God Wrote a Book! - John Piper
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Fabricating Climate Doom: Hijacking Conservation Success in the UK to Build Consensus!
Adapted from the chapter Deceptive Extremes in Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism by Jim Steele
What Good Conservation Science Reported
Good stewards of the environment are compelled to engage in good science. In 1980, butterfly experts in the United Kingdom predicted that both the Silver-spotted Skipper and the Large Blue butterfly were doomed to extinction. The widespread Silver-spotted Skipper was gradually restricted to just 46 locations. The more rare Large Blue had been declining from over 90 estimated colonies supporting tens of thousands in the 1800s to just two colonies and about 325 individuals by 1972. The question that had continuously eluded conservationists was why? Disturbed by repeated failures to correctly identify the causes of the decline, Dr. Jeremy Thomas embarked upon extensive research that ultimately unraveled the mystery. It is a model of superb scientific research and demonstrates why good environmental stewards must employ carefully detailed studies. For those of you who enjoy bizarre nature stories, the life of the Large Blue is a fascinating tale of deception and betrayal in which plump, seemingly helpless caterpillars turn the tables on voracious ants. And oddly enough, despite global warming, the Large Blue went extinct in England because its microclimate had cooled.
In earlier attempts to stave off the Large Blue’s extirpation, UK conservationists had protected nine areas in order to minimize any human impact on the remaining populations. However this habitat protection uncharacteristically failed to slow the species’ decline, so conservationists inferred that the most likely culprits must be unscrupulous butterfly collectors who were trying to cash in on the value of its increasing rarity. So conservationists hurriedly erected protective fences, only to watch hopelessly as the last population continued to decline. Ironically, the fence itself, not greedy collectors, was the final nail in the Large Blue’s coffin.1
Europe’s Large Blue belongs to a group of butterflies whose survival has been eternally entwined with the fate of local ants. In a process that sounds lifted from a Disney or Pixar screenplay, Large Blue caterpillars summon ant bodyguards with special calls and scents. The discovery of talking caterpillars is a fascinating story in itself, but the story gets better. Upon arriving, the summoned ants are fed with a sugary reward oozed from special pores in the caterpillar’s bodies. The caterpillars also exude intoxicating chemicals that make their new ant bodyguards more aggressive against other less friendly ant species. (Search YouTube for “ant caterpillar mutualism” for a 2-minute real-life video)
One species of the Blues not only beckons the ants to come to its protection, but then seduces the ants to carry it into the ant colony. Once inside, the caterpillar then mimics the sounds of the queen ant, demanding to be fed in royal ant fashion. This is not quite the royal treatment imagined by humans: the caterpillar’s instinctual impersonation induces the worker ants to approach and regurgitate their stomach contents, upon which the caterpillar gratefully dines.
The Large Blue’s relationship with ants has an added twist more reminiscent of a grade B movie depicting the horrors of adopting a mysterious orphan. After hatching, Large Blue caterpillars feed on their host plant just as all other caterpillars do. And like other species of Blues, they soon drop to the ground to summon and then mesmerize a local ant species. Because the ants’ worm-like larvae resemble the size and shape of the early stage of these caterpillars, the intoxicating charade is sufficiently convincing, and the ants quickly carry the caterpillar into their nest.
Once the caterpillar is safely nestled into the ant’s nursery, the hideous betrayal commences. One by one the ungrateful adoptee devours the ant’s larvae. The Large Blue’s very existence has evolved to become completely dependent on eating “baby ants.” And only this one species of ant will do. Ironically, these butterflies often cause the extirpation of the adopting ant colony, which in turn limits the butterfly’s population.
Earlier conservation solutions had been simply based on the prevailing biases that failed to prevent extinction. Thomas lamented, “every hypothesis [collectors, insecticides, fragmentation, inbreeding, climate, pollution] on which the conservation measures of the previous 50 years had been based was untenable.”
To be kind to those earlier researchers, the critical changes in the Large Blue’s protected habitat were barely perceptible. These changes created a baffling illusion that something was oozing across the boundaries of their protected conservation areas and decimating the species. So blaming collectors, pollution, climate change, or disease made sense simply because those phenomena readily cross artificial boundaries. But further observations never supported these suspicions. To unravel the Large Blue’s extinction mystery, Jeremy Thomas painstakingly identified and measured every possible confounding factor that might affect not only the butterfly directly, but also its host plants and the host ants. In addition to general weather variables, he tallied the various local ant species, measured temperatures above and below ground, differences in turf height, plant species composition, and the amounts of bare ground available.
It was laborious and detailed work, but exactly what good science dictates. Why the real agent of extinction had gone unnoticed finally became clear. Thomas discovered that just a few millimeters of change in the height of the grass, during the spring and autumn, could lead to the butterflies’ local extinction. The species of ants that the Large Blue plundered requires a very short grass habitat, which allowed the sun to warm the soil and their underground colony. When the grass grew from 1 to 2 centimeters, the temperatures just below the surface in the ants’ brood chamber dropped by 3–5°F. When the turf exceeded 3 cm, the microclimate below the grass cooled enough that competing ant species overran the Large Blue’s host ants. Three centimeters is less than your little finger, so such a small change in the height of the grass had been understandably overlooked.
Over the years, as more efficient animal husbandry reduced sheep and cattle grazing, pastures were increasingly abandoned. Biologists assumed that as more pastures returned to their natural state, wildlife biodiversity and abundance would also increase. That assumption is often true, but without human management, not only did the grass grow taller, but shady trees and shrubs soon invaded. The increasing shade was killing not only the Large Blue but was also endangering a diverse array of the United Kingdom’s other warmth-requiring butterflies like the Silver-spotted Skipper.
In addition to reduced grazing, earlier attempts to control UK rabbit populations added to the demise of these warmth-loving butterflies. Rabbits are not native to the British Isles, or to Australia, but had been introduced long ago as a source of meat. As growing populations of escaped rabbits competed for grasslands with the sheep and cattle (also nonnative), people attempted various forms of pest control. In Australia, humans erected the “great rabbit fence” to separate western and eastern Australia. Eventually, they turned to germ warfare, employing a newly discovered myxomatosis virus, which decimated the Australian rabbit population. In France a bacteriologist introduced the disease to rid his estate of rabbits. It then quickly spread, killing 90% of France’s native rabbit population. The virus then spread, either naturally or intentionally, into Great Britain. By the mid 1950s it had devastated the rabbit populations there. With fewer cattle, fewer sheep, and fewer rabbits grazing, the grasslands became increasingly overgrown, and warmth-loving butterflies became increasingly scarce. Not realizing the importance of grazers, the well-intentioned conservationists who had erected the protective fence unwittingly destroyed that which they sought to protect.
Once informed by the detailed work of Jeremy Thomas and his colleagues, by 1980 conservationists had begun efforts to successfully reintroduce the extinct Large Blue. Government subsidies and environmental schemes were enacted to encourage grazing, while conservationists mowed abandoned pastures to the optimum turf height. Individuals from Large Blue populations that still survived in Sweden were shuttled to England’s “terra nova” for a second chance. Under careful management, the reintroduced Large Blue is slowly rebounding.
But why should people need to intervene so directly and so intensively? Why couldn’t the Large Blue and other butterflies just exist “naturally”? Another ironic twist to this story is that humans actively created much of England’s grasslands, starting between four and six thousand years ago when new colonists introduced farming and grazing to England. To feed their sheep and cattle, early Britons increasingly cut down the natural forests that had once covered most of Great Britain. These human-generated grasslands were then maintained by grazing sheep and cattle that ate the sprouts of any trees that dared to recolonize. Similarly, the Victorians set fires to clear much of Scotland’s forest to encourage heather for grouse hunting. Much of Great Britain’s “natural” habitat is actually the product of millennia of human design. To maintain human-made biodiversity requires human stewardship.
What Good Conservation Science Reported
Good stewards of the environment are compelled to engage in good science. In 1980, butterfly experts in the United Kingdom predicted that both the Silver-spotted Skipper and the Large Blue butterfly were doomed to extinction. The widespread Silver-spotted Skipper was gradually restricted to just 46 locations. The more rare Large Blue had been declining from over 90 estimated colonies supporting tens of thousands in the 1800s to just two colonies and about 325 individuals by 1972. The question that had continuously eluded conservationists was why? Disturbed by repeated failures to correctly identify the causes of the decline, Dr. Jeremy Thomas embarked upon extensive research that ultimately unraveled the mystery. It is a model of superb scientific research and demonstrates why good environmental stewards must employ carefully detailed studies. For those of you who enjoy bizarre nature stories, the life of the Large Blue is a fascinating tale of deception and betrayal in which plump, seemingly helpless caterpillars turn the tables on voracious ants. And oddly enough, despite global warming, the Large Blue went extinct in England because its microclimate had cooled.
In earlier attempts to stave off the Large Blue’s extirpation, UK conservationists had protected nine areas in order to minimize any human impact on the remaining populations. However this habitat protection uncharacteristically failed to slow the species’ decline, so conservationists inferred that the most likely culprits must be unscrupulous butterfly collectors who were trying to cash in on the value of its increasing rarity. So conservationists hurriedly erected protective fences, only to watch hopelessly as the last population continued to decline. Ironically, the fence itself, not greedy collectors, was the final nail in the Large Blue’s coffin.1
Europe’s Large Blue belongs to a group of butterflies whose survival has been eternally entwined with the fate of local ants. In a process that sounds lifted from a Disney or Pixar screenplay, Large Blue caterpillars summon ant bodyguards with special calls and scents. The discovery of talking caterpillars is a fascinating story in itself, but the story gets better. Upon arriving, the summoned ants are fed with a sugary reward oozed from special pores in the caterpillar’s bodies. The caterpillars also exude intoxicating chemicals that make their new ant bodyguards more aggressive against other less friendly ant species. (Search YouTube for “ant caterpillar mutualism” for a 2-minute real-life video)
One species of the Blues not only beckons the ants to come to its protection, but then seduces the ants to carry it into the ant colony. Once inside, the caterpillar then mimics the sounds of the queen ant, demanding to be fed in royal ant fashion. This is not quite the royal treatment imagined by humans: the caterpillar’s instinctual impersonation induces the worker ants to approach and regurgitate their stomach contents, upon which the caterpillar gratefully dines.
The Large Blue’s relationship with ants has an added twist more reminiscent of a grade B movie depicting the horrors of adopting a mysterious orphan. After hatching, Large Blue caterpillars feed on their host plant just as all other caterpillars do. And like other species of Blues, they soon drop to the ground to summon and then mesmerize a local ant species. Because the ants’ worm-like larvae resemble the size and shape of the early stage of these caterpillars, the intoxicating charade is sufficiently convincing, and the ants quickly carry the caterpillar into their nest.
Once the caterpillar is safely nestled into the ant’s nursery, the hideous betrayal commences. One by one the ungrateful adoptee devours the ant’s larvae. The Large Blue’s very existence has evolved to become completely dependent on eating “baby ants.” And only this one species of ant will do. Ironically, these butterflies often cause the extirpation of the adopting ant colony, which in turn limits the butterfly’s population.
Earlier conservation solutions had been simply based on the prevailing biases that failed to prevent extinction. Thomas lamented, “every hypothesis [collectors, insecticides, fragmentation, inbreeding, climate, pollution] on which the conservation measures of the previous 50 years had been based was untenable.”
