Progressive Foreign Policy

Contra the Israel Lobby

I do not understand the need to idealize Israel: we can favor them over their barbaric enemies without idealizing them. The American-Israeli relationship has benefited the Israelis enormously, Americans not at all. There is no such thing as what this fellow terms an "unconditional ally," and Israel is the last country that would subscribe to such a sentimental notion. They are the most Machiavellian of nations--both in the sense of manifesting a rare capacity for intelligent decision-making and in the sense of being rigorously unsentimental. Consider the catastrophization of most of its neighbors of late. Do you really think the Jews had no hand in this bloody madness? Have you ever heard of the neo-cons? It happens to be a Jew-run movement and (extremely) pro-Israel. Chaos virtually surrounds Israel. This might sound disadvantageous; but, militarily, it's sound strategy. A mob cannot defeat a properly motivated military.

America in Afghanistan

I recently watched some Obama officials testifying before Congress on the Afghan situation. These men work for an ideology dying from a million lies eating its insides like worms, an ideology whose immune system has been hijacked by these parasites and now selectively rejects truth. How could they cough up the accursed truth? How could they even digest it in order that it might then be coughed up? They speak truth only accidentally or, upon encounter, angrily reject the alien substance. Look how General McChrystal was vomited out. Among the insane ruling class, the truth is an alien pathology.

Kerry on Egypt from Pakistan

John Kerry, Obama's traveling jester, exercising his Bushian semantic acuity on Egyptian developments:


“The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of descendance into chaos, into violence,” Kerry was quoted as having told Geo. “And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment – so far. To run the country, there’s a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy,” he added.



Hey, maybe its time for the Pentagon to restore democracy in America, to prevent further "descendance" into violence and disaster. I think this might mean the Cathedral is more enamored of democracy in theory than in practice. Which isn't to say that they're about to drop the pro-democracy propaganda shtick. Rather, it means that democracy will mean whatever they say it means. They are fairly fond of this trick, commandeering the language and reforming it for the purpose of moral betterment and good-thinking. What they call "amnesty" these days actually means get-out-of-jail-free for millions, and get-into-America-free for millions more. In the case of Egypt, since the army proved more friendly to good Egyptian friends of the Cathedral than the Muslim Brotherhood was, democracy means that the army resumes power. Now, do you think his Pakistani hosts quite follow these sophisticated involutions of intent and flights of interpretation? Who knows when the State Department's priests of permanent revolution may alight upon Islamabad as a promising new proving ground for their religion? When you consider that FDR inaugurated permanent revolution in America, could it be any way surprising that State translates this foundational stance into foreign policy? State's long struggle against colonialism, a struggle that catastrophized much of the third world, was certainly revolutionary and certainly stopped at nothing: they undermined the French in Algeria and the Pentagon in Vietnam, amongst many other glorious achievements against non-Marxists everywhere. Still, Kerry's bold turn of phrase shows the way for any adept dictatorship to keep State off its back. At least, that is, until State goes even further Left, as inevitably it must.



http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170519#.UfyHDCIo6Rt

http://www.xenosystems.net/the-islamic-vortex-part-3a/

Maverick Wisdom

This is my rather lengthy selection from an interview of Edward Luttwak in Tablet Sept 2011
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/76739/qa-edward-luttwak?all=1

I'm especially interested in his interpretation of the trajectory of Iranian society, his compare/contrast of intelligent government with "innocent" leaders against ineffective government with clever leaders, and his insight into the typically third world government of Pakistan, a government with "no institutional integrity":


Why are so many Jews so stupid about politics?
They have not had a state for 2,000 years, they have had no power or responsibility and it will take centuries before they catch up with the instinctive political understanding that any ordinary Englishman has. They don’t understand politics, and of course they confuse their friends and their enemies, and that is the ultimate political proof of imbecility.

