Defense Articles

As night fell on December 29, 1837, a small British force crossed the Niagara River from Canada into New York. Their mission was to destroy the American steamboat Caroline, which had been carrying supplies to a group of Canadian insurgents. The Caroline was boarded, fired, and set drifting downriver, towards the Falls. At least one U.S. citizen was killed, several were wounded, and the U.S. came close to war with Britain. Rather than trigger war, however, the “Caroline incident” spawned the modern international-law doctrine of “anticipatory self- defense,” a doctrine on which the U.S. now intends to rely heavily to justify military action against terrorist states. Speaking at West Point’s recent commencement, President Bush laid out the compelling policy justification for this doctrine, noting that “we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Far-reaching changes in strategy and force posture are already being made in order to implement this doctrine.

The rule of anticipatory self defense, as described in the correspondence between Britain’s Lord Ashburton and America’s secretary of state Daniel Webster over the Caroline incident, holds that a state need not absorb an enemy’s attack, but may anticipate it and lawfully strike first. In accepting the British explanation that the Caroline was destroyed in “self-defense,” because she would otherwise have continued to assist the Canadian rebels, Webster articulated the circumstances in which the doctrine properly applies: where the need is “instant, overwhelming, and leav[es] no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”

Anticipatory self-defense had been a common practice even before the Caroline. In 1587, for example, Queen Elizabeth I sent a fleet, under Sir Francis Drake, to attack Spanish and Portuguese harbors in a preemptive strike against the “Invincible Armada.” Forty years later, international-law theorist Hugo Grotius acknowledged the practice as a rule of law.

For all that, however, anticipatory self-defense remains controversial. The European view generally appears to be that a U.N. Security Council resolution is necessary before armed force can be employed. A number of European leaders claim that force can be used only to repel an armed attack on one’s territory. But this position — which would require states to wait until the smokestacks of an enemy fleet rose over the horizon and the first broadside was fired before responding — was hopelessly unrealistic even a century ago. Today, when advance warnings may be calculated in seconds, rather than weeks or days, it is all the more so.

Nevertheless, opponents of the anticipatory-self-defense doctrine appear more concerned with the possibility that it could be abused — by states seeking to cloak aggression in the mantle of self-defense — than with the increasing danger that a delayed response will result in disaster. These criticisms are often laced with a heavy dose of anti- Americanism, since the U.S. is currently viewed as the most obvious beneficiary of the anticipatory-self-defense rule.

Some commentators argue that allowing states to attack based upon suspicions or intelligence warnings would make the use of force a more frequent occurrence; their underlying assumption is that misperceptions, mistakes, and hair-trigger military postures — the World War I mentality — are destabilizing and the main causes of wars. When pressed for modern examples, they describe the current Pakistan- India standoff as an illustration of the dangers posed by preemptive military postures. These criticisms, however, are misplaced. The real danger in today’s world comes from rogue regimes and terrorist organizations that don’t care about international law, and whose propensity to use violence is not affected by game theory or exegeses of international treaties. Such regimes and groups understand only the language of military force. A robust preemptive posture offers the best hope both of deterring them and, if necessary, of defeating them.

Perhaps recognizing the weakness of their policy arguments, opponents also advance legal claims. They argue that the anticipatory-self- defense doctrine, however venerable or consonant with the national interest, did not survive the 1945 adoption of the U.N. Charter — which requires all U.N. members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” and limits application of the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense” to circumstances in which an armed attack already has taken place. This argument, however, relies on a crabbed reading of the charter, and reflects the erroneous (albeit widely held) view that the charter superseded the entire preexisting body of international law.

Moreover, the notion that anticipatory self-defense is barred by the U.N. Charter has not been supported by the actual practice of states in the years since the U.N. was established. And that, in the final reckoning, is the critical question. Anyone attempting to determine what international law truly provides on any particular point would do well to heed the Marquise de Merteuil’s maxim in Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Don’t listen to what people tell you, watch what they do. Here, the evidence is overwhelming that the traditional law of anticipatory self-defense survives. In 1967, for example, Israel preemptively struck Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, rather than suffer the attack of their massing forces; Israel was neither condemned nor sanctioned by the U.N. for this action. Similarly, she attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear-power facility in 1981, again citing “self- defense” as justification; this time, Israel’s action was condemned in the Security Council, but no action was taken to address the supposed “aggression.” Recalling the marquise’s maxim, this strongly suggests a fundamental recognition that Israel acted in accordance with her rights under international law to anticipate, and foil, attacks before they were launched.