To be kind to those earlier researchers, the critical changes in the Large Blue’s protected habitat were barely perceptible. These changes created a baffling illusion that something was oozing across the boundaries of their protected conservation areas and decimating the species. So blaming collectors, pollution, climate change, or disease made sense simply because those phenomena readily cross artificial boundaries. But further observations never supported these suspicions. To unravel the Large Blue’s extinction mystery, Jeremy Thomas painstakingly identified and measured every possible confounding factor that might affect not only the butterfly directly, but also its host plants and the host ants. In addition to general weather variables, he tallied the various local ant species, measured temperatures above and below ground, differences in turf height, plant species composition, and the amounts of bare ground available.
It was laborious and detailed work, but exactly what good science dictates. Why the real agent of extinction had gone unnoticed finally became clear. Thomas discovered that just a few millimeters of change in the height of the grass, during the spring and autumn, could lead to the butterflies’ local extinction. The species of ants that the Large Blue plundered requires a very short grass habitat, which allowed the sun to warm the soil and their underground colony. When the grass grew from 1 to 2 centimeters, the temperatures just below the surface in the ants’ brood chamber dropped by 3–5°F. When the turf exceeded 3 cm, the microclimate below the grass cooled enough that competing ant species overran the Large Blue’s host ants. Three centimeters is less than your little finger, so such a small change in the height of the grass had been understandably overlooked.
Over the years, as more efficient animal husbandry reduced sheep and cattle grazing, pastures were increasingly abandoned. Biologists assumed that as more pastures returned to their natural state, wildlife biodiversity and abundance would also increase. That assumption is often true, but without human management, not only did the grass grow taller, but shady trees and shrubs soon invaded. The increasing shade was killing not only the Large Blue but was also endangering a diverse array of the United Kingdom’s other warmth-requiring butterflies like the Silver-spotted Skipper.
In addition to reduced grazing, earlier attempts to control UK rabbit populations added to the demise of these warmth-loving butterflies. Rabbits are not native to the British Isles, or to Australia, but had been introduced long ago as a source of meat. As growing populations of escaped rabbits competed for grasslands with the sheep and cattle (also nonnative), people attempted various forms of pest control. In Australia, humans erected the “great rabbit fence” to separate western and eastern Australia. Eventually, they turned to germ warfare, employing a newly discovered myxomatosis virus, which decimated the Australian rabbit population. In France a bacteriologist introduced the disease to rid his estate of rabbits. It then quickly spread, killing 90% of France’s native rabbit population. The virus then spread, either naturally or intentionally, into Great Britain. By the mid 1950s it had devastated the rabbit populations there. With fewer cattle, fewer sheep, and fewer rabbits grazing, the grasslands became increasingly overgrown, and warmth-loving butterflies became increasingly scarce. Not realizing the importance of grazers, the well-intentioned conservationists who had erected the protective fence unwittingly destroyed that which they sought to protect.
Once informed by the detailed work of Jeremy Thomas and his colleagues, by 1980 conservationists had begun efforts to successfully reintroduce the extinct Large Blue. Government subsidies and environmental schemes were enacted to encourage grazing, while conservationists mowed abandoned pastures to the optimum turf height. Individuals from Large Blue populations that still survived in Sweden were shuttled to England’s “terra nova” for a second chance. Under careful management, the reintroduced Large Blue is slowly rebounding.
But why should people need to intervene so directly and so intensively? Why couldn’t the Large Blue and other butterflies just exist “naturally”? Another ironic twist to this story is that humans actively created much of England’s grasslands, starting between four and six thousand years ago when new colonists introduced farming and grazing to England. To feed their sheep and cattle, early Britons increasingly cut down the natural forests that had once covered most of Great Britain. These human-generated grasslands were then maintained by grazing sheep and cattle that ate the sprouts of any trees that dared to recolonize. Similarly, the Victorians set fires to clear much of Scotland’s forest to encourage heather for grouse hunting. Much of Great Britain’s “natural” habitat is actually the product of millennia of human design. To maintain human-made biodiversity requires human stewardship.
Metamorphosing Conservation Success into Climate Alarm
“We search for a climate fingerprint in the overall patterns, rather than critiquing each study individually” 3
Dr. Camille Parmesan, University of Texas
While serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Camille Parmesan (whose work was introduced here Fabricating Climate Doom – Part 1: Parmesan’s Butterfly Effect) issued the paper “A Globally Coherent Fingerprint of Climate Change Impacts Across Natural Systems.” In contrast to Jeremy Thomas’s detailed investigations, Parmesan again advocated that biologists should ignore local details. She wrote, “Here we present quantitative estimates of the global biological impacts of climate change. We search for a climate fingerprint in the overall patterns, rather than critiquing each study individually.” However, critiquing individual studies is always the essential first step. Otherwise the overall pattern will be distilled from faulty information. And in order to support her supposed pattern of global warming disruption, she again omitted crucial contradictory details.
Parmesan tactfully offered lip service to altered landscapes, but stated that her “probabilistic model” accurately separated the effects of land use from climate change. To demonstrate her model’s power, she wrote, “Consider the case of the silver-spotted skipper butterfly (Hesperia comma) that has expanded its distribution close to its northern boundary in England over the past 20 years. Possible ecological explanations for this expansion are regional warming and changes in land use. Comparing the magnitudes and directions of these two factors suggests that climate change is more likely than land-use change to be the cause of expansion.” That was a very odd claim.
This was the very same Silver-spotted Skipper that Jeremy Thomas’ detailed studies and subsequent conservation prescriptions had saved from extinction along with the Large Blue. Parmesan was hijacking a conservation success story to spin a tale of climate disruption. Her “proof” that climate change was driving the Silver-spotted Skipper northward came from the work of her old friend C.D. Thomas, known for predicting that rising CO2 levels had committed 60% of the world’s species to extinction.5 Using a mesmerizing statistical model, C.D. Thomas argued that because the Silver-spotted Skipper “needs warmth,” only global warming could account for its recent colonization of a few cooler north-facing slopes of England’s southern hills.
The Skipper is indeed fond of hotter south-facing slopes. However, the butterfly had historically inhabited cooler northern slopes if those slopes had been grazed. Like the Large Blue, the Skipper had disappeared from both cool north-facing slopes and warm south-facing slopes whenever the turf grew too high.6,7 C.D. Thomas’ model was statistically significant only if he ignored recent conservation efforts to promote warmer, short-turf habitat. At the end of his paper, relegated to his methods sections, he quietly stated, “we assumed that grazing patterns were the same in 1982 as in 2000.”4Parmesan and C.D. were guilty of grave sins of omission.
I emailed Dr. Jeremy Thomas regarding the study by C.D. Thomas and asked, “I assume due to earlier collaboration, you are aware of the habitat his study referenced? If so, is his implied assumption of no changes to turf height valid?” He replied, “No, it's not valid. There was a massive change in turf height and vegetation structure …between 1980 and the 1990s onwards for 2 reasons. (emphasis added)” First, since the 1986 paper, several of the key surviving sites were grazed more appropriately by conservationists and most of them, and many neighbors, are today in “agri-environmental schemes” to maintain optimum grass heights. Second, from 1990 onwards the rabbits had gradually returned and did the same job on several abandoned former sites.
Although he did not have local climate data for the Silver-spotted Skipper’s recovery, Jeremy Thomas suggested that at least two thirds of the Skippers’ recovery and their subsequent recolonization had resulted from both the increased grazing and the rabbits’ recovery. He was willing to attribute as much as a third of the butterflies’ recovery to climate warming between the 1970s and the present.
If, for argument’s sake, we accept that one-third of the recovery was due solely to CO2warming and ignore published arguments that the warming in England have been caused by the warm mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation9 (and recent cooling by the cool mode), habitat improvements still account for at least two-thirds of the skippers’ expansion. Furthermore, the Silver-spotted Skipper had yet to expand further northward than its previous 1920s boundary. Yet that was Parmesan’s best example of a “coherent fingerprint of global warming” disruption! It was bad science, but the consensus flocked to it in agreement.
To date more than 3500 papers have referenced her interpretation as evidence of climate disruption. It is a consensus built on misleading results that hijacked legitimate conservation science. In contrast, Jeremy Thomas’ successful preservation of two species on the brink of regional extinction had unequivocally demonstrated that the long-term changes were due to the quality of the caterpillar’s habitat. Although weather change causes short-term fluctuations in butterfly populations, a change in habitat quality affects populations 100 times more powerfully than weather.8 But such successful conservation efforts do not get funded in the same way as global warming horror stories do, and Jeremy Thomas’ “Evidence Based Conservation of Butterflies” has been cited by just 17 papers. Such a gross imbalance is a sad testimony to how the politics of climate change has corrupted the environmental sciences. I fear it is a hijacking that will only breed distrust for our legitimate green concerns in the future.The misguided obsession with CO2 and Parmesan’s faulty probabilistic model has supported equally bad analyses regards the fate of polar bears, penguins, frogs, pika and marine ecosystems, but that takes a whole book to document.
Why have so few scientists celebrated the good science like Jeremy Thomas’ when it empowers us with the critical understanding that allows us to locally build a more resilient environment? Why instead have thousands of scientists uncritically pushed false scenarios of catastrophic climate change? Although some skeptics have suggested a nefarious scientific conspiracy, I believe it demonstrates the ease with which the human mind embraces illusions. Once those scientists accepted CO2 warming as a reasonable explanation for ecological disruptions, despite never thoroughly examining the issue, they embraced whatever supported their choice. Their intellectual identity became intimately entwined with any validation of their chosen hypothesis. Like an avid sports fan, they feel great when their team is “winning” and distraught when their team is “wrong”. They brand anyone who challenges their hypothesis as a denier, stupid, traitor or infidel, and do not hesitate to brutalize anyone on the wrong team.
Robert Bolton wrote, "A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind." Once we make a choice, that choice possesses us. One of the more active areas of psychological research deals with “change blindness” and “choice blindness”. An international team from Harvard, the University of Tokyo, and Lund University in Sweden cleverly demonstrated how humans are hardwired to defend their choices despite contrary evidence. Test subjects were asked to choose who was the most attractive person in a set of two pictures displayed on the other side of the table. The researchers would then retrieve the pictures and ask the subjects to explain why they made their choice. However the lighting in the room was designed to allow the researchers to switch pictures and the test subjects were handed the picture they did notchoose. Most subjects never noticed the switch, and believing it was their choice proceeded to explain in great detail how the picture they never chose was the most attractive.10 A National Geographic series called Brain Games modified that experiment on a recent segment called “You Decide” and I urge you to watch it. Once you believeCO2 is destroying the world, any “search for a climate fingerprint” will always be “found” even when it is not there. Whether you are a CO2 advocate or skeptic, we are all victims to “choice blindness.” More critical analyses and respectful debate are the only paths to follow if we are ever to free ourselves from the shackles of our own illusions.
Literature Cited
1. Thomas, J., et al., (2005) Successful Conservation of a Threatened Maculinea Butterfly. Science, vol. 325, p.80-83.
2. Thomas, J., et al. (1986) Ecology and Declining Status of the Silver?spotted Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia Comma) in Britain. Journal o Applied Ecology. Vol. 23, p. 365-380.
3. Parmesan, C. and Yohe, G. (2003) A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature, vol. 142, p.37-42
4. Thomas, C.D, et al., (2000) Ecological and evolutionary processes at expanding range margins. Nature, vol. 411, p. 577?581.
