Mean Mr. Mustard

2002-10-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

Moving out sale! Everything Must go!

That's right folks, pursuant with my move to my new home at www.MeanMrMustard.net, every part of this site must be sold off! We've got tons of items that are going at low low prices. In fact, our prices are so low, you'll think I've suffered brain damage!

We've got items for the whole family. Along with a large stock of mainstream products such as full collections of definite articles, indefinite articles, preopsitions, modifiers and assorted nouns, verbs and adjectives, we also have a special selection of hard-to-find items that you won't be able to get anywhere else in the blogosphere!

Due to our company's policy of consuming large amounts of alcohol prior to posting, we have accumulated an impressive array of unique words that will impress your friends and baffle your enemies.

Ever wanted to have a "the" spelled with a 6? Well now you can!

Are you afraid that spelling "trapanasomiasis" correctly will make you seem snooty? No worries, because we right now have over 10 different versions for you to use, so that your friends won't worry about you thinking you're better than everyone else. (note: we assume no responsibility for any beatings you may undergo for merely using the word "trapanasomiasis" at all).

So get these items while they're still here, because no one likes a smarty pants.

2002-10-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Regular blogging to resume soon...

...seeing as how I'm going through what should be the last steps to get Movable Type up and working. I've hit a few snags that I'm seeking advice on, and so soon I hope to have those issues resolved.

Then you'd better ready for more hot blog-on-blog action!

2002-10-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

Much too little of it these days...

Common sense, that is. How nice now that we've got a one-stop-shop for it in the blogosphere.

So take a gander at Common Sense, and guys, don't be intimidated by the pink background. Just because you're reading a pink blog doesn't make you any less of a man.

That frilly underwear you've got on that you stole from your girlfriend's dresser on the other hand, does.

2002-10-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

Search Query Fun

My favorite one of the day: "effects of detergent in mustard."

Apparently pouring Tide in your Dijon causes one to get a blog and start firing off angry screeds.

2002-10-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

Bush Rex

The Rott points out the latest episode in Jim McDermott's descent into paranoid delusional madness, claiming with a straight face that Bush seeks to crown himself emperor of America.

This accusation raises an important and troubling issue: when a national political figure has gone completely bananer, do you invoke an intervention, bringing together his friends and family for a frank and honest discussion about how much they are all worried about his downward spiral in the hopes that he will seek the help he needs, or do you just beat him silly with a sack full of doorknobs?

The first solution is productive and empathic, but the second is just so much more goddamned fun!

2002-10-08T02:05:00.000-07:00

"Who Would Wish This on Anyone?"

Jon MacArthur asks this question in the title of his article on Common Dreams, in which he begs for an answer to the query, in the manner of a 5 year old seeing things that are impossibly beyond his mental grasp, "Why do people go to war, Daddy?". This sort of naivete can be endearing in the unblemished innocence of a child, but for a full-grown man who is the publisher of Harper's, it strikes one as a little pathetic.

Indeed, a more apt substitute for what the "this" refers to in his title would not be war, but his sad piece of shoddy, illogical and purely emotional drivel that is MacArthur's article. This might seem cruel to my readers to quote extensively from it, but if I had to go through the mental anguish of reading it, then so do you, dammit.

The feverish war talk pouring forth from Washington and the cable networks this past year was inevitable, given 9/11.

That's right, jingoistic American cowboys can't really be expected to do anything else. I like how you, in one stupid sentence, reduce all the moral, strategic and geopolitical concerns that have led up to America planning military action against Iraq into a cathartic mass hysteria of kvetching in some blind, hate-fueled need to get us some revenge 'gainst all them Ay-Rabs. It's much easier than addressing any kind of issue that actually pertains to the situation isn't it?

I see you've been taking Maureen Dowd's workshop.

But lately, the relentless barrage of military enthusiasm has caused me to wonder: How did war itself -- that is, killing, maiming, bombing and burning -- come to be such a popular program in American political and media circles?

Because after all, that's all war is. It's us dropping bombs and whooping it up at all the big noises and shiny things while poor people blow up into little bits.

It's not as if war against Saddam actually serves the easily identifiable purpose of self-defense and world security, is it? Admit it, using a bunch of high-falutin' arguments about weapons of mass destruction and violation of cease-fire agreements is just coded language to mask the fact that you want to kill people in other countries to make yourself feel like a big man.

MacArthur completely brushes aside any reference to any of the stated reasons for this particular war and simply claims that all war ever is can be labeled "killing, maiming, bombing and burning." It is completely pointless, you see. All just about mindless violence.

Ah, the innocence of children... or of a middle-aged man with the deductive powers of children, who are able to discern that wars often increase the amount of frowns and tears, and so conclude that therefore we should tell all the bad men with the big guns to stop doing those things and instead sing songs about sharing and togetherness to each other.

Logically, human beings ought to be terrified of war; after all, you or someone you know might die in one, or suffer a hideous wound, either as a combatant or an innocent bystander. Yet some in the Bush administration -- not just the cynical political operatives who would count votes before they would count corpses -- seem positively thrilled by the notion of smashing Iraq, and a lot of Iraqis, to pieces.

Or, "How could you want to go to war, don't you know you might get hurt? Leave that tank alone, you could put an eye out!"

And it's good to know that the Bushies aren't planning to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers only to win an election. They also have an unquenchable bloodlust on top of that! Whew, good to know.

And of course, despite the fact that everyone in any position of power has said over and over again how our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people, but Saddam and his cronies, MacArthur isn't fooled. Oh no. This war is about killing lots of innocent Iraqis. Why else would we be doing it? War is about "killing, maiming, bombing and burning," remember?

There being little opposition among elected politicians here at home to leveling Afghan villages and destroying Iraqi sewage plants, I had to look elsewhere for an explanation -- to an interview I conducted last April with a German of Second World War vintage, Helmut Schmidt, who was West Germany's Social Democratic chancellor from 1974 to 1982.

And also spent about 4 years fighting to bring Europe under the sway of that icon of peace and freedom, Adolf Hitler.

A venerable 83 years old when I met him in a midtown Manhattan hotel room, Mr. Schmidt seemed not to care much what American politicians thought of him any more, or European politicians for that matter, so I figured I'd come to the right place. His generation of Cold War leaders has passed from the public stage and he now spends his days as the elder statesman publisher of Die Zeit, the great Hamburg-based intellectual weekly.

The contortions that MacArthur goes through in order to brush aside the fact that Schmidt fought for the Nazis in that last paragraph should qualify him for a circus sideshow.

The problem with all the self-righteous, post 9/11 saber rattling, Mr. Schmidt told me, was that the politicians doing the rattling literally don't know what they're talking about. "In none of the European capitals do you still have individuals who have lived through war as grown-up people, be it as soldiers, be it in concentration camps as prisoners, be it in the basements of cities where the bombs and the fire were falling from the sky," he said. "They don't know what war is. They haven't experienced it. . . . Mr. Clinton hasn't, Mr. Bush hasn't. They don't know what war means to people. And they are, therefore, more easily inclined to intervene by force, even under humanitarian auspices . . . without conceiving the loss of lives that any military intervention brings with it."

I recall (vaguely, since I was a wee lad at the time) the testimonies of all sorts of disarmament activists during the 80's who appeared before congress during the periodical drives advocating the US to just give up all our nukes and hope that the Soviet Union would follow our noble example.

So you basically got people like Ralph Nader parading their moral superiority and indignation at the fact that a simple, obvious truth was being ignored by all kinds of military experts and senators and presidents: that nuclear war would like, really, really suck, man!

And the senators taking the breathless statements of these people describing the horrors of nuclear war would sort of try to hide the pained looks on their faces that seemed to suggest "As if we didn't know that, you silly twit."

I'm tempted to ask just how, since no one has ever had to experience a M.A.D. nuclear exchange, would they have been in any psoition to talk about how bad one would be? And just what gave them the moral authority to argue against it, never having had to live through what they're denouncing?

It might just be because a halfway intelligent person doesn'tt have to participate in a war to recognize the perils inherent. Forget that walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes, because most of the time, that argument is pure sillines. It is based on the contention that rational person cannot make any kind of reasonable judgement about a situation without directly experiencing it.

This is utter nonsense, and it demonstrates a kind of blind unshakeable faith in simplistic platitudes of which MacArthur has thus far shown himself to be quite the connoisseur.

Were this childlike belief true, then we would have to, for instance, abolish the entire Western tradition of law, since it is predicated on the principle that normal people (jurors and judges) can reach logical and correct conclusions about a situation (a crime) in which they had no part. Likewise, it does not speak well for the human condition as a whole if the president or his advisors cannot be counted on to realize that war is a difficult, bloody and treacherous affair. MacArthur essentially makes the same assumption that is an Idiotarian fave: that the fact that anyone is even thinking about war is proof positive that they have not even given a moment's thought to the dangers. Don't they know people die in war?

Read on, there's much more to shake your head sadly at or pump your fist in anger.

2002-10-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

Matthew Engel: Reductio ad Idiotium

Ok, so everyone by this point is painfully aware of the fact that the specter of Nazism and Hitler and fascism is used far too often. George Orwell was able to see and comment on this more than 50 years ago when he said that, by the way people were using it, that the word fascism essentially came to mean anything that was even vaguely disliked by anyone.

So that's why I'm never surprised when I see or hear about the ghosts of National Socialism creeping into the most absurd of places in public debate today. I'm not surprised when the mendacious snakes in America and Europe that pimp for the murder of Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas call the Israelis Nazis, or depict Sharon as Hitler. Nor am I particularly shocked that a German government official compared Bush to Hitler (and I won't even go into the fact that the irony in that statement is so thick you couldn't cut it with a blowtorch).

So in that sense, Matthew ENgel of the Guardian is correct. The word is thrown around too much these days. No one would dispute that. I, for one, wouldn't be surprised if it became so common that someone who got cut off in traffic would roll down their window and shout "Watch where you're going, Hitler!"

But Engel's solution to this problem is to completely banish the word as well as any other associated with Nazism from any kind of use in discussion about current affairs. I'm not sure how serious he's being about this (isn't a sense of humor somehow prohibited in the hiring process at the Guardian?), but however much he really means what he says directly correlates with how dumb he ends up looking in his article.

This would not apply to discussion of German history in the years up to 1945. That is not the problem. The problem is the incessant appearance of the words as a resort to winning arguments about modern politics.

Well I'm glad he doesn't want to strike the word out of history books, because that's what I thought he meant! (As a sidenote, it's not as if Hitler isn't relevant to history that takes place after the end of WWII, although a lot of Germans would like to think of it that way.)

But yes, it's wrong to invoke the Nazis as some sort of argumentative ad hom trump card. But is Engel saying anything new or original by making this statement? No half-way sensible person would ever have doubted that in the first place. Engel ends up showing his real ideological cards a little later on:

Let's be clear about this. Saddam Hussein is not Hitler, as hysterical Americans keep claiming. The charges of external violence are 12 years old. There is no coherent evidence that he had any plans (at least before the US began goading him) for more adventures, merely that he is obsessed with stockpiling weaponry, a charge that applies equally to the Pentagon. Far from seeking global or regional domination, he only dominates portions of Iraq.

Hoo-boy, and there it is. The first and most prominent example Engel trots out is "hysterical" Americans claiming that Saddam is Hitler. Yes, that is why we shouldn't be using the word anymore.

I hate to have to take apart the nice little strawman that you've built here, Engel, but there aren't many Americans (even among the more "hysterical" of us) who just claim outright that Saddam is just another Hitler, a Boy From Brazil with a slightly bushier mustache.

What many people have done (and demonstrated good reason for doing so) is to point out similarities between the two that are worth drawing. Just one of the most prominent of these is the sheer degree of inhumane brutality between the Baath party in Iraq and the Nazi party in Germany. The level of well-documented torture that seems to serve both political and personal ends is simply nauseating. And no, it isn't matched the world over in dozens of other countires. I have no wide-eyed naive views about the rest of the globe being a cheery, innocent place, but others besides Saddam and his cronies would have to work very hard and be very creative to just come close to the amount of torture and pain and death inflicted in Iraq over the last 20 years.

In this case, as in many others, comparing the Tikrit monsters to Nazis is not unwarranted. Indeed, it would be instructive and helpful to do so. It would be even more instructive if the word were not diluted to such an extent and robbed of the real power it should have by despicable liars and demagogues who can't muster up the intellectual courage to confront the ideas of their opponents, and instead start hurling accusations of Nazism.

The pro-war folks (and in general those more on the Right) do not call anyone who happens to disagree with them Hitler. They don't talk about fascist tactics in an election whose outcome they don't happen to like. And they don't say that simply deporting foreigners who have already overstayed their visas and are thus already in violation of US law is putting us on the slippery slope to hanging swastikas outside every window.

And therein lies the real reason that Engel has embarked on this foolish crusade: because almost exclusively, those who employ those words and images in their outrageous, illogical and dishonest fashion are on the Left. The laughably ridiculous Students for Justice in Palestine label Hillel members Nazis. People (read: idiots) photoshop images of Bush wearing a brownshirt and giving a left-handed Nazi salute. A German twit suggests that Bush is taking a page from the Hitler/Goebbels playbook, trying to placate and fool the masses by focusing them on a nonexistent outward enemy. And then some people make well-supported comparisons of some aspects of Nazism and the current regime in Iraq.

Now boys and girls, which of these things is not like the others?

Engel wants to banish the use of Nazis in public debate because it is invariably the Left that ends up looking stupid because of it, with their shrill, over-the-top accusations and poorly drawn comparisons. Whereas on the other side of the political spectrum, comparing some aspects of Saddam Hussein to Hitler is actually justified and useful. Engel ends up looking like one of those painfully idiotic college kids who can't the difference between Bush and Hitler when he claims that any rhetorical use of the Nazis is inherently demagogic and unjustified.

Maybe Engel truly does believe that. More likely in my mind is that he's afraid that the terror the image of Hitler strikes, and the revulsion that it produces in any civilized person will be put to constructive use by the pro-war folks, since thire accusation carries so much more weight, seeing as how it's not patently absurd and so dishonest as to be outright offensive. He's worried that people will actually be able to show that Saddam's intended ends, as well as the means that he is willing to employ to reach them, do in fact bear an unmistakable and non-trivial relation to that gigantic looming monster of human history, and thus that this will rightly galvanize people in the campaign to take military action in order to be rid of Saddam, which is what I think Mr. Engel is really concerned about.

He says, as if it is some sort of even-handed concession, that "Blair is not Hitler," and "Bush is not Hitler."

Well no fucking shit.

He states with equal certainty however that to label Saddam as Hitler is just as ridiculous, mentioning it as the first and foremost (and subtlely even the most egregious) misuse of the word. Sorry boyo, but that's a much tougher proposition to establish.

By simply lumping those three figures in together as all being equally "not Hitler," he's in effect comparing Bush and Blair to Saddam! This is almost as bad, if not worse, as saying that the President and the Prime Minister have secret cabinets full of jackboots and brownshirts at home, especially since he does this while outrageously striking a pose of singular level-headedness, pooh-poohing all the hysterical jingoistic Americans and the banshee cries of the panties-in-a-bundle Euros.

Engel better check himself. He's letting his hysteria show.

2002-10-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Anti-War Fever Strikes San Francisco!

Nurse, get me 20 CCs of common sense, stat!

The San Francisco Chronicle (the toilet paper of major US newspapers) has an article about an anti-war protest that took place over the weekend. The writer, Elizabeth Fernandez, stops just short of describing the event in completely breathless admiration, writing:

Anti-war fever awoke over the weekend, as about 8,000 protesters in San Francisco joined brethren across the country in a rising rumble against President Bush's drive to disarm Iraq.

I suppose it's a testament to the Chronicle's devotion to journalistic objectivity that she didn't call them fearless comrades struggling against an imperialistic regime.

A good way to judge someone is by the company they keep:

"This is the beginning of a solid anti-war movement," said Osama Qasem, 32, president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who attended Sunday's demonstration at Union Square.

Bad choice of name there, Osama. You might want to take a page from the book of any German immigrants that were named Hitler in 1941. For some reason you don't see many of those today.

Mr. Qasem's committee is a delightful repository of junk, lies and propaganda, eager to debunk such "myths" as the contention that the Israeli military seeking out murderous terrorists and the specific targeting of civilians by suicide bombers aren't the same thing, and that Arafat never condemns terrorism sincerely. As proof of the later, they cite two instances where Arafat apparently condemned some specific attacks.

Wow. Two whole quotes. I suppose you might also want to address the literally hundreds of quotes taken from that baby-wiping pussbag in which he unabashedly praises suicide bombers, as well that funny little moment where he called the 19 9/11 hijackers the "most noble men among us," or maybe, just as a crazy suggestion, you might consider explaining what was up with all that documented proof that Arafat and the PA personally had a hand in supplying and planning suicide attacks against Israeli women and children.

In the immortal words of Ben Stein: "Anyone? Anyone?"

Polls generally indicate support for military action against Iraq, believed by the Bush administration to have long been acquiring weapons of mass destruction, with a majority of people polled favoring multilateral backing through the United Nations.

Catch that? The fact that Saddam is trying to get WMDs is a "belief" on the part of the Bush administration, probably among those wacky loose cannons like Wolfy and Rummy. I wouldn't be surprised if I went back about 12 years in the Chronicle archives and found stories about the Gulf War where it referred to Iraq as being "believed by the Bush administration to have invaded Kuwait."

So anyway, it's nice that the kids could get out for a day and make themselves feel all nice and self-righteous. It's a good thing that they're in a severe minority, since I'm sure it only adds to their sense of satisfaction that they're so much more enlightened than all the war-mongering simpletons in "fly-over" country. And of course the Chronicle couldn't leave us without highlighting that cherished belief:

Watching bemusedly from the cable car queue was Chris Jacobsen, 19, a Coast Guard seaman apprentice visiting the city from Nebraska.

"There's a generation gap going on here. I see a lot of old people who probably haven't been protesting since Vietnam," said Jacobsen, who supports military action in Iraq. "San Francisco has been liberal for so long, you expect to see demonstrations like this here. In Omaha, this would never fly."

One of the more nauseating things about Berkeley (and that's saying a lot) is the constant self-referential and self-aggrandizing stance of "Hey America, look at us, we're liberal and iconoclastic and we're not afraid to show it!"

Not only are they not afraid, but they cream their pants with glee at the very suggestion.

The same sentiment runs rampant in San Francisco as well (a city with a massive inferiority complex if there ever was one), which constantly strives to show how much more refined, more sophisticated and generally just how much better it is, morally, intellectually, culturally. It's the tired, masturbatory dance of folks who just can't get over the fact that the rest of the country isn't interested in the opinions of what are so obviously its moral and intellectual betters.

So we get snippets like the one above, striving to show just how different they are from -shudder!- Omaha.

Yes, thank you. Message received. We'll let you know if the rest of us ever start caring. Just don't hold your breath.

No, on second thought: Please, hold your breath. If you start to lose conciousness it means it's working.

2002-10-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm on it, I swear!

I'm still working on the big switch over to Movable Type and the casting off of the shackles of Blogspot for greener hosting pastures. Should be happening soon.

Also, I've changed my email that I'm using for this site. Send all comments to mrmustard1980@yahoo.com

2002-10-06T23:16:00.000-07:00

Oh excellent.

The Angry Clam points to this despicable flyer from the despicable goons at Students for Justice in Palestine.

Rally on the 16th, eh?

I'll be there, you thugs. You'll be able to tell it's me cuz I'll be the one carrying the big "I disagree" sign.

I figure that's in keeping with the tradition of dissent from this kind of campus idiocy.

2002-10-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

The blogosphere: typically pro-war because...

...we're part of an information medium that allows, nay, thrives on actual debate and having its ideas challenged. Or so suggests this JoeUser fellow (pointed to by the Prof).

I completely agree. No shock there.

I remember about 5 years ago, I was listening to Dennis Prager and the topic was liberal control of the media (Don't groan. It wasn't a normal topic for him. Besides, it's true). Someone called to disagree and they pointed to talk radio as a counter example, since it was so overwhelmingly conservative.

Prager didn't respond with the obvious answer to that contention: that Talk Radio was and is a tiny, tiny fraction of the media market when compared with mainstream print and broadcast journalism, but he did say "I can give you the reason why talk radio is more conservative than mainstream media, but you're not going to like it."

He said essentially that it was due to the fact that talk radio was the only medium that allowed direct, immediate confrontation of the ideas it put forth. The caller of course scoffed at this, just as there will sundry others will scoff at JoeUser's contention.

And they'll do so flimsily, using inept ad hom and equivocation, not bringing anything much of any real substance to the table, and the Blogosphere will hand them their rhetorical ass again.

And again.

2002-10-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Took the LSAT yesterday morning...

