most of whom are known to modern Americans from movies."

Iron Law of Bureaucracy?

Oh yeah, that.

Our military is an armed bureaucracy, at least some of the time.

"The French want us to sit on Fritz. The Germans like having Americans spend money in Germany, and not having to have a large Wehrmacht. The troops like it in Europe. The taxpayers have never read George Washington’s advice on entangling alliances and not being involved in overseas territorial disputes. So it goes."

The taxpayers (and their representatives) in the immediate post-WW2 period should, perhaps, be forgiven their understandable desire to not have to come back and settle the Jerries hash, so to speak, for a third time; the second time being perceived as the result of their disengagement after the first time.


"Europe could afford Socialism because they didn’t need to defend their territory against Russia during the Cold war. It’s a tradition."

Likewise, Russia harbors lingering fears about various of its neighbors to the west; that too is tradition and it informs their view of geopolitics even today.


"The Marines acted without thinking of the consequences and must be made to realize that; but I have always believed that far more serious acts take place in every combat action. War is Hell. A rational army would run away. Those men did not run away, and I’d far rather have troops who urinate on the enemy than troops who surrender to get their throats cut while in captivity."

That about sums it up.

_____

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.

1/15

re: "Hope, Change, and 99% View 685 20110728"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") examined issues of assimilation vs. diversity and of budget crises.

Money quote(s):

"Sowing the wind.

We don’t do breaking news, but it isn’t so much news as settling “when”: there has been another plot by a Muslim soldier to kill his comrades in protest against being “forced” to participate in the unjust wars in the Middle East.

U.S. officials told ABC News an AWOL serviceman, identified by the FBI as a Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested Wednesday after making a purchase at Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas, the same ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the weapons he allegedly used to gun down 13 people and wound 32 others on Nov. 5, 2009.

As to why it isn’t news:

Abdo told ABC News in 2010 he was Muslim and should not have to participate in what he called an "unjust war" in the Middle East.

"Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the U.S. military," Abdo said then.

Welcome to the joys of diversity and entitlement. America was not built as a society of entitlement and diversity. There was a founding culture. It was a culture of tolerance, but tolerance is not the same as the celebration of “diversity.” Immigrants were always encouraged to assimilate. They were not forced to do so, but the public system tolerated diversity; it didn’t force it. There were crèches in the public square at Christmas. Later we added the menorah. Almost all public ceremonies were opened by an invocation by a Protestant minister. Over time we added a Catholic priest (and of course some communities always had included Catholics, although most had not). Later we added a rabbi. All of this was to show some deference to the American culture. We would tolerate diversity as a monument to our liberty but we did not set the public hangman the task of destroying the crèche in the public square. We did not use the courts as an engine of destruction of our culture.

Then we began to sow the wind. All cultures are equal. There is no American culture as such.

We have coupled diversity with egality and added entitlements. We have sown the wind.

And we reap the whirlwind. Nidal Hasan and Naser Abdo are not the last of the pale riders."

Dr. Pournelle, as the original blogger, has been around long enough to see certain long-lead-time trends take shape over the period of decades. That perspective is important to those of us who've come after.

"National unity is not a given. Patriotism is not free. For an example relevant to today’s story: imagine an Amish soldier who insists on his right to be part of the Army, but that the Courts prevent the Army from using motorized vehicles anywhere near him since the sight of them offends him; now imagine a court granting that, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding that decision.

We can endure regional diversity. The abortion issue is an example. There is no national consensus. Shall we send armed agents to enforce whatever happens to be the opinion of a majority at the time? Shall the Army insist that Mother Superior perform abortions in St. Joseph’s, or jail abortionists who perform them? Left to the states the issue is endurable.

The goal is a society that holds together, not one of some ideal perfection."

This was written last July. Now we have nearly the exact absurdity, insisting that Mother Superior and St. Joseph's pay for abortions, becoming a matter of federal law.