5. Thomas, C.D, et al., (2004) Extinction risk from climate change. Nature , vol. 427.
6. Thomas, C. D. and Jones, T. M., (1993) Partial recovery of a Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia comma) from Population Refuges: Lessons for Conservation in a Fragmented Landscape. Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 62, p. 472-481.
7. Thomas, J., et al. (1986) Ecology and Declining Status of the Silver?spotted Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia Comma) in Britain. Journal o Applied Ecology. Vol. 23, p. 365-380.
8. Thomas, J et al. (2011) evidence based Conservation of butterflies. J. Insect Cons., vol. 15, p. 241?258.
9.Hurrell, J. and Deser, C. (2009) North Atlantic climate variability: The role of the North Atlantic Oscillation.Journal of Marine Systems, vo. 78, p. 28–41.
10. Johansson, P., et al. (2008) From Change Blindness to Choice Blindness. Psychologia, vol. 51, p. 142-155
Adapted from the chapter Deceptive Extremes in Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism by Jim Steele
“We search for a climate fingerprint in the overall patterns, rather than critiquing each study individually” 3
Dr. Camille Parmesan, University of Texas
While serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Camille Parmesan (whose work was introduced here Fabricating Climate Doom – Part 1: Parmesan’s Butterfly Effect) issued the paper “A Globally Coherent Fingerprint of Climate Change Impacts Across Natural Systems.” In contrast to Jeremy Thomas’s detailed investigations, Parmesan again advocated that biologists should ignore local details. She wrote, “Here we present quantitative estimates of the global biological impacts of climate change. We search for a climate fingerprint in the overall patterns, rather than critiquing each study individually.” However, critiquing individual studies is always the essential first step. Otherwise the overall pattern will be distilled from faulty information. And in order to support her supposed pattern of global warming disruption, she again omitted crucial contradictory details.
Parmesan tactfully offered lip service to altered landscapes, but stated that her “probabilistic model” accurately separated the effects of land use from climate change. To demonstrate her model’s power, she wrote, “Consider the case of the silver-spotted skipper butterfly (Hesperia comma) that has expanded its distribution close to its northern boundary in England over the past 20 years. Possible ecological explanations for this expansion are regional warming and changes in land use. Comparing the magnitudes and directions of these two factors suggests that climate change is more likely than land-use change to be the cause of expansion.” That was a very odd claim.
This was the very same Silver-spotted Skipper that Jeremy Thomas’ detailed studies and subsequent conservation prescriptions had saved from extinction along with the Large Blue. Parmesan was hijacking a conservation success story to spin a tale of climate disruption. Her “proof” that climate change was driving the Silver-spotted Skipper northward came from the work of her old friend C.D. Thomas, known for predicting that rising CO2 levels had committed 60% of the world’s species to extinction.5 Using a mesmerizing statistical model, C.D. Thomas argued that because the Silver-spotted Skipper “needs warmth,” only global warming could account for its recent colonization of a few cooler north-facing slopes of England’s southern hills.
The Skipper is indeed fond of hotter south-facing slopes. However, the butterfly had historically inhabited cooler northern slopes if those slopes had been grazed. Like the Large Blue, the Skipper had disappeared from both cool north-facing slopes and warm south-facing slopes whenever the turf grew too high.6,7 C.D. Thomas’ model was statistically significant only if he ignored recent conservation efforts to promote warmer, short-turf habitat. At the end of his paper, relegated to his methods sections, he quietly stated, “we assumed that grazing patterns were the same in 1982 as in 2000.”4Parmesan and C.D. were guilty of grave sins of omission.
I emailed Dr. Jeremy Thomas regarding the study by C.D. Thomas and asked, “I assume due to earlier collaboration, you are aware of the habitat his study referenced? If so, is his implied assumption of no changes to turf height valid?” He replied, “No, it's not valid. There was a massive change in turf height and vegetation structure …between 1980 and the 1990s onwards for 2 reasons. (emphasis added)” First, since the 1986 paper, several of the key surviving sites were grazed more appropriately by conservationists and most of them, and many neighbors, are today in “agri-environmental schemes” to maintain optimum grass heights. Second, from 1990 onwards the rabbits had gradually returned and did the same job on several abandoned former sites.
Although he did not have local climate data for the Silver-spotted Skipper’s recovery, Jeremy Thomas suggested that at least two thirds of the Skippers’ recovery and their subsequent recolonization had resulted from both the increased grazing and the rabbits’ recovery. He was willing to attribute as much as a third of the butterflies’ recovery to climate warming between the 1970s and the present.
If, for argument’s sake, we accept that one-third of the recovery was due solely to CO2warming and ignore published arguments that the warming in England have been caused by the warm mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation9 (and recent cooling by the cool mode), habitat improvements still account for at least two-thirds of the skippers’ expansion. Furthermore, the Silver-spotted Skipper had yet to expand further northward than its previous 1920s boundary. Yet that was Parmesan’s best example of a “coherent fingerprint of global warming” disruption! It was bad science, but the consensus flocked to it in agreement.
To date more than 3500 papers have referenced her interpretation as evidence of climate disruption. It is a consensus built on misleading results that hijacked legitimate conservation science. In contrast, Jeremy Thomas’ successful preservation of two species on the brink of regional extinction had unequivocally demonstrated that the long-term changes were due to the quality of the caterpillar’s habitat. Although weather change causes short-term fluctuations in butterfly populations, a change in habitat quality affects populations 100 times more powerfully than weather.8 But such successful conservation efforts do not get funded in the same way as global warming horror stories do, and Jeremy Thomas’ “Evidence Based Conservation of Butterflies” has been cited by just 17 papers. Such a gross imbalance is a sad testimony to how the politics of climate change has corrupted the environmental sciences. I fear it is a hijacking that will only breed distrust for our legitimate green concerns in the future.The misguided obsession with CO2 and Parmesan’s faulty probabilistic model has supported equally bad analyses regards the fate of polar bears, penguins, frogs, pika and marine ecosystems, but that takes a whole book to document.
Why have so few scientists celebrated the good science like Jeremy Thomas’ when it empowers us with the critical understanding that allows us to locally build a more resilient environment? Why instead have thousands of scientists uncritically pushed false scenarios of catastrophic climate change? Although some skeptics have suggested a nefarious scientific conspiracy, I believe it demonstrates the ease with which the human mind embraces illusions. Once those scientists accepted CO2 warming as a reasonable explanation for ecological disruptions, despite never thoroughly examining the issue, they embraced whatever supported their choice. Their intellectual identity became intimately entwined with any validation of their chosen hypothesis. Like an avid sports fan, they feel great when their team is “winning” and distraught when their team is “wrong”. They brand anyone who challenges their hypothesis as a denier, stupid, traitor or infidel, and do not hesitate to brutalize anyone on the wrong team.
Robert Bolton wrote, "A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind." Once we make a choice, that choice possesses us. One of the more active areas of psychological research deals with “change blindness” and “choice blindness”. An international team from Harvard, the University of Tokyo, and Lund University in Sweden cleverly demonstrated how humans are hardwired to defend their choices despite contrary evidence. Test subjects were asked to choose who was the most attractive person in a set of two pictures displayed on the other side of the table. The researchers would then retrieve the pictures and ask the subjects to explain why they made their choice. However the lighting in the room was designed to allow the researchers to switch pictures and the test subjects were handed the picture they did notchoose. Most subjects never noticed the switch, and believing it was their choice proceeded to explain in great detail how the picture they never chose was the most attractive.10 A National Geographic series called Brain Games modified that experiment on a recent segment called “You Decide” and I urge you to watch it. Once you believeCO2 is destroying the world, any “search for a climate fingerprint” will always be “found” even when it is not there. Whether you are a CO2 advocate or skeptic, we are all victims to “choice blindness.” More critical analyses and respectful debate are the only paths to follow if we are ever to free ourselves from the shackles of our own illusions.
Literature Cited
1. Thomas, J., et al., (2005) Successful Conservation of a Threatened Maculinea Butterfly. Science, vol. 325, p.80-83.
2. Thomas, J., et al. (1986) Ecology and Declining Status of the Silver?spotted Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia Comma) in Britain. Journal o Applied Ecology. Vol. 23, p. 365-380.
3. Parmesan, C. and Yohe, G. (2003) A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature, vol. 142, p.37-42
4. Thomas, C.D, et al., (2000) Ecological and evolutionary processes at expanding range margins. Nature, vol. 411, p. 577?581.
5. Thomas, C.D, et al., (2004) Extinction risk from climate change. Nature , vol. 427.
6. Thomas, C. D. and Jones, T. M., (1993) Partial recovery of a Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia comma) from Population Refuges: Lessons for Conservation in a Fragmented Landscape. Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 62, p. 472-481.
7. Thomas, J., et al. (1986) Ecology and Declining Status of the Silver?spotted Skipper Butterfly (Hesperia Comma) in Britain. Journal o Applied Ecology. Vol. 23, p. 365-380.
8. Thomas, J et al. (2011) evidence based Conservation of butterflies. J. Insect Cons., vol. 15, p. 241?258.
9.Hurrell, J. and Deser, C. (2009) North Atlantic climate variability: The role of the North Atlantic Oscillation.Journal of Marine Systems, vo. 78, p. 28–41.
10. Johansson, P., et al. (2008) From Change Blindness to Choice Blindness. Psychologia, vol. 51, p. 142-155
Adapted from the chapter Deceptive Extremes in Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism by Jim Steele
Immanuel - God is with us!
P. Amsterdam
Christmas represents one of the most significant events in human history—when God physically came into our world in the form of His Son, Jesus. In telling the story of God’s entrance into the world, Matthew’s Gospel says that the events leading up to Jesus’ birth took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).1
In the Old Testament we read of God’s presence among His people, His being “with us.” We see it in the story of the Garden of Eden, where God conversed with Adam in the cool of the day;2 in the pillar of cloud and of fire that led Moses and the children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land;3 in the Ark of the Covenant4 and the Holy of Holies.5 God also assured His people that He would be with them when they went into battle,6 as well as when they were fearful or facing great trial.7
Then in the New Testament God’s presence took on a whole new meaning in the incarnation, the physical embodiment of God in the birth of Jesus. His conception was like no other before or after. His mother, Mary, was a virgin, betrothed—but not yet married—to Joseph, a Jewish carpenter. Mary received a visit from an angel who announced that she would conceive and bear a son who will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.8
When she questioned how this could happen, since she was a virgin, the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”9 Nine months later, the unique person who was both God and man was born—Immanuel, “God with us.”
Some of the manifestations of “God with us” were seen through Jesus’ actions which reflected the attributes of God, such as:
Compassion through healing those with leprosy,10 palsy (paralysis),11blindness,12 epilepsy,13 fever,14 dropsy,15 deafness,16 and demonic oppression.17
Overall care and provision for all of humanity and concern for the poor and hungry, manifested by feeding the crowds of 5,00018 and 4,000.19
Power over nature as He walked on water and commanded the wind and storm to cease.20
Power over death—raising the only son of a widow,21 a twelve-year-old girl,22 and His friend Lazarus from the dead.23
Mercy by forgiving sins.24
Love by His willingness to be hung on the cross to die so as to make it possible for us to enter an eternal relationship with God.25
Through His teachings, Jesus informed us of the character of God. This is seen in particular in the parables, which portray various aspects of God’s nature, such as:
A loving and forgiving father in the story of “the father and the lost sons.”26
A caring and faithful father in “the friend at midnight”27 and “the father’s good gifts.”28
He who seeks and saves those who are lost in “the lost sheep”29 and “the lost coin.”30
He who waits patiently for the right time for judgment in “the wheat and the weeds”31 and “the seed growing.”32
He who judges righteously in “the rich fool,”33 “the unjust steward,”34 and “the rich man and Lazarus.”35
The forgiver of sins in “the two debtors.”36
He who loves and cares for those in need, no matter who they are, in “the good Samaritan.”37
The one who consistently seeks for those in need of salvation in “the compassionate employer.”38
Jesus, “God with us,” showed us the lengths to which God would go in order to reconcile humanity to Himself—by ordaining that He Himself, in the form of God the Son, would take the punishment of the sins of humanity, so that we might live with Him forever.
