Half Sigma

Democracy bad for the Middle East

A front page article in today's Wall Street Journal has picked up on a theme that bloggers like Steve Sailer and ParaPundit have been writing about frequently.

The violence in Lebanon also highlighted what critics say are contradictions in the Bush democracy quest. For one, the administration now has to rely on autocratic leaders as it pursues its goal of ridding the region of autocratic leaders. Moreover, the region's worst unrest is in the three places Washington has pushed hardest for democratic change: Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.

The article focuses on Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak is President for life. The United States is much better off with secular and moderate Mubarak than what we'd get in Egypt if the people had a real choice. Mubarak's powers to have anyone he wants imprisoned without a trial and tortured allows him to control the terrorist proclivities of the religious elements of the population. Too bad the U.S. can't use powers like that In Iraq. No wonder why we can't control the place.

I predict that democracy will never work in the Middle East until the population can be secularized and educated in the importance of liberterian government (instead of being educated in the importance of killing Jews). It's also possible that the genetic intelligence of the average Arab just isn't high enough to support a stable libertarian democracy. (As I demonstrated using the GSS, libertarianism and secularism are correlated with higher intelligence.)

Scott Adams predicts elimination of Islam

Scott Adams says (hat tip Catallarchy for pointing me to Scott Adams' blog):

From my point of view, the terrorists will never stop, and we’ll never kill enough of them, and their weapons and tactics will improve without end. At some future point, only Draconian methods will end the threat. That’s why I predict that some hawkish Christian leader will emerge with an idea for eliminating Islam. And as horribly evil as that will be, no one will have a better idea.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating that solution. I just predict it will happen.

I think this is a reasonable prediction.

The Israel/Hezbollah conflict is an example of the likelihood of this happening. Israel doesn't have the balls to completely wipe out Hezbollah (like blowing up Mosques, intentionally targeting civilians, attacking anyone who resupplies Hezbollah), so eventually there will be a ceasefire, and then Hezbollah will be resupplied by Iran and Syria, and more Shiites will join up because they were inspired by Hezbollah's ability to stand up to the Jews. Eventually Hezbollah will be even more powerful than it was before the attack.

Now some will say "ah ha! This means it was a mistake for Israel to attack." This ignores the fact that Hezbollah was growing stronger and stronger before the Israeli attack. Shiites were joining up inspired by Hezbollah's ability to kidnap Israeli soldiers and get away with it.

So you see, whether Israel does nothing, or attacks Hezbollah half-hearted way (the current strategy), Hezbollah grows stronger.

Yes, let's let more nurses immigrate

According to a NY Times article, poor nations are complaining about a provision in the new immigration bill which allows an unlimited number of trained nurses to immgrate to the United States.

There's some irony here. The same countries that are joyously happy for us to absorb their least productive people get mad that we will allow their productive citizens to immigrate.

In order to immigrate here as a nurse, the immigrant must pass an English test and a nursing test. The nursing test is surely correlated with intelligence. Immigration of intelligent people who speak English sounds like a better idea to me than immigration of stupid people who don't speak English.

Iran will have bomb by 2010

Israeli intelligence says that Iran will have a nuclear bomb by 2010.

Some people are no doubt thinking that this is just a self-serving statement because the Israeli government wants Iran attacked regardless of the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

However, I don't see what Israel has to gain by stirring up the pot with these accusations unless the Israeli government believes them to be credible. Without nuclear weapons, Iran isn't a serious threat to Israel because there is too much distance between the two countries. It is true that Iran finances anti-Israeli terrorist groups, but a U.S. led attack on Iran is not likely to change that unless the attack causes the current government to be overthrown.

A U.S. led attack on Iran will likely lead to Iranian missile retaliation against Israel (see my post U.S. attacks Iran), so my conclusion is that Israel wouldn't be hyping the Iranian threat unless it was real.

Iran decision tree level 4, U.S. attacks Iran

After our nation's easy victories against Iraq, and our ability to bomb any country such as Sudan (Clinton bombed a factory there) and Serbia (Clinton dropped a whole lot of bombs there), people have come to believe that the U.S. military is invincible, a big change from the immediate post-Vietnam era when people thought the opposite about our military.