I came into self-defense through martial arts. In 1992, I took a five-minute self-defense class at a women’s festival: how to use your voice, do a power yell and a palm heel strike, where you strike the nose with the heel of your palm. It had never occurred to me that I could protect myself because I’m a woman and I’m small and not that strong. The next day I signed up for a class.

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In 1993 some Asian women friends and I started RUCKUS. We thought we’d start a school for Asian women, but martial arts is a little hard; it needs commitment and it’s a “no pain, no gain” situation. Attrition is high. So the conversation turned to self-defense. Our way of teaching self-defense is about instilling confidence. We talk about internal strength, prevention, being smart. We talk about being a bitch, able to say what you want to say, set up a boundary and get the hell out. It goes from prevention to after-care. In between you might have to fight back. I teach them to go against vulnerable places. We go for eyes, nose and knees. We give women the chance to test their strength by hitting a pad. It doesn’t take much pressure to break a knee, so when you hit a pad and see that you’ve hit it hard, you know you can knock someone down. It’s a great way for women to imprint on their bodies that they have physical strength.

Asian women deal with specific issues; we tend to be smaller, and we’re supposed to be easy to attack. Attackers assume that we won’t do anything. We’re submissive, we’re gentle. Those assumptions make us vulnerable. Asian men also deal with the stereotype of being more submissive, more feminine, not as strong, thinner, weaker. For men, it’s very easy to go from zero to 100, and they have to learn when it’s okay not to fight. We also expanded to teaching queer communities, where people are often faced with multiple attackers, or need to get away with a partner. We have discussion, games, role plays and techniques. We talk about violence from people we don’t know and violence from people we do know. We talk about self-defense in domestic violence situations, where you have to see the person the next day.

It’s important to put violence in the context of our culture. Sometimes women give a racial description for their attacker. We don’t get “this white guy approached me”–he’s just “a guy”–but the men of color get identified. When it comes up, we try to separate the identity from the behavior: what actually happened, what he actually did.

I started teaching in Japan in 1997, when predominantly men or the police were teaching. I heard a lot of stories that the men didn’t believe women could defend themselves. It was hierarchical, with the big judo sensei teaching all these little women things they wouldn’t be able to do anyway. One woman came to my class and didn’t talk at all. Often people who don’t talk are thinking, thinking, thinking. After class, she handed me a thick envelope with her story. She ran away from home to Tokyo when she was a teenager. She was wandering and a man struck up a conversation with her. She told him she didn’t have a place to stay, and he said, “Why don’t you come with me?” He took her to a hotel and tried to rape her. She fended him off but he was very strong, so she feigned asthma and had a coughing fit. She kept it up for five and a half hours. He’d get her water, tell her “get better” and then try again. Every time he’d try to rape her, she’d start coughing. Finally it was like a war of attrition. He said, “I’m leaving.” I had started that class by telling self-defense stories, pointing out the maneuvers that women had used. Like coughing, or sometimes waiting, talking, cajoling, flattering. She said, “Please tell my story to as many women as you can so they can be inspired to get away, too.”

There was another woman who was blind. She had been told all her life that she should not go out, that she was a nuisance because she needs a caregiver to take her around. That was the first time I had taught someone who couldn’t see, so I had to learn about her instinctive reaction to her environment. I stood away from her and asked her to touch my nose; she touched it right away. I moved a little bit and asked her to touch my shoulder, and she did. She also had the guide stick that collapses into a bundle, or extends to six feet. I said, “Let me see your stick, it looks like a great weapon.” She said, “Oh my God, I’ve been told never to use that as a weapon.” I took it and started wielding it around, to see how she could hold it. We came up with all these great moves she could use, not to puncture anybody but to keep people away from her, to make it a shield.