A continuation of “God with us” is seen in that after His death and resurrection, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers.
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.39
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? … Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?40
Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”41
Christmas is the celebration of “God with us,” the birth of God’s incarnate Son, who lived and died in order to make it possible for us to come into relationship with God and for the Spirit of God to dwell within us. What a joyful reason to celebrate!
At Christmas, and every other day of the year, all of us within whom the Spirit of God dwells are in a sense an extension of “God with us” in our community—to our friends and neighbors, our coworkers, the people who serve us in shops and restaurants, and strangers whom the Lord brings across our paths. The love we show through our interactions with others, the words we speak and actions we take, the kindness and generosity we show, the helping hand we offer, reflect the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Others can sense something uncommon and special in us, and when we explain that God is with us and can be with them as well, we help to fulfill the ultimate reason of Christmas.
This is a wonderful time of year to share the gospel with others, to let them know that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.42 We are each called to do all we can to share the news of “God with us” with those who need Him.
1 Matthew 1:22–23. All scriptures are from the English Standard Version of the Bible.
2 Genesis 3:8.
3 Exodus 13:21–22.
4 Exodus 25:22.
5 Exodus 26:34. See also Exodus 40:34–38.
6 Deuteronomy 20:1, 31:6; Joshua 1:9.
7 Isaiah 41:10, 43:2.
8 Luke 1:31–33.
9 Luke 1:35.
10 Matthew 8:1–4; Mark 1:40–45; Luke 5:12–15, 17:12–14.
11 Mark 2:1–12.
12 Matthew 9:27–30, 20:30–34, 21:14; Mark 8:22–25, 10:46–52; Luke 18:35–43; John 9:1–7.
13 Matthew 17:15–18; Mark 9:25–27.
14 Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:30–31; John 4:46–53.
15 Luke 14:1–4.
16 Mark 7:32–37.
17 Matthew 12:22–23, 9:31–33; Luke 4:33–35, 8:27–35, 9:38–42.
18 Matthew 14:14–21; Mark 6:35–44; Luke 9:12–17; John 6:5–13.
19 Matthew 15:32–38; Mark 8:2–9.
20 Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 4:35–41, 6:45–51; Luke 8:22–25; John 6:16–21.
21 Luke 7:11–16.
22 Mark 5:22–23, 35–43.
23 John 11:1–44.
24 Matthew 9:2–8; Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:18–26, 7:44–50.
25 Colossians 1:19–22, 2:13–14; Ephesians 2:13–19.
26 Luke 15:11–32.
27 Luke 11:5–8.
28 Luke 11:9–13; Matthew 7:9–11.
29 Matthew 18:12–13; Luke 15:4–7.
30 Luke 15:8–9.
31 Matthew 13:24–30.
32 Mark 4:26–29.
33 Luke 12:13–21.
34 Matthew 18:21–35.
35 Luke 16:19–31.
36 Luke 7:40–50.
37 Luke 10:25–37.
38 Matthew 20:1–16.
39 John 14:16–17.
40 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19.
41 Galatians 4:6.
42 John 3:16.
Louvar nos Momentos DifÃceis
Link Maria Fountaine
Todos sabemos que acontecem coisas ruins todos os dias neste mundo, e nós, cristãos, não estamos isentos disso. Temos dificuldades e experiências dolorosas, e essas coisas podem perturbar a nossa paz de espÃrito, dificultar que realizemos o que Jesus nos pediu para fazer, e à s vezes até ameaçam enfraquecer a nossa fé. Mas, quando se trata dos filhos de Deus que O amam, Jesus prometeu fazer todas as coisas, tanto as boas quanto as ruins, concorrerem juntamente para trazer um bom resultado para nós no final.
Para encontrarmos o bem nas coisas pelas quais passamos, temos que olhar para o Senhor. Temos que combater o bom combate, nos agarrar à nossa fé e confiar em Deus apesar das coisas ruins. Quando fazemos isso, Ele prometeu fazer o que não temos condições, ou seja, atuar para que essas experiências sejam para o nosso bem, quer nesta vida ou na próxima.
Quando surgem problemas e dificuldades, uma das melhores maneiras para superarmos a tristeza e o desencorajamento é nos lembrarmos da bondade e do cuidado de Deus por nós, e louvá-lO por isso. Parece fácil quando olhamos de fora, mas quando se está no meio da luta pode ser muito difÃcil dar esse passo de louvar. Às vezes, parece simplesmente impossÃvel. Você não sente vontade nem de tentar louvar. É lógico que não faz sentido. É tipo: “Você deve estar de brincadeira. Como posso louvar agora?” Você mal consegue entender pelo que deveria estar louvando. Talvez o máximo que consiga dizer é, “Obrigado, Jesus. Obrigado, Jesus. Obrigado, Jesus.”
Se isso é tudo o que você consegue fazer no momento, então Deus vai honrá-lo. Ele sabe quanta confiança e fé é preciso. Ele sabe que você está Lhe dando o “sacrifÃcio do louvor”. Talvez para você dizer essas palavras, “obrigado, Jesus”, não pareça ter muito sentido. Contudo, dar até mesmo esse passo pode guiar seu espÃrito na direção certa de encontro com Deus e distante das coisas negativas que ameaçam dominá-lo.
Percebi recentemente que podia fazer algo que me ajudaria a louvar mais rápido e facilmente quando estivesse enfrentando problemas. Tenho uma série de canções no meu MP3 na pasta “louvar nas dificuldades”. Quando ouço falar de algo de maior porte que está acontecendo, ou até coisas menos importantes que me deixam frustrada, eu ouço essas canções. Elas me lembram das muitas coisas pelas quais estar grata e como posso louvar o Senhor no vale das sombras. A música mexe comigo e me motiva a cantar. Mesmo depois que termina, sinto que deixou sua marca na minha mente e tenho algo para repetir e cantar para mim mesma, mesmo sem o acompanhamento musical. Isto tem alavancado a minha vida de oração/louvor, e tem sido uma maneira eficaz de louvar o Senhor nas coisas mais importantes como também nas menores, no que é maravilhoso e até no que é difÃcil.
Uma das minhas favoritas, “I Bless Your Name,” fala da ocasião quando Paulo e Silas, na prisão e acorrentados depois de serem açoitados até sangrar, começaram a cantar e foram libertados por Deus. A maioria de nós nunca ficou literalmente acorrentado, mas talvez estejamos “na prisão da nossa mente” lutando com os problemas e as experiências difÃceis, e parecemos que não temos condições de superar. Podemos alcançar e quebrar essas correntes manifestando nossa fé e confiança em Jesus através do louvor, e elas cairão por terra.
Essas canções me lembram que eu não só deveria louvar quando tenho abundância em lugares agradáveis, mas também quando me encontro “nos lugares ermos”, “no deserto”, e “quando a escuridão me cerca”. Apesar do caminho ser “marcado com sofrimento” e de talvez haver “dor na minha oferta”, pela graça de Deus, ainda assim posso louvar o Seu nome.
Ouço essas canções me lembrando que Satanás é um mentiroso que “quer nos fazer pensar que somos pobres em vez de filhos do Rei.” Mas para resistir a ele basta levantar o escudo da fé e louvar o Senhor. Ele vai operar através dos nossos louvores, já que o AltÃssimo habita no louvor do Seu povo.
Tal como diz em uma das canções, “As correntes que nos prendem, servem apenas para nos lembrar, que vão cair sem nenhum poder e para trás ficar, quando louvarmos a Deus.”
Seguem-se os links de algumas dessas canções que são uma bênção para mim. Há várias outras que você pode procurar, e que também podem ajudá-lo. Experimente. Pode funcionar para você também!
I Bless Your Name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN9SpcWLbLs
Blessed Be Your Name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXnB1Tv-xp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdFdoWlyUDA
Praise the Lord
https://youtube/6iYC55-469U
Todos sabemos que acontecem coisas ruins todos os dias neste mundo, e nós, cristãos, não estamos isentos disso. Temos dificuldades e experiências dolorosas, e essas coisas podem perturbar a nossa paz de espÃrito, dificultar que realizemos o que Jesus nos pediu para fazer, e à s vezes até ameaçam enfraquecer a nossa fé. Mas, quando se trata dos filhos de Deus que O amam, Jesus prometeu fazer todas as coisas, tanto as boas quanto as ruins, concorrerem juntamente para trazer um bom resultado para nós no final.
Para encontrarmos o bem nas coisas pelas quais passamos, temos que olhar para o Senhor. Temos que combater o bom combate, nos agarrar à nossa fé e confiar em Deus apesar das coisas ruins. Quando fazemos isso, Ele prometeu fazer o que não temos condições, ou seja, atuar para que essas experiências sejam para o nosso bem, quer nesta vida ou na próxima.
Quando surgem problemas e dificuldades, uma das melhores maneiras para superarmos a tristeza e o desencorajamento é nos lembrarmos da bondade e do cuidado de Deus por nós, e louvá-lO por isso. Parece fácil quando olhamos de fora, mas quando se está no meio da luta pode ser muito difÃcil dar esse passo de louvar. Às vezes, parece simplesmente impossÃvel. Você não sente vontade nem de tentar louvar. É lógico que não faz sentido. É tipo: “Você deve estar de brincadeira. Como posso louvar agora?” Você mal consegue entender pelo que deveria estar louvando. Talvez o máximo que consiga dizer é, “Obrigado, Jesus. Obrigado, Jesus. Obrigado, Jesus.”
Se isso é tudo o que você consegue fazer no momento, então Deus vai honrá-lo. Ele sabe quanta confiança e fé é preciso. Ele sabe que você está Lhe dando o “sacrifÃcio do louvor”. Talvez para você dizer essas palavras, “obrigado, Jesus”, não pareça ter muito sentido. Contudo, dar até mesmo esse passo pode guiar seu espÃrito na direção certa de encontro com Deus e distante das coisas negativas que ameaçam dominá-lo.
Percebi recentemente que podia fazer algo que me ajudaria a louvar mais rápido e facilmente quando estivesse enfrentando problemas. Tenho uma série de canções no meu MP3 na pasta “louvar nas dificuldades”. Quando ouço falar de algo de maior porte que está acontecendo, ou até coisas menos importantes que me deixam frustrada, eu ouço essas canções. Elas me lembram das muitas coisas pelas quais estar grata e como posso louvar o Senhor no vale das sombras. A música mexe comigo e me motiva a cantar. Mesmo depois que termina, sinto que deixou sua marca na minha mente e tenho algo para repetir e cantar para mim mesma, mesmo sem o acompanhamento musical. Isto tem alavancado a minha vida de oração/louvor, e tem sido uma maneira eficaz de louvar o Senhor nas coisas mais importantes como também nas menores, no que é maravilhoso e até no que é difÃcil.
