IRAQ CIRCLES THE DRAIN

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


 9 July 2014

  

Last month, amid a welter of slaughter and torture, a new Islamic Caliphate was proclaimed on the territories of Syria and Iraq.  This new political creation resembles a balloon: one pinprick and it will collapse.

 

The Islamic Caliphate was created by a homicidal egomaniac who now calls himself Caliph Ibrahim.  Previously he went under the alias of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.  He sees himself as the second coming of Mohammed, except with a better taste in wristwatches.  The new Caliphate rests on the bayonets of some six thousand men, half of whom are foreigners from Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and the United States.  The appeal of fighting for the Caliphate among these men is the feeling of fighting for Islamic righteousness, i.e. jihad; and the chance to gratify the darkest of human desires.  As proof, thousands of unarmed civilians and captured soldiers have been gruesomely executed by ISIS members, and few of these were by crucifixion.  These executions have been posted on social media for the entertainment of some and the terrorization of others.

 

ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is the name of the terrorist entity.  Failing to make further headway against the forces loyal to Syrian president Bashir al Assad, ISIS turned east in June and advanced against an utterly demoralized and unprofessionally led Iraqi military.  The Iraqi forces either deserted or retired before the advance, and allowed ISIS to occupy Mosul, the second largest city of Iraq.  ISIS occupies a portion of the Sunni majority area of Iraq.  It has made no effort to advance into Iraqi Kurdistan, which is stoutly defended by the Peshmerga, the tough Kurdish militia; or into Jordan.  The rapid ISIS advance stalled north of Baghdad, where Sunni majority Iraq begins.

 

Some rather breathless western commentators have said that ISIS is transforming itself into a real army.  All that has been seen in film clips, however, are civilian pickup trucks sporting mounted machine guns, and disordered bodies of men firing automatic weapons aimlessly into the unseen distance for the benefit of the camera crew.  ISIS may have captured some Iraqi and Syrian military equipment and fighting vehicles and put them on display for the cameras.

 

There’s many a slip twixt lip and cup.  It is one thing to be able to drive a fighting vehicle and quite another to coordinate the tactical use of groupings of fighting machines in battle.  All the ISIS has demonstrated with their fighting vehicles is the capacity to drive in convoy.  ISIS has never demonstrated the capacity to maneuver in battalion and brigade sized formations in open battle.  They have no air power.  With only six thousand real fighting men, half of whom are foreign adventurers, oppressing millions, Caliph Ibrahim makes a lot of boasts.

 

In his first public pronouncements, Caliph Ibrahim promised to make terrorist attacks against the United States and called upon all Muslims to “obey” him.  A Caliphate is a special thing in Islamic history and teaching; it is the empire of the Ummah, the believers, and the Caliph is the head of state and theocratic absolute monarch.  A Caliphate would hold that the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the Republics of Turkey, Egypt, and Iran would be vassal states under its suzerainty and the Kings and presidents of these countries are vassals.  Perhaps some confused western diplomats, seeking clarification, might ask the governments of these countries if they planned to “obey” the new Caliph; whether their countries should now be regarded as subordinate entities to the new Caliphate, and if not, why not.

 

The new Caliphate and self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim represent a political crisis in Islam, first and foremost.  His threat to western countries is a separate matter.

 

By proclaiming a new Caliphate and establishing Mosul as its capital, Caliph Ibrahim has created hostages to fortune.  He is no longer the head of an ethereal terrorist organization that exists nowhere in particular and is responsible for the governance of nothing.  An act of terrorism committed against a NATO country, or any other country, would constitute an act of war by the Caliphate.  Mosul may not be as pleasant a place to govern from after it was flattened from a visit from the United States Air Force in retaliation for a Caliphate sponsored act of terrorism.

 

Enjoy the Caliphate while it lasts.  Its strength is grossly overestimated; it has no political legitimacy, and has made too many enemies in the Muslim world.

