The Jade Steps

In every army, there are (a few) Grants and (many) McClellans. The key to success in war is to find and promote the Grants. Keep this in mind as you examine what Time magazine calls the "Revolt of the Generals."

Six retired Army and Marine generals have called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  There are about 4,700 retired flag officers. For every general speaking out against Secretary Rumsfeld, there are more than 780 who are not.

The generals speaking out may have reasons other than patriotism for doing so. Gen. Zinni is flogging a book. MajGen. John Riggs was busted a grade and forced to retire because of a procurement scandal. MajGen. Eaton oversaw the rebuilding of the Iraqi army in 2003-2004, when everyone now agrees this was a disaster.

Teaching people how to practice self-absorption is one of the harmful effects of my profession in general.  Psychologists have taught people to be hyper aware of their own feelings, their own thoughts, their own experience, and in the process have framed such self-absorption as a moral good.

But the reality is much more messy and difficult to define: It is good to know what you are feeling, thinking and experiencing, up to a point.  Beyond that point such focus is counter-productive and hinders your capacity for absorption in the world - the world of work, the world of creative and productive activity, and the world of other people who you love.

Since this column is designed to help you improve your level of happiness and life satisfaction, let's get to work improving the quality and quantity of love and gratitude in your life.  I am going to be blunt and practical here.

[Dagny departs from her normal column this week.  Usually she provides the Nasdaq QQQQ chart, noting the concurrence between market shifts and political events during the week.  Here, in addition to her pungent weekly commentary, she analyzes the Nasdaq over the last 33 years and the effect Leftist media frenzies have upon it. 

Dagny D'Anconia's Political Nasdaq is exclusive to To The Point, and is an example of the exclusive benefits of TTP membership.  I'm providing free access to this week's Political Nasdaq as additional encouragement for those considering joining TTP to do so. ---JW]

This week was a short one due to the Easter holiday.  Monday (4/17) was Tax Day, and it was also the day that it became clear that Rumsfeld would not be run out of Washington by a media pack attack.  The Nasdaq dropped.

Oil prices rose to new highs on Tuesday (4/18).  Statements came from Federal Reserve that inflation was in check and interest rate increases would cease soon.  It is ironic and puzzling that new highs in oil would not affect their view of inflation risk.  The market went up nevertheless. 

If we had Ronald Reagan here with us today, he would be puzzled over the entire debate on "illegal immigration."  He would recognize that just like the Cold War, the liberals are arguing for appeasement and the conservatives for containment.  He would be asking conservatives, "Don't you fellows realize that just playing defense doesn't work?"

Of course, defense is critical.  You've got to prevent the other team from scoring touchdowns.  So you've got to build the fence authorized by the Sensenbrenner bill in the House.  You've got to shut the border down regarding the illegal flood.  You've got to disallow illegals (and, yes, their children) from access to government benefits.

There are many other things you can do to defend America from this invasion - but, the crucial but for Ronald Reagan, would be we can't just play defense. We've got to go on the offense.

Which means an offense against Mexico.  Not with guns and soldiers, but with ideas and information.  "To explain the truth and go on an ideological offensive against the Soviet Union," Reagan would say, "we had Radio Free Europe beamed to the Soviet colonies of Eastern Europe, and Radio Liberty beamed to people within the Soviet Union itself."

"So, obviously," Reagan would conclude, "now you need a Radio Free Mexico beamed to the people of Mexico for the purpose of liberating them from the socialism, poverty, and corruption in their country that drives them to leave it."

A To The Point Editorial

Why is it that the left always denounces people on the right for ‘wrapping themselves in the American flag,' and is so fond of saying ‘patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels' - and then celebrates this same behavior when performed by illegal aliens?

The giant pro-illegal immigration rallies of Monday April 10 in many US cities have got to be the greatest exercises of phony flag waving in the history of America.  And newspapers like the Washington Post promoted it to the hilt, with front page pictures of demonstrators waving a sea of American flags and carrying signs saying ‘We are all Americans'.

