Sunday Morning Scene

Cathedral of the Madeline, Salt Lake City Utah



From Churches of the West: Cathedral of the Madeline, Salt Lake City Utah: where there is more on the same..

Friday Farming: Sheepherder, 1940s

Student Revolt in Jefferson County, Colorado

High school students in Jefferson County (part of the megalopolis of Denver) are now on day four of a walk out, in protest of their school district.  A "Massive Protest" is occuring outside of one of the high schools in the area today, in which 1,000 high school students from two different high schools are participating. What' gives?

Well, in part, getting a walk out rolling in nice weather probably isn't as hard as it might seem, but beyond that the protests are focused on the following, according to the Denver Post:

Community members are angry about an evaluation-based system for awarding raises to educators and a proposed curriculum committee that would call for promoting "positive aspects" of the United States.

I'm not sure what an "evaluation based system for awarding raises to educators" actually means.  That's vague enough that, without further explanaion, it'd be hard to know what they're talking about really. As for the curriculum, the post reports the following:

The curriculum proposal, crafted by board member Julie Williams, calls for a nine-member panel to "review curricular choices for conformity to JeffCo academic standards, accuracy and omissions," and present information accurately and objectively.

Williams' proposal calls for instructional material presenting "positive aspects" of U.S. heritage that "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights."  Materials should not, it says, "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."

Interesting how this has worked. The students apparently are offended and feel that they're going to be fed propaganda, and are reacting.  So, accidentally, the materials are resulting in civil disorder and social strife.

Logic would or should dictate that students just get the straight scoop on stuff, whatever that is, science, history, or whatever. In recent years that has always been the case, on the political right or the political left.  At least in Jefferson County, students appear to have taken note to some extent.

Of course, the nice weather doesn't hurt either.

Some Gave All: Sharp, Franklin, Taylor, Doe, and Kelly, and the b...

Some Gave All: Sharp, Franklin, Taylor, Doe, and Kelly, and the b...: A marker locating the spot where various Oregon Trail immigrants lost their lives during the Indian Wars of the early 1860s, ...

Holscher's Hub: Competing modes of transportation.

Holscher's Hub: Competing modes of transportation.

 

 Interesting example of two very separate generations of transportation, but with the older carrying the newer.

Holscher's Hub: Mystery Plant

Holscher's Hub: Mystery Plant: Does anyone recognize what this very large leafed plant in the Laramie Range may be? The leaves are easily 5" across, and were g...

And what if Ireland. . . ?

As everyone knows, Scotland voted yesterday to keep on being a member of the United Kingdom, effectively keeping the United Kingdom as a entity. Without Scotland, no matter what it called itself, the country that was the United Kingdom would really be England.  Indeed, in some ways that was the point of Scot's separatist.  England has the dominant political and economic role in the United Kingdom, although perhaps a bit oddly in recent years, Scotland effectively has home rule on most things, and a vote in the English Parliament, while England lacks a vote in the Scottish Parliament.

 Flag of the self declared Irish Republic, somewhat ironically with text in English.  Attribution:  Wikipedia Commons, ArnoldPlaton - SVG version of Irish Republic Flag.jpg

Anyhow, a person of historical bent can't ponder the recent episode with Scottish separatist bidding for independence without considering the history of just over a century ago in regards to Ireland.

The United Kingdom was once the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.  A Celtic land, of course, like Scotland (with which it shared interesting historical and ethnic connections), England's history in connection with Ireland, or perhaps we should say the United Kingdom's history, was considerably different from that of Scotland's, which perhaps makes any comparison between the two somewhat irrelevant. Still, there's some interesting things to consider.

Relating that history would amount to writing a treatise, and it isn't as if it hasn't been done before, but will simply summarize it so as to make the story informed enough to make sense in context.  While Scotland and Ireland shared ancient historical, ethnic and religious connections (Scots are descendant not only from the original native British population, but also from Irish invaders who gave the Scots their ultimate name, and Ireland Christianized Scotland), their paths really diverged during the Reformation. By that time, England was already the dominant political power in the British Isles, and it effectively dominated the area irrespective of the regions theoretical independence.  Ireland had effectively been an English possession since the time of the Anglo Norman invasions of Ireland, which it had resisted at the time and which it continued to resist off and on until independence. Scotland also retained waning independence aspirations, and resisted the English, but really less effectively.

The Reformation effectively sealed what was already the case at that time.  England, due to King Henry VIII, became a prime mover in the Reformation, but because its path way was mixed, confused and unclear, it flopped back and forth for some time between Protestantism, near Catholicism and a return to Catholicism.  Ultimate the "Settlement" of this issue, or rather the forced Crown decree on how it was to be settled, created the official Church of England, but in some ways the questions that have always existed continue to exist within it to this day.  Scotland, however, joined the most Protestant of the Reformation movements, or at least its monarchy did, adopting Calvinism in the form of Presbyterianism, which remains today the official Church of Scotland.  Ireland remained staunchly Catholic, however, and continued to do so even with the British Parliament briefly sided with Calvinist thought under Cromwell, whose forces famously attempted to fully subjugate Ireland.

Religious strife went on for a long time on Great Britain, something that's somewhat forgotten today, as the Crown and Parliament struggled over which branch of Protestantism would be the official one, and as, which is also forgotten, a fair amount of Catholicism remained amongst the rural peasantry and the Churches that served them.  Any religion other than the official one was suppressed, often violently, and the English spread this effort out to Ireland, which it fully controlled.  In England Catholicism was outlawed.  In Ireland, where completely outlawing it would have been impossible, Irish Catholics were extremely repressed.  As part of their effort to more fully dominate the island in this era, the English caused Scots Presbyterian immigrants to settle in Ulster, where they had no choice but to be loyal to the English Crown, as they formed a tiny Protestant island in a large Catholic sea.

Scotland became part of the United Kingdom in 1707, with the Act of Union.  Ireland didn't become part of it until 1801, although its role in the UK was at first necessarily constrained, given that so much of its population was really ineligible to vote.

This is all history that is well known, and of course the Irish continued to resist and occasionally rebel against the Crown.  Resistance to the Crown continued in Scotland, in a different context, for a time too, but eventually it died down, in spite of some good reasons to continue to resent England.

But lets leap ahead to the late 19th Century (skipping the famine and all of that). By the late 19th Century the British had really started to reconsider much of what had occurred before, and the Parliament began to back away from the repression it had levied in early decades and centuries.  Parliament lifted its ban on Catholicism in England and it ceased suppression of it in Ireland.  By the late 19th Century, the English Parliament was starting to seriously consider Irish Home Rule, so much so that it became a controversial subject in the English Parliament.  Home Rule was very much gaining ground in the early 20th Century, and it appeared, and looking back still appears, that but for World War One, home rule would have been achieved.

Had home rule been achieved, Ireland would essentially have today what Scotland has, it's own self governing parliament and laws withing in the United Kingdom. And because there was actually a Scottish independence movement that was gaining some ground in the early 20th Century as well, chances are high that had Ireland achieved that by 1920 or so, Scotland would have achieved the same shortly thereafter, and the United Kingdom would have gone on to be a federated state, which it now appears likely to shortly become.

That assumes, of course, that Irish independence wasn't inevitable, which it's easy to assume it was. But looking back, it doesn't appear to have been.

