Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about the release of his new work. Understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating impact on social capital, the fabric of associations, trust and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. In the short to medium range, that is, because in the long run, new communities and new ties are formed, Putnam says. What he fears - correctly - is that his work on the surprisingly negative impact of diversity will become part of the immigration debate.

His study found that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups. Trust, even of one's own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. The problem is not ethnic conflict or worse racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: "In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down,' - that is, to pull in like a turtle."

In 41 sites studied in the U.S., the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This was true in communities large and small, from Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Boston to Yakima, rural South Dakota and the mountains of West Virginia. In diverse San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 30 percent of people say they trust neighbors a lot. In ethnically homogeneous communities in the Dakotas, the figure is 70-80 percent. The difference between Los Angeles and homogeneous Bismarck, North Dakota, is roughly as great as the difference between an area with a poverty rate of 7 percent and one with a poverty rate of 23 percent, or between an area with 36 percent college graduates and one with none.

Putnam's findings are published in the June issue of Scandinavian Political Studies ("E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century"). Diversity does not produce "bad race relations," he says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend "to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings "may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal."

Neither age nor disparities of wealth explain diversity's impact, "Americans raised in the 1970s seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s." And the "hunkering down" occurred no matter whether the communities were relatively egalitarian or showed great differences in personal income. Even when communities are equally poor or rich, equally safe or crime-ridden, diversity is associated with less trust of neighbors. It also correlated with lower confidence in local politicians and news media, less charitable giving and volunteering, few close friends and less happiness.

Putnam has long been aware that his findings could have a devastating impact on the immigration debate. Last October he told the Financial Times that he delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity. He said it "would have been irresponsible to publish without that," a quote that is likely to raise eyebrows. Academics are not supposed to withhold negative data until they can suggest antidotes to their findings.

Putnam has not made details of his study public for examination by peers and the public. A long description of his U.S. findings, a speech he gave after winning an award in Sweden, appears only in a foreign journal. His office said Putnam is in Britain, working on a religion project at the University of Manchester, and currently too busy to grant an interview.

Putnam makes two positive points: in the long run, increased immigration and diversity are inevitable and desirable, and successful immigrant societies "dampen the negative effects of diversity" by constructing new identities.

Social psychologists have long favored the optimistic hypothesis that contact between different ethnic and racial groups increases tolerance and social solidarity. For instance, white soldiers assigned to units with black soldiers after World War II were more relaxed about desegregation of the army than were soldiers in all-white units. But Putnam acknowledges that most empirical studies do not support the "contact hypothesis." In general, they find that the more people are brought into contact with those of another race or ethnicity, the more they stick to their own and the less they trust others. Putnam writes: "across local areas in the United States, Australia, Sweden Canada and Britain, greater ethnic diversity is associated with lower social trust and, at least in some case, lower investment in public goods."

After their military defeat by regular forces, the occupied population produced terrorists who engaged in bombings, sniping, poisonings, and other attacks on occupation forces and on the civilian population. They operated as irregulars in small terror units, armed with automatic weapons and bazookas.

Women and minors as young as eight participated in the terror attacks. They attempted to build weapons of mass destruction, using chemical poisons. They assassinated officials of the occupation regime. They had a special obsession with torturing and murdering "collaborators." They murdered hundreds of civilians, while thousands of the terrorists themselves were killed by the occupation armed forces. The occupiers responded to terror with brutality and force, sometimes using collective punishment.

The above does notrefer to or describe the anti-American and anti-British terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does it describe Palestinian terrorism against Israel launched from the West Bank and Gaza.

What it does refer to is the campaign of terrorism directed against Allied forces in Europe in the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The terrorists were members of a number of underground "resistance" organizations attempting to punish the Allied "occupiers" and drive them out. The most important of the terror groups was known as Werwolf (German for werewolf).

Until recently, relatively little was known about groups like Werwolf. But several books, particularly those authored by Perry Biddiscombe, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia, have shed light on the activities of the groups and on the anti-terror strategies that ultimately defeated them.

