Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • CIA Prewar Assessments and Fallout

    I found the following article interesting but in no way surprising:

    Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and “probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups” in the Muslim world.

    The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.” The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was “largely bereft of the social underpinnings” to support democratic development. (Source: Washington Post via MSNBC

    They obviously got all that right. I had been wondering how the experts could have missed the obvious problems with the rosy view of democratization resulting in a stable and peaceful new Iraq. It seems that they didn’t do quite that badly. They were excessively optimistic, however, on how long it would take to clean up and on the oil revenues that would result.

    The fact is that the war, as it stands, is a defeat. I would argue, however, that it is not a military defeat, but a political one. The objectives were not attainable. Every reasonable military objective has been obtained. The idea of going into Iraq and removing weapons of mass destruction or of toppling the nasty regime of Saddam Hussein were both obtainable goals. There were no weapons of mass destruction, so nobody could do that. Saddam Hussein has been toppled.

    At this point, our problem is that we’re expecting our military to create a democratic society, something they are in no way equipped to do. I cannot imagine how our government thought this would work. In an off-hand conversation the other day, I commented that it might be possible given a decade and perhaps 1.5 million troops. But even then I would suggest that the only option would be to create a strong and hopefully benevolent dictatorship or oligarchy favorable to our goals.

    As it is, we are trying to support a government that has next to no chance at all in its present form. Further, no likely governing group is Iraq is likely to fulfill all our goals, i.e. being a free government and suppressing international terrorism.

    In the 21st century style of war, the war on terror, we need greater strategic flexibility. Right now we need credible force to use in negotiating with countries such as Iran and North Korea. Because we are tied up trying to do the impossible in Iraq, we don’t really have the necessary force available.

    None of this–none whatsoever–is the fault of the troops who have done an extraordinary job in the face of the muddled and ill-considered objectives they were given. They should come back to victory parades, not because we as a nation have won, but because they have done even better than that. They have fought hard and effectively even without and end in sight.

    During the first gulf war, I knew approximately when I was coming home. Oh, there was the standard military shuffling of the paperwork, but then soon I was on a plane. We came home to wonderful welcome. Stores were offering discounts and everyone was celebrating. We had been in what the U.S. population likes–a short, victorious war with very light casualties. I was and am proud to have served.

    Our troops right now deserve no less. In fact, they deserve much more. They have labored through the heat of the day. Not only that, we need them for the future, and we need more volunteers like them. What is missing in the current debate over getting out of Iraq is any sense of further strategy for the war on terror. When we leave Iraq, no matter what the circumstances, radical Islam will still exist, terrorism will still exist, and there will still be states supporting terrorism. What are we going to do about them.

    Having muddled and impossible goals is bad. But having no goals at all is even worse. A strategy of reacting to individual acts of terrorism is not going to win the battle. Money will have to be spent on technology and personnel to improve security. We’re going to need the troops many more times. We need to be thinking about that.

  • Update on the Kentucky Gubernatorial Primary

    Well, Fletcher did it. With 50% of the vote to his main opponent’s 37% (Source: CQPolitics.com) he became the Republican nominee. I find it interesting that Bush’s approval rating is lower than Fletcher’s (38%), and Fletcher was indicted while in office. Yes, I know there’s the unpopular war in Iraq, but then one also has to explain why people who once supported the war suddenly became so incredibly hostile to the leader they once gave unprecedented popularity ratings. What on earth did they think was going to happen?

    It just makes me wonder just how people decide what candidate to vote for, and what policies to support. It strikes me as involving momentary whims. It seems to me that George Bush is the same person who was elected back in 2000. He’s behaved as one might expect him to behave based on his history, his associates, and his campaign. Of course many thought the war would go much better, though it still astounds me that they would imagine such a thing.

    What was it Churchill said? Something like “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

    OK, enough whining for today!

  • Devotionals from 1 Corinthians 13

    I’m writing a series of devotionals from 1 Corinthians 13 for my wife’s devotional list.

    The first three entries have been posted. Entries on the devotional list are posted each weekday morning.