When you look at the current conduct of American policy in the Middle East, do you see any coherent policy or strategy?
Obama is no different than most previous administrations that come into office with ready-made solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jimmy Carter was the first one, and his plan was redacted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. It led to Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem because his brilliant idea was to subject Egyptians and Israelis to a Soviet-American condominium, which was a terrible idea, and so Sadat created his own reality. It was really one of the funnier moments in history. The national security adviser officials, and I believe Brzezinski himself, came out with a lot of negative statements when Sadat first made his announcement because he was ruining their policy scheme, which was, of course, impossible.
Obama is in that tradition. He came in with an impossible policy scheme, which is first you get Israelis to stop agreeing to settlements, and then you proceed. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. When you draw a border that is what matters. The Israelis removed all the settlements from Sinai without any American involvement in two minutes after the agreement was made with Egypt.
There’s nobody involved who is anti-Israeli like there were in the past, when there was a strong Arabist position in the State Department. The people in the Obama Administration read the New York Times and they don’t know Arabic, and therefore they are operating systematically with false categories. The fundamental error with regard to settlements is a very simple one: When borders are established, borders are established, and settlements are neither here nor there. This notion that when some faction of Israelis puts a camper on a hilltop that this changes anything is a fantasy.

A fantasy both on the part of the people who put the campers on the ground and also American policymakers.
They’re both equally deluded.

Do you anticipate violence this fall between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
I don’t anticipate violence this fall. War leads to peace. Peace leads to war. So, now logically we should have war. And the Iranians, of course, would love to pay for one. But the moment there is an intifada, the Palestinian regiment collapses and gangsters take over. So, the moment the violence escalates they stop fighting and they start talking peace. The moment the talking appears to be approaching an actual peace, they start an intifada.

Do you think the cost of the violence and other social ills that come out of the stalemate you are describing is something Israeli society can easily afford, or do you think there is any alternative to it?
I’m not sure it’s a cost.

Because the strategic depth that it affords and the control over those borders is more important?
Listen, my wife is a very good cook. And we have a housekeeper, who is an even better cook. It’s a weird situation, but I think my housekeeper is a better cook than any restaurant in Washington. She is a simple woman with no education, from Chile, and she just happens to have a superhuman talent. She being such a good cook, she achieves wonderful effects with very strange ingredients, and strange combinations of ingredients. Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats of different kinds. Arab violence or threats of violence are part of the Israeli soup. There are certain levels of violence that are so high that they’re damaging, and there are also levels that are so low they are damaging. There is an optimum level of the Arab threat. I would say for about nine days of the 1973 war, the level of violence was much too high. Even when Israelis were successful, the level of violence was destroying the tissue of the state. Most of the time, the violence is positive.

When you say that the effects of Arab violence are positive, you mean that they generate social cohesion inside Israel?
Lenin taught, “Power is mass multiplied by cohesion.” Arab violence generates Jewish cohesion. Cohesion turns mass into power. Israel has had very small mass, very high cohesion. If only the Palestinians understood that, they would have attacked the Jews with flowers.

Shimon Peres says, “Iran is a decaying corpse of a country and the idea that they are any long-term threat to anybody, based on demographics and based on the rickety state of their economy, is a joke. So yes, it would be terrible if they ended up with an atomic bomb, but otherwise, Iran is not a long-term strategic threat to anybody.”
I think to get a good view on Iran you have to put yourself in the shoes of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is wholly dependent on Iran. Without Iran, Hezbollah is just a band of hotheads with a few thousand highly trained men. So, view Iran from Hezbollah’s point of view. What do you see? It’s a regime that has been around since 1979 in one way or the other. Is it consolidated? Is it functioning better and better and getting more and more support? It’s not. Is it getting more dependent on police repression or less? The answer is more. So, from the Hezbollah point of view, you realize that your days are counted because the regime is in a downward spiral.
There is a good measure of social control in Iran, and that is the price of genuine imported Scotch whiskey in Tehran, because it’s a) forbidden, and b) has to be smuggled in for practical purposes from Dubai, and the only way it can come from Dubai is with the cooperation of the Revolutionary Guard. The price of whiskey has been declining for years, and you go to a party in north Tehran now and you get lots of whiskey. And it’s only slightly more expensive than in Northwest Washington.
But on the other hand, the regime is doing something for which they will have my undying gratitude—that is, they have been manufacturing the one and only post-Islamic society. They created a situation in which Iranians in general, worldwide, not only in Iran, are disaffiliated. They are converting Muslim Iranians into post-Muslim Iranians.