Home Rule, as a movement, was faced with two sources of opposition. One was in English nationalism, which very much opposed it.  Randolph Churchill, for example, somewhat made his name opposing it.  But beyond that it also faced Irish nationalism, which also opposed it as it wanted to take Ireland completely out of the United Kingdom, and by the early 20th Century was ready to do so by force if it could.  Armed nationalist militias were forming, and at the same time Unionist militias were also forming, both often quite in the open.  Strong support for Unionism was also found within the British officer ranks for Irish units, who reflected the fact that the British Army's officer corps remained a class within a class, largely recruited from well to do members of Protestant British families, who otherwise would have gone into the business of managing family estates or into the Anglican clergy.  Indeed, this was so much the case that a significant section of these officers made it known that if their units were called out of their barracks to suppress armed Unionist activity, they'd refuse the order and resign, resulting in a "rebellion" that threatened their careers.

Such was the case just a century ago.  Ireland appeared clearly headed towards home rule, with it being fairly clear that if that happened there'd be at least some Unionist armed revolts, and with it also being fairly clear that these would be met by Republican armed militiamen, who were less well armed, but more numerous. Those Republicans also were headed towards rebellion themselves.  A certain section of the Republicans were already working underground towards that aim.

Then, in August 1914, Europe erupted into warfare, with the United Kingdom joining in right from the onset.  The whole thing was put aside, Home Rule, Unionism, and Republicanism, at least for most people.  The Irish volunteered to serve in the British Army in large numbers.  The entire issue largely went away, although it was generally assumed that immediately after the war, Ireland would be granted home rule.

The United Kingdom tried, at first, to fight the war with all volunteer troops.  But the manpower requirements were simply to vast.  Britain therefore passed a conscription act that extended to Great Britain alone.  Ireland's unique status, and the fact that it might be a tinder box, was recognized in that conscription was not made to extend to it.  But, in 1916, with manpower waning, and with a feeling amongst British conservatives that omitting Ireland from conscription was unfair, conscription was extended to Ireland.

It was a mistake.  Ireland was already contributing manpower in such numbers that the conscription act would have had no actual effect on British manpower. But it was regarded as offensive on an island that had suffered from British repression and had only recently found its population being regarded as co-equal in rights with those living in England and Scotland. And it caused Republicans to believe that their moment had come.  On Easter, 1916, they staged a rebellion in Dublin.

 Proclamation of 1916.

That was also a mistake. The rebellion failed and Dubliners came out to protest a rebellion against the British when their sons were serving in France.  It didn't deter the Republicans, however, who shortly after World War One took the very unusual step of declaring Ireland independent and forming a parliament and ministries.  In essence, they were conducting a guerrilla war against the United Kingdom while simultaneously acting as the legitimate Irish government.

In what must be regarded as a peculiar move, and on that reflects how tired the United Kingdom was after World War One, the British chose to treat the Dail in exactly the fashion it regarded itself, and it negotiated with it. The results was the Irish Free State, which recognized an independent Ireland with the British Empire.  In short, Ireland was a dominion at that time, in the same fashion that Canada and Australian were.  Part of the 1922 treaty that recognized Irish independence allowed a vote in Ulster as to whether to remain part of the Free State, or to return to being part of the United Kingdom.  It opted for the United Kingdom, and the Irish Civil War immediately commenced over both Ulster's ability to do that (ironically, really) and the Dominion status of Ireland. The Free State won.

But, at that point, the point at which the rebel Dail signed a peace treaty and thereby became the defacto and de jure Irish parliament, were most Irish demanding full Independence.  It doesn't seem so.  Indeed, to the extent we can tell, even after all of that, the majority of the Irish hoped for home rule, even that late.  Had the Irish negotiators accepted that, which they could not given who they were an what the represented, the majority of the Irish would have achieved what they hoped to receive.  They received more than that in receiving independence with a dominion status, and the Republicans' dream came true. They also received, of course, a civil war, which went on in to 1923 before the National Army defeated the Irish Republican Army.  Eventually, the competing forces would uneasily come to live with each other, although a Republican desire to have the return of Ulster lingered on, and with some still does.

So, once again we have an application of Holscher's Fourth Law of History, War Changes Everything.  But for World War One, it seems certain that Ireland would have received home rule, with an accompanying period of messy civil unrest, probably in the mid teens.  That would have resulted in Scottish self rule almost immediately thereafter, and probably the United Kingdom would have become a federation, sort of like the United States, by the 1930s.   I doubt very much, in this scenario, if Ireland would have ever have become an independent state. The United Kingdom today would be a federated nation made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.  Northern Ireland would simply be part of Ireland.

Is this a better or worse result?  I hate to say it, particularly as two of my ancestors fought for Irish independence at Vinegar Hill, and one of them died there, but I frankly think it would have been a better one.  Ireland, in independence, became an economic backwater whose main export was its people for decades.  As a nation that managed to preserve its nationhood for centuries in spite of occupation, I don't think its culture was in danger, and indeed the fact that the Scottish are still that, would show that it wasn't.

Mid Week At Work: WPA Poster

Semi scary, nearly Nazi like, WPA poster.

At war with ISIL

FA-18Es of the U.S. Navy launch from the USS George H. W. Bush yesterday, for airstrikes against ISIL  U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert Burck.

We are now in a full scale war with the Islamic State.  It is, for us, an air war.  On the ground, the troops will be natives of the region.  Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, and Syrians fighting their government and the Islamic State.  As a practical matter, while we do not wish to admit it, many of the ground troops that will be fighting the Islamic State in Syria, and who knows, perhaps in Iraq as well, will be Syrian regulars.   That's the practical reality of it.

It's popular to claim that airwars can't be won, but they can be and have been, if there's a substantial element on the ground, and here there is.  It isn't the best set of ground forces in the world, but then IS doesn't have a well trained army itself.  Compared to the Syrian army it's definitely a second string outfit, and it probably is compared to the Peshmerga, save for the fact that the Peshmerga is more attuned to fighting as a guerrilla army with light weapons, and IS is semi mechanized.

 F-35s of the U.S. Air Force, Florida.  This effort will undoubtedly provide the first combat deployment of the F-35.  Official U. S. Air Force photograph.

The Islamic State controls the roads, but that's about it.  It draws its support from vast stretches of territory it sort of influences beyond the roads, but the roads and the cities and towns attached to the roads are what it actually occupies for the most part. And a road dependent army can be degraded by raids.

The French army in Indochina was road dependent, and the Viet Minh controlled the countryside.  It took vast effort by the French Army to push out into the country, and they never lost their dependence on the roads.  In this war, IS is the French Army, and we're the Viet Minh.  Able to strike at any time day or night, there's not too many places for IS to hide. 

At some point, the war will go back to being a terrorist campaign by IS, which it was when IS was Al Queda in Iraq, its name before it rebranded itself in recognition of its nearly correct belief that it could establish an Islamic state on the Arab frontier, and make it a Caliphate, right now.  In that it nearly succeeded, but through the clever strategy of taking only the roads and major population centers.  That battle is probably over now and IS will go on the defensive.  

What will emerge is key.  To make this really successful, we must destroy ISIL.  Destroy it, not merely remove it from the population centers and roads.  And we have to plan for what comes after.  The Kurds have made it plain enough that what they don't want, really, is to have to rely on the anemic Shiia dominated Iraqi parliament. The Sunnis Arabs don't either, which is a lot of the reason ISIL has been so successful in this war, as Arab tribes united with it. Those same tribes will now abandon it, but that doesn't mean they want the Iraqi central government back.  Chaldean and Assyrian populations have also indicated that they feel they need their own state, as the lesson has now been fully learned what occurs to them when the winds shift suddenly over that Sunni sea.

