Comprehensive immigration reform versus the Ebola virus

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is far, far worse than most of us realize. Richard Fernandez provides a chilling graphic of the skyrocketing number of cases:

This is yet another instance in which the national delusion that is the Obama presidency comes up against the hard reality of nature:

[T]he World Health Organization is meeting to decide whether the experimental drug Zmapp should be provided to the stricken African countries. Nothing like demanding a uncertified, unneeded product created by a morally defective capitalist pharmaceutical system to save the world. The LA Times reports:

[T]he World Health Organization said it was convening a panel of medical ethicists early next week to consider whether experimental drugs should be more widely released. 

A decision to allow two American health workers infected in Liberia to have access to an experimental treatment — while dozens of African doctors and nurses have perished — has ignited a controversy over the ethics of the decision, which reportedly sidestepped Liberian health regulations.

If the serum proves their last hope they’ll first demand it as a ‘right’– then commandeer it if necessary.  Necessity knows no bounds. But that cuts both ways. There may be no serum other than a few experimental vials. Reality doesn’t give a damn about Liberian health regulations nor WHO edicts nor speeches by president Obama. It cares about facts.
About who invested in medical research, and who didn’t; about who has good epidemic controls systems and which don’t; about which country have functioning border controls and which care about ‘immigration reform’.  And there isn’t any serum in production, then there’s no serum. The problem is that since our leaders have messed up the facts, they can’t fix things with speeches.
War, Famine and Pestilence all obey the laws of physics. The media, government and the academy have heretofore cared about the laws of political correctness and the tyranny of appearances.  Now we get to see who wins. In recent years it has become fashionable to claim the Narrative trumps reality. Yet you can’t bribe viruses, can’t “hide” infectious victims, can’t appease dictators and you can’t print money. As I’ve written many times before, nobody beats arithmetic.
Not even Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis don’t act rationally then the Haj can become one giant virus distribution system, their K street lobby notwithstanding. If Obama doesn’t close the border, if something can come along, something will come along.  Something like Ebola, which if unchecked will teach the Boko Haram and ISIS that chopping off people’s heads and having sex with hundreds of kidnapped African schoolgirls isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The narrative of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is often given a mystical interpretation. But it can be viewed as a straightforward secular warning against folly. According to Billy Graham, the First Horseman is the great liar, the false prophet, the anti-Christ.  But even if you’re not a Billy Graham fan, and even if you hate him, it’s easy to see how a venal government, a debased culture, a system of self-deception can lead to famine, pestilence and war.
Corrupting the information store will get you every time.

We had the Plague of Justinian. We had the Black Death. Now we have the Ebola virus. Up against "comprehensive immigration reform." We'll see who wins.

The Third Reich saw itself as "peace-loving" too.

The Perception Gap Between China and Its Neighbors: China’s self-image is enormously different from how it is perceived by other regional actors:

China’s ascendance in world affairs is one of the most significant and challenging issues in today’s international system. This underscores the importance of understanding China’s role in the world. However, when people debate about how to understand China and its policies, they often overlook the importance of perception, especially how Chinese see themselves and their relations with the rest of the world. In fact, there exists a huge perception gap between China’s self-image and how the outside world sees China. Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore, used to say that he was sad to see “the gulf in understanding” between Chinese and Westerners. If we examine China’s recent territorial disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, we can clearly see such a “gulf in understanding” between China and its neighbors. In fact, it’s more than a gulf; the perception gap has grown as wide as the Pacific Ocean.
Where people outside China tend to see China’s recent foreign policy behavior, such as the actions in South China Sea, as aggressive and bullying, many Chinese genuinely believe that China is a peace-loving country and see themselves as the victims. They believe that China’s neighbors have long been violating China’s sovereignty, rights, and interests inside the “nine-dashed line” in the South China Sea. For example, the Chinese have routinely used a three-phrase narrative to describe these violations in South China Sea: “海域被瓜分” (water territories have been carved up), “岛礁被侵占” (islands and reefs have been occupied), and “资源被掠夺” (resources have been plundered). A Google search of these phrases gives over 293,000 results. Chinese media has detailed reports on the foreign theft, such as how many islands and reefs are occupied by Vietnam and the Philippines and the number of oil and gas wells drilled by foreign companies. Many people also believe that there is an international coalition conspiring against China, with the United States facilitating this bloc. Thus, they see China as the victim: one country against many.