One way to look at the place of Israel in this landscape is “Wow, you have a functioning neo-liberal state with a tech economy second to Silicon Valley amidst the rubble of all these failed Arab states. Imagine the Syrian army trying to attack anybody. Egypt’s army is incapable of doing anything despite $10 billion worth of American weapons, Iran is falling to pieces, Lebanon is still a mess, Jordan is a joke of a country with a Palestinian majority.” On the other hand, you could look at it and say, “Israel is a tiny country in a chaotic neighborhood where it will always get sucked into conflicts with its neighbors and will never have a moment of peace.”
Yes, everything you say is correct, but there is a third element you are omitting. The very innermost circle of Israeli security is actually within the 1967 borders. And there you have almost 1.5 million Arabs, some Christian, some Muslim. The current situation is helping consolidate their loyalty to the Israeli state. If you ask them, “Are you loyal to the Israeli state?” They will say, “Oh no, we hate them all.” Are they involved in terror plots? The answer is that out of the 1.5 million, the ones involved in terror plots or even plain criminality of any sort, they could all sleep in my house. Or if not, they could sleep in a motel.
But there is even a more fundamental issue within Israel, which is the functioning of the Israeli economy and its impact on Israeli society. What’s happened, as you know from these latest demonstrations, is that the Israeli economy has become so successful that it has generated big numbers of millionaires, which means that four-room apartments in Tel Aviv cost as much as they do in New York. Israel is becoming Aspen, Colo., where normal people have to travel 20 miles to go to sleep because they can’t live anywhere within Aspen proper.

Are strategic minds nurtured through upbringing and education, or is the ability to think strategically an inborn gift, like mathematics?
It’s a gift like mathematics. The paradoxical logic of strategy contradicts the logic of everyday life, it goes against all normal definitions of intelligence we have. It only makes sense if you understand the dialectic. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you actively want war, disarm yourself, and then you’ll get war. Virile and martial elites understand that kind of thinking instinctively.

Here’s an easily falsifiable statement, but there’s something in it that interests me and I want you to pick it apart. I would start with the moment when George W. Bush met Vladimir Putin and said, “I looked into his eyes and saw this was a man I could really trust.” So, my thesis is this: If you’re Vladimir Putin, and you rise to the top of this chaotic and brutal society after going through the KGB, you must be some kind of strategic genius with amazing survival skills, because the penalty for failure may be torture or death. This kind of Darwinian set-up exists in many countries around the world. What does it mean to be head of the security services in Egypt? It means that you had to betray your friends but only at the right time, and you had to survive many vicious predators who would have loved to kill you or torture you, or otherwise derail your career. By the time you become Vladimir Putin or Omar Suleiman, your ability to think ahead and analyze threats has been adequately tested.
By contrast, what does it take to become a U.S. Senator? You have to eat rubber chicken dinners, you have to impress some rich people who are generally pretty stupid about politics, and smile in TV commercials. The penalties for failure are hardly so dire. And so, American leadership generally sucks, and America is perennially in the position of being the sucker in the global poker game. That’s the thesis. So, tell me why it’s wrong.
Even if your analysis is totally correct, your conclusion is wrong. Think about what it means to work for a Putin, whose natural approach to any problem is deception. For example, he had an affair with this athlete, a gymnast, and he went through two phases. Phase one: He concealed it from his wife. Phase two: He launched a public campaign showing himself to be a macho man. He had photographs of him shooting a rifle, and as a Judo champion, and therefore had the news leaked that he was having an affair. Not only an affair with a young woman, but a gymnast, an athlete. Obviously such a person is much more wily and cunning and able to handle conflict than his American counterpart. But when such a person is the head of a department, the whole department is actually paralyzed and they are all reduced to serfs and valets. Therefore, what gets applied to a problem is only the wisdom of the aforementioned wily head of the department. All the other talent is wasted, all the other knowledge is wasted.
Now you have a choice: You can have a non-wily head of a department and the collective knowledge and wisdom of the whole department, or else you can have a wily head and zero functioning. And that is how the Russian government is currently working. Putin and Medvedev have very little control of the Russian bureaucracy. When you want to deal with them, and I dealt with them this morning, they act in very uncooperative, cagey, and deceptive ways because they are first of all trying to protect their security and stability and benefits from their boss. They have to deceive you because they are deceiving their boss before he even shows up to work. And they are all running little games. So, that’s the alternative. You can have a wily Putin and a stupid government. Or an intelligent government and an innocent head. There’s always is a trade-off. A Putin cannot be an inspiring leader.