Uma das minhas favoritas, “I Bless Your Name,” fala da ocasião quando Paulo e Silas, na prisão e acorrentados depois de serem açoitados até sangrar, começaram a cantar e foram libertados por Deus. A maioria de nós nunca ficou literalmente acorrentado, mas talvez estejamos “na prisão da nossa mente” lutando com os problemas e as experiências difÃceis, e parecemos que não temos condições de superar. Podemos alcançar e quebrar essas correntes manifestando nossa fé e confiança em Jesus através do louvor, e elas cairão por terra.
Essas canções me lembram que eu não só deveria louvar quando tenho abundância em lugares agradáveis, mas também quando me encontro “nos lugares ermos”, “no deserto”, e “quando a escuridão me cerca”. Apesar do caminho ser “marcado com sofrimento” e de talvez haver “dor na minha oferta”, pela graça de Deus, ainda assim posso louvar o Seu nome.
Ouço essas canções me lembrando que Satanás é um mentiroso que “quer nos fazer pensar que somos pobres em vez de filhos do Rei.” Mas para resistir a ele basta levantar o escudo da fé e louvar o Senhor. Ele vai operar através dos nossos louvores, já que o AltÃssimo habita no louvor do Seu povo.
Tal como diz em uma das canções, “As correntes que nos prendem, servem apenas para nos lembrar, que vão cair sem nenhum poder e para trás ficar, quando louvarmos a Deus.”
Seguem-se os links de algumas dessas canções que são uma bênção para mim. Há várias outras que você pode procurar, e que também podem ajudá-lo. Experimente. Pode funcionar para você também!
I Bless Your Name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN9SpcWLbLs
Blessed Be Your Name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXnB1Tv-xp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdFdoWlyUDA
Praise the Lord
https://youtube/6iYC55-469U
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Mourning the death of the ‘messiah of Africa’
BBC, 6 December 2015
When Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, there were scenes of jubilation in Libya. But Jake Wallis Simons didn’t have to go far in Ghana to find those who have fond memories of the executed Libyan leader, and are still mourning his loss.
One recent Sunday afternoon, amid the yellow dust, sunshine and traffic fumes of Accra, I met a man who told me that Colonel Gaddafi was the messiah.
The man’s name was Karim Mohamed, an ebullient 45-year-old tailor who had spent three years living and working in Libya before the fall of Gaddafi.
He was married with three children, and lived in a six-bedroom house that he had built himself using the money he had earned in Libya.
“In Libya, everybody was happy,” he told me. “In America, there are people sleeping under bridges. In Libya, never. There was no discrimination, no problems, nothing. The work was good and so was the money. My life is all thanks to Gaddafi. He was the messiah of Africa.”
Karim was far from unusual in this part of Ghana. As we talked, two other men sauntered over to join the conversation, and turned out to share his passion for the late Libyan dictator.
“Gaddafi was a nice guy,” said Mustafa Abdel Momin, a cheerful, 35-year-old construction worker who had worked in Libya for seven years. “He never cheated anybody. He was perfect. The best.”
“What was the point of killing him?” added Eliyas Yahya, the local imam. “You kill someone to solve the problem and now the problem is worse. Why kill Gaddafi?”
Gaddafi may have been a ruthless autocrat, but for years the relative affluence and stability of his rule was a godsend to migrants desperate for work. My new friends were among the tens of thousands of Africans who had used money earned in Libya to break themselves from the cycle of poverty at home.
As we talked in the shade of a small grocery shop, the evidence was all around us. This was a district in the north of the city known locally as the Libyan Quarter, home to a community of Ghanaians who had made their money under the Gaddafi regime.
The ramshackle houses that characterise many parts of Accra were nowhere to be seen here. Instead there were modern, spacious residences lining the orange dirt road, stretching into the distance.
Karim pointed out what I had thought was a municipal building on the corner. As it turned out, it was actually a mansion belonging to a man called Sheikh Swala, who had started several successful businesses using money he had earned in Libya. The house had 30 bedrooms. And without Gaddafi, it would never have been built.
Indeed, new construction was now a rarity in this neighbourhood. Here and there, some houses were even lying unfinished–when Gaddafi was deposed, the Libyan Quarter became frozen in time.
A diffident, 36-year-old man called Amadu joined our group. Nobody noticed him at first, as he seemed so withdrawn. But eventually, he told his story.
Amadu had been among those unable to afford a proper Libyan visa. In 2010, he and several friends made the dangerous journey there overland, through the Sahara desert. They ran out of water and many of his group died, but he made it to Libya and found work as a tiler.
By the time war broke out in 2011, he had saved $3,500 (£2,300). He remembers standing on the docks in Tripoli when the first shots were fired, forcing him to run for cover. He was confined to his room for several days before he managed to escape back to Ghana, but he was unable to bring his hard-earned money with him. And that was how his dreams had died.
“There is nothing for the youth here in Ghana,” said Mustafa. “After Gaddafi, we are full of crisis. Youth unemployment is sky-high and there is nothing for us to do. Either we end up living a life of crime because it is the only way to make money, or we try and make it to Europe.”
The others agreed. “Now it is Europe, Europe, Europe, wherever on earth you go,” said Eliyas loudly. “Some people are going to Brazil, if they can afford it. But for everyone else, it’s Europe.”
Before Gaddafi was ousted, he officially warned the European Union that if his regime were to collapse, as many as two million migrants would arrive on Europe’s shores, creating chaos.
He may have been more a dictator than a messiah. But he seems to have been right about that.
When Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, there were scenes of jubilation in Libya. But Jake Wallis Simons didn’t have to go far in Ghana to find those who have fond memories of the executed Libyan leader, and are still mourning his loss.
One recent Sunday afternoon, amid the yellow dust, sunshine and traffic fumes of Accra, I met a man who told me that Colonel Gaddafi was the messiah.
The man’s name was Karim Mohamed, an ebullient 45-year-old tailor who had spent three years living and working in Libya before the fall of Gaddafi.
He was married with three children, and lived in a six-bedroom house that he had built himself using the money he had earned in Libya.
“In Libya, everybody was happy,” he told me. “In America, there are people sleeping under bridges. In Libya, never. There was no discrimination, no problems, nothing. The work was good and so was the money. My life is all thanks to Gaddafi. He was the messiah of Africa.”
Karim was far from unusual in this part of Ghana. As we talked, two other men sauntered over to join the conversation, and turned out to share his passion for the late Libyan dictator.
“Gaddafi was a nice guy,” said Mustafa Abdel Momin, a cheerful, 35-year-old construction worker who had worked in Libya for seven years. “He never cheated anybody. He was perfect. The best.”
“What was the point of killing him?” added Eliyas Yahya, the local imam. “You kill someone to solve the problem and now the problem is worse. Why kill Gaddafi?”
Gaddafi may have been a ruthless autocrat, but for years the relative affluence and stability of his rule was a godsend to migrants desperate for work. My new friends were among the tens of thousands of Africans who had used money earned in Libya to break themselves from the cycle of poverty at home.
As we talked in the shade of a small grocery shop, the evidence was all around us. This was a district in the north of the city known locally as the Libyan Quarter, home to a community of Ghanaians who had made their money under the Gaddafi regime.
The ramshackle houses that characterise many parts of Accra were nowhere to be seen here. Instead there were modern, spacious residences lining the orange dirt road, stretching into the distance.
Karim pointed out what I had thought was a municipal building on the corner. As it turned out, it was actually a mansion belonging to a man called Sheikh Swala, who had started several successful businesses using money he had earned in Libya. The house had 30 bedrooms. And without Gaddafi, it would never have been built.
Indeed, new construction was now a rarity in this neighbourhood. Here and there, some houses were even lying unfinished–when Gaddafi was deposed, the Libyan Quarter became frozen in time.
A diffident, 36-year-old man called Amadu joined our group. Nobody noticed him at first, as he seemed so withdrawn. But eventually, he told his story.
Amadu had been among those unable to afford a proper Libyan visa. In 2010, he and several friends made the dangerous journey there overland, through the Sahara desert. They ran out of water and many of his group died, but he made it to Libya and found work as a tiler.
By the time war broke out in 2011, he had saved $3,500 (£2,300). He remembers standing on the docks in Tripoli when the first shots were fired, forcing him to run for cover. He was confined to his room for several days before he managed to escape back to Ghana, but he was unable to bring his hard-earned money with him. And that was how his dreams had died.
“There is nothing for the youth here in Ghana,” said Mustafa. “After Gaddafi, we are full of crisis. Youth unemployment is sky-high and there is nothing for us to do. Either we end up living a life of crime because it is the only way to make money, or we try and make it to Europe.”
The others agreed. “Now it is Europe, Europe, Europe, wherever on earth you go,” said Eliyas loudly. “Some people are going to Brazil, if they can afford it. But for everyone else, it’s Europe.”
Before Gaddafi was ousted, he officially warned the European Union that if his regime were to collapse, as many as two million migrants would arrive on Europe’s shores, creating chaos.
He may have been more a dictator than a messiah. But he seems to have been right about that.
Beyond ISIS: World War IV
By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch, December 5, 2015
Assume that the hawks get their way–that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Then what?
Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent U.S. interventions in the Greater Middle East. In 1991, when the first President Bush ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait, Americans rejoiced, believing that they had won a decisive victory. A decade later, the younger Bush seemingly outdid his father by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then making short work of Saddam himself–a liberation twofer achieved in less time than it takes Americans to choose a president. After the passage of another decade, Barack Obama got into the liberation act, overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in what appeared to be a tidy air intervention with a clean outcome. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memorably put it, “We came, we saw, he died.” End of story.
In fact, subsequent events in each case mocked early claims of success or outright victory. Unanticipated consequences and complications abounded. “Liberation” turned out to be a prelude to chronic violence and upheaval.
Indeed, the very existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) today renders a definitive verdict on the Iraq wars over which the Presidents Bush presided, each abetted by a Democratic successor. A de facto collaboration of four successive administrations succeeded in reducing Iraq to what it is today: a dysfunctional quasi-state unable to control its borders or territory while serving as a magnet and inspiration for terrorists.
The United States bears a profound moral responsibility for having made such a hash of things there. Were it not for the reckless American decision to invade and occupy a nation that, whatever its crimes, had nothing to do with 9/11, the Islamic State would not exist. Per the famous Pottery Barn Rule attributed to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, having smashed Iraq to bits a decade ago, we can now hardly deny owning ISIS.
That the United States possesses sufficient military power to make short work of that “caliphate” is also the case. True, in both Syria and Iraq the Islamic State has demonstrated a disturbing ability to capture and hold large stretches of desert, along with several population centers. It has, however, achieved these successes against poorly motivated local forces of, at best, indifferent quality.
In that regard, the glibly bellicose editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, is surely correct in suggesting that a well-armed contingent of 50,000 U.S. troops, supported by ample quantities of air power, would make mincemeat of ISIS in a toe-to-toe contest. Liberation of the various ISIS strongholds like Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq and Palmyra and Raqqa, its “capital,” in Syria would undoubtedly follow in short order.
In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris, the American mood is strongly trending in favor of this sort of escalation. Just about anyone who is anyone–the current occupant of the Oval Office partially excepted–favors intensifying the U.S. military campaign against ISIS. And why not? What could possibly go wrong? As Kristol puts it, “I don’t think there’s much in the way of unanticipated side effects that are going to be bad there.”