...and I feel like I did pretty well. I'm hoping for 170 or higher and I think that's at least in the realm of possibilities. It all depends which section was experimental. By the time the real part of the test was over and we had to do the writing section, I was sick of the whole thing and wanted desperately to get out of there.

People had told me beforehand that the writing section was a total joke, since it didn't count towards your numerical score at all, and is only included as a token nod to the fact that "writing matters too" or something. A guy from Princeton Review told me, "Don't even worry about the writing section. It'll take you like 10 minutes to do, and then you'll just be sitting there for the next half hour or so. If you get the urge to practice the writing section, just turn on the TV or something." He also told me that many law schools don't even to bother glancing at your writing sample, and that it almost doesn't matter what you write as long as it's not "I like weed," scrawled over and over.

Nevertheless, I decided to approach the matter seriously and took a whole 15 minutes or so and actually tried to present a coherent case with the space I was given, laying out several points and supporting them with warrants and evidence.

Then I wrote, "P.S. I like weed."

2002-10-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

A different world? Not so fast there, buddy...

Today in the New York Times, Thomas Mann writes concerning Bush's foreign policy as it relates to that of Harry Truman.

It isn't an over-the-top piece. It isn't shrill or snarking or mired in reflexive nail-biting about addressing "root-causes" and asking why they hate us. These days, that's something to be thankful for.

That's not to say, however, that Mann doesn't drop the ball in the same tired way that so many before him have.

Central to Mann's proposition is that the geopolitical worlds of Truman and Bush are similar enough to use Truman as an exemplar of action for Bush to follow. Of course, this contention has never been credibly established, when it's been acknowledged at all. More often, you'll see (or not see) the assumption fly by without even being addressed by the writer.

Mann, at the very least, starts to look like he's going to address this point, but he never does. After praising Truman and offering qualified praise for Bush's actions immediately following 9/11, he goes on to say,

Of course, George Bush faces very different security threats and operates in a world vastly changed from what it was in Truman's time.

Upon first reading this, I briefly felt hope rising in my chest, hope that this fellow would finally be one to actually get it, that he would realize that Arab Traditionalism isn't the same kind of threat as Soviet Communism, that the current diplomatic climate is vastly different from that of the 1950's and carries with it different implications for action. I thought about how all the flavors of people who can be labeled (or rather, accused to be) conservatives in one or another, whether of the neocon, paleocon, libertarian, or any other such strain have likely been at one time accused of living in the past, or being out of touch, or stuck in some sort of world-gone-by, and I'm sure it would be an irony as bittersweet as tears on Turkish Delight for the new brand of "containment" doves were they to realize that they are absolutely buried up to the neck in the Cold War swamp, and that the world's situation has passed them by and left them behind, still slogging through the old theories that no longer apply.

These were the things that were going through my mind as I began to read that bit of Mann's piece. Of course, it wasn't long before reality came crashing down. It was the next sentence, in fact.

It is often said that American military, economic and technological primacy now affords us the freedom to wage discretionary wars and to pursue national interests without the cooperation of major allies or the approval of international organizations.

Dammit.

Mann, you were this close.

More:

Yet Truman had some of these same options. America emerged from World War II as the dominant economic and military power. It could have embraced a unilateralist and offensive posture in responding to postwar security challenges. But Truman resisted pressure from those advocating more aggressive actions against the Soviet Union and China. His restraint and his inclination to take the long view may fit the particular challenges now facing Mr. Bush.

At the very least, it must be acknowledged that the strongest actual proscriptive that Mann posits is for the Bush team to consider whether or not we could benefit from a similar strategy as Truman's. However, to my mind this is merely Mann hollowly hedging his bets, suggesting somehow that this strategy, as the dominant theory in American foreign policy for more than a half-century, hasn't already been addressed by the Bush administration as a possible course of action, as if they've just neglected or forgot about it somehow. It apparently doesn't enter the realm of possibilities that this theory of geopolitics has been examined and discarded because, when faced with Al Qeada and not the USSR, Iraq and not Vietnam, Iran and not China, the practices that went into halting international communism just don't apply.

Above, Mann seems to be on the verge of coming to terms with that fact: that the world, and the enemies we have in it, just aren't the same that they were 50 years ago, but instead claims that the really important differences between then and now aren't in the nature of who's opposing us, but of who we are (or think we are). Essentially, Mann seems to think that the only real matter of import these days is that now we think that we're so just so goddamned big!

Of Truman, Mann says,

His instinct was to look for allies and international legitimacy in responding to security threats while mobilizing American resolve and resources. He built and strengthened multilateral institutions, forged broad alliances to confront the Soviet Union, and turned immediately to the United Nations when North Korea launched its attack in 1950.

This is to suggest that president Bush has not done this.

The distinction that Mann seems to miss is that we do welcome and seek out allies in this conflict. We also consult with them and take their opinions seriously, but we do not let the fact that they happen to not agree with our ideas about what action the situation warrants to act as some sort of immediate and all-powerful check on what we can and can't do. That wasn't the case then and it isn't the case now. Almost no one believes we shouldn't consult with our allies. What is a matter of disagreement is just what "consult" means. Does it mean we ask for their input and form a plan, taking into mind their considerations but not necessarily agreeing with or implementing them, or does it mean they say "Nah, we really don't like that plan," and then we nod "Ok then," pack it up and just forget we ever thought of the whole silly business?

The crucial difference between Truman's time and Bush's on this side of the conflict lies not with the United States or its president, but in the nature of the UN and the rest of the international community.

Confronted with the kind of threat we're facing today, I'm sure Truman would have sought out UN approval to seek out and destroy the enemy, and should he have faced an indifferent or outright hostile UN, he would have gone ahead and done what he felt the country needed to do to ensure its protection anyway, because he would have realized that in times of crisis, you seek out your allies, but you don't let the fact that some of your allies may well be idiots in a particular situation keep you from acting sensibly. A coalition is a nice part of a means to an end, if you can swing it. It is not an end in itself.

2002-10-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

If you've sent me email...

...over the last couple days, I didn't get it, since Eudora exploded and sent messy globs of POP all over my room. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bits of porn spam out of carpet?

Anyway, I reinstalled, so if you sent anything important and don't mind sending it again, please do so (unless it's about Gwynne Dyer being a guy. Thank you, I have had this pointed out a number of times already. Besides, that's his problem, not mine.)

2002-10-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

I said FISK! Huh! Good God, y'all! What is he good for? Absolutely nuthin'!

Say it again!

Well actually, I'm being unfair. He is good for several things.

I am told that, were he melted down and separated into his various basic chemical components, he would be worth a full 71 cents.
He has supplied the Blogosphere with one of its most enduring terms.
He serves as a celebrity rolemodel for other victims of Extreme Stupidity Disease ("eliminate ESD in our lifetime!").
He has not ceased to produce a constant stream of unthinking commentary, unhinged from any considerations of reality or the mental health of his readers, and thus serves as a wellspring for those looking for something to get their panties all up in a bundle about.

I'm sure there are others who have covered this, but it's just too goddamned much fun for me to not join the party as well, so witness the latest.

NATO Used the Same Old Trick When It Made Milosevic an Offer He Could Only Refuse
by Robert Fisk

It's the same old trap. NATO used exactly the same trick to ensure that it could have a war with Slobodan Milosevic. Now the Americans are demanding the same of Saddam Hussein – buried well down in their list of demands, of course. Tell your enemy that you're going to need his roads and airspace – with your troops on the highways – and you destroy his sovereignty.

Saddam's sovereignty, eh?

Did someone turn the clock back to 1990 and not tell me?

Ever since the cease-fire agreement that ended the first Gulf War, there hasn't been any sovereignty to speak of. Saddam gave it up (or rather, had it justifiably taken away from him) as the price of not having the coalition (read: US) forces personally hand him his ass after his terrifying million man army was scattered in 100 hours of fighting like cockroaches after the lights are flipped on.

You'd think a journalist of Fisk's caliber would have access to a dictionary. But since he obviously doesn't, let's have ourselves a little vocabulary review: sovereignty:

Supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign or sovereign state.
Royal rank, authority, or power.
Complete independence and self-government.
A territory existing as an independent state.

So ask yourself, Robbie, does the fact that Saddam was forced to agree to give up its WMDs, forced to remain outside of the no-fly zones on the southern and northern ends of the country, and threatened with immediate military action should he not meet these conditions constitute "complete independence"?

I know it hurts, but just keep thinking, it'll come to you eventually.

Saddam has had no de jure sovereignty since the end of the Gulf War. He should have absolutely no de facto sovereignty as well, but because the UN has been remiss in its duties (a shock, that), this hasn't been the case. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that it will soon. I'm sure you're shitting yourself in terror at the thought, since you're no doubt certain that this will only serve to inflame the "Arab Street" further, and incite more of these poor, oppressed folks to whale on you some more. That's another reason I'm crossing my fingers.

That's what NATO demanded of Serbia in 1999. That's what the new UN resolution touted by Messrs Bush and Blair demands of Saddam Hussein. It's a declaration of war.

No, that isn't a declaration of war. It's a declaration of "We're going to do exactly what was agreed upon a decade ago." I realize that this pledge to actually follow through on statements made is a pretty frightening idea to everyone else in the UN, seeing as how it disrupts their wonderfully comfortable lifestyle of endless meetings catered with lobster and champagne while they perfect their most withering frowns to direct at their enemies, but hey, thems the breaks.

It worked in 1999. The Serbs accepted most of NATO's Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo, but not Appendix 8, which insisted that "NATO personnel shall enjoy ... free and unimpeded passage and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

It was a demand that Mr Milosevic could never accept. US troops driving through Serbia would have meant, in these circumstances, the end of Yugoslav sovereignty.

It did not mean the end of Yugoslav sovereignty, it meant the end of Slobodan Milosevic, so yes, he couldn't accept that offer.

See, Fisk, this is the part where you explain what your moronic point is.

Oh. You don't have one. Very well...

This is a politically necessary statement, essentially giving Saddam one last chance to give up peacefully and not drag his country through a war. But of course he can't accept that, since he's a an egomaniacal freakazoid who only cares about his own survival and personal ambition. Does this fact somehow put him in the right?

But now we have the draft UN resolution which Presidents Bush and Blair insist the UN must pass. Arms inspection teams, it says, "shall have the right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces or by members of the UN [Security] Council".

In other words, Washington can order forces of the US (a Security Council member) to "enforce" these "corridors" through Iraq – on the ground – when it wants. US troops would thus be in Iraq. It would be invasion without war; the end of Saddam, "regime change", the whole shebang.

Well Fisk, you let it out. Your ideological pants are down to your ankles and we can all see your Idiotarian weenis in its pathetic, intellectually shriveled glory.

I always thought getting rid of Saddam without war was what all the anti-war folks wanted. I forget how I came to that conclusion...

Oh right.

That's what they said. Endlessly. For weeks.

Every bit of commentary that opposed the war that wasn't from the wackiest 2% of the left always preambled its claims that we shouldn't get rid of Saddam with some prosaic drivel about how nice it would be if Saddam suddenly dissapeared without war. Well, here you go, Fisk. It's even gift-wrapped with a nice little red bow and a card that reads "Courtesy of a simplistic, unilateral cowboy."

What? You're taking it back?

Geez, some people you just can't shop for.

No Iraqi government – even a Baghdad administration without the odious Saddam – could ever accept such a demand. Nor could Serbia have accepted such a demand from NATO, even without the odious Slobodan. Which is why the Serbs and NATO went to war.

Correction: no mass-murdering, insane crapocracy could accept those demands. Any reasonably intelligent government that actually cared about the welfare of the nation and its people more than its own selfish desires would throw up its hands and say "come on in!"

What, Saddam isn't one of those kinds of rulers? I, for one, am shocked and appalled.

2002-10-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

Rachel Lucas is right...

Blogspot ain't the best thing in the world for bloggers. She suggests that every blogger worth his or her words get off their duff and get their own domain or at least go somewhere else. Well, it just so happens that I've been contemplating such a move. But then of course, I've got a web admin friend who will just give me free hosting, cuz well, he's cool like that.

I doubt most bloggers are in the same fortuitous position and might hestitate to shell out 10-20 bucks a month in return for just the barebones of quality as far as web hosting goes.

But as for me, sometime over the next few days (more likely after Saturday), I'll be switching to www.meanmrmustard.net, and hopefully not long after I'll be abandoning this whole Bplogger deal and moving on to MovableType, and of course then the real fun will begin.

2002-10-03T02:03:00.000-07:00

Take two Fisks and call me in the morning

Ugh. I'm tired of studying. The analytical reasoning section is beginning to grate on my nerves.

No, that's not true. It grated on my nerves the moment I came into contact with it. By now it's ground itself deep into my body cavity and is, as we speak, eviscerating entire sections of my lower intestine before hits the spine and makes a beeline for my cerebral cortex.

All the literature on preparing for standardized tests specifically says stop and take a break once the disembowlment metaphors start popping into your head. And who am I to disagree with the experts?

So I went a-coasting for some online idiocy to angry up the blood. I had to look for like, a whole 35 seconds, man. A slow day for internet stupidity if there ever was one. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. Does Barbra Streisand have a blog?

So, zipping on over to Common Dreams, I come across a delightful screed (I mean that in the bad, un-Lileks way. I fear the chap has taken a perfectly good pejorative and forever draped a robe of ambiguity about it. From now on, we'll be wondering, "Did he mean a boring, crappy speech, or an incisive piece of invective with logic so sharp it could cut a penny?" I might have to stop using it altogether), this one by the "writer and activist" Rick Stahlhut. Take a gander.

Rick apparently does his writing and activismizing in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Now I'm sure there are lots of perfectly normal, sane people in Kalamazoo, and no, simply being from there or calling it your residence, by virtue of the name of the place, of course doesn't automatically make one a loon.

But I don't think it helps.

At least, it really doesn't help in Mr. Strahlhut's case, as he goes about "Considering Motives for Gulf War II."

Citizens can influence the decision whether to attack Iraq. This requires understanding our administration's likely motives, which are not necessarily the stated ones. Although this task may seem overwhelming to busy Americans, it is nevertheless worthwhile, given that many soldiers and innocents will die if we attack.

Thank goodness we have Rick here to illuminate things for us, the pedestrian proles, the provincial plebs, the (two more words that both begin with "p")s. I for one know that I'm "overwhelmed" whenever I turn on my TV and see all these strange bright colors and hear the voices of people coming out of it. Is my television box infested with some kind of evil spirit? Are there little elves somehow playing a dirty trick on me?

Usually at that point I start to turn big and green and inevitably end up having to buy a new shirt, so it's nice that Strahlhut is willing to do all this brain-intensive interpretive work for us ordinary Hulk-Americans. At the very least it'll help me save money on my wardrobe.

And thanks for letting me in on the whole "death in war" thing. I'd been operating on the assumption that no one would be hurt. All this time I thought the conflict would be decided with those foam aggression mallets you get at psychiatrists' offices. That way, we could settle our differences, get out all that pent-up rage, and then we could all sit down and "come to terms" with something, having a good, cathartic cry in the process.

History helps. Early in World War I, Woodrow Wilson was reelected on a pacifist platform. But he believed that we had to enter the war, and thus created the Creel Commission to turn public opinion. It worked.

History doesn't help you, you uninformed jackass.

Strahlhut here makes it sound as if Wilson deliberately misled the people during the election into thinking that he was against entering the war, all the while snickering at the dumb apes behind their backs while he went home every night and delighted in pushing little plastic armymen around a map of Europe spread out on his kitchen table.

Wilson was against going to war. He didn't plan to involve the US in it militarily. What he didn't count on during the election was that Germany wasn't going to give him that option. And by all indications, he still didn't want to go to war even when it seemed completely necessary after the accumulation of such events as unrestricted submarine warfare, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Zimmerman note to Mexico and acts of attempted sabotage on American soil. And in many respects, he was acquiescing to public opinion, not shaping it. I'm no fan of Woodrow Wilson, being quite the fuzzy-headed idealist that he was, but that doesn't mean you get a pass on distorting history in order to help make your silly, juvenile arguments.

Examining Gulf War I brings us up-to-date. Then, as now, the official mission was to get Hussein, the latest Hitler -- but when the war ended, he was still there. Going after Saddam personally would have cost American lives, we were told. But then Iraqi rebels tried to depose Hussein, and our troops stood down as Saddam crushed them.

OK, now you've lost me.

So you're suggesting that the US, when the vaunted "coalition" didn't want us going into Iraq and deposing Saddam just as he was at his most vunerable, should have given a hearty unilateralist "fuck off" to all the allied ankle-bters and done it anyway? Cuz I sure would've been just fine and dandy with that.

Or are you just using this as another shallow and empty snipe, pointing out something that didn't end perfectly without a single sour note and using that fact as justification that the entire endeavor was rotten to the core? Or are you just an idiot who can't even get his own position straight?

PR firms were hired to promote the war -- described in detail in John MacArthur's book, "Second Front." For example, the fall of the real Kuwait, a dictatorship which was probably stealing Iraqi oil, was not likely to create a great deal of sympathy here.

Ooooooooohhh.

I've got to admit he's got a point there. The Bush administration, deciding on a course of war, tried to actually convince the American people that it was the right thing to do! I suppose what Bush Sr. should've done is just said "Hey, I'm the president, I can do whatever I damn well please. I don't need anyone to agree me. I'm the president! Now let's gas up the jets and kill us some Iraqis!"

It's simply wonderful how Strahlhut never actually disputes anything Bush claimed, but instead implies that the mere act of trying to build national support for the cause automatically means he was being deceptive. You know, like all those dirty warmongers in the early 40's telling people to buy warbonds and join the army. Those miserable deceptive fucks.

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, was hired to invent and deploy the now infamous incubator story, in which the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter falsely claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers dumping newborn babies out of hospital incubators and leaving them to die.

Wonderful use of the passage voice there, Ricky. It nicely distorts what you're saying and makes it sound like Bush knowingly and actively hired them to spread things he was aware were not true. Have you been taking lessons from Clinton? Well, then you should be well acquainted with this one. Come on, say it with me now: "Mistakes were made."

It was Kuwait that retained their services to spread international outrage over the Iraqi invasion, not Bush and company.

Big. Difference.

"Mistakes were made" sounds a lot better than "I fucked up," don't it?

Five years later, Bush senior's advisor Brent Scowcroft told the BBC that the war was really about oil. Not surprising. Weak dictators are preferred for maintaining stability and oil flow in the region. Hussein's flaw, despite the PR, was not his crimes, but that he'd become too strong and independent.

That's right. He was sticking it to the man, showing Whitey what was up, keepin' it real with all his Baath niggaz in da hood. Why we gotta be playa-hatin' on him like that??

Strahlhut, your stupidity is like a hot poker being turned in my brain.

Saddam was just as "independent" and "strong" before he rolled across the Kuwaiti border as he was after. Suddenly playing a game of geopolitical smash 'n grab didn't bother us because Saddam was asserting his ego-integrity. He was trying to conquer other countries. For all we cared he could assert his independence until he was blue in the face and keeled over in the dust from assertion-stroke. That's just a teensy bit different than treating neighboring countries like items in the impulse-buy rack at the Quik-E-Mart.

The strategy, apparently, was to weaken him, but not remove. With rebels dead and civilians devastated by our sanctions, a weaker Hussein would not be overthrown.

Teleology. Great. Why am I not surprised?

So the fact that he was never overthrown of course, of course means that it was all part of the big, nefarious, secret-handshake, Masonic plot for world domination. Because it couldn't possibly be because we foolishly
kow-towed to the notion of our "fragile" coaltion, made up of all those other countries (many of them dictatorships, Strahlhut! I'm sure you're shocked and appalled) that weren't too keen on us bringing about the great boogeyman of the current anti-war crowd, Instability, and thus let them dissuade us from doing what we knew would have been just and prudent to do.

Strahlhut then firmly adjusts his tin-foil hat and proceeds to say what this new war will really be about. I'll give you a hint, it begins with "oi" and ends with "l," and it isn't "oidel"

Go ahead, read the rest of it. You may get a kcik out of the way his mind works. Or doesn't.

2002-10-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Caustic, uninformed opinion on backorder...

I'm taking the LSAT this Saturday, so I won't be doing any heavy posting until I'm all done with that crap.

Until then, I invite you to look at the monkey.

Come on, look at the silly monkey.

2002-10-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

D'yer Mak'er...

...write shitty columns? American Samizdat (most definately not to be confused with Samizdata) points to this perfectly excreble diatribe by Gwynne Dyer, which attempts to let all us warmongering simpletons in on the profound truth that the real Saddam isn't a cartoon villian!

I suppose this means the Pentagon's new 10-million dollar, wire-guided, precision smart erasers have to be scrapped.