You believe the story about the courier who led us to bin Laden?
I believe it and I believe it categorically. Look, the Pakistanis had been sheltering Bin Laden. But in these matters, the only way to proceed is to develop thoughts that are based only on uncontroversial facts. Any analysis of the Bin Laden story tells you that there was active Pakistani complicity simply because people cannot go to Abbottabad and live in a compound without somebody asking questions. For one thing, Pakistan has this system where foreign citizens have to obtain the residence permits and renew them, and there are foreigners including Arabs living there, and they would be asked to show their papers. Pakistani complicity is certain. That’s point one. Point two: The guy uses couriers. Therefore, if you’re going to find him, you had to find the courier. The courier story is not the cover story.

Why kill him?
They were under orders to kill him.

Wouldn’t Osama Bin Laden be a source of useful intelligence? Alternately, one good reason to kill him is that you have a deal with the Pakistanis—“we’re gonna get rid of this problem”—then you need to kill him, because otherwise he might start talking about who protected him for the past 10 years.
There was no deal with the Pakistanis. There’s no institutional integrity. Therefore you cannot make deals with the Pakistani system. They would betray each other. There was no deal.

They killed Bin Laden simply because of the inconvenience of a trial?
They killed him because of the fact that if we captured Bin Laden, every Jihadist in the world would have been duty-bound to kidnap any American citizen anywhere and exchange him for Bin Laden.

Afghanistan and American Responsibilities

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/opinion/31topping.html?_r=1

I consider this a rather dubious line of reasoning, culminating in the fantastical assumption in the last line. Depend upon it, none of our allies in any war we have ever fought volunteered to fight "in our interests." Were the French royals fighting in our interests in the Revolutionary War? Were Stalin's soldiers fighting in our interests? Absolutely not. They are motivated by their own distinct set of interests. The fact that there is sufficient overlap in their interests and ours to constitute them allies is a very different matter from having the same interests. This guy is arguing that whenever we go to war we have to accept the responsibility either to fight indefinitely until victory or to be prepared to relocate whole peoples and nations to the U.S. There are cases in which neither option is acceptable or reasonable, either from our perspective or from that of our allies. I might add that if this were adopted explicitly as U.S. policy it could lead to a major increase in isolationist tendencies. It effectively punishes us for trying to create decent regimes in other countries. This is like insisting that a man who saved several children from a fire, at risk to his own life, must now adopt those children since he failed to save their parents. It punishes good intentions and encourages a dangerous isolationism--which is far more pernicious, morally, than the occasional failure of well-intentioned international intervention. 

 

From a moral perspective there is no more reason to relocate Afghan allies to the U.S. than to relocate Congolans caught in the middle of that nation's civil war. Neither group was promised this privilege. Both groups face the prospect of being murdered by their countrymen and may, to that degree, be considered equally innocent and worthy of rescue. And there is no proof that our intervention in Afghanistan caused or will cause an excess of deaths above what would have occurred had we left that land to continue its endless civil wars and theocratic gambits. Perhaps we are more culpable for the millions of deaths in Congo since these might have been greatly reduced had we intervened. Another moralistic perspective might be this: it became clear within the first few years that the Afghan war was unwinnable (since the Taliban are based in Pakistan and Pakistan is neither our ally nor readily conquerable). This means the lives lost and monies squandered in the last 2-4 years were wasted in a futile exercise. And, remember, money at this scale, properly spent, could actually save lives instead of facilitating finishings.  

The Climate Summit

This "deal" is a disappointment and a major failure if there happen to be future generations of humans. I attribute this mainly to the current economic problems: no one wants to pay more than a nominal price to solve this right now.

 

As to the Chinese, they have good reasons to play hardball on this. They are relatively poor still, and have done relatively little to contribute to the underlying problem, even though they are now the largest annual contributors to it. On the other hand, in 2010 they will snatch from us our lead in wind power generation, currently the most viable alternative energy. Also, they are making a huge effort to become the world leader in solar energy. Thus, for reasons of pride and economic competitiveness, they are engaging on the climate change issue on their own terms just as we are. They despise international coercion about as much as we do since they consider themselves the other superpower.

