perfidy

The record setting rapid progress of American forces in Iraq is disconcerting to two groups of people. One, those who feel that they might be next on the list; and two, the American and European left. The fear of the first group is natural, their regimes are on our list. But the supporters of the oppressed and downtrodden workers of the world have no excuse to attack the United States for acting to liberate the oppressed of a fascist regime like Saddam's. All of the Left's favorite victims are especial targets of Saddam's dictatorship. Yet America is attacked as an imperialist. Is it worse that America should exercise her might, or that Iraqis continue to die, be tortured, raped, and brutalized?

One thing is obvious about the anti-war protestors, aside from lack of a keen fashion sense. It is that they are far more anti-American than they are anti-war (let alone pro-peace.) Many freely admit that Saddam is a butchering fascist - but that doesn't stop them from opposing our own Hitler, George W. Bush. This is a complete divorce from any kind of moral reasoning. No sane person can claim that Bush is worse than Hussein, or that the American government is as repressive as Saddam's. The left in Europe and America petulantly insist that America keep jumping through an infinite series of hoops, in the vain hope that this policy will prevent the exercise of American military power, than which nothing could be more evil. The exercise of American military force has been so terrible over the years that millions once enslaved by communism are now free. And South Korea is not in (literal) darkness like North Korea. And Germany isn't killing Jews by the millions. And Japan isn't enslaving all of East Asia. So terrible, in fact, that the one time in the last century that we failed to exercise our military power in full, a million South Vietnamese civilians were slaughtered by our opponents, the peaceful agrarian reformers of the north.

It seems that the only nation that isn't allowed to deal with the problem of Iraq is the one nation that can deal with the problem. The one nation that has proved that it uses force on the whole wisely - to oppose, for lack of a better word, evil. We should be proud that our nation is a natural wrecking ball for totalitarian regimes.

The tragic part of this is that innocents die in the process. Hundreds of thousands of innocent German civilians died in our bombing campaigns over Germany, and likewise in Japan. Very few people argue that this price was not worth paying. When we analyse the moral pros and cons, civilian deaths are most certainly a factor. Miraculously, our technology has advanced to the point where we can utterly destroy a building and leave its neighbors unharmed. This precision allows us to greatly limit the harm to innocents. Our military has, for the last couple weeks been operating under the most extreme rules of engagement ever conceived for an army at war. We may not fire at the enemy if he is behind civilians. We may not destroy buildings if we are not sure that civilians have been evacuated. And so on. Nevertheless, we have conducted a war of unparalleled lethality. My back of the envelope calculations (and supported by the wink and nod from my Marine Major next door neighbor, who works for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) indicate that we are incurring kill ratios against the Iraqi army of 1000:1. (It seems that the Special Republican Guard is "special" in the short bus sense.)

This amazing care that the military shows for the people of Iraq is absolutely not mirrored by the left. The callous disregard for the fates of the people of a nation with an honest to god fascist dictatorship is remarkable - or rather not remarkable, as the press never reports on this. The United States must be the evil party, because, well, the United States is evil. Therefore, we will gloss over any minor shortcomings of people like Saddam, Castro, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc. (The Baathist party grew from the influence of the Nazi party, from when Germany ruled Syria and Iraq during the Second World War, after the fall of France.) The ability of the left to fawn over any murderous (socialist) thug simply blows my mind.

As America works to liberate Iraq, a very small number of Iraqi citizens will die. That the war might make us safer is worth that cost. But the benefit to the Iraqis is far greater - they will be free.

The dictatorial leaders of Iran and Syria have both publically announced that they intend to do everything possible to prevent the emergence of a free and prosperous Iraq, and to attack the United States wherever their puny weapons can reach. Syria's Assad proclaimed that Lebanon would be the model for his nation's campaign against the coalition. Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei said that America's presence in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than Saddam, who waged a bloody decade long war against Iran. Iran has gathered terrorist and guerilla forces on its border, and Syria may already have sent terrorists across its border.

The threat of a free Iraq has led these two nations to move from rote propaganda condemnations of the "Great Satan" to the verge of actual hostilities. For those who are already uncomfortable with the fact that America is at war, this will be disturbing. But for a Jacksonian like myself, this is good news. America as a whole is slow to anger, and we have absorbed hundreds of small attacks with little or no reaction. (And, of course, this likely encouraged further attacks.) The attacks on the WTC and Pentagon finally woke people up to the fact that there is in fact a threat, and in fact a rather serious one.