She apparently thinks that anyone contending that Saddam Hussein poses sufficient danger to warrant military action has reduced him to a curly-mustached, black cape-wearing caricature, rubbing his hands greedily while his maniacal laughter shakes his stooped, hump-backed frame.

Cartoon villains have no need of complex personalities or even motives; they're just evil, that's all. From the Joker in the old Batman comics down to Evil the Cat in 'Earthworm Jim', they seek to destroy our hero and conquer the universe simply because evil is their vocation.

Note to Miss Dyer: in an article that's about people making simplistic and incorrect generalizations based on shallow observations and reasoning, it's usually not a good idea to do exactly that in the opening paragraph. I may be letting my nerd collar show here, but the Joker is most definately not "just evil." He is the result of a fragile personality driven to sociopathic insanity by a severe physical and mental trauma. Isn't that the kind wonderfully nuanced and complex explanation for behavior that you and your ilk favor?

As for Earthworm Jim, "Evil Cat" is a self-referential joke, an exaggerated take on the genre of comic villiany. Either that, or he just serves as further evidence that cats in fact are the handmaidens of Satan. I'm not sure which.

Saddam Hussein's image in Western propaganda is a lot like that.

Oh really. Well I'm glad you deigned to let all us stoo-pid folk in on that little tidbit of info. There I was focusing on all those eyewitness accounts of Saddam's nuclear weapons programs, analyzing his past behaviors and judging the strategic factors in the middle east, when I should've been been watching the Saturday morning "Saddy the Baddy!" cartoon show. Well I'm glad you've been watching it for us, since I can't devote much of my time right now to childrens' television programming. By the way, when can we expect your report on the latest Teletubbies episode?

The 50-page dossier entitled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction', published by the British government on 24 September, is a major attempt led by Prime Minister Tony Blair himself to persuade the sceptical British public (and the even more sceptical governments of America's other allies) that there is an urgent need to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The document avoids most of the tricks of language and blatant manipulation of facts that contaminate comparable US efforts, trades on the reputation of British intelligence -- and still fails to convince.

You're not convinced? Well, are you sure you were paying attention? After all, I know how hard it is to pull you away from your kids shows.

Dyer, of course, does nothing to deny any of the veracity of this report, because, well... because she can't. But somehow she just doesn't buy it anyway. Well, there are always at least two parties in the transmission of information, Gwynne, and the possibility that the reciever is simply a thick-skulled twit for whom no amount of fact or rationality will suffice is just as viable an option as the sender is somehow being dishonest to serve as an explanation of why this info "fails to convince." In fact, I think we'll find that the former is the horse to bet on in this case.

Nowhere, for example, is there a single mention of al-Qaeda.

Ok, fine.

"See Al Qeada run. Run, Al Qeada, run." There's your single mention. Can we move on now?

(But if there are no known links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then why is dealing with Saddam a more urgent issue this year than last?)

Firstly, it's a more urgent reason this year than last for the very simple fact that it is now this year and not last, meaning that Saddam has now had yet another year get his Fat Man up and running.

But I see what you're getting at: we weren't doing anything against Saddam a year ago, therefore our action now must be based on faulty reasons.

Buzzz! Oh, I'm so sorry, Gwynne, but that's not the right answer. But don't worry, we're not going to say goodbye without some nice parting gifts. Johnny, tell 'er what she's won.

It's a brand new smoking radioactive crater where your home town used to be! That's right Gwynne, forget about using that gooey, unpleasant SPF-45 sunscreen from now on, because you're gonna need about 6 inches of lead to keep your skin from crisping for the next 30 years or so. And, you can throw away those bothersome birth control pills, cuz, guess what? You're now sterile!

Point of fact, Gwynne, it isn't true that we didn't consider Saddam a threat earlier, as recently released reports have shown that the Bush cronies were already formulating plans to get rid of him before W was even elected. It's quite funny how sundry idiots either point to this fact as being proof that Bush was an evil hegemonic Fuhrer-in-waiting right from the get-go, or they ignore it and claim that we're just going into Iraq because Bush is a capricious cowboy looking for some other people with brown skin that he can kill.

Secondly, even if we hadn't been doing anything about Saddam until now, in light of current evidence, I think it's pretty clear that that fact proves that we were remiss in our duty a year or two years ago when Saddam wasn't on the national radar, and that we're now working to correct that mistake. You wanna get out of our way, please? You're blocking the howitzer.

It warns that Iraq could build nuclear weapons within a couple of years if it got its hands on fissile material (but fails to mention that so could any other country bigger than Costa Rica, or that there are already elaborate and effective controls to stop fissile materials from reaching Iraq).

It also fails to mention that my favorite color is blue, and that the average airspeed of an unladen African swallow is 30 mph.

These things share several qualities with each other. They are all true. They are also all irrelevant, since there isn't credible evidence that any of those other countries bigger than a breadbox are anywhere near producing nuclear weapons, or even that they are particularly interested in getting them in the first place.

And it's nice to know that you believe there are "elaborate and effective controls" to keep U-235 out of Saddam's hands. Child-like naivete can be so refreshing sometimes.

What the report evades entirely is any analysis Iraq's strategy: WHY has Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction' at all costs for over twenty years? By not addressing the question of what rational reasons Saddam Hussein might have for wanting nuclear weapons, the war party in Washington and London hopes to leave the impression that he is like Evil the Cat in the cartoons: pure, unmotivated, boundless malevolence. If he can find a way to do harm anywhere, he will.

I think that perhaps some sympathetic and kind-hearted individual has been trying to explain to Miss Dyer the conflict in terms that they thought she could understand, because otherwise I can't fathom where she got this empty-headed notion. Let's completely put aside the fact that she is doing to the pro-war camp exactly what she accuses them of doing to Saddam, and instead take a look at this whole "rational strategy" thing...

So Saddam is perfectly rational, eh? Well great. That's good. Solves all our problems doesn't it?

Of course, being the perfectly rational fellow that he is, he must only be sacrificing so much money and effort to get nukes because he knows that it will give him much more power and freedom than he currently has, to, for instance, make another grab for Kuwait, or get back out on the floor with his old dance partner, Iran. And we would be, at the very best, severely constrained in any possible response to this aggression, and at the very worst, completely paralyzed, unable to do anything but watch as he methodically gathered vast portions of the middle east and stuffed them in his pants.

The fact that these would be perfectly rational decisions on his part makes it ok, I guess? Right. I get it now.

2002-10-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Rumsfield Deploys Maureen Dowd to Middle East - Saddam Surrenders

In a seminal strategic event, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield announced his plans to deploy New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd to the Middle East theater early today, prompting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to quickly announce his complete and uconditional surrender.

"I have stood up to the United States before, and have been willing to suffer many harsh consequences for my stance, but I am unable to submit my country to this horror of horrors," the Iraqi president said in a televised statement, adding, "I've used poison gas on civilians, murdered parents in front of their children and endlessly tortured dissidents to death, but in my defense, I never tried to do something as hideous as that."

Unexpectedly, the arrival of the Pentagon's new Dowd weapon system, which functions by assailing its target with irritating, incomprehensibly shrill and painfully unfunny newspaper columns, has prompted the spontaneous submission of several other hostile nations in the region as well, including Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Not to be outdone, France has also offered it's complete surrender.

"How can we hope to stand against the United States when they are willing to use such a horrible weapon?" President Jaques Chirac asked. "We throw outselves at the mercy of President Bush to not rain this terror of excruciatingly mind-numbing commentary down upon us. No, I did not mean President Bush, Emperor Bush. All hail the new Emperor."

Following Rumsfield's announcement, there was immediate discussion in the UN about the possibility of proliferation of this terrible new weapon system, with many citing the fear that somehow Dowd could be cloned illegally and used by terrorist organizations to intimidate the civilized world.

"What will happen when the entire world is held in the grip of fear should this new and foreboding weapon bring on a new arms race among the nations of the world?" Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked. He then proceded to collapse at the foot of his podium, trembling and biting his nails while muttering "Happy place, think of the happy place..."

Annan's words were already making a significant impact on military analysts as early as that afternoon, and there has already been significant talk at the Pentagon about not allowing a "Dowd Gap" to emerge between the US and its enemies. This new variable in the geostrategic world has caused many, in the US and the rest of the world, to worry about what the implications are for the future of global security.

One unamed source at the Pentagon went so far as to say, "Well the Pandora's Box is open now, and there's no closing it... may God have mercy on us all."

2002-10-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

Move along folks, nothing to see here

The Rott points out something of excellent import in an addendum to Gore's speech. There's an audio recording of his speech, as well as a question and answer portion available here. In the Q and A, Al Snore drops the following whopper:

I first spoke against the regime of Saddam Hussein in the fall of 1988, soon after he used poison gas against a minority within his own people. My father's older brother had been the victim of poison gas in World War I. Because of that fact, our family's oral histories had always put a special emphasis on the horror of those weapons. And you know, that generation impressed that same lesson on peoples around the world. We went through all of World War II without poison gas being used, save in some horrible experiments in the Far East, but not used by combatants. When Saddam became the first to break that taboo, it really set off alarm bells.

As the Rott rightfully points out, what about all those other people that were gassed and incinerated during World War II? What were they called?

Oh. Right. The Jews.

I also seem to recall that there were quite a lot of them killed too. I must be wrong though, because with Gore's herculean intellect, faster than a speeding supercomputer, able to leap tall fallacies in a single syllogism, he could never simply forget something like that, right?

Right?

Now, it's time to shift gears and get your mind into thought experiment mode.

Imagine that it was Bush making that statement instead of Gore. I think it might go a little something like this:

"President Bush today denied the deaths of millions of European Jews when he stated that there was never any use of poison gas between World War I and the Iran-Iraq war. The president has faced strong criticism from many political groups, and the DNC has issued a statement saying that, 'Although President Bush may be a despicable holocaust denier, Democrats of course will never allow the world to forget about that most terrible of human tragedies.'

Certain commentators have been quick to give the president the benefit of the doubt, arguing that he wasn't knowingly denying the death of 6 million jews by poison gas in Nazi death camps, but merely that he is j'ust too goddamned stupid to keep more than a few historical facts in his head at a time,' and cannot be blamed for his laughable ignorance.

Meanwhile, in a stunning turn of events, there have been spontaneous rallies in support of Bush in the streets of Palestine, with demonstrators saying 'Well it's good to see that Bush has finally come to his senses about the Jews and the lies perpetuated by the Jew-run media.'"

2002-10-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

Is it just me...

...or is Ted Rall objectively the worst thing ever?

(Nota Bene: I intended to link to his most recent, September 30 cartoon, but the WaPo doesn't seem to offer permalinks to the most current cartoon, but that's no matter, cuz any Rall cartoon your eyes are exposed to will be equally horrible!)

2002-10-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

Pro-War folks: dangerous fanatics!!

Now I persoanlly know that I'm a blindly patriotic troglodyte, eager to grind to dust under the heel of my shiny new jackboots (like 'em? Just got my new shipment from Authoritarians 'R Us), but I figured that maybe I was the exception.

How refreshing to learn that not only am I not alone in my brutish predilections towards reason and debate among my blogging bretheren, but that it so happens that just about everyone who favors war with Iraq is a mindless, warmongering ape that froths at the mouth at the merest suggestion that we not go and massacre us a shitload of Ay-Rabs.

At least, that's the message you get when you read Charles Sheenan-Miles' detailing of the reaction he recieved from the sloping-brow crowd about his questions regarding war with Iraq.

Our full statement can be found at http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org. In the first twenty-four hours after we announced our site, quite a few veterans signed on to the statement. But a small minority sent hate-mail. To give you a picture of the tone, I'll quote three of them:

"Get over your-stupid-selves. Dumbass Liberal pussies."

"I say turn the place into glass!"

"Where in God's name did you ever get the idea to countermand the commander in chief of our nation?"

Well, it's nice to know that I'm in such good company.

Sheehan-Miles then defiantly and proudly plods through a rundown of the most tired platitudes about "dissent" and "speaking out," acting as if, in responding to a few isolated dolts who don't deserve a response, he is refuting the best-laid intellectual propositions of the pro-war camp, as if Thomas Jefferson himself had appeared to him in a dream and personally bestowed these new and important truths and urged him to "go, tell the people!"

The poor, put-upon fellow gets a few angry emails from some random putzes, and suddenly the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is knocking at his door with "disappearance" marching orders. Frankly, I'd advise everyone to be very careful around this guy and to not make any sudden movements. He seems to be the excitable and none-too-bright type.

I hate to burst his carefully-constructed self-righteous bubble of brave defiance against the Nazi hordes of the Right, but those people are not exactly a representative sample.

As if these kooks are anything but a handful or idiots. As if they have anything remotely to do with the arguments and reasons of those who favor going to war with Iraq. As if their stupidity implies that the pro war folks are just wetting themselves in anger over any kind of opposition to war with Iraq, sputtering with nearly incoherent rage, "Dare thee question God-Emperor Bush?! Summon the dogs to eviscerate this infidel's testicles!"

It wouldn't exactly be hard for me to dig up no shortage of horrible, despicable, "Amerikkka!!" type posts and comments from the dimwits on the extreme left. However, I am not stupid enough to think that somehow these statistically few intellectual sadsacks are somehow indicative of the whole anti-war crowd. I would expect the same from those on the other side of the spectrum, but maybe I'm just too demanding. Jingoistic, authoritarian gorillas are known to be that way sometimes.

2002-09-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Agony and the Ecstasy

The Daily Pundit has a moment of vindication concerning a report that there's no consensus about the dangers of E, in terms of long-term neurological damage. Apparently they didn't devote any time to studying the dangers of E causing you to make a complete jackass out of yourself, something I have first-hand experience with.

I never liked it much myself, since the whole disassociative aspect of E (taking your emotional state and shooting it through a rainbow cannon into some happy touchy-feely wonderland) didn't sit well with me. However, a friend of mine worked for several months at a webhosting company in which many of the other employers were weekly ravers, and had been doing it for several years.

They were the most cohesively sour, bad-tempered and generally unhappy group he ever met. I know there isn't conclusive evidence about this, but I took that as a pretty strong indication that you can seriously screw up your seratonin receptors, if not permanently, then at least while you're taking the drug regularly. And who wants to be a depressed sourpuss 6 out of 7 days a week? You might as well just go Goth. The makeup is probably cheaper than the weekly E fix.

It's only fair to warn you though, I am a card-carrying member of the SBTSFGSSD: The Society for Beating Those Stupid Fucking Goths Senseless With Sacks of Doorknobs.

2002-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Q&A time

William Raspberry of the Washington Post apparently slept in, because in lieu of writing a column, he simply forwards several questions asked by retired Marine colonel Larry Williams. They're questions that need answering. The funny thing is, most of them have been answered before. Raspberry should have been paying attention in class when these things were explained, rather than trying to sneak a look at his neighbor's paper.

What is the actual threat to the United States -- the purpose of war?

Says Williams: "Even if the Iraqis make a nuclear device -- which also concerns me -- what would they do with it? The Mideast region is not alarmed. Why are we -- thousands of miles away -- alarmed to the degree of war?"

This is actually a tact I haven't seen before: arguing that since the Middle East crapocracies aren't visibly concerned with Saddam is evidence enough that he doesn't pose a threat. Forgive me if I find this less than convincing.

There are at least two possibilities for this:

They simply don't understand the nature of the threat. It's not as if the Arabic nations have the best track record of estimating strategic situations. Arab armies proved that in several wars with Israel. Saddam did the same thing in the Gulf War. Gross strategic miscalculations are not exactly unheard of in the Arab world. Ultimately, this is just an appeal to authority, and it doesn't even hold up under the rubric of that context.
They do fear Saddam, but they fear more the chance that deposing him and creating a pro-Western, reasonably free and secular government that will ultimately be successful right next door will significantly hasten their own downfall. Also, as long as Saddam is in power, he will always be the Middle Eastern nation that the world is most concerned with and concentrated on. Removing him will focus new attention on the problems inherent in his neighbors, and that is attention they could do without.

How many American lives will we expend to punish Saddam Hussein?

Baghdad has nearly 5 million residents. It is reasonable to expect that many would see America not as a liberator but as an invader -- and that many of these would see our military as at least as great a threat as Hussein. "If," says the professor, "one million of them resist an American invasion in street-to-street resistance -- under a local threat of chemical and/or biological weapons -- how many Americans will die?"

First of all, this isn't about "punishment". Secondly, the answer is "As many as it is necessary with all due precautions." Any other answer is foolish, as is the question itself. It seeks to unfairly force some sort of number to be stipulated, as if once we reach or exceed that number, suddenly the cause is no longer worthwhile.

I, for one, do not believe the casualties will be high on either side, though they will be significantly higher on the Iraqi side. It is simply a baseless contention that we will run into citizens fanatically devoted to defending their glorious leader Saddam, especially since we will make it quite clear at the outset of fighting that we have no intentions of fighting the Iraqi people, only their leader. The idea that a fifth of Baghdad's residents will swell into some sort of popular resistance front is, quite simply, ridiculous.

One of the chief purposes of the existence of Saddam's army is to keep the civilian population in check because he cannot trust them. He created the Republican Guard because he needed a small army of bodyguards, realizing he couldn't trust his army either. He then created the Special Republican Guard because he realized he couldn't even trust his own cadre of thugs who were supposed to rotect him. I'm still waiting to hear about the Super Special Elite Republican Guard.

Saddam's rule is a carefully built deck of cards and Saddam himself knows full well how much his army and people generally loathe him. There are many indications that he doesn't even expect his own army to fight any American invaders, as he has positioned them in places around Baghdad where their only effectiveness would be to resist dissidents from within Iraq itself. Iraqis surrendered in droves during the last Gulf War after a few hours of ground attack (and this was when their strength, training and morale were far better than today). What exactly makes you think that somehow the civilian population, cowed and beaten by years of oppressive rule, will suddenly galvanize in support of the tyrant that they all realize is responsible for their suffering?

How long will public support last when hundreds, possibly thousands, of body bags start arriving home?

"Desert Storm and Afghanistan make war look so easy, with so few casualties. When support at home wanes, how will you turn back the clock?"

By making sure that America understands the threat that Saddam poses. An excellent laying out of that ultimate threat can be found explained exhaustively here.

Secondly, Williams deliberately calls up the spectre of Vietnam, with his image of body bags shipped home by the hundreds every week to the homefront. As has been down repeatedly, the analogy to Vietnam is drawn (implicitly rather that explicitly in this case) when no such analogy is warranted. The political climate that eroded American morale in Vietnam was based on many factors, most of which are simply not present in this case. First and foremost, the lack of a clear and attainable goal made Americans feel that we would be constantly flailing away in the jungles, always fighting on the terms of the enemy and never able to achieve a decisive victory, since we were not allowed to directly attack the enemy, but were forced to wait for him to come to us. Secondly, the culture of the army was different. There was a draft, which caused significant resentment both within the army and without. Today's armed forces are a highly trained, specialized and volunteer force. This is not to say that every foot soldier believes to his core that attacking Iraq is the right thing to do, but that even those that have doubts will follow their commanders resolutely, because they devoted themselves to the cause of defending their country and subsequently following the orders of their commanding officers of their own free will.

How, militarily, do you plan to fight this war?

The Army is too "heavy" to get there short of a Desert Storm-style buildup. Air power and advanced technology get you little in the fight to conquer cities.

I don't suppose you noticed the buildup that's been going on for several months now, such as the new bases built in Qatar, the preparations in Kuwait, etc? Sure, the president hasn't been exactly shouting from the rooftops about where all our divisions are going to be (nor should he; did Roosevelt get on the radio in early June and lay out the plans for D-Day?), but the indications are for those who care to look.

How many Iraqi citizens do you plan to kill in order to bestow democracy?

"You can't level cities by bombing, as in World War II. When newspapers and TV broadcasts around the world start to show pictures of Iraqi mothers carrying babies dead from U.S. bombs -- pictures real or staged, it doesn't matter -- the world will be inflamed in anti-American sentiment, and U.S. public support will dissolve."

Once again, a bad question. Firstly, "hostages" would be a better word than "citizens," since the latter implies that they are part of some free and open democracy of their own choosing. Secondly as stated above, the only sensible answer is "As few as is possible." And once again, I think there is a preponderence of evidence to suggest that that number will not be high at all. No one plans to start leveling cities. No one plans to plaster Baghdad into dust.

Any babies killed will be a tradgedy, but it's going to happen. But it is not going to happen en masse, because that's the way we fight our wars now, with a mind to preserving innocent human life wherever possible. And, the responsibility for those that are killed lies squarely at Saddam's feet.