The Big Speech: Socrates on Youth

Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority.  They show disrespect for old people and love silly talk in place of exercise.  They no longer stand up when older people enter the room; they contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers

Socrates 400 B.C.

Some Gave All: Willow Springs, Natrona County, Wyoming

Some Gave All: Willow Springs, Natrona County, Wyoming

Monday At the Bar: Annual Shad Bake, 1916. District of Columbia Bar.

The Big Picture: Fort Marion, St. Augustine Florida.

Episode 49: Vikings Among the English and French | The History of English Podcast

Episode 49: Vikings Among the English and French | The History of English Podcast



Fascinating episode.

Sunday Morning Scene

Post Church, Ft. Douglas Utah.



From Churches of the West: Post Church, Ft. Douglas Utah, where there is more on the same.

Lex Anteinternet: Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - ...

Lex Anteinternet: Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - ...: Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - MarketWatch The Russians owning Pabst? What is the world coming to?

While I posted my first entry in jest, this does bring back to mind an earlier post, which mentioned how many local breweries  there used to be.  In short, there were vast numbers. And there are starting to be vast numbers again.  Denver Colorado and the surrounding region seems to introduce a new brewery per week. Seriously, there's something like well over 100 small breweries in Colorado now, just in the Denver region.

But there were also a lot of large breweries making regional nor nationally distributed brews in the late 19th and for most of the 20th Centuries.  Budweiser is the best known example, but Pabst was another, having a major market share in its day.

Well, through the process of globalization and consolidation, the number of these companies has grown smaller.  Their brand names are still there in many (but certainly not all) cases. Budweiser, Pabst, etc., are still around. But they're part of bigger outfits.  Budweiser belongs to a Belgian alcohol concern.  Pabst will now belong to a Russian one.

This is simple, and global, economics, but it also brings to mind our earlier discussion on distributist economics.  Here, however, local breweries exhibiting the principle of subsidarity are plentiful, and some of them have grown in size themselves, repeating the original histories of Pabst and  Budweiser.

Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - MarketWatch

Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - MarketWatch

The Russians owning Pabst?

What is the world coming to?

Thanks To Nutella, The World Needs More Hazelnuts : The Salt : NPR

Thanks To Nutella, The World Needs More Hazelnuts : The Salt : NPR

Wyoming Brand Lard

10646787_442244832582818_2981191216607897998_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 720 pixels)

A lard can, depicting lard that was packed at my family's packing house in Casper Wyoming, before we owned it.

This must have been a brand name that the prior owner used, probably in the 1930s, maybe in the 1920s.

Interesting to see this.  I don't even think of lard being packed by a local company, and of course they sold regionally so it wasn't really local, but still, interesting glimpse into history, both regional and personal.

New Mexico Green Chile Advertising Act | Texas Agriculture Law

New Mexico Green Chile Advertising Act | Texas Agriculture Law

Scotland votes No.

The United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will continue to be.  As was really self evident, a "Yes" vote for independence would have meant the end of the United Kingdom, leaving it effectively the country of England with two much smaller nationalities appended to it.

Good for the majority of Scottish voters, who recognized that it is their country, and in the modern world, a Scottish separation from the United Kingdom would not have made political, national, historical, or economic, good sense.

AP Photos: Scenes from Iraq's Mosul then and now | CharlotteObserver.com

AP Photos: Scenes from Iraq's Mosul then and now | CharlotteObserver.com

Friday Farming: Fall Wheat

Here's How Young Farmers Looking For Land Are Getting Creative : The Salt : NPR

Here's How Young Farmers Looking For Land Are Getting Creative : The Salt : NPR

If Local Farms Aren't Local Enough, Buy From The Rooftop : The Salt : NPR

If Local Farms Aren't Local Enough, Buy From The Rooftop : The Salt : NPR

Better With Butter? Here's Why Americans Are Consuming More : The Salt : NPR

Better With Butter? Here's Why Americans Are Consuming More : The Salt : NPR

Computerization, Transportation, Globalization, and the loss of the local

Some time ago I posted here on the Uniform Bar Exam, a development, in my view, which is wholly negative.  One of the selling points of the UBE, for its proponents, is that it makes bar admission "transportable".

 African American lawyer in the early 1940s.  Contrary to general supposition, law has long traditionally been an introductory occupation filled in part by members of minority groups and classes.  While this is contrary to the "rich lawyer" image many people erroneously hold of the law, it makes sense as the profession is traditionally one that has low start up costs in terms of everything but the education, and minority classes often have legal needs by the fact that they are minorities.  Indeed certain stereotypes and former stereotypes, such as "Irish Lawyer" or "Jewish Lawyer" are explained by this phenomenon.  A layer like this certainly didn't have a transportable career, and was part of his community.

It does, but is that a good thing?  And what does that mean?

"Transportability" is not a new phenomenon, but it is an accelerating one.  And its one of those little thought out byproducts of technology that have massive unintended impacts.  It might serve to look at it a bit, as while "transportability" is simply inevitable in some things, it isn't in everything, and its not necessarily that good of thing in some circumstances.

Transportability really means the ability to rapidly relocate from one place to another, as the immigrants qualifications will be equally valid in any location, or at least in multiple locations. But, and what is often missed when transportability is discussed, is that actual relocation is not necessary in this day and age.  Rather, a person can "transport" themselves and out of a location by telephone and Internet.  Indeed most current litigation attorneys already do this to some extent.  I do.  In addition to Wyoming, I practice in Colorado's Federal Courts, which I can do electronically for the most part.

Now, the advantages of this are fairly obvious, but right now the brake on "transportation," if you will, is that for lawyers you must be admitted by the other state's bar in some fashion, or at least you must be admitted in front of the other state's particular court you seek to practice in.  This is not new, and the UBE, discussed below, does not propose to change that.

What is proposed to be changed, however, is how a person does that.

Right now, a person must pass a bar exam for that state, so you still have to pass some bar exam recognized by the state. But what the UBE does is to allow you to take it in one state, and simply pay a fee to be admitted in other states that will recognize the UBE without requiring more. Wyoming still requires more, but what that more is, is to sit through a day long CLE class, which any person could do without any real effort other than sitting there and enduring it.  So, suddenly, the license becomes transportable.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, here it is.

I'm a type of lawyer whose practice is statewide, and my practice even laps a little into neighboring states, as noted, but I am of this state, and very familiar with it.  I was born here, grew up here, my wife is from here.  I went to the same high school, in different years, as my wife, father in law, mother in law, aunts and uncles, and father.  I have pretty deep connections here.

Which is not to say that there isn't movement in and out of here. When there's an oil boom going on, as there is now, there are a lot of new people here.  Some stay, some leave.  Some people from here move out as soon as they can (with that being a seemingly common desire of young people, who starting about 30 years after that become hopelessly nostalgic for what they left).  But moving in and out, is not the same as turning on your computer and "being there" in the form of a stream of electrons.

That's something that is seemingly missed by the advocates of transportability.  Not only has our society become more mobile, but it's less attached than ever.  Somebody who is located in a big city elsewhere, now, can pretend to be practicing in a completely different state with which they have no real connections.