I believe that Iran will be our most challenging enemy since World War II. Iran clearly has a strategy in which they think they have a chance of hurting us, and it makes a lot more sense than Saddam's non-strategy. As you recall, Saddam just let us bomb him in two successive wars without mounting much of a challenge. Defensive wars don't work very well when modern weapons are involved. The French learned that in WWII. Iran plans to go on the offense.

Naval strategy

Iran's strategy is surely to take control of the Persian Gulf, where the U.S. always maintains an aircraft carrier group. To attack our fleet, Iran has both air launched and surface launched anti-ship missiles, including French Exocet and newer Chinese Silkworm missiles. Iran has dozens of these missiles, several for each U.S. ship that needs to be sunk.

Additionally, Iran has several submarines which will launch torpedoes at our ships. And to top it off, Iran has a fleet of approximately a thousand small attack boats, you may call them "suicide boats." Iran will use these boats to swarm our ships and Iran hopes that some will make it adjacent to a ship to detonate its payload. These boats also have machine guns mounted on them.

Yes, our ships have defenses, but can we simlutaneously defend against dozens of missiles, torpedoes, and a thousand suicide boats? If we are unable to defend, then our Persian gulf fleet will wind up being completely obliterated and Iran will have won the first naval victory against us since WWII. After defeating our Persian Gulf fleet Iran will mine the straights of Hormuz, blocking off the Gulf from both inbound and outbound naval traffic. This will, of course, wreak havoc on the world economy because no oil will be able to get out.

To prevent the above scenario, the U.S. will have to remove its ships from the Gulf, which is not something our military will want to do because they are need to support our Iraqi operations, and we need them to conduct our miliary campaign against Iran. The second way to protect our fleet is to attack first and destroy as much of Iran's military as possible. Once we establish air superiority, we can attack anything we see sailing out of Iran or any airplane we see flying off the ground. Unlike Saddam, who let us attack first, I think that Iran won't be so stupid and that they will launch the first attack. The U.S. will surely give adequate warning, with a vote of Congress authorizing some sort of action, and a lot of ultimatums issued by George Bush.

Long range missiles

Iran has hundreds of long range missiles, including as many as a hundred of the newer Shahab 3 missiles which can deliver a 2000 pount warhead to Israel. These are built with Russian and North Korean technology. Iran will surely want to launch these before we attack and destroy them the way we did Saddam's Scud missiles. These Iranian missiles are much better than Saddam's Scud missiles, they user newer technology and are better designed for long range. Thousands of Iraelis would be killed if Iran simultaneously launched all of its missiles at Tel Aviv. What would Israel do if faced with such an attack? Iran hopes that Israel would somehow get involved in the war and this would unite the Islamic world behind Iran.

I should point out that it will not be easy for Israel to retaliate. Isreal does not possess an armada of conventional missiles, just a few nuclear armed missiles. It would be difficult to launch airstrikes against Iraq becuase it is a long flight, requiring the flyover of unfriendly countries and in air refueling. And Israel faces the danger that its planes might be shot down by Iranian air defense missiles.

Iran can also use its long range missiles against the oil facilities of neighboring countries deemed to be helping the United States. This would include Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and this would have a horrible economic impact because millions of barrels per day of oil production would be taken offline for many years.

Are you scared?

Our own armed forces might indeed be afraid of the consequences of military action against Iran, which is why I deemed it more likely than not that the U.S. will just acquiesce to the Iranian nuclear program, which in my opinion would be a big mistake. The longer we allow Iran to build up its military, the harder it will be to attack them.

Zimbabwe on the verge of collapse

The economy of Zimbabwe seems to be on the verge of collapse. Inflation is around 1000% a year. This is interesting because once upon a time, back in the days when South Africa was still apartheid, Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, was trumpeted as an example of how whites could successfully relinquish their power to the majority.

Zimbabwe no longer looks like much of a success today. Once one of the strongest economies in Africa, Zimbabwe has now sunk down to the abysmal level of the other countries in the continent. The real tailspin began six years ago when the farms owned by whites were confiscated by the government and redistributed to poor blacks. This scared away all foreign investment and the farms were not run well after they were redistributed. It's almost like a page out of Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged.

