September 2007 Archives

Excellent article by James Lewis at American Thinker. Here’s a teaser — go read the whole story:

One of the clichéd questions of the Left is “Why did Bush invade Iraq? We were attacked by Saudi Arabians on 9/11!” Or so goes the customary narrative.

This mantra is supposed to expose President Bush’s stupidity. But in fact The Question reveals the asker’s own clueless blunder about war and strategy. The proper answer is to point to other presidents and other wars. Like FDR after Pearl Harbor.

After the “day that will live in infamy” FDR’s first land attack took place in Morocco and Algeria, then French colonies, in alliance with the British.

…

In the upshot, the Allies invaded France before we finally reached Japan. So by the “logic” of our friends on the Left, FDR attacked all the wrong places and all the wrong people — the Germans and Italians (who only fought back once we attacked), not the Japanese who assaulted us at Pearl.

Our highbrow strategists on the Left must believe that FDR should have just done a tit-for-tat for the attack on Hawaii, avenged two thousand plus American lives, and the war would have been over in six months. Which is a load of nonsense, of course, because the Japanese, the Germans and Italians, were long-term, world-wide, imperialist fanatics.

So are the Islamic fascists.

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FDR understood that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not an isolated incident, just as President Bush understood that the attack on America on 9/11 was not an isolated event. The liberals still don’t get that. They who woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 — and promptly went back to sleep the day after that. None so blind as will not see.

Everytime I talk to a Democrat about the War Against Terror I hear the same old bumper sticker slogans:  Bush is stupid, Bush lied us into war with Iraq, Bush rushed us into an illegal war, Iraq never attacked us, Iraq was a secular country and had no contacts with Islamic terrorists, and the list goes on. Everyone one of those is refutable, of course, but it does not stop them from believing what they say. I blame part of it on the public school system — history is barely taught, logic is not taught at all except in higher mathematics and mathematics-related courses.

If we surrender in the war on Iraq, we will regret it for hundreds of years.

A transnational privacy standard? Sounds too good to be true. However, groups of countries like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the European Union (EU) have created their own privacy standards that have been more or less successful.

APEC’s Privacy Framework is based upon nine essential points:

• Preventing Harm
• Notice
• Collection Limitations
• Uses of Personal Information
• Choice
• Integrity of Personal Information
• Security Safeguards
• Access and Correction
• Accountablity

APEC’s framework has been derided as being too vague. The EU, however, defines privacy as a “fundamental human right” and has instituted measures that are positively draconian when compared to US laws. The US Department of Commerce has worked with the European Commission to develop a safe harbor for American companies wishing to do businesses with countries in the EU.

Google is proposing a global standard for privacy concerns. The details will be released on September 21, 2007. From NetworkWorld:

Search giant Google will propose on Friday that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy to address growing concerns over how personal data is handled across the Internet.

Fleischer’s 30-minute presentation will advocate that regulators, international organizations and private companies increase dialog on privacy issues with a goal to create a unified standard.

Google envisions the policy to be a product of self-regulation by companies, improved laws and possible new ones, according to a Google spokesman based in London.

Google will have a tough row to hoe. First, there are many who hate Google as much as they hate Microsoft. I don’t understand that kind of thinking, but it’s out there. Second, there are many people — myself included — who despise Google’s collusion with the Chinese government. Finally, Google’s proposal is apparently weaker than the EU standard and it’s unlikely that the EU is going to budge.

Google’s initiatives will have to be strengthened to be accepted in today’s world. However, the fact that they are pushing for a global standard and that they have the economic clout to do so might just put them in the driver’s seat. We’ll have to watch and see how it pans out.