Sure sounds like the Chinese government's use of loaded phrases like "water territories have been carved up," “islands and reefs have been occupied," and “resources have been plundered" to justify its “nine-dashed line” has more to do with that perception gap than anything else. China has made its bed here.

Welcome to the 1930s. Again.

1939. Again.

Poland said that a renewed buildup of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border raises the specter of a possible invasion, as President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to prepare a response to U.S. and European sanctions.
“Unfortunately, Russia has restored its combat-readiness on the Ukraine border with more than a dozen battalion-sized combat groups,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, told TVN24 BiS television yesterday, while giving no indication that an invasion was imminent. “There’s a lot of equipment. This is the sort of thing one does to exert pressure or to invade.”
Putin has showed no sign of backing down over Ukraine since the U.S. and the European Union tightened sanctions last week, with Russia massing forces on its neighbor’s border in the biggest military buildup since troops were withdrawn from the area in May.

Ukraine expressed alarm about a new deployment of Russian forces on its frontier as it pressed an offensive against pro-Russian separatists. There’s “active combat taking place” on the outskirts of Donetsk, with two civilians killed, the city council said on its website last night.
The humanitarian situation in Ukraine is steaily (sic) worsening, John Ging, director of humanitarian operations for the United Nations, said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council yesterday in New York. He said the fighting has killed at least 1,367 people -- both civilians and combatants -- and wounded 4,087 since mid-April.

About 3.9 million people live in areas directly affected by violence and face imminent security threats, while more than 1,000 people flee conflict zones every day, said Ging, who cited a Russian estimate that 740,000 Ukrainians have crossed into Russia since the beginning of the year.
Putin said the government has proposed measures to retaliate against sanctions. Russia may limit or ban flights over Siberia by European carriers bound for Asia as a response to sanctions levied against the country, the Moscow-based Vedomosti newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter it didn’t identify.
“Political instruments of pressure on the economy are unacceptable, they contradict all norms and rules,” Putin said yesterday during a meeting with Alexey Gordeev, governor of the Voronezh region near Ukraine. Any retaliation “must be done extremely carefully to support producers and avoid harming consumers.”

Numbers of troops?

Russia has deployed 45,000 soldiers, 160 tanks and as many as 1,360 armored vehicles, a Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, told reporters in Kiev yesterday. There are also 192 Russian warplanes and 137 military helicopters, as well as artillery systems and multiple rocket launchers, he said.
Changing and conflicting estimates of the Russian troop presence near Ukraine depend in part on different assumptions.
While estimates cited by Ukraine include about 20,000 Russian forces in Crimea, those by the U.S. and NATO don’t.
On that basis, Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters yesterday that Russia still has “north of 10,000 troops” on Ukraine’s border, and NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow said in a posting on Twitter that the number is about 20,000.
“The numbers aren’t the key metric here,” Kirby said. “What matters is that they continue to reinforce these units, that they are very capable and very ready across what we call combined arms capabilities -- armor, artillery, air defense, special forces, and that they are closer to the border than they were in the spring.”

Ukraine’s armed forces are pushing ahead with their campaign after the U.S. and the EU increased pressure on Putin over his backing of the rebels with an expansion of sanctions. Last month’s downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which the U.S. says was probably caused by a missile fired by the insurgents, has helped harden attitudes against Russia. The rebels and Putin’s government blame Ukrainian forces.
While Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the conflict, the U.S. and its EU allies blame Putin for failing to rein in the insurgency and stop the war.

Don't worry. I'm sure, Obama, Jarrett, Kerry, and their Smart Diplomacy™ will handle it.