And as for "staged" pictures inflaming world opinion: even worrying about this is stupid, stupid, stupid. Saddam is going to lie and decieve as much as possible as often as possible to "inflame world opinion." So the FUCK WHAT? He's been doing it for years already. He lied about UN sanctions killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children when it didn't take much to realize that it was his actions diverting food and medical supplies to pay for his WMD programs that caused whatever deaths there were. Very stupid people accepted his claims at face value. Very stupid people will be fooled again by staged cries of genocide, as they were in Jenin. If they continue to believe such things, then the best we can do is show them the contrary evidence, and if they still stubbornly hold to their foolish beliefs touted by Iraqi propaganda ministers, we say "Sorry chaps, but we're going to have to ask you to kindly fuck off." Letting ourselves be cowed by idiocy, however vocal, is a pointless and foolhardy thing to do.

How will you govern a defeated Iraq?

"Of course, a military victory is as assured as it was at the outset of Desert Storm. But then, how will you govern a country probably still resisting through guerrilla activity and in which we do not speak the language? Will your military forces be confined to cantonments at night because they do not control the streets of Baghdad?"

Pardon me? So you've just admitted that a military victory is assured? Maybe you should've skipped all those above questions then and saved us considerable time.

Once again, I deny important aspects of your question. Autocratic dictators that are hated and feared and holding on to power through force and intimidation alone are not exactly wont to inspire cadres of impassioned guerillas, enduring privation and extreme danger for the sake of their ideals. Here, rather than Vietnam, Willaims summons up the ghosts of Somalia, another poorly drawn analogy.

The fiasco in Somalia resulted from an ineffectual presence, again necessitated by the fact that were there as only half-strength watchdogs with two hands tied behind our backs, prohibited from striking directly against the head of the snake that was biting us.

And even considering all of that, still our vastly outnumbered and surrounded soldiers killed more than 40 enemy fighters for every single American death.

How does the war against Iraq contribute to winning the war against terrorism?

"The origin of the attacks of 9/11 and the preceding chain of attacks against the embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks in 1983 and other embassies thereafter were in the Arab/Muslim world. Victory in the war against terrorism must necessarily be found in that worldwide presence. How does alienating every facet of that world contribute to victory in the current war on terrorism?"

As the point has been made endlessly before, that world respects strength and only strength. In our efforts to apply "appropriate responses" and to not seem heavy-handed, all we did was encourage those elements that already hated us to become bolder. Decisive defeat will not make them love us, but it make them fear us, initially, and then once they see that they have nothing to fear if only they cease their own aggression, then there is the possibility for them becoming our friends.

2002-09-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

No racist, authoritarian deed goes unrewarded

Mugabe is doing his Ruthless Dictator Mambo again...

Police in Zimbabwe have arrested a member of parliament for the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), on the second and final day of local council elections.

Friends of the politician, Roy Bennett, said he and several other people were detained in the Chimanimani district in the south-east of the country.

The police said Mr Bennett had been arrested because he refused to vacate his farm, defying a government order given to nearly 3,000 white farmers.

In light of these recent events, the UN has decided to take immediate action passing a resolution in support of Mugabe and recommending that Zimbabwe immediately be made chair of the UN Human Right Commission.

"Frankly, it is a crime against humanity that this nation is not head of the commission already," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said during a light brunch with Saddam Hussein. "I do not think I am exagerating at all when I say that it is an act of extreme racism and covert genocide."

At that, Hussein stiffened considerably.

"Relax Saddy, I'm not talking about you," Annan said.

2002-09-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

Intellectually anemic academics

There was a brief period of time early in college when I thought I wanted to be a rhetoric major. After all, I had aspirations to be a lawyer, and the classical definition of rhetoric, the art of argumentation and speaking, seemed right up that alley. I wanted to be taught how to hone my logical and argumentative tools to a high sheen, able to cut through fallacious reasoning like a GBU-28 through several feet of concrete.

That feeling lasted about 2 weeks into my classes.

Oh sure, I still wanted to learn these things. That hadn't changed. What changed was the expectation that I would be able to acquire that knowledge from the professors and classes in the rhetoric department. Very soon I learned that what they were interested in teaching us was a post-modern pantheon of rubbish and lies propogated by mendacious charlatans.

We had to read Foucault and Said, Barthes and Derrida, and sundry other linguistic weavers of pseudo-intellectual lies.

For the first few weeks I struggled through the reading, because as anyone who has read these painful excuses for writers and thinkers knows, it is very very difficult. My professors were eager to point out that it was necessarily so hard because of the complexity of the ideas. I mostly just didn't understand it and so had to take their word for it. Then, about halfway through the semester, I was walking home from class, holding Barthes' "Mythologies" and an excerpt from Foucault, and I had a revelation that made me drop my books on the ground and stand there speechless for a minute or so.

Actually, "revelation" probably isn't the right word, since it implies some sort of completely new idea bestowed upon one's mind, as if a heavy black curtain that you couldn't get is helpfully pulled back by an unseen benefactor. This epiphany, however, was the result of many smaller observations, questions and inconsistences which had been building up in my head over the last 2 months, swirling and occaisonally bumping into each other but never forming any kind of cohesive whole.

That afternoon it all came together, and the words screamed in my mind, "It's all bullshit!"

Not very elegant for a "eureka!" moment, I know, but it was no less important to me, because it suddenly made sense. I understood why the reading was so hard to comprehend: because the writers purposefully make it difficult to do so, weaving as long-winded and mixed up, non-sensical sentences, creating pointlessly long and complex terms for ideas which much simpler words could easily describe and putting in ridiculous, jarring interjections in the middle of their sentences to deliberately disrupt the reader's train of thought. And I understood why they wanted to do this: because the ideas they're advocating are so obviously ridiculous that to speak about them plainly would be to expose themselves to well-deserved ridicule, and the more I read that semester, the more my theory was confirmed.

That was the end of my aspirations towards being a rhetoric major. It also was the beginning of a marked increase in my personal arrogance. Oh sure, I tried and mostly succeeded to remain a humble genial guy on the outside, but every day from that time, whenever I listened to my rhetoric professors or read any post-modernism or listened to someone praising some ridiculous new book as the next big intellectual break-through of the world, I smiled to myself or shook my head and silently thought, "idiot," only half-heartedly trying to supress the rising feeling of superiority, which was borne from the realization that these people, those who subscribe and contribute to and breathlessly laud this school of "thought," those who are held up as some of the smartest people in the world (at least in the disconnected-from-reality halls of academia), have been taken in by what is no more than an intellectual con-game. And that I, just a dumb college student, had figured out what they couldn't.

Like I said, arrogant, but it's genuinely hard to not feel that way when you're confronted with the sheer stupidity of these academics (since PoMo is endemic in almost every huamnities department on the modern college campus) in all its withered, naked shame.

So, I developed a robust skepticism concerning the authority of academics. It does not mean that I dismiss someone's ideas just because he or she is a college professor, but it also doesn't mean that their station affords them any kind of leeway or advantaged position when I set out to assess their ideas (except of course in scientific and technical disciplines, and only so far as their specialized knowledge pertains to the matter at hand).

So, it was with this mind that I gandered at this statement, which billed itself as "AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY OPPOSING A U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ." Let's take a look and see what's in there, shall we?

We the undersigned members of the academic community are opposed to an invasion of Iraq by the United States.

Objection noted.

The decision to start a war is perhaps the most significant decision the leaders of a democracy can make. It requires ordering fellow citizens to kill and be killed in the name of the entire nation, in our names and in yours. For this decision to be just and legitimate, the reasons offered for war must be principled and arrived at through public debate.

No argument here thus far.

To date, the justifications offered by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Rice, their subordinates, or an array of commentators in the media do not justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Hmm. Right there folks: the parting of ways.

Invasion to replace the Hussein regime is not in the best interests of the United States, the region, or the world. An invasion of Iraq and destruction of the Hussein regime may lead to prolonged instability in Iraq; destabilization of the wider Middle East including the possibility of a prolonged and heightened conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; increased popular appeal of radical Islamic movements and increased anti-Americanism worldwide; and increased terrorism in the U.S. and abroad. Invading Iraq therefore will probably make both the region and the world less secure, not more secure.

Before I read this I had some mild hope that these folks' priveleged academic milieu might predispose them towards not trotting out the same old, dead arguments that have been beaten so badly that only their dentist would be able to identify them.

Prolonged instability in Iraq would be preferable to the prolonged stability that Saddam has enjoyed thus far. Besides, that prolonged instability is even less likely than it was in Afghanistan (instability being an oft-used argument in the objections to that conflict as well), since Iraq still enjoys some rudimentary infrastructure and the possibility for a nascent civil society. This is not to suggest that Jeffersonian democracy will spring up there overnight. Only those as shortsighted as your fellow academics might be fooled into believing something so foolish. But at the very least, it will be preferable to the paranoid, irrational and murderous thug that now sits in Baghdad.

And exactly how in the hell did you manage to pull out of your ass the notion that deposing Saddam will prolong the Israeli-Palestinian problem? At the very worst, it will have no affect on the Israeli situation whatsoever, since Iraq has no bearing on that conflict, save to exacerbate it, with Saddam's despicable payments to the families of suicide bombers. It has been demonstrated amply in the past that by attacking the infrastructure that funds and supports the bombers, their effectiveness and numbers begin to dwindle significantly, and any effect will be at leats mildly positive.

The appeal of radical Islam has always been in its propensity for victory. Sure, the Arabs are pissed off that their culture is such an abject faillure, but that isn't enough to make them flock to the banners of the Caliph or the ayatollahs. What they respect and fear above all else is strength. 9/11 proved that. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, the demonstrations in the Arab world on that day had nothing to do with outrage. They were about triumphalism, thinking that they had finally struck a winning blow. And then, only a few months later with the abject collapse of the Taliban, the Arab street was eerily silent. Did someone just forget to remind everyone about the explosion of Islamic rage that was supposed to take place then? They really should fire their publicist.

Key U.S. allies do not support an invasion of Iraq. Many governments allied with the U.S. are urging restraint, demanding more evidence of an Iraqi threat, or opposing a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Governmental and popular support in Great Britain, the most stalwart U.S. ally, is weak at best. Any military action against Iraq should have the moral force of international consensus behind it.

"Key US allies" are against the war for their own selfish benefit, and thus the criticisms they level about "international law" and "sovereignty" are hollow and worthy of dismissal with extreme prejudice. Europe doesn't wish to seem irrelevant or squander the significant diplomatic capital they have expended in trying to establish influence in the Arab world through diplomacy in lieu of the threat of force, because they no longer have the capability to exert it, not to mention their fears of restless Islamic populations in their own countries.

And Great Britain cares more about fox hunting than it does opposing the war with Iraq.

The U.S. Government is not unified in support of invasion. Some senior elected officials, including members of President Bush's own Republican Party such as Rep. Dick Armey (TX) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (NE), do not support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired four star General with 35 years of military service who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, is known to oppose a U.S. invasion without broad international support. Major media outlets have been reporting for several months on widespread opposition to an invasion of Iraq among senior officers in the Pentagon, including several or all of the Chiefs of Staff. The decision to go to war should have the clear support of the U.S. Congress, the Secretary of State, and the commanding officers of the armed forces.

The congress was significantly divided over the Gulf War as well. There were opposing votes against war with Japan after Pearl Harbor. "Unity" is an impossible condition.

And frankly I believe the stories of dissent and backbiting within the military and the Joint Chiefs are not all they are made out to be. There has been significant amounts of disinformation generated so as to catch Saddam off guard in the last few months. Secondly, assuming there are some generals that oppose it, once again, that isn't sufficient reason to scrap war plans. Unanamity cannot be a requirement. And Colin Powel was the same man who urged a halt in the allied advance just as Saddam was on the verge of collapsing altogether during the first Gulf War. Had that position not been advanced on the basis of a "coalition" with our "allies," we wouldn't be in this current mess, so his track record on the matter isn't exactly unblemished.

The Iraqi threat is not credible. The opposition to an invasion among senior U.S. government and military leaders as well as most U.S. allies in the Middle East suggests that the Iraqi threat is not credible. The Bush Administration has presented no credible evidence of Iraqi progress toward making nuclear weapons. If they have such evidence, they should have presented it by now in the face of mounting international and domestic opposition to an invasion of Iraq.

Excuse me? Perhaps you should retreat back to that refuge from reality that you've obviously been spending most of your time in and let people who have some grasp on the basic tenets of the world we live in work this out. In other words, "Shhh, grownups are talking."

Defector after defector has described Saddam as diligently and fervently working towards creating nuclear weapons. The weapons inspectors who were barred from entering Iraq said that it was highly likely that they missed significant locations where material for nukes could be constructed and stored. I'd like to know under which meaning of "no credible evidence" do these unpleasant facts lie?

And this evidence has been presented. Repeatedly. With nice color photos and pretty charts to make sure the idiots at the UN don't drift off. The problem is, they believe, in their, naive, wide-eyed way that is adorable inchildren but strangely less so when you're talking about national security, that this problem should be addressed with more mind-numbingly ineffectual inspections and diplomacy.

An invasion of Iraq would be illegal under the Charter of the United Nations, to which the U.S. is a signatory. According to the Charter, only the Security Council has legal authority to start wars, with the single exception of national self-defense against armed attack. If the U.S. is indeed a land of laws, then our government should adhere to the basic principles of the Charter, which are intended to govern the relationships between nations for the collective security of all people.

Suppose you have a police officer who not only is reluctant, but refuses to enforce the law that you agreed to obey. There is an implicit contract involved in the charter that the United States signed, and the UN has broken it repeatedly over the last 10 years by refusing to enforce the rules that were imposed following the Gulf War, rules whose non-compliance by Iraq carried the explicit threat of force.

When the police refuse to do their job, you can't blame a citizen who shoots a mugger. What you should do is thank him.

For these reasons, we oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq and urge others to do so also. Although we recognize the Hussein regime is reprehensible, the war being planned will not decrease and MAY increase the suffering of the Iraqi people for many years to come. The likelihood of a high cost in lives of both combatants and non-combatants is too great given the weak justifications that have been offered for an invasion and the limited considerations for post-war Iraq. If pursued, war should be the last resort, undertaken collectively by a U.N. sponsored international coalition only after renewal of weapons inspections and diplomacy have utterly failed to bring Iraq into compliance with all Security Council Resolutions.

We will only know that diplomacy and inspections have failed when Saddam presses the big red button and turns twenty miles or so of city blocks into radioactive dust. If the last decade has shown us anything, it is that the inspection and diplomacy process can be drawn out as long as Saddam pleases, with no effective goals being accomplished on our side. I refuse to wait until he's holding nuclear weapons over our head. I refuse to let you, through your stupidity and sloth, put us in that position. I refuse to not point out how wrong and poorly thought-out your position.

And I will refuse your apology should the remote possibility that you somehow win the public debate come to pass and millions of our citizens die in a nuclear fire because we sat by and put our faith in dishonest diplomacy and pointless inspections.

2002-09-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

We're ready, he's ready, what are we waiting for?

Let's get this show on the road, already.

According to a Palestinian official (I love how they never fail to somehow mix up the terms "thug" and "official"), Yasser Arafat is ready for martyrdom. Well I'm glad he finally came around to the idea. Sundry folks in the Blogosphere have been advocating that for months. It's nice to know we're ahead of the curve.

Besieged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would die resisting Israeli brutality to maintain the rights of his people - despite worsening conditions inside his destroyed headquarters in Ramallah, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.

Ali Sha'ath, Assistant Undersecretary at the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, made these comments during a lecture yesterday at the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up.

It's also a comfort to realize that even though the PA can't seem to wrap their shriveled collective mind around this whole democracy concept, they've proved quite adept at appropriating the more irritating traits of a stagnant and pointless bureaucracy.

But even more heartening is since we now all agree on this whole Arafat thing, all we have left to do is figure out how we're going to send him to that big baby-wipe factory in the sky. Utilitarian-minded folks will surely suggest such pedestrian measures as a bullet to the head or, if they're willing to splurge a bit, a tank shell aimed squarely at his nether regions. Others, citing precedent, would no doubt be eager to string him up, Mussolini-like, and pinata him into the next life.

I would like to urge everyone to resist those urges. After all, some people have been waiting for this moment for thirty years or so. You don't wanna blow it on a single second or few minutes of orgiastic violent justice. We would be wise to squeeze every last bit of retributive satiety from this opportunity through more creative measures of implementing extremely predjucial termination upon Mr. Arafat.

With that in mind, I hereby announce the creation of the Center of Forward Planning for the Unique and Irrevocable Deployment of Mortality in the Immediate Vicinity of Yasser Arafat. All comments and suggestions about how this man is to bite the big one are greatly appreciated.

"The CFPUIDMIVYA: Now even he agrees it's the right thing to do."

2002-09-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

There she is, Miss Palestine...

Not getting an Israeli tank shell rammed up your ass can do wonders for a man's disposition. Case in point: see Yasser Arafat after triumphantly emerging from his compound (read: single room) like a teary eyed Miss America eager to give everyone in the world a puppy to create world peace.

He said nothing but blew kisses to supporters gathered outside and made a V for victory sign as he was paraded around the compound on the shoulders of his guards.

Well that's nice. Sorta like some hideous mutant crossbreed between Nixon, beauty queen and champion quarterback.

Earlier, Mr Arafat accused the Israelis of playing games with the international community.

Not with the international community, Yasser. That's your bag. Israel, on the other hand, is like a cat batting around a mouse for a few moments before it bites the little rodent's head off. Guess who's the mouse?

As for you, well, you're the all-time high scorer on Fool the World! It's a telling glimpe into the moral authority of the international community that Sharon is portrayed as a hideous vampire-Nazi and you've been able to style yourself as cuddly Uncle Yass to all the lefties, gullibles and general idiots around the world. You must have been speaking to Fidel's publicist.

Reading out the text of a UN Security Council resolution passed last week calling for the lifting of the siege, he said the terms of the resolution had not been met.

"This Israelis must withdraw immediately from not only the compound but all the Palestinian cities," he said.

Curiously missing from his speech was this part of the same resolution, in which the SC

Reiterates its demand for complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction [and] calls on the Palestinian Authority to meet its expressed commitment that all those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice.

Of course he couldn't read that out, sice 1) it would means HE would have to be brought to justice first and foremost, and 2) the status quo for a security council resolution is for the Palestinians, and the world at large, to cite with outrage and self-righteousness the demands made on Israel and not even mention those about terrorist activities of the PA.

In surrounding Arafat's compound, in which it was well-known that he was harboring terrorism organizers, Israel was in fact upholding the SC's resolution, doing what the UN had called on Arafat to do, and what no one actually expected him to.

And people wonder why sensible folks scoff at the UN.

2002-09-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Not silent, most definately not a majority

Displaying a childlike grasp of poll dynamics, Democracy Now! reports triumphantly here about the results of their poll.

The national news radio show Democracy Now! conducted an informal survey on Thursday of 70 Republican and Democratic Senate offices.

Of the 26 offices which responded to our inquires, 22 reported an overwhelming majority - in some cases up to 99 percent -- of constituents opposed war in Iraq; three said the response was split and just one office reported a majority called backing the war.

Oh dear. It's really a sad thing to watch the folks over at DN furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to grasp the meaning of this information. Let this be a lesson kids, never trust an organization that has an exclamation point in its title.

This is a self-selecting poll. Of course the minority of people who oppose the war are going to be calling their congressmen in greater numbers, since someone in support of the war (like myself) wouldn't feel the need to. The majority of the country (according to numerous polls) is behind it and is aware of the fact that our government is steadily moving in that direction. You don't take time out of your day to call your representative about an issue that is already going your way.

According to Gallup, 57% of Americans favor military action of Iraq. The number drops to 37 vs 58 if the UN decides against it, but then again jumps to almost 70 should Congress approve. These numbers may not be ironclad, but they're hardly indicative of some vast majority implied by Democracy Now!

2002-09-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Of war and fox-hunting

Antiwar.com points to this article about a protest rally in Britain against going to war with Iraq. As is normal for these kinds of deals, the actual number of people is always about a third or less thna the number claimed by the event organizers, who said there over 400,000 Britons doing their peace thang, when the police estimated it at about 150,000.

Ok, so it's not almost half a million, but still, 150,000 people is like a lot, man.

I would be more impressed if I hadn't read this story.

It seems a good number of Britons don't want to kill Iraqis, but almost three times as much want to kill foxes. Maybe we should tell all those English farmers that Iraq is crawling with those cunning predators.

Rightio, Nigel, what did 'ey say th' li'le buggers looked like?

Uhh...'bout six-foot-three, 200 pounds, big bushy black mustache... um, "answers to Saddam".

There's one! Shoot 'em!

Problem solved.

2002-09-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Greeny, Greeny, quite a weeny

Ugh, I really have to stop this whole wisenheimer rhymy schtick. I feel like I'm starting to resemble the more irritating moments of Maureen Dowd. But anyway, GreenThink! responds yet again to my post about the legality of unilaterally attacking Iraq. I'm really starting to feel guilty about this, since I'm pretty sure all this effort he's focusing on me is surely cutting into his baby seal rescuing time (I know responding to him is certainly cutting into my baby seal clubbing time).