It was such an incredibly obvious act of mass political cynicism.  The first mass pro-illegal alien demonstrations a couple of weeks before displayed the demonstrators' true loyalties by waving the Mexican flag.  Now they all turn on a dime and there's hardly a Mexican flag to be seen.  It's all we-love-America-red-white-and-blue.  Yet the chant is still the same:  Si se puede in Spanish, not ‘Yes we can' in English.

Next week Thursday, April 20, four days after what many Christians consider their holiest day, Easter, and celebrate the resurrection of Christ, President Bush will meet with Hu Jintao, President of Communist China, in the White House.

The purpose of the meeting is being billed as an attempt to settle "trade differences" between the US and China.  Bush may very well wheedle some minor trade concessions out of Hu, which will be piddling in terms of coming remotely close to correcting the gargantuan trade deficit we have with China.

Bush may also attempt to extract a concession from Hu regarding less Chinese oppression of Tibet - given that Hu was for some years the Chicom governor of Tibet and had a horrible record of tyranny over the Tibetan people. 

The Pentagon takes the military and terrorist threat of Iran extremely seriously.  Yet the brass in Rummy's inner circle could not keep their faces straight with all the recent announcements from Tehran.

A week ago on April 7, the air force chief of Pasdaran, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hossein Salami, announced the successful firing of a stealth missile impossible to detect by radar, hailing the Fajr (Dawn) 3 as a "remarkable" achievement.

Turns out it was a primitive Shahab-2 copy of an unsophisticated Russian Scud-C.

Sunday April 9, the deputy naval commander of Pasdaran, Gen. Ali Fadavi announced the launching of "the world's fastest underwater missile," a torpedo so fast it was undetectable.

Turns out it's a poor copy of a Soviet-era rocket-powered torpedo, the Shkval.  It's range is less than four miles, has no target designation devices and is not self-homing.  It's huge wake makes it easy to spot and destroy.

In Sunday's Washington Post Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman provide their gullible readers with a reprise of one of the great myths of the runup to the Iraq war: that President Bush used blatantly false information to justify the war.

The story revolves around various claims by several intelligence services that Saddam's agents were trying to buy uranium in Africa. At least three European services - the French, the Italian, and the British - told Washington about the reported Iraqi efforts.

Linzer and Gellman are wrong, indeed so clearly wrong that it takes one's breath away. The British government did indeed have information about Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium in Africa.  The definitive British parliamentary inquiry - the Butler Commission Report of July, 2004 - totally endorsed the position of British intelligence.

Nonetheless, the conventional media spin is that "Bush lied."  How can that be?  Part of the answer - the other part being the malevolence of the press - is that the White House made a total hash of the whole thing, as is their wont.

Here is something that may help you if you are feeling anxious or overwhelmed.  Often when we feel anxiety, our focus zeroes in on the object of our anxiety.  You get caught in a vicious cycle where you see the object of your anxiety, and all of the ways that it threatens you, and all of the things you have tried that have failed to vanquish it, and then you see the object of your anxiety as larger still.

If you can step back from what you are focused on for a moment and find a larger context, you may find that either other options present themselves, or that you see the object of your anxiety from a perspective that makes it more manageable.

The DDI has remained emphatically down.  In fact, good news for Liberals has been gradually less and less effective in diverting the market from its DDI downward path.  Daily news events can divert it from its path for only so long and a good drop was overdue.

Thus on Friday (4/7) there was a sharp drop in the market.  This must have been disappointing to people who thought the last quarter performance was a sign of safety.  Good economic news and the falling apart of the Immigration deal in the Senate also helped precipitate the drop Friday. 

Monday (4/10) it continued down, in spite of France surrendering to the protesting student beggars.  The terrible Bush poll showing 60% disapproval on Monday night only gave the market a brief bump up overnight.  Even the best of news seemed relatively impotent.  The market continued down on Tuesday (4/11).  Shiite Iran's announcement Tuesday that it was concentrating uranium did not help put wealthy Sunni oil men's minds at ease either.