Glenn Reynolds picked up a report from National Geographic on astronomers and atmospheric scientists speculating that the earth's recent apparent increase in average temperature is heliogenic, not anthropogenic. A Mister Habibullo Abdussamatov asserted that whatever man combusts, he "cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance." Heat, you say, produced by the sun?

That convinced me to renew my subscription to the magazine. I had let it lapse this February after cover story upon cover story heralded what I thought couldn't be denied as quack physical and social science. Believe me, I would look hard for sound journalism; or the other way. If National Geographic indeed still values factually responsible, and perhaps less sensational, reporting, that is worth thirty-four dollars annually. And if there are poorly supported articles, well, I know where to take a good disputation.

What would you do with Darfur if you won the heart of it, we might ask of those who blow kisses at the Sudan. A lot of them might answer with a non sequitur, and demand that a particular American man in elected office leave his position, though he has no liability for the northeast-African Islamist eradication of black farmers. After that, we will find two organizations settled prominently on the internet. One is called Save Darfur, the other Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop. The former appears blessed with sponsorship but the latter managed to procure a photograph of Bette Midler with one hand to her face, tightened in a delicate grimace.

So, what would they do? Funds, of course, require support, e.g., your dollars. But with those funds, both groups avow, right shall be accomplished. Yes, and what? All propositions are such that each could be introduced with the phrase "If only" — for many, "if only" that particular man in elected office would act before anyone succeeds in pushing him out.

Here it gets tenebrous. A Genocide We Can Stop rests on the notion that just three men — Sudan's prevailing strongman and two allies — are responsible for the bloodletting. Its solution is less direct, requiring that Washington and Europe "fully support" the International Criminal Court before the court can go to work at indicting the Sudanese masterminds. At that point someone or something will extradite the three for trial, and in their absence peace overwhelms. A Genocide We Can Stop has studiously ascertained that "It is time for justice, because only justice can bring peace."

Save Darfur is a little more substantive, if its first step towards ending the massacres is to take steps. The president of the United States, and the secretary-general of the United Nations, even the president of the European Union by way of the German chancellor, are to be petitioned. That is meant to impel countries like Russia and China, who do good business in the Sudan, to promulgate in the United Nations Security Council the mandate for an armed melange called "peacekeepers," which will garrison Darfur.

How an army without a military objective ends Khartoum's delegated butchery is left to inference, perhaps that deriving peace from justice from time. These groups have declarations of unity but none of efficacy.

So we ratiocinate. Is there a deliberate effort to murder and drive off an indigenous people within the confines of a very closed dictatorship? There is. Is the list of crimes familiar, including "systematic bombardment of villages, widespread arbitrary arrests, torture, 'disappearances,' summary executions, and forced displacement"? Yes. Should we stop this? We should. How, right from where we are, this moment? We'll switch on the diplomatic channels and enjoin the despot's actions.

And what if he says Go to hell, schedules a martial parade for later that week, and then keeps on killing at the frontier?

We're all serious, here; now we hold this man accountable to natural law. Some special judiciary? Yes, or a jury of reasonable men, whatever can align the world's best intentions. Suppose he flouts that, and any other condemnation, and continues the slaughter for years? All right, then some of us concede that violence must be made against some people, so we make a little of it. Aerial, even ground protection forces? Definitely. And if that won't work, will some of us concede that sovereignty, especially of those ruling by mere coercion, has limits? Yes, those of us know who they are and No, they couldn't prevent deposition, but would grieve at the deaths that might have been avoided, and fear for the consequences.

So identified are the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, whose homes were razed by Saddam Hussein; they who survived, and have returned to live in swamps restored by the American armed forces. Their story isn't known widely in the public, and the latest chapter comes when a commanding General David Petraeus is addressing his soldiers with the same granite solemnity of General Douglas MacArthur to the contested Philippines.

"The war here will soon enter its fifth year," says Petraeus. Five years? "The way ahead will not be easy." Impossible? "But hard is not hopeless." No quick gratification in that. War leads to rigorous evaluations of oneself. The lonely hearts can't wait five years for justice and peace. Especially not if they are hard. Darfur, please.

Editors of Newsweek oversaw the making a clever cover layout for their magazine's February 19th issue. A single head — ugly? rearing? — is implied by the respective right and left sides of the faces of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and George Bush. It dehisces to reveal a title ("The Hidden War with Iran") and subtitles ("Skirmishes," "Threats," "Missed Signals," "Why the Standoff Could Turn Deadly"). The compound morally equates an American president and a foreign, fascist posturer, and on very sharp terms: these two men will blunder their way towards world's end, and the gentlemen at Newsweek seem to want the newsstand customer to remember that they warned everybody beforehand.