Now that the war is started, I'd like to see it actually finished, not left festering like back in '91. And, as events unfold, "finished" might include Syria and Iran. Iran's population openly loaths the regime - it is likely that the mullahs will be toppled with only minimal effort on America's part. Syria, like Iraq a Baathist dictatorship, might require more effort. Once Iraq is settled, Syria is stuck between Iraq and US naval forces in the Med.

The prospect of further conflict in the Middle East is not something that should be approached recklessly or, god forbid, with glee. I do not relish the idea of more American casualties, or of more civilian casualties in Syria or Iran. Would we have stopped fighting Nazi Germany after liberating France? I think that a similar issue confronts us in the Middle East. The United States has reluctantly undertaken a War on Terror, not just against Al Quaida. We have declared that terrorism, of all kinds, is a target. Syria and Iran are the two largest state supporters of terrorism. When we consider the intersection of two things - direct threat to American citizens by way of Syrian and Iranian sponsored terrorism, and the plight of the citizens of these two repressive governments, I believe that we have an obligation to act, just as we did in Iraq.

We have liberated Afghanistan. Iraq is not far behind. If we can encourage the hundreds of thousands of democracy activists in Iran (brave, brave people - they protest in a nation where protests can get you killed.) to overthrow the mullahs, and depose Assad's facsist government, and encourage reform in Pakistan - we will have helped to create a stretch of free Islamic nations from the Europe to the Indus river. Coincidently, this is roughly the extent of Alexander's Empire. But unlike Alexander, the United States clearly has no imperial aims. We do not plan to incorporate these nations into a new American empire. The US has been taken up the mountain, but we have refused to be tempted. Now some might argue that these new regimes will be part of America's global hegemony - but no more so than France or Germany, who are world famous for toeing the American foriegn policy line. American (and British and Australian) companies will win contracts from the new governments. But is the fact that an American company can make some money dealing with a freely elected representative of the Iraqi people worse than the shady deals that TotalElFina made with Saddam with the collusion of bribed French officials?

If these experiments in liberty amongst the Mohammedans are as successful as Turkey, or South Korea, American national security will be enhanced. We will have helped make hundreds of millions of people citizens of responsible governments - similar to the effect on Eastern Europe after we won the cold war. (Sadly, Russia does not seem to be going far in that direction - perhaps that extra thirty years of communism was too much.) If they could be as successful as Japan, the example that these nations will set might set off reforms in other Islamic nations.

The most crucial of these will be Saudi Arabia. With the largest reserves of oil in the world, Saudi Arabia has a influence on the world economy all out of proportion to the skill or education of its people, its industry or economy, or its contribution to world civilization. Saudi Arabia is a primitive tribal culture sitting on top of a gold mine. It is a perverse welfare state for the rich. Despite the vast amounts of money that oil brought, the Saudis have made no effort to develop an economy. Since the Saudis don't work, over 70% of all jobs in the country are held by foriegners. That percentage jumps to 90% when private sector jobs are examined. And Saudi Arabia undergoing a demographic explosion - half of the population is under 18, and the nation has the highest birth rate of any country outside Africa.

This nation also supplies vast amounts of money to fundamentalist Islamic groups in Saudi Arabia and around the world. We all know that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. Most of the detainees at Guantanamo are Saudi. These young Saudis, well educated, entering their twenties and entering an economy specifically designed to not provide jobs for them, are perfect targets for the Wahabbis. Somehow, this must be fixed. Hopefully, it can be fixed without further American intervention. But we won't really be safe from Islamic terrorism until the last sources of funding have been cut off. And that means Saudi Arabia.

More space stuff. Liberty and other family values. War Aims, or why good people sometimes need to be blown up. Fascism, Norwegians and communism, three things that I hate.

WEMU-FM host Terry Hughes was fired from Eastern Michigan Public Radio for repeatedly expressing his support for the War, President Bush and American soldiers. He also denigrated NPR news coverage, saying, "We know if you want a current assessment of what's going on, you're sure not listening to us... You'll be over at Fox TV where they're not bending the news. ... It ain't happening on NPR."