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Published in the August, 2014 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine.

 

 

THE PROTESTATIONS OF MURDERERS

 

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


25 June 2014

 

 

For all the talk and turmoil in Washington over who lost Iraq, a few rather important things are missing from the discussion.

 

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, moved into and has occupied the north-central part of Iraq from Syria and presently lie within striking distance of Baghdad.  Unable to make headway in Syria against the government forces of President Bashir al-Assad, this force of ISIS, once estimated to be about 6,000 men in size, moved east and south into Iraqi territory against an utterly demoralized and unprofessionally led Iraqi military.  ISIS “conquered” and occupied the city Mosul, and many other minor towns and villages.  ISIS members savagely murdered thousands of innocents and those protected by the Laws of War in their area of control.

 

Curiously, everybody seems to take for granted the claim by ISIS that it intends to establish an Islamic Caliphate.  Official Washington and many on the political right believe that such a state would represent a threat to the strategic interests of the United States, and perhaps serve as a base for terrorist strikes within homeland America.  As such, military intervention by the United States, either in the form of air strikes or of military “boots on the ground,” is justified to turn the tide in Iraq.

 

Thinking people ought to be able to make their own assessment and reach their own conclusions.  It seems, as in the case of Boko Haram, that Washington takes the political protestations of a gang of murderers altogether too seriously.  From a close analysis of the facts on the ground one can reach the conclusion that the career of ISIS amounts to nothing more than the madcap adventures of a homicidal egomaniac.  That person is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an alias.

 

ISIS says it desires to create an Islamic Caliphate under strict Sharia law.  A Caliphate is a special thing in Islamic history and teaching; it amounts to the empire of the Ummah, the believers; and is led by a Caliph.  Nobody seems to ask ISIS who this Caliph is supposed to be.  More importantly, what will be the relationship between this Caliph and the King and state of Saudi Arabia, the King of Jordan, and the Presidents and states of Iran, Egypt, and Turkey?  By rights, these individuals and states should be vassals and vassal states of the Caliph, and historically this state of subordination was maintained by a combination of money, diplomacy, and military force.  A little reflection will lead one to conclude that this Islamic Caliphate of ISIS amounts to a good deal of pretense and not a little egomania.

 

As for strict Sharia law as the basis of ISIS’s caliphate, that legal regime exists in several other states and would not a novel or atavistic experiment.  Granted, Sharia law amounts to the dominance of the Muslim male in society, but ISIS, with the wholesale murders in the territory it has conquered, took this dominance to a whole new level.  Sharia law has certain injunctions against Muslims killing other Muslims, which to date have not been enforced by al-Baghdadi against his loyal followers.  These wanton murders and this lack of enforcement of Sharia law demonstrate that the appeal of ISIS to the individual member of that body is the opportunity to gratify fantasies of dominance and power over others, and of desires even darker; and that al Baghdadi understands this.

 

About half of these loyal followers of his are reported to have come from rather exotic places: Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and the United States.  Since Sharia law exists in many established countries, one is entitled to conclude that it is the adventure and the opportunity for easy gratification of one’s inner demons that draws these so-called self-radicalized Muslims from the western world to the war in Syria and now Iraq.

 

This also gives indication as to the true purpose of ISIS, and it has nothing to do with the long term resolution of a political crisis.  There is no reason, therefore, to place any weight on the alleged political program of ISIS.  ISIS exists because it can, and survives for the gratification of the personal demons of its members.

 

Militarily, ISIS is extremely weak.  For any attack by ISIS within homeland America to occur, the attackers would have board a commercial airliner and pass through U.S. Customs.  The Administration could protect the American homeland by control at the borders.

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On Monday, June 30th, the AP reported that ISIS has declared the creation of an Islamic state and their leader, al-Baghdadi, the Caliph.  Previously he was just an Emir.  With his proclamation, he has demanded the submission of all Muslims and declared illegal any previously created Muslim state, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and so on.