They may believe that the do, but that's part of the delusion.  And once that connection is lost, it's truly lost.

Nearly every lawyer practicing in a state, no matter what he did, took on some projects and clients that were because he lived there. An organization, some local cause, or just people he knew.  Now, that won't be true. Will a lawyer in Denver represent  youth group for free in Casper, or sit on his Parish Council in Rock Springs?  Will a lawyer in Billings take on the cause of a widower in Sheridan.

Will he know what farmers and ranchers in Buffalo worry about, or what somebody whose road is now full of oilfield traffic experiences, or what the economic concerns of a man who has a roustabout company in Glenrock thinks, or will he even really care.

Making professions, professions of any kind, sort of like an Amazon service, remote, electronic and disconnected, is not a good idea.   Professions were to be of communities.  Indeed, any economic activity or occupation is.  By being so remote, we stand the chance of not only being disconnected, but harmful.

Indeed, it will also be highly self defeating, which the backers of transportability never apprecaite. They want their careers transportable, but only theirs.

With professions that can be made highly transportable, like the law, or accounting, there's no reason whatsoever that they can't be transported right out of the country.  There's no requirement, and nobody is proposing one, that to practice law anywhere in the US you must be a citizen of the United States.  So, if Wyoming's bar can be transported to Colorado or Montana, why not Mumbai?  Not only do I think that this can happen, I think it will happen.

Why not?  If the practice of law is, as it typically is, the writing and reviewing of documents and materials, why not have that done by a lawyer, admitted in Wyoming, who lives in Delhi?   Chances are high that some very highly skilled underemployed lawyers could be found there, who could do a fine product, and who could work in an area of the law where they rarely needed to appear in court.  So, for example, the vast droves of Colorado lawyers who claim to be "oil and gas" lawyers in Wyoming, could quite easily be replaced by the same in Delhi, to some extent, where the same lawyer would probably work for $25.00/hour.

Much of this, because of its nature, is something we are going to have to experience and deal with no matter what. But that doesn't make it all good, and technological advances that allow us to live in one city and work in another have their problems.  When it comes to professions, that's wholly negative, in my view.  We can do something about that, even if we can't do much about a lot of this, and we should.

Mid Week At Work: Enduring investigation.

Caption reads:

Navy's crack speed pilot faces Senate Committee seeking reason for resignation. Lieut. Al Williams, crack Navy speed pilot who recently resigned rather than accept a transfer to sea, appeared before a special Senate Naval l Affairs subcommittee today. The committee is investigating the reason for the resignation of the noted pilot. In the photograph, left to right: Senator Patrick J. Sullivan, Wyoming; Lieut. Williams; Senator Millard E. Tydings, Maryland, chairman; and David S. Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aviation

UW law school says it meets needs of state, energy industry - www.wyofile.com

UW law school says it meets needs of state, energy industry - www.wyofile.com

University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...

University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...: ...

After seemingly picking on (but not intending to) American football the past few days, I offer these recent photos I took of women's rugby at the University of Wyoming.

I don't have a clue what the rules are, but rugby is really fun to watch, and I've always liked it. This is the first time, however, I've seen the women's team at UW in action.

It's a fast moving game, which is part of what I like.   It shares a common ancestor with American football, but to those of us who are big fans of it, American football seems slow.  Rugby is a much faster paced game.

Played without padding or helmets, it's also one which features a lot of injuries, but it doesn't seem to share the same percentage of really severe injuries, perhaps because of the lack of armor in the game.

Rootless

From Harrop's op ed this week questions whether we need a "place called home".  It's an excellent piece, questioning the value of rootlessness.  Ironically, the local paper today also features a front page article on an English woman who seems fairly rootless, having moved from a small city in England, to Paris, and whom is now studying range management at the University of Wyoming, after having worked on a Big Horn Basis ranch.

Harrop quotes from As You Like It in her article, although she doesn't quote the whole text, which reads:

Rosalind:  A traveler.  By my faith, you have great reason to be sad.  I fear you have sold your land to see other men's.  Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

 Jacques:  Yes, I have gained my experience.

 Rosalind:  And your experience makes you sad.  I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad--and to travel for it too.

Forrop goes on to note who we seemingly envy the traveling, but there's something to be sad about their rootless lives.  And she wonders what occurs to these people in their old ages, do they settle in someplace new, where they have no connections, or return to the place they abandoned and pick up their old lives.

Well, by observation, at least some do.  My home state, for many years, exported its young population, some of whom remained sort of romantically attached to the state for their careers, and then whom return later.  As Americans, with Freedom To Travel written into their organic foundational and mythological law, the Constitution, they have that right.

But Farrop is on to something, although she's hardly unique in noting it.   Agrarian poet, educator and novelist Wendell Berry earlier noted it in his essay Becoming Native To This Place.  Berry notes that unless a person has real roots in a place, he's lacking a bit in something and by extension, everything suffers form a rootless population.

Indeed, that's the irony of travel. Travelers travel, usually, to see the authentic, unless they travel to one of the Disneyfied locations that Americans so love to visit.  Absent that, when the travel to see Hawaii, or Paris, or Ireland or Scotland, they travel to see the real places, not a bunch of people like themselves who have a generic culture and no roots.  They sense, really, that those cultures have something deeper, in being attached to the land and knowing it.

Americans have always been somewhat rootless, but in prior days they tended to move within their immediate regions.  In the Frontier era, people moved, but often less than ten miles before establishing a new home.  Some moves, of course, were huge, but they tended to be a big singular move.  Now some people move constantly, and while relocation within a region remain very common, and because they are within a region are not really the type of move we mention here, the phenomenon of some people moving again and again, following a career, or just moving, is not unusual.  

Well, it is a big sad.  By constantly moving they never become, as Berry would have it, "native" to a place, and they lack something as a result.  If our culture becomes more fluid, as it seems to threaten, and as some hope, this will become even more pronounced, and an era may arrive when people have no attachment to their region, don't even know it, have no attachment to their communities, and don't even know them, and have no attachment to each other.

Random Snippets: Trivial questions on the news.

This past weekend the new moderator for Meet The Press did an interesting and in depth interview of a member of President Obama's administration regarding ISIL and our plans to take that on.

At the tail end of it, the moderator suddenly shifted and told the guest that he was sure that the guest had spoken to the President about football player Ray Rice and did the President have a view on the NFL's recent actions regarding Rice, and if something should be done to the commissioner of that organization.

Seriously?

While it would be contrary to what the guest stated, I hope that in serious discussions at the White House the NFL's problems or those of its player, indeed the entire topic of professional sports controversies doesn't come up.  Here we're talking about war, and the moderator is asking about the NFL?  Rice's actions were inexcusable, but we're talking about the life and death of thousands here in war.  That's much more signficant than the NFL.

Today In Wyoming's History: American Archives Month

Today In Wyoming's History: American Archives Month

Monday at the Bar: Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work: Annual Shad Bake, Bar to Bench,...

Mid Week at Work: Annual Shad Bake, Bar to Bench, 1924. District of Columbia Bar.

Do they still have the Shad Bake?

New feature (at the bar refers to the admission to practice law, not a bar serving drinks). And yes, this photo is recycled.

The Big Picture: Court Square, Osceola Iowa, 1908

Football and Injury

I just posted a thread on being out of touch.  One thing I've noted here before, is that I'm really out of touch about sports.  Truly out of touch.