The station manager Art Timko said, "He was fired basically over philosophical differences," Timko said. "We have a policy that eliminates or restricts the expression of personal opinion on issues of controversy, and he didn't believe that applied to him."

Hughes plans to continue taping his vintage R&B and Soul program at home for syndication. "It wasn't my intention to mess with the station manager," he said. "It's only been my intent to do crazy cool radio in America."

The quote from the station manager seems to indicate that public radio has serious problems with traditional American values like free speech.

"In so far as the enemy has a strategy, it's to use their own people as hostages. The "pockets of resistance" in the southern towns have been able to make mischief because they blend in with the local populations. They know that Washington and its allies are concerned above all to avoid casualties among Iraqi civilians and, indeed, among your typical Iraqi conscripts. In other words, everything the Baath regime does is predicated on the moral superiority of their foe."

(Emphasis mine) and: 

"When I say the allies are concerned above all to avoid not just civilian but pretty much any enemy casualties, I mean it. Washington has taken a decision to expose its forces to greater danger in order to all but eliminate collateral damage. Hence, the policy of simply bypassing towns rather than seizing them to secure flanks and rears; and of giving every Iraqi the benefit of the doubt, including the fake surrenderers who ambushed the US marines at Nasiriyah. If you can get to a rooftop, you can fire rocket-propelled grenades at the Brits and Yanks with impunity; under the most onerous rules of engagement you could devise, they won't fire back just in case the building you're standing on hasn't been completely evacuated. This is the operational opposite, one should note, of Bill Clinton's Kosovo campaign. A lot of analysts over here are disturbed by this excessive deference to non-military considerations, especially with rumours that the Baathists in their death throes are planning to go chemical. But it's working out swell for the Iraqis. On the first night of "Shock and Awe" in Baghdad, the TV boys' preferred line was, "it looks like Dresden." The next day, the Iraqi foreign minister announced a civilian death toll of ...four. Four? You mean, four thousand? But no. Single figures. Not exactly Dresdenesque, and a long way from the anti-war movement's thoughtful projections. "Thousands will die as - collateral damage,"’ declared Yahya Ibrahim in the New Straits Times. "Tens of thousands will die and the Middle East be plunged into chaos and bloodshed," warned George Galloway. "Why do hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have to die when they're no threat to us?" asked Margo MacDonald in the Edinburgh Evening News. "The United States is about to destroy an entire country and kill 20 per cent of its people," wrote Nicholas Oshukany in Monday's Kitchener Waterloo Record in Canada. That would be just shy of five million dead Iraqis. What a mound of corpses! But the Yanks will have to pick up the pace a bit. Right now, there are so many civilian casualties that, as my compatriot Andrew Coyne puts it, Robert Fisk can personally visit them all.’

I think a lot of people need to take some stress tabs, so that we can talk about things reasonably.

Which means I can't post, at least not right now. I've been slammed at work, and still must devote mucho time to preparing the new hacienda. But I've been thinking... (and yes, Johno, it does make my brain hurt) and hopefully will have some interesting thoughts up soon. I'm not going to argue with Mike's history mojo on the origins of fascism and communism, but I think there's a lot to say about how they fit in now. Also, I have some bones to pick on the empire thing - just can't let it die.

As for opposition to the war - it doesn't make you puking, filthy, Stalinist, anti-Bush, ill-informed, blinkered, one-worlder, giant-puppet wielding, anti-Capitalists. There are two groups of people against the war - people like you and Mike, and people like the asshatted fuckwits at DU. But even those idiots are not traitors; there is a clear difference between dissent and treason. Treason is more like Taliban Johnny - actively fighting for our enemies, not merely opposing the war inside the U.S. If they were sabotaging military installations, or hiding Al Quaida operatives in the SanFran area, then they should be hung from the neck until dead, dead, dead. Until then, they are free to make complete asses of themselves on national TV.

Was, curiously, also on April 30 - five years earlier when the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was evacuated by Helicopter. Operation "Frequent Wind."

The McCain quote that Johno posted below exactly describes my views on the current and historical (well, last century, anyway) uses of American power, and why we aren't an empire. I always liked McCain, and even my liberal mom said she would have voted for him in 2000 had he been the Republican candidate. But I don't remember him coming out against military action in Iraq, and the article would seem to suggest that he supports it.

