Hispansylvania - the 51st state?

Rossputin suggests that claims about a “cultural reconquest” may be a tipping point in opinion on immigration. Illegal immigration makes that issue even more urgent.

According to most estimates, the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. is at least 11,000,000.

That's a lot. Hard to imagine.

For perspective, here's a list of the populations for the seven most populous U.S. states:

California - 35,484,453
Texas - 22,118,509
New York - 19,190,115
Florida - 17,019,068
Illinois - 12,653,544
Pennsylvania - 12,365,455
Ohio - 11,435,798
(source: http://geography.about.com/cs/censuspopulation1/a/2003estimates.htm)

In other words, the number of illegal immigrants, put all together, would make up at least the seventh or eighth largest state in the union. That's if the 11,000,000 is accurate, and it probably isn't.

Were the U.S. to adopt the Senate's recent bill, which proposes allowing illegals already in the country the opportunity to "earn" citizenship--while doing next to nothing to stop more from coming in--we would in effect be admitting a 51st state, one larger than at least 43 existing states, into the U.S.

And this new state would be made up entirely of people who began their lives in the U.S. by flouting its laws, and many of whom refuse to assimilate. How much longer until something is done to curb illegal immigration? How many more Ohio's do we want to add?

The International Criminal Court

A friend sent me the article below, posted at the Global Policy Forum. I was sorry to see that it was immersed in some really skewed logic:

As the International Criminal Court came into being on July 1, 2002, ratified by 90 nations, the United States took many steps to undercut it, complaining that the new court would subject US nationals to politically-motivated international justice. The US insisted that the Security Council adopt an omnibus resolution exempting all UN peacekeepers from the jurisdiction of the Court or, at least, that each new renewal of peacekeeping operations would include an exemption provision. Under threat of a US veto of all UN peacekeeping missions, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1422 in July 2002, granting Washington a twelve-month blanket immunity from the ICC. The US again used its veto power and successfully renewed its immunity arrangement a year later. However, with widespread outrage over US treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Washington was unable to garner support for further exemption agreements in 2004. Since then, the US has not openly lobbied for any yearly provisions, but makes its position clear by routinely placing its opposition on the agenda and seeking ad-hoc immunity.

US unilateralism provokes strong opposition from most other nations. Security Council members hold that the Council should not be used to override international treaties and they expressed shock that the US would be willing to wreck UN peacekeeping missions in order to demonstrate its objections to the Court. By forcing the Security Council to arbitrarily defer prosecutions, the United States is striving to do exactly what it seemingly denounced: it is creating a multi-tiered standard of justice. But the battle has wider significance than the jurisdiction of the ICC alone. It may prove a defining moment in the relations between the superpower and the rest of the international community, creating hostility and counter-alliances to challenge the domination of the US hegemon. ("The ICC in the Security Council"; my italics).

This misrepresentation of the situation notes that the US wants exemption for “all UN peacekeepers” and then contradicts itself by accusing the US of trying to create a “multi-tiered standard of justice.” You get the implication, of course: The US wants one standard for itself and another for the rest of the world.

This claim is transparently nonsense. First, the US wants what the rest of the world wants — that is, it wants not to have outsiders impose their ideas of justice. Second, it’s not as if the US came up with the plan for the ICC and is now, hypocritically, trying to get others to commit to an agreement without subscribing itself. The idea came from others. The US just isn’t buying into it. Third, the US isn’t forcing any other nation to sign on. It’s only insisting that its own sovereignty not be compromised.

Because the UN rejected the exemption for all peacekeepers, the US is bound to do precisely what the supposedly united “rest of the international community” is already doing: looking after its own interests. The writer seems to think the UN is a theoretical world-civics exercise, in which philosophical coherence and “fairness” (translation: equal power for all) are the ultimate values. But this isn’t the way the UN, or the world itself, works.

But let’s play along for a moment. Let’s think of fairness. From the outset, the ICC arrangement would be unfair to the US, if you want to put it in those words, in two ways:

1) As the superpower, the US would theoretically be most involved in peacekeeping. Therefore, it would expose itself to a disproportionate level of liability; and
2) The US would have to surrender much more of its power relative to the rest of the world than others to achieve whatever good might come of it.

I can understand the argument that the US should surrender authority over its own citizens unilaterally out of virtue. Yet it’s too easy by far to rhapsodize about doing so “for the greater good.” Other nations don’t want the ICC for some greater good. They want it for their own good — which, perversely, they suppose to be a weakening of American power. It’s easy to see why: it’s a net gain for them. They surrender some sovereignty, but they leverage over the US and other nations. The US, however, loses power in this exchange because the result is a net loss of American sovereignty. For the US, then, the problem is this: what’s the upside? And is whatever good that might come of such an arrangement worth the price?