"It is important to understand that no Congress has the power to bind a future Congress. If this Congress cannot get us out of the automatic increases in entitlements, another can. It may require replacing every single Senator, Member of Congress, the President and Vice President, and every senior civil servant in Washington, but it is possible simply not to fund “non-discretionary entitlements” . The Constitution is very clear: tax and revenue bills have to originate in the House, and “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Words and phrases such as entitlements, discretionary vs. non-discretionary funding, and the like, obscure the truth Dr. Pournelle reminds us of: that no Congress can bind a future one.

7/28

re: "Who's Afraid of Cain?"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") made some predictions and observations that have stood the test of a few months time.

Money quote(s):

"The reason for the increasing shrillness of the attacks is desperation: the liberal establishment has concluded that Obama is vulnerable, possibly even doomed, and of the Republican candidates only Romney appears to be someone they can work with, someone who can grow in office, who will reach across the aisle to continue liberal programs.

Note that Romney has nothing to do with the attacks on Cain. He’s just the guy the media consider to be the lesser of a number of evils. They can work with him."

Dr. Pournelle follows this observation with a reasonable man's analysis of the "charges" then being leveled against then-candidate Cain.

"Newt will be next. Then anyone else who isn’t Romney. The attack machine will be silent on Romney until he is the nominee. Then it will begin again, but it will be a different attack."

11/9

re: "Days eaten by locusts; a Marine urination kafloozle."

Dr. Jerry Pournelle from Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") gave this possible lapse in discipline some sober thought.

Money quote(s):

"(S)some things are pretty clear. First, they allowed a comrade to tape this, and he put it up on a social medium, and it got loose. Is anyone here astonished? Which says several things about these particular Marines.

First, they won their battle. It’s them that’s doing the urinating, not being urinated on. Urinating on the enemy is a practice of war from at least 3,000 years ago, and probably a lot longer. It’s better to be the guy letting fly than the recipient. When you send young men into combat and they win this is what happens.

Second, none of these guys is ready for promotion to any kind of command NCO level. They may be good as combat leaders and may not – they did win this fight, after all – but they don’t think through enough. This hands the Taliban a bit of a propaganda device, but then we have plenty of tapes the Taliban made about themselves.

Third, this is a Marine matter, and if it were left to me I’d leave it to the Company Commander. That’s what company grade officers are for. There will be howls from the media, of course. It’s a free country. Of course it’s free because we have troopers like these.

And fourth, if nobody else wants them, in the extremely unlikely event that they post me to a combat command over there, I’ll take them. They look like good troops to me."

That pretty much sums it up.

1/11

re: "Libya, Iowa, and F22 View 20110814"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") is good at looking at some big picture and on-the-horizon issues, at the same time.

Money quote(s):

"Libya and Syria

According to Aquinas, it is just to go to war to defend the innocent. There are restrictions, but this is not an unfair statement. Presumably that is why Obama considers it just to continue to break things and kill people in Libya. And recently Qaddaffi used helicopters, which once again put him in violation of the UN resolution, and thus required that the US kill some more Libyans and break some more Libyan property in the name of NATO acting for the UN." (Emphasis in original text heading. - CAA.)

Obviously, this linkery and quite have been idling awhile in my queue, waiting for my limited time and attention to get a "round tueit."

But the point still stands with regards to just war theory.

"One necessary condition for a war to be just is that there is a reasonable expectation of success. Success is defined in many ways, but you might sum it up by saying that in the end there would be more justice in the world after the war ends than there would be if it never started.

If we continue the intervention in Libya, do we expect that when it is all over there will be more justice in North Africa than there is now? And if we intervene in Syria, is there a reasonable expectation that what comes after the end of the thugocracy in Syria will be better than before we went in? I ask this seriously. Iraq is certainly better off without Saddam and his thuggish sons, but there were probably better ways to accomplish that than a lengthy occupation.

