Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently
Permanently? Egotists!
altered the Earth's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere. That possibly caused the Earth to warm up and forever changed the climate.
Lead study author William Ruddiman is a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a climate scientist.
"It seems like a common-sense idea that there weren't enough people around 5, 6, 7,000 years ago to have any significant impact on climate. But if you allow for the fact that those people, person by person, had something like 10 times as much of an effect or cleared 10 times as much land as people do today on average, that bumps up the effect of those earlier farmers considerably, and it does make them a factor in contributing to the rise of greenhouse gasses," Ruddiman said.
Ruddiman said that starting thousands of years ago, people would burn down a forest, poke a hole in the soil between the stumps, drop seeds in the holes and grow a crop on that land until the nutrients were tapped out of the soil. Then they would move on.
"And they'd burn down another patch of forest and another and another. They might do that five times in a 20-year period," he said.
That slashing and burning on such a large scale spewed enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and warmed the planet, the study says.
What about the Little Ice Age?
Ruddiman has studied and researched the idea of ancient man contributing to climate change for years now. And he's endured plenty of criticism over his theories.
Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, is among those who disagree with Ruddiman. He said Ruddiman is "exaggerating the importance of early man."
Caldeira told CNN that while ancient farmers may have played a tiny role in climate change, "it just wasn't a significant factor." He added, "There are actually studies showing if you cut down forests for farmland, you actually cool the planet, because of the glare from the cleared land." Heathen!
Ruddiman and study co-author Erle Ellis, an ecologist with UMBC, acknowledge that some models of past land use show it's only been in the past 150 years -- with a huge population explosion, the onset of the Industrial Age and the rise of fossil-fuel burning -- that global warming has accelerated.
Just to clarify for me, is it as warm yet as it was during the lifetime of Jesus Christ?
But Ruddiman said, "My argument is that even at the beginning, they just used much more land per person, so even though there weren't that many people, they used enough to start to push these greenhouse gas concentrations up."
Ruddiman's research also argues that the Earth was on its way to another ice age 10,000 years ago and that ice sheets were already forming in northern latitudes when ancient man started his slashing and burning method of farming.
#1
He's right about the farming, but wrong about the CO2.
You clearly see the effect of farming versus natural forest here in Western Australia along what we call the vermin fence. On one side is wheat fields and clear skies. On the other side is natural forest and frequently cloudy skies and as a result higher rainfall.
The fence runs in a straight line and so does the cloud vs clear sky boundary.
CO2 levels are of course identical on both sides of the fence.
#5
I think he's trying to say that it's the evil People that have caused the destruction of his eden.
Like so many others in the green movement they see a depopulated earth as nirvana.
Posted by: DanNY ||
08/19/2009 8:44 Comments ||
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#6
Like so many others in the green movement they see a depopulated earth as nirvana.
Except for themselves. Someone has to stick around and manage nirvana ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2009 9:00 Comments ||
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#7
TW, they might have reforest the wheatbelt anyway. Without trees that capture the rainfall near the surface and transpire it back into the air, the water seeps down and brings salt up to the surface making the land useless for agriculture.
On a global scale cutting down forests results in less water transpired back into the air and more runoff to the ocean. Hence a drier, less cloudy world.
A single tree will transpire 10,000s of litres of water (as water vapour) a year into the atmosphere. Multiple that by a few billion trees and the effect is suprisingly large.
#8
phil_b: There is a twist to that. Plants open leaf pores to uptake CO2, and in doing so, lose water. But if more CO2 is in the air, they don't open their pores so much, retain more water, which remains in the ground.
Likewise, the old question was, "Are plants more 'soil' or more 'air'?", that is, do they get more of their bulk from soil nutrition or from photosynthesis?, comes down squarely on the side of 'air'. Once they have their minimal needs met from the 'soil', they don't need any more from the 'soil', which remains behind for other plants to use.
This means that higher CO2 levels reverse desertification by raising soil moisture levels, increase plant density in the same area, raise humidity where plant life is dense, thus lowering evaporation.
I'd like to add that most land salinization doesn't come from liquefied salts rising, but from shallow irrigation. This is a major problem in California, where much farmland is lost every year.
Typically, to restore land, it has to be flooded for weeks, to carry the salt far below the root level. However, several plants have been discovered that uptake huge amounts of salts. With just normal irrigation, they can be harvested for disposal, stripping the land of much of its salt contamination.