I'd link to his response, but it's in his comments section, since he doesn't want to "waste space" on his blog. He even insinuated to me that I don't have a comments section because I'm too chicken to risk "losing an argument on my own turf." Them's fightin' words! Here's a couple more: "let's fight!"

And also, let's get one thing straight about me not having a commens feature, Green: there is a big difference between being too lazy and/or stupid to do something, and being afraid of doing that thing. Take THAT, space coyote!

So here's Think!'s commentaritativation:

On Mustard's site, he cites a Czech official who says Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi official in Prague in 2001, and that's the proof that Iraq supports terrorism.

Even if true, that's some pretty flimsy proof on which to justify a war against Iraq... I mean, there are other countries that have more blatantly supported al Qaeda, like Saudi Arabia. Why wouldn't we go to war with them first?

Secondly, the FBI and CIA won't stand behind the statement of the Czech official about the Prague/Atta/Iraq connection. Now, you'd think the lefttist rags would jump all over this fact... and they did... but the Washington Times did too! The Washington Times!!!

Thirdly, Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein. Saddam has suppressed Muslims in Iraq, not puttting him on Osama's good side. bin Laden has called Hussein "an apostate, an infidel, someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim." In 1990, bin Laden offered up mujahedeen fighters to drive Iraq from Kuwait. What allies!

You'll recall (or maybe you won't, after all you might be suffering from some degenerative brain affliction; it would explain a lot) that I didn't say it was proof. What I said that it was credible enough evidence, and I made that statement with the implicit consideration of the threat that such a connection would imply were it to be true. Which leads me into my next point:

I have to admit, I got suckered into a discussion about whether we were in the right concerning int'l law, inadvertantly allowing the concept to be defined on the terms of GreenThink and others who have a deeply flawed view of it. So yes, Green, you're right that under the definition that both you and Barbara Lee subscribe to, the US is violating int'l law. The problem is that your definition is simply bad.

Law must be a thing of disinterested parties settling disputes according to a standard, but there is no such thing in this case, since the nations involved that essentially set the precedent and decide what "international law" is are themselves motivated by their own national interest.

As for other countries supporting Al Qeada, it's true that Iraq could very well be on the low end of that spectrum, but Saudi Arabia and the others aren't militarily expansionist entities, and they're not seeking to get their hands on nukes. Their expansionism is of a more insidious religio-cultural form. That's not to say that I don't want that problem addressed, but that an imminent military attack isn't the kind of action that's warranted in SA's case, rather than some gradual but consistent and forceful diplomatic/political/economic pressure.

Iraq and Saudi Arabia are part of the same coin, but they're the two sides of it. There are many names for this coin. I like to simply call it Arabism. Steven Den Beste called it Arab Traditionalism, and did an excellent job of identifying it as an overarching whole.

And regarding your third point: It doesn't matter whether these people are best friends with each other or not. However much they may hate each other, Osama's animosity towards the US is much greater, and Saddam is motivated by mostly strategic goals (he's still a bit loony though, and cannot be considered a strictly rational actor). It is never a very intelligent thing to take the righteous-sounding statements of Arab politicians at face value. Outright lying and betrayal is perceived as a matter of honorable cunning in the Arab world.

Witness Kuwait's stance against the US only a few months ago. They were jabbering about having solidarity with their Iraqi brothers against American imperialism. Now it's looking like it will be the main staging area for an invasion of Iraq. This change of heart doesn't have anything to do with how they judged the rightness of the conflict, but merely because they recognized that they could profit more by siding with us.

So both Al Qeada and Iraq, while perhaps having no great love for one another, will not hesitate to join up to oppose the US.

2002-09-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

Best. Argument. Ever.

Why is it that IMAO is able to so consistently pick out the cogent points that everyone else seems to miss? Witness the following:

Kennedy has come out against going to war with Iraq. He outlines a number of reasons to which I respond by pointing out how large his head is. It's HUGE! He has to be obese to lower his center of gravity and keep from toppling over. Now, the size of his head probably has nothing to do with the value of his arguments, but I would then point out that Rep. Nadler has a very large head as well. Anyway, depite his enourmous head and the fact that he talks funny, Kennedy still has some pull in the Senate, due probably to the fear from other Senators that he might eat them, offer them a ride home, or, worst of all, headbutt them.

Gravity is another possible explanation, or can we really rule out the possibility that the whole collective career of the Kennedys isn't based on some kind of voodoo curse?

2002-09-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

Argumentum Ad Pythonium

The sand-pounders over at Warblogger Watch must be tickled with their own cleverness at this post by Amir Butler, relegating the Bush Doctrine to the realm of Monty Python:

It is an ANCIENT Welsh ART based on a BRILLIANTLY simple I-D-E-A, which is a SECRET. The best form of DEFENCE is ATTACK (Clausewitz) and the most VITAL element of ATTACK is SURPRISE (Oscar HAMMERstein). Therefore, the BEST way to protect yourself AGAINST any ASSAILANT is to ATTACK him before he attacks YOU... Or BETTER... BEFORE the THOUGHT of doing so has EVEN OCCURRED TO HIM!!! SO YOU MAY BE ABLE TO RENDER YOUR ASSAILANT UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE he is EVEN aware of your very existence!

Yes, the Pythons were remarkably prescient, weren't they? At another time they also managed to quite aptly identify the motivating principles for action that Europe, the UN, and the folks at WBW have shown themselves to subscribe to. Let's watch (From The Life of Brian):

REG: Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you've been doing some work on this.

FRANCIS: Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.

REG: Twelve months?

FRANCIS: Yeah, twelve months. And, let's face it. As empires go, this is the big one, so we've got to get up off our arses and stop just talking about it!

COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

LORETTA: I agree. It's action that counts, not words, and we need action now.

COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

REG: You're right. We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It's not going to shift one Roman soldier!

FRANCIS: So, let's just stop gabbing on about it. It's completely pointless and it's getting us nowhere!

COMMANDOS: Right!

LORETTA: I agree. This is a complete waste of time. [bam]

JUDITH: They've arrested Brian!

REG: What?

COMMANDOS: What?

JUDITH: They've dragged him off! They're going to crucify him!

REG: Right! This calls for immediate discussion!

Maybe we should suggest they change their name from Warblogger Watch to the People's Front of Judea.

2002-09-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

"Not a left-wing idiot"

...or so IMAO generously appraises me here.

Which of course leads to the question, just what kind of idiot am I? Any suggestions are welcome.

2002-09-27T22:40:00.000-07:00

Greenthink!'s endrun

Either his rhetorical/intellectual stamina is not of the caliber to continue our little tit for tat (for tot for teet for toot) concerning his love letters to the brave voice of dissent that is Cynthia McKinney, or he just got bored. I was worried this would happen. I considered using some pretty visual aids like flowcharts or a puppet show to keep his interest, but oh well. I can't force him to take his Ritalin if he doesn't want to.

Anyway, his latest apparently aspires to fact check my ass vis-a-vis my Babbling Barb post.

I'm afraid this won't be the kind of entertaining, maledictory verbal assault unhinged from any kind of restraint against national figures of embarrassment, something that people tell me they enjoy so much about this site, but hey, I'm a sucker for unproductive internecine strife.

Once again, I'm forced to use up valuable posting space to argue with Mr. Mustard.

Yeah, I really should take that gun away from your head that's forcing you to waste your precious time responding to posts that aren't even about you when you could be out there fighting for truth, justice and the Green Party way.

Mustard: "And as for "international law" and the UN charter, there is no proscription against war for defensive purposes."

That's correct, but would attacking Iraq be a defensive move? Hmmm.... let's take a look at the U.N. charter's Article 51, the unilateral warmonger's fave:

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations"

I repeat... IF AN ARMED ATTACK OCCURS.

What exactly do you consider September 11th, an accident? And before you get all huffy about the fact that the 9/11 hijackers weren't Iraqi soldiers, I'd advise you to remember that the exact words of Czech Interior Minister Stanislov Gross were as follows: "We can confirm now that during his trip to the Czech Republic in April 2001, his second trip there [9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta], did have a contact with an officer of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani."

Now I know you're the type that refuses to connect these sorts of dots unless they walk right up and slap you in the face with a 10-pound flounder, but frankly I'm tired of holding your hand on these matters of deduction, so I'll just advise you to sit and think about it for a while. I promise that it'll come.

This connection is enough to assume that Iraq, if not directly sponsoring our enemies, is at least aiding and coordinating with them. That makes them allies, and that makes them a viable target in the response to the attacks last year, completely consistent with the policy of working against terrorists and the states that aid and abet them.

2002-09-27T18:57:00.000-07:00

I think that I shall never see,
Another as dumb as Barbara Lee...

I really owe it to The Rott for pointing out Common Dreams. It already has proven itself to be a sort of vast train wreck of dishonest and poorly-formed opinions, just crying out to the world, "Look at me! Acknowledge me! Fisk me!"

Being the obliging sort that I am, how could I turn my back on their implicit cries?

And beyond that, when Barbara Lee writes a column, you'd have to be the most sourpussed and dour of fellows to not want to join the party. After all, picking out errors of reason in her statements and writings is like going fishing with crack: the little critters practicaly line up for a turn on the hook.

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, you might recall her as the sole caster of a "nay" vote for the resolution advising and allowing President Bush to use all necessary force to protect America from terrorism after 9/11, making her the darling of Berkeleyites and other such silly folks who consider themselves valiant voices of dissent (and no, "Berkeleyite" doesn't mean me; as far as I'm concerned, the word describes a state of mind -or non-mind- rather than a geographical location).

Now, I consider her vote silly and incorrect, but it alone isn't enough to condemn her out of hand. After all, maybe she just took a few too many stupid pills that morning. This howver, is enough justification for the Blogosphere Furies to hound her to the end of her dispicable days:

Barbara Lee later became a staffer in the office of Democrat congressman Ron Dellums. In this capacity she committed an act of betrayal that I am unable to describe as treason only because she was never prosecuted for it. At the time, Ron Dellums was the head of the House Sub-committee on Military Installations. In this capacity, he had top security clearance and carried on a one-man campaign to thwart the foreign policy of the United States in regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada.

U.S. security officials had identified the Communist dictatorship as a threat because of the presence of large numbers of Soviet bloc advisers and their ongoing construction of an airport that could be used for Soviet military planes. As the ranking Democrat member of the House Armed Services Committee, Dellums went to Grenada to conduct his own fact-finding tour. On his return he testified before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs that "based on my personal observations, discussion and analysis of the new international airport under construction in Grenada, it is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use. It is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing and totally unwarranted for the United States Government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States' national security."

What legislators did not know at the time, was that Dellums had previously submitted his report on the airport to the Communist dictator of Grenada for his prior approval, and subject to any changes he or his military advisers chose to make. In other words Dellums acted as an agent of the Communist enemy in abetting his hostile designs against the United States. His emissary in this act of betrayal was Barbara Lee.

So, now that we're all nice and aquainted with Bolshie Barb, what say we take a gander at the giant crap she decorously deposited on the Common Dreams website.

Our nation is today on the verge of going to war against Iraq. In a rush to launch a first strike, we risk destabilizing the Middle East and setting an international precedent that could come back to haunt us all. President Bush's doctrine of pre-emption violates international law, the charter of the United Nations and our own long-term security interests. It forecloses alternatives to war before we have even tried to pursue them.

Well, there it is. Lee took all the most frequent claims of the anti-war crowd, threw them into a blender, and slopped them right onto our collective internet plate for our perusing enjoyment.

"We risk destabalizing the Middle East and setting an international precedent that could come back to haunt us all." Barb, you say "risk" as if that isn't one of our aims. We're risking Middle East stability the same way we were risking German stability in June of 1944. As for international precedent, that clattering sound is my knees shaking in terror.

"Coming this December, the most blood curdling horror film about international law since The Curse of the Security Council Resolution! You'll scream, you'll faint, you'll go weak when you see The Return of the International Precedent!"

This oft-repeated business of a dreaded precedent set that will be followed by sundry aggressive nations wanting to get in on the pre-emption racket is bunk. Firstly, it is plain that our claims are different than those of say, China, using pre-emption as a reason to either invade Taiwan or else to acquire whatever territory that it has its eye on or Russia claiming pre-emption against "terrorist" wayward provinces whose only crime is wishing to form a separate republic. Secondly, when have the types of nations that would unfairly use the rhetoric of pre-emption to launch aggressive wars ever followed our example anyway? Iraq was already claiming "pre-emption" when it attacked Iran more than 20 years ago. Whether or not we claim it in a justified case will not have any bearing on similar nations doing it in unjustified situations.

And as for "international law" and the UN charter, there is no proscription against war for defensive purposes. And our long-term security interests do NOT involve having to deal with a nuclear Saddam. War now is dangerous. No war is more dangerous.

It forecloses alternatives to war before we have even tried to pursue them. You mean like the last decade of sanctions, inspections, censure etc? Or do you mean something else, maybe? I'm just curious, is all.

The president has told us that we must attack Iraq because our nation is in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein.

We'll have proof he has nukes when he uses them. We'll have proof that he has hostile intentions against us when New York or DC become a radioactive hole. I'm not really interested in sitting around and waiting for that to happen.

We all agree that the world would be better off without Hussein in power, but we would be better off still if we eliminate weapons of mass destruction from the entire world.

And we would be even better off if we made the whole world join hands in the spirit of brotherhood and harmony and sing a song of peace and friendship. I suppose you brought some blueprints for accomplishing that?

The Pandora's box of nuclear weapons can't be closed in the foreseeable future. But what we can do is keep nukes from falling into the hands of an unpredictable, aggressive, whacked-out contender for "Who Wants to be a Mass-Murderer?"

Now Saddam, we're coming up on the last round. You've come a long way. You won the Uranium and the gas centrifuges, and just got your hands on the molecular pumps. Get this one right, and you move onto the final round and get that coveted Big Red Button. Are you nervous?

Yes Regis, very nervous.

Ok now, for that Big Red Button, what is the primary means of subduing a restless ethnic population?

Hmm...

Take your time, Saddam.

I think I'm going to have to use my last Deathline on this one.

Ok, you're using your last Deathline. Did you have anyone particualr in mind?

Yes, I'd like to gas the Kurds, Regis.

...And so forth.

There are viable and more effective alternatives. For these reasons, I have introduced House Concurrent Resolution 473, which urges the United States to re-engage the diplomatic process and stresses our government's commitment to the U.N. inspections process. Containment and inspections have worked and can work in the future.

Well, I'm eager to hear about your trip this interesting alternate universe where your beloved inspections and containment have worked. Do people wear hats n their feet there as well? What a whimsical-sounding place!

At the very least, I'm impressed by Lee's stunning willingness to deny the most basic facts that reality has thrown onto our table. "Inspections have worked." "Saddam isn't a threat." "I've never been kicked in the head by a mule repeatedly and thus lost most cognitive function."

2002-09-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

Babs: investigative journalistic DYNAMO!

IMAO points out that Barbra Streisand has taken enough time out of torturing small children and animals with her singing to send off a memo to Dick "Gebhardt," demanding that he and Democrats stop all those nasty Republicans from doing all those nasty things.

Oh, this is simply delicious:

How can we ignore the obvious influence on the Bush Administration of such special interests as the oil industry, the chemical companies, the logging industry...

The logging industry?

Now one might make the claim that to call the near-entirety of the memo a dim-witted sack of horse crap would be an insult to the mentally handicapped feces of equines everywhere, but no one can deny that Babs has dropped a journalistic bomb there.

I didn't even know that the logging industry wanted us to go to war so it could profit from it!

I can't really think of a reason why they would be so in favor of this, unless they were itching to get at some vast tracts of virgin Iraqi forestland that no one told me about. Babs couldn't be wrong about this, could she? The mere suggestion is blasphemy. So not only has she somehow uncovered the nefarious influences of the the dreaded "big lumber" on the Iraqi situation, she's also discovered the existence of an entirely new, verdant ecosystem ready for exploitation in the Middle East! Wow.

Barbra Streisand: singer, actress, director, producer, idiot.

2002-09-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

Greenthink! Part Deux

Greeny (another Berkeley blog) and I have exchanged a few missives now.

For reference:

My first post, commenting on Greenthink!'s ruminations of a McKinney Green Party presidential bid.
Greenthink!'s unthink!ing response.
Part 3: me again.
Greenthink!'s latest.

And my final refutation: pbbbttttttthhhhhhhhhh!

Seriously though, Monsieur VerdePenser! displays a painful inability to connect the largest, most obvious dots when he claims that McKinney never made any explicit accusation saying that Bush knowingly allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen so the stock portfolio of he and his Skull & Bones cronies would skyrocket. I mean these things are more like crop circles than dots. From his forced obtuseness, I'd doubt that Greeny would be able to recognize an insinuation if it walked right up to him and put some Jello in his pants (especially since this is a leisure activity he hints at enjoying, when he's not being spinny for McKinney).

What kind of a conservative lives in CZ anyway?

A poor one. I know it's a shock to your common conceptions of the non-class warrior types that I don't sit in my mansion on the hill laughing maniacally while rubbing filthy lucre between my grubby, gnarled hands. Think of it this way, instead of being poor, just consider me a cheap, stingy miser, deathly afraid to part with any of my precious shinies. There, is that better? Good. I always try to help people keep their treasured world-views intact.

As a matter of fact (sorry to all the non-Berkeley people for this continued, localized tangent), I take a measure of pride in the fact that I was one of the people who put in a lot of effort into changing CZ from the smelly, dirty, loud, unmanageble crackhouse that it was 3 years ago into the clean and safe environment that it is today. When I moved in, the place was a mess. We're talking honest to God crack dealers and meth labs. In those days, the place was self-selecting - those who wanted it to be a drug-infested anarchic playground tended to push anyone not so inclined out of the house. And now, only a few years later we've got average, hard-working students that are perfectly happy to live here and call it home. If that kind of gentrification isn't the mark of a good conservative, I don't know what is.

OK, enough about Berkeley.

So Greenthink! takes issue with the claim that McKinney accused Bush of knowing about 9/11, and not acting so as to suit his personal gain. Let's go through a rundown of what viscous bile of stupidity issued forth from the McKinney maw:

We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?

And then this:

What is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11th.

Got all that? Apparently Greenthink! isn't able to use these two bits of shameful rhetoric to get from Point A to Point B, despite the big-ass flashing sign that says "Hey you! Yeah, YOU! THIS WAY!--->."

She insinuates quite clearly that she's not talking about vague hints of attacks, hints which were among hundreds of other peices of evidence and threats that pour in weekly through intelligence channels. By saying that these people were "needlessly" murdered, she doesn't exactly hold back in suggesting that Bush knew the attacks were going to happen. And then, she mentions the bit about corporations close to the administration being in a position to possibly profit from the aftermath.

Are we getting it now? Don't make me get out the dunce cap. Why would she mention the bit about profiting unless to claim that this was the motive about not trying to stop the attacks? Was she just making conversation?

GreenThink!:

I have never heard her directly accuse Bush by saying something like, "Bush knew the WTC would be attacked and did nothing."

That's because if she did, most of the nation would be howling for her head, and rightly. Not to mention that such an accusation is illegal slander.

McKinney is an idiot, but she's a selective idiot. She knew enough to hedge her statements to the point of possibile deniability (deniability that, in the real world, would only really fly with those afflicted with some horrible disease, the symptoms of which reduces one's cognitive powers to that of a brain-damaged mule). For instance, you just can't beat this little gem, which she vomited up after being pressed about her wild-eyed, sickening accusation:

I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.

Yuh-huh. And I am not aware of any evidence showing that if I took a tire-iron and whacked that imbecility-laced head of hers around for a good half-hour, elves would pop out and start dancing and giving me three wishes. But a complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.

And I've already got the tire iron!

2002-09-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

Arundhati Roy and her Guardian blathering

Remember Arundhati Roy? Sure you do! She was one of those brave dissenters who weren't afraid to make themselves look like chronic glue-sniffers or victims of an effective pummeling to the head by making claims such as Bush was no different than Bin Laden.

What, you haven't heard of her? Well then, that's all the proof I need to believe that her brave voice of dissent was stifled. Please, please, I don't want to hear any nonsense about her arguments and statements being so baseless that they make Robert Fisk look positively well thought-out and reasonable. I can't have any of those facts interupting my worldview. That's just what those brutal Amerikkkans want.

Well, no matter if you can't remember her. That's why we have the Guardian! Besides being high in digital fiber, the Guardian boasts the most concentrated collection of whiny-wacko-wonkies (the other WWW!) this side of Mother Jones, and Roy is one of their occaisonal stars. But don't take my word for it, have a look-see yourself. And away we go.