This is the start of the year where high school football becomes a bit deal for a lot of people, and its of course closely followed by parents and siblings who have family members playing football.  That's fine, and to be expected.  It's also the season where old alumni follow the games of their old schools, including high schools, and of course universities.

One of the things I've noted before in regards to this is that the best evidence is that American football has a hideous head injury rate.  Frankly, playing football is very dangerous for youth.  It simply is.  It amazes me, as an observer, how adults will worry a great deal about injury from activities that a person is highly unlikely to be injured at, and not at all from one where the injury rate is high.  I've heard, for example, parents worry about kids becoming interested in shooting sports, but at the same time feel that football is just fine.  A person is much more likely to be injured playing football that shooting or hunting.

I'm not campaigning for something here, but I'm making this post to note that the National Football League has released a study that finds 30% of its players will suffer from Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, with the suggestion being that this is due to game related head injuries. To be fair to the NFL, almost every single player in the NFL was a college player and a high school player before that.

Now, I'm not saying that we should ban high school football, or college ball.  But as a person who is so disinterested in football that I just can't follow a game no matter how hard I try, I have to admit that every time I see a young person I know suited up in a football uniform, it inspires concern in me. 

Seems pretty self evident that the head injuries associated with this sport are a present danger to the players,  and that needs to be addressed right away.  No amount of grid iron glory will seem worth it when a person starts to suffer neurological deficits.

Random Snippets: Out of touch

I've concluded that there's no better way to confirm that you are out of touch than to get a bit of the sports or entertainment news.

Right now, the news is full of stories about a football player, last name of Rice, who was caught on camera beating up the woman who is now his wife (I don't know if they were married at the time). The themes of that is what the NFL should do about that.

Now, I think it's horrible that he beat up his wife or girlfriend, but beyond that its one of those things that actually surprise me that its such big news.  I don't approve of that conduct at all, but what that means, it seems, would self evidently apply pretty much to him and her, and maybe society in general in terms of domestic abuse being horrible and it should be stopped.  But does the NFL as his employer have a unique duty here?  I really don't know why it would, unless every employer does.  That is, if I learn that somebody beat up their spouse, and I honor bound to fire them?  I hadn't thought that I was unless it was on company time.  Maybe this incident was on NFL time?  I don't know.  I do know that in my role as a lawyer I've learned of plenty of reprehensible behavior that I find personally repugnant at all sorts of levels, but unless they were on company time for somebody I hadn't thought that required the person to be fired. Does it?  Does the NFL have a morals clause in its contracts (now nearly a thing of the past)?  I have no idea.

Is this even a football player people have heard of?  I don't know the answer to that either.

Secondly, recently in the news there's been a huge outbreak of female personalities complaining about their private images (you can fill in the details here) being released.  I don't know who most of those people are, although in a couple of instances they're apparently well known singers.  No idea.  Now I've heard their songs, and I'm not impressed.

Likewise, recently the big song of the summer seem to be a song called "Fancy".  Now, I've heard that.  But why is this song so nifty.  Don't know the answer to that either.  For that matter, having listened to it on the radio prior to seeing any images of the songteuse, I assumed, quite incorrectly, that the singer was probably an American, and probably an African American from an urban background, given the accents deployed in the song.  Nope, she's an Australian.  I have to wonder if African Americans find this offensive.  I would. She's co-opted a black musical style and affected an urban African American accent.

Isn't that a little offensive somehow?  Are people offended.  And doesn't that pretty much mean that rap must truly be passe?  No offense to Australians intended, but if young Australian women are carrying the banner for hip hop, the genre has obviously moved on.

Finally, at our house, a movie about the filming of Mary Poppins has been getting a lot of air time. Showing that I'm not just out of touch on current events, but on lots of stuff, I don't have a clue why that would be interesting as a topic.  I've never seen but a few snippets of Mary Poppins, the film, in the first place, and it looks boring.  A movie about it would seem to be doubly boring.

Sunday Morning Scene.

St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah

From Churches of the West: St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City, where there's more text on the same.

Scottish Independence?

This upcoming week we may see Scotland acquire something it hasn't had since the 18th Century, that being Scottish independence.  If a majority of Scottish voters vote "yes" on a referendum on September 18, Scotland will resume independent status and the United Kingdom will shrink to just being England and Wales.

Let's hope Scottish voters take a page from the Quebecois and vote "no".  Its a terrible idea.

Yes, the Scots remain a separate culture, but even before de jure unification the Scots, English and Welsh people had been so closely associated with each other, as they would have to be given that they all share a single large island, that the intertwining of their destinies was inevitable.  They've so impacted each other that they are a British people, with separate, but not that separate, national identities.  They further share a common history, and like or it or not, they'll continue to share a common fate as they move forward.   It'll be easier to deal with that fate together, rather than separately.

It'd be a shame to see the United Kingdom cease to be that.  Here's hoping that Scotland remains in it.

Thomas Berger passes

I learned, just tonight, that Thomas Berger, the novelist, died in July at age 89.

Berger was the author of Little Big Man, a great novel and one of my absolute favorite. Even though I'm engaged, slow motion, in trying to write a historical novel (for which this blog is supposedly research), I read very few novels of any kid. But this is a great one.

Most people familiar with this title are probably familiar with the now dated movie.  I like the movie, but in some ways the movie hasn't passed the test of time.  The book, however, certainly has.  It serves the function that the best historical fiction does, acting to illuminate the truth of which the fiction is based.  Its great.

I haven't read any of Mr. Berger's other novels, including the 1999 sequel to Little Big Man, which was well received.  I may read at least that latter novel. At any rate, however, if Mr. Berger had contributed only one book to the American library, Little Big Man would ahve been a great addition.

May he rest in peace.

Repeating History. Learning from the Crusades

I just bumped up the Myths thread, which includes a lot of historical myths.  I thought about adding this one to it, but it deserves its own thread, so here it goes.

 Depiction of the Sarcens outside of Paris in 732. That's right, outside of Paris.  The Islamic invasion of Europe in this early Caliphate stage advanced this far north, which it would do again (outside Vienna) 700 years later.

One of the most often repeated lines about history is George Santayana's observation that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  This is often changed to "those who have not learned from history are doomed to repeat it", and similar variants, all of which are true.  Probably something that can be added to that is that those who learn history incorrectly, or who misunderstand history, get to repeat it as well, frequently to their horror.

And so we have the Crusades.

The Crusades weren't called the Crusades at the time that they occurred.  That's a term tagged on them in later years, post Reformation, when they were understood as sort of a singular episode.  Even that understanding isn't really correct, as it seems to assume, quite falsely, that the Church declared war on Islam, and then the Crusades happened, and then they ended.  None of that is really right.  Looking at what really  happened is worth doing, as we didn't learn the history, and now we are in fact repeating it.

The Crusades were once more or less accurately understood, but over the past several decades there's been a lot of hand wringing in the western world about how awful we (Europeans) were, or sometimes how awful the Catholic church was, for picking on the Moslems in the Middle East. That's the current view now, backed up in self-righteous statements people have issued over the years, seemingly assuming that we enlightened folks would never do something like that now, and we just failed to comprehend Islam.  None of that is even close to being historically accurate.