Most of what follows is based on the research of Biddiscombe. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the campaign against the Werwolf, both for the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and for Israel in its battles against Arab terrorism.

For many years now the conventional wisdom has been that terrorism cannot be defeated militarily, that it can only be stopped when its underlying grievances are redressed and appeased. Moreover, the entire strategy of dealing with terrorism militarily has long been under assault by the Western chattering classes as ineffective and unjust.

Anti-terror tactics used by the contemporary Allies in Iraq and Afghanistan or by Israel against its enemies have been denounced by the media and by countless public figures, especially in Western Europe. But the claim that terrorism and guerilla warfare cannot be defeated militarily is false, as illustrated by the campaign against the Werwolf.

Origins and Tactics

Nazi preparations for a campaign of terrorism against the invading Allies were underway by 1943. At first the intention was for irregular fighters to serve as a diversionary force operating behind enemy lines. The name "Werwolf" (also spelled "Wehrwolf") was chosen from a book by Hermann Lons (Der Wehrwolf) glamorizing a 17th century German guerilla fighter.

The Werwolf developed into a large full-fledged terrorist organization, operating under the command of the SS. It operated in "groups" consisting of 4 to 6 fighters, with 6 to 10 groups forming a "sector" and 6 to 8 sectors forming a "section." At its height, the Werwolf organization probably had about 6,000 fighters, though it could call on the support and cooperation of other units such as the Volksturm, a militia of the elderly and very young set up by Hitler near the end of the war. Himmler took personal control of operations starting in 1944.

The technology of those terrorists was of course far more primitive than that used by modern Middle East terrorists, but some of the similarities in technique are striking. Beheadings were a common Werwolf tactic. Decades before the pilfering of the museums of Baghdad, the Werwolf were under orders to sabotage and destroy art galleries, museums and other cultural institutions. While Germany never produced a campaign of suicide bombers, Werwolf terrorists were equipped with cyanide tablets and expected to commit suicide rather than be taken captive.

In the campaign against the Werwolf, an estimated 3,000-5,500 terrorists were killed. Werwolf terrorism continued well after formal hostilities ended and Germany had surrendered. In the German area of Italy, South Tyrol, where a German separatist movement was active, sabotage, bombings and Werwolf guerilla violence continued into the 1960’s.

As part of the campaign of terrorism, German Red Cross ambulances routinely carried arms and munitions, long before the Palestinians perfected that technique. Buildings thought to be designated for use as Allied barracks were mined, especially in Lorraine (where the attacks were directed against the U.S. Third Army). Werwolf terrorists collected caches of poison gases and chemical weapons, most of which were discovered by Allied forces before they could be used.

The Werwolf used death squads and assassination hit teams, often against German civilians whom the terrorists suspected of collaboration or defeatism. Civil authorities in German towns under Allied occupation were favorite targets. Priests, public officials, and even German villagers flying white surrender flags were attacked.

Werwolf terrorists were each typically equipped with 15-20 pounds of explosives and small arms, often including bazookas. Generally they operated stealthily without uniform, in civilian clothes. They set up caches of armaments in farms, caves, forests, and abandoned mines. Interestingly, there was a female contingent of terrorists, a unit of which, equipped with bazookas, played an important role in the last weeks of fighting around Berlin.

Children were also frequently used in terror attacks. The Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, was one of the main sources of recruits for the Werwolf. Entire units of Werwolf consisted of minors. Teenage Werwolf terrorists were involved in bombing the Red Army barracks near Hindenberg. Child snipers shot and threw grenades at advancing American forces. Himmler himself invented an incentive system for Hitler Youth serving in the Werwolf: 100 cigarettes for ten sniper kills; 20 days’ leave for twenty kills; a watch and Iron Cross for fifty kills.

A unit of 14-year-olds attacked U.S. forces near Nuremberg. "Operation Nursery," a campaign against Werwolf terrorism by minors, was mounted by U.S. and British troops and continued well into 1946.