To date, supranational government has yet to prove viable, or even virtuous.

It’s not hard to see the point the article is trying to make. In a sense, its implicit claim may be true, in that the US insists that it be the one to choose and enforce its own standard of justice on its own military.

So?

Given the prosecutions that have followed Abu Ghraib and other situations, it looks to me as if the US military can police its own without the ICC’s help.

Strategy: Iran (and N. Korea) May Explain Iraq

Rev. Joseph Lowery's WMD comment at the Coretta Scott King's funeral -- and the audience's applause at it -- bring up a question we keep coming back to: why Iraq?

Here's a possibility:

In the 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." Of these, which of the three was weakest militarily? Which of these three could the U.S. attack with the least cost to our military and the in-country civilian population?

The answer to both is Iraq. Add to these Iraq's own role in fighting its way to the front of the line by

• defying numerous UN resolutions, leading up to November 2002's Resolution 1441.
• shooting at coalition planes over the no-fly zones
• subverting UN sanctions
• maniplulating the Oil-for-Food program, and
• loudly rattling its own sabers.

All this, plus the President's repeated assertions that the US had to "take the fight to the enemy," suggest that the larger strategic reason for attacking Iraq, whatever the short-term, tactical reasons given at the time (and they were not just WMDs, as is so often claimed), was in part to serve as a warning to the two larger threats, Iran and North Korea.

The peace-at-any-cost mob's cynical argument that the US should not have gone into Iraq because North Korea and Iran pose far greater threats only underscores the point: attacking either of these states, at least from the inevitably flawed vantage point the US had in 2003, would have had (and may yet have) far higher human, military, and political costs than overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

In short, perhaps the US calculated that a relatively easy victory in Iraq could remove Saddam AND accomplish two other key goals: (a) show rogue regimes worldwide that it meant business; and (b) avoid having to invade Iran and North Korea.

True, the victory has not come as easily as hoped. And Iran nor North Korea keep shaking their fists at the world, and especially the US. Still, from a strategic standpoint, given the information at hand at the time, the decision to go into Iraq -- assuming my speculation is right -- may not look all bad.

Ah, C'Mon Hillary!

AP reports the following on Hillary R. Clinton:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday accused Republicans of "playing the fear card" of terrorism to win elections and said Democrats cannot keep quiet if they want to win in November. (http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/08/D8FL4DNO6.html)

Ah, c'mon Mrs. C. -- since when have the Democrats EVER been able to "keep quiet"?

The real problem is that they don't keep quiet enough. It's all the squawking that gets them into trouble. Maybe all the exhortation to keep speaking up -- most likely born of the left's nostalgia for the 60s and the fantasy that their protests improved America by forcing it to abandon Vietnam -- explains the rise of the far left's rising hegemony within the party.

As extremists so often are, they are quite simply the loudest shriekers at the table.

Shaming Coretta

The funeral for Coretta Scott King yesterday was in many ways dignified and worthy of the woman whose life it celebrated. But some of the speakers and the guests -- at certain points -- shamed themselves and soiled the occasion they came to celebrate.

The worst was Rev. Joseph Lowery, who tried to embarrass President Bush by claiming, "We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there." We know no such thing. All anyone can claim is that we haven't found any. In fact, all who actually know anything about it agree that there were indeed WMDs "over there" at one point. The question is, where are they now?

And even if he was right, how about exhibiting a little of Mrs. King's famous class instead of using the woman's own funeral to make such a cheap, cliched point?

And then there was former President and current Panderer-in-Chief James Earl Carter, whose knack for embarrassing himself without apparently realizing it is getting hard to watch. He said that the ceremony was not only to commemorate Coretta and Martin's lives, but to "remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over." For proof, says he, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi... Those who were most devastated by Katrina know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Does he mean that if only these people would have been white, Mayor Naggin would have fired up the idle school buses and evacuated them? Although it was indeed heart-breaking to see such suffering, must Carter and Company continue to humiliate the poor by suggesting that they are too inept--or too black--to work their way out of poverty, despite plenty of evidence (e.g., the city's own mayor) to the contrary?

Besides, their poverty doesn't prove anything about the state of equal opportunity in the U.S. -- but it does testify to the lack of guaranteed equal outcomes, a state of affairs that apparently annoys Carter to no end.

Equally disgraceful was the crowd's reaction -- sustained applause -- to both of these stunts. It made them look rude and misinformed, if not brainwashed.

Pettiest yet saddest of all, and I hate to say this, was the Reverend Bernice King's claim that sexism is still a problem because the audience didn't sufficiently cheer her comparison of her mother to the biblical Joshua. Maybe they were too dazed by Bernice's barely concealed grab for her parents' legacy to respond.