#9
It seems to me that most of these "environmental" academics don't have much background in modern agricultural practices/theories and or just basic scientific methods. And they are really prone to specious assumptions for their theories.
#10
Moose, there is no irrigation of any consequence in the Western Australian wheatbelt. Doubtless the trees maintained a salt free zone near the surface.
He's what a scientist should be: careful, fact-based, open about his assumptions and models. The 2007 book was written for the general public specifically to counter the global warming political movement. And he has been highly respected in his field, so when he spoke out a lot of on-the-fence scientists began to pay attention. The result is a slowly growing acknowledgement that the claims were way overblown and ungrounded.
(Ruddiman) presents a very persuasive case that starting about 8000 years ago, an increased "unnatural" output of carbon dioxide from early human agricultural endeavors began to measurably effect the earth's climate (with the effect intensified a few thousand years later by increased methane emissions from rice farming).
It is Ruddiman's conclusion, very clearly presented and well supported with evidence, that this "extra" carbon dioxide has offset the "normal" global cooling that otherwise would have ended the present comfortable "interglacial" period and plunged us once again into an era of heavy glaciation. In short, into yet another Ice Age.
Ruddiman's work challenges us to jettison many comfortable myths, among them being that "Mother Earth" is naturally a stable benign guardian and that pre-industrial humans lived in some idyllic, low impact manner.
The second hypothesis is the most plausible explanation I've seen for some of the puzzling short-term temperature/CO2 gyrations of the last 2000 years. He proposes that major plague pandemics have caused sufficient die-offs, abandoment of farms, and reforestration to temporarily lower CO2 and temperature.
This could explain the later-Roman/Dark Ages lower temperatures, followed by the relatively disease-free Medieval Warming Period, in which Greenland was settled, and UK vineyards spread again to current levels, if not quite as far as early Roman.
He ascribes the Little Ice Age drop to Bubonic plagues in Europe, and especially, to the death of estimated 50 million native Americans from smallpox and other European diseases.
He does enough math to make these claims at least worth further study. He (ed: also) carefully observes that "correlation is not causation" and (ed: therefore) goes on to calibrate the mechanisms by which pandemic can lead to lower CO2.
Ruddiman refreshingly understands the differences between early hypotheses and well-tested theories. He often starts with an observed behavior, then carefully evaluates alternate explanations for it, rather than just offering an answer.
This is an exemplary approach to science, and while the hypotheses certainly need testing, this seems like a very productive line of thought that should incite useful further research. Climate analysis always faces the serious problem of extracting trends, and their causes from a very noisy signal.
Compared to many competing hypotheses, Ruddiman's seem to be able to explain some gyrations that have often caused people to say "temperatures go up and down randomly anyway."
#16
The major false assumption is that if a tree is cut down, no other tree will ever grow on that spot. Every time those early slash-and-burn farmers moved on, they left a regenerating forest behind them.
Anyone concerned about deforestation would do well to go on Google Earth and spend a while looking over the Amazon basin.
#18
OK, one last comment before I go back to work from my lunch break.
Grunter, consider the biomass of new trees vs. hundred+ year old ones. Reforestation does not replace the O2 production of old growth quickly. In any case, what is at stake is the burning of those trees, not simply their removal.
Like I said, read the book and then come have a discussion about his work.
#19
I heard this theory floated quite a few years back, but it was about the Chinese rice terracing.
Wanna have some fun with a GreenGo, argue for them to admit that the mass slaughter of the Bison was in fact beneficial since it cut down significantly the amount of grazing animal farts. Then suggest gore award the Plains Indians' tribes with an award acknowledging their sacrifice in the name his cause of preventing Goebbal Swarming.
That Africa's game parks should be disbanded, and all Africa grazing animals be put down or placed inside of methane harvesting structures.
That whales quite possibly stifle the growth of phytoplankton and should be hunted down in the name of gore's cause.
#20
"Salting" the soil is a function of irrigation not rainfall. Rain water picks up solubles and moves it lower into a soil profile. Irrigation water either from a river or ground water will concentrate salts into the upper profile.
#21
Here's an article about a ancient farming method that might be revived:Poor farmers in the heart of Bolivia's Amazon are being encouraged to embrace the annual floods - by using a centuries-old irrigation system for their crops. They are experimenting with a sustainable way of growing food crops that their ancestors used.