All it takes is for somebody to tell you “this can be a weapon,” and your whole perspective changes. You see that your body is a weapon. Your voice is a weapon. Your hair-clip is a weapon. Your high heel is a weapon. But the biggest shift was her feeling that she has the right to protect herself. She’d always been taught that because she is disabled, she has to be protected. Two years ago in Japan domestic violence became a crime. In the last five years, there have been a lot of speak-outs about domestic violence and rape. That’s helped because people want this. They seek it out and it’s not a secret.

Most computer security books focus on how to defend a computer system or network from outside attack: that’s the basic difference between them and Neil R. Wylder’s Aggressive Network Self-Defense: I’m Mad As Hell, And I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore! The focus here is on the technical, legal and financial ramifications of a ’strike-back’ and ‘active defense’ program which promotes doing more than just defense. Chapters cover ‘cyber dogfights’ between hackers and defender/attackers, offers up tales of revenge and following the trail of an attacker, accounts of fights at different network levels, and stories of problem-solving in network attacks. Both fictional and many real-life scenarios are covered, with plenty of technical computer detail. A lively, satisfying book for all levels of computer user, but particularly administrators who want to do more than just defend.

In this work of epistemology, Elshof (philosophy, Biola U., California) conducts a critical assessment of the perceptual/observational model of introspection by examining the knowledge humans have of themselves, and whether such knowledge is a species of perception. He begins by analyzing the significance and pervasiveness of introspection and proceeds to his Perpetual Model of Introspection (PMI), describing its historical proponents and central thesis. He compares PMI to other models of self-knowledge, and summarizes early and contemporary arguments against it, including those from Lyons, Searle and Dennett, and follows with an examination of Shoemaker’s critiques, comparing him to Hume. In closing, Elshof maintains that despite the efforts of theorists since the onset of the twentieth century, PMI is the most natural way of thinking about the knowledge humans have of their own minds.

Like all my major life changes, my transformation began with lesbian relationship drama. My girlfriend went on vacation, remained incommunicado for a week, then phoned during a layover at a Midwestern airport and unceremoniously dumped me. The injustice was palpable-how dare she treat me so shabbily after all we’d been through!

I cursed her name as I walked my rottweiler around Brooklyn, miles passing as I vowed revenge. After a few weeks, my anger-fueled marches had burned 10 pounds. Although by lesbian standards I wasn’t even close to huge, I was definitely overweight. Years of nesting with my girlfriend, watching movies, and downing pints of Chunky Monkey had ballooned me to a size 17.

But when I realized my thighs didn’t chirp when I wore corduroy, my plan came lucidly into focus. Any gay man will tell you that the best revenge is looking fabulous. I’d have my ex kicking herself for leaving me.

In 2000, I’d joined a Hoteikan dojo, taking the occasional kickboxing class, gaining flexibility but not losing weight. I’d slacked off, but I began attending classes again. When my schedule interfered with kickboxing, my classmate Eileen convinced me to join karate.

I was reluctant to try what I saw. It seemed like a pissing contest for teenage boys with a Jackie Chan complex. Still, I needed to work out, if just to jettison stress. I started karate and–apart from occasional confusion over Japanese commands–found I was actually pretty good. My classmates surprised me with a new karate gi. I love drag, and dressing up in those white pajamas sealed the deal.

I threw myself into it, channeling my rage into kumite, or sparring. My mind was quiet, almost meditative, when I did kata, a series of moves for defeating an invisible opponent. I learned how to strike, how to kick, and how to block. With every new defense I realized how little I knew. It made me humble.

It also made me stop plotting revenge. When my ex moved, I helped her paint. I found her paint-splattered Calvin Kleins among my painting clothes and began wearing them. They were tight but fit better than my fatty pants, by now several sizes too big.

Soon, those Calvins were my fatty pants. “You’re shrinking away,” my ex said. I just smiled.

Each month took with it five more pounds of my adipose armor. The punches and blocks toned my shoulders and arms. Holding deep karate stances made my legs and calves strong. My ass morphed into two perfectly round orbs strong enough to crack walnuts. After a year I had lost nearly 50 pounds. Eight months later I’d kept it off. And although I’m less than anxious to get into another long-term relationship, all this exercise has kept my sheets as hot as my libido.