Why the threat from Ebola in the US is overrated

From "Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger [and] full-time nerd" Tara C. Smith:

It’s odd to see otherwise pretty rational folks getting nervous about the news that the American Ebola patients are being flown back to the United States for treatment. “What if Ebola gets out?” “What if it infects the doctors/pilots/nurses taking care of them?” “I don’t want Ebola in the US!”
Friends, I have news for you: Ebola is *already* in the US.

OK, um, not the most comforting. But there's more:

Ebola is a virus with no vaccine or cure. [Still not making me feel better -- JC] As such, any scientist who wants to work with the live virus needs to have biosafety level 4 facilities (the highest, most secure labs in existence–abbreviated BSL4) available to them. We have a number of those here in the United States, and people are working with many of the Ebola types here. Have you heard of any Ebola outbreaks occurring here in the US? Nope. These scientists are highly trained and very careful, just like people treating these Ebola patients and working out all the logistics of their arrival and transport will be.
Second, you might not know that we’ve already experienced patients coming into the US with deadly hemorrhagic fever infections. We’ve had more than one case of imported Lassa fever, another African hemorrhagic fever virus with a fairly high fatality rate in humans (though not rising to the level of Ebola outbreaks). One occurred in Pennsylvania; another in New York just this past April; a previous one in New Jersey a decade ago. All told, there have been at least 7  cases of Lassa fever imported into the United States–and those are just the ones we know about, who were sick enough to be hospitalized, and whose symptoms and travel history alerted doctors to take samples and contact the CDC. It’s not surprising this would show up occasionally in the US, as Lassa causes up to 300,000 infections per year in Africa.
How many secondary cases occurred from those importations? None. Like Ebola, Lassa is spread human to human via contact with blood and other body fluids. It’s not readily transmissible or easily airborne, so the risk to others in US hospitals (or on public transportation or other similar places) is quite low.

The upshot?

Ebola is a terrible disease. It kills many that it infects. ["Many?" It kills 90% of those it infects. -- JC] It *can* spread fairly rapidly when precautions are not carefully adhered to: when cultural practices such as ritual washing of bodies are continued despite warnings, or when needles are reused because of a lack of medical supplies, or when gloves and other protective gear are not available, or when patients are sharing beds because they are brought to hospitals lacking even such basics as enough beds or clean bedding for patients. But if all you know of Ebola is from The Hot Zone or Outbreak, well, that’s not really what Ebola looks like. I interviewed colleagues from Doctors without Borders a few years back on their experiences with an Ebola outbreak, and they noted:

“As for the disease, it is not as bloody and dramatic as in the movies or books. The patients mostly look sick and weak. If there is blood, it is not a lot, usually in the vomit or diarrhea, occasionally from the gums or nose. The transmission is rather ordinary, just contact with infected body fluids. It does not occur because of mere proximity or via an airborne route (as in Outbreak if I recall correctly). The outbreak control organizations in the movies have no problem implementing their solutions once these have been found. In reality, we know what needs to be done, the problem is getting it to happen. This is why community relations are such an issue, where they are not such a problem in the movies.”

So, sure, be concerned. But be rational as well. Yes, we know all too well that our public health agencies can fuck up. I’m not saying there is zero chance of something going wrong. But it is low. As an infectious disease specialist (and one with an extreme interest in Ebola), I’m way more concerned about influenza or measles many other “ordinary” viruses than I am about Ebola. Ebola is exotic and its symptoms can be terrifying, but also much easier to contain by people who know their stuff.

Makes me feel better, I guess. It's not that I don't trust Dr. Smith, but that I don't trust anything connected to this current administration to be handled with any degree of competence.

If you have to ask, you know the answer.

"[W]hose side is Obama on?" asks Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club.

This man is what is known as an "Idiot."

'Islam is reviving British values', says former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Everything you know about the US and Muhammad Mossadegh is wrong

When discussing the evil of the Iranian mullahs and their malevolent plans for nuclear weapons, I inevitably have a few, mainly leftists and Ronulans, who argue, "Well, we would not have this problem if the US had just left Iran alone and not overthrown Muhammad Mossadegh in 1953." They use that argument as an excuse for allowing the mullahs to have nuclear weapons, almost as if when the mullahs nuke New York City these people will argue, "We can't retaliate. We can't fight Iran. We have no right to, because we overthrew Muhammad Mossaegh in 1953." (And don't think Ron Paul in particular would not argue that.)