 

I guess al-Baghdadi answered the questions in the piece above.  These answers prove my contention that al-Baghdadi is an unserious enthusiast; and rather than concede the political legitimacy of his gang of murderers, we should instead look at what he does rather than what he says.

 

The ISIS movement cannot last much longer.  Al-Baghdadi is no longer fighting the United States, or Christian Crusaders, or any other western phantasm.  Now he is declaring war upon solid, well-established Islamic entities.  His supply of western bayonets is going to dry up and he will suddenly find himself without money, except for the cash he stole from Iraqi banks.

 

Focussing on the criminal acts rather than taking seriously the political proclamations of these groups is the more informative activity.  The alleged political program of the gang is taken altogether too seriously.  A gang of homicidal maniacs drags a red herring of politics before itself, and the hounds of Washington chase after the fish

 

Boko Haram and The Magnificent Seven

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis

29 May 2014

 

In the movie The Magnificent Seven, a collection of hired American gunslingers defend a poor Mexican village from the predation of a gang of Banditos, led by Calvera, who was portrayed by actor Eli Wallach.

 

The Mexican bandits had no interest in governing the village.  They were not interested in providing peace, order, and justice to the village.  They only wanted to take: food and money, primarily.  In other words, they taxed but provided nothing in return.

 

If he had to justify what he did to the villagers, Calvera vaguely referred to an ongoing Mexican revolution and of the need for his gang to survive for the revolution to continue.  Clavera thinks of himself as the father to the gang, who has to provide food and other things for his men.  To him, the products of the village are his own crop to reap.

 

The Nigerian group Boko Haram operates a lot like Calvera’s gang of bandits.  They take from the peaceable people around them for the benefit of the gang, and the taking is done in the name of some higher purpose.  In no instance is Boko Haram offering a government to the people it terrorizes, nor would it be competent to run a civil government with law, order, and justice should it attempt to do so.  Its leadership is competent to run a gang but not a government.

 

Boko Haram is in the news of late because it abducted 276 Nigerian school girls and is in the process of selling them off as wives to Muslim tribesmen, or holding them for ransom.  Perhaps some of the girls were married off to gang members.  The strategic end served by the abduction of these girls was the prosperity of the gang.

 

A lot has been made recently of the connection between Boko Haram and other al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups.  The ostensible political aim of Boko Haram is the imposition of an Islamic Caliphate in Nigeria, the imposition of Sharia law, and the elimination of western education from that country.  They seem to share a common ideology with al Qaeda, which is linked further to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United States.

 

But the other thing Boko Haram has in common with al Qaeda is the need to survive.  Both groups need money, and in addition to money Boko Haram needs food, weapons, and ammunition.  Its men, who live in the African bush, need women.  Consequently, a lot of criminal activity takes place in the name of religion by al Qaeda and Boko Haram.  Without this criminal activity, Boko Haram could not survive.  Its men would have to find sustenance elsewhere should gang activity not provide it for them.

 

The imposition of the kind of rule advocated by the Boko Haram is opposed even by other Muslims in Nigeria.  And given that Nigeria is fairly evenly divided between Christian and Muslim, the likelihood of a happy and successful political regime in Nigeria of a kind advocated by Boko Haram is remote.  The political program advocated by Boko Harem is not serious.  The alleged political aims of Boko Haram have no place in a serious discussion of what to do about the gang.

 

The purpose of Boko Haram is to fulfill the psychopathic needs of its leadership.  The men of the gang find gratification of their own personal wants and needs in the gang’s activities.  Opportunities for killing, raping, adventure, a sense of belonging and purpose, as well as food and pay are positive motivators for gang membership and retention.  What political program is advocated serves to quell any pangs of conscience that might arise in the course of violence.