It’s an alluring prospect. In the face of a sustained assault by the greatest military the world has ever seen, ISIS foolishly (and therefore improbably) chooses to make an Alamo-like stand. Whammo! We win. They lose. Mission accomplished.
Of course, that phrase recalls the euphoric early reactions to Operations Desert Storm in 1991, Enduring Freedom in 2001, Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and Odyssey Dawn, the Libyan intervention of 2011. Time and again the unanticipated side effects of U.S. military action turned out to be very bad indeed. In Kabul, Baghdad, or Tripoli, the Alamo fell, but the enemy dispersed or reinvented itself and the conflict continued. Assurances offered by Kristol that this time things will surely be different deserve to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Pass the whole shaker.
Embracing Generational War. Why this repeated disparity between perceived and actual outcomes? Why have apparent battlefield successes led so regularly to more violence and disorder? Before following Kristol’s counsel, Americans would do well to reflect on these questions.
Cue Professor Eliot A. Cohen. Shortly after 9/11, Cohen, one of this country’s preeminent military thinkers, characterized the conflict on which the United States was then embarking as “World War IV.” (In this formulation, the Cold War becomes World War III.) Other than in certain neoconservative quarters, the depiction did not catch on. Yet nearly a decade-and-a-half later, the Johns Hopkins professor and former State Department official is sticking to his guns. In an essay penned for the American Interest following the recent Paris attacks, he returns to his theme. “It was World War IV in 2001,” Cohen insists. “It is World War IV today.” And to our considerable benefit he spells out at least some of the implications of casting the conflict in such expansive and evocative terms.
Now I happen to think that equating our present predicament in the Islamic world with the immensely destructive conflicts of the prior century is dead wrong. Yet it’s a proposition that Americans at this juncture should contemplate with the utmost seriousness.
In the United States today, confusion about what war itself signifies is widespread. Through misuse, misapplication, and above all misremembering, we have distorted the term almost beyond recognition. As one consequence, talk of war comes too easily off the tongues of the unknowing.
Not so with Cohen. When it comes to war, he has no illusions. Addressing that subject, he illuminates it, enabling us to see what war entails. So in advocating World War IV, he performs a great service, even if perhaps not the one he intends.
What will distinguish the war that Cohen deems essential? “Begin with endurance,” he writes. “This war will probably go on for the rest of my life, and well into my children’s.” Although American political leaders seem reluctant “to explain just how high the stakes are,” Cohen lays them out in direct, unvarnished language. At issue, he insists, is the American way of life itself, not simply “in the sense of rock concerts and alcohol in restaurants, but the more fundamental rights of freedom of speech and religion, the equality of women, and, most essentially, the freedom from fear and freedom to think.”
With so much on the line, Cohen derides the Obama administration’s tendency to rely on “therapeutic bombing, which will temporarily relieve the itch, but leave the wounds suppurating.” The time for such half-measures has long since passed. Defeating the Islamic State and “kindred movements” will require the U.S. to “kill a great many people.” To that end Washington needs “a long-range plan not to ‘contain’ but to crush” the enemy. Even with such a plan, victory will be a long way off and will require “a long, bloody, and costly process.”
Cohen’s candor and specificity, as bracing as they are rare, should command our respect. If World War IV describes what we are in for, then eliminating ISIS might figure as a near-term imperative, but it can hardly define the endgame. Beyond ISIS loom all those continually evolving “kindred movements” to which the United States will have to attend before it can declare the war itself well and truly won.
To send just tens of thousands of U.S. troops to clean up Syria and Iraq, as William Kristol and others propose, offers at best a recipe for winning a single campaign. Winning the larger war would involve far more arduous exertions. This Cohen understands, accepts, and urges others to acknowledge.
And here we come to the heart of the matter. For at least the past 35 years–that is, since well before 9/11–the United States has been “at war” in various quarters of the Islamic world. At no point has it demonstrated the will or the ability to finish the job. Washington’s approach has been akin to treating cancer with a little bit of chemo one year and a one-shot course of radiation the next. Such gross malpractice aptly describes U.S. military policy throughout the Greater Middle East across several decades.
While there may be many reasons why the Iraq War of 2003 to 2011 and the still longer Afghanistan War yielded such disappointing results, Washington’s timidity in conducting those campaigns deserves pride of place. That most Americans might bridle at the term “timidity” reflects the extent to which they have deluded themselves regarding the reality of war.
In comparison to Vietnam, for example, Washington’s approach to waging its two principal post-9/11 campaigns was positively half-hearted. With the nation as a whole adhering to peacetime routines, Washington neither sent enough troops nor stayed anywhere near long enough to finish the job. Yes, we killed many tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but if winning World War IV requires, as Cohen writes, that we “break the back” of the enemy, then we obviously didn’t kill nearly enough.
Nor were Americans sufficiently willing to die for the cause. In South Vietnam, 58,000 G.I.s died in a futile effort to enable that country to survive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stakes were presumably much higher, we pulled the plug after fewer than 7,000 deaths.
Americans would be foolish to listen to those like William Kristol who, even today, peddle illusions about war being neat and easy. They would do well instead to heed Cohen, who knows that war is hard and ugly.
What Would World War IV Look Like? Yet when specifying the practical implications of generational war, Cohen is less forthcoming. From his perspective, this fourth iteration of existential armed conflict in a single century is not going well. But apart from greater resolve and bloody-mindedness, what will it take to get things on the right track?
As a thought experiment, let’s answer that question by treating it with the urgency that Cohen believes it deserves. After 9/11, certain U.S. officials thundered about “taking the gloves off.” In practice, however, with the notable exception of policies permitting torture and imprisonment without due process, the gloves stayed on. Take Cohen’s conception of World War IV at face value and that will have to change.
For starters, the country would have to move to something like a war footing, enabling Washington to raise a lot more troops and spend a lot more money over a very long period of time. Although long since banished from the nation’s political lexicon, the M-word–mobilization–would make a comeback. Prosecuting a generational war, after all, is going to require the commitment of generations.
Furthermore, if winning World War IV means crushing the enemy, as Cohen emphasizes, then ensuring that the enemy, once crushed, cannot recover would be hardly less important. And that requirement would prohibit U.S. forces from simply walking away from a particular fight even–or especially–when it might appear won.
At the present moment, defeating the Islamic State ranks as Washington’s number one priority. With the Pentagon already claiming a body count of 20,000 ISIS fighters without notable effect, this campaign won’t end anytime soon. But even assuming an eventually positive outcome, the task of maintaining order and stability in areas that ISIS now controls will remain. Indeed, that task will persist until the conditions giving rise to entities like ISIS are eliminated. Don’t expect French President François Hollande or British Prime Minister David Cameron to sign up for that thankless job. U.S. forces will own it. Packing up and leaving the scene won’t be an option.
How long would those forces have to stay? Extrapolating from recent U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, something on the order of a quarter-century seems like a plausible approximation. So should our 45th president opt for a boots-on-the-ground solution to ISIS, as might well be the case, the privilege of welcoming the troops home could belong to the 48th or 49th occupant of the White House.
In the meantime, U.S. forces would have to deal with the various and sundry “kindred movements” that are already cropping up like crabgrass in country after country. Afghanistan–still? again?–would head the list of places requiring U.S. military attention. But other prospective locales would include such hotbeds of Islamist activity as Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, and Yemen, along with several West African countries increasingly beset with insurgencies. Unless Egyptian, Pakistani, and Saudi security forces demonstrate the ability (not to mention the will) to suppress the violent radicals in their midst, one or more of those countries could also become the scene of significant U.S. military action.
Effective prosecution of World War IV, in other words, would require the Pentagon to plan for each of these contingencies, while mustering the assets needed for implementation. Allies might kick in token assistance, but the United States will necessarily carry most of the load.
What Would World War IV Cost? During World War III (aka the Cold War), the Pentagon maintained a force structure ostensibly adequate to the simultaneous prosecution of two and a half wars. This meant having the wherewithal to defend Europe and the Pacific from communist aggression while still leaving something for the unexpected. World War IV campaigns are unlikely to entail anything on the scale of the Warsaw Pact attacking Western Europe or North Korea invading the South. Still, the range of plausible scenarios will require that U.S. forces be able to take on militant organizations C and D even while guarding against the resurgence of organizations A and B in altogether different geographic locations.
Even though Washington may try whenever possible to avoid large-scale ground combat, relying on air power (including drones) and elite Special Operations forces to do the actual killing, post-conflict pacification promises to be a manpower intensive activity. Certainly, this ranks as one of the most obvious lessons to emerge from World War IV’s preliminary phases: when the initial fight ends, the real work begins.
U.S. forces committed to asserting control over Iraq after the invasion of 2003 topped out at roughly 180,000. In Afghanistan, during the Obama presidency, the presence peaked at 110,000. In a historical context, these are not especially large numbers. At the height of the Vietnam War, for example, U.S. troop strength in Southeast Asia exceeded 500,000.
In hindsight, the Army general who, before the invasion of 2003, publicly suggested that pacifying postwar Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops” had it right. A similar estimate applies to Afghanistan. In other words, those two occupations together could easily have absorbed 600,000 to 800,000 troops on an ongoing basis. Given the Pentagon’s standard three-to-one rotation policy, which assumes that for every unit in-country, a second is just back, and a third is preparing to deploy, you’re talking about a minimum requirement of between 1.8 and 2.4 million troops to sustain just two medium-sized campaigns–a figure that wouldn’t include some number of additional troops kept in reserve for the unexpected.
In other words, waging World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the U.S. Army–and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls–this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.
Whether it could also retain the current model of an all-volunteer force is another matter. Recruiters would certainly face considerable challenges, even if Congress enhanced the material inducements for service, which since 9/11 have already included a succession of generous increases in military pay. A loosening of immigration policy, granting a few hundred thousand foreigners citizenship in return for successfully completing a term of enlistment might help. In all likelihood, however, as with all three previous world wars, waging World War IV would oblige the United States to revive the draft. In short, going all out to create the forces needed to win World War IV would confront Americans with uncomfortable choices.
The budgetary implications of expanding U.S. forces while conducting a perpetual round of what the Pentagon calls “overseas contingency operations” would also loom large. Precisely how much money an essentially global conflict projected to extend well into the latter half of the century would require is difficult to gauge. As a starting point, given the increased number of active duty forces, tripling the present Defense Department budget of more than $600 billion might serve as a reasonable guess.
At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon.
Of course, that money would have to come from somewhere. For several years during the last decade, sustaining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed the federal deficit above a trillion dollars. As one consequence, the total national debt now exceeds annual GDP, having tripled since 9/11. How much additional debt the United States can accrue without doing permanent damage to the economy is a question of more than academic interest.
To avoid having World War IV produce an endless string of unacceptably large deficits, ratcheting up military spending would undoubtedly require either substantial tax increases or significant cuts in non-military spending, including big-ticket programs like Medicare and social security–precisely those, that is, which members of the middle class hold most dear.
In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loath to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn’t so far.
The Folly of World War IV. In his essay, Cohen writes, “we need to stop the circumlocutions.” Of those who would bear the direct burden of his world war, he says, “we must start telling them the truth.” He’s right, even if he himself is largely silent about what the conduct of World War IV is likely to exact from the average citizen.