Neutered

 http://www.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm

These are the qualifying scores for various tests to join MENSA, the "high IQ" society. Notice how the current versions of the SAT, ACT, and GRE are no longer considered representative of intelligence. This is because the socialists watered them down into feel-good tests. Result: admittance into college and grad school no longer takes intelligence directly into account. The calculation by the socialists is that if you don't measure intelligence, you shouldn't have to apply affirmative action preferences to stupid minorities since the stupid will be almost indistinguishable from the intelligent. Thus we arrive at the point the socialists have been pursuing all along: promotion by political connections and considerations instead of by merit.

If you look at the bottom of the page, the military has also dropped IQ measurement from its aptitude tests.

Stripping IQ measurements from society reduces economic efficiency by failing to sort people into different professions according to their abilities. Of course, it also deprives individuals of this form of self-knowledge, which may lead them to pursuits above or beneath their natural aptitudes; in other words, it impedes their paths to realizing their full potentials. But, it's like every other form of political correctness. It's a lie. This time the lie is in the form of concealing the truth. Lies lead to more lies, and to inefficiency, and to the corruption of societal morals.

I wonder how many people are even aware of this development or have any sense of its implications. I suspect few professional educators know of it. Consider: our prime geopolitical, economic, and military competitor, China, is heading in the opposite direction, raising standards in its educational system, requiring the demonstration of both effort and intelligence for admission into its professional programs. The U.S. is decadent, eaten away from inside by weakness of will evidenced in endless give-aways that encourage dependence, weakness, stupidity, irresponsibility--led by the socialists, but passively tolerated by the capitalists and the independents.

Our only hope geopolitically is that China will follow Japan and implode. This appears unlikely. China possesses a more primitive psychology which manifests in shameless, unthinking nationalism. It also remembers past imperial power and desperately seeks the high respect that imperial power once commanded. Nor is it a dependent nation, as Japan has been for two generations. Also, it believes it has won its last five wars (against Japan, the Kuomintang, the U.S./"U.N."/S. Korea, India, Vietnam).

Confrontation merely enkindles its self-confidence. The Chinese are engaged in a highly disciplined attempt to raise their nation to the first position--not just in the region (already achieved), but in the world. And they seem to understand that strength of will is as important as any other factor in the competition among nations. This is the decisive difference between the U.S. and the pretender to the throne: strength of will. Here the will is directed at the "end of suffering", physical, psychological, spiritual. In China, for its leaders at least, it is the will to power that trumps all other priorities. But, power can only be achieved through struggle, and struggle means pain. And it can only be sustained through struggle, and struggle means pain. "Therefore," say the socialists, "all struggle must be abolished, and all competition too." Nor would Mr. Hu object if America were to lose its place by forfeit. 

Packer's Take

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/09/reading-the-mcchrystal-report.html This is a good summary and analysis of the McChrystal report and its implications. As with Iran, and Iraq, and Pakistan, in Afghanistan too the President has no good options. He cannot be seen to retreat in face of terrorism. But, if he commits to victory he faces grave costs on many levels and the distinct possibility of failure to achieve victory by 2012. A contradiction in our first premise (ie, that our withdrawal means victory for the Taliban and a consequent increase in the terrorist threat): the Taliban already have a sanctuary in the North-West Provinces of Pakistan--what does it matter if their sanctuary is enlarged to include Afghanistan, or the Pashtun part of Afghanistan?

Obama's Israel Dilemma

This article sets out the settlement issue quite clearly: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html?_r=1 The price we have paid (and go on paying) for Israel's sins seems sometimes even to exceed the price the Israelis pay. Is it possible for an ally to also be our greatest foreign policy liability?

Iran Policy

http://townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/2009/06/19/hope_and_change_-_but_not_for_iran/page/full/

 

Apparently Krauthammer has forgotten what happened to Iraqi Shia and Kurds when Bush I encouraged them to rebel against Saddam. They rebelled, Saddam crushed them, Bush I sat stupidly watching. The same would happen here, and our overt support would provide Khamenei with the excuse that he wasn't merely crushing Iranian rebels--he would claim that he was crushing American puppets. This latter excuse would fly high among Iranians, and dissent from the regime would be discredited for a generation. Krauthammer is simply dead wrong on this question. He is ignorant of Iran and making cheap, shallow criticisms of a careful and considered policy posture.