Of course the method takes a lot of work to start & then a coordinated ongoing effort to maintain. Some farmers there doubt it will pay off. The method is touted as a way to deal with 'global warming.'
#22
However, several plants have been discovered that uptake huge amounts of salts. With just normal irrigation, they can be harvested for disposal, stripping the land of much of its salt contamination.
#23
Poor farmers in the heart of Bolivia's Amazon are being encouraged to embrace the annual floods - by using a centuries-old irrigation system for their crops. They are experimenting with a sustainable way of growing food crops that their ancestors used.
Except when the weather fails to deliver or delivers too much. That's why man decided to try to have some influence over the situation because when crops fail lots of people starve [and as we've read that in fact seems to be an objective of some of the greenies - not them of course].
I wrote an article a few months back entitled 'Yemen...What if Sedition Ends in Catastrophe?" In this editorial I suggested that if sedition, which has reared its head in Yemen, ends in catastrophe then no party will be victorious and everybody would share the same feelings of defeat, failure and bitterness. Yemen, along with its stability, dreams and aspirations will be the victim.
What pushed me to write the article was the emergence of some voices in the south of Yemen that called for breaking the Yemeni union, which was realized in 1990, based on the pretext of inequality between the north and the south in the political and economic fields and the employment sector.
That's a pretext? When did the reality change?
"Yemen with its rough terrain and important position was and still is the 'promised land' that Al Qaeda dreams of rather than remote Afghanistan or wretched Somalia."
What adds to the Yemeni concern today is the war against the Al Houthi movement. This movement has ideological, military and political complications as well as ties, interests and demands that intertwine in a way that makes a decisive settlement difficult to achieve, even though the government could accomplish a victory on the military level.
I hope it isn't too late for Yemen to rectify the mistakes that the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh acknowledged when he suggested that there are some practices that need to be sorted out, as the seeds of sedition in Yemen have been visible for a long time. This was handled only with temporary painkillers and partial solutions instead of permanent cures.
Some people even describe the current conflict between the government and the Al Houthi movement as the "sixth war". It does not indicate to people observing the events in Yemen that the conflicting powers realize the dangers that surround their country or that they comprehend the real responsibility they have towards saving Yemen from a miserable fate.
Yemen with its rough terrain and important position was and still is the "promised land" that Al Qaeda dreams of rather than remote Afghanistan or wretched Somalia. If Al Qaeda is able to establish a stronghold in Yemen then removing it from that country will be a very complicated and very costly task.
Therefore, support must be given to a united Yemen in order to solve its internal problems based on justice and fairness, and equal opportunities for all the different components of Yemeni society. This support must be given by all those [states] that are at risk from a lack of stability in Yemen, most prominently the Gulf countries and the superpowers with direct interests in the security of sea routes in this important part of the world.
May God save Yemen and the Yemenis.
Amen. Since it doesn't look like they'll manage it any time soon by themselves.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
The current Yemen is the union of 2 distinct countries. They have different cultures, populations etc. breaking them back up again would not be a bad idea.
(Think of Malasia -a mix of Muslim Malaya and Christian colonies on Borneo.)
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
08/19/2009 11:42 Comments ||
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Eyes beginning to peep in under the tent
But worse for Obama, his end run damaged what was once his greatest asset -- the belief among voters that he was something different.
Endless evasions and then a crackdown on opponents has made Obama look like just another president -- and a cynical one at that. Emotionally invoking his grandmother's November death over the weekend to shame his critics was just the latest in a series of shoddy ploys.
Can President Obama escape the wreckage of his health care effort? Yes, but only if he stops being so slippery and starts leveling with voters.
#1
I do not know anyone who thinks Obama is "different". People turn down the sound when Obama comes on the TV or radio. That cannot be a good sign for the President, or what is left of his term.
Salem Police Department reports finding a man's body in the Willamette river just west of the Marion Bridge.
The dead man's name will not be released until his family has been notified.
The victim apparently drowned due to excessive intoxication. He was wearing black fishnet stockings, a red garter belt, a strap-on sexual device, and an Obama t-shirt.
He also had a cucumber inserted in his rectum.
The police removed the Obama t-shirt to spare his family any unnecessary embarrassment.
A good read/ Michael ends it with:
The foreign policy experts call this "realism." I call it stasist. It leaves America standing not for hope and change, but for the status quo and despair.