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government (myself included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

A commonly held contention. Sure, it isn't true, but hey, as long as we're playing fast and loose with our words...

Ms. Roy makes the same mistake that just about every put-upon "dissenter" and their dog has made: that their ideas are dismissed because people have formed rash preconceived notions about them, since they've been labeled "anti-Americans." This is, in many respects, a double whammy of wrongness, so let's take it one at a time. Firstly, they seem to feel that the term itself is a sort of the standard frontline weapon for anyone seeking to discredit them.

"Oh yeah?" says I. "Then show me." I don't use the term, and no bloggers that I read use the term either, at least not with any degree of freqency that approaches what Roy claims. She gives the impression that the anti-war crowd is beset with shouts of "anti-Americans!" whenever they make honest, cogent, good-faith arguments, because of course the ugly Americans and their British puppets can't be counted on to address what was said. This is bullshit, plain and simple (you might want to go get some boots before reading further, cuz the shit only gets thicker from here).

"Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride." That's strike two, Roy. Once again, the fact that people don't wholeheartedly agree with people of Roy's stripes serves as the ultimate proof to them that they have been dismissed without a hearing. What is simply too painful to contemplate is that 1) People listened, and 2) They disagreed. It doesn't matter if they were labeled "anti-American," "pro-American," "amateur-American" or "100%-all-beef-American," once they say something like "You know, Bin Laden is really just Bush's twin," they've revealed themselves to be "anti-common-sense," and then are dismissed as irrelevant.

What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

Wait a minute here, lemme get this straight... are you saying that you don't hate giant sequoias?

Well sheeee-it! Looks like this whole hullabuloo was about nuthin'! Let's stop the fussin' and the feudin' then!

I don't think you hate all Americans. I do, however, think that you believe that any American who doesn't agree with you is a simplistic moron, since they would apparently buy the notion that criticizing America means you hate Louis Armstrong and General Sherman.

Strawman, meet Arundhati. Arundhati, strawman.

There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in US government policy come from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended, if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian government's fascist policies.)

Well, they're obviously brave souls, seeing as how the death squads and jackboots are constantly roaming our country and squashing dissent. Man, those death squads have really got to learn to be more effective. How are all those "scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques" getting out?

To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Roy, you're powers of creating a flimsy opposing idea out of thin air and then mercilessly triumphing over it are just breathtaking. Really, bravo. Bravo.

Come now, "racist"? When did race ever factor into this? Someon ought to tell Roy that there is no such thing as an American race. And why quibble with using fancy words like "the establishment"? Why not just come out and speak the truth in plain language: "Foo, you be a tool o' da Man!" At least we have Roy "keepin' it real up in da hizzouse!"

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realised that it's not. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war.

I'm not surprised you think it's canny, after all, you made it up and you seem to be the egotistic type.

And look out, people. This war is "dangerous"! We really should put up a big danger sign around the war so school children know not to wander through it. Why don't we have any more of those non-dangerous wars? You know the ones I'm talking about... with the fully automatic .45 caliber nerf bats and the laser guided wiffle balls. Those were a blast.

All wars are dangerous, you twit. In this case, not going to war is even more dangerous. You could argue with that point if you wish, but clearly you can't be bothered to.

Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism. Now that the initial aim of the war - capturing Osama bin Laden - seems to have run into bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's military ally, Saudi Arabia?)

If you can name me a single person of note who claimed that those reasons were the main point of the war, I promise to not slap you silly with this 8-pound flounder.

The stated reasons for this war have always been to reduce the chance of repeated terrorism against the United States. Getting (or killing, as by all evidence now he seems dead) Osama Bin Laden was a useful step in that process. So was eradicating or scattering most of Al-Qeada to the point that, even if still alive, its remaining membership has become limp and ineffective. Freeing the Afghani people and ending the rule of the Taliban was a side-effect of the main goal. But of course, Roy completely glosses over the fact that all of these things were overwhelming positives for all those people who are apparently so victimized by the US.

As for Saudi Arabia, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The House of Saud will have its day of reckoning. It might not be at the point of a gun, but they're going down, and soon.

Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against "untouchables", against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed?

1) India and Pakistan did not help 19 people kill 3,000 American citizens. 2) India, though flawed, is a democracy, and is nothing like what Afghanistan was. 3) Pakistan's president is currently working to mediate the extremism of his country. Whenever this is an option, we're all for it rather than using force. 4)You're a fucking idiot.

Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows that no war, no act of revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.

I think they might disagree. If you told them that we could prevent this from happening again by going to war, I have a strange inkling that they would be behind it.

But that's beside the point. The argument is completely irrelevant. We're not doing this on their behalf. We're doing it to protect the other 270 million Americans. Maybe you think this is some sort of simplistic revenge. I could see how that would be, clearly being simplistic yourself.

To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.

Whuzza-huh??

Have you been watching different TV than me? Cuz somehow I don't recall seeing any advertisements for the new Nike "Muslim-hunters: 2002." You're saying US corporations are using propaganda to whip up a frenzy for war because it will help them sell Tide to American housewives? Well, it's good your wide assortment of tin-foil headgear is blocking out the mind-control devices employed by these corporations so that you don't fall under their spell. Onward Idiotarian soldier!

Oh dear. I'm not even halfway through this thing and already my eyes are burning from the pain. I'll leave this up to those bloggers with more stamina than I to finish. She's already set herself folks, all you gotta do is knock her down.

2002-09-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

He done did said it already...

My post about the word "chickenhawk" caused Aaron Haspel over at God of the Machine to point out that he blogged about it as well, earlier and in a much better fashion than myself, I might add (not that I ever thought that I was the first one to do it, of course).

It's a very solid takedown, and I recommend as a useful time saver pursuant to my goal of eradicating its use as a useful term, that the next time someone mentions the word, you simply provide a link to that post.

Let the "chickenhawk"-icide begin!

2002-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

You can't rape a .38

The Prof points to this, as a completely sensible reason why Britain's gun control laws don't protect their citizenry.

A few days ago, a girl who lives in my house (it's a co-op house with 127 people, and msot of them are new, so I don't know her name) was wearing a shirt with the slogan emblazoned on the front: "You can't rape a .38."

I thought to myself, "You go, girl," and was reminded that the most empowering and socially-leveling of devices is a handgun. This is the kind of message that needs to be communicated more often and more intensely, especially in the liberal enclaves of America.

Last year, the Libertarian student group here at Berkeley stood at the North Gate entrance to campus with some purposefully provocative signs, one of which read "Gun control causes rape." There was more than one girl in my house who was quite ticked off by it. Part of the outrage wasn't just from the fact that it was a pro-gun statement (when of course all decent people would shudder at the thought of even holding one of those dirty, loud, uncivilized contraptions), but that it had taken what they considered to be a feminist issue and appropriated it unfairly for their own use. Part of the reasoning implicit in this feeling was that rape is violence against women, and guns are inherently related to aggressive violence, and aggressive violence is inherently male, with the conclusion being that therefore, a sign saying "Gun control causes rape" was indirectly working to increase acts of violent aggression against women. The notion that a woman might use a gun to fend off an attacker never entered into the equation. It was a pure absurdity, in their line of reasoning, which held as an assumption that any increase in gun ownership would a) be male ownership, and b) also increase the amount of violence perpetrated against women by men with guns.

That perception has to be changed. We need more slogans like "You can't rape a .38"

2002-09-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Get your masters degree in education, make the world a better place!

Another bit from my UCLA friend:

My roommate is in the Masters of Education program here at UCLA, and from what he tells me, it's not really worth much. Two days ago, they played a game where they had to choose one of four animals by going to a corner of the room. Then they had to say how they were like the animal, and how they could interact with all the other animals. Today they made a poster of their feelings. Imagine teaching a group of inner city gangsters how to paint by numbers.

My dad was a principle in the LA city school district, and as such, he was required, every year, to attend some workshops/retreats to show them how to be better educators. The anecdote he told of these sessions that always stood out in my mind was of the educators being forced to sit in a circle and describe, if they were a tree, just what kind of tree would they be.

2002-09-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Limbaugh-like," am I?

My two salvos(here and here) against GreenThink have elicited a response.

Well, well, well... welly, welly, welly... wellity, wellity, wellity!...

Undiscovered right-wing Berkeley blogger, Mean Mr. Mustard, doesn't seem to like me. But I'm fair and balanced. I report, you decide. Here and here.

As is common among those on the right, he has a Limbaugh-like fear of opposing viewpoints, and therefore hasn't added comment boxes to his blog.

I might have to defend myself on my own turf in the coming days.

Hehe... I think you might've confused "fear" with "revulsion," there Greeny. And furthermore, it isn't even against opposing viewpoints. There are those who can disagree with me that I respect wholeheartedly. It's mind-numbingly stupid, poorly thought-out and delusional ones that get my goat (and I love my goat. Anyone even thinks about touching my goat and by God I swear I'll...!!!).

You can oppose the war in Iraq. You can think Bush is bad/dumb president. You can even put Jello down your pants for all I care in the privacy of your own home. What I will not let pass without loading up the my Rhetorical Howizter with armor-piercing, explosive invective shells, is for you to suggest something as outrageous as that miserable twit McKinney did, namely that the intelligence "failures" preceding 9/11 weren't failures at all, but that Bush knew all about the attacks beforehand, and let it happen because he wanted to make money off of it.

This is what McKinney said, but you, being either too dim-witted or too mendacious to acknowledge that, instead did McKinney's hedging for her, and claimed that all she was asking for was an investigation into "what went wrong."

That is utter horseshit.

I'm basically repeating myself here, but I've been forced to, since GreenThink! has shown a remarkable ability to ignore the actual issues that were raised and instead erect a strawman that just wets himself in utter terror at the thought of someone having a different opinion than he.

Right, that's it. I'm exposing your stupidity because I'm frightened of different opinions. It couldn't be because your opinions are idiotically wrong. I actually addressed the ideas and arguments. You resorted to ad hominem.

Frankly, it leaves you looking like -gasp!- you're afraid of opposing views!

2002-09-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

It's word-killin' time!

Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting memes.

So what's the most useless and dishonest term to recently float to the surface of the Dowdish swirl of filth that coats and leaves greenish-brown rings on the rusty steel toilet bowl of the Idiotarian blogistan?

I've got to throw my lot in with "chickenhawk." Yeah, yeah this won't sit very well with all the folks who are just tickled by the term the way the shallow-brained crowd for so many years was downright delighted by that whole "military intelligence" "oxymoron," but hey, I gots to calls 'em like I sees 'em, or at least the way the voices interpret 'em for me. And right now the voices are unanimously telling me that "chickenhawk" has gotta go.

As memes go, it is uniquely bad, for it rests upon the claim made by the left that those who have not served in the military are not fit to make decisions on military matters (ie, Iraq).

Hmm. I didn't know that the Left was so in favor of a military dictatorship. The first time I heard its use and garnered what exactly those using it were getting at, I have to admit that I thought for moment that I had stepped through a rift in Space-Time into some sort of alternate opposite reality where cats chase dogs, Saturday Night Live is funny, and Maureen Dowd is able to make a cogent point. But I quickly figured out that this couldn't be the case. After all, no one was sporting the mandatory "evil doppelganger" goatee.

So eventually, having ruled out the Star Trek explanantion (which is always the first empirical mental test I run in any situation), I realized that the word "chickenhawk," and the ideological baggage it hefts along with it, was merely the latest and most stunning example of the Left's ability to mold, contort, stretch, and generally do things that would make Play-Doh look like reinforced steel, to its own principles and convictions.

It's truly amazing. The sleight of hand involved would make a 3-card-monte dealer stand back agape. The sheer amount of impossible self-contradtion would make an Escher picture look completely consistent. The shameless and dishonest dispersal of apparently sacred beliefs for short-sighted expediency would sicken Benedict Arnold.

Civilian control of the military is one of the founding principles of our constitution. They are not the ones that decide when we go to war, but exactly how we go about doing it when the decision is made. Of course taking their opinions and observations based on experience is a valuable and worthwhile step in the decision process, but they are not the only voice, and the buck does not stop at them. To suggest otherwise is to remove the mantle of Commander in Chief from the President and give it to general, and if a nation's sovereignty is based on the ability to defend itself and maintain that sovereignty through force, then suddenly you've created a cabal of generals who can essentially run the country.

Let's just sit back for a minute and take a moment to reflect on how wacky this idea, particularly coming from the Left, those snarking anti-military types who took so much pleasure in thinking the term "military-intelligence" was an oxymoron. Does it mean these people are really that flexible with their core beliefs?

Nah. It just means that they're horribly dishonest (though I won't entirely rule out the possibility that they're just idiots), and will use any pathetic linguistic ploy to try to spin the reasons for war away from the actual issues that the debate must center around, even if that means an appeal to an authority that they, on the other 6 days of the week, consider evil incarnate.

This meme needs to be beaten down to a bloody pulp, ground into dust, burned to ashes and then shot into the sun, meaning every time it is used, the user gets called on it, and demonstrated to be a person of either very shallow thought, or highly suspect honesty. And then, time permitting, a round of beatings with a sack of doorknobs.

2002-09-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

This guy is just whacked out of his gourd!

But in a good way. I'm convinced that, after perusing his site, IMAO has officially taken from Laurence Simon the title of "Craziest Fucking Psycho in the Blogosphere." Congrats, IMAO. May your reign be long and belwildering.

I'm particularly fond of his treatise on world peace: Nuke the Moon.

IMAO reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons, when Bart hires Herman to help him defeat Nelson, the school bully.

Bart: Grandpa, I think this guy is a little nuts...

Grandpa: Oh yeah? Well General George S. Patton was a little nuts, and this guy is completely out of his mind. We can't lose!

Indeed. Those that get in his way, beware.

2002-09-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

The Rott flexes that massive canine muscle of his...

...by linking to me and doubling the traffic. I'm of course delighted, both by the traffic and the fact that someone I'm a fan of has mentioned and complimented the results of me skipping my anti-psychotic meds.

2002-09-25T21:01:00.000-07:00

This one is off the Official Doozy Meter

The Guardian, with no apparent sense of irony whatsoever, showcases a Palestinian report on UN resolutions, loudly proclaiming "Aha!" and suggesting that Bush is operating under some sort of double standard.

(I know, I know, but let's go through the motions of taking a peek at Brian Whitaker's flaccid fallacious fluff anyway, shall we? And a-Fisking we go!)

In his speech to the United Nations earlier this month, President George Bush emphasised the need for action rather than words.

"We created the United Nations security council, so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk, our resolutions would be more than wishes," he said.

"All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment," he continued. "Are security council resolutions to be honoured and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? [...] Right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime."

Brian bursts out of the gate and jumps to a good start. So far, he's showing good form and coherence, but it must be noted that it is still very early in the game and things can still go either way.

The same could be said of various other countries, but most notably Israel. Throughout its history, the security council has never once taken enforcement action over Israel's flouting of UN resolutions or its violations of international law.

Oooooooh! And once again the ball is dropped after a promising start. What do you say, Brent Musberger?

Well, looking at their past performance, these kinds of logical errors are par the course for The Guardian, a franchise that has consistently squandered whatever credibility it had on foolish mistakes like these.

I'd have to agree with you on that one, Brent. What would you say is most indicative of their reasoning problems? Is it their analogy-squad, or maybe their ad hominem special teams?

Frankly, Russ, I'd have to say they're just fucking idiots.

No argument on that point, Brent. Let's go to the playback and see why: Whitaker fumbles early on by suggesting that in order to be consistent, Bush would have to follow all the Security council resolutions concerning Israel as well as those of Iraq. What's the problem here, Brent?

Well, it's a pretty clear case of a grave misunderstanding on Mr. Whitaker's part. The Security Council resolutions against Israel do not carry any expressed threat of enforcement. Sure, they're full of demands and censures (which in most cases are baseless and politically motivated in nature, but that's another ballgame), but they expressly do not say "Do X or we will take military action Y". These kinds of resolutions are written up and touted for the world to see on a weekly basis, and they do not carry any force of law, for inherent in law is the aspect of enforcement and punishment. However, those elements are not missing in the case of Saddam, whose cease-fire agreement from 1991 expressly stated that the cessation of hostilities was contingent on his carrying-out of UNSC resolutions regarding disarmament, etc, and that failure to comply would result in renewed military action. Over the last 10 years, he has consistently violated each proscription. I'd say there's a big difference there, Russell.

I have to agree with you on that one, Brent. Let's go back to the playback:

Largely as a result of American pressure, criticisms of Israel in security council resolutions also tend to be softer than the criticisms of other countries for similar offences.

Not only that. Thirty-two draft resolutions criticising Israel since 1972 have never seen the light of day because the US used its security council veto to block them.

Ooh, that's another stunning foul.

You've got that right, Russ. I don't know how they're even allowed to stay in the league anymore.

I suppose Whitaker refuses to confront the possibility that the United States vetoed those resolutions because they were completely unwarranted, seeing as how making baseless and absurdly backward censures and claims is what the UN best these days. The complete hoax of a massacre at Jenin is a perfect example. In cases such as these, the US would be morally remiss to not block such an unfair resolution.

A report published today by the PLO's negotiations affairs department looks at a series of UN resolutions relating to Israel, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Rwanda and Iraq - and compares the follow-up action taken in each case.

The report discusses existing resolutions in four categories: grave human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law; colonies and demographic manipulation; the right of return for refugees and displaced persons; and the withdrawal of forces from territories under armed occupation.

In the first category, action taken by the security council on human rights violations included tribunals for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity (in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda), an arms embargo (Kosovo), an international presence (Kosovo and East Timor), and "all necessary means" (ie military action) in the case of Iraq.

And it's a high fly ball to deep left field...

Not even the mildest of these remedies was adopted in the case of Israel, whose violations - assassinations, deportations, house demolitions, restrictions on freedom of movement, etc - are well documented.

And Whitaker shits himself in the middle of the play and collapses into a quivering fetal position on the field, while the ball rolls to a stop and lies untouched! Tack up another error for the Guardian.

Well, that's another 2 runs for the opposing team.

You mean "truth"?

You got it.

Now, I just want to be sure I've got this straight... he's comparing Israel working to find and kill known terrorists, knocking down the houses of suicide bombers, and setting up checkpoints and curfews to the mass genocide/torture in Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor and Iraq? I'd just like to be sure that's what he's saying so I won't feel bad when I pray for him to get run over by a 16-wheeler. By the way, can you rent those?

Easy tiger, let's go back to the video.

In the second category - demographic manipulation - Israel has sought to consolidate its occupation of the Palestinian territories by changing the population balance in two ways.

One is to encourage Palestinian emigration through economic disruption and land expropriation, as well as direct expulsion in some cases. The other is through the establishment of illegal Jewish colonies whose population has risen, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, from 200,000 to 400,000.

A common strategy at this point in the game, eh Russ?

You're right about that, Brent, but not a justifiable one. The settlements are often held up as the least defensible of Israel's actions, even by many who are strong suppporters of Israel, and as such, it's a favorite tact for the Idiotarian team when it's almost halftime and they're already down quite a few points. The only problem is that it isn't the secret weapon they think it is.

First of all, over much of the territory on which the settlements that have been expanded since the Six Day war, there lived Jewish settlers since long before 1948, Zionists who hadn't displaced anyone, since the area was largely an empty swath of desert, whose highlights were sand, some nomadic arabic tribes, sand, rocks, and sand. During the unprovoked war in which the Arabs wished to crush the nascent state of Israel the day after its founding, many of these settlements were cleansed of Jews, which means that any that didn't flee were slaughtered. Wae victis. When this land was recaptured in 1967, the Israelis were, by any measure, a helluva lot more humane to the conquered, merely telling the Arabs to pack up and go.

And no, it isn't true that Jews inhabited 100 percent of the lands held after the Six Day war, but my reaction to that objection is: so the fuck what? You guys started an unprovoked war. You lost. Get over it.

And prior to 1967, Israel was just a few strips of barely connected land, and the Israeli government and military reasoned (quite rightly) that they could never defend such a geography from Arab aggression (which was sure to come again). It is perfectly within their right to defend themselves by taking and settling land that was acquired in a defensive action.

Can Whitaker keep up this foolishness?? Let's watch!

In 1980, the security council issued a resolution saying that these activities had "no legal validity" and constituted "a flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva convention". It decided to establish a commission "to examine the situation".

Israel refused to co-operate with the commission and the security council responded with another resolution "strongly deploring" Israel's refusal.

Elsewhere, it has been a different story. In Kosovo, for example, efforts to drive out the majority ethnic Albanian population and replace them with ethnic Serbs were denounced by the security council and backed up with international action. Similarly in Bosnia and Rwanda, strong condemnation was followed by comprehensive sanctions and enforcement action.

'Scuse me, Brent, I gotta go take a whiz...

