The Immigration Bill

Bill Whittle develops an idea here. I'm not sure it will work (read the whole thing, then see my comment), but part-way through his post Bill really summarizes why so many people don't like the current immigration bill being proposed. I'm glad he did, because I didn't really understand the objection before. To quote Bill:

"Large numbers of non-citizens want to live in the United States. Large numbers. A society can only assimilate so many people in a given year. If millions and millions of people come here illegally, they are loading the system to capacity at the expense of the honest, decent people who are doing the right thing by applying to immigrate legally. If we reward illegal immigration with amnesty, we have allowed the illegals not only to screw our own people and laws, but even more so they harm their own countrymen who are trying to get here by cooperating.

The biggest losers in our inability to control illegal immigration are the legal immigrants. What benefit do these honest people gain from playing by the rules? This is as clear a real-world example as you are likely to see of the lack of retaliation flipping a system from cooperation to betrayal.

And, by allowing this to happen, you also set a precedent, which I think is even more destructive: you are saying not only to the illegals but to the entire society that laws are for chumps. Cheaters win. How much of this do we need to be immersed in before everyone realizes the smart move is to flip from cooperation to betrayal? How much damage does it do when the very people sworn to uphold the law – uphold the rules that allow this amazing cooperation game to continue -- are the ones who seem most enthusiastic to reward cheating? Finding out the cops are in on the crime is enough to drive even the most stout-hearted person to despair.

A steady diet of this message is not going to end well."

He's right, of course. Disrespect for one law (even if you think it's a bad one), may grow into a general disrespect for all laws. The law of a civilization must be followed, or the people within that civilization will not trust each other, and we'll quickly slip into a Prisoner's Dilemma "Screw the other Guy" Mode. (Read page 1 of Bill's post for a longer explanation of what that means).

The Z-visa didn't bother me because I don't have a problem with large immigration flows. I'm an "open borders" kind of guy, and as long as folks are law-abiding, hard-working, god-fearing and tax-paying, I don't mind if they move in next door. Goodness knows that the Latinos who sneak across the border for work are hard-working and god-fearing, and except for the immigration laws, they're generally law-abiding. If we can get them on the tax rolls, we'll be all set. That was my first thought, anyway.

But I should have known better. I should have thought of the precedent this sets. What does it say to others that someone can break the law today, as long as the law changes tomorrow? A bad precedent, I assure you. If everyone believed that, and if everyone acted on that, then people would be breaking laws left and right. We'd have no idea whether someone would obey a particular speed limit, or pay a certain tax, or honor a certain contract, because they might believe that tomorrow the law would change. This is Not Good(TM). "The law" is what holds a civilization together. To a point, it must be followed. So the Z-Visa is a bad idea.

I think the Y-Visa is more tolerable. In many senses, this "temporary worker" visa has been the unofficial system we've been using for years now. Latinos and other illegal immigrants knew they could come here because they knew that they could get a job, and send money home. Although it was an unofficial contract, it was a contract of our creation through our actions. We legally tolerated their presence, and commercially encouraged it. We are at least somewhat honor-bound to respect the promises we have made with our actions.

Hat-tip Glenn.

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al Qaeda still winning the media war

"The terrorists" have never had a hope of defeating the West militarily. The size and sophistication of the civilized world's armed forces (not just America's, but European, Japanese and other militaries as well) make it an impossible goal.



But jihadists can still make progress on achieving their Salafist objective of establishing a new Caliphate by by sapping the West's will to "reform" the Middle East. Their chief weapons in this fight are media weapons; their chief strategy is propaganda. The physical strength to resist a new Caliphate rests on the strength of the people's will to spend blood and treasure to oppose the Salafists, and through propaganda the will to resist can be drained away. A population which is convinced that resistance is futile will not make an organized and successful effort to so do.



MFN-Iraq has released a story about successful resistance by Iraqi forces to a large, coordinated attack by Jihadists in Mosul. Their accurate but tepid description: "
Iraqi Security Forces repel attacks in Mosul". CNN also reported the story, but their lead downplays it even further: "Iraqi forces thwart jailbreak plot". The header suggests to the casual headline-scanning reader that a police investigation may have caught a few plotters meeting in a basement, or perhaps inmates were caught digging under the wall one pocket-full of dirt at a time. Useful stuff, but not the kind of thing of which propaganda wars are won.



Compare and constrast with this loose collection of non sequiturs from the WaPo: "7 Killed on Bus in Iraq; Parliament Hit". This type of story drains the will the American people on two levels. First, the header concentrates on the loses inflicted, reminding the reader of all the bad consequences of violence in Iraq. Secondly, the story presents a jumbled collection of anecdotal violence in Iraq, and any casual reader without a frame of reference will find the story disorienting. People don't like being disoriented and confused; it's painful, and while some will insist on digging deeper and "figuring out what the heck is going on", some will shy away and vote to pull out of Iraq in attempt to make the confusing stories go away. It's a bit irrational, but that's human nature for you.



Even more subversive are the videos and pictures distributed by the Jihadists themselves from their own websites and via news networks like Al Jazeera. The Jihadists always take pictures, and use pictures from successful operations as part of their propaganda strategy. Because Western forces do not document their successful operations in the same way (for good operational reasons), and because the Jihadists do not distribute the recordings of their losses, the overwhelming majority of media available to the Western and Middle Easter public are of Jihadist victory (even if the victories are as small as a single burned out car or a couple dead civilians). If these documents are thought of as a propaganda arsenal, Jihadists then become stronger with each military victory, while military defeats leave them no weaker.



As long as Western forces refuse to toot their own horn, and as long as the Western media won't do it for them, this pattern will continue. It may feel sensationalist, but a MFN-Iraq headline like: "Major terrorist attack thwarted by Mosul police; lots of terrorists die" (followed by a lede like "Salafist jerk-offs bring dump-truck to a tank fight...") would be a victory separate and apart from the operational victory. It would reinforce the belief among the Iraqi and American publics alike that "we can beat these guys", and replace fear of an enemy with ridicule.



Until that happens though, al Qaeda is still winning the media war.



Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the initial tip.

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Posted with ScribeFire

My inaugural post should recognize the tools that makes this possible. I would like to thank the folks at Mozilla for the Firefox browser, the folks at Google for hosting this site, and Mr. Christopher Finkle, who's ScribeFire Add-On brings it all together so conveniently.



Also, a shout-out to V at Violent Acres.  I don't read her much anymore (I'd rather write my own opinions than obsess over hers), but some of her posts from earlier in late-Winter / early-Spring were what got me off my butt and inspired me to do this blogging thing.



Let's hope I stick with it.

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