I am sure that you find it inspiring that America elected its first black president (I do, too). And I am sure you appreciate Obamas openness to alternative lifestyles, although you may have noticed that he, like George W. Bush and unlike Dick Cheney, opposes same-sex marriage.
The larger point is this: You want policies that will enable you to choose your future. Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you. Is this the hope and change you want?
#1
They can't help it! They've been fed a diet of egalitarian, cultural Afrocentrism, affirmative action pablum for decades. Stricken with institutionalized white guilt, many young people as well as some not so young, actually believe NOT voting and supporting Barry or a black president, regardless of background and qualifications, would have been a predatory act of exclusion and racism. The same holds true for black youth and many who embrace black chauvanism. Don't blame the youth. They've long been programmed by our left-leaning educational systems. Our chickens coming home to roost I would wager.
Barack Obama is all in favor of offshore drilling for oil. Just not here in America. To prove the point, his administration is ready to lend $2 Billion dollars to Petrobas, the huge Brazilian Oil Company, to drill in their newly discovered oil fields off their Atlantic coast.
Barack Obama's assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, conveniently outlined the administration's present and future policy mistakes in a speech on August 6, "A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans."
John O. Brennan, Barack Obama's assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
To start with, his address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, has an unusual tenor. "Sycophantic" is the word that springs to mind, as Brennan ninety times in five thousand words invokes either "President Obama," "he," "his," or "the president." Disturbingly, Brennan ascribes virtually every thought or policy in his speech to the wisdom of the One. This cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North Korean functionary paying homage to the Dear Leader.
Specifics are no better. Most fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing terrorists: "Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent." Which legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think Al-Qaeda represents?
Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold threat, one being "Al-Qaida and its allies" and the other "violent extremism." But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter. This elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.
He also rejects any connection between "violent extremism" and Islam: "Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself."
This passage regurgitates a theory of radical Islam that, according to Lt. Colonel Joseph C. Myers of the U.S. Air Command and Staff College, "is part of a strategic disinformation and denial and deception campaign" developed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Discredited in 2007 by Robert Spencer, the theory distinguishes between good jihad and bad jihad and denies any connection between Islam and terrorism.
It's a deeply deceptive interpretation intended to confuse non-Muslims and win time for Islamists. The George W. Bush administration, for all its mistakes, did not succumb to this ruse. But Brennan informs us that his boss now bases U.S. policy on it. Young Barack probably learned this while attending koran memorization classes.
I shouldn't think so -- that kind of argument is only for the infidels, not the locals amongst themselves. No doubt he heard it from his dear friend and babysitter, PLO activist Professor Rashid Khalidi.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2009 10:52 ||
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#1
Along with the monthly "surprise" of higher unemployment figures, will come the day of "surprise" when Al-Quaida and its allies show themselves to Obama to be murderers of children, murderers of women, murderers of tied-up men, and killers of Americans everywhere.
As Pakistan marks the 62nd anniversary of its founding this month, it remains mired in existential conflicts. Outsiders are often perplexed at how the Pakistan government can engage in state-sponsored terrorism and harboring of jihadi militants while claiming partnership with America in the fight against terrorism.
For those familiar with colonial history of British India, Pakistans emergence as a dangerous and destabilizing force was Pakistans destiny. The seeds were sown in 1940 by those who exploited Islam to gain political power and eventually secured Pakistan from the British Empire in 1947.
Formation of Pakistan was neither assured nor certain. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the champion of Pakistan, could hardly be called a Muslim in any sense. Famous for his expensively tailored Savile Row suits, educated at Lincoln Inn, he was a highly successful and extremely wealthy lawyer. He ate pork, drank alcohol and could barely speak Urdu, the language of pride for Indian Muslims.
Similarly, Muslim Leagues creators were an amalgamation of royalists and feudal landlords who were loyal to the British Empire and never commanded ordinary Muslims attention and support. Under their stewardship, Pakistan was a mere fantasy. In fact, 10 years before Partition of India and the departure of the British, Muslim League and Jinnah were on the verge of political extinction.
In 1937, the Muslim League had failed miserably in pre-colonial Indian provincial elections. The results demonstrated that the party claiming to represent Muslims did not speak for Muslims it received 4.8 percent of the Muslim vote even with separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus instituted by British colonialists.
The Nationalist Congress party, dominated by Hindus but still largely secular in nature, swept the elections. Jinnah, the supreme leader of Muslim League, who had started as a rising star in Congress in 1905 with impeccable secular credentials, became marginalized.