Now, we have a serious challenge to the established narrative:

Ray Takeyh of the Council of Foreign Affairs, an Iranian-American and a liberal, has powerfully attacked the conventional view of U.S. responsibility for the overthrow of Mosaddeq. Takeyh attacks it most recently in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. Previously, he had made his case in the Weekly Standard.
Takeyh argues that Mosaddeq was destined to fall due to the internal opposition produced by the British response to his oil nationalization policy, and that the U.S. played an inconsequential role in his demise. He makes the following points:

1. Mosaddeq, a popularly elected leader, antagonized the British by taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose majority shareholder was the British government.
2. Great Britain responded by, among other measures, discouraging European countries from buying Iran’s oil and interdicting Iranian ships that carried oil for export.
3. The U.S., under President Truman, tried to mediate the dispute and work out a compromise.
4. Mosaddeq wasn’t interested in compromising.
5. Britain’s retaliatory measures dealt a huge blow to the Iranian oil industry, and to Iran’s economy generally.
6. As a result, Mosaddeq became unpopular in Iran.
7. Among those who turned against him were the mullahs — the predecessors of those who excoriate the U.S. for alleging toppling Mosaddeq and restoring the Shah.
8. The Shah, fed up with Mosaddeq, announced he was leaving the country due to unspecified medical concerns.
9. Mass demonstrations broke out imploring the Shah to stay. (There is, according to Takeyh, no evidence that the CIA was behind these demonstrations).
10. Mosaddeq responded by dissolving the Iranian legislature and holding a national referendum on this action.
11. The election was rigged, as evidenced by the fact that 99 percent of vote went Mosaddeq’s way.
12. The U.S. government, now led by President Eisenhower, urged Mosaddeq to settle his dispute with Great Britian, but also began considering a British plan to further undermine Mosaddeq.
13. The CIA participated with Britain’s M16 in this plan which included paying journalists to write stories critical of the prime minister, charging that he was corrupt and power hungry, and alleging that he was of Jewish descent.
14. With U.S. encouragement, the Shah signed a royal decree dismissing Mosaddeq and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi as the new prime minister.
15. The Shah sent an emissary to deliver the decree to Mosaddeq, who refused to accept it and promptly arrested the emissary.
16. The Eisenhower administration did not pursue the matter further. Indications are that it was prepared to change direction and “snuggle up” to Mosaddeq (in the words of Bedell Smith, a high level State Department official and the president’s close confidant).
17. General Zahedi, however, did not give up. He published the Shah’s decree.
18. This led to major demonstrations against Mosaddeq throughout the country.
19. The U.S. did not take these demonstrations seriously. The U.S. ambassador cabled Washington to say they would probably prove insignificant.
20. Mosaddeq commanded the military to restore order, but instead many soldiers joined in the demonstrations.
21. The army chief of staff told Mosaddeq he had lost control of many of his troops and of the capital city.
22. Mosaddeq went into hiding, but later turned himself in.
23. The Shah was restored.

As Power Line's Paul Mirengoff puts it:

If this scenario is accurate, the United States was a bit player in the overthrow of Mosaddeq. The prime minister authored his demise and the Iranians carried it out.
The U.S. did nothing that rose to the level of requiring an apology, much less an apology to brutal theocrats whose predecessors supported the overthrow of Mosaddeq.

I agree,  but I always have in this case. Nevertheless, judge for yourselves. Here are links to Takeyh pieces in the Weekly Standard and in Foreign Affairs. Check 'em out.

ISIS has the Kurds on the ropes

I have often said that the two most important elements of a military operation are information and communications. Obviously, though, you need other things as well, like troops and ammunition. The Kurds, who have been acting as sort of the good guys in the brewing civil war in Iraq, have plenty of the former but are running out of the latter. So, will Obama send them ammunition to stop the manifest evil that is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria?