As the United States enters a presidential election year, plain talk about the prospects of our ongoing military engagement in the Islamic world should be the order of the day. The pretense that either dropping a few more bombs or invading one or two more countries will yield a conclusive outcome amounts to more than an evasion. It is an outright lie.
As Cohen knows, winning World War IV would require dropping many, many more bombs and invading, and then occupying for years to come, many more countries. After all, it’s not just ISIS that Washington will have to deal with, but also its affiliates, offshoots, wannabes, and the successors almost surely waiting in the wings. And don’t forget al-Qaeda.
Cohen believes that we have no alternative. Either we get serious about fighting World War IV the way it needs to be fought or darkness will envelop the land. He is undeterred by the evidence that the more deeply we insert our soldiers into the Greater Middle East the more concerted the resistance they face; that the more militants we kill the more we seem to create; that the inevitable, if unintended, killing of innocents only serves to strengthen the hand of the extremists. As he sees it, with everything we believe in riding on the outcome, we have no choice but to press on.
While listening carefully to Cohen’s call to arms, Americans should reflect on its implications. Wars change countries and people. Embracing his prescription for World War IV would change the United States in fundamental ways. It would radically expand the scope and reach of the national security state, which, of course, includes agencies beyond the military itself. It would divert vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes. It would make the militarization of the American way of life, a legacy of prior world wars, irreversible. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it would also compromise American freedom in the name of protecting it. The nation that decades from now might celebrate VT Day–victory over terrorism–will have become a different place, materially, politically, culturally, and morally.
In my view, Cohen’s World War IV is an invitation to collective suicide. Yet here’s the ultimate irony: even without the name, the United States has already embarked upon something akin to a world war, which now extends into the far reaches of the Islamic world and spreads further year by year.
Incrementally, bit by bit, this nameless war has already expanded the scope and reach of the national security apparatus. It is diverting vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes even as it normalizes the continuing militarization of the American way of life. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it is undermining American freedom in the name of protecting it, and doing so right before our eyes.
For a rich and powerful nation to conclude that it has no choice but to engage in quasi-permanent armed conflict in the far reaches of the planet represents the height of folly. Power confers choice. As citizens, we must resist with all our might arguments that deny the existence of choice. Whether advanced forthrightly by Cohen or fecklessly by the militarily ignorant, such claims will only perpetuate the folly that has already lasted far too long.
Assume that the hawks get their way–that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Then what?
Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent U.S. interventions in the Greater Middle East. In 1991, when the first President Bush ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait, Americans rejoiced, believing that they had won a decisive victory. A decade later, the younger Bush seemingly outdid his father by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then making short work of Saddam himself–a liberation twofer achieved in less time than it takes Americans to choose a president. After the passage of another decade, Barack Obama got into the liberation act, overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in what appeared to be a tidy air intervention with a clean outcome. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memorably put it, “We came, we saw, he died.” End of story.
In fact, subsequent events in each case mocked early claims of success or outright victory. Unanticipated consequences and complications abounded. “Liberation” turned out to be a prelude to chronic violence and upheaval.
Indeed, the very existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) today renders a definitive verdict on the Iraq wars over which the Presidents Bush presided, each abetted by a Democratic successor. A de facto collaboration of four successive administrations succeeded in reducing Iraq to what it is today: a dysfunctional quasi-state unable to control its borders or territory while serving as a magnet and inspiration for terrorists.
The United States bears a profound moral responsibility for having made such a hash of things there. Were it not for the reckless American decision to invade and occupy a nation that, whatever its crimes, had nothing to do with 9/11, the Islamic State would not exist. Per the famous Pottery Barn Rule attributed to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, having smashed Iraq to bits a decade ago, we can now hardly deny owning ISIS.
That the United States possesses sufficient military power to make short work of that “caliphate” is also the case. True, in both Syria and Iraq the Islamic State has demonstrated a disturbing ability to capture and hold large stretches of desert, along with several population centers. It has, however, achieved these successes against poorly motivated local forces of, at best, indifferent quality.
In that regard, the glibly bellicose editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, is surely correct in suggesting that a well-armed contingent of 50,000 U.S. troops, supported by ample quantities of air power, would make mincemeat of ISIS in a toe-to-toe contest. Liberation of the various ISIS strongholds like Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq and Palmyra and Raqqa, its “capital,” in Syria would undoubtedly follow in short order.
In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris, the American mood is strongly trending in favor of this sort of escalation. Just about anyone who is anyone–the current occupant of the Oval Office partially excepted–favors intensifying the U.S. military campaign against ISIS. And why not? What could possibly go wrong? As Kristol puts it, “I don’t think there’s much in the way of unanticipated side effects that are going to be bad there.”
It’s an alluring prospect. In the face of a sustained assault by the greatest military the world has ever seen, ISIS foolishly (and therefore improbably) chooses to make an Alamo-like stand. Whammo! We win. They lose. Mission accomplished.
Of course, that phrase recalls the euphoric early reactions to Operations Desert Storm in 1991, Enduring Freedom in 2001, Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and Odyssey Dawn, the Libyan intervention of 2011. Time and again the unanticipated side effects of U.S. military action turned out to be very bad indeed. In Kabul, Baghdad, or Tripoli, the Alamo fell, but the enemy dispersed or reinvented itself and the conflict continued. Assurances offered by Kristol that this time things will surely be different deserve to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Pass the whole shaker.
Embracing Generational War. Why this repeated disparity between perceived and actual outcomes? Why have apparent battlefield successes led so regularly to more violence and disorder? Before following Kristol’s counsel, Americans would do well to reflect on these questions.
Cue Professor Eliot A. Cohen. Shortly after 9/11, Cohen, one of this country’s preeminent military thinkers, characterized the conflict on which the United States was then embarking as “World War IV.” (In this formulation, the Cold War becomes World War III.) Other than in certain neoconservative quarters, the depiction did not catch on. Yet nearly a decade-and-a-half later, the Johns Hopkins professor and former State Department official is sticking to his guns. In an essay penned for the American Interest following the recent Paris attacks, he returns to his theme. “It was World War IV in 2001,” Cohen insists. “It is World War IV today.” And to our considerable benefit he spells out at least some of the implications of casting the conflict in such expansive and evocative terms.
Now I happen to think that equating our present predicament in the Islamic world with the immensely destructive conflicts of the prior century is dead wrong. Yet it’s a proposition that Americans at this juncture should contemplate with the utmost seriousness.
In the United States today, confusion about what war itself signifies is widespread. Through misuse, misapplication, and above all misremembering, we have distorted the term almost beyond recognition. As one consequence, talk of war comes too easily off the tongues of the unknowing.
Not so with Cohen. When it comes to war, he has no illusions. Addressing that subject, he illuminates it, enabling us to see what war entails. So in advocating World War IV, he performs a great service, even if perhaps not the one he intends.
What will distinguish the war that Cohen deems essential? “Begin with endurance,” he writes. “This war will probably go on for the rest of my life, and well into my children’s.” Although American political leaders seem reluctant “to explain just how high the stakes are,” Cohen lays them out in direct, unvarnished language. At issue, he insists, is the American way of life itself, not simply “in the sense of rock concerts and alcohol in restaurants, but the more fundamental rights of freedom of speech and religion, the equality of women, and, most essentially, the freedom from fear and freedom to think.”
With so much on the line, Cohen derides the Obama administration’s tendency to rely on “therapeutic bombing, which will temporarily relieve the itch, but leave the wounds suppurating.” The time for such half-measures has long since passed. Defeating the Islamic State and “kindred movements” will require the U.S. to “kill a great many people.” To that end Washington needs “a long-range plan not to ‘contain’ but to crush” the enemy. Even with such a plan, victory will be a long way off and will require “a long, bloody, and costly process.”
Cohen’s candor and specificity, as bracing as they are rare, should command our respect. If World War IV describes what we are in for, then eliminating ISIS might figure as a near-term imperative, but it can hardly define the endgame. Beyond ISIS loom all those continually evolving “kindred movements” to which the United States will have to attend before it can declare the war itself well and truly won.
To send just tens of thousands of U.S. troops to clean up Syria and Iraq, as William Kristol and others propose, offers at best a recipe for winning a single campaign. Winning the larger war would involve far more arduous exertions. This Cohen understands, accepts, and urges others to acknowledge.
And here we come to the heart of the matter. For at least the past 35 years–that is, since well before 9/11–the United States has been “at war” in various quarters of the Islamic world. At no point has it demonstrated the will or the ability to finish the job. Washington’s approach has been akin to treating cancer with a little bit of chemo one year and a one-shot course of radiation the next. Such gross malpractice aptly describes U.S. military policy throughout the Greater Middle East across several decades.
While there may be many reasons why the Iraq War of 2003 to 2011 and the still longer Afghanistan War yielded such disappointing results, Washington’s timidity in conducting those campaigns deserves pride of place. That most Americans might bridle at the term “timidity” reflects the extent to which they have deluded themselves regarding the reality of war.
In comparison to Vietnam, for example, Washington’s approach to waging its two principal post-9/11 campaigns was positively half-hearted. With the nation as a whole adhering to peacetime routines, Washington neither sent enough troops nor stayed anywhere near long enough to finish the job. Yes, we killed many tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but if winning World War IV requires, as Cohen writes, that we “break the back” of the enemy, then we obviously didn’t kill nearly enough.
Nor were Americans sufficiently willing to die for the cause. In South Vietnam, 58,000 G.I.s died in a futile effort to enable that country to survive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stakes were presumably much higher, we pulled the plug after fewer than 7,000 deaths.
Americans would be foolish to listen to those like William Kristol who, even today, peddle illusions about war being neat and easy. They would do well instead to heed Cohen, who knows that war is hard and ugly.
What Would World War IV Look Like? Yet when specifying the practical implications of generational war, Cohen is less forthcoming. From his perspective, this fourth iteration of existential armed conflict in a single century is not going well. But apart from greater resolve and bloody-mindedness, what will it take to get things on the right track?
As a thought experiment, let’s answer that question by treating it with the urgency that Cohen believes it deserves. After 9/11, certain U.S. officials thundered about “taking the gloves off.” In practice, however, with the notable exception of policies permitting torture and imprisonment without due process, the gloves stayed on. Take Cohen’s conception of World War IV at face value and that will have to change.
For starters, the country would have to move to something like a war footing, enabling Washington to raise a lot more troops and spend a lot more money over a very long period of time. Although long since banished from the nation’s political lexicon, the M-word–mobilization–would make a comeback. Prosecuting a generational war, after all, is going to require the commitment of generations.
Furthermore, if winning World War IV means crushing the enemy, as Cohen emphasizes, then ensuring that the enemy, once crushed, cannot recover would be hardly less important. And that requirement would prohibit U.S. forces from simply walking away from a particular fight even–or especially–when it might appear won.
At the present moment, defeating the Islamic State ranks as Washington’s number one priority. With the Pentagon already claiming a body count of 20,000 ISIS fighters without notable effect, this campaign won’t end anytime soon. But even assuming an eventually positive outcome, the task of maintaining order and stability in areas that ISIS now controls will remain. Indeed, that task will persist until the conditions giving rise to entities like ISIS are eliminated. Don’t expect French President François Hollande or British Prime Minister David Cameron to sign up for that thankless job. U.S. forces will own it. Packing up and leaving the scene won’t be an option.
