Did my matzos come?

It's a bit comforting—only a bit—that P. J. O'Rourke, who's a lot smarter than I and experienced in the ways of the Mideast, made assumptions similar to mine:

"I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion," he says. "What were the questions? Is Saddam Hussein a bad man? Is he doing bad things? Does he have the oil money to do more bad things? Is he likely to do more bad things? If these were the questions, was the answer more cooperation with France?"

In the aftermath he expected "a great spontaneous return to order," much like, he says, what he saw after the Iraqis were expelled from "devastated" Kuwait. "After they got chased out of there the Kuwaitis totally took control, and it was as though somebody had been chased out of, I don't know, Dayton. Everything was working again within days. Civil society came to the fore--Hayekian social forces. It was amazing. We thought--I know I thought, knowing a fair number of sophisticated, intelligent Iraqis--that this would happen in Iraq. You remove the oppressor, and there would be these self-organizing forces. Well, nooo," he says, drawing out the word. "Instead what you got was Yugoslavia. Triple Yugoslavia. You might call it the really violent Bosnia. [. . .]"
 

(Via James Panero.)

Theodore Dalrymple:

[T]he chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority . . . has suggested that, henceforth, the clause requiring doctors to take account of the need of a child for a father, when offering in vitro fertilisation to infertile women, should be removed from the law. The idea that fathers are necessary or even desirable in the lives of children is, in the opinion of Ms Leather, too old-fashioned to be entertained any longer. . . .

If you care to look at the already extensive part of the country in which fatherhood scarcely exists, except in the merest biological sense, you will find not merely an alternative, but a very much worse kind of family life (the word family being used very loosely). It exists in a Hobbesian world of primitive brutality, where the man with the biggest fist or biggest machete or biggest gun rules, and where children are soon inducted into a wholly egotistical code of conduct in which what you do is determined only by what you can get away with.

It is a world from which increasingly there is no escape. . . . Merely to call this way of life different is abject cowardice or dishonesty. Indeed, having lived and worked in several parts of the world, and having travelled very extensively, I should say that it is the worst way of life known to me anywhere.
 

Momofuku Ando, who invented instant noodles, died earlier this month. From The Economist's obituary:

One cold night in 1957, walking home from his salt-making factory in Osaka, in Japan, Mr Ando saw white clouds of steam in the street, and a crowd of people gathering. They were waiting for noodles to be cooked to order in vats of boiling water, and were prepared to wait a long time. Why not make it easier? thought Mr Ando. And why not try to do it himself? . . .

In 1958 instant noodles went on the market, yellowish wormy bricks in cellophane bags, and were laughed at by fresh-noodle makers all over Japan. They were just a high-tech craze, costing six times as much as the fresh stuff; they would never catch on. By the end of the first year Mr Ando had sold 13m bags and had attracted a dozen competitors. He never looked back.

Two details I particularly like:

He ate Chikin Ramen, his original flavour of noodles, almost every day until he died. Though sceptics pointed out that they were loaded with fat, salt and monosodium glutamate, he looked bonny and spry.

And:

The Japanese voted instant noodles their most important 20th-century invention, Sony Walkmans notwithstanding.
 

(Via Stefan Beck.)
 

What should our government do that it isn't now doing to protect us from terrorist attack? Please be specific.
 

Our military can win the war in Iraq. Will you let them?
 

Shouldn't this trouble them?

There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. . . .

The study investigated 1,500 cases of "serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestations committed by illegal immigrants" between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Of the 1,500 cases examined, illegal immigrant offenders were located in 36 states with the highest number of sexual offenders in California, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.

Schurman-Kauflin reports that according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records, sex offenders comprise two percent of illegals apprehended. Using the statistics by ICE and the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, Schurman-Kauflin estimates there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders currently residing in the United States. Also using the two-percent figure, this means that 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. every day.

The basic math: more than 4,000 serial sex offenders enter the U.S. illegally each year.

What steps would Democrats support to protect us from the influx of illegals and the rapists and child molesters among them?

(Via NCPA.)
 