There probably won't be much analysis of Zimbabwe in either the blogosphere or the MSM, because it's hard to not sound racist if one suggests that the blacks of Zimbabwe were better off when white people were running things.

One wonders if South Africa is headed down this same path. Is it safe to invest in South African stocks?.

Why Iranian nukes are our problem

A commenter wrote:

To make a decision on whether to invade Iran, because they may obtain nukes, is whistling past the graveyard. Israel and Europe need to defend themselves, and the US should stop playing the impossible task of World's cop - especially when the analogy is a cop trying to win the drug war. Stop wasting US dollars and US lives. Our economy is in bad enough shape thanks to internal policies, we don't need to act like an empire to make it worse.

He seems to be saying that Iranian nukes aren't our problem. If Iran has a nuclear exchange with Israel it's not our problem. If Iran wants to take over the oil fields of neighboring countries, it's not our problem.

Unlike the commenter, I lack the certainty that these things aren't our problem or that we should not care if millions in the Middle East die in a nuclear exchange. This would seem to me to be much more of a problem for us than what was going on in Serbia in the 1990s, yet the same anti-war Democrats who oppose Bush cheered on Clinton's military intervention in the Balkans.

But the danger to the United States is even more direct, because the motto of the government of Iran ever since the hostage crisis has been to bring "death to America." They are still shouting that slogan even today. According to a Pakistani newspaper,

Thousands of religious hardliners chanting “Death to America” gathered in Iran’s central desert on Tuesday [April 25th] to celebrate a failed US hostage rescue mission 26 years ago.

Luckily for us, the Iranians have no way to bring death to the United States mainland. Today.

If Iran obtains nuclear weapons, the Iranians would indeed have the means to bring death to hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, by sneaking a nuclear bomb into the United States and detonating it in a densely popoulated city such as New York.

Looking the other way and pretending that these religious nuts aren't really serious about bringing us death is simlar to how the world looked the other way when Hitler was running Germany. We should take the Iranians at face value, assume they mean it, and therefore a pre-emptive strike becomes our obligation.

Iran decision tree, level four, after Iran gets nukes

Other nations have obtained nuclear weapons and the world did not come to an end. China, India, Pakistan which is a Muslim country, and even North Korea which is part of George Bush's "Axis of Evil." So why is it a big deal if Iran gets them as well?

First of all, the world is not a safer place on account of Pakistan and North Korea possessing nuclear weapons. These countries haven't used them yet, but Korea is governed by a dictator with mental problems, and Pakistan's government isn't so secure.

Even though Pakistan is a Muslim nation, the government is run by the military. Normally we think of military governments as being bad, but actually it's a good thing in Muslim countries. Armies tend to be secular meritocracies and the generals are usually capable of rational decision making. Musharraf probably doesn't want to die in a nuclear exchange.

The problem Pakistan owning nuclear weapons isn't so much that the current government will use them, but that a future less rational government, run by religious zealots, might used them. The other problem is that nuclear technology seems to be leaking out of Pakistan, and out of North Korea as well. And that technology is leaking in the direction of Iran.

The more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more likely that one may eventually be used, and the more likely that terrorists may acquire one and set it off in the United States. The nuclearization fo the world's nations is a very bad trend. And Iran has already stated that they wish to help Sudan also become a nuclear power.

But Iran is especially worrisome because the government isn't run by rational people, but by religious zealots who believe that it's their mission to destroy Israel and destroy the United States who they call the Great Satan. It's one thing to legitimately worry about a country that says they only want to defend themselves. But for a country that publicly states over and over again that it wishes to destroy us, and who believe that dying in battle against us means ascension to Paradise, then we really ought to take these words at face value and not assume that they don't really mean it. Jewish people in Germany believed that Hitler wasn't serious about his anti-Semitic statements, but they found out that he was very serious indeed.

I am open to arguments why we should trust the Ayatollahs of Iran more than we should trust Hitler. Please try to convince me otherwise.