I have been very busy. I am, even now, composing a reply to your fascism thingie. However, while I'm doing that, your one sentence comment on Empire didn't answer the one question I asked for which I was most curious to hear your reply: "If we have an informal empire, a halfway state between empire and not empire, how does it work?" How are we creating, maintaining and administering this empire.? I truly don't see evidence of anything that I would describe as empire - even an informal one. Exerting influence, yes; playing politics, yes; even military action, yes - but I don't see that we are actively trying to control other countries, or peoples, on any kind of systematic basis.

Also, in regard to the expectations for the war 

No official of this government, or in the military has ever said that the war would be over in days, or that the Iraqis would surrender en masse right at the beginning. Granted, they want the war over as quickly as possible - but Bush regularly said that we should be prepared for a long, difficult fight. And for that, he was accused by the media of putting on the spin, to lower expectations. But consider, there are still only a handful of combat casualties after nearly a week of fighting. And, we are less than fifty miles from Baghdad - it took six weeks to get this far in '91. This is the fastest armored assault in military history. The only army that ever moved faster (toward the enemy) is the Mongol Hordes. And given the logistical hurdles that we have and 'Ol Genghis didn't, that's pretty remarkable. We were hoping for a coup, not counting on it. Likewise with the Turks. The plan that Gen. Franks and his staff has come up with is audacious, but not ill considered. And it is going very, very well by any historical standard. 

Do I have to bring out my republic stick again? 

Gore lost the election because we have a republic and not a direct democracy. It was decided by constitutional procedures. Rule of law is more important than democracy, and that would be the greatest gift we could give the Iraqis. Rule of law leads to civil insititutions that can support democracy, it doesn't work the other way around, as many third world nations have found to their sorrow. (And remember, Bush got a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton did both times he was elected.)

From the website Democratic Underground:

HappyLibLady (1155 posts): The "coalition" POWs
"It was interesting to see the interviews being held with a few of the POWs captured by the Iraqis.

I noticed that the interviewers spoke in calm, comforting voices, and I saw how one of them put a gentle hand on the shoulder of the young African-American female. Her eyes seemed to express a terrible fear, and that is likely because she was trained/brainwashed by the US miltary to believe all Iraqis are blood-thirsty murderers.

I have faith that the experience of these POWs will leave them non-plussed and very confused. I expect that they will be given good treatment, decent food and clean quarters during their confinement, and that they will be released, unharmed when the time comes.

Maybe I'm just dreaming, but it is my hope that the POWs will discover that they were treated better by the Iraqis than they have ever been treated by the very people who are supposed to be protecting them on the battlefield. And, in the case of the African-American woman, she may find that people in the Middle East, unlike too many of the folks back home, do not consider her a second-class human being because of her dark brown skin!"

I am shocked, shocked that someone could be this completely naive. Although I shouldn't be, because everytime I visit that website, I see something equally stupid. (And she uses scare quotes, too.)

Design your own constitutional amendment, and win the undying admiration of the ruling troika of this webpage. The entry picked as winner will receive good karma in vast quantities, and a Chinese fortune cookie (only half eaten, fortune still included.) The rules:

1) It can't be an amendment that is already in the Constitution. 

2) Your amendment cannot change the laws of physics. 

3) Try to solve a real problem with your amendment, and not guarantee plentiful dogfood for every canine in America, or annex Norway or something. 

4) Write your amendment like you thought it might actually go in the Constitution with all the other clearly and beautifully written amendments.

After entries are recieved, we will post interesting ones, and declare a winner. Tell your friends! 

UPDATE: Submit entries to gustavus-at-juno-dot-com, and put "amendment" in the subject line. Any complaints can be sent to johnnyisasmartass-at-yahoo-dot-com. 
 

As a conservative, I often have difficulties with elected Republican officials. The Federalism issue is one of the most frequent. It would be nice to have an honest to god conservative president, but I don't think that is terribly likely, given the lip service that must be paid to big government by any candidate standing for election.

Listening to the radio on the way back from Ohio, I heard translations of a statement from the Iraqi Propaganda Minister. The thing that kept popping into my head was what the aliens said when they landed in Springfield on the Simpsons:

"Your superior weapons are no match for our feeble intellect!"