Republics seldom do Imperialism with any great competence. Competent Empire requires long term commitments, and a number of subtleties including the use of silver bullets, puppet regimes, auxiliaries and foreign legions, and other devices that do not win popularity in free elections. Incompetent Empire can leave both patron and client worse off than before. Washington warned us not to become involved in the territorial disputes of Europe. It is not isolationism to understand that we don’t know how to achieve some otherwise desirable results; and it is unjust to go to war without a battle plan under which we can realistically expect the world to be better off after our intervention than it would be if we did not undertake it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Part of strategic thinking (see the bolded passage above), involves knowing what sort of end state, what kind of strategic objective, you have in mind.

Now, I think the bar should be adjusted quite a bit when it comes to waging a defensive war, a war for national survival; since it's quite lofty thinking to expect national leaders to intellectually accept that because they have no "realistic" chance of success, they must not fight in self-defense.

"The Chinese have launched an aircraft carrier. Carriers are the force projection system par excellance. Viet Nam has reinstated conscription. Japan is considering expansion of its self-defence forces. Few others in the world are made joyful by the news. Taiwan announced a sale on missiles that can kill aircraft carriers."

The Chinese re-launced an aircraft carrier, the Varyag. The Kiev apparently did in fact become some sort of hotel/casino.

As Dr. Pournelle correctly states, aircraft carriers (and their associated battle groups) are the defining force projection systems of our time, along with ICBMs. One could make a similar argument in favor of amphibious or other long-ranch ground expeditionary capabilities.

CAA has, in writing, made the academic argument that the aircraft carrier, along with ICBMs, are the strategic military capabilities that make a superpower "super." That was CAA's essential thesis when writing a "one-hour essay" the first time taking the FSWE (back during the late pre-Cambrian period when the "written exam" involved actual writing.)

CAA stands by that argument, by the way.



8/14

re: "Pournelle and Mead: Two Must-Reads for Today. They Will Be on The Final."

Vanderleun at American Digest demonstrated by example what you should be reading.


7/14

re: "Proscriptions"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("This is my personal journal and day book. Subjects include civilization and technology, strategy, climate, energy policy, space access, and other issues that interest me.") exhibits one of the qualities of good citizens; asking good and just questions about what our government does in their name.

Money quote(s):

"the justification for the missile attacks on two American citizens in Yemen is that this was an act of war against those who have publicly declared themselves to be enemies of the United States. They considered themselves at war with us, and we with them. This is war.

We can accept this, but questions remain.

First, this wasn’t an act of war against someone engaged in actions against the United States. At the time they were travelling from one town to another, and whether they were armed or not is not relevant. It was a missile strike without warning on specific and named individuals, and one presumes there is a list of others who merit the same deadly attention, all of them persons who are at war with the United States. Let us assume all those persons on that list deserve to be there; that they have in fact engaged in war against the United States, and hitting them with missiles, or a sniper’s bullet, is no more than they deserve.

Questions still remain.

The first question is, how do you get on that list? It surely isn’t automatic. Just because the press reports that you have publicly declared yourself an enemy of the United States doesn’t necessarily make it true. Newspapers have been known to get such things wrong. But assuming that we have good intelligence reports, how do you get on the list? Is this a power that lies with the President alone, or must he have the acquiescence of someone else? Who? We are well beyond the law or the constitution here. We have to presume that this is a war power and resides in the President and that he can delegate that power.

To whom is he responsible, and how must he convey this command?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Good questions, all of them.

The U.S. is, at long last, at least somewhat at war with those who've been waging war with us for decades. That war is not, as sometimes happens, limited to distinct and discrete geographical theaters of war or campaigns or areas of operations but is, instead, waged globally and multi-dimensionally.

Still, for all that, to deliberately select and eliminate, whether by drone-launched missile or poison blow-dart, a particular person (regardless of their citizenship or nationality) begs the question of targeteering.