How long would those forces have to stay? Extrapolating from recent U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, something on the order of a quarter-century seems like a plausible approximation. So should our 45th president opt for a boots-on-the-ground solution to ISIS, as might well be the case, the privilege of welcoming the troops home could belong to the 48th or 49th occupant of the White House.
In the meantime, U.S. forces would have to deal with the various and sundry “kindred movements” that are already cropping up like crabgrass in country after country. Afghanistan–still? again?–would head the list of places requiring U.S. military attention. But other prospective locales would include such hotbeds of Islamist activity as Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, and Yemen, along with several West African countries increasingly beset with insurgencies. Unless Egyptian, Pakistani, and Saudi security forces demonstrate the ability (not to mention the will) to suppress the violent radicals in their midst, one or more of those countries could also become the scene of significant U.S. military action.
Effective prosecution of World War IV, in other words, would require the Pentagon to plan for each of these contingencies, while mustering the assets needed for implementation. Allies might kick in token assistance, but the United States will necessarily carry most of the load.
What Would World War IV Cost? During World War III (aka the Cold War), the Pentagon maintained a force structure ostensibly adequate to the simultaneous prosecution of two and a half wars. This meant having the wherewithal to defend Europe and the Pacific from communist aggression while still leaving something for the unexpected. World War IV campaigns are unlikely to entail anything on the scale of the Warsaw Pact attacking Western Europe or North Korea invading the South. Still, the range of plausible scenarios will require that U.S. forces be able to take on militant organizations C and D even while guarding against the resurgence of organizations A and B in altogether different geographic locations.
Even though Washington may try whenever possible to avoid large-scale ground combat, relying on air power (including drones) and elite Special Operations forces to do the actual killing, post-conflict pacification promises to be a manpower intensive activity. Certainly, this ranks as one of the most obvious lessons to emerge from World War IV’s preliminary phases: when the initial fight ends, the real work begins.
U.S. forces committed to asserting control over Iraq after the invasion of 2003 topped out at roughly 180,000. In Afghanistan, during the Obama presidency, the presence peaked at 110,000. In a historical context, these are not especially large numbers. At the height of the Vietnam War, for example, U.S. troop strength in Southeast Asia exceeded 500,000.
In hindsight, the Army general who, before the invasion of 2003, publicly suggested that pacifying postwar Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops” had it right. A similar estimate applies to Afghanistan. In other words, those two occupations together could easily have absorbed 600,000 to 800,000 troops on an ongoing basis. Given the Pentagon’s standard three-to-one rotation policy, which assumes that for every unit in-country, a second is just back, and a third is preparing to deploy, you’re talking about a minimum requirement of between 1.8 and 2.4 million troops to sustain just two medium-sized campaigns–a figure that wouldn’t include some number of additional troops kept in reserve for the unexpected.
In other words, waging World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the U.S. Army–and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls–this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.
Whether it could also retain the current model of an all-volunteer force is another matter. Recruiters would certainly face considerable challenges, even if Congress enhanced the material inducements for service, which since 9/11 have already included a succession of generous increases in military pay. A loosening of immigration policy, granting a few hundred thousand foreigners citizenship in return for successfully completing a term of enlistment might help. In all likelihood, however, as with all three previous world wars, waging World War IV would oblige the United States to revive the draft. In short, going all out to create the forces needed to win World War IV would confront Americans with uncomfortable choices.
The budgetary implications of expanding U.S. forces while conducting a perpetual round of what the Pentagon calls “overseas contingency operations” would also loom large. Precisely how much money an essentially global conflict projected to extend well into the latter half of the century would require is difficult to gauge. As a starting point, given the increased number of active duty forces, tripling the present Defense Department budget of more than $600 billion might serve as a reasonable guess.
At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon.
Of course, that money would have to come from somewhere. For several years during the last decade, sustaining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed the federal deficit above a trillion dollars. As one consequence, the total national debt now exceeds annual GDP, having tripled since 9/11. How much additional debt the United States can accrue without doing permanent damage to the economy is a question of more than academic interest.
To avoid having World War IV produce an endless string of unacceptably large deficits, ratcheting up military spending would undoubtedly require either substantial tax increases or significant cuts in non-military spending, including big-ticket programs like Medicare and social security–precisely those, that is, which members of the middle class hold most dear.
In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loath to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn’t so far.
The Folly of World War IV. In his essay, Cohen writes, “we need to stop the circumlocutions.” Of those who would bear the direct burden of his world war, he says, “we must start telling them the truth.” He’s right, even if he himself is largely silent about what the conduct of World War IV is likely to exact from the average citizen.
As the United States enters a presidential election year, plain talk about the prospects of our ongoing military engagement in the Islamic world should be the order of the day. The pretense that either dropping a few more bombs or invading one or two more countries will yield a conclusive outcome amounts to more than an evasion. It is an outright lie.
As Cohen knows, winning World War IV would require dropping many, many more bombs and invading, and then occupying for years to come, many more countries. After all, it’s not just ISIS that Washington will have to deal with, but also its affiliates, offshoots, wannabes, and the successors almost surely waiting in the wings. And don’t forget al-Qaeda.
Cohen believes that we have no alternative. Either we get serious about fighting World War IV the way it needs to be fought or darkness will envelop the land. He is undeterred by the evidence that the more deeply we insert our soldiers into the Greater Middle East the more concerted the resistance they face; that the more militants we kill the more we seem to create; that the inevitable, if unintended, killing of innocents only serves to strengthen the hand of the extremists. As he sees it, with everything we believe in riding on the outcome, we have no choice but to press on.
While listening carefully to Cohen’s call to arms, Americans should reflect on its implications. Wars change countries and people. Embracing his prescription for World War IV would change the United States in fundamental ways. It would radically expand the scope and reach of the national security state, which, of course, includes agencies beyond the military itself. It would divert vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes. It would make the militarization of the American way of life, a legacy of prior world wars, irreversible. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it would also compromise American freedom in the name of protecting it. The nation that decades from now might celebrate VT Day–victory over terrorism–will have become a different place, materially, politically, culturally, and morally.
In my view, Cohen’s World War IV is an invitation to collective suicide. Yet here’s the ultimate irony: even without the name, the United States has already embarked upon something akin to a world war, which now extends into the far reaches of the Islamic world and spreads further year by year.
Incrementally, bit by bit, this nameless war has already expanded the scope and reach of the national security apparatus. It is diverting vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes even as it normalizes the continuing militarization of the American way of life. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it is undermining American freedom in the name of protecting it, and doing so right before our eyes.
For a rich and powerful nation to conclude that it has no choice but to engage in quasi-permanent armed conflict in the far reaches of the planet represents the height of folly. Power confers choice. As citizens, we must resist with all our might arguments that deny the existence of choice. Whether advanced forthrightly by Cohen or fecklessly by the militarily ignorant, such claims will only perpetuate the folly that has already lasted far too long.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Hello, Hezekiah! Archaeology and Biblical History
By Eric Metaxas, BreakPoint, Dec. 4, 2015
Five years ago, a team of archaeologists digging “at the foot of the southern part of the wall that surrounds Jerusalem’s Old City” came across a refuse dump dating to the eighth century before Christ.
As the New York Times told its readers, it’s “an area rich in relics from the period of the first of two ancient Jewish temples.” Among their findings were thirty-three clay imprints or seals, known as bulla. These seals were catalogued and stored.
It wasn’t until recently that these bulla were examined more closely, and what the closer examination revealed is rocking the archaeological world. One of the bulla bore the inscription “Belonging to Hezekiah (son of) Ahaz king of Judah.”
That would be the Hezekiah of which the Bible says, “He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses” (2 Kings 18:5-6).
As Eliat Mazar of Hebrew University told the Times, “It’s always a question, what are the real facts behind the biblical stories … Here we have a chance to get as close as possible to the person himself, to the king himself.”
You’ll pardon me for saying, but how cool is that?!
Now, this is only the most recent in a series of archaeological finds that are confirming the historical nature and veracity of the biblical narratives. A few years ago, I told you about the discovery of Shaarayim, one of the two cities of David mentioned in First Chronicles, as well as the remains of one of David’s palaces and royal storehouses.
I also told you about the discovery of a coin, dating from the 11th century before Christ, which depicted “a man with long hair fighting a large animal with a feline tail.” As if that didn’t ring your biblical bell enough, the coin was discovered “near the Sorek River, which was the border between the ancient Israelite and Philistine territories 3,100 years ago.”
Of course, the coin depicted Sampson.
You’ve got to remember that it was not that long ago that many historians and scholars were convinced that the biblical narratives that described the time before the Babylonian exile were largely the creation of pious scribes whose goal was to justify their contemporary concerns by creating a usable past. In fact, it was widely doubted that people like David and Solomon ever even existed, and if they did, they were little more than glorified tribal chieftains.
Then in 1993, a stone slab or stele dating from the 9th century B.C. referring to the “House of David” was found in northern Israel. More recently, archaeologists have discovered ancient copper mines south of Jerusalem that dated from the time of Solomon. The mines included “an impressive collection of clothing, fabrics, and ropes made using advanced weaving technology; foods, like dates, grapes, and pistachios; ceramics; and various types of metallurgical installations.”
So much for myths and glorified tribal chieftains!
Five years ago, a team of archaeologists digging “at the foot of the southern part of the wall that surrounds Jerusalem’s Old City” came across a refuse dump dating to the eighth century before Christ.
As the New York Times told its readers, it’s “an area rich in relics from the period of the first of two ancient Jewish temples.” Among their findings were thirty-three clay imprints or seals, known as bulla. These seals were catalogued and stored.
It wasn’t until recently that these bulla were examined more closely, and what the closer examination revealed is rocking the archaeological world. One of the bulla bore the inscription “Belonging to Hezekiah (son of) Ahaz king of Judah.”
That would be the Hezekiah of which the Bible says, “He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses” (2 Kings 18:5-6).
As Eliat Mazar of Hebrew University told the Times, “It’s always a question, what are the real facts behind the biblical stories … Here we have a chance to get as close as possible to the person himself, to the king himself.”
You’ll pardon me for saying, but how cool is that?!
Now, this is only the most recent in a series of archaeological finds that are confirming the historical nature and veracity of the biblical narratives. A few years ago, I told you about the discovery of Shaarayim, one of the two cities of David mentioned in First Chronicles, as well as the remains of one of David’s palaces and royal storehouses.
I also told you about the discovery of a coin, dating from the 11th century before Christ, which depicted “a man with long hair fighting a large animal with a feline tail.” As if that didn’t ring your biblical bell enough, the coin was discovered “near the Sorek River, which was the border between the ancient Israelite and Philistine territories 3,100 years ago.”
Of course, the coin depicted Sampson.
You’ve got to remember that it was not that long ago that many historians and scholars were convinced that the biblical narratives that described the time before the Babylonian exile were largely the creation of pious scribes whose goal was to justify their contemporary concerns by creating a usable past. In fact, it was widely doubted that people like David and Solomon ever even existed, and if they did, they were little more than glorified tribal chieftains.
Then in 1993, a stone slab or stele dating from the 9th century B.C. referring to the “House of David” was found in northern Israel. More recently, archaeologists have discovered ancient copper mines south of Jerusalem that dated from the time of Solomon. The mines included “an impressive collection of clothing, fabrics, and ropes made using advanced weaving technology; foods, like dates, grapes, and pistachios; ceramics; and various types of metallurgical installations.”
So much for myths and glorified tribal chieftains!
