Category Archives: culture

Ramadi and Strategy

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JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey said last week that losing Ramadi to the Daesh would be unimportant from a strategic perspective; it would have only symbolic importance.

I have a couple of thoughts about that. First, symbolism in a war has vast importance, to the morale of the defenders and to the morale of the attackers. Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo had no strategic importance whatsoever, but it was critically important: the symbolism of the raid—”we can hit you wherever we wish, whenever we wish”—had immediate impact on Japan’s strategic thinking and on American and Australian military and civilian morale, even though the raid did trivial physical damage.

So it is with Ramadi, especially for an Iraqi army that presently has no heart and little willingness to stand and fight, much less attack and fight. Tikrit, after all, was recaptured, to the extent it has been, by Iraqi militias and American bombing; the army itself played only a supporting role. Ramadi’s loss would simply add to the army’s mindset that it would only lose any encounter with Daesh. Ramadi’s loss also would add fuel to the ongoing conflict between Sunni Iraq and Shia Iraq. Symbolism matters in Iraq, too, and symbolic importance is…important.

Second, Doolittle’s raid came within the framework of an actual strategic plan for wresting the Pacific and its island nations back from Japan, driving Japan from the Asian mainland, and ultimately defeating Japan. In the present case, it’s entirely possible that Ramadi has no strategic importance, but this administration has no coherent strategy against which to measure Ramadi’s importance.

The 10th Amendment

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Here’s an example of the 10th Amendment in action:

While the United States and Iran edge closer to a nuclear deal, nearly two dozen US states are imposing their own sanctions against Tehran—a move some say could derail fragile talks between the two countries.

The states, though, say they aren’t budging. In fact, Kansas and Mississippi are even considering adding more sanctions.

And

Several states across the country have put their own measures in place to punish Iran-linked companies operating in certain sectors of its economy, directing public pension funds with billions of dollars in assets to divesting from the firms and sometimes barring them from public contracts[.]

Other states doing this sort of thing include Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Oregon, among others.

Would that the White House had similarly capable judgment.

YGTBSM

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Senate Democrats are fuming over abortion language inserted into a bipartisan human trafficking bill that they failed to notice before voting to move the bill to the floor.

Failed to notice for the two months they’ve had it. Another case of irresponsible Democrats not bothering to read legislation on which they vote—even in committee.

Democrats are now threatening to block the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2 by a unanimous vote and is now being debated before the full Senate.

Because spending your tax dollars on abortion is more important to Democrats than is protecting women and children from sex slavery. And one of its fallouts: pregnancies.

The NAACP is Right on This

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There’s a school district in Prince George’s County, MD (which works out to suburban DC), that’s looking to set up two public (not private) high schools for immigrants and second generation students who don’t speak English—and to teach in their old country language.

The NAACP is objecting, and they’re right on this one, albeit for some wrong reasons. Bob Ross, president of the Prince George’s County branch of the NAACP, had this:

It risks turning Prince George’s County into a segregated school system[.]

He said the setup is a violation of Brown v Board of Education, and he’s close. He’s also worried that this will divert resources from the existing school system, and he’s right here, too. This objection, though, isn’t that important; any effort to add schools will divert those resources.

Tehani Collazo, Senior Director of Casa’s Schools and Community Engagement section, disagreed, also with reason:

If we are saying all [English-language-learning] students must go to these schools, that’s one thing. But we are not.

Like the many that already exist across the country, the International Schools are schools of choice. They are built on an innovative and proven model that will help support the needs of our most struggling group of learners—English Language Learners.

They’re both missing the larger point, though, about American education in this context. The segregation argument is close, but it misses.   Brown was about forced segregation; this is voluntary.

On the other hand, “schools of choice” are appropriate for a lot of things, but not in this context. There can’t be any choice about being taught in English.

Immigrants need to assimilate into American culture; it’s our culture that has created the opportunities we have and that underlie our enormous success. Our culture isn’t learned by students and their families holding themselves apart from it, which is what happens when students go to American schools to learn in their own language instead of in English.

Language is thought, and English is the language of American culture. It’s entirely likely that English needs to be taught with greater emphasis in those of our public schools that have large fractions of their student populations who don’t speak a version of English natively. However, public funds should not be spent on public schools that will teach only in a foreign language. That’s not how American culture will be learned; that’s not how immigrants will assimilate.