So Rubble doesn't cause Trouble, eh?

Mark Steyn doesn't agree. In his new book, he writes on page 79:

Wearying of what he regards as the deluded idealism of the liberty-touting Bush doctrine, National Review's John Derbyshire began promoting the slogan "Rubble doesn't cause trouble" Cute, and I wish him well with the T-shirt sales. But, in arguing for a "realist" foreign policy of long-range bombing as necessary, he overlooks the very obvious point that rubble causes alot of trouble: The rubble of Bosnia is directly responsible for radicalizing a generation of European Muslims, including Daniel Pearl's executioner; the rubble of Afghanistan became an international terrorist training camp, whose alumni include the shoe-bomber Richard Reid. the millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, and the September 11 plotters; the rubble of Grozny turned Chechen nationalists into pan-Islamist jihadi. Those correspondents of mine who send me e-mails headed "Nuke Mecca!" might like to ponder the bigger strategic impact on a billion Muslims from Indonesia to Yorkshire, for whom any fallout will be psychological rather than carcinogenic. Rubble is an insufficient solution, unless you're also going to attend to the Muslim world's real problem: its intellectual rubble.

Incidentally, I'm about half-way through the book, and so far the one thing I can say about it is that even if one discounts every single claim Mr. Steyn makes --and I don't-- the situation appears to be alarming, because numbers, after all, don't lie.

Demography trumps everything. Facts are facts. The "West"(meaning Europe and certain other industrialized nations) has largely stopped reproducing and is in demographic decline. Populations are on the move. The world of tomorrow will be shaped by the interaction of new populations, which have already taken root and are in the process of supplanting the old ones. How this transition occurs cannot be predicted with any certainty, but we can certainly look for markers as we head down this path. The picture Steyn paints, with his trademark wit, is a grim one.

I highly recommend reading this book!

More Rubble Less Trouble:

Victor Davis Hanson looks at scenarios for Darfur and thinks that the failure of interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan may mean the birth of something scarier. Some may live to regret the failure of the neocons' attempts to implant democracy in the heart of the Middle East when the troops leave and the missiles begin raining down on Damascus, Kandahar, Tehran after each new terrorist attack.

I predict exactly the sort of scenario he presents if the troops on the ground are withdrawn: A return to the days when the U.S., reluctant to take casualties on the ground, casually oblitaterated targets in air campaigns (see Kosovo, for example).... which is exactly why I pray for some measure of success in the current NATO and US operations now underway. A reversion to that policy would wreak unimaginable devastation and cause many innocent deaths, making what we saw in Israel and Lebanon this summer look like small potatoes. The doctrine of pre-emptive war would in effect be replaced by one of punitive warfare, involving attacks aimed at so devastating those states that harbour terrorists, or tolerate their presence, that they would in effect be "bombed back to the stone age" --which was the threat that was used on Musharaf in the wake of 9-11 to ensure his cooperation in the nascent War on Terror. That is some scary shit.

On a lighter note, it seems that Kazakhstan has shifted its approach with its least favourite son, and is calling him home so that he can see the error of his ways:

Homecoming for BORAT?

Chicago photos

Here are a bunch of shots that showcase what I think is the most impressive cityscape I have ever seen.

Randomosity

One of my favourite poems: Shelley's Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:-Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.


A Canadian Baron?... and it ain't Conrad Black.

The Countdown Has Begun...

KHAAANN!!!!