Of course not:

President Obama famously failed to act when warned that ISIS was preparing to mount an offensive in Western Iraq. This left ISIS free to conquer, with virtually no resistance, city after city in the defense of which American soldiers have shed blood.
Now Obama is receiving new warnings, this time from the Kurds in Northern Iraq. In fact, according to the Washington Post, the Kurds are “pleading for U.S. military aid.”
Unlike the Iraqi government, the Kurds possess a viable military that is prepared to fight ISIS. Indeed, they are fighting ISIS, and fairly effectively.
However, the Kurds now have a 650 mile border to defend, thanks to the abandonment of the area by Iraq’s military forces. Thus, the Kurdish forces are stretched extremely thin.
The Kurds should be receiving a share of the weapons the U.S. is supplying to the Iraqi government. But that, of course, isn’t happening. Mansour Barzani, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s intelligence and security chief, told the Post that Baghdad hasn’t provided “a single bullet.”
Meanwhile, says the Post, the ISIS forces attacking the Kurds have seized weapons worth hundreds of millions of dollars from retreating Iraqi soldiers. In effect, Baghdad is supplying ISIS while providing the Kurds with nothing.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Obama administration has rejected Kurdish pleas for arms with which to fight ISIS. Its rationale is that assistance must come through the central government.
[...]
It’s almost as if Obama is indifferent to the progress of ISIS and willing to embrace any excuse for standing idly by in the face of that progress.

And now it's getting much worse:

[...] ISIS has made its first significant inroads against the defenses of the overstretched Kurds. They have punched through to the northern town of Sinjar. Another town, Wana, has also fallen, leaving ISIS within striking distance of Mosul’s hydroelectric dam, the largest in the country.
In Sinjar, ISIS promptly blew up a Shiite shrine and ordered residents to convert or die.
The Obama administration, through State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, stated that the United States is “gravely concerned” by the displacement of civilians and the loss of life. What’s next, a #SavetheShrines campaign?

This is where the true Obama has come out:

Why hasn’t Obama supplied the Kurds? Apparently, it has something to do with the niceties of Iraq’s constitutional framework. Obama, it seems, has more regard for that framework than he does for ours.
If Obama is prepared to ignore the U.S. Constitution to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants who face virtually zero chance of deportation, he should be willing to overlook Iraqi formalities in order to help the Kurds defend themselves against our most implacable and barbaric enemy — a group that even Eric Holder finds “more frightening than anything.”
But Obama’s mission is the transformation of America, not so much its defense.

And speaking of the 1930s

It's approaching September 1939 in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin accuses Ukraine of invading Russian territory, just as Hitler accused Poland of invading Germany as justification for his invasion of Poland.

And Russia has 15,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.

Welcome to 1939.

Welcome to the 1930s

So says Roger Simon at PJ Media. His reference is to the rising tide of anti-Semitism, especially in Europe, and our inept State Department's surrender to it, but he could easily be referencing Russia in Ukraine, or China in the Far East. His most chilling line: "[W]e are in a new version of the 1930s with the armageddon of the ’40s around the corner."

As Joe Biden once said, "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." And so we are.

Japan lays groundwork for collective defense against China

While most of the world has been understandably distracted with the implosion of Iraq and the Soviet ... er, Russian invasion of Ukraine, momentous events have been taking place on the other side of the world: Japan has moved away from its commitment to international pacifism under its post-war constitution:

The Abe administration, in a Cabinet decision made on Tuesday — the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Self-Defense Forces — changed the government’s longstanding interpretation of the Constitution so that Japan can exercise the right to collective self-defense. The decision not only effectively undermines the Constitution’s war-renouncing Article 9 — which has prevented Japan from being involved in international military conflicts in the postwar period — but also violates the principles of rule of law under the Constitution.
The Cabinet decision, pending related changes to relevant laws, paves the way for the SDF to use force overseas to defend Japan’s allies even if Japan itself is not under attack. In other words, it allows Japan to take part in conflicts abroad, potentially putting SDF members in harm’s way.
The Abe administration’s new interpretation of the Constitution also does not rule out Japan’s participation in United Nations-led collective security operations, which are mainly aimed at punishing countries that breach international peace — a concept different from self-defense. This contradicts what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated at a news conference following Tuesday’s Cabinet decision: “Japan will never take part in fighting such as has taken place in the Gulf War or the Iraq War.” Abandoning the traditional “defense-only defense” position, the administration’s move marks a clear departure from the postwar Japan’s basic defense posture.