The First Crusade was "called" in 1095.  By that time, however, the Christian world had endured Islamic armed invasion for about 400 years.  The first waive of it had come during Mohamed's lifetime when he expanded his new religion by the sword, taking over the Arabian peninsula in the process.  This lead him into Christian lands, which would remain Christian for decades thereafter, in spite of the invasions, and whose remnants even today still exist.  In the following decades Islam was spread by Arab armies in wars of conquest all over North Africa and into Spain. The Moslems' armies of conquest then spread over the Pyrenees and into France, until Charles Martel arrested their progress, and turned them around, in the Battle of Tours in 732, just mere decades after Mohamed's death.  This arrested the progress of Islam's advance by the sword, all the way up in central France, and the process began of rolling the Islamic tide back in Spain, a process that wouldn't be complete until 1492.

In Middle East, Moslem forces, by the 11th Century, were oppressing the Christian residents of that region, which in many instances constituted the majority of the population and were pressing into the Byzantine Empire.  The Great Schism had not yet occurred, although the differences that would lead to it in culture were starting to manifest themselves, and the Byzantines called for help. The result was the Crusades.

We have tended to view that as some sort of unwarranted invasion for some time, but in reality, in an era when history generally progressed slowly, it wasn't seen that way at all.  It was an armed expedition to help a Christian Ally, the Byzantines, and to protect the Christian population of the Middle East, which was often the majority in any one region, all against an aggressive Islam that was an unwanted and unrelenting invader.  It was seen as a massive existential threat to the region, and to the safety of the Western World.

In other words, the Arab Islamic Armies (and later the Ottoman Turks) were seen pretty much the way we're seeing ISIL right now.  In taking on ISIL, we're pretty much doing what they started doing in the 11th Century.

Well, we might want to quit picking on the Crusaders, I suppose, given that.

And we might want to consider that the defensive wars of the Crusades were initially a success, but ultimately failed.  As a defensive war, they succeeded in arresting Arab Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire and in removing Islamic over-lordship of Christian lands.  They no doubt also occupied some Islamic territory as well.  But ultimately, they failed.  The reason is simple.  It wasn't because Europeans were trying to control a foreign culture.  Recent research has shown that the majority Christian population in those regions where they were the majority adapted to the Europeans pretty quickly and even generally welcomed the European immigrants that came along after the armies.  No, what happened is that after the initial successes, the Europeans generally lost interest in the region and when it fell again, viewed it as a far off distant threat.  The threat wasn't even appreciated again until the Turks invaded Anatolia and took Constantinople in 1453.  Ultimately, the Moslem armies would be turned around in Vienna, in 1529.

So what can we learn from this? Well, a variety of things I suppose.  One thing is that before condemning our own culture for taking on a military project, perhaps we ought to consider what they were really thinking and why.  The other may be that when regarding a threat, just because it was in antiquity doesn't mean that it really has fully gone away, but maybe just gone smaller or larger.  The Battle of Tours was 300 years distant from the First Crusades, and 1400 years from the Siege of Constantinople. We're about 500 years from that Siege, and the similar one at Vienna, making us closer in time to those events than Charles Martel was.

I'm not saying that those who have invaded Iraq and who contest for Syria are fully analogous to Mohamed's armies of the 7th Century, nor to the Ottoman Turks of the 15th. But they see themselves that way, and we would be pretty naive to at least not appreciate their world view, and the world view of those faced with similar or at least somewhat similar threats in the distant past, and learn by them.

Washington Coffee

Another interesting World War One themed advertisement.

UW College of Law Survey - UW_College_of_Law_Survey_Results.pdf

Microsoft Word - UW College of Law Survey - UW_College_of_Law_Survey_Results.pdf

Recent results of a Wyoming State Bar poll on the University of Wyoming's College of Law.

The comments are really interesting, but not uniform at all. Frankly, I don't know what a person could actually derive from these comments.

USDA Blog » Durfee Students Learn Healthy Habits in the Garden, Classroom, and Cafeteria

USDA Blog » Durfee Students Learn Healthy Habits in the Garden, Classroom, and Cafeteria

USDA Blog » New Mexico: A Rich Cultural History of Farming and Ranching

USDA Blog » New Mexico: A Rich Cultural History of Farming and Ranching

USDA Blog » New Fences Keep Cattle In, But Allow Elk & Wildlife to Move Freely

USDA Blog » New Fences Keep Cattle In, But Allow Elk & Wildlife to Move Freely

On the Anniversary of September 11, 2001. . . how well have we done?

Today is the anniversary of the Al Queda attack on the United States in 2011.  Thirteen fast years have gone by, and since that day we've conceived of ourselves of being at war with a vague terrorist enemy.  Indeed, at least at one time we conceived ourselves as having defeated that enemy. That concept has taken us into an acknowledged two wars, which I think has been actually three, and we're now involved in a fourth.*

 A soldier of the multi ethic Free Iraqi Forces reunited with his father, in 2003.  He hadn't seen his father in a decade.  A decade later, Iraq is in a civil war, and we're in a war with a self declared Islamic State recalling a an era much older than the history of our nation.  The FIF soldier wears then obsolete U.S desert BDUs and a US armored vest.  U.S. Army Photo by Spec. Tyler Long.

How well have we done in addressing the existential threat?  We should ask ourselves that question now, as we begin to launch off into a forth war, a war which we have no choice but to fight, and which may in fact have been one in which we were in some ways engaged, without our realizing it, prior to that terrible day 13 years ago.  Have we identified the enemy, and what motivates him?  I'm afraid we have in part, but perhaps only in part.

Any nation engaged in a war needs to address the seemingly simple topic of who the enemy actually is.  How does the enemy conceive of themselves?  We would think that this would be self evident, but frequently it is not, and just as frequently one nation conceives of the enemy through a thick filter of its own self perception.

We've been guilty of that many times in the past century.  During World War Two the Italians proved themselves not to be our enemy, as they abandoned their own government and acted in Italy's best interest by abandoning the Fascists.  Even now we hear some people claim that during that same war it wasn't the Germans, but the Nazis, who were our enemy in Germany, even though the evidence is well established that the German people were complicit in Germany's crimes.  During the Vietnam War was our enemy the Communist in the north, or Vietnamese nationalism?  That topic is still debated.  In the present crisis that started thirteen years ago is our enemy Al Queda, or is it something broader and deeper?  Or have we made it somehow broader and deeper through our own errors or omissions, or simply because War Changes Everything?  We should ask these questions now.

Let's start with the clear enemy, Al Queda.  Who and what are they?  Ever since 9/11 we've been repeatedly told that they're an aberrant extremist Islamic movement. Are they? And if so, what do they want and how to they justify it?  Did we take them on in a correct fashion, and have we beaten them?

Well, lets take a closer look.

Al Queda is an Islamic armed movement, to be sure, but that doesn't make it unique.  Even if we only go as far back as the mid 19th Century we can find many other examples of armed Islamic movements, including ones that took on Western powers.  So it would seem that there's some precedent for movements of this type, so merely stating that its an organization of that type doesn't get us where we need to go.  This is particularly the case as in modern times there's been some other very distinct examples of the same thing.  Islamic radicals assassinated Anwar Sadat, and they toppled the Shah of Iran.  Hamas, an offshoot in some ways of groups in Egypt, but also of Shiia fundamentalism in Iran, has continually waged war against Israel for well over a decade. So they've been around for awhile.