Actually, I have nothing agin the herring munching surrender monkeys of the north. It's really a cover for my racist feelings toward the powerful swedes, who are quick to anger and too dangerous to provoke openly.

I am driving out to Ohio, for tomorrow I must endure...

...A baby shower.

Johno endorses Federalism.

The Bolsheviks crushed the trade unions in Russia, too, and they didn't stop being socialist. Economic planning in the Third Reich was still centrally controlled, was it not? Sadly, I know too little about the early years of the Nazis. But my dad (blatant appeal to authority: eminent Russian historian) says that Fascism grew out of the left; and if I remember correctly, in Europe the right was all the wacky ancien regime monarchist reactionary types.

Saying that workers and farmers in both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia lived under feudal conditions is unkind to serfs. From my vantage point in 21st century America, I can only discern three critical differences between the Nazis and the Commies.

1) Nazis hate Jews because they're not German, Commies hate Jews because they're rich.
2) Nazis believed that everyone who is not German must die, to make room for Germans. Commies believed that everyone should become commie, then die.
3) Nazis had far cooler uniforms.

Well, Johno and I seem to agree that there is a distinct difference between Empire and Hegemony. Although I have issues with the term "American Global Hegemony," it is largely due to the people who usually use the phrase. Mike has chimed in with a scenario where other cultures borrow from and become derivative of another culture, without that culture engaging in imperialism. 

Why don't we, for our own convenience, establish some terms, so that we can argue more effectively? If an Empire is political and military ownership of other nations/territories/cultures, and acts that further expand an empire are Imperialism, we can distinguish this behavior from Cultural Hegemony, which is the economic, cultural and technological dominance of one nation over others. 

Now, wars can be fought without imperialistic aims. A war of defense, for example would not have imperialistic aims. WWII was not a war of Empire for the United States. Imperialism could be considered naturally aggressive, though the effects of imperial rule would range from sadistic to benign. But one key factor in an Empire is that subject territories always remain subject territories, used for the benefit of the nation at the center of the Empire. 

There is certainly no rule that says that empires are ruled by emperors. Most of the territory eventually ruled by the Roman Empire was conquered by the Roman Republic. Democratic Athens created an Empire. Britain had an empire, but was ruled by a Parliament and Prime Minister. But India never sent ministers to Parliament. America has never exactly been an Empire - conquered territories are either integrated directly into the nation itself, or eventually granted independence. We conquered California from the Mexicans, but in no sense is California a subject territory of a separate United States. 

Now cultural influence - here is where it gets more interesting. Mike cites several examples where cultures have voluntarily borrowed from another civilization. This, he says, is not cultural imperialism, or hegemony. The United States is the most influential part of the most influential civilization on Earth. To what extent are other nations or cultures voluntarily borrowing from our culture? Does cultural hegemony require an analog of the aggressiveness of imperialism? Are we forcing our culture on others, are are they voluntarily adopting Levis, Michael Jordan basketball Jerseys, Rock and Roll and Rap music, McD's hamburgers, watching Hollywood movies and so on? 

I would argue that China's impact on Japan was larger than America's impact on much of non-Western civilization today - maybe just because it operated over a longer period - but if that isn't cultural hegemony or informal empire, then what do we have? We are clearly a daughter culture of England, western Christendom, Rome and Greece. Of those, only England survives, and we are now having more impact on them than they are on us. We have overtaken our parent culture. We influence the whole world, not just because we have more money, and thus more guns. Our technology, freedom and cultural dynamism are what effects everyone. Our military impacts only a small part of the world. We aren't forcing people to buy into our culture. 

If we have an informal empire, a halfway state between empire and not empire, how does it work? Rome in republican times had a dual empire - parts were directly controlled, others were client states who had local autonomy but had no control over external affairs. Various territories often moved from the latter status to the former over time. Is this an informal empire? We have trade agreements, but they are that - agreements. We negotiate them. We do not have client states. 