    Understanding Love
    The Priority of Love
    Characteristics of Love I
    Characteristics of Love II
    Love is Eternal (Update)
    Love is Boring (Update)
    Love and Childishness (Update)
    The Greatest of These (Update)

    (That completes the series.)

    In case you can’t guess, tomorrow morning Characteristics of Love II will appear!

  • Affirming Feminine Spirituality

    My Christianity Today Connection news e-mail connected me to an article in Today’s Christian Woman titled The Goddess Unmasked. It’s a Christian response to Wicca, looking at reasons why women who have grown up Christian become Wiccans, and discusses ministry to them.

    It’s not my intention to discuss the issue of responses to various religions or specifically to Wicca here. This article caught my attention due to the topic, and it kept my attention because of the reasons, as summarized in this quote:

    What lies behind the allure of goddess worship and its sister religion, witchcraft/Wicca? For many—especially those women who feel marginalized or devalued by what they perceive as the traditional, male-dominated church—its appeal is found in its affirmation of female spirituality.

    It is very common in my experience that people who change religions from the faith in which they were brought up do so more because of the way they were treated than because they have been convinced that their old religion was false and the new one true. I’m going to guess that it is easier to recruit new converts amongst those who are loosely attached to their own faith or have been separated from it in some way, and that is usually going to be the result of a relationship problem of some sort, not just family, but community.

    They may well become convinced of the tenets of the new religion, but that wasn’t the starting point. I don’t mean here to call converts dishonest. I’m sure they are, in general, following their consciences. I also apply this same principle both to converts to and from Christianity or any other faith.

    I see a tragedy in this story in that so much of the church can be seen as male dominated. In some groups I know of, single women with children have been warned that if they don’t get married, and have a male in the home covering them, they are leaving the door open to Satan’s attacks, since they are not following the God-ordained plan for the home. That plan, according to these folks, is that a woman is always under the authority of some man.

    We give some lip service in many churches to the idea that God encompasses both genders, and thus is no more “male” than “female.” That is a good theological view, but try referring to God as “she,” even in many churches who would accept women as pastors, and the reaction will be negative. Using “parent” instead of “father” in reference to God is even controversial. I greatly appreciate Andrew Greeley’s mixture of gender language in his novels, which I regard as excellent presentations of the gospel in the form of fiction. But for many, referring to God as heavenly mother is just too jarring.

    On the other hand we can just as easily put down feminine spirituality in a condescending way, by talking about women being more spiritual because of emotional responses. “Isn’t it nice that the women are praying and crying at the altar,” someone says, with the obvious implication that such prayer is women’s work. This cuts both ways, by the implication that being male says you can’t have emotions, and that all women are totally subject to theirs.

    How about both men and women can be spiritual people, but they may be differently spiritual. Not less or more, but different. Just how different and in what way? That’s not my problem. All I need to do is follow my own spiritual walk and avoid criticizing that of others.

    If our concern is to keep people in our community of faith, the best approach, it seems to me, is to get about fulfilling spiritual needs. People who are put on the fringes, subjected to an amused tolerance, or even suppressed are likely to look for a place where those things don’t happen. Shocking, isn’t it?

  • ID and Probability

    It seems that the probability arguments related to creationism don’t change much at the core, they just get more complex and verbose. The old “747 from a hurricane in a junk yard” argument just gets reformatted and reused about different things.

    Ed Brayton has a response to DaveScot that is so good I need to link to it. It’s very helpful for all the non-statisticians/non-mathematicians amongst us.

    DaveScot uses a deck of cards as his analogy, and the key thing to remember is that one can calculate the probability of a particular outcome because we know the precise process by which the cards get shuffled. All things being equal, each card has an equal probability of appearing in any particular position. Proteins are not like cards in that sense.

    I’ve heard a few times that one has to be a mathematician to respond to Dembski on things like specified complexity and the “no free lunch” theorem, but I think the GIGO principle is more applicable. If you don’t know what the processes you’re analyzing actually are, it is silly to talk about how probable it is that they will occur. The problem here is logic. No matter how good your algorithm, it will not produce good information with bad input, and the input used by the ID proponents is bad.

    Ed does a better job of analyzing it, though. Go read his.