This isn't all fabricated. Armageddon has in both protocol and modest imagination followed a possible train of executive decisions. The original premise, however, was Soviet armor advancing on free Berlin and then Western Europe and then everywhere else, leaving Washington recourse in nuclear retaliation and redoubt in underground shelters. But presidents of the United States were photographed with their Russian counterparts for magazine covers because the Cold War superpowers were a) of comparable strength, and b) talking to one another, even if Moscow's man almost always lied.

Washington corresponds with Tehran via the Swiss, because Iran's nascent Khomeinists showed right away a lack of respect for diplomatic indemnity. It is not about two leaders who are simply rivals, submitting their quarrel to a duel and then summoning obliterative powers beyond comprehension. That version has been insinuated over the last forty years, and Newsweek's portrayal of two madmen is its clearest narration.

Today, halfway through President Bush's second term and in the opening months of a Democratic congressional majority, there are two lefts seen differentiated. The first body of the left includes the heads of Newsweek, entertaining useful and politic extracts of the nihilism of the second, fringe left. Lost on group one, especially in the fusion of George and Mahmoud, is the meaning of the eschatology of the twentieth century's latter radicals.

Capitol Hill reports that Jack Murtha's legislative move against Bush's foreign policy has been marginalized, in part by Democrats. Before any of this happened, though, Murtha was quoted while discussing his plan of subversion before an audience whose organizers are pretty up-front about their interest in etiolating American power while investing other place, like the carnival of the United Nations General Assembly, with transnational authority. The Pennsylvania congressman's excuse is that he is, at least professionally, non compos mentis, but the fundaments of those with whom Murtha was speaking are very real.

The calendar for the postmodern relativist begins around 1945 and solidifies around 1968. The time before that is by necessity prehistory, extraneous, irrelevant; how else can one abrogate tradition if the record through which one traces it isn't effaced? Next: what is said of the Sixties generation by those who live within its displaced chronology. There is a lot of vague attribution of "trying" things and attempting "change," most perceptibly the many acts of open disgust for a culture that tolerates open disgust of it. But the "movement" is one that is described as incomplete. So if the initiation, in the minds of the radicals, half-destroyed The Establishment, then the realization will — ?

A political assessment of the Democratic attempt on presidential control is, in a literal sense, correct: the far left wing of the party's moves to compel American retreat from a military front may deprive the Democrats of the White House and even the retention of Congress. But that falls short of explication, since its corollary invites a question: Why wouldn't they see this? And the answer is perilously close to They can see it, but they aren't concerned about elections. If the Sixties miscreant thinks history and his life to be coterminous, achievement is going to embrace immolation, and it is his face that belongs next to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's, inviting the apocalypse.

Publicly spoken words of a senator — my senator, George Voinovich — are a portrait of the equivocation reigning on Capitol Hill. Senator Voinovich, you see, heard all about the animadversion against President Bush's efforts to win a war, and decided that he might have some of his own, depending.

Three weeks ago, before the president's seventh address on the state of the union, the Repository — a newspaper out of Canton, Ohio — ran a story on Voinovich's misgivings about several things in regards to Iraq. The author of the article introduced the senator as "maverick," which was the wrong word because "maverick" denotes autonomy, imputes solitude. Voinovich is in a legislative majority, seeking to oppose George Bush on whatever. This is OK, because journalism is not a place where the English language prospers, but the distinction must be understood. Voinovich probably wished to set himself apart. He instead spoke, as quoted, in a run of contradictions.

The senator would not condone an arrest of congressional monies intended for the front. He would follow this principle until the elected Iraqi government failed to meet certain standards of Washington. What, precisely? Well, the senator needed some, any, or else no more funding for Baghdad. On principle.

He wanted "sincerity" from the Iraqis before he thought about disavowing a foreign ally. Specifically, he desired Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to assert, in front of television cameras, independence. Helpfully, Voinovich even suggested a line for the speech: "This is not the United States telling me what to do." Also, Senator Voinovich showed concern over al-Maliki not doing what the United States was telling him to do, and demanded evidence that he was "willing to crack down on powerful Shia militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr." In that reluctance could be, well, a dangerous independence. Reasonable requests. Now, why couldn't the president simply listen to Voinovich?

Careful decisions were important to Voinovich. "It's really important" — this was one of them — "that the word goes out in the Muslim community that this is not just more of the infidels occupying the place." Which community? The one of Arab dictatorships? Or perhaps communities in Iraq, where a majority of the population has voted and the largest armed group is the stable and capable national army? The Shiites, who, in millions, reject Moqtada al-Sadr? The Sunnis, who do not act as one, most of whom have turned on al Qaeda? The Kurds, modernity's invisible ethnic group? Accepting the premise, wouldn't repudiating that kind of calumny be the correct response, rather than acting in deference to it?