Here is my sobering list of possiblities for what happens when Iran obtains nuclear weapons:

(1) Launch first strike against Israel. Iran has already stated that they think Israel should be wiped off the map. The benefit of this tactic is that it's a sure thing to hit Israel with a ballistic missile. The drawback, from Iran's perspective, is that Israel has submarines with nuclear warheads so will surely launch a counterstike that destroys the country. But this may be considered acceptable losses to religious fanatics. 25% probablity.

(2) Give a nuclear bomb to terrorists who will bring it into the United States and detonate it in a populated city such as New York or Washington DC (for symbolic purposes). This will surely punish us good for being the Great Satan. The benefit of this tactic is that Iran might be able to maintain plausible deniability and thus avoid a nuclear counterattack. But the problem here is that it's not so easy to smuggle a bomb across the world, and it may be intercepted U.S. counterintelligence. If Iran only has enough enriched uranium to build a single bomb, and the goal is to actually detonate it, trying to smuggle it into the U.S. is a risky strategy. 10% probability.

(3) Iran invades southern Iraq (after we've withdrawn) in order to unite the Shiites, and then invades Kuwait as well because they have a lot of oil and Saddam has already proven that Kuwait is an easy target. Iran will say that this is to punish Kuwait for cooperating with the Great Satan. Then Iran will brandish its nuclear weapons and threaten to use them if attacked. 35% probability of this or a similar miltary excursion.

(4) Iran peacefully does nothing with its nuclear weapons. 30% probability.

Given the high probability that very bad things will happen with Iran obtains nuclear weapons, it is my belief that we shouldn't allow it to happen.

Iran decision tree, level three, no sanctions

If there are no sanctions, or if there are sanctions but they have no significant effect positive or negative, then here are the possiblities in the next level:

(1) Nothing happens and Iran gets nuclear weapons. This is the most likely outcome because the U.S. is afraid to act and no other country has the power or desire to stop Iran. 55% probablility.
(2) Israel attacks Iran. 10% probability.
(3) Secular Iranians overthrow the religious government, and then voluntary end the WMD program in exchange for U.S. aid. It hasn't happened since 1980, why is it suddenly going to happen just in the nick of time to save us? Highly unlikely. 2% probability.
(4) U.S. led attack on Iran. 33% probability.

Iranian decision tree, level two

After Iran refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions, there are two possible actions:

(1) Economic sanctions against Iran. 25% probability.
(2) No economic sanctions. 75% probability.

Why aren't any other possiblities included at this level? Because the way I see it, there's a good chance that the sanctions won't accomplish anything, in which case we face the same decision possibilities as if sanctions never happened in the fist place. But it's also possible for sanctions to go horribly wrong, which is why I think they probably won't happen.

The Iranian decision tree, top level

The U.S. and her allies want Iran to stop its nuclear weapons research. Iran has three options here:

(1) Cave in to pressure and stop the research.
(2) Pretend to cave in while secrectly continuing the research.
(3) Ignore the pressure and carry on.

Based upon Iranian public statements, and my guess of how Irananian leaders think option (3) will play out, I think there's a 90% chance that Iran will choose option (3), and 10% chance of option (2), and a close to 0% chance of option (1).

Therefore, future posts in this series will explore what happens after Iran ignores the UN Security Council or whatever other pressure we put on them.

Newsweek article about Iran

I pretty much agree with this Newsweek article about Iran, except to the extent that it implies that we shouldn't take any military action.

The article basically has two points:

(1) The Iranian people aren't waiting for us to liberate them, nor are they about to revolt against their current government. On the one hand this means that an attempt to use our military to turn Iran into a secular Western democracy will be doomed to failure. On the other hand, it also means that it's a bad strategy to hope that a pro-democracy movement is going to overthrough the government and solve our Iranian problem for us. If we don't want a bunch of religious nuts to control a nuclear arsenal, then we have to take action now.

(2) If we attack Iran, Iran might retaliate against us using terrorism, including the use of "martyrs" willing to give up their lives. I believe this is highly likely. I take Iran's statements that they will retaliate at face value. The Newsweek article doesn't mention the threat from Iranian missiles which I also find quite credible. I wrote about this in my post Can Iran hurt us militarily?.