Taking a closer look at Al Queda, they're principally an organization of Sunni fundamentalist who were dedicated to the long term proposition of the restoration of a Caliphate such as it existed in early Islamic times, when its territorial extent was larger than that which had been controlled by Rome.  Being lead by educated men, they did not dream of an immediate accomplishment of that goal, which would be impossible, but rather had it as a distant one, in the same way, basically, that mainstream Bolsheviks conceived of a Communist world some day, not right away.  For a short term goal, they wanted to push the United States out of the Arabian Peninsula, which they regarded as an affront to Islam.  Their strategy involved attacking American military assets in the Middle East at first. When this failed, they conceived of, oddly enough, basically the same idea that the Soviets naively had explored as an opening gambit in the event of a Third World War, which was to strike the American financial district in New York City.

What so angered them, we must ask, about the US that it determined to murder innocents in a building and earlier attempted to sink the USS Cole?  Just having troops on the Arabian Peninsula did that. And they were there because we'd gone to the aid of Kuwait when Baathist Iraq attacked and attempted to annex it.

Baathist Iraq was a strictly secular regime, tolerating all religions, or none at all.  It wasn't culturally tolerant, but rather universally culturally repressive.  It was far from a model of democracy, and was more of a model of retained fascism in a way, which oddly enough made it an enemy of Al Queda, who called the Baath Party "the communist", which they weren't.  There was indeed an Iraqi Communist Party, but the Baath Party, like all fascists parties, suppressed it. So one would think that Al Queda would have welcomed the U.S. role in that first fight against Iraq, but it did not.  It abhorred the thought of "infidels" on what it regarded as the holy soil of the Arabian Peninsula.

Or, perhaps, indeed probably, it feared the thought of what a western democratic people would mean to the oppressed population of Saudi Arabia, a region which in antiquity had populations of Christians and Jews, but which was locked up in Sunni fundamentalism under a kingdom.  So, to try to end this affront, it determined to wage a terrorist war against us.

Were those goals and methods consistent with Islam?  We've been repeated told since 9/11 that "Islam is a religion of peace" and that Al Queda is an aberration. And that Al Queda is a de facto aberration is self evident, as most Moslems most places don't act in this fashion. Still, the blanket assertion that this is self evidently contrary to the stated nature of Islam has not really been examined, and it doesn't bear up well upon examination.

The Koran, which is taken by Moslems as the actual words of God, fully advocates the use of violence against non believers in context, with that context seemingly being at least warfare to conquer.  Non Islamic students of the Koran generally hold that the "peaceful" language of the Koran was written before the violent texts, and it can be taken from this that the history of the text follows Mohammed's success in spreading his message violently, which he did.  Early on, Islam had to just hold on as one religion, almost certainly a Gnostic based heresy or a Gnostic influenced new religion, amongst many religions in Mecca, which was tolerant to nearly any religion. Later, as it gained ground, Islam became highly intolerant of other religions with some slight tolerance of Judaism and Christianity, in no small part, probably, as it was a Gnostic heresy based upon them.  Indeed, while Gnosticism had tended to be hostile to some degree against orthodox Christianity (or we could say Catholicism, as the Catholic Church was the only church at the time.  That Islam licensed violence is really indisputable.  Indeed, not only did it license warfare, but the text actually allows Moslem combatants to take the women of their enemies, physically.  Excused as a necessity in the text, reflecting that Islamic fighters were away from their homes, they could use the women acquired with "their strong right arms" and were told now to worry about that creating any progeny.  People tend to turn a blind eye towards this, as its shocking, but that's what it says.  Recent actions by ISIL in doing just that are fully compliant with the Koran.

Al Queda, having aligned itself with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, found it self in an enviable position prior to 9/11.  In the catbirds seat with the support of a regime of Islamic "students" (the meaning of "Taliban") it seemed safe and secure.  It decided to go bold, in an act it through would take down the American economy. It showed itself naive, just as the Soviets had with an earlier secret plan that also would have struck the New York financial district.  And it didn't properly gauge the American reaction. We, of course, went to war there, and largely eliminated it.  But didn't eliminate it completely. And now we find its strain of thought weaving itself through individual Afghans, and it seems somewhat on the rise there.  So, did we achieve our initial aim there?  It would seem we did at least in part, although we also seem ready to quit the fight and leave Afghanistan with no modern institutions, which it has largely lacked since the 1970s at least.  We best rethink this.

We also went into Iraq, and that seems now to be a clear error.

It was frankly a misguided effort to start with. The war in Iraq had nothing at all to do with Al Queda, which despised the Baath regime.  And Al Queda wasn't hte stated aim in any event, but the elimination of chemical weapons we believed held by Iraq and which the Iraqis stupidly wouldn't confirm they lacked.  The Iraqis guessed badly, having been lead to believe that we would not topple the regime as we had not done so in 1990-91 and we hadn't supported the uprising against the regime thereafter.  They failed to appreciate that American administrations, and therefore goals, change at least every eight years.

Defeating the Baath regime proved to be easy, but what we did not anticipate is that the vacuum in the regime's power would be immediately filled by contesting Islamic forces, including Al Queda in Iraq, which is now known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.  With the war against Al Queda in Afghanistan hardly even commenced, Al Queda remained more than powerful enough to support regional splinter groups and it did (and does).  One of these was Al Queda in Iraq, which commenced a guerrilla war against the coalition forces.

Al Queda in Iraq was a bit different than Al Queda.  Fighting successfully in the field against the coalition at first, it came to dream of establishing a Caliphate immediately, not some day.  It, and other local forces, were put down, but it didn't go away.  When the war ended, we supported the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, which quickly went Shiia against all others, and alienated all the rest of the population over time.

Almost immediately thereafter, the lid seemingly came off of despotic governments all over the middle east, and there were uprising is Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.  Interpreted in the west as nascent democratic movements, only in Libya, with its complicated ethnic and political history, was that more or less true.   Elsewhere, Islamic fundamentalist movements were a strong element in every uprising, seeking to push out an autocratic or military government in favor of an Islamic one.  In Egypt and Tunisia that succeeded, until the armies, the most liberal and westernized institutions in those countries, pushed back, preventing them from becoming second and third Irans.

Then came Syria, about which we've already written.  Ruled by a Baathist government, but controlled by Alawites, the multicultural country was ruled by a strongman but by necessity the government, controlled by a group that Moslems regard as heretical, was tolerant towards all religions.  And the country in fact, like Iraq, was the home to several. Engaged in fighting Islamic militants since the 1990s, it found itself engaged in a civil war in which western pundits naively assumed would necessarily result in a democratic victory, when in fact a Sunni theocracy was the obvious likely outcome.

Out of that, Al Queda in Iraq, seeing its chances expanded, re branded itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Syria) and declared the Caliphate the immediate goal.  In the west its naively believed that its moved beyond Al Queda, but in reality the better evidence is that the local Al Queda in Iraq simply saw its chance to make the long term goal the present one, and effectively evolved into the Al Queda that counts.  It expanded its war into Iraq, and up until our insertion of air power, the western arming of the separatist Kurds, and the Iranian arming of Shiia militias, it came darn close to achieving its goal.

And what is that goal, well as we've already blogged, its the establishment of a Caliphate, and its declared t he Caliph to be in power, and the seat of his power is to be Baghdad.  It's used methods that we have not seen in this scale since Mohammed's own time, that being mass armed violence, and the assault, capture and enslavement of non Moslem women.

