Debating Iraq's Future
Frederick W. Kagan makes a convincing diagnosis of the primary motivation behind the Sunni-Arab insurgency: It's not the fear of being ruled by Americans, who will sooner or later depart Iraq, but of being dominated by the majority Shiites ("Blueprint for Victory," Oct. 31). Not surprisingly, the Sunnis would like to wield disproportionate power over greater Iraq in a manner to which they had long been accustomed.
Given that diagnosis, I was less impressed with Kagan's positing that the "only political solution . . . is to compel the Sunni Arabs to accept a far lesser [than historical] voice in Iraq's affairs." Such "acceptance," he writes, would be achieved by causing them to know they are defeated via a thoroughgoing military occupation so as "to pacify the Sunni Triangle."
Although the best of all worlds would be a united Iraq, with its constituent ethnic groups living in peace, the process of achieving that end through military means will likely be prolonged and costly. It would seem that the shortest route to a viable peace would be to cut the Sunni Triangle loose from the other two ethnic regions, making it an independent state. This would give the Sunnis what they want the most--autonomy from the Shiites. And the Shiites would be handed the less onerous task of defending a national border rather than having perpetually to battle suicidal insurgents on their own turf.
Yes, before official "Balkanization" were to occur, we should probably "give peace a chance." Given the prospects of being expelled from the Iraqi Federation and accordingly denied the opportunity to share in the greater oil wealth of its neighbors, one would think that it would be the Sunnis and not the Shiites and Kurds who were overwhelmingly supportive of the provisional constitution. The former have everything to gain from national unity, and as it now stands, the latter two have the most to lose. They would not only have to share their wealth directly, but if current trends prevail, they would also have to bear the greater human and material burden of keeping peace within the Sunni territory. But if after six months or so the Sunnis have failed to demonstrate that they can behave suitably under the auspices of a federation, they should be put out on their own.
Balkanization, contrary to the stigma of its connotation, has worked reasonably well in the former Yugoslavia. The Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, and Serbs generally behaved better once they had, or were largely confined to, their own countries. Our legitimate objectives in Iraq don't require national unity in order to be achieved.
George R. Compton
Layton, UT
Uni-or Multi-Versity?
James Piereson's wonderfully comprehensive discourse on higher education ("The Left University," Oct. 3) omitted the main reason universities have moved leftward in recent decades: the growth of moral relativism. After all, if each individual is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, then the well-educated thinkers in academe are entitled to think they are more right than anyone else. Freed from the constraints of "truth," they also deny rationality and contradict themselves at will. Moral relativism is wrong and cannot justify university leftism. But if we don't know how to disprove it, then we're stuck with university leftism.
Steven B. Cord
Columbia, MD
Abortion & Cancer
Sally Satel's "Political Science" (Oct. 31) contains an absurd criticism. She insists that "medical reality was indeed distorted" if the National Cancer Institute's website "was changed to say that women who undergo abortions have a meaningful chance of developing breast cancer." Didn't Dr. Satel learn in medical school that childbirth helps protect against breast cancer? Abortion prevents childbirth and thereby its protective effect; many studies show abortion also elevates the risk in other ways. The overall risk of breast cancer in the United States is 1 in 7.5, nearly twice or more than it is in countries that ban abortion, such as Ireland.
There is no denying that women who undergo abortions have a meaningful chance of developing breast cancer, and Dr. Satel's criticism of that disclosure is unjustified.
Andy Schlafly
Association of American Physicians & Surgeons
Far Hills, NJ
Sally Satel responds: I chose the phrase "meaningful chance" of breast cancer carefully. At the very most, abortion is only weakly linked to breast cancer--and, in epidemiological studies with small relative risks (as is typical of most breast cancer-abortion studies), a linkage by no means indicates cause and effect.
Researchers have long realized that women who have breast cancer will give a more complete account of their abortions than women who do not have breast cancer. Such "recall bias" can skew the accuracy of study results. A 2004 study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, analyzed data from 59 studies, including 83,000 women with breast cancer from 16 countries with liberal abortion laws. To control for recall bias, the Lancet study analyzed data collected on thousands of women (who did and did not have abortions) before they developed breast cancer. They found that "pregnancies that end as a spontaneous or induced abortion did not increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer."
This study corroborated the findings of a vast study of 1.5 million Danish women. In that 1997 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, all Danish women born between 1935 and 1978 were linked with the National Registry of Induced Abortions and with the Danish Cancer Registry, thereby circumventing recall bias. No relationship between abortion and later breast cancer was found.
Finally, in February 2003, the U.S. National Cancer Institute gathered over 100 of the world's leading experts who study breast cancer risk. They found no linkage, nor did the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that same year.
Sparring with Commies
In "Project for a New Chinese Century" (Oct. 10), Max Boot calls for using media to "crack open, not cement, the authority of the Communist party."
I would like to call attention to the boldest and most effective effort to date to "crack open" the authority of the Chinese Communist party: the Epoch Times's publication of the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" (available at www.ninecommentaries.com). The message of the "Nine Commentaries" is quite simple: The CCP is illegitimate, and its rule must end.
This series of editorials, which is also broadcast via radio, gives the Chinese people an uncensored history of the CCP that details its massive crimes; explains how it has ruled China through terror, lies, and the control of all information; and shows how it has set out to destroy all traditional forms of morality and belief. The "Nine Commentaries" is an appeal to the conscience of the Chinese people to shake off the rule of an evil tyranny.
The effect within China has been dramatic. Since early December, 5.2 million Chinese have renounced all association with the CCP and its affiliated organizations. Approximately 20,000 renounce the CCP every day. Naturally, the CCP has done everything within its power to prevent the spread of the "Nine Commentaries." For instance, just a few weeks ago, the Epoch Times published the story of police officer Han Xinlei of Xi'an City, Shanxi Province, who was murdered after having renounced the CCP. A recent study done at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School shows that websites referencing the "Nine Commentaries" are the most likely to be blocked by Internet filters in China.
Boot also suggests that "we need to champion Chinese dissidents, intellectuals, and political prisoners, and help make them as famous as Andrei Sakharov, Václav Havel, and Lech Walesa." We at the Epoch Times strongly agree and suggest that those of us outside China begin by calling attention to the millions inside China who have renounced the CCP. Their peaceful acts of extraordinary courage are helping bring a better future to China, and, as Boot makes clear, we all should be deeply grateful.
Stephen Gregory
Chairman, the Epoch Times
Chicago, IL
Metaphorical Assassins
I assume that The Weekly Standard will provide content meeting the highest standards of linguistic propriety; consequently, Iwas disappointed to meet an example of what I thought to be a lapse of such standards in Irwin M. Stelzer's "Blackpool Blues" (Oct. 17). Stelzer writes, "It was the Tory members of parliament who assassinated Margaret Thatcher when they deemed her usefulness to them to be at end." He then proceeds to say, "Since then, the assassins . . . " This is an unacceptable use of the term "assassinated." Rabin was assassinated. So were Kennedy and King. Thatcher was not.
Carl Zeno
Shrewsbury, VT
Fie! Foes Watch TV, Too
Fred Barnes's "A Failure to Communicate" (Oct. 17) was excellent as usual. I do believe, though, that many Americans fail to realize that when government officials speak to American media outlets, other audiences, including our enemies, are listening. For example, the administration would not want to discourage Iraqis by saying on national news networks how few Iraqi troops are ready and willing; instead, we want to encourage the Iraqis with the number of security forces that are battle-ready. The American audience may see "mixed messages" coming from the Bush administration, but we must come to understand that we are not the only ones listening.
Mike Irving
Boise, ID