For political survival, Jinnah began blatant use of religion to gain support of Muslim masses with highly incendiary slogans, frightening the masses that Hindus were going to destroy the Muslims after the British left India. Jinnah propounded his deceitful theory of Hindus and Muslims being two separate nations that could not live together and asked for creation of Pakistan, a land for Muslims, by division of India.
His partys incendiary slogan of Islam in danger created a tremendous rift in divided Indian society; cities and towns burned with communal violence. The violence was instigated by Muslim League with tacit support of its national leaders through their paramilitary League National Guard goons and resulted in massive Hindu retaliation. Thousands were butchered and tens of thousands made homeless. Once unleashed, the bloody monster of religious hatred was on its unimpeded march.
Jinnahs chauvinistic propaganda and contrived ethnic conflict so effectively mobilized the Muslim population that, in a short period of seven years, the Muslim League went from winning less than 5 percent to more than 75 percent of the Muslim vote in provincial elections of 1945. It took only two more years for the country to be divided on the basis of religious hatred and massive violence.
Jinnahs pathological politics resulted in a horrendous bloodbath. The Partition resulted in one of the most brutal and bloody forced migrations in history, in which Sikhs and Hindus were chased from newly created Pakistan and Muslims from India.
The ensuing violence resulted in the massacre of some 2 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs and expulsion of approximately 17 million people from their homes. The Machiavellian policies of Pakistan are the legacy of the holocaust accompanying the Partition. We are still reaping the bitter fruit of poisonous seeds Jinnah and the Muslim League planted in 1940s. At the dawn of the 21st century, the world stands on the brink due to two nuclear powers perpetually in conflict. There have been four major wars between India and Pakistan and the two nations have come perilously close to nuclear war after Pakistani-sponsored terrorists attacked the Indian parliament in 2001.
Nascent Pakistan was insecure and fearful of its larger neighbor India and immediately adopted three basic constructs as her reason for existence: India as the enemy, Partition as unfinished business, and search for allies.This misdirected focus resulted in authoritarian, centralized rule, lack of rapprochement with India and a perpetual state of militarization and war.
The never-ending search for allies against India resulted in Pakistani dictators and autocratic leaders making Machiavellian deals that further radicalized religious fanatics and later resulted in unholy alliances with al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Since Pakistan felt it had been shortchanged in Partition (deprived of Kashmir, a state with a Muslim majority), and it was militarily weak, it engaged in a war of attrition in Kashmir by supporting jihadi terrorists through Pakistan military. The shacklehold of Pakistan military on domestic and foreign policy ensured that peace would remain elusive between India and Pakistan.
Additionally, Pakistan sought to destabilize and control Afghanistan utilizing militant Islamists, accepted money from the fundamentalist Saudi Arabia regime for militant religious schools, developed nuclear weapons to counter Indian military superiority and sold her services to the larger military powers with the eventual goal of countering and destabilizing India. While Pakistan is being riven by the Taliban and Islamic militants, the ruling elite still consider India as her primary enemy!
Fundamentalists in the Pakistani military created the Taliban, supported and harbored al-Qaida, and possibly made nuclear weapon technology deals with North Korea. Pakistani political vision has been frozen in 1947 and remains stunted due to Pakistans fixation over Kashmir. As a result, 62 years after her independence, Pakistan stands as a state perpetually at war with herself and with her own citizens.
Machiavellian policies that used Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir have begun their blowback as terrorists blow people up in Lahore and Islamabad, jihadis train killers to launch attacks in Mumbai and elsewhere, and the Taliban expands its control and continues its march within Pakistan. Besides fighting the Taliban in Swat, the Pakistan military battles nationalists and separatists in Balochistan and the Northwestern Province. Pakistan continues to struggle to imagine itself as a nation, to find a coherent self.
As Pakistan celebrated her independence Aug. 14, it is instructional to focus on U.S. soldiers fighting the Pakistani-trained and sheltered Taliban in Afghanistan. While our military bombs militants in western Pakistan and we line the pockets of the Pakistani establishment in return, the weak government of President Asif Ali Zardari vacillates between serving its U.S. financers and homegrown jihadi ideologues obsessed with Kashmir and control of Afghanistan. Nothing good can come of this.