No problem, I'll take this one. Once again, the fact that the UN basically looked at the Israelis and frowned real hard reveals that the situation, even though they might've disapproved of it, is not at all similar to the ones in Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq, Ted Kennedy's car, etc. Whitaker should've learned that in Spring Training. I hear though that the coaches at the Guardian were too focused on their specially designed Cranial-Anus calisthenics. Never before has a team spent so much time with their heads up their asses.

In the third category - the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes - there is no relevant security council resolution about Palestinian refugees, though there have been resolutions regarding Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Rwanda.

"In contrast with the compared cases where the right of return formed a key component of all peace settlements and was enforced by international operations", the PLO report says, "no attempts have been made to enforce the Palestinian right of return and there have been attempts [by Israel] to declare the Palestinian refugee return issue a 'non-negotiable' one."

Hmmm... an interesting play at this late stage in the game. By this time the fans are usually yawning at the repetition of the same old tired crap. Forget the seventh inning stretch, we need a seventh inning beat-the-Idiotarian-to-death-with-his-own-shoe. Bring the kids! Each child under twelve gets a free steel-toed boot with admission.

Simply put, there IS no Palestinian "right of return." During the 20th century, there have been literally hundreds of millions of people displaced permanently by war, and most of them had a lot less blood on their hands than the Palestinians. After WWII, millions of Germans, French, Poles and a myriad of other ethnic groups had to move after lands changed hands. Immediately after the founding of Israel, almost every Jew living in an Arab country was forcibly expelled and absorbed by Israel. If the rest of the Arab countries cared so much for the Palestinians, they would do the same, since these refugees, I might add, were CREATED by the war that the Arab world perpetrated against Israel. There wouldn't be any need for even the discussion of a right of return if the Arab world were willing to live in peace with Israel.

In the fourth category - withdrawal of occupying forces - the strongest action taken by the security council was against Iraq, following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Member states were authorised to "use all necessary means" to end the occupation.

In the case of Bosnia, which in 1992 was occupied by Yugoslav and Croatian army units, the security council ordered "a general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia".

Oh, it looks like Whitaker here might be making a comeback. He's gone two whole paragraphs without a significant factual or logical blunder... can he continue this streak??

In Kosovo, the security council backed up its withdrawal demand with action to deploy an international security presence. Unlike these rather short-lived occupations, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has continued for 35 years.

Oooooh, that's gotta hurt. The agony of stupidity right there folks. It looked like he might, for just a moment there, pull out a salient point, but instead once again he's fumbled and lies sprawled on the infield green.

A tough break, Brent, but it's not like it's one we didn't see coming. Treating as equivalent unprovoked invasions, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder on the one hand, and a defending your nation from attack on the other... It's just sad really.

I hear that. I can see that right now in the wives sections of the bleachers, Whitaker's spouse has joined in booing and pelting him with rotten fruit.

And now this is a startling, but welcome development: even though this match was scheduled to go on for three more paragraphs, the ref has stepped in and is declaring a TKO on Whitaker.

Well, I for one can say that I'm relieved. Any more punishment and Whitaker could've endured some permanent damage to his frontal lobe.

Oh wait a minute, it seems I spoke too soon. It seems that rather than stopping the match, the ref has entered the ring and is beating Whitaker senseless with an aluminum bat.

2002-09-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

Yes. YES

I hear many on the left — the extreme-ish left — saying that any debate on the war has been suppressed. They pretend that anti-Bush views can’t get a hearing. What they mean is, they’re not winning the argument — that’s all. And when they can’t win, when the public really doesn’t respect them, they cry “Unfair!” “Suppression!” “McCarthy!” “A. Mitchell Palmer!” Etc.

Look, I don’t prevail in plenty of arguments: If I had my way, Social Security would be privatized tomorrow. But I don’t pretend that I’ve been suppressed. I acknowledge that the weight of opinion (or emotion) is against me.

When Susan Sarandon whines to the Euro-media that in an Age of Fear “progressive” views are stifled, what she means is: The dumb boobs won’t listen to me. Won’t agree with me.- Jay Nordlinger

2002-09-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hey Ma, it's me!

Since I'm currently way too cheap to bother getting my own domain name and hosting (even though a web admin friend of mine has already offered me free hosting), I haven't put any kind of bio/info page or section yet. Maybe one day I will. Another distinct possibility is that aeronautically-inclined primates will exit rapidly en masse from my derrier.

But then, in lieu of that, there's this. Casa Zimbabwe is the co-op I live in, and that's me with the stupid grin on his face. Don't laugh, I couldn't help it. The photographer said, "Ok, look natural.... um, could we add a bit of 'dumbass' to the scene? No, more... good. Smile."

2002-09-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Don't we all...

"This whole invasion-of-Iraq thing is so complicated. I wish Kurt Loder would explain it to me." -Rick Dunst, Cab Driver

2002-09-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

They said the word "OIL!" It's really about OIL!

In what several soft-headed people apparently think is a gigantic "gotcha!" moment, we are pointed to this article by Keith Davidson in The Age about the war with Iraq, entitled "The word from the CIA: it's the oil, stupid."

Really. Well I'm glad The Age was finally brave enough to tell us that. Looks like the tin-foil hat people over at IndyMedia were right after all.

France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq towards decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies will work with them. If they throw their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraq government to work with them.

Oh.

Well that's a bit different now, isn't it? Somehow The Age, or at the least the people pointing to this article as vindication of their poorly constructed arguments, seem to think that the fact that we're trying to convince France and Russia to get on board with us on this whole "regime change" dilly-yo is proof positive that we're obsessed with oil and that's the real reason we're going in there (plus of course there's the jollies we get from seeing innocent women and children with a different color skin that ours die in droves, but that's just the gravy, man!).

Sorry, but no. You better check your math, kids. I think you forgot to carry the one. Anyone with with a fifth-grader's reading comprehension skills would be able to pick out the very salient point that the CIA is telling France and Russia this in order to get them to support Iraq's liberation. I will be kind enough to not mention in the first place that this is an example of the US trying its hand at that holy grail of anti-war rhetoric, multilateralism. However, I can't resist the temptation to point out that it's France and Russia, not the US, that apparently need the impetus of oil to be goaded into doing the right thing.

Which jives perfectly with what's been stated several times in the blogosphere before: that oppostion to war with Iraq isn't based as much on fuzzy-head notions of national sovereignty or national law, but rather thinly disguised self interest.

So there you have it. The Bush administration may be telling the world that the reason the UN Security Council has to approve an allied attack on Iraq is because of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, but the real reason France and Russia are being told to get on board the US military bandwagon is Iraq's oil reserves.

Sigh. You can almost hear the editors at the Guardian and elsewhere high-fiving themselves at what they no doubt deem to be an exemplar of journalistic takedowns. Oh please.

No, I'm afraid what we have here is the fact that the United States wants to get rid of Saddam because he's a mass-murdering fuck face who seems to think that no problem is unsolvable with the right amount of liberally applied WMDs, and who has demonstrated a distinctly crazy bent concerning his relations with the rest of the world. That reason is enough for us. Then we tell France and Russia this, and they sniff the air, their noses upturned arrogantly like some waiter outraged that you asked for another glass of water and sneer, "Yes, and what is in it for us?"

According to The Washington Post, all five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership in Baghdad. The Washington Post is one of the major media vehicles through which members of the American establishment talk to each other.

No! Bad journalist! How many times have I told you? No aggravated idiocy in my class! Get back in the corner!

If we were really concerned about oil (and hence, just greedy for the money it brings), then we would NOT want to go through this messy, bloody, expensive process of removing Saddam. Instead we would be bleating about "dialogue" and "engagement" with Uncle Saddy, and talk about lifting the sanctions and "normalizing" relations, so that we could get at that precious, precious oil with the least amount of fuss and bother. In short, we would be like France and Russia.

It's not like Saddam doesn't want to sell the world oil. After all, building nukes is expensive and his parents' allowance only goes far enough to buy the car batteries he uses to shock the testicles of dissidents. What is a genocidal madman to do? Sell that black Iraqi gold, of course.

Neither the US nor Britain - nor Australia for that matter - has produced any credible evidence to back up the ostensible reason for an attack on Iraq, or "regime change" (read assassination of Saddam).

Well, I'll go easy on you about this one, since it's clear that you've been on vacation for a while. By the way, how WAS your trip to Mars? Did you enjoy sitting in a cave with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears for the last ten years?

It's already a standard tact of Idiotarian crowd to use "credible" to mean "ironclad and with not even the most remote speck of doubt." So basically for these folks, they'll be satisfied with "credible" evidence once New York becomes a smoking crater.

And another thing, you stupid Aussie drungo, "regime change" doesn't mean the assassination of Saddam. Not by a long shot. It means assassination of him, the despicable fruit of his loins, Uday, and the rest of his Tikrit cronies so that no one like him takes his place. Sure, it would be nice if it also meant the installation of a reasonably liberal, secular democracy in his place, but only people for whom reality is no impediment would actually expect that to be a requirement. Instead, I'll settle for someone who is reasonably pro-West and not completely bananer (which won't be as easy as one might think. This already rules out most of the western mainstream media and intelligentsia).

The debate about how the US should go about getting control of Iraqi oil has been blunt and to the point. The new regime that the US intends to impose on Iraq will not honour any of the agreements made between the old regime and oil companies around the world.

Nor should it. Not if our "friends" insist on hindering us and indirectly helping to prop up our stated enemy because of naked self-interest. We're not forcing anyone here, just making it very clear that they have to bet on a horse, and there are consequences for choosing the wrong one.

Apparently, Mr Davidson would only be satisfied if, after the US expends its blood and money to make the world safer and free the Iraqi people, it suddenly turned to France and Russia and said "OK boys, here you go. Sure, we did all the fighting and dying while you did your best to hinder us, but no matter. Have some cheap oil!" It reminds me of that Simpsons where the International Olympic Committee is trying to decide where to hold the next games and the French representative says they should be in Paris. The IOC chairman asks why, and the Frenchman replies, outraged, "We don't have to explain ourselves to the likes of you!" and throws some wine in his face.

As the Post points out, since the Gulf War in 1991, companies from more than a dozen nations have either reached or sought agreements to develop Iraqi oil fields or repair existing facilities.

Ah. Well then. So, is this oh-so-very principled stand aginst war with Iraq about universal considerations for sovereignty and human rights, or about their poorly-thought-out investments?

American Samizdat then quotes a delicous bit by Cynthia McKinney, the all-time, number one Fisking goldmine.

What I found most incredible about the article, especially after reading this week's Washington Post article, was the last sentence which said:

"The most adventurous ingredient in the anti-Iraqi proposal is the use of US ground troops . . . significant numbers of [US] troops could also be called on in the early stages of any rebellion to guard oil fields around the Shia port of Basra in southern Iraq."

Isn't it amazing the London Times didn't refer to US troops guarding the new parliament, or the schools or hospitals full of ravaged civilians, or saving the men, women and children brutalized under years of Hussein's rule.

No. No, it isn't amazing you dimwitted, dishonest, pathetic has-been (or rather "never-was"). It isn't amazing because oil fields and a large port city are strategically important assests in a military campaign, you fucking jackass. We have to protect the populace by making short work of Saddam and his military assets. In order to do this, we have to focus on capturing important strategic points, a port city being one of them. Once you removed your head from your anal region, you might recognize this. Are you engaged in some sort of Guinness endeavor to set some kind of world record for pathetically stupid or dispicably mendacious statements in a given period? If so, you're on your way!

It is really really disappointing to think that this is the best the anti-war crowd has to offer.

2002-09-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

Slipping into the black hole that is Doe Library

Expect light posting for the next two weeks. On October 5 I'm taking the LSAT, so I won't be getting my blog-groove on to such an extent as I have been recently until after then.

2002-09-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Are we being invaded?

Today at 12:30 and 2:00 p.m., what were apparently two C-141s flew over campus, flying so low that the 20,000 pound scream of thrust from each of their four engines sounded like a stereo blasting by your ear. I was crossing Hearst Ave by North Gate when I saw the first one flying north by northeast, only a few hundred feet directly overhead. Before I realized that it wasn't a commercial passanger jet, I thought to myself "Oh shit, what is it aiming for?"

As I see it, this wasn't a particularly irrational first thought. It was simply too low to be just passing overhead. The most likely possibility was that it was taking off from Oakland International, but that's 40 miles south of us, and you would guess that it would have achieved a much higher altitude by then. No jet airliner has ever flown anywhere near that low overhead before as long as I've been here. So it seems it was doing a deliberately low flyover, or taking off or landng somewhere nearby. I can't even begin to guess where those takeoff/landing sites might be, so in either case, it's an interesting question.

I was in my room when I heard the second one. My girlfriend was on campus when it flew overheard and said it was at most about 150 feet above the top of the Campinile.

So what's the deal? I have no idea. Chnaces are there's a completely mundane explanation for this, but since it's never happened as long as I can remember, I can't help but wonder what's going on.

2002-09-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

An eighth criterion for non-competitive cultures?

A friend of mine, an econ grad student at UCLA, writes the following:

There was one international person in our homework study group who had been a lecturer for Beijing University for quite some time before coming here to study. He's very very intelligent (and funny!), but that's besides the point. The rest of us are domestic students, with all of them being much more intelligent than me, but during that particular time we had this problem that couldn't be solved using the method that they taught us in the book (A difference equation problem.. them again). So we're ripping our hair out when all of a sudden, this guy comes up with a brilliant idea that solves it, using a method that gives an answer... and all of us examined it quickly and decided that that was the solution. And our international friend said, "I have to ask the professor."

"What's the matter, is it wrong?"

"No, it's right, but I have to ask the professor before I put it down."

I was floored.

So in his lengthy Arab Traditionalism posts, Den Beste highlighted Ralph Peters' identification of seven criteria that cause cultures to be losers, relatively speaking.

My friend is from Taiwan, so he knows more about Chinese culture and attitudes than I do, and it seems from his indication that this particular tendency towards authority is common among the Chinese, and has also ingrained itself in its own idiosyncratic way into the ChiCom society as well. One can imagine what a hinderance this could be for a culture, since it could go a long way towards stifling initiative, among other things. Does that mean it could be added to Peters' list?

It's an interesting question, I think, but certainly one that I don't know enough about to really comment substantively on. Any ideas are welcome.

2002-09-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

WarBloggerWatch: so stupid it's patently offensive

To paraphrase a wiser man than myself: This idiocy is offensive primarily for the reason that all stpidity, save for that of small children and puppies, is offensive.

I occaisonally check WBW because sometimes (but very infrequently, as I've found recently) they can provide useful fact checking on the excesses of the pro-war, anti-idiot crowd that dominates the blogosphere. Their take-down of Mark Steyn's rape-by-Muslim-immigrant statistics is one such example, and since I haven't seen any refutations of their criticisms on the Anti-Idiotarian side, I can only guess that they were right. Frankly, I would have liked to see some acknowledgements of jumping the gun from our side.

HOWEVER.

About 90-95% of the time, it seems the WBW folks insist that prior to each post they make, it is mandatory that one either a) get a swift blow to the head with a hammer b) huff sizable amounts of glue and/or rubber cement or c) undergo a full frontal lobotomy.

I'm guessing that this post falls squarely in the category of c). Exhibit A for this proposition lies in the fact that Grady Olivier points to Hesiod, seemingly suggesting that he was able to refute Den Beste's Arab Traditionalism posts. For why that's so stupid as to approach the pitiable see here, or just read the stuff that Olivier links to. The ignorance screams for itself.

Then, Mr Olivier states

Den Beste goes on to deride the Arab world as embodying a "14th century culture," wagging his finger eastwards over what he sees as the area's refusal to secularize itself.

Which immediately begs the question: "Yeah, and what's your friggin' point?" Apparently at WBW it's enough to point and smirk knowingly like an irritating 15 year old who's too cool for everyone else, yet who can't even try to say why without sounding like he deserves the eventual beating he gets by the school bully.

Firstly, I defy Mr. Olivier, or anyone else of the WBW crowd to show that large segments of Arab society aren't mired in many of the many of the more brutal aspects of their medieval past. Secondly, they must show that significant portions of the Arab world (especially those in power) wish to secularize themselves. Thirdly, they must lather up their nether regions with barbeque sauce and pour a jar full of flesh-eating ants over it (unrelated, I know, but fun to watch).

And then there's this concentrated boobery: "He sincerely believes that his country has been a historical friend of pan-Arab and Islamic secularism."

Yuh-huh. First off (once again, these points must be enumerated because there are so many different reasons that Olivier's statement is dumb enough to induce vomiting), when exactly did he say anything of the sort? I'll help you out on that one since I don't want you to get a headache thinking too hard (or at all): He never even mentioned anything in those posts about America's past attitudes of radical Islam.

Second, again I must ask, what the fuck is your point?? Whether we, in the past, were champions of secular reform, completely indifferent to the situation, or out in the streets chanting "Allahu akbar!" with the rest of the turbaned kooks has absolutely NOTHING to do with a proscription for action in the present situation. I suppose if you lived in Britain in 1939, you would think it wrong to oppose Hitler after he invaded Poland since, well, after all, we didn't do anything when he reoccupied the Rhine and when he took Czechoslovakia either, so we can't in good conscience stand up to him now! If anything, our inability to confront Arabism previously confers upon us MORE responsibility now to do what we should've done before.

And third, we DID work (in the limited ways that were possible) to encourage secularism in the middle east. Why do you think we supported the Shah? Why were we initially friendly towards Saddam? I'll give you a hint: it's not because we thought either of them were particularly virtuous as world leaders go, but we saw the option of propping up fanatical Islam regimes, or reasonably secular ones. Especially in Saddam's case, neither choice was very good, but them's the breaks. When you're provided with two shitty options, you go with the one that is slightly less shitty.

Shittiness being something your arguments are so rife with, I'd think you'd be an expert on that.

2002-09-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Mother of all Wars

Dave Barry does the military history thing in The War on Tobacco.

So a while ago, politicians from a bunch of states were scratching their heads, trying to figure out what to do about the tobacco problem. One option, of course, was to say: ''Hey, if people want to be stupid, it's none of our business.'' But of course that was out of the question. Politicians believe EVERYTHING is their business, which is why -- to pick one of many examples -- most states have elaborate regulations governing who may, and who may not, give manicures.

Another option was to simply make selling cigarettes illegal, just like other evil activities, such as selling heroin, or giving unlicensed manicures, or operating lotteries (except, of course, for lotteries operated by states). But the politicians immediately saw a major flaw with this approach: It did not provide any way for money to be funneled to politicians.

And so they went with option three, which was to file lawsuits against the tobacco companies. The underlying moral principle of these lawsuits was: ``You are knowingly selling a product that kills tens of thousands of our citizens each year. We want a piece of that action!''

I don't suppose there's some sort of class action motion the folks of the blogosphere could file so as to compel Mr. Barry to get himself a blog?

2002-09-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

Another meme I'll throw out there so I can be promptly ignored

Since my influence in the blogosphere is close to nil, I don't expect to find what I'm about to propose to suddenly pop up on InstaPundit (and that's assuming someone else hasn't already coined the term, which isn't very likely), but what the hell? I ran out of donuts and eggs to throw at cars from the roof, so this is at the very least a distant second in terms of enjoyability.

So Den Beste, in this post can't quite seem to come up with a nice concise name to describe our enemy in the current war. I initially was quite content with "jerks," but that lends itself to too wide an interpretation. He identifies them thusly, referring to the Caliphate of the Ottomans:

[Like] all empires, it eventually fell. Unlike other empires, this was against the word of God, for the Qur'an says that Islam will eventually dominate the entire world. In reality, it's been in retreat for more than three hundred years, and its decline became far more precipitous with the collapse of the Ottomans. Once-great Arab nations became little more than colonies for heathen Europeans, or economic dependents of America.

Our enemy is those who inherit the culture and heritage of that empire. Not everyone within the empire's physical realm now partakes of that culture, but many do.

I am having a difficult time coming up with a pithy term for our enemy. It's hard. It isn't really greater Arabia. It certainly isn't Islam. Islamic fundamentalism is a symptom of it, not the core. Arab nationalism and imperialism is also a symptom of it, not the core. Each of those can and does exist without the other, but they're both expressions of the real enemy we face, something deeper than that.

I would characterize his whole piece as a sort of off-the-cuff parallel to John Fonte's overarching identification of Transnational Progressisvism. Fonte's article describes the binding elements of liberal democracy's ideological enemies in the West and Den Beste does the same thing for the Middle East.

But as to what to call them, Den Beste hesitantly settled on "Arab Traditionalists." I would like to humbly suggest "Arabists," (in the vein of Daniel Pipes' characterization of Islamic Fundamentalists as "Islamists") since I think that word effectively and concisely describes the common element, the binding chauvanism and reaction against things non-Arab, be they religious, social or political.