"Another question: if either of these American citizens had returned to the United States and come to Kennedy International where they presented their US passports at the entry booth, could they have been arrested? On what charge? Were there outstanding warrants? In the case of Samir Khan it is not clear what he could be charged with. He ran a blog, an Internet magazine – I do not know of any other involvement other than that he associated with Al Awaki who associated on line with Major Hassan. Perhaps either or both could be charged with conspiracy and with levying war against the US, but I don’t think that has been done. So: we establish that they could be killed out of hand while travelling from one place to another, neither carrying arms or engaged in any act of war, while in a foreign country: but could they have been shot down by a US Marshall while still in the part of the airport that is not yet in the United States? On international territory? Or after they stepped into the United States?

They can be killed but not arrested: it would take convening a grand jury or a warrant from a magistrate before they could be arrested at Kennedy?

I do not here seek to make life difficult for our military; but I do seek to ask questions. If American citizens can be put on a proscription list and those on that list can be killed on sight by launching high explosives as them, is it proper to ask the procedures required to get on that list?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

We do not, at present (nor since 1865 or thereabouts) routinely have U.S. military or law enforcement personnel execute "shoot on sight" orders against American citizens within our own borders.

(Historians of the Indian Wars may care to dispute the definitions implicit in that statement.)

So the idea that had either Triple-A or Mr. Khan appeared at an international air terminal (or other port of entry) they would be engaged with lethal force strikes us (and should) as quite alien. But as it is necessary to consider the eventual consequences of what Dr. Pournelle terms (with historical accuracy) as a "proscription list." It is further necessary to understand how such a thing functions.

"Perhaps the questions are frivolous? Perhaps as one reader says “It’s war and all’s fair in love and war.” Of course that statement is not true. And I do not seek to condemn Mr. Obama for ordering the strike. I do question whether we have sufficiently thought this through. Surely before American citizens can be put on a proscription list there must be some conditions: an act of war, a determination by the President, and surely there needs to be a declaration of war. We assume that the War on Terror establishes a state of war (although I believe Mr. Obama rejected that during the campaign; perhaps he has changed his mind, as he has changed his mind regarding Guantanamo, and trials of the inmates of Guantanamo by military tribunals (note that here there is to be a trial: the President does not seem to assert the right simply to order the execution of those held in Guantanamo without those military tribunals). Would it be good to write down the procedures for establishing the proscription list?

Well, enough. Had Mr. Clinton acted positively when Delta had Bin Laden in their sights, it might be that 911 would not have happened. Mr. Obama did not shirk the responsibility. We give him credit for that. But I do think it is worth discussing how we regularize the procedure for getting on the proscription list, and specify how one might appeal to get off it – perhaps by coming home to the United States and engaging a lawyer?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

10/3

re: "The Road to Serfdom View 20110707-1"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("This is my personal journal and day book. Subjects include civilization and technology, strategy, climate, energy policy, space access, and other issues that interest me.") is always worth reading.

Money quote(s):

"Today’s Wall Street Journal has an op ed essay called “The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt” that ought to be required reading for everyone in the State Department, although I suspect that few in State read WSJ. Fouad Ajami of the Hoover Institution has a good analysis of what is going wrong in the Arab world. He also calls attention to F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s 1944 masterpiece is such an essential part of any intelligent citizen’s education that I tend to forget that there are many who have not read it. If you know anyone who hasn’t, rag them until they do. It’s not a long book, and it’s not difficult reading. One key discussion in the book is “Why the worst get on top.” "

Time to buy Hayek's book; I've put it off long enough.

"FALLEN ANGELS is a science fiction adventure novel by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Much of it is satirical but it has its serious moments. The premise is a world in which The Ice returns: a good part of Canada is under glacial sheet ice, which is moving south. There is Climate Change all right, and human actions affect it."

'Fallen Angels" is an excellent and entertaining read, although it owes just a smidgen too much to inside jokes within the science fiction fan and convention community.

re: "National Debate on the Legions"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog") frames the discussion.

Money quote(s):

"It is time for a national debate on the military: how big do we need it? What are our military objectives and goals? Do we go abroad seeking monsters to slay, or are we the friends of liberty everywhere but guardians only of our own? If guardians of our own, what are the treats we must guard against? Who are our potential enemies and how stable are they? Where abroad do our national interests lie?