The terrorists used a variety of techniques. In addition to sniping and bombings, decapitation wires were popular  thin piano wire stretched across a road just at the height of the necks of drivers of Allied vehicles or motorcycles. Allied forces sometimes retaliated against such attacks by beheading captured terrorists. In Schleswig-Holstein, the British lopped off the heads of a dozen terrorists.

Mass poisoning was another favorite terrorist method. It was used with horrific success especially, but not exclusively, against Red Army troops. Between February and July 1945, 180 American troops were murdered with poisoned liquor. The Werwolf would spike liquor and food with odorless poison and wait for the troops to indulge. A special entity called the KTI, or Criminal Technical Institute, would prepare the poisons.

While the armed conflict raged, Werwolf terrorists were active in capturing, torturing and murdering enemy troops. But as the war drew to a close, the Werwolf began to specialize in terrorizing German civilians suspected of collaborating with or failing to resist the Allies’ advance.

Werwolf terrorism was strongest on the Eastern front, as Soviet forces threatened East Prussia, Silesia, and other areas regarded by Germans as part of their heartland. The Werwolf even ran its own radio station.

Ferocious Response

How were those terrorists eventually defeated? With brutal military force and counter-terrorism combined with a long-term program of denazification of German civilians.

The Soviets were by far the least squeamish of the Allies when it came to suppressing Werwolf terrorism. According to a Vatican report, "Russian reprisals…were terrible. Using flame-throwers the Russians destroyed entire blocks of houses causing the deaths of hundreds of the inhabitants."

Soviet troops dealt with the threat through mass executions, mass arrests, marauding, and arson directed against German civilians. Hostages were grabbed from areas where any Werwolf sabotage took place and often were summarily executed. Any Germans – even hunters – possessing any weapons were shot on the spot as terrorists. Any German witnessing terror attacks who did not come forward to testify about them was shot. Those hiding terrorists or weapons were shot and their homes burned to the ground.

As of October 1946, the Soviets were holding 3,336 Werwolf terrorists in prison within the Soviet zone. The Soviets also crowded 240,000 suspected Werwolf sympathizers into a prison camp (where fully a third simply perished). In Jarmin in Pomerania, when German terrorists killed two Soviet troops, the entire town was demolished. In Schivelbein, after a Soviet general was killed by a sniper, the Soviets murdered every man in town.

Soviet looting and marauding in occupied German areas continued unrestrained into 1947. While such behavior may strike us as barbarous retaliation, Biddiscombe describes it thus: "None the less, given what the Werwolf was doing, or trying to do, the responses of the occupiers do not lay beyond the realm of comprehension." The Soviets were still concerned about threats of Werwolf sabotage and terror in Eastern Europe during the 1950’s.

The French were second to the Soviets in the viciousness and ferocity of their suppression of Werwolf terrorism. French soldiers pillaged German areas as they fell under their control. Random beatings of Germans by the French were common. The French forcibly expelled all German civilians from numerous towns and villages in their area of control. General Le Clerc issued an edict on November 25, 1944 to shoot five Germans for every act of sniping near Strasbourg.

Following some Werwolf activity around Constance, French forces grabbed 400 hostages and executed two. Any building in the French zone with Werwolf graffiti on it was immediately demolished. Owners had at most an hour to remove such graffiti once it appeared in order to avoid such a fate. Collective fines were imposed on German civilians for sabotage activities in their area. Wholesale travel and curfew restrictions were imposed on the entire German population.

While American troops generally avoided the excesses of the Soviets and French, they were sharply criticized by the British for using excessive brutality and force in suppressing the Werwolf. General Eisenhower ordered the execution of all Werwolf fighters captured in civilian garb.

It was understood among U.S. troops that they had a green light for applying frontier justice to terrorists, with no lawyers or trials. The counterinsurgency manual issued by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expedition Force (SHAEF) recommended that troops simply ignore Geneva Convention rules when dealing with the Werwolf.

