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Sheriff Joe Arpaio Teaches Citizenship to Inmates

Posted by Sapper on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 2:46:17 PM
Thank god for Sheriff Joe in a world otherwise gone mad.  Not too far from the border -- where apparently we need an act of Congress to erect fences -- here in Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has decided his inmates ought to speak English, at least on a basic level, and understand the basic concepts of our form of self-government:

"These inmates happen to be incarcerated in the United States of America and in Maricopa County where I run the jails," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement. "And we speak English here, not foreign languages."

Classes will last two hours a day. The curriculum comprises the three branches of government, how a bill becomes law, state government, law enforcement and court services, and jailhouse "situational" terminology.

I'm sure there will be many who will view this as somehow an "attack" on these mainly Spanish-speaking inmates rights or some sort of right-wing indoctrination.  However, I think that if these young men had been so "indoctrinated" earlier, in school or at the border, they might not be in Sheriff Joe's jail in the first place.
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Why Being a Yankees Fan is Meaningless

Posted by Sapper on Saturday, October 14, 2006 1:08:43 AM
OK, first of all let me get something out in the open:  I am an Orioles fan. [pause]

Alright, now that you've stopped laughing, let me tell you why I'd rather be an Orioles fan than a Yankees fan, and it has nothing to do with -- well OK maybe a lot to do with -- where I'm from.  But, that being said I'd take the pain of being a good loyal Orioles fan -- yes, I know we're at 9 straight losing seasons and counting -- over the shallow, meaninglessness of rooting for the Yankees. 

I mean, what's the point?  Rooting for the Yankees in the regular season is like rooting for the lions vs. the Christians in the Colosseum.  Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Mike Tyson vs. Ichabod Crane in an ear biting contest.  Rooting for the Yankees in the regular season is absolutely meaningless and here's why: In sports, the risk of losing is just as important as the hope of victory.  I don't know how Yankee fans can stand to sit through 162 meaningless games every year knowing that Big Daddy Boss Steinbrenner has already purchased the pennant and that the only meaningful games are the ones that are lost in October.  To me, I equate being a Yankees fan more with a fashion statement than a commitment to a sports team.  (And don't laugh too hard Red Sox fans.  I'm looking at you too.)

Is a pennant purchased as sweet as a pennant won?  I wouldn't think so.  It's just my opinion but one of these days, Peter Angelos (the Orioles hated owner) will move on one way or another, and years from now, my team will win another pennant and possibly another world series and it will be oh so sweet.  I will never know why Yankees fans even bother.
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British Teen Arrested for "Racism"

Posted by Sapper on Thursday, October 12, 2006 9:01:35 PM
 According to the Daily Mail, the Manchester Police were called in to arrest a 14 year old schoolgirl because she had the audacity to request assignment to a school project group in which the other participants [gasp] SPEAK ENGLISH:

The teenager had not been in school the day before due to a hospital appointment and had missed the start of a project, so the teacher allocated her a group to sit with.

"She said I had to sit there with five Asian pupils," said Codie yesterday.

"Only one could speak English, so she had to tell that one what to do so she could explain in their language. Then she sat me with them and said 'Discuss'."

According to Codie, the five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'."

I think this quote sums up my reaction:

Last night Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: "It's obviously common sense that pupils who don't speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers."

"I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time, but it's a sad reflection on the school if they can't deal with it without involving the police."

"A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions - they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say."
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"More Troops" is not a Strategy

Posted by Sapper on Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:49:10 PM
I'll put it bluntly.  Iraq is in a state of Stalemate.  The terrorists and we have each other by the tail and neither can now afford to let go.  We can't release Iraq to the jihadists any more than they can let us have our victory.  For better or for worse somebody has to blink.

Calls for more troops alone will not solve the problem just as the jihadists have found that more terrorists won't give them a military victory.  Churchill learned his lesson about throwing more troops into a stalemate on hostile territory at Galipoli.  Just as we should have learned the same lesson from Vietnam.  There we lost not because the North Vietnamese Communists were a superior force, or better trained, or that they had better morale and will.  We lost because we quickly chose to reduce the battle to their terms and gave up our strategic and tactical advantages.  The war turned into a stalemate that we eventually grew tired of and left.  The communists "won" by default.  It was an expensive lesson that we should have learned well.

The jihadists can also win this war "by default" and they know it.  We've voluntarily given up our strategic and tactical advantages and now we're fighting on their terms, reacting instead of acting.  We have given the terrorists initiative by default because we haven't, as yet, taken it on a large scale.

For the US Army, since the Battle of Trenton, Maneuver has been a winning principal of warfare when used properly.  And when we fail to do so, we are toast.  From the loss of New York to the British to the loss of Vietnam to the Communists, when we are a static army reacting to the enemy, we are lost.  Throwing more troops into the battle is, in essence, adding "mass" or "fires" using doctrinal terms.  In a war of attrition, that's how you win.  In a war of maneuver, it is only useful if those "fires" are used to fix the enemy, outmaneuver him and cut off his head.

But the essential point of this war as we have it now is not a traditional military victory but a political one.  Because, at its core, Jihadism is a political force and terror is its weapon of choice.  This may be too fine a distinction but we need to define our enemy before we can fix it, outmaneuver it and kill it.  Our enemy is not "terrorism".  Terror is a tactic.  Our enemy as I see it is Islamic Jihadism and this is what we must outmaneuver. 

We have not had either the will or the power to fix the enemy as he has been able to move about town to town, province to province, and country to country despite our best efforts.  Unless we are going to deploy a sufficiently large enough force to put Iraq and its towns and borders into total lockdown, we will be fighting this war the same way we are now until we tire of it and concede. I suspect the more viable solutions are probably political in nature since we can't even secure our own borders with "friendly" nations let alone the borders of Iraq. 

The people of Iraq must be invested in victory or there will be no victory, no matter how many troops we send.  The people must be made to believe that they have a stake in a democratic future.  Elections were a vital first step but unless those elections lead to tangible results the elected government will have no credibility as anything other than a puppet of the US military.  It is essential that we use whatever means we can muster at once to outmaneuver the enemy politically and enlist the help of our "friends" in the region, even if that means buying their help.  Turkey, which fears a breakdown of Iraq and a separate Kurdistan and who is also a NATO member seems a likely partner. Kuwait perhaps could be persuaded.  And furthermore, it must not seem to be a US-led effort in the long term.  As Ronald Reagan said, "you can accomplish anything if you don't care who gets the credit."
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