These are not trivial questions. They are not politically easy, either, since the needs of the services are different. It is much easier to build a large Army from cadre than greatly to expand a professional Navy. (The Caine Mutiny had some revelations about that.) The Air Force has to decide just what its role is now that SAC no longer exists, and we are not faced with 26,000 launchable nuclear warheads. The Army can’t be reduced simply to cadre. What is the proper size and role of the Marine Corps? These are not just political questions although they will be answered by politicians.

One problem is that we don’t have many who can debate these questions. As Kagan said long ago in his comments on the Peloponnesian War, if you seek peace you must keep that peace. Or as Appius Claudius put it, if you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war. Of course most of those who will be debating these matters will not have heard of Appius Claudius, or Plutarch, or Thucydides, and if they vaguely remember that people with those names existed they will not have read about them, much less have read them."

There's little I can add to Dr. Pournelle's remarks. These decisions will be made by politicians, in and out of uniform, and be made for political reasons, when what the Republic needs are statesmen.

"We expected our Senators to be familiar with keeping the peace, and what a Pyrrhic victory was. Indeed we expected anyone who put himself up as a candidate for Congress to have some familiarity with the basic documents and ideas in the development of Western Civilization. Now – well, not so much"

It would be much easier, if it were possible at all, to come up with a list of politicians who do have that kind of basic familiarity. The list of those who do not is much, much longer, and includes some whose professional training would have caused you to suppose quite the opposite, at least in a less-imperfect world.

"We can’t afford to take a meat axe to the Legions, either. If we are to remain a Republic we must discuss these issues, which means that the debates must start, and those who do know some history will have to spoon feed it to the many who don’t – and worse, to those who have been persuaded that they know things they do not know. We have far too many who seem to have majored in self-esteem while in fact learning little that is estimable."

Not too long ago, CAA had the opportunity to share some classroom time with junior military folks in an environment where they were being exposed to some of the Western military history one would once have expected them to have learned long ago in their schoolroom days. They were, frankly, lapping it up, eager and wondering aloud why they'd never been taught any of this stuff before.

re: "US Policy and the Middle East"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog*") had a recap of some Israeli-Palestianian issues.

Money quote(s):

"Any border between Israel and Palestine is going to be imposed, not "mutually agreed". If Obama does not know know this -- and it's very difficult to believe that he does not -- Secretary Clinton and the Foreign Service certainly do, as does most of Capitol Hill. There is not going to be any mutually agreed border between Palestine and Israel. There is not going to be any contiguous Palestinian state that unites Gaza and the West Bank. (The Camp David Accord proposal included an elevated railway and an elevated freeway between Gaza and Judea.) Israel is not going to give up the settlements, the Golan Heights, or the fortifications in the Jordan River Valley, nor will the IDF give up unmonitored and unrestricted access to the Jordan Valley. Israel does not have the resources to force the settlers to leave the West Bank. The IDF won't do it; the experience in Gaza was too traumatic. Nor could any Israeli government survive an hour after Palestinian police began forcibly removing Jewish settlers from homes around Bethlehem or in Samaria.

This is reality; but assume that somehow it happened and there were "mutually agreed swaps" leading to some kind of border: there remains the question of the refugees who claim a right of return. After the 1948 war, and again after the 1967 war, a number of Arabs fled Israel, in both cases at the encouragement of Arab governments. Most expected to return after the Arab victories. When those victories didn't materialize, they became refugees. How many is controversial, but a half million is a not unreasonable compromise. There are now more than a million who claim refugee status and a right of return to Israel. That includes the surviving original refugees and their lineal descendents including heirs to property to which they have a nearly indisputable title going back to the Turkish government that preceded the British League of Nations Mandate that created Trans-Jordan and Palestine. Some are Christians. I know some of these people. As one put it, "I know that the Germans did terrible things to those people, but I do not know why that gives them the right to my home." The home she describes is in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem corridor, and she grew up in it as a girl. Their family has always been Christian, and they claim descent from the original first generation baptized by the Apostles. Whatever the truth of that claim, they certainly owned that property under the Turks and under the British Mandate government, and it is certainly occupied by European born Jews whose title comes from the Israeli government. No compensation has ever been paid -- not that such compensation would be accepted. "It is not for sale. It has never been for sale."