SHAEF instructions allowed using captive Germans in forced labor; seizure of German civilians as hostages; collective punishment; shooting of hostages; and massive bombings of civilian areas containing terrorists. Threats to shoot all curfew violators were commonly made. At Lutzkampen, Allied troops threatened to burn down the village if there were any violations of curfew.

When U.S. troops were attacked at Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia, the entire town was annihilated by Seventh Army artillery. In the fall of 1945, well after the surrender, U.S. forces still regarded Werwolf bands as "one of the biggest potential threats to security in both the American and Allied Zones of Occupation."

Around Stuttgart, members of Werwolf bazooka teams were shot on sight by American troops. Massive artillery bombardment of civilian areas with snipers was used whenever it was thought such action could prevent Allied troop casualties. In Krefeld, one of the first towns taken by the Americans, 120,000 civilians were rounded up and held in detention camps.

Other Allied forces were vicious in suppressing the Werwolf. The Czechoslovaks routinely tortured and abused captured terrorists. The most dramatic Czechoslovak actions took place in the Sudetenland. After some Czechs were murdered by the Werwolf, local authorities threatened to shoot all German refugees there who had arrived from Silesia.

In July 1945 a large explosion took place in Aussig an der Elbe, killing 50 people. Blaming local ethnic Germans, the authorities killed German civilians in reprisal. The remaining German population was expelled from the town. Slovaks and Poles often treated Germans little better.

Canadian forces were also brutal in suppressing terrorism. Canadian General Chris Vokes carried out large-scale destruction of German property in retaliation for guerilla activities. Towns from which sniper fire was directed against Canadian troops were reduced to rubble. Orders were given to demolish buildings housing snipers rather than risk the lives of troops. German homes were bulldozed. No "solidarity" protesters picketed the corporate headquarters of the companies manufacturing the bulldozers.

As is the case with the terrorism directed against U.S. troops in Iraq and against Jews in Israel, Werwolf terror was never in and of itself an existential threat, nor did it represent a serious military strategy capable of defeating regular armies. Rather, it was designed to demoralize  to defeat the enemy by generating growing casualties over long periods and trigger defeatism among the enemy’s home population.

While no one in his or her right mind would advocate some of the more excessive means used to suppress the German terrorists of the late 1940’s, that era nevertheless teaches us that a determined no-nonsense campaign of wiping out terrorism with armed force is capable of succeeding, even against the most brutal of opponents. Determined denazification of fanatic violent populations was also shown to work.

Such success is not easy, nor does it come cheaply.

"Communism claimed 100 million victims," Emil Constantinescu pointed out. 

One sure sign that academia is failing in its mission can be seen in the lack of understanding by the young of the toll taken by communist regimes around the world throughout the 20th Century, that continues to accumulate to this very day. "Ask college students, and I have, how many Stalin killed and you get the answer, 'thousands,'" University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors said on June 12th at the Heritage Foundation. "That's like saying Hitler killed hundreds of Jews."

"Communism claimed 100 million victims," Emil Constantinescu pointed out in the same forum that Dr. Kors addressed. "In my country, Romania, we had one million dead and one million political prisoners out of a total population of 16 million." Constantinescu was the former President of Romania.

"I think that you talk about the 100 million victims of communism without taking account of about 300-400 million because you are not talking about their families," Cuban Pedro Fuentes told the audience at Heritage. "My mother was told not to come to see me in prison because I was shot."

"She fainted." Fuentes spent 18 years in Cuba's prison system. "So with my marriage, which was shot," he remembered, "and my son who I had not seen since he was a baby."

"Now he was a grown man." Cuba is a country that college professors enthusiastically urge students to visit and do volunteer work in, labor that ultimately aids Fidel Castro's regime which has controlled the island nation for nearly half a century.

"What about the 60's radicals who kept pictures of Mao and Che on their walls?" Dr. Kors asks. He characterizes that act as "the equivalent of putting up pictures of Hitler and Eichmann."