Saddam Hussein was probably the worst military strategist the world has ever known. Iran will be a tougher military target. We need to assume that Iran will make effective of use of asyMMetric warfare via Martyrs and Missiles, the two M's of asyMMetric, and that Iran will attack first and not wait for us to just bomb them without a fight.

However, my warning for people who are afraid to attack Iran is that fear now will only make Iran and all future enemies that much bolder.

Can Iran hurt us militarily?

This is not something the MSM has been talking about, but after doing some research I think the resounding answer is YES.

Yes, we kicked Saddam's butt easily. Twice. Saddam may have been the worst military tactician the world has ever known. Both times he let us build up a huge force on his borders, and he let us attack first with our overwhelming airpower, and he tried to fight with us on our own terms.

Airplane against airplane, ship against ship, infantry man against infranty man, we can crush anything in the Middle East. But if the people running Iran's military have any sense, they will not let us attack first with overwhelming airpower, and they will fight asymmetrically against us.

Iran's biggest military buildup has been in the acquisition of missiles. Missiles are asymmetric weapons. They don't have to be as good as our missiles. They just have to be better than our defenses. Two Exocet missiles knocked out the USS Stark in the 1980s, and one Exocet missile (out of two fired) sunk the HMS Sheffield in the Falkland Islands war. Iran has hundreds of Exocet and Chinese anti-ship missiles.

If the U.S. has a naval fleet in the Perian Gulf, it could be a sitting duck for Iranian missiles. For our defense we have one or more Aegis cruisers that are supposed to be able to shoot down incoming missiles and protect the aircraft carrier. But who knows if this will really work in combat? If Iran launches a big attack with dozens of missiles simultaneously coming at our fleet, can the defense systems really shoot all of them down?

Iran has a lot of the latest Chinese missiles, and sure it's easy to say "ha, Chinese missiles must be crap," but Chinese engineers are pretty smart (visit the engineering department at any American college and count how many white American engineering students you see there) and if they can make DVD players and computer chips, they can also make effective missiles capable of shooting down our ships and planes. Once again, the Chinese missiles don't have to be as good as the best American missiles (but who says they aren't?), they just have to be better than our anti-missile defenses.

If Iran attacks first, there is the serious possiblity that the U.S. could suffer the worst naval defeat since Pearl Harbor.

Hamas wins an election

I have never blogged about Israel until now. It seems pointless. I'd just get pissed. I get pissed at people in the West who insist that Israel is just as culpable in this conflict as the Palestinians and other Muslim Arabs. And pissed at Israelis who are are so full of liberal guilt that they let everyone walk all over them.

Israeli spokespeople will often say "no other nation would put up with..." and they are right, no other nation would put up with whatever shit they are taking that week they way the Israelis put up with it. But the problem is, no one really believes it because they can't imagine any nation acting so against its self-interest. For example, after the U.S. suffered a terrorist attack we responded by taking over two whole countries. So the world figures that if Israel doesn't just solve the Palestinian problem by shoving all the Palestinians into Jordan, it must be because the Israelis know they are in the wrong.

The majority of Palestinians would kick the Israelis into the sea, the stated policy of the organization they just voted for. So they figure that the Israelis would do the same to them, and the only reason they don't do it is because they can't. They have a complete lack of understanding about Jewish liberal guilt.

So anyway, what happens now that Hamas is in charge? Probably nothing much. Prior to the Olso Accords the Palestinians were committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel put up with it without doing much about it, so the same thing will happen now. The only thing different today is that there's a greater chance that Palestinian terrorists might acquire a nuclear weapon.

I like the French riots

The aftermath of hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity for some to rail against the mistreatment of poor and minorities in the United States. It's always implied that liberal European countries like France do a much better job.

For this reason, the French riots are so enjoyable. Maybe the French politicians should come to the United States to learn the proper ways to treat its poor and minorities.

When Muslims become religious

One suspect had fallen out with his mother, a friend said, while another had suddenly grown more religious after going away to college. Two had grown thick beards in recent months, and in general they all had grown more distant from their friends and neighbors, they said.

NY Times.

When Muslims become more religious, they blow stuff up and kill people. This is why it’s dangerous to have many Muslims living in the country, some of them will become religious like these guys in Britain.