The Japan Times editorial makes it clear that it opposes this course of action, although most of its criticisms are procedural. Abe has fully earned his reputation as a Japanese nationalist, which is contributing to the heavy criticism he is receiving for this action.

But it's hard to see this as anything but inevitable given the recent behavior of China. Even while this measure was under consideration, China harassed Japanese coast guard vessels near the disputed Senkaku Islands. That is not the behavior of someone who wants peace except on his own terms. To be imposed violently if necessary.

While some will claim it heightens tensions in the region, it actually is in response to tensions already heightened by China. China has been playing a game of seeing its neighbors already divided, so it acts against them one by one. Japan is just about the only one of those neighbors capable of defending itself at sea (especially) and in the air. The Philippines, victims of Chinese aggression in the Spratlys and the Scarboroughs, are too weak, which is why they reached a deal with the US to base forces there once again. Vietnam, who fought a border clash with China in 1979 spurred on by Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge, has shown it is more than able to defend itself on land, but not at sea, which is one reason there has been talk of the US moving in there as well. The US already has relationships with Singapore (especially), Indonesia and Malaysia.

The problem is that, like most of our allies, these countries doubt the commitment of Barack Obama to defend them. In Japan's case it is especially critical, since the US is required to defend it as a result of its post-war constitution, Japan does not want its hands tied by an Obama-led US unwilling to honor its commitment to defend it. That is another major reason behind this move.

It is hard to overstate the depth of distrust for Japan in East Asia after its barbaric acts in the Pacific War, but Japan is an old enemy. China is rapidly making itself into a new enemy. And for countries too weak to defend themselves at sea and understandably mistrustful of Obama and his Smart Diplomacy™, Abe's act here gives East Asia another option for collective defense.

A forgotten relic of communism

Michael Totten has a fascinating article on the decades-old civil war in one of the least-known regions of the world - Western Sahara, a large, desolate strip of land on Africa's west coast just south of and administered by Morocco. Fidel Castro, Muammar Gadhafi and the Soviets decided to start trouble there in the 1970s by forming and funding a communist guerilla group known as the Polisario, who has been fighting a war in the region ever since. Charming people, those communists.

Obama must be proud

Our friends at Power Line opine on Obama's performance in Iraq:

The only problem is that Barack Obama may actually take this literally. To him and his leftist ilk, turning Iraq into Vietnam is not a bug, but a feature.

The potential of Benedict Bergdahl

Take this article with a grain of salt, but Robert Spencer has a piece giving 5 reasons to believe Bowe Bergdahl is not just guilty of being AWOL (Absent Without Leave) or desertion but of treason. To me, the most damning is actually Number Five:

5. The precision of post-desertion IEDs.
Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow, who served with Bergdahl and was present the night he disappeared, says flatly:

Bergdahl is a deserter, and he’s not a hero. He needs to answer for what he did.” Even worse, Buetow recounted that days after Bergdahl vanished from the U.S. base, there were reports that he was in a nearby village looking for someone who spoke English, so that he could establish communications with the Taliban. Soon afterward, Buetow recalled, “IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes were very calculated, very methodical.”

Bergdahl knew where the trucks would be going and when; said Buetow: “We were incredibly worried” that the Taliban’s “prisoner of war” was passing this information on to his captors in order to help them place their bombs most effectively.

Forget rumors of his statements and whatnot. This is not rumor, but quantifiable evidence from his colleagues as to how how enemy tactics changed after Bergdahl ended up with the Taliban.