"They get to teach students about the superiority of their political philosophy," Dr. Kors asserts. Dr. Kors is the co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) which spawned a national network of pro-bono attorneys who defend students whose civil liberties have been jeopardized by college administrators.

"No other system has caused as much death as communism has," Dr. Kors concludes. "In the case of Nazis, we rightly hunt down 90-year-old men because the bones cry out for justice."

"In the case of communism, we follow the advice of our educated class which says, 'No witch hunts.'" He is pessimistic about the prospects of an enlightenment among these elites.

"Understanding of communism is going to have to come from civil society because it isn't going to come from the professoriat," he advises. For such an epiphany to occur among faculty members, Dr. Kors contends that "you need universities that hire pluralistically and not by political litmus test."

"We need to stop using the Lenin and Stalin terminology that divided the world into capitalist and socialist camps," the European Union's Tunne Kelam insists. "The Holocaust took 15 years to receive recognition with the trial of Adolph Eichmann," he reminded the audience.

Kelam was a leading Estonian dissident during the Soviet occupation of that country. "Even the KGB managed to have a soft landing," he observed of the demise of communism in central Europe. "Victims of communism lack the guarantee that victims of Nazis had which was, 'Never again.'"

"Crimes of communism should be treated the way that crimes of Naziism were." Now that would be an unusually productive activity for the EU.

"In 1980, only Lane Kirkland threw his weight behind Lech Walesa," the University of Maryland's Michael Szporer recounted in another flashback at the Heritage "Victims of Communism" program.

The then-head of the AFL-CIO backed the Polish trade union boss "against the wishes of the Carter Administration and particularly its two most prominent cabinet members who were Polish-Americans," Dr. Szporer contends. Those two holdouts would be Secretary of State Edmund Muskie and national security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski.

As former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis pointed out in his unsuccessful run for the White House, "The fish rots from the head down." Dukakis, of course, made his famous characterization, unjustly, of the Reagan Administration.

But could it be said of the Gipper's predecessor? When I met Muskie in the summer of 1984, I reminded him that I had seen him speak at my alma mater during the hard-fought 1980 presidential campaign.

"I may have," he admitted. "I made a lot of speeches when I worked for what's-his-name." As for Brezinski, it should be noted that he was supportive of Reagan Administration policies that aided the anti-communist movement in Poland.

So Lebanon is purely an Arab country now; the unique culture and traditions which had once made her the light of the Middle-East have been so eroded by the onslaught of Palestinians and Syrians that the Lebanese leaders see their land as just another Arab state.

We allowed this to happen; had the United States let Israel continue to occupy Lebanon, or had we acted against the Syrians when our Marines were attacked while we occupied it during the Reagan years, Lebanon would not have endured decades of Syrian repression and arabification. We turned tail and ran, leaving the country (via the Taef Agreement) at the mercy of the Baathists of Syria and allowing the destruction of the Maronite Christian culture which had existed for hundreds of years.  It`s now just another Arab hell-hole, or fast becoming one.

Lebanon should be a cautionary tale for America;  once predominantly Christian, the influx of Arabs and Palestinians (to the tune of 900,000 in a country with a little over 3 million people) is now under the Islamic bootheel, and likely to remain so.  By not restricting the this invasion southern Lebanon came under the thumb of the Palestinians and Hezbollah, who now operate it as an autonomous zone and military base of operations against Israel.  Immigration-legal and otherwise-has destroyed the once great culture of the Lebanese.

Sound familiar?  How long before La Raza establishes an autonomous zone in the Southern United States?