Twenty-five days later, today, the Senate is keeping Saturday hours. General David Petraeus is effecting a strategy that, based on the witness of tactics thereof, is a judicious departure from the last four years. Mr. al-Maliki is coming along. Nobody knows where al-Sadr ran off to. Senator Voinovich, news says, decided to resolve on the matter to only himself, and it is eminently likely that he has amended his remarks in the weeks since.

But that's the problem: revision, revision. Good war, bad war; bad war; good war. Legislators behave as if they think of armed conflict not so much to be sedately joined and won, as to be what makes for dynamic politics; to your advantage if you are behind it and then against it, and then generally of the martial spirit though maybe not to this end, all at the opportune times. None in Congress is the man who leads the military ex officio. With timely press, however, one can try out commander-in-chief pro tempore.

Defeatists in Congress, says Mark Steyn, are openly drafting a strategy against the president that "denies him victory and absolves them of any responsibility for defeat." As if to help, the Washington Post article Steyn excerpts states that "The idea is to slowly choke off the war by stopping the deployment of troops from units that have been badly degraded by four years of combat."

Under judgment intended to derogate it, the United States military is either unprepared for a kind of combat, in this case counterterrorism; or, in the words of the article, "badly degraded" once it has engaged in earnest. Whatever metric is applied to degradation, or at which degree it is concluded bad, is not explained. And when the factions of the enemy are alternately rumored and ascertained to have joined, incorporated, disbanded and reorganized many times since the fall of Saddam Hussein, does the absence of affiliative integrity — let alone the absence of the majority of a cell or gang, due to the incarceration or death of its members — designate them as "terribly degraded" or "irretrievably degraded"? Or is no one on Capitol Hill, or the press, scrutinizing the other side for weaknesses?

Americans once suffered losses in war totaling nearly half a million but five years before they committed soldiers for three more years, and lost fifty thousand more. About one-seventh of a percentage point of 1.5 million deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, three thousand plus, have been killed in four years. Morale is evidently robust and soldiers are returning to each theater so their country and its allies can achieve victory. Whose sensitivity has intervened? The congressman's.

Sung to the melody of Elton John's "Benny and the Jets."

Hey kids, shake a leg already
The Fifty-Seven's waiting
Flights like this are lush and heady
We'll hoist the golden calf tonight
So climb aboard
And meet and greet the entourage when
Your cocktail is poured

Say, Denny and Billy, have you seen them yet
But they're so decked out, Nancy and her jet
Ah, but the fed. gov. has paid for it
Oh, Nancy, she's pretty set
She's got cross-country flyin', non-union wine
You know I may as well have voted for 'em
Nancy and her jet

(Nancy! Nancy! Nancy and her jet!)

Hey gang, get a load of the Greens
Maybe they'll bust us
But Nancy keeps them quiet
We'll mouth the words — "CO₂!" — just play along
It's like when we fought our parents in the streets
Who cares who's right and who's wrong?

David Bernstein couldn't recall the Bush administration having "appointed any conservative judges with significant libertarian sympathies" and wonders "If not, why not?"

George Bush nominates appointees; the Senate confirms them. When a certain power of the executive is qualified by the need for majoritarian support from a coequal branch of government, political reality prescribes all selections and judgments during the nomination process. The current environment is possessed with partisan and ideological intransigence on the part of the left, plain in Senators Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, or statements from other members of the Judiciary Committee, to be found in session transcripts.

Libertarians? Verboten. More so with Congress in Democratic hands. This should be obvious, but then on the question of implementation there is that grand disjuncture between libertarianism and sobriety.

Reporter John Burns of the New York Times has left his station in Iraq to lead the American newspaper's London bureau. On cable television three days ago, he was asked by Tim Russert if Washington could ever have been able to "truly understand the way Iraqis would have reacted" to the deposition of Saddam Hussein; by Russert's implication, the impossible.

Burns responded, fair to the historical record of Iraqis greeting allied troops "as liberators," though he regretted leaders having "completely miscalculated the impact of 30 years of violent, brutal repression on the Iraqi people." I myself noted in July 2004 that "the one mistake America truly did make was to overestimate the humanity of its authoritarian enemies...the virtuous flaw of peaceful people."

Burns, however, went on, predicting that "history will say that the forces that we liberated by invading Iraq were so powerful and so uncontrollable that virtually nothing the United States might have done...would have effectively prevented this disintegration that is now occurring."