So, we must now ask ourselves, is this an Islamic aberration, or is it something that's consistent with the Moslem faith. This question really matters, as determining what war we are fighting, and when it will end, depends entirely on that.  A war ends when the enemy gives up, not when we decide its over.

So the use of violence by Al Queda, and now by ISIL, isn't really an aberration, or is it?  The Koran doesn't license the use of violence against other Moslems. That may be a fine distinction for those who aren't Moslems, but that is also the case.  Here's where Al Queda and its progeny ISIL seem to have gone off the mark.  They both kill a lot of Moslems.  They know doubt are rationalizing it, but that's something that we don't seem to quite have appreciated.  Our enemy is okay with killing most of us, in tehir basic texts, as long as it is based on a religious aim. Killing other Moslems, however, is not Islamic.

We know that by and large, most Moslems most places ignore most of this aspect of their faith.  The Koran does sanction, as we've noted, war, enslavement and assault.  But most Moslems don't do any of that.   Indeed, adherence to this view seems to be largely concentrated amongst Arabs, who initiated the religion in the first place, and radicalized Punjabs and Europeans.  That's something we haven't seemed to really grasp either.  Moslem Indonesians, for example, seem to have little interest in this aspect of their Faith.  Indeed, most Moslems most places certainly don't act on it, assuming that they are even aware of it, which they may in fact not be, as the Koran is regarded as authentic only in the language it was first written in (which Moslems believe to be the direct word of God), Arabic.  Indeed, its' very common for non Arab Moslems to memorize vast tracks of the Koran but have no idea what they are saying, and converts to the faith in the west largely come into it with the highly developed view Christians hold towards the Bible, which does not hold the text to be God's direct words, but rather to be inspired by God.

Indeed, we also know that beyond that, we also have the historical example of Moslems serving in the colonial armed forces of Christian nations, which would cut the opposite way.  Lots of Moslems served in the French Army up into the 1960s. And we can find similar British examples, so there's obviously some nuance to this, somewhere.

But where?

We'd do well to figure it out. But I don't think we've tried very hard, and it would serve us well to do so.  We have seen uprising of Moslem "fundamentalist" dating back to the mid 19th Century at least, or basically any time there were westerners in the Arabian region.  So the call of "fundamentalism" is strong and longly held.  It would not seem to be a call to "fundamentalism" at all, but rather a call towards fundamentals.  A faith that was expanded originally by warfare and which expanded into, and controlled, areas that were majority Christian for centuries thereafter, the faith is used to the idea and based on the idea of armed conflict and conquer.  A return to at least armed conflict is part of its history, and warfare waged by groups hearing that call is often brutal in the extreme.  Even during World War Two Moslem troops in command of the French went on a notorious rampage directed upon Italian women at one point.   But at the same time, we know that most of the time most Moslems remain peaceful and in fact ignore large tenants of their faith.

We also know, or should know, that the entire "moderate Islam" line is a complete fable.  The percentage of Moslems who have a doctrine that has formally adapted to such a view is tiny.  There are those who have, but generally the Hellenized view of Islam fell out of favor, and was regarded as heretical by Moslems, in the Middle Ages. Therefore, while there are many peaceful Moslems, there's no peaceful Moslem theology and those who like to believe their is are living in a fantasy land.

Indeed, the differnce in mainstream Islamic groups is slight, and people who like to point to them as huge are fooling themselves and lack a large doctrinal difference to point to. This does not mean that they get along with each other, but that's more in the nature of human nature than doctrinal difference.  Students of Christianity will note that the Catholic and Orthodox have not always gotten along well, even though they view each others holy orders as fully valid and from the outside those familiar with them are often stunned how close these "two lungs of the church" are.

We do know, however, that nowhere in Islam does it sanction the killing in this fashion of other Moslems. And there, at least, Al Queda and ISIL are clearly outside the Islamic fold.  They seemingly have no problem with that.  ISIL of course mostly limits itself to warfare against Christians, Zoroastrians, and Shiias (where it can site to doctrinal difference, no matter how slight), but that it kills some Sunni Kurds cannot be disputed. 

Have we grasped, therefore, what has occurred and are we prepared to deal with it?

Our war in Afghanistan was necessary, and we won it. But we've done a bad job of securing the peace there, and now we are leaving before it is fully secured.  The Afghanis are not Arabs, and the country has a long history of tolerating all sorts of peoples, including Jews, Communists, and Buddhists.  This is evaporating, or has, and will if we leave too soon.  We haveint' fully done in Al Queda in Central Asia, and we best do that before we leave.  And we should leave Afghanistan intact and functioning, which it isn't yet.

Invading Iraq was, in my view, a mistake.  All over Arabia and North Africa we've totally failed to appreciate the irony that the most western of governments in that region are also the most fascistic. That's icky, but true. They hold to no religion so they do not favor any.  They educate women, and in terms of domestic policies they tend to focus on economics more than anything else. They are like Mussolini's Italy, gross, overblown, blowhards, but making the trains run on time and granting quarter to no other movements, secular or religious. As much as we hate to admit it, over time, these governments would fall of their own accord, but when they did, it would have been because they educated their population, and most  particularly their female population, to the point where that population will not put up with them any longer.

And once women in the region are educated to that extent, they won't put up with the old jihad interpretation of Islam either.  That fact is one that we should appreciate.  Mohamed held that the majority of the population in Hell was female, and the prize for males in Heaven were females. That's an appealing vision to primitive men, stuck in a teenage view of teenage girls, but it has no appeal to educated males and even less appeal to educated women.  It was already being interpreted out of the Koran by Hellenized Islamic theologians before they were put down and condemned as heretical in the Middle Ages. That view will fall out of favor once most women in the Middle East are educated, but we have a long ways to go before that.

In that meantime, we need to be aware that the virtues of "tolerance" and "multi culturalism" are not human instincts, but learned behavior in their entirety.  Intolerance is the human norm and instinct.  In the west, these values are universal because of the long influence of Christianity, and we've imported them to receptive cultures around the globe. We haven't succeeded in exporting them to the Middle East whatsoever, and we're a long ways from doing so. Only in partially Christian Lebanon, Syria and Egypt do these views really have a toehold.  In the closed world of the Arabian Peninsula they have no traction at all.  One of our prime "allies" in that region, Saudi Arabia, is a model of repression, with the door completely closed to religious tolerance and rights for women.

All of these facts we need to acknowledge.  When we take in, in the west, large numbers of immigrants from this region, we take in these views, which will take at least a generation or more to evolve out of those populations.  When we do that we also provide for western youth who live in the any value is a good value, or no value at all, world we've developed since the mid 60s with an attractive option to join something that clearly believes in something, no matter how contrary to our values it may be.  When we look at governments in the region, we need to see what they do on the ground level, not at that the electoral level, even if that means holding our nose and pocketing our hands from time to time.  And where peoples who are more western are ready to carve off of those who are not ready to move forward, such as the Kurds, we need to support them.  Where others remained entrenched in the 7th Century, like Saudi Arabia, we need to back away from them, as they'll fall anyhow, and they in no way support our values.

Most of all, we need to be ready for a long haul with that section of the Arabic and Islamic population that regards this as a Holy War, and which will pop up for time to time for the foreseeable future.  Just because we don't view this as a Holy War doesn't mean they don't, and just because we believe we've won at one one point in time, doesn't mean we have.