By Steven Milloy, June 18, 2007

What should conservatives do about global
warming? Jim Manzi suggests in his June 25
National Review cover story (Game Plan) that
conservatives embrace junk science and ``manage``
global climate change so that they can ``peel off``
1 percent of the votes from the ``opposing
coalition`` in some future presidential
election.  Manzi’s is a recipe for social,
political and economic disaster  not just for
conservatives, but for everyone, with the
possible exception of the back-to-nature socialists among us.
"It is no longer possible, scientifically or
politically, to deny that human activities have
very likely increased global temperatures``,
intones Manzi, who has apparently spent too much
time watching ``An Inconvenient Truth.``  It’s
clear from his article that he neither
understands the science nor the politics of global warming.

Manzi says we should believe in global warming
because of the ``underlying physics.`` He writes,
``All else equal, the more CO2 molecules we have
in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.``  But both
the underlying physics and historical climate
data debunk this statement.  Different greenhouse
gases absorb different wavelengths of energy
emitted by the Earth. The fact that only a
limited amount of the Earth’s emitted energy is
available for absorption by CO2 and that CO2 has
to compete with water vapor and clouds for that
energy, results in a crucial (but little
publicized) logarithmic relationship between CO2
and temperature  that is, as atmospheric CO2
increases, it absorbs less and less additional
energy to produce correspondingly less and less
additional warming. At some point, adding more
atmospheric CO2 doesn’t significantly change atmospheric temperature.

To analogize, consider a window with many shades,
each blocking half the incoming light. As
successive shades are pulled, the transmitted
light is halved and the effect of each shade is
diminished. Eventually, there’s no additional
effect because previous shades have already
absorbed the light to all but a vanishing degree.
As more shades won’t block more light, more CO2
won’t cause significantly more warming.  In fact,
there’s been more than enough greenhouse gas in
the atmosphere to cause much greater warming than
actually occurs since long before humans discovered fire.

From a historical perspective, consider the
relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and
global temperature for the period 1940-1970. As
atmospheric CO2 levels steadily increased during
this period, global temperatures decreased,
giving rise to the 1970s-era scare of an
impending ice age. It’s also clear that, if there
has been a relationship between atmospheric CO2
and global temperature since the 1970s, it’s not readily apparent.

And let’s not forget the third-rail of global
warming debate  one that Al Gore carefully slid
over in his movie  the actual relationship
between carbon dioxide and global
temperature.  While alarmists would have us
assume that increases in atmospheric CO2 precede
and cause increases in global temperature, the
scientific data say the exact
opposite.  Historical data taken from polar ice
core samples indicate that increases in
temperature have preceded increases in
atmospheric CO2 by several hundred years. Not
letting this ``inconvenient truth`` spoil his
movie, Al Gore only describes the relationship
between atmospheric CO2 and temperature as ``complex``.

Global warming worriers can take no comfort from
Antarctic data either. Over the last 30 years,
atmospheric CO2 increased by about 15 percent,
from about 328 parts per million to about 372
parts per million. But the Antarctic temperature
trend for that period indicates a slight cooling.
This observation contrasts sharply with the
relatively steep Antarctic warming observed from
1949 to 1974, which was accompanied by a much
more modest increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

As to trees removing CO2 from the atmosphere,
well, some do and some don’t.  Researchers from
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
recently reported in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (April 17) that
while tropical forests exert a cooling influence
on global climate, forests in northern regions,
because of their absorption of sunlight, exert a
warming influence ­ and it’s not just a trivial
climatic effect.  Based on the researchers’
computer modeling, forests above 20 degrees
latitude in the Northern Hemisphere ­ that is,
north of the line of latitude running through
Southern Mexico, Saharan Africa, central India
and the southernmost Chinese island of Hainan 
will warm surface temperatures in those regions
by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year
2100.  It would seem that climate jihadists might
well start their anti-warming campaigns in the
chainsaw isle of their local hardware stores,
rather than coming for our SUVs, incandescent light bulbs and thermostats.

Manzi’s reading of the political situation is as
wrong-headed as his facts and reasoning on the
science.  He suggests that conservatives turn
global warming alarmism into a political
advantage by essentially out-marketing the
enviros on the solutions. ``Conservatives should
propose policies that are appropriately
optimistic, science-based and low-cost A key
political question is therefore which side could
more effectively use its position on carbon taxes
to peel off 1 percent of the relevant votes from
the opposing coalition``, he writes.