 

Because of its strength and organization, the methods of normal law enforcement will not prevail against the gang.  Stronger measures, the methods of war, are called for.  This situation creates a problem for those addicted to positive law because positive law was developed in and for the framework of civil peace, and positive law devotees are constitutionally unable to admit the boundaries of their doctrine.  They reject the old Roman legal maxim, Silent enim leges inter arma (The laws are silent in time of war).

 

Like what happened to Calvera and his men, Boko Haram needs to be hunted down and slain in a military operation.  Its members are not protected by the laws of war.  They are, and ought to be declared, outlaws in the purest sense of that term: the protection of the civil law does not apply to them.

 

The moral analogy between the movie and the actual situation in Nigeria can be extended further.  At the end of the movie, a dying Calvera asks Chris, the leader of the Magnificent Seven, “Why?”

 

Indeed, a kind of equilibrium had been established between Calvera and the villages he raided for supplies, and the Magnificent Seven broke that up, at great cost to themselves.

 

Ugly as it is, Boko Haram’s preying upon the people around them represents ongoing life in the African bush.  If something is going to be done about the predations of Boko Haram, if somebody is going to play the part of the Magnificent Seven, then the question “why” might need to be answered.  If it can be answered satisfactorily, then the military solution is also the only one that is permanently availing.   Those who seek something other than the military solution, such as a paying ransom or applying political pressure in order to get the girls back, are deluding themselves about the longer term.

 

But, if we cannot give a good answer to the question “Why?” then we are quite justified in holding that ‘such is life, luckily not my life’ and move on.

 

Will a Magnificent Seven undertake the operation?

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Lawrence Freedman: Strategy, a History Reviewed

Vincent J. Curtis

 

8 May 14 

 

 

 

Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman is a tour de force of erudition and a powerful demonstration of his breadth of knowledge and reading.

 

Dr. Freedman has a terrific ability to summarize clearly and accurately the main lines of thought of other theorists.

 

I’m glad it was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I hold in high regard.  If he had not, I would likely have tossed Lawrence’s book aside after the first chapter and most certainly by the end of the first section.  I would have missed much of the book.

 

As a history, it is lacking in the philosophy department.  It is more of a survey of the uses of a word, accounted for in chronological order of occurrence.  Dr. Freedman never gives a proper definition of strategy (more on that later), and most of the uses he accounts for are not strategies as a military man would conceive them.  Since he does not hold to an essential meaning or definition of strategy, he frequently lapses into holding that a strategic end and the tactics to get to it are strategy.  If you put an end and the tactics to gain it together into a whole, then that whole might be a strategy, but not strategy as such.

 

In the course of his critique of strategies found in business, and their alleged derivation from Clausewitz, Jomini, or Sun Tzu, he points out the fallaciousness of trying to correlate business practices with military strategy.  I agree with that assessment.  However, he didn’t apply that observation to his own work!  The consequence then is a very detailed philology of a term, and the term was not always used by those allegedly employing strategy.  Consequently, somewhere, in the back of his mind, is a sense of what strategy is; but Freedman never really gives it.  He eliminated material from consideration on the basis of this vague notion of what strategy is, and so this work must be what he thinks strategy is.  But the book is supposed to be a history of a thing, not an account of what the thing is.

 

A strategy is a plan for the attainment of an object.  Since strategy is a kind of plan, then the thing strategizing must be capable of conceptual thought.  Moreover, since the plan is for the attainment of an object, the attainment of that object constitutes the end of the strategy.  It must be a terminal end, because the attainment of it occurs at a moment in time.  A strategy cannot be used to attain a normative end because a normative end is not attainable at one moment in time.  A military strategy is a plan for the attainment of a military object, and is quintessentially an example of strategy as such.

 

Consequently, the effort to attain normative ends, such as enduring success in business, cannot not have a strategy.  A strategy can be used to get to a certain point of success, and from one point of success to another point of success, each point being a terminal end.  But the normative end of enduring success is not attainable by a strategy.