 

Here is a discussion of the issue on Charlie Rose which includes Bush's Iran expert making essentially the argument I make above:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10385

Obama's Foreign Policy

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090616/OPINION01/906160319/1008/opinion01/Earnest-goodwill-doesn-t-substitute-for-foreign-policy

This doesn't seem especially coherent to me. He calls Obama a Wilsonian idealist, but then says that he hasn't changed Bush's foreign policy except at the margins. In other words, he talks like an idealist and acts like a realist? And this means he lacks a foreign policy? Reagan talked of abolishing nukes. Was he an idealist without a foreign policy? Bush II tried to democratize the Middle East (surely an idealistic notion). Was he an idealist without a foreign policy? In the end, most ambitious presidents discover that they have less power to alter the course of world history than they would like to think or boast of.

Israel is not an ally. It is a disease our political system has contracted from the Israel lobby. Unless that nation can demonstrate symbiotic characteristics with respect to our body politic, it ought to be flushed out of our system and left to seek some other host.

 

Neither Clinton nor Bush accomplished anything with N. Korea either--it is a virtual protectorate of China. On Iran a little discretion is advisable since our interference is unlikely to help the opposition at this juncture (as Bush's Iran expert Mr. Burns argued on Charlie Rose recently).

 

Just because certain ideologues in this country are shrieking that Obama is weak does not make it so--and hopefully their misguided efforts will be properly dismissed by our adversaries as those nations reformulate their strategies in face of the new administration. But, BO really should give up on the "apologize for America" shtick.

The Pakistani Way

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10424283

 

The book reviewed revisits the Pakistan-nuclear proliferation nexus managed by Mr. Khan. This is one of America's great foreign policy failures in recent times. If the book's interpretation is accurate, it begets some wonder concerning what other activities our political and intelligence leaders may have decided to let pass as they let Khan's network pass for all those years. Presumably we remain vigilant at least with respect to our rivals--but have we allowed other supposed allies to proceed with WMD programs under cover of our willful ignorance? And doesn't such a policy stance severely diminish our moral standing on counter-proliferation issues? Is this a certain reward now on offer for any nation that allies itself with us--however temporarily? It is difficult to conceive of a more foolishly short-term approach. Also, why did we let Khan run unfettered through the 90's? Pakistan was then less important strategically.

But, of course, the book may be wrong; maybe we just didn't know about Khan--wouldn't that be a relief? Then, our only problem would be somehow to correct our monumentally wasteful and incompetent intelligence services.  

Dr. Watson and the Goodthinkers

Watson, the Nobelist DNA co-discoverer, has been run out of conformist society for mentioning the great gap in IQ scores between black Africans and the people of the developed world. The scientific literature counts a 25-30 point differential. Watson's point, in context, was that this is likely a major obstacle to African development, since IQ tests are designed to measure an individual's capacity to function in a modern economy and society. These scores indicate that only 2-5% of black Africans have IQs of 100 or above, 100 being the average IQ of white Americans and Europeans and Japanese and most developed populations. Who in Africa can lead? Who can run government, create businesses, manage businesses, provide technical and engineering services, enforce the law, provide medical care, engage in banking services, manage money for governments, businesses, individuals? In the developed world, we rely on people with IQs over 100 to do these things, or at least to provide the leadership in these sectors. This is not to speak of the surplus IQ needed for actual innovation.

For mentioning this crucial issue in the development, not just of the economy, but of civilization itself--Watson is ostracized and most hypocritically lambasted. If his cowardly critics actually cared about these African unfortunates, they might seek for solutions to this massive IQ deficit instead of persisting in their quasi-religious posing as holier-than-thou saints of political correctness. For example, there is clear evidence that African IQs are substantially depressed by poor pre-natal, post-natal, and infant nutrition. Also, excessive infectious disease rates among mothers and children reduce cognitive potential. Action, thus, might be taken. But the PC scoundrels prefer to engage in a ritualistic excommunication "action."

The following post is a fairly thorough examination of this shameful episode of the intellectual "establishment" working hard to scramble and suppress the truth and invert decent values:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php