Pakistan may be hopelessly corrupt, lawless, drug-ridden and inherently unstable, but it is here to stay. Despite being brainwashed by their rulers, Pakistani people have time and again rejected Islamic fundamentalists and remain remarkably open and tolerant. It is time for their leaders to step out of their insecure cocoons and focus on development of Pakistan. If the rulers of Pakistan will not detach themselves from their poisonous origin, we can expect continual wars by proxies, jihadi politics and perpetual suffering in south Asia for years to come.
Sunil Dutta, Ph.D., lives in Agoura.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
No. They are rooted in sixth century Arabian Peninsula where/when religion for sociopaths was invented.
#2
After losing one war after another with India, Pakis turned to the Arab world for backing. In exchange for massive aid, the Saudis forced Pakistan to allow cultural infiltration by the Wahabi clerics. The rest is the darkest history of the post WW2 world.
After watching Middle East politics for more than 30 years, it is clear that these events--and the perceptions of them--move in cycles. At times, developments force a more realistic, and at other times a less realistic, understanding of what's going on. Sometimes, sadly, it is only when things go wrong that people in the West wake up.
Let's take some "positive examples," in terms of negative developments, as examples
1. 1967 war: Israel is not going to be wiped out, as many in West and Arab world predicted. Its defeat of Soviet allies is perceived as a victory for the West, and Israel begins to be appreciated as a strategic asset. The Arab world's rejection of peace after the war is clearly recognized.
2. Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, 1979: Despite predictions that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini will either be shoved aside after the revolution or is a moderate reformer, the regime becomes a very radical one, anti-American and a menace to the region. The danger of radical Islamism is recognized as is the fact that measures must be taken to counter Iran, mainly to save Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf.
3. Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 1990-1991: The prediction that all Arabs will support Saddam Hussein if the West attacks is shown to be ridiculous (I debated Madeleine Albright in December 1990 and that's what she said). The idea of unitary Arab nationalism and the Palestinian issue as the only thing that matters is exposed as false. Along with the USSR's collapse, the Western defeat of Iraq, and the PLO's mistake in backing Saddam, this gives the opportunity for moving ahead on peace efforts. It also shut up the Palestinian-issue-is-all-that-matters crowd for about five years or so.
4. The failure of the Camp David meeting and the Clinton-Assad meetings, 2000: The Clinton Administration sees that neither Yasir Arafat nor Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad want peace. The failure of the peace process is put on their shoulders by American policymakers (this is where the Bush Administration got the basis for its policy), but this lesson isn't remembered very long by the public.
5. The September 11 attacks, 2001: Things will never be the same, it was said on that day, but of course, the cycle always continues. Radical Islamism is recognized as a major threat both to America and the region. This one lasts about four years but is cancelled out largely by the Iraq war.
I could also give examples of the alternative part of the cycle, but let me just use the current one as the example. Policymakers and much of the public goes in the other direction because they are dissatisfied with the Iraq war, which appears as a failure at the time; President George Bush's alleged unilateralism and his unpopularity at home and abroad; and certain other trends in the West (discussed more below).
To a large extent, the spirit of the current age is: Israeli-Palestinian peace is within reach; it's all Israel's fault; Islamists aren't so much a threat as a call for engagement; there's nothing worth fighting about; and many other points you're familiar with.
Now, here's the key question: Is this current phase a long-term trend or do we see the distant but approaching end of it? I don't know but I have some thoughts.
The argument that this is a long-term new phase of history rests on a number of points: the sharp swing left of Western elites and to some extent public opinion; post-modern, Politically Correct, multi-cultural ideology; the reaction against the Bush Administration; the expansion of a hedonistically inclined Western upper middle class; spoiling by the welfare state; the changes in Europe due to large-scale Muslim immigration; the Obama phenomenon; and other factors.
What are the counter-forces? Within Western society there are such things as dissatisfaction with Western elites that seem indifferent to the needs and legitimate concerns of their own people; a reaction against Obama perhaps; economic problems; along with additional points.
Examining only the Middle East elements, however, I would suggest the following:
--Already it is clear that the Obama Administration's efforts on the Arab-Israeli front have failed. While some of this will be blamed on Israel, policymakers must see the lack of cooperation by Arab states and the Palestinian Authority (PA). If Fatah and the PA swing in a more radical direction under a post-Abbas leadership, this could disillusion people about the ease and importance of solving this issue.