And by rumors, I am talking about the alleged letter that Bergdahl left behind:

2. The note he left behind.
Fox News reported Tuesday that according to “sources who had debriefed two former members of Bergdahl’s unit,” the deserter “left behind a note the night he left base in which he expressed disillusionment with the Army and being an American and suggested that he wanted to renounce his American citizenship and go find the Taliban.”

That letter has been reported in multiple media outlets. But now, it seems, there is serious question as to the existence of the note:

Three days ago, the New York Times cited a “former senior military officer” for the claim that Bergdahl had left a note behind in his tent the night he disappeared saying “he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan and was leaving to start a new life.” Pretty strong evidence of desertion; in fact, it’s the only hard evidence of Bergdahl’s motives that allegedly exists. The same day, Fox News reported that two unnamed former members of Bergdahl’s unit also claim that he left a note, and that the note suggested not only desertion but an intent to renounce his citizenship. All of this came as a shock to Saxby Chambliss, the ranking GOP member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had read the classified file on Bergdahl and saw nothing in there about a note.

That’s when things started to get weird.

Chambliss later said he was told that the report of the existence of the note was wrong.

The military’s classified 35-page report on Bergdahl’s disappearance also says nothing about a note. [...]
Did the letter mysteriously disappear or did it never exist at all?

A cautionary tale that reports gathered in wartime can have errors and omissions, not always or even usually intentional.

But the evidence of Benedict Bergdahl so far seems persuasive.

The Price of Moral Vanity

In the past I have used the term "moral vanity" to describe the desire of a person to show how much they care more than everyone else. Moral vanity usually manifests itself in 1. Committing ineffectual and sometimes dangerous or even counterproductive acts a to address a particular issue that carries intense emotion; and 2. A refusal to accept any criticism or even questioning of those acts, going so far as to insult and demonize those that do so.

Well, in a must-read column today, Roger Simon comes up with a similar, perhaps better term: Moral Narcissism.

Moral Narcissism is an evocative term for the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now common in our culture.  It doesn’t matter how anything turns out as long as your intentions are good.  And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines them, is you.
In other words, if you propose or do something, it only matters that you feel good or righteous about what you did or are proposing, that it makes you feel better personally.  The results are irrelevant, as are how the actual activity affects others.
Also, although it pretends (especially to the self) to altruism, moral narcissism is in essence passive aggressive, asserting superiority over the ignorant or “selfish” other. It is elitist,  anti-democratic and quote often, consciously or unconsciously, sadistic.
The Obama administration is loaded with moral narcissists, including, obviously, the president himself — Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton etc.  The media and Hollywood are also clearly stuffed to the gills with moral narcissists.
Obamacare is a perfect example of moral narcissism in action.  Never mind that the public didn’t want it. Never mind it was an atrociously planned bureaucratic mess (in fact that comes with the territory).  It was what Barack Obama wanted — for himself.
Moral narcissism creates an atmosphere of dishonesty bizarrely similar to Islamic taqqiya.  In Islam, the believer is permitted to lie to the non-believer because the believer has the greater truth.  For the moral narcissist, lies becomes truth in almost the same manner. Some like Dan Rather (a moral narcissist par excellence) could thus pronounce the Bush National Guard papers real when anyone with an IQ in triple digits could see that they were fake.  They felt real to Dan. And, crucially, that made him feel good about himself.

As an aside, you might want to keep that taqqiya in mind when developing opinions on agreements and treaties with predominantly Muslim and especially Islamist parties. Anyway, Simon cites this characteristic as pushing the inexcusable Bowe Bergdahl trade:

In the Bergdahl affair, what really was operative in the prisoner swap was Barack Obama’s feelings about himself.  Never mind that Bergdahl may have been a deserter whose sympathies were with the enemy.  Never mind that many U.S. servicemen had already been killed attempting to rescue him. Never mind that the five released prisoners were all likely to resume their lives of terror as soon as possible, murdering who knows how many more people.  And never mind that the release of the terrorists would only encourage the Taliban to kidnap more hostages. What mattered was how Barack perceived himself.

Forget arrogance, incompetence, and a barely concealed anti-Americanism. The single unifying feature of the Obama administration is its utter selfishness.