 

This same analysis applies to political normative ends, the ends of the state.  The end conceived of by Marx and Engels was not a terminal end, and so the so-called strategy to attain it was a strategic end combined with tactics to get there.  They climbed a hill to reach the edge of the plateau at the top.  But being on the plateau is a normative end.  Getting to the edge was a strategic end, and revolution was the tactic to get there.  The munificence of the plateau, and the matter of staying on it, Marx and Engels apparently never really contemplated – like Moses leading the Israelites to the promised land, he had no idea what to do once they got there and he died just before they got there.

 

Because strategy requires in the strategizer the power of conceptual thought, Freedman’s account of the origins of strategy is unnecessary bunkum.  There was no need to impute strategic thinking to chimps.  They are not capable of conceptual thought; only man is.  What behaviorologists do is anthropomorphize apes by imputing strategic thinking to them to account for observed behavior.  It may help man to understand apes, but it goes too far to impute to them a power they lack, the power of conceptual thought.  In addition, the accounts of the strategy to defeat God’s will (which also occurs in the first section) are not history because we have no evidence of it occurring as a matter of historical fact.

 

The book provided ample evidence that economics and sociology remain subject matters and not sciences.

 

All that said, I am glad to have read the entire book.  It informed me on matters I had vague knowledge about, and this work concisely filled me in on the important outlines.  The only section of the book directly useful to the military man is the section on military strategy.

 

Let me now take up the matter of Freedman offering an alleged definition of strategy, though not a proper one.

 

I observed that Freedman never gave a definition of what strategy was, and as a result he wandered all over the place in his history of it.  On page 607 of his book, he states that he offered “the art of creating power” as his “short definition”, though he never offers another.

 

A criticism I made of his work was that, as a history, it was weak in the philosophy department.  His proffered “short definition” of strategy is another example of that weakness.  The problem with that formulation is that it fails the basic test of a definition.  It cannot be a definition.  A statement of definition must be convertible.  A statement of definition has to say the same thing when the terms are reversed in order.

 

But: “Strategy is the art of creating power” and “The art of creating power is strategy” do not say the same thing, and therefore cannot be a definition.  Disregarding the obscurity of the phrase “creating power,” the first statement has the form of a definition, but the second statement seems to be the assignment of a handy name-word to substitute for a longer formulation.  The obscure expression, ‘creating power’ is not the essence of strategy - it is not what strategy is essentially about - but creating power may be an accidental consequence of it, sometimes.  A real definition is founded upon the essence of the thing being defined, and is a phrase which contains a genus and a differentia.  Freedman’s formulation would hold that the genus of strategy is art and ‘creating power’ is its differentia, or essence.

 

In contrast, consider the following: “A strategy is a plan for the attainment of an object,” and “A plan for the attainment of an object is a strategy.”  These statements are convertible, for they say the same thing forwards and backwards.  The formulation passes a basic test of a definition, with ‘plan’ being the genus and ‘for the attainment of an object’ being the differentia of strategy, that which differentiates it from all other kinds of plans.  In addition, ‘for the attainment of an object’ seems to be the essence of strategy, while the creation of power is simply too obscure to say that it is the essence of anything.  The terms of a definition must be better known than the thing being defined, for the less well-known is defined in terms of things better-known.  The first sentence in Freedman’s book is: “Everyone needs a strategy.”  Substituting his proffered definition, the sentence reads: “Everyone needs an art of creating power,” which makes no sense, and is certainly a more obscure sentence than the first.

 

Because Freedman founded his idea of what strategy was upon an obscure and accidental attribute (creating power), and that he admittedly does not always adhere to it (cf pg 608), his history consists of accounts of things unrelated to each other in their essences.  Freedman picks among random things and holds them before the reader as examples of strategy.  Collectively, these things show no development in strategy through historical experience, as one might expect to observe historical development in a history of the fine art of painting, for example.  This is why the book as a whole is so unfocussed.