--Most important of all is the Iran issue. Efforts to talk with Iran or pressure it will fail, obviously so by early 2010. The Iranian regime has never been more extreme and indifferent to Western opinion. Will Tehran behave in a fashion that forces the West to see its government as a threat that must be countered?
--Syria's regime can talk sweetly for short periods of time but always reverts to bluster, threats, subversion, and terrorism. Will the West conclude that rapprochement with that dictatorship is impossible?
--Radical Islamist movements tend to reveal their true nature. Will a revolutionary crisis or takeover or massive terrorism force Western governments to realize the nature of this threat and to take action? Remember that it is Arab governments, not Israel, whose warnings and pleas are likely to have the most effect here.
I see a critical period at the very end of this year and certainly in 2010. We will begin to see whether this current era is going to be sustained or whether it is as transient as all those which have come before it.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2009 00:00 ||
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There will be no change for three and a half years, at least.
Nat Hentoff, who describes himself as "a member of the Proud and Ancient Order of Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheists," is a pro-life, left-leaning libertarian and implacable critic of the ACLU who used to write for the Village Voice and now works for the Cato Institute. He is, above all else, an honest man who calls things as he sees them.
I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) -- as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill -- decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.
The members of that ultimate federal board will themselves not have examined or seen the patient in question.... Go read it all.
Posted by: Mike ||
08/19/2009 08:26 ||
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I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking.
Sorry, Nat, I don't have any interest in hearing your alien-abduction testimonies ....
I'm asking, after 7 years of asking, just WTF these people are talking about when they spout crap like this. It's one of the most ridiculous, pervasive, unchallenged false claims of the Bush years - and that's saying something, obviously.
Or perhaps I'm just lucky that, almost alone, I have miraculously escaped the evil war on the Bill of Rights. Sheesh.
#2
Verlaine, we heard innumerable times that Bush had "abolished the writ of habeas corpus!" (which always cracked me up because at any given the time federal court system is swamped with habeas petitions from jailhouse laywers.) If that were true, where's the legislation or executive order restoring habeas corpus? Must not be very high on the new administration's agenda.
Posted by: Matt ||
08/19/2009 13:08 Comments ||
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#3
Ah, the boy who cried wolf when he saw the sheep dogs now meets a REAL wolf.
Remember when polite society treated a politician's use of the word "evil" as a sign that the old boy was dangerously lacking upstairs?
We saw it in 1983, when Ronald Reagan famously used the word in a speech to describe the Soviet empire. What a rube! New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis spoke for the smart set when he wondered what Soviet leaders must think: "What confidence can they have in the restraint of an American leader with such an outlook?"
We saw it again in 2002, when George W. Bush characterized North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as an "axis of evil." Tom Daschle, a Democrat and then Senate majority leader, warned that "we've got to be very careful with rhetoric of that kind"; former President Jimmy Carter called it "overly simplistic and counterproductive"; and comedian Will Ferrell parodied it on Saturday Night Live. Soon the phrase became acceptable only in the ironic sense--as in the Chris Fair cookbook titled "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations."
With all this history, you would think Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had ample warning. Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader invoked the e-word himself last week at an energy conference in Las Vegas, where he accused those protesting President Barack Obama's health-care proposals of being "evil mongers." So proud was he of this contribution to the American political lexicon that he repeated it to a reporter the next day and noted the phrase was "an original."
And then . . . nothing. No thundering rebuke from the New York Times. No outburst from Mr. Carter. In fact, it's hard not to notice that the good and gracious people who instinctively recoil at words like "evil" or "un-American" (the preferred term of Mr. Reid's counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi) have all been silent....
In fairness to the senator, perhaps history will one day vindicate his "evil monger" statement as a prophetic Gipper moment. If so, the legions of white-haired grandpas and grandmas now descending on our nation's town halls will be exposed to be as irredeemably evil as, say, Iran or the USSR. When asked if the senator has any second thoughts about calling American citizens evil, a spokesman emailed me to say that Mr. Reid's only regret is the "hate-filled rhetoric and signage" being used "to disrupt civil dialogue."
Plainly the Nevada Democrat is taking no chances. Instead of pressing the flesh at a real town hall this August, Mr. Reid has opted for a tele-town hall late next week. Aides say the format allows him to reach thousands more people. Of course, it also protects him from having to come face to face with all those evil mongers out there....
Posted by: Mike ||
08/19/2009 05:38 ||
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#1
I don't think he has seen the evil that awaits him.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
William McGurn, Wall Street Journal