  • Christian Carnival CLXXIII Posted

    . . . at Pseudo-Polymath. Go look at it for the fine pictures used to separate the sections. Oh–read the articles too!

  • Bible Software for Linux

    Since I am playing with a new box I built with Ubuntu installed, I have written a short note on Bible software for Linux on my Computer Services company blog. I’m looking at a Java based application which is also available for Windows, so those looking for free Bible software should check it out.

  • How Politicians Survive Scandal

    Does this strike anyone else as odd?

    Fletcher’s political recovery has been little short of remarkable. A year ago, he was under indictment on three misdemeanor charges of rigging state hiring to favor loyalists. He declined to speak to a grand jury, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and issued a blanket pardon that nullified charges against nine state workers. (Source: Washington Post

    I just don’t get this. I understand that in court one is not supposed to take pleading the fifth amendment as evidence of guilt, but the voters of Kentucky aren’t on a jury. They’re voting for a leader. I have a really hard time understanding why such a person as Governor Ernie Fletcher would get any votes at all after using such tactics. It seems we should have higher standards. I suspect, as was noted in the article, that the GOP of Kentucky may be committing its own brand of suicide.

  • More on UC Admission Policies and Creationism

    I got my ears pinned back (very politely) in a comment by Mary on my previous post on this topic, and the commenter made such good points I think it is appropriate to promote her comment there to a post so more people will see it.

    You’ve asked some interesting questions about UC’s admissions policies. Most of them can be answered by a close read of the UC admissions web pages.

    The UC campuses have many more well qualified applicants than can possibly be accommodated. Anywhere from a third to half must be rejected, and it is only fair to give preference to students who can demonstrate that they are most likely to succeed. There are several ways for students to demonstrate that they are qualified. Very high test scores are one, special exemption is another, and there are other ways for transfer and nontraditional students to get in, but the easiest path for freshmen is to get good grades in a UC-approved core curriculum in high school.

    UC takes the approval process very seriously: it examines the textbook, the syllabus, any supplemental materials, sample lesson plans, and so on, to determine that each approved class actually teaches the material UC wants its incoming freshmen to know, at a college-prep level, accurately and completely. Students who have not demonstrated that they know this core material (because they didn’t bother to take the approved courses, or because they were home schooled) can still get in using the other pathways, although students relying on test scores alone must have higher test scores than students whose grades also demonstrate that they actually learned something in high school.

    One could argue that this arrangement is unfair to home schooled students, but as you pointed out, the quality of home schooling is hugely variable, and UC has no way to tell which parents have provided a good education. It is important for a university to have a student body with diverse interests and backgrounds, but it benefits neither UC nor the students themselves to accept unqualified students. In principle and in effect, UC’s requirements are no different from an employer giving preference to a job applicant who presents evidence of actual relevant job experience over one who scores well on an aptitude test, but doesn’t present evidence of relevant job experience.

    UC has no intention of closing its alternative paths to admissions, and Calvary Chapel’s students can use them even if they haven’t taken the proper coursework, just like any other applicant. Alternatively, a Calvary Chapel student can sign up for the appropriate number and kinds of UC-approved courses (the school has sufficient approved courses to offer students some choice while still fulfilling the requirements). What Calvary Chapel and its students can’t do is substitute unapproved Bible Study classes for the required science, history, and other academic classes, and expect a world-class secular university to go along with it. One has to wonder at the sheer hubris that leads them to file this lawsuit.

    Let me add a starting link to UC’s freshman admission policies. I have no way of knowing how these are actually applied myself, but the process described by Mary seems very rational to me.

    Specific answers to the process for home schooled applications start here.

  • Bible Prayer Index

    I have added my Bible prayer index to the right sidebar. This index has been in existence for some time. It is not exhaustive. For example, I did not include all prayers I found in the Psalms. The way I produced it was to read the Bible through and mark each prayer that particularly struck me at the time. There are 400 categorized entries. Over time I have been working to include more adaptations, such as written prayers based on promises. There are a number of those already in the index.

    Over the next couple of days I will add an index in scriptural order so you can search for a specific scripture, and also introduce an option to list only those with adaptations, notes, or translations added.