 

I cannot take away from the erudition of Dr. Freedman, or that demonstrated in his book, but the philosophical failings result in a work that does not hold together.

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Progressive ideology in education

Vincent J. Curtis

22 April 2014

Over the last week, the newspaper of my hometown has run a series of articles on so-called EQAO testing.  (Education Quality Accountability Office.)  It is a set of standardized tests run across the province to evaluated the educational attainments of students.  The newspaper report focused on the differences in performance generally between inner city schools, and those of the affluent suburbs.  In general, the tone of the articles was non-ideological.  However,, those individuals quoted in the articles did have an ideological bias, namely the unwarranted belief that educational outcomes ought to be the same.  Since they are not the same, something is wrong and they are ready to apply their nostrums to fix the alleged problem.

Below is a missive on the subject.

 

There is no question that each child is a special, unique, and different individual, with their own set of gifts.

 

When these unique individuals are put through the same education system, it should not be surprising that the outcome from each individual will be different.  Call these differences gaps, if you will.

 

To say that these gaps should not exist is to substitute an ideological position for a logical deduction.

 

It may seem progressive to insist that the educational outcomes of different individuals should be measurably identical, but think about what that ideological position means.

 

In order to obtain identical educational outcomes from different individuals it would require that the education each individual received be specifically tailored to enable that individual to achieve the standard, and no more.  It will also require that education be denied high achieving individuals so that they do not exceed the standard, lest that detested gap reappear.  I doubt that the educational authorities possess the knowledge necessary to put together such a program, nor would the morality of it be accepted once it became evident.  Thus we have the naked claim that different individuals ought to perform the same on the basis of nothing but ideological predilections.

 

Instead of trying to teach each child to become a good economic unit, children should be taught to be good citizens.

 

In the end, society, Ontario, and Canada will belong to the generation said presently to be suffering from educational gaps.  So long as they pay our pensions, that problem will be theirs to solve as adults, as we did.

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There is Stupid, and then there is Fanatic

Vincent J. Curtis

10 April 2014

 

Over the last several months, a circle of writers who are or were employed by the public school system of my hometown have been writing letters to the editor of the local paper calling for the abolishment of the Separate School system.  The Separate School system is the Catholic run school system that has operated in Ontario since the 1840s, i.e. before there even was an Ontario.  The right of Catholics in Ontario to have their school system funded by the provincial government was guaranteed in Section 93 of the British North America Act of 1867, and was most recently ratified in the Constitution Act of 1982.  All this right amounts to is the taxes paid by Catholics for schools in Ontario be directed towards the Separate system while all others have their taxes directed towards the public system.  Both systems are, in effect, public.  There has always been resentment in some quarters to this arrangement, which some have unfairly put down to anti-Catholic animus.  This resentment has become vocal as the mis-management of the public school system in the area of my hometown has become quite evident.  In addition to the mismanagement, parents feel that their children are not getting as good an education in the public system as they could get in the Separate system.

 

Chairman of the Separate School Board Patrick Daly had an Op-Ed piece published in the newpaper the other week addressing the deficiencies in the arguments made by the circle of writers, and offered an olive branch of co-operation.  He did not neglect to mention the constitutional matters involved in revoking a black-letter right of a religious minority.  That article still did not quiet the circle.  Below are my comments, some of which are actually constructive.

 

On a side note, people do not discuss matters that are settled.  That the local newspaper continues to publish the letters from the circle of writers means that the editors of the newpaper themselves would like to see the matter re-opened.

The definition of a fanatic is a person who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject.  The Op-Ed piece by Separate School Board Chairman Pat Daly ought to have been the last word on the subject of destroying the Separate School system, but apparently not.

 

In their facts and in their tone, the circle of people who have written on this subject have revealed their motives.  The amount of money that will be saved the taxpayer through eliminating the Separate School system has finally been revealed, and amounts to a rounding error in the Ontario budget.