Why won’t putting a happy-face on being the
low-cost-provider of planetary apocalypticism
work? Because averting planetary disaster is not
what global warming alarmism is all about. There
are many nefarious agendas driving the global
warming controversy, none of them have anything
to do with ``saving`` the planet, and to pretend
they don’t exist is to truly live in denial.

First, there are the radical left-wing
environmentalists whose goal  through control of
energy production and use, and ultimately the
economy  is global socialism. As Greenpeace
founder Patrick Moore related in the recent
Channel 4 (UK) documentary, entitled The Great
Global Warming Swindle, by the mid-1980s,
environmental goals  e.g., clean air and clean
water  had become so mainstream that activists
had to adopt more extreme positions to remain
anti-establishment. Then when the Berlin Wall
fell and the Cold War ended, many ``peace-niks``
and left-wing political activists moved over to
environmental activism, bringing their
``neo-Marxist`` political philosophy with them. As
Moore puts it, environmentalism became the ``new guise for anti-capitalism.``

Then there are the Europeans who are responsible
for launching global warming alarmism in the
first place.  When Margaret Thatcher became UK
Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was to reduce
Britain’s economic decline. Thatcher wanted to
make the UK energy-independent through nuclear
power  she didn’t like her country’s reliance on
coal, which politically empowered the coal miner
unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states.

So Thatcher latched onto her science adviser’s
notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide
warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby
providing the perfect political cover for
advancing her nuclear power agenda without having
to fight the miners or Arab oil states.  She
empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin
global climate change research, a move that
eventually led to the 1988 creation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
the United Nations’ group that has come to be the
``official`` international agency for global warming alarmism.

The Europeans now see global warming as a means
of hampering U.S. economic competitiveness
through increased energy prices. In a global
warming-worried world, it becomes more expensive
to use coal, for example. About 52 percent of
U.S. electricity is produced by burning coal.
France, in contrast, gets 80 percent of its
electricity from nuclear power. Guess whose
economy takes the hit.  The Europeans also know
that environmentalists and trial lawyers will
ensure that greenhouse gas emissions regulations
are strictly enforced in the U.S. The same cannot be said for Europe.

There is also the gigantic global warming
bureaucracy that’s been created over the last 20
years. Whereas there used to be only a handful of
scientists who called themselves atmospheric
scientists, now there are legions of
self-proclaimed ``climatologists`` along with the
attendant bureaucracies to support them. U.S.
taxpayers alone support this gang to a tune of
about $5 billion per year.  Where a zoologist
might previously have had difficulty getting a
grant to study the mating habits of squirrels, a
whole new world of possibilities opens up if the
newly minted climato-zoologist asks for funding
to study whether changes in atmospheric carbon
dioxide are making female squirrels friskier.

Perhaps the most effective of these pro-global
warming groups is big business.  The alternative
energy industry uses global warming
fear-mongering to sell subsidized, but still
high-priced energy. Wal-Mart wants us to pay
$5.99 for inferior but climate-friendly light
bulbs, rather than $0.75 for traditional
incandescent bulbs. Dupont and other
manufacturing giants want Congress to dole out
global warming pork for their past, voluntary
reductions in greenhouse gases. Goldman Sachs
owns part of the climate exchanges on which
permits to emit greenhouse gases are to be traded.

Global warming hysteria was just that, until big
business climbed aboard the climate railroad. Now
with its army of lobbyists in Washington, many
businesses see global warming as a lucrative
endeavor and they are trying to engineer
congressional action for their own limited interests.

And let’s not forget Congress and other state and
local politicians who, not surprisingly, have
adopted the Green veneer of virtue. ``Green-ness``
has become the new moral high ground that few
dare to challenge. Those that do are pilloried as
``skeptics`` and likened to Holocaust deniers. It’s
no surprise that so many politicians  not a
courageous lot to start with  have opted to join the Big Green machine.