There is determinism in that, an ugly kind, the same with which an entire population is held blameworthy for the actions of its criminal and violent minority. John Podhoretz excerpted Burns' interview with Russert, calling the pronouncement "frank, complex, powerful and ultimately tragic."

Off went a short letter. John Burns' opinion may be "frank," I wrote, but it's prepossessed, irresolute and ultimately supercilious. Societies are so damaged that they should simply be left alone? Totalism hasn't been extracted from Iraqi culture after four years, so the liberation was — in principle! — a notional failure? This is typical Boomer sophism, in which one tries to pass off dereliction as forbearance. Remarkable, maybe — for its misanthropy.

Podhoretz replied succinctly: "Oh, come on — the guy has been there before during and after, is brave and honest. This is his perspective, and you can't dismiss it so lightly."

I have nothing against Burns personally. The opinion is a common one, however, and even if it weren't offensive it's been refuted several times in the last sixty years. How many would have believed, shortly after V-J Day, that the sons of the men who raped and butchered in Nanking would be invading the world with cuddly, animated characters?

As for empiricism — there are a lot of Iraqis who have been in-country throughout, necessarily longer than Burns, are capable of objective analysis and have concluded that the belief Burns shares is misguided, and that what has harmed the Iraqi cause most is Western fastidiousness.

One argument made by Burns that I can accept is of a half-million troops, flattening in 2003 the forces now harassing the government and slowly, like General Douglas MacArthur did, instructing the country on how to organize civilly. That is politically impossible at this time, and nobody should take what-ifs seriously. But this stuff, Burns' take, is gloomy excess.

China's National People's Congress, the hardheaded know, passes laws with an independence comparable to the front wheels of a car negotiating a right-hand turn when the steering wheel goes clockwise. Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun has the scoop: "Chinese lawmakers" — read, the Politburo — "are expected to pass and enact in March a property rights law that clearly protects privately owned land." In what language, exactly? Somebody got their hands on a draft and passed along a few sentences. "Ownership rights of the state, groups and individuals are protected by law, and no individual or organization may violate these rights."

The word "expropriate" is in another clause. This is significant because in order to expropriate the state needs to take that which didn't belong to it. Chinese citizens are not privy to ownership as they are to tenancy, within a power structure that has variously resembled medieval allotment for half a century, thank you, Chairman Mao.

The People's Republic, still totalitarian, appears to be gradually acceding to those Chinese republican people, and we would celebrate this reparation of rights, and Oh, wonder what Beijing might do next — if not for inveteracies.

Not long ago I made the transitory acquaintance of a young woman who did not really smoke anymore, except for when there was a lit cigarette passing from her hand to her mouth. By all means, it was first said by correspondence, my reproaches for the sake of health were welcome, fit as they were. When finally in the girl's sullen presence, I chided — and was dismissed, "Not this time" the curt response given to clarify the earlier admission as a gratuity of flirtation, not a mea culpa.

Well, totality of the Politburo is China's little weakness, and curtailments of it, even by the Politburo itself, ought to be regarded by the free world as probationary, not exculpatory. How a Wang Wei fares against Party eminent domain, assuming a serious dispute makes it to court, should tell us a lot.

At certain intervals the far left produces claims about the war or this country or life in general that offend reason, and those on the right have a choice between ignoring what is said because it has already been confuted; or addressing a statement rationally, but strictly to apprise onlookers of its invalidity. This is burdensome, as it might be if you and I were about to design a car, when you went and drafted squarish blocks on the axles instead of wheels. On Friday, a friend was one of several asking a question: "What sort of citizen — what sort of human being would prefer that their country lose a war in which so much is at stake?"

Take someone who believes that 1) all nations are at moral parity; 2) all governments, even illiberal ones, have either as much or more legitimacy than the first fruits of common law, the United States or the United Kingdom; 3) all wars are the result of petty disagreements between obstinate people; 4) terrorists and other violent actors are normal citizens who are pushed, by injustice, beyond desperation. They will view events of today not as an intensifying struggle between a democratic First World and a brutal Third World that is paradoxically strengthened by accomplishments of the First World, but as a chamber full of countries anthropomorphized into legates who have "the same wants and needs." Not the people, mind you; the countries themselves.

Operation Enduring Freedom, therefore, is viewed strictly in terms of crime and punishment; sentence carried out with the removal of the Taliban. Iraq, before Operation Iraqi Freedom, is thought to have been harassed for twelve years after it capitulated in 1991. No religion-studded, transnational fascist movement is remotely conceivable from within this mindset; let alone quiescent threats from China or Russia or other despot states. No, the only problem is the obstreperous United States.