 

It is not the money that will be saved, but it is the sense of injustice that motivates this circle of writers.  They observe that the Separate School system is better managed and provides a better education than the public system does.  Since the Separate School system was established to provide for the education of Catholic children, it is unjust to those who are not Catholic to have to attend a system which is poorer in quality.

 

Rather than try to solve the problems in the Public system and provide a better education for the children of Ontario, this circle wants the better system eliminated.

 

The reason why, at this period in Ontario’s history, that the Separate Schools are better managed and provide a better education is not hard to state, but will be very hard for the Public Schools to overcome.  The reason is the superior intellectual and moral discipline combined with equal funding in the Separate system.  And the reason for the intellectual and moral discipline in the Separate system is that the system must reflect the values of the Roman Catholic Church.  Being concerned with the eternal truths, the Roman Catholic Church is inherently conservative.

 

The Public system and Ontario politics used to be animated by a Protestant ethic, which is not a bad thing.  But over the last fifty years, people lost confidence in the old Protestant ethic, and the dominant ethic in public affairs became humanist.  Humanism represents a slackening of intellectual and moral discipline.  While it may be impossible for Ontario ever to return to its old Protestant roots, it is possible by reaching further back to regain intellectual and moral discipline in the Public system.

 

The answer is to turn to the intellectual tradition of ancient Greece.  Plato and Aristotle knew a thing or two about educating youth, and were quite able to educate in a spirit of intellectual and moral discipline without a Church to back them up.  There are a few examples in North America in existence of a return to this style and spirit of educating youth.

 

When the focus and the touchstone of the Public system becomes education of youth, instead of becoming the refuse pit and receptacle of every social, moral, and intellectual fashion of the day, then the gap in quality which the circle of writers acknowledges exists will disappear.  The cause of the injustice which this circle feels will be gone with it.

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Pro-abortion folks want it both ways

Vincent J. Curtis

8 April 2014

Margaret Shkimba is a part time columnist for my local newspaper.  I rarely read her.  However, today I slipped up and did read her column of today.  It was the story of how she was transformed from a pro-life person full of righteousness to a pro-abortion person full of righteousness.  Her beef today concerned the depiction of aborted babies on large signs from the bridges over a local highway.  To morally implicate abortion mills, apparently, is morally wrong.



Margaret Shkimba may rest assured that she has lost none of her youthful righteousness nor her youthful powers of reason.

Her numerous errors of fact and reason are only surpassed by the thunderous self-contradiction of argument.

She drags out a parade of horribles: of the women who died or were maimed as a result of abortionist butchery.  She makes quite clear that the conditions which led to such atrocities no longer obtain, yet she nevertheless sticks to her conclusion!

We are supposed to be horrified by the blood of women who died terrible, gruesome deaths as the result of a botched abortion, but we are not supposed to be horrified by terrible, gruesome death of the baby in an unbotched abortion.

While it may be that no one of us has a right to tell a woman what to do with her own body, it remains a compelling state interest to regulate and minimize abortion. The state has a responsibility to ensure its own existence and the prospect of killing off the next generation is anathema to that goal.

Margaret Shkimba ought to address herself to the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who ran an abortuary in Philadelphia for decades.  Gosnell was one of those sort of doctors that Shkimba would praise: he provided all sorts of abortion services even to the poor.  No public official bothered to inspect his clinic for fear that the Margaret Shkimba's of the world would raise the cry that the state was trying to intimidate and shut down abortion mills, to the detriment of women's health.

The very savagery which Shkimba condemns actually happened in Gosnell’s clinic under the current regime of abortion on demand.  Gosnell escaped the death penalty but is now doing life in prison for murder.  And Gosnell’s clinic is only the most famous of its kind; it is not the only one.

Not a shred of Shkimba’s argument holds together.  If Shkimba detests bloody death, she ought to oppose abortion not support it.
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