Thomas Friedman on the Muslim problem

On July 4th I wrote that immigration and Islam were the two greatest threats to our freedom.

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman seems to agree with me. He writes about the London bombings:

The attacks are also deeply disturbing because when jihadist bombers take their madness into the heart of our open societies, our societies are never again quite as open. Indeed, we all just lost a little freedom yesterday.

He is also on point with the following:

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

Islam strikes again

On July 4th I wrote that the two greatest threats to our freedom were immigration and Islam.

Sure enough, just three days later, Islamic terrorists strike London. And how much do you want to bet that the majority, if not all of, the terrorists were not born in the United Kingdom?

(And see Tim Worstall’s much linked to roundup of posts.)

Simple thoughts on China

Don Boudreax, agreeing with Lawrence Kudlow, writes:

Kudlow opens his op-ed with an appropriate question: "If a store is selling quality products at low prices, why would anyone want to shut it down?"

Indeed, why?

Why indeed?

Hey, maybe because the owner of the store is a communist with an arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at us and will use the profits to buy more?

Stop lending money to poor countries

The G8 agreed to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by the world’s poorest countries, most of them in Africa. (See NY Times.)

The lesson I get out of this is that it’s a bad idea to lend money to poor countries. The money apparently gets squandered instead of being put to productive uses. Read the following quote from the article:

Mr. Brown [referring to Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the Exchequer] said Group of 8 countries had agreed to compensate the World Bank and the African Development Bank in particular for forfeiting interest payments on poor countries' debt, so those groups would have the income to make new loans to other countries. "We could not contemplate a situation," he said, where debt cancellation for some poor countries was made at the expense of other poor countries.

The above quote suggests makes it clear the no lessons have been learned. The world will continue to lend money to poor countries, and such countries will continue to squander the money and end up being worse off because of the loans.

Maybe Newseek was right

The news today (WaPo article) suggests that Korans were routinely "mistreated" at Guantanomo Bay.

Now I should point out that I could really care the less if a Koran was "abused." It's just a book for crying out loud, not a human being. But I previously pointed out that the Newsweek story about the Koran incident was more believable than the Pentagon's denials, and the news today gives further credence to my original take on the matter.

Desecrated Korans and double standards

Joe Gandalman writes about the Koran which may or may not have been desecrated at Guantanamo Bay:

It almost defies description, if it's true. What would many Americans conclude if they heard that Americans captured in a Muslim country had to watch a crucifix set on fire — or if Jews capture had to watch the destruction of their holy Torah?

Arabs desecrated Joseph’s Tomb, destroying an irreplaceable archeological and religious site. This is a thousand times worse of a crime than destroying a book that someone bought at Borders. Yet from the reaction in America, not very many people cared at all.

UPDATE

Marc at USS Neverdock expresses similar thoughts when complains that the media ignored a story about Palestinians using Bibles for toilet paper:

Where's the outrage? Where's the indignation? Why is the world media so hell bent on portraying Islam as some kind of sacrosanct religion, better and above the rest? Is their book somehow holier than everybody else's? Not bloody likely!

Small countries are better than big countries

Gary Becker and Richard Posner both have some interesting thoughts on the economic benefits of small countries versus big countries.

Here are my thoughts:

The primary advantage of being big is self defense. In a world where wars are frequent, small countries tend to get swallowed up. But in the modern era, this doesn’t happen as often, and the United States is around as the world’s cop to protect small countries from larger aggressors.

Becker and Posner both point out that with globalization and free trade, countries no longer need to be self sufficient in all things, a factor favoring small countries. They even explain why small countries have an advantage in global trade.

Big countries lead to bigger, more bureaucratic, and less efficient government. Unnecessary laws are created that interfere with free markets and harm the country’s economy.

When the big country is compromised of different ethnic or religious groups which don’t get along well, this creates another problem which prevents the country from being efficiently run.

For some reason, our foreign policy seems to discourage the breaking up of countries. For example, one of our goals for Iraq was to keep it a single country even though it’s compromised of three different groups that don’t like each other very much.

Our foreign policy is backwards. We should be actively encouraging the splitting up of large countries into smaller ones.