Our companies, and industry, and so on have subsidiaries in other nations. But they have been nationalized in the past, or lost money and closed, or whatever - we don't force nations to open McD's. The Thais who work for Nike, or for third world employees of just about any American company not run by Kathy Lee Gifford generally make more money than their counterparts in local industries. Sure, they are paid less than an American worker, but the cost of living is vastly lower as well. The South Koreans leveraged participation in the lower rungs of the American and Japanese economies into growing prosperity, and their per capita wages are now higher than much of Europe. Is this a voluntary adoption of a American cultural ideas, and fitting them into their existing culture to make a better life for themselves, or is it rapacious and arrogant US economic imperialism compounded by showing them a vision of heaven while denying them admittance? 

The Japanese and South Koreans were exposed to American culture more than most nations in the last fifty years. American soldiers were the primary vector for this infection. In the first case, our troops remained after WWII for our security interests due to the recent phenomenon of Japanese militarism. South Korean and, later, Japanese bases were maintained to protect those nations (and us) from communist aggression. These two nations have borrowed more from our culture than most. Their cultures do not seem in imminent danger of disappearing. They are also the two richest non-western nations in the world. Are they part of our Hegemony, or our informal empire? 

Or is it only voluntary adoption when ethnically similar cultures borrow from each other? Are we victims of Chinese cultural imperialism because we have Chinese restaurants, manned exclusively by ethnic Chinese waitresses and cooks, and there are Kung Fu schools in every village across the land? American Ecofreaks (sorry, environmentalists) in the US dream longingly of the unspoiled rainforests where earthy people live in harmony with Gaia. Tribesman in Borneo and elsewhere dream of getting to America where they can have a house and a car and big screen TV. Which if these people did American Cultural Hegemony brainwash? 

Well, a final (at last!) point. Johno asked, "Is cultural hegemony like empire? By its own lights, it is not. But, if empire implies achieving dominance via force, and hegemony implies achieving dominance via way of life, what do you call it when we go kick some ass for the sake of asserting (and, arguably, protecting) our way of life?" 

That depends.

In Sawfan, in southern Iraq, American troops were welcomed by residents. "Americans very good," Ali Khemy said. "Iraq wants to be free." Some chanted, "Ameriki! Ameriki!" "No Saddam Hussein!" one young man in headscarf told Gurfein. "Bush!" It looks as though the Arab street, at least in Iraq, will not be rising up against us.

Mike: I wasn't bring up any particular issue in re: University of Michigan. I just hate them because I'm an Ohio State fan. But thanks for the insightful commentary. 

As far as the connection between communism and fascism, there are many similarities - state control of economy, police state policies, brutal oppression, etc. They were two sides of the same coin - one side plated with internationalism and class warfare, the other with nationalism and race warfare. That's probably why they hated each other so much, and why calling a political opponent a Nazi is still the greatest insult someone on the left can lay on an opponent. (If Stalin and crew weren't communists, why did they insist that they were? Socialism evolved into many things, one of them was fascism.) 

Definitely tell your students! Tell everyone, pass out flyers in the street... 

Johno: On convenience, I agree completely. That's why we wrote our constitution in negative statements - "Congress shall pass no law..." It isn't about government convenience, its about our freedom. 

As far as Saddam, ex-pet American dictator, goes - I think we are cleaning up our mess. The fact that we helped create it (as we did in Afghanistan) does lay a moral obligation on us. We did a lot of questionable things in the Cold War - many of which were probably justified in the light of the larger struggle against communism - that we will have to clean up. 

Thanks for the Pat Boone post.

I'm surprised that Johno never reacted to the Eminem is like Pat Boone comment.

The way the left ignores the abuses of murderers like Castro.

Our politicians making like they're Alexander the Great for busting bong manufacturers, closing down a rave, or picking on a defenseless computer geek for using ftp.

Civil Forfeiture and the RICO statutes.

Ex-Admiral John Poindexter's all seeing eye.

The Drug War

Norway

Idiots who think that America and Americans are too delicate, and must be protected by all consuming security laws. Look what happened to the shoe bomber. Or the guy on SW Airlines a few years back who was killed by his fellow passengers. I'll take a few extra risks, and keep my freedom, thank you very much.

Meddling politicians who are over-solicitous of my safety and well being, and act on it. (see above.)

Tom Daschle, who thinks I'm rich, and deserve to have two thirds of my income taken away to pay for his ridiculous sob sister policies.

People who call Bush a Nazi. National Socialist Worker's Party, jackass.

Reality programming

The University of Michigan

There's more, but that's enough for now.