That story can be multiplied by thousands. How many thousands is not clear. Some of the refugees are descendents of nomads of no fixed address -- much of Palestine in 1948 was undeveloped desert. Some have questionable origins or questionable titles to land in Israel. Discard all those of questionable status and there remain hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees displaced from land in pre-1967 Israel, and who claim a right of return. Add the the others whose status cannot be determined and the number climbs toward a million, perhaps more. While my friends have homes and jobs in Bethlehem (one is a physician married to another Palestinian who is legally resident in Jerusalem although he is not allowed to live there), most of those claiming refugee status live in poverty in refugee camps.

The Arab Israeli wars also produced tens to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, who were forced out of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and other Arab lands. They fled to Israel, where they were absorbed into the Israeli economy and have long since ceased to have any kind of refugee status. That did not happen with the Arab refugees. They were put up in refugee camps and kept there. They were not absorbed into any Arab countries, and most of them remain stateless refugees" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

re: "On Newt Gingrich; and immigration questions"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog*") insists on applying logic and reason to political issues.

Money quote(s):

"There are about 20 million illegal aliens living in the United States. Suppose that Congress and the President decided tomorrow that "they all must go." How would that come about? Merely transporting Twenty Million People is a non-trivial task. Assume that of the 20 million aliens in the US, ten million will require transport of 1,000 km (621 miles). That is ten billion passenger/kilometers. The total annual rail passenger traffic in the US, including commuter travel, is about 17 billion passenger/kilometers. They would have to be fed. Many would have medical needs. While many of them could be transported by rail to the Mexican border -- in boxcars? or must there be at least day coach transport? -- many would have to go elsewhere, some to Latin America, but many to Asia and Africa, and many to places that will refuse to accept them.

A non-trivial task, even assuming that we could identify them all, and assuming there would be no expensive legal actions required: just identify, apprehend, and transport. It would take an enormous budget to accomplish.

Now add political realities. It's all very well to grab some thug with a long criminal record and say "Enough! Out!" to the general applause of a vast majority, but even then there are going to be problems with the ACLU as well as various immigrant rights organizations. Assume that it can be done: what fraction of the 20 million will that account for?

Of course advocates of amnesty or the dream act like to show the example of a teenage girl brought to the US at age five, brought up to speak English and assimilate to American customs, earning a high school diploma with an A- average, and in general an all-American girl who ought to be college bound. Or the young oriental boy with much the same record. We don't have to concede that people with similar stories will be a very great fraction of the 20 million, but it is not zero, and every one of those will be paraded by the media as soon as apprehended."

Discussion of the logistics? Check.

Discussion of the costs? Check.

Discussion of political opposition? Check.

Discussion of likely poster children? Check.

"(A)n operation this large will require a lot of police agents. Do we insist that they all be capable of handcuffing teenagers and putting them on the train to the border? Do we want a lot of people with that attitude to have police power? And what of illegals who have joined the Armed Forces? Veterans? Active duty soldiers? An operation this large may well require action from the Legions: will they pay more attention to the orders of their officers or the appeals of their comrades? Of course that's a silly question, but my correspondent did talk about crossfire and punishing treason, which probably means civil war, and the Legions, both Regulars and various reserves and militias and National Guard are certainly not going to be idle while that happens."

This is why I don't favor a "big round-up" solution to illegal immigration. The cure is worse than the disease. Dr. Pournelle isn't afraid to think past the it-couldn't-happen-here emo-llectual linders about civil-military conflict.

"The problem of the illegals amongst us will not go away simply because we don't think about it.