By Pete Hegseth
Monday, June 25, 2007; A19

As an Iraq war veteran who participated in combat operations and political reconciliation efforts, I take issue with some of the arguments repeatedly being made on Capitol Hill. Most recently I was bothered by statements from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who cited three common antiwar arguments in his June 21 op-ed, " Lincoln's Example for Iraq," all of which run counter to realities on the ground in Iraq.

· A deadline for withdrawal is an incentive for Iraqi political compromise. Levin thinks we ought to pressure Iraq's government with a warning tantamount to saying: "You better fix the situation before we leave and your country descends into chaos." He should consider the more likely result: an American exit date crushing any incentive for Iraqi leaders to cooperate and instead prompting rival factions to position themselves to capitalize on the looming power void.

My experience in Iraq bore this out. Only after my unit established a meaningful relationship with the president of the Samarra city council -- built on tangible security improvements and a commitment to cooperation -- did political progress occur. Our relationship fostered unforeseen political opportunities and encouraged leaders, even ones from rival tribes, to side with American and Iraqi forces against local insurgents and foreign fighters.

· We can bring the war to a "responsible end" but still conduct counterterrorism operations. The problem with this argument is what a "responsible end" would mean. What is "responsible" about the large-scale bloodshed that would surely occur if we left the Iraqis behind with insufficient security forces? What is "responsible" about proving al-Qaeda's thesis that America can be defeated anywhere with enough suicide bombings?

The senator also seems to believe that America will have success fighting terrorists in Iraq with a minimal troop presence, despite the fact that 150,000 troops have their hands full right now doing precisely that.

· We are "supporting the troops" by demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Levin says that "our troops should hear an unequivocal message from Congress that we support them." He explains his vote to fund and "support" the troops while simultaneously trying to legislate the war's end. But what kind of "support" and "unequivocal message" do the troops hear from leaders in Congress who call their commanders "incompetent" or declare the war "lost"?

Such statements provide nearly instant enemy propaganda to every mud hut with a satellite dish in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. These messages do not spell support, no matter how you spin them. And they could inspire insurgents, making the situation more dangerous for our soldiers and Marines.

Veterans know firsthand that numerous mistakes have been made in the war. But that does not change the unfortunate reality: Iraq today is the front line of a global jihad being waged against America and its allies. Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have said so.

We face an important choice in the coming months: provide Gen. David Petraeus the time and troops he needs to execute his counterinsurgency campaign, or declare defeat and withdraw from Iraq. It seems that Democrats in Congress have already made their decision.

In his op-ed, Sen. Levin invoked the example of Abraham Lincoln, who endured years of challenges before finding the right generals and strategy to win the Civil War. After four years of uncertainty in Iraq, America finally has both the general and the strategy to turn the tide. The question is whether 2007 will unfold like 1865 or 1969.

President Lincoln chose to fight a bloody and unpopular war because he believed the enemy had to be defeated. He was right. And to me, that sounds more than a bit like the situation our country faces today. What path will we choose?

Eleven to twelve million illegal immigrants currently reside in the United States thanks to this Administration's failure to secure our borders. The Bush Administration has refused to enforce the laws we have on the books and clearly did not make border security or immigration reform a priority until an election year. Last year, President Bush chose to only fund 210 extra Border Patrol agents after Congress authorized an additional 10,000 agents over five years. In addition, audits of employers who use illegals has declined from 8,000 under the Clinton Administration to 2,200 in 2003. In 2004, only THREE employers were fined for hiring illegal labor. This was down from 1999, when 417 businesses were fined. This failure is inexcusable.

Until the President and Congress can move forward on this agenda, Claire does not believe we need any new guest worker programs undermining American workers. While building a fence along the border in some of our most porous areas is an appropriate first step, rampant illegal immigration will not be resolved until this Administration stops taking care of special interests who care more about access to cheap-labor than they do about securing our borders.