For me, fighting is the best exercise. It relieves stress and boosts my endorphin levels, making me naturally happy. Learning new techniques keeps my mind busy, turning working out into play. Losing weight took a lot of strain off my body. It’s wonderful that lesbians are less body-obsessed than the mainstream population, but we still need to take care of ourselves.

“Lesbians do smoke more, use alcohol at higher rates than heterosexual women … and tend to have higher weight. These things put us at risk for poor health outcomes, including cancer but also heart disease,” says Amari S. Pearson-Fields, deputy director of the Mautner Project, a national lesbian health organization.

Learning how to defend myself also made me less willing to be a victim. Although Brooklyn is a relatively safe place to live, there are people who want to harm you because you’re different. (When it comes to muggers, my sensei Tom Carrano advised, “Money and jewelry are replaceable; your life is much more valuable than any possession.”)

It’s great to have fighting skills, but it’s even better if you never have to use them in the street. Sensei Carrano teaches how to avoid or deflect violence using verbal skills. These strategies are also stressed at Brooklyn’s Center for Anti-Violence Education, a dojo geared toward women that specifically reaches out to communities affected by violence, including lesbians and transgender people. “Built into the sport are ways to protect yourself and build awareness of your environment,” says cofounder Annie Ellman. “But violence is a societal issue, and it takes a community to work against.”

Whether you live in a big city or a small town in America’s heartland, you will find a dojo nearby. Parents send their kids to karate to increase their concentration and to protect them from bullies. It works the same for adults. Especially for lesbians, karate can be a tough, sexy, and empowering way to get and stay in shape.

McCroy writes for numerous publications, including the New York Blade and Go NYC magazine.

The 2006 SHOT Show proved once again the firearms industry is a hotbed innovation and adaptation. New designs, new materials, it all came together in the Remington booth this year.

The most difficult of all shotguns to design is a semiautomatic. It has to feed, fire, extract and eject reliably light loads and heavy loads–standard 2 3/4″ shells, 3″ shells and increasingly, those 3 1/2″ Roman candles–and do it all without a hiccup and without beating itself into a pile of worn out and broken parts.

It has to be light without dishing out punishing levels of recoil. It has to be simple and easily disassembled by its owner because no gun accumulates more carbon, unburned power, and general gunk than a semiauto.

It’s really a marvel of engineering and firms like Remington, Browning, Winchester, Mossberg, Beretta, Benelli and Franchi have kept us well supplied with new and interesting models for decades.

When it comes to new semiautos, the year 2006 belongs to Remington. Their engineers really outdid themselves. Their new creation is called the 105CTi.

100th Anniversary

If the model designation sounds a little arcane, it is. The “1″ is Remington’s model prefix for autoloading shotguns as well as signifying their first new autoloader of the 21 st century. The “05″ stands for the year of design, 2005, which is also the 100th anniversary of Remington autoloading shotguns. The “C” and the “Ti” are the symbols for Carbon and Titanium in the Periodic Table of Elements. This is a high-tech smoothbore coupled with 21st century nomenclature.

I had an opportunity to shoot the 105CTi for a full morning on the skeet ranges of Nellis Air Force Base and I haven’t been more excited since the day I first handled a Remington 1100 and a Browning Double Auto.

In fact, if I had to draw an analogy to describe the 105CTi, it would be it’s as lively, light and well balanced as a Twelvette Double-Auto and as smooth and soft to shoot as an 1100.

Tour De Force

The engineering incorporated in the 105CTi is state of the art. To keep weight to a minimum and overall lines slim, the receiver is crafted from skeltonized Titanium. You wouldn’t know it because the Titanium is encased in a very eye-appealing, attractive, textured carbon-fiber shell.

The second big surprise is the 105CTi is an ambidextrous bottom feeder/ejector. No, there is no side port to collect weeds, seeds or rain, sleet and snow. You don’t have to worry about dumping hot cases down your friend’s back when in a duck blind, plus the first shell loaded is automatically fed into the chamber.

The trigger is the best Remington has ever put on an autoloader. It features a roller sear and is factory adjusted between 3 1/2 and 4 pounds. Have you noticed how trigger pull-weights are getting lighter and more adjustable across the industry? You bitched, they listened.