Note, incidentally, that Newt distinguishes between the right to be a legal resident and citizenship. This is not brought up in most "amnesty" discussions, but it should be. Citizens have rights, including the right to sponsor other immigrants. The Supreme Court has held that illegal immigrants have rights very similar if not identical to citizens, but that is not the plain language of the Constitution. A sane immigration policy will make that distinction -- including entitlements.

I am not going to "solve" the illegal immigrant problem here, but I will say that denouncing as "amnesty" anything other than a policy of 'deport them all and deport them now' is not useful. We aren't going to deport them all, and no Congress or President will do that, nor could even if it were thought desirable. The United States is not going to erect detention camps nor will we herd people into boxcars. We can't even get the southern border closed."

Any amnesty must be exceptional. That is, exceptionally positive candidates for amnesty receive it, others not-so-much. The honor students and military veterans who'd qualify would self-identify, come forward, and receive it. Bio-metrics and police checks, &tc., would have to apply. Age limits and a prior-to date sometime in the past would be necessary as well, otherwise it only encourages even more illegal immigration.

And I would quibble with former-Speaker Gingrich about the "right to be a legal resident." In what Constitutional article may I find that "right" ennumerated?

Certain classes of person, qualifying under specific statues, have the "right" to petition on behalf of other persons (usually relatives, sometimes employees) to obtain an immigration benefit, including legal permanent residence (LPR). That can include self-petition in certain circumstances.

"We can and should do more to enforce employment laws; but do we really want police coming around to demand "your papers" from our gardeners and fry cooks and homemakers? For if "your papers, please" becomes common practice, there will be demands for equality; for not profiling; for equal opportunity harassment -- but you get the idea."

Just keep the pressure on. Require proof of legal residency (I had to do it whenever I applied for a job) and when it's found out, terminate employment (or fine the employer). If an employee is so blessed valuable that the employer is willing to pay the fine, then perhaps they should be sponsoring (i.e., petitioning on their behalf) them for LPR status. Make both the fine about double the cost of the immigration petition, and that not insignificant (but not necessarily punitive).

The idea is to take them "out of the shadows" and get them enrolled in our public life. Document them. Fingerprint them. Hell, DNA-sample them; but limit that to out-of-the-shadows illegal/undocumented immigrants, line-crossers, and deportees.

And if they break other laws, commit felonies (or three-or-more un-related misdemeanors; that is, not stemming from the same offense) then they get on the conveyor belt to deportation.

IIRC, deportees are barred from legal travel to the U.S. for a period of 10 years (the first time). Apologies: my immigration law book is still in a crate somewhere.

"(P)erhaps, perhaps, there will come a time when there is an actual serious discussion of the subject, and we can come up with policies and tactics that have a chance of working and of actually being adopted.

But we will never get there so long as bringing up the subject for discussion makes you a traitor."

Gingrich? A traitor?

(Nah: just someone I wouldn't want dating a family member.)

_____

Note: Chaos Manor has moved!

re: "Immigration; Voodoo Science"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog *") discusses the problems associated with discussing amnesty.

Money quote(s):

"Any hint that there can be some form of amnesty enormously increases the incentives for others to come here illegally. Even discussing the subject can produce an increase in the flood of undocumented migrants aka illegal immigrants. The system is already saturated, and we should do nothing to worsen the situation.

It has always been the position of Republican -- and some, although lately fewer, Democratic -- politicians that amnesty cannot be seriously proposed or debated until the borders are closed. The problem is that even talking about it can worsen the problem.

Perhaps that should be the position to take: we won't talk about this until the borders are under control. It is the position that politicians ought to take, and Newt's speculations, while reasonable from a political philosopher, are improper for a candidate for office. Of course any move to close the borders will do the same -- get in now, they're cracking down -- but there's not much help for that. A comprehensive immigration policy must be implemented quickly and effectively, with crackdowns on employment and employers as well as illegal workers, along with effective control of the borders." (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

&

"The high cost of imprisonment is very much part of the immigration problem. There is little incentive for the recently deported not to try again, and again, and again --- they know we don't want to jail them. It costs too much."