Each Christmas National Review publishes a piece by the late Aloïse Buckley Heath. The one that appeared in 2006, "Before You Say No..." (NR subtitles it "A correspondence, nonfictional, between a young boy, a housewife, a headmaster, and the young boy’s brother"), couldn't be more charming. It starts with a request from thirteen-year-old Peter for a letter of recommendation:

Before you say no, I did break the trampoline but I didn’t honestly know how heavy I was, because I grew very suddenly and the only reason I was always on the roof was because of my gliders which you said I could get if they were on the roof, and the time you wouldn’t let me come in your backyard for three weeks that time, Catholic Word of Honor, John started it and it was not my fault because Scout’s Honor, I only gave John the most compleatly gentle kind of tap so he would go home so Georgie Cunningham wouldn’t beat him up, because you know how Georgie is when he gets mad. Because John threw a mud ball at him on his bicycle. Not that you were wrong, but that I’m explaning now, because you were so mad then you wouldn’t give me a chance to explane, because John got their first and he fed you a lot of garbage. But I still like John, he is a fine young boy, he has been well brought up by his Mother.

It doesn't flag. You can buy it from NRO for $1.95.

(Post revised for clarity 1/29.)
 

Bing West, ex-Marine and former assistant secretary of defense, in the current National Review (on dead tree, so no link):

The only institution, finally, that can bring stability to Iraq is not the under-performing office of the prime minister or the fractious national assembly. It is the Iraqi Army. Casey knew what he was doing; that’s why Sadr feared him.

In sum, we need a coherent, aggressive military strategy on the local level as well as a top-down political strategy. If we are serious about a military strategy, we will take the following actions immediately:

• Deploy hand-held identification devices to fingerprint all military-age males and deprive the insurgents of the ability to move about and blend in with the population.
• Shift platoons from our battalions to Iraqi army and police units.
• Train our units and advisers in tough police techniques.
• Give cash to our battalions and advisers to buy the loyalty of tribes and reward Iraqi battlefield performance.
• Take the offense in Baghdad, with no area off-limits.
• Imprison insurgents and militia leaders for the duration of hostilities — period.
• Insist on joint U.S.-Iraqi boards for key appointments and removal for malfeasance.

The Iraqi army is the least sectarian organization in Iraq. President Bush should keep open the possibility that the army will control Iraq, as the military did in South Korea and in Turkey in decades past. A stable Iraq under military rule — overt or behind-the-scenes — is preferable to a failed state.
 

Printed on an envelope that came today:

Your Con Edison bill is inside — in a NEW SIZE!
 

Travel advice from Dave Barry:

St. Barts is known as a playground for wealthy billionaire jet-set celebrities, who go there to relax with other billionaire celebrities in a relaxing billionaire-celebrity environment. For example, according to a guidebook that my wife read, Brad Pitt sunbathes naked there. I am not saying this is the only reason we went there, but I am saying that, from the moment she read this fact, my wife seemed more interested in St. Barts than any of the other Antilles.
 

In response to this one, about Reynolds's (excellent) piece in the New York Times: Not long ago I'd have felt like congratulating him on getting a piece in the Times. Now I feel like congratulating the Times for getting a piece from him. The world has changed.

And regarding this one, in which he writes, "I don't think that actual conservatives care much about where I think conservatism ought to go anyway," I'd refer him to the following from Jonah Goldberg:

I think the problem — and I am repeating myself — is that liberals have wonderful arguments about tactics and strategies among themselves, but very few on first principles. They've agreed, in a dogmatic fashion, about the role of the government. Where it should be limited, at least in the broad economic realm, is an issue for "pragmatic" and "empirical" discussion, but not philosophical concern (though in fairness it should be said they still have serious internal debates about the police powers of the state). This is where the liberals have shot themselves in the foot by rejecting the "liberaltarian" overture so reflexively. The beauty of having libertarians in the room is that they force you to question every policy issue from the ground up. Thanks to the influence and presence of libertarians, the most brilliant and dedicated rightwing virturecrat better have a good explanation for why doing X is better than doing nothing at all. Liberals haven't had a constituency in their coalition to play that role for generations — and it shows. Their abiding interest in power, and the arguments over how to attain it, are the logical consequence of a movement which is no longer interested in first principles.

(Emphasis added.) I'm sure they'd value his thoughts.
 

Thomas Sowell:

[D]emocracy arose in Western civilization centuries after law and order had been established. We tried to do it in the reverse order in Iraq.

When push comes to shove, people will support tyranny rather than suffer lethal chaos that makes normal everyday life impossible for themselves and their children.

The success or failure of the troop surge in Iraq may depend far more on whether those troops can again be hamstrung by politically restrictive “rules of engagement” than on how many troops there are.