Some people have advanced a theory to explain Iran’s failure to do damage to US personnel in Iraq in this latest attack: the Iranians missed on purpose. Well, maybe. But others strongly disagree:
The top US general made clear Wednesday night that he believes Iran meant to kill US troops in the ballistic missile attack on US forces in Iraq, rebutting a belief among some Trump administration officials that Iran intentionally missed areas populated by Americans.
“I believe based on what I saw and what I know that they were intended to cause structural damage destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft, and to kill personnel. That’s my own personal assessment,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when speaking to reporters on Wednesday,
Milley argued that the reason there were no casualties had “more to do with the defensive techniques that our forces used as opposed to intent.”
He added, “We took sufficient defensive measures that there were no casualties to US personnel, coalition personnel, contractors or Iraqis.”
So perhaps the failure was intentional, but I believe it was probably more a combination of an only so-so offense meeting an excellent defense.
And then there’s the possible (probable?) shooting down of the Ukrainian plane. Of course, perhaps the Iranians really intended to shoot down a commercial airliner full of Canadian-Iranians on their way back from visiting family in Iran. Perhaps. But I very much doubt it. I believe that, if the plane was indeed shot down (and at this point I think it was), it’s because it was misidentified by the Iranians as an incoming weapon of some sort. If that’s what happened, it would demonstrate a considerable and dangerous lack of basic coordination between Iran’s commercial aviation system and its air defense.
If I’m correct about all of this (and I rely on my more scientifically informed readers to correct me if I’m wrong), it means that Iran is in some technological trouble, although of course they are still making weapons that can do damage, and getting some effective weapons from other countries like Russia. But Iran’s brain drain has probably been quite intense, and much of Iran’s best and brightest may have fled the country over the years.
I noticed, for example, that a large number of the Canadian-Iranian victims of the Ukrainian crash were students or professors in the sciences who were studying or employed in Canada. Maybe they were there because they were seeking more liberty in general, as is often true of Iranian expats who live in the west. Maybe they were there because the instruction and opportunities in science are better in the west. And/or maybe so many were there because any scientist in Iran must toe the ideological line, and enquiring scientific minds don’t tend to run in the direction the mullahs demand. If political (and in Iran’s case, religious) orthodoxy and conformance are required of all scientists and the science they produce, that can handicap scientific rigor and success.
Which doesn’t mean that weapons can’t be produced and used – they can – but the level of precision and the amount of innovation is probably reduced from what it would be if thought control wasn’t imposed.
Unfortunately, the trend is also towards thought control in the west now, as the social justice warriors complete their takeover of the university. They started with the humanities, because it was easier and the ground far more fertile. But they have encroached on science and math as well, and that’s not good for those disciplines.
It’s already happening (the linked article is from two and a half years ago):
Engineering education has been infiltrated by a “phalanx of social justice warriors” who are steadily corrupting the field, according to a Michigan State University professor.
“They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as ‘diversity’ and ‘different perspectives’ and ‘racial gaps’ and ‘unfairness’ and ‘unequal outcomes’ make up the daily vocabulary,” asserts Mechanical Engineering professor Indrek Wichman in an essay published Wednesday by the James G. Martin Center.
“Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group representation, hurt feelings, and ‘microaggressions’ in the profession,” Wichman adds.
Citing the Purdue University School of Education Engineering as a case study, Wichman claims that “engineering education” schools increasingly focus on concepts that are incompatible with the actual discipline, such as “empowering” students and “reimagining” engineering as a more “socially connected” field of study.
“For the record, engineers ‘empower’ themselves and, most important, other people, by inventing things,” he points out. “Those things are our agents of change.”
Wichman goes on to highlight the “ambitious agenda” of Dr. Donna Riley, the recently appointed dean of Purdue’s engineering school, as an example of the extent of social justice “infiltration” at the school.
According to her faculty page, Riley aims to “revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destination” by incorporating “concerns related to…social responsibility,” focusing on “de-centering Western civilization,” and “uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups.”
More here:
…[E]thnomathematics is also used to explain why the tough stuff, and even math itself, isn’t important — and can thus be ignored. Some math educators say culturally defined math is a human “right.”
To be jettisoned (says one the book’s authors) are the “criteria of validity, reliability, and objectivity as they are understood and applied in scientific paradigm research.” In their place will come an intense awareness of “social class,” diversity, equality, and all the other standard goals of modern academia…
Take two influential organizations, the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) and TODOS: Mathematics for ALL. They state that they “ratify social justice as a key priority in the access to, engagement with, and advancement in mathematics education for our country’s youth.”
They say, “a social justice stance interrogates and challenges the roles power, privilege, and oppression play in the current unjust system of mathematics education-and in society as a whole.”
Forty years ago, when the Iranian revolution occurred, I followed it on the news. Those of you old enough probably recall following it, too. At the time I was puzzled by the coming together of the left and the fundamentalist Islamists like Khomeini, uniting in order to overthrow the shah and his government. I didn’t realize back then that the left thought it was just using the mullahs and would easily outfox and supplant them as soon as the shah was gone. The mullahs though the reverse, and it turns out that the mullahs were the ones who got the last laugh.
But none of it should have surprised me, because fanatics dedicated to their ideology are birds of a feather, and both will end up crushing scientific thought by replacing enquiry with orthodoxy.
[NOTE: Here’s an example of what the Israelis are doing in terms of defense:
The Defense Ministry has made a technological breakthrough in the development of lasers that can intercept aerial threats, including rockets and anti-tank guided missiles, it announced Wednesday.
New laser technology “makes the security apparatus more lethal, more powerful and more advanced,” Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday evening. ]