The new bolt is interesting. There’s a rotating locking ring just behind the bolt face so the bolt reciprocates and feeds in a straight line plus all internal parts are slick with an electroless nickel and Teflon finish. The tang of the bolt fits into an oil-filled cylinder, or rate reducer, housed in the butt stock. It regulates bolt velocity when shooting either 2 3/4″ or 3″ shells and reduces felt recoil.

In fact, recoil reduction in this 7-pound, 12-gauge gun is one of its outstanding qualities. It’s easy on your shoulder. Not only does the rate reducer smooth out recoil impulses, the concentric gas system is simple and lightweight, the barrel is overbored (.735″) and incorporates a long forcing cone. Finally, there’s a contoured Limb Saver-type R3 recoil pad screwed to the butt.

Fitted with either a 26″ or 28″ barrel, the 105CTi is fitted with one more hightech item–a lightweight, twin bead, ventilated rib made from carbon and aramid fibers. The aviation industry has really had an impact on modem firearm design. Look for the 105CTi at your dealers by the time you read this.

Other Treasures

Benelli introduced the ultra, “Ultra Light” autoloader–a 6-pound, 12-gauge gun for those whose “average hunting day is measured in miles.” Marlin’s L.C. Smiths looked better than ever. Kimber’s new seven-pin sidelock O/U, the Marias, was gorgeous. Beretta addressed the youth and smaller stature markets with the 3901 Target RL autoloader. The gun’s stock adjusts down to a 12″ length-of-pull combined with a cast off/on and comb height adjustments. Savage will be importing a new line of double guns. Winchester’s new Super X3 was loaded with bells and whistles. Browning’s latest Cynergy offerings include 20- and 28-gauge models. The Guerini booth was always filled. All in all, 2006 is turning out to be a great year for shotgunning!

Spanish shotgun manufacturer ComLanber S.A. has formed Lanber USA, headquartered in Blakely, Ga., to provide distribution, service and marketing for its line of over-and-under and semiautomatic shotguns.

The new U.S. facility will import and service Lanber over-and-under Models 2065, 2081, 2082, 2085, 2087 and the Sporting Clays Model 2097. Also available are the Lanber semiautomatics in Models 2532, 2533 and 2534. All Lanber shotguns are warranted for five years and are now available for immediate delivery to U.S. dealers.

When soldiers with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team boarded a charter flight from Savannah to Kuwait, they carried their rifles, shotguns, and pistols. But they didn’t carry any pocket knives, nose-hair clippers, or cigarette lighters. In keeping with federal regulations, they had to give up all of those items before getting on the airplane.

The M1200 shotgun is obsolete and has been replaced by the 34500 Mossberg shotgun, NSN 1005-01-295-1832. If your unit is authorized shotguns and you have M1200s, you should get them replaced with M500s since the M1200 is no longer supported by the Army. If you need help, contact TACOM-Rock Island’s Flora Taylor at DSN 793-1943/(309) 782-1943 or email:

flora.taylor@us.army.rail

Smith & Wesson officially confirmed in mid-November the strong rumors that it would soon introduce shotguns to its offerings. That will happen at the SHOT Show, where the company will debut two lines of shotguns.

The Smith & Wesson Elite Series will initially consist of the Elite Gold side-by-side 20-gauge and the Elite Silver over-and-under 12-gauge. In the Smith & Wesson 1000 Series of semiautos, S & W is offering shotguns in 29 configurations. The shotguns, designed by Smith & Wesson, are being made in Turkey.

“By partnering with seasoned veterans and securing dedicated facilities in Turkey that have been built entirely for our use, we are entering the market with new products very quickly, with a high degree of quality and with no investment of capital,” said Mike Golden, S & W president and CEO.

S & W will showcase the new shotguns at its main SHOT Show booth (#3175).

Smith & Wesson’s introduction of shotguns comes as no surprise. Company officials have openly discussed their goals to aggressively pursue new markets. First came the M & P15 rifles, now shotguns. Hunting rifles will be next.

“We continue to explore opportunities in the market for hunting rifles, as well,” Golden said.