I know, I know, not much of a difference is it? What can I say, I enjoy hearing myself type.

2002-09-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Hesiod, not worth debating

Hesiod, in my discussions with him about deterrence, and more recently in his ridiculous snarking at Den Beste has proven himself to be either a simpleton or someone who, with every keystroke, cynically distorts the arguments of whoever he disagrees with into the most confused strawmen I've ever seen.

For instance, during our exchange, either through stupidity or dishonesty, he conflated two different arguments I was making, and used points of one to argue against points of the other. The first argument was whether Saddam was rational enough to be deterred. The next was that, even if he WAS rational, using deterrence against him was a very dangerous game and one we shouldn't be playing. I made the distinction between the two clear and also made clear the fact that I was accepting Saddam's rationality for the sake of argument in the second one, but Hesiod apparently couldn't, or wasn't willing to make or acknowledge that distinction, and so fallaciously kept referring between the two to argue against two separate conclusions based on different propositions. It was embarrassing to watch.

Then in his Dowdish shrieking attacks on Den Beste, he essentially called him a Nazi. At which point Den Beste appropriately responded by an explanation of Godwin's law, which states that the longer an online debate goes on, the more chance there is for one side to invoke the spectre of Nazism and apply it to the other side, at which point the discussion shuts down and the "Nazi" invoker automatically loses.

Laughably, Hesiod tried to claim that Den Beste did the same thing in his original post because he also mentioned Hitler and WWII era Germany. The only problem is that Den Beste was using the history of the situation as an analogy to delineate a point. He wasn't calling people who disagreed with him, or even the Arabists he was pointing out as our enemy Nazis. He wasn't comparing their behaviour or belief to that of Nazis'. What he wrote was:

In most wars, there's a government or core organization which you can identify as the enemy. It isn't always a single person; in World War II it was Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, but it wasn't Tojo in Japan.

and this:

I can't explain the reasons for attacking Iraq in a vacuum because Iraq is part of a bigger picture, and the attack there will be one battle in a much longer war. Trying to understand one particular battle without the context of the larger war is an exercise in futility. (By analogy: what excuse is there in 1942 for the US to attack Vichy France in Morocco? Vichy France wasn't our enemy; Germany and Italy were. Taken out of the context of the larger war, the Torch landings in Africa make little sense. It's only when you look at the bigger picture of the whole war that you can understand them.)

Again, this is a matter of Hesiod being either too stupid to notice, or too dishonest to mention that illustrating a point with such a historical analogy that has nothing to even do with the belief systems or morality of the National Socialist Party is completely different than shouting "Nazi!" at someone you disagree with.

Hesiod has demonstrated clearly that he is an ineptly sophistic worm, and as such, he doesn't deserve any consideration or attention in online debates. He has proven himself to be either an aggressively stupid or deliberately dishonest debater, and engaging him in conversation is pointless. His rhetorical idiocy is so frequent and pervasive that he isn't even worth a hardy Fisking. Time to zap some links.

2002-09-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Sincere apologies in the blogosphere

Instapundit links to this this post by Dawn Olsen. with regards to the whole sexism-in-the-blogosphere hullabaloo. I found the sincerity quite striking. Rarely is such an admission found in the halls of the blogodome, seeing as how so many people see the whole PunditBlog deal as an exhortation to always aggressively pursue the line that you're right and those who disagree with you are idiots or jerks or both.

I remember reading some of the initial exchanges between Dawn and Den Beste. AT the time I didn't thnk much about the substance of her claims, sinceher attitude about it was so off-putting, and well, just plain bitchy. I dismissed her and her ideas on that basis.

Not logically sound, I know, but justifiable in the sense that someone who isn't willing to come to the argumentative table with at least a small degree of consideration for the other side doesn't deserve consideration him/herself. i'm still not sure about her claims of sexism, but I'll surely pay more attention to the possibility in the future.

And for whatever it's worth, she gets a link.

2002-09-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

GreenThink: Rightwing subversive?

I'm really starting to think that this GreenThink! fellow is actually an undercover agent for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Consider this.

That's the only conclusion I can think of, since apparently Mr Think! is overjoyed that Cynthia McKinney is now considering a presidential run for the Green Party in the next election. Seeing as how the overpowering crappitude of McKinney as a politician and human being will only serve to drive more Americans away from progressive politics (ie, all those of the non-"Amerikkka" variety, since those kooks are a lost cause, beyond any help save some kind of kidnapping and deprogramming endeavour of the type they use to get people out of religious cults), I'm all for this.

She may even change parties before leaving office, and thus would become the first Green member of Congress.

Actually she wouldn't be the first green member in congress, since whenever she speaks a majority of the house inevitably starts to turn green with nausea by her stupidity.

Such a switch might not bode too well for the Greens, however, because Cynthia has built up a pretty bad reputation in the MFing corporate media.

Yeah, it's the corporate media that makes McKinney reviled, not her outrageous suggestions that Bush somehow actively allowed the WTC attacks to happen so he and his frat brothers could get an extra few million out of it, you jackass.

All she has called for is an investigation into the events of 911. Why were we attacked? Why were there intelligence failures?

Sigh... another sad case of cranial-anus impaction. How do these people so routinely manage to get their heads stuck up their asses?

Look, she wasn't talking about "intelligence failures," as if people honestly and actively engaged in the protection of our country and citizens merely made a mistake, she accused Bush of willfully allowing the attcks to happen so he could profit monetarily from it. If you can;t see the difference between that, then you're too stupid to be using grown-up scissors.

Her exact words:

What is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefiteed from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11th.

Yeah, when the stock market plunged and our country almost tipped into a recession because of this, all the baddies in the boardrooms were high-fiving each other, I'm sure.

She forgot to mention that Israel directly benefited from this situation as well, seeing as how it finally gave Americans a taste what they live with every day. Oh, and of course the spectacle of Palestinians whooping it up like their team just won the Superbowl didn't help us feel sympathy for them either. So I guess it was the Mossad who did this after all. Perhaps we need an investigation into that too.

Another bit of pure, concentrated stupidity:

I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.

And I am not aware that McKinney was ever employed as a crackwhore on the streets of New York and gave poisoned lollipops to schoolchildren, but who knows what a full investigation might reveal? I say we should look into it.

Fucking idiot.

2002-09-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

In Berkeley, they care about politics...

...but as to whether they actually think about it, well, that's another matter entirely.

Greenthink wants as many people as he can get to vote for the Green party in the next gubernatorial election. I want to give as much aid as possible to this worthy cause, since I see few things that would aid Bill Simon more in becoming our next governor. So get out there and support this... uh, just a sec, I have to check my "Wacky Bananners" rolodex... ah yes: Peter Camejo for governor.. All you Dems and progressives, you Greens and Sandalistas, and of course let's not forget the Idiotarians... get out there and support this Peter fellow with all the shrill, self-righteous and never-irritating protest slogans you can come up with!

This political service announcement funded by the Alliance to Ensure the Left Looks Sillier Than They Already Do. The AELLSTTAD: getting a good laugh out of fools since this morning. .

2002-09-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

A thought...

...from a friend of mine: "The 101st Airborne should be the UN inspections team."

2002-09-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

Hesiod, a little too quick to trust

Hesiod over at CounterSpin Central claims that he's bested Den Beste over the matter of whether that Iraqi letter stipulates actual unfettered access to all places that might be WMD research or construction sites.

Frankly he's being a bit grandiose. At the very least, the reports are conflicting. It seems Hesiod may have been correct about what Saddam wanted the Iraqi letter to tell the world, but I feel a perfectly sensible response to that is: so the hell what? Who gives a shit what Saddam wants to communicate to the world? What really matters is what he intends to do, and now it seems, from the latter article linked above, that he is basically playing the same game he always has been: stall and harrass them as much as possible, and when they get really worked up about it, act like you're making concessions for a few weeks until they have calmed down and all the momentum has died. Repeat as necessary.

What Den Beste (and the White House) was completely right about was the fact that Saddam saw this as a necessary act to continue his process of taking advantage of the atrocious diplomatic sloth of the UN to keep holding them off while his nuclear scientists are hard at work.

At the most, Hesiod was right about an inconsequential semantic point, while Den Beste and others were right about the actual veracity of the situation as a whole. Forget about missing the forest for the trees... Heese was too busy looking at specks of bark.

2002-09-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

Talking at cross purposes (again)

Hesiod responds to my response concerning deterrence and Saddam. At least this time he actively tried to address the points that were made. Tally ho.

Russ. Do you even understand what the word "irrational" means? If Saddam had reason to believe he could get away with his invasion of Kuwait, and acted on that reasonable belief (cue April Glaspie), his invasion was not an irrational act. That doesn't mean his invasion was a moral act, or a smart one, however.

I noticed this problem in your previous posts. We're using two different definitions of "rational." Yours is concerned only with the most shallow prescriptions of a type of process, and in which it follows that in any situation in which Saddam actually thought through the ramifications of his invasion (even though the actual quality of his reasoning was severely faulty and he came to a ridiculous conclusion), he was thus acting rationally. The fact that his reasoning had an almost suicidal outcome is merely tangential. In this manner, just about everything that isn't done purely for the sheer random thrill of it, or out of any purely emotional reason falls under the rubric of "rationality."

An analogy: if you're watching some birds flying in the sky, and you mark the way they flap their appendages, you might think to yourself that you could do the same thing if you flapped your arms the way they do their wings. So you go jump off a cliff. From the way you described Saddam as rational in the Gulf War situation, this act too would fall under that same term. So Saddam was rational. Al Qeada was rational. A paranoid schizophrenic that kills someone because the voice in his head told him to is rational. After all, the voice said that unless he did it, crows would come and peck out his eyeballs while he slept. It doesn't seem to matter to you that at every point in the reasoning process he made egregious errors. Saddam did the same thing. He was wrong (absurdly wrong!) about both the willingness of the US to fight him and his military capabilities.

When I used the word "rational," the process used to come to a conclusion has to be free of any particularly serious faults in reasoning, and also have a reasonable chance of success. The schizophrenic making the causal link that not killing someone will make angry birds peck his eyes out, or Saddam thinking that he can act in any way he pleases because no one is willing to oppose him had fundamental flaws in reasoning, both stemming from the inability to discern aspects of the basic reality of a situation.

The reason I use the word in the I do way is because it is actually meaningful. Your use isn't. Under your meaning, in the context of trying to gauge their behaviour, it doesn't matter whether someone is "rational" or not, because the results of their actions are apt to be not much more logically defensible or predictable from someone who does things purely from random. Now, this was just a clarifying argument about our respective meanings of that word, in order to ensure that we both know what's actually being said; now onto the question of whether or not Saddam can actually, with an acceptable amount of risk, be classified under my definition of rational.

In any event, we are discussing his potential use of WMD's against the U.S. or our allies, and the Gulf War makes my case for me. He didn't use them. He had them, and culd deliver them, but did not attack us with them because he was warned not to. That's deterrence.

You're right about the fact of his actions. You're wrong about the implications. First of all, nuclear weapons are NOT the same as chemical or biological ones. You made quite a point (as did I - funny how we can agree and yet not agree) of emphasizing that nuclear weapons are inherently theater-wide strategic tools. Chem and bio however are perfectly apt to be used as tactical weapons on the battlefield. You claim the reason that Saddam didn't use these weapons because he was rationally deterred by our threats to visit overwhelming reprisals upon him for doing so. I don't think it's that simple.

First off, Saddam's chem and bio arsenal is simply not very effective as a battlefield tool. First off, the Scuds that he would use to deliver them are woefully inaccurate. He can fire his Scuds at cities and expect them to hit something, because the entire area for dozens of square miles is a target. Secondly, the area of dispersal for any chem/bio agent is not that large. On the battlefield, where our formations are always spread out to a degree that the actual chem/bio agents would only reach a small number of troops, chem/bio warheads are almost useless. And then there is the fact that our forces were supplied with significant protection agaisnt these kinds of weapons, which would have rendered them even more ineffective. So you're right in claiming that his non-use of chem/bio was an example of rational deterrence. However, that's irrelevant to my point, because this same scenario is not likely to hold up in a nuclear situation.

Like both of us said, nuclear weapons are fundamentally different animals. In their case, a poorly aimed Scud is perfectly acceptable when the area of total destruction is a space of several miles is every direction. The way I see the use of nuclear weapons is this: our conventional forces are making significant progress against Saddam's woefully undertrained and underequipped armies, and he decides to send a barrage of nukes at every main US position. To you and I this seems like utter madness, but the argument could be made that: The Americans are not psychologically prepared to sustain heavy military losses. The last time that happened was Vietnam, and there they turned tail and ran. Therefore, if one can inflict a huge percentage of casualties on those troops that are currently stationed in the theater, even though it will not even come close to blunting America's overall military might, it will shock them (especially the public and their leaders) into thinking that this war is not worth the sacrifices.

It's not a good argument. Its warrants and reasons are fatally flawed to the point that undertaking it would be to sign one's own death certificate (and likely that of a good portion of your nation), but I do not think that you can assume with any reasonable degree of safety that Saddam will not make that same miscalculation. In fact I think the chances that he would do such a thing in the situation I described are pretty much even.

In my post, I also used Al Qeada as an example of faulty reasoning, since by their calculations, the WTC attack was a strategically viable offensive action, but one that, in reality, turned out to be suicidal. Hesiod responded:

Huh?. What does that have to do with Saddam Hussein? Saddam is not a religious fanatic. He doesnt even really care about Arab nationalism. All he cares about is himself. Therefore, while Al Qaeda cannot be deterred, Saddam can. And, frankly, it's IRRATIONAL to go after Saddam Hussein without wiping out our fanatical enemies who cannot be deterred, first. And Russ makes the ridiculous claim that Saddam's invasio of Kuwait, etc. were "suicidal acts" on par with Atta and the boys flying jets into the Pentagon and the WTC. What?!?

You missed my point, Heese. Allow me to clarify: First of all, you blatantly ignored the fact that I stipulated when I used the word "suicidal" I wasn't referring to the fellows with the boxcutters. I meant the organization and the movement as a whole. They thought that sacrificing a few lives to kill thousands of American citizens was a good strategic move, but instead, over the course of the last year, their entire network has be cut in almost all places, their funding has been blocked and
their ranks have been decimated. It was an indirect suicidal act the same way a 95 pound kid whose never thrown a punch in his life walking up to a 250 lb guy with anger management problems and kicking him in the crotch would be.

Secondly, like I said above, we HAVE already, to a significant extent, wiped out the enemies that perpetrated 9/11. There are still isolated cells, and they will no doubt continue to be pursued, but that isn't the type campaign that requires the total focus and resources of our government and military.

And thirdly, making the point that they were religious fanatics and that Saddam is not is irrelevant in this case. Their belief that 9/11 would cause America to back down was not based on religious fanaticism. It was based on the observation that in the past, when Al Qeada attacked the US in Yemen and in Africa, all we did was issue some strong statements about finding the perpetrators and bring them to justice. And then, after a few weeks, after having maybe captured one or two people involved, and when it was no longer in the headlines, we essentially stopped pursuing the matter to any meaningful degree. Osama made this point several times in his video in refernece to this. In their eyes, that looked like a completely acceptable strategic tradeoff, and they expected the same thing to happen after 9/11. Again, it was wrong, foolhardy, incorrect, but not "irrational" under your definition. Saddam could make the same mistake.

Later I made the following point:

Think of Europe during the Cold War. Why didn't the US simply take back Germany from the Soviets? Why didn't the Soviets overrun France at any point (it wouldn't have been hard. All they would've had to do was speak in German and they would've been given the key to Paris)? Because immeadiately [sic] both sides would've started punching in launch codes and turning missile keys in response. And everyone knew it.

The Nesiod responded with:

Exactly, Russ! Why DIDN'T the Soviets overrun France? Duh! I already admitted that Saddam wants nukes as a strategic deterrent against the United States and Israel to prevent them from INVADING Iraq and taking him out. Other than that, they have little or no value. He can't use his conventional forces to menace anyone so long as we mainatin air supremacy with coalition aircraft. And he can't intimidate anyone with his nukes if we extend the nuclear deterrence umbreall to them [as we did with Western Europe via the creation of NATO].

Again, Heese, you missed the point of that argument. In that instance, I was conceding (for the sake of argument) that Saddam is completely rational, even though I think I showed quite clearly that is not the case. But in the context of that concession, I was using the Cold War as an illustration of a different point, since you asserted that having nukes would not give Saddam any more freedom to act geopolitically than he does now. The problem is you either became confused or cynically tried to mix up two separate arguments that were based on different propositions. It doesn't make you look very good, to be honest.

The example of the cold war shows that we could not act against the Soviets in ways we otherwise would have been able to if they did not have nukes. We could've taken back Germany and Poland and the rest of the satellites without directly threatening Russian territory, yet this would have caused a nuclear war, and so we had to let the Soviets keep those states that they were occupying. Russia invaded Afghanistan. We could only act in a limited, highly proxy fashion because we did not want to risk nuclear war. I beleive that if nuclear weapons were not a factor, we would have gone there in force in 1980. In the same manner, Saddam would be given the same measure of freedom. It would vastly increase his scope of possible action.

And furthermore, as a side note, the fact that we would go to war over France is yet another example (even in a hyper-rational context) that you don't need to be in a situation of facing imminent destruction in order to lead to a nuclear exchange. These are all points I made before. Once again, you talked around them or mischaracterized them.

Onward. Hesiod writes in response to my use of the Cuban missile crisis as another example of the above points:

Excuse me, Russ...but did we GO TO WAR against Cuba? Or did we manage to get those missiles removed without firing a shot? We can do the same things with Saddam, if we didn't have a nincompoop for a President. [Heck, Iraq just offered to let inspectors back in WITHOUT conditsions].

No we didn't, but anyone familiar with the scenario knows that we came within half-an-inch of our lives to doing so. THAT'S MY POINT. The outcome of the Cuban missile crisis was by no means assured. That's why they called it a crisis. You seem to look at deterrence as some sort of ironclad, foolproof certainty, whereas I and other sensible people realize that under the deterrence model, even when you're dealing with a reasonably rational entity (which I've shown isn't the case here), STILL you're playing a very very dangerous game. I don't want us playing that game with Saddam.

And another thing, this "unconditional inspectors" bullshit is yet another delaying tactic. He's been doing it for ten years. He'll do it for a few more until he's got his nukes.

More:

My favorite part of his response, is that he argues that, despite all of the Soviet Union's "brutal faults" it was a rational actor upon which deterrence could work. Huh? What about Hungary in 1956? What about Czechoslovakia in 1968? What about Afghanistan in 1979? Didn't Russ just argue that unprovoked invasion of other countries is a sign of IRRATIONAL behavior? Apparently, it isn't. Unless, of course, Saddam does it, and you have to desperately manufacture evidence that he's nuts to overcome the argument that deterrence will work on him.

Thank you Hesiod. You've just proved what I said immediately above. So you're saying then that deterrence doesn't work? You're the true believer. I'm a skeptic who thinks that under the US vs. Soviet model, it was an imperfect, yet viable model for action. You imply that it can be used anywhere, at any time, with anyone. That's my favorite part of your argument.

Hesiod then responds to another reference I made to the Soviets which implied that we would be in a mini-version of a similar, expensive, drawn out standoff with Saddam:

Excuse me? But comparing pipsqueak Saddam, with the Soviet Union as a world menace just seals the deal that you are arguing in bad faith. The Soviets had hundreds of thousands of troops, a huge amount of territory, and thousands of nuclear weapons, including submarines and ballistic missiles. Saddam, has a military taht can be crushed in about two weeks by the US. And even if he has nukes, they will not be very effective, and will be small in number.

Incidentally, Saddamn has hundreds of thousands of troops. The Soviets had millions.

And I didn't say it would be on the same scale. I said it would be a mini-version of the Cold War, meaning that essentially we would be blocked and to a certain extent paralyzed from opposing Saddam in a number of ways. Meaning that we would have to deal with him on a completely different level than we do now. Meaning that the level of sustained effort we would have to to expend to contain him would suddenly go up drstically, and remain on status of high alert for possibly many years.

And it doesn't matter if his nukes aren't that good. They're still nukes, and even 2nd rate nukes attached to third rate Scuds can cause a hell of a lot of destruction, assuming he is willing to use them, which I demonstrated above that the chance of such a thing is in the realm of the very possible. I never said he would lob Scuds over the Atlantic and vaporize all our cities. I made the point of him using them locally against our forces who are in the theater to oppose some aggressive action on his part.

Response??

2002-09-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Hesiod, poster-child for thinking before you open your mouth

So over at Counter-Spin Central, it seems the order of the day is to respond to others' posts with arguments that either completely disregard what they're trying to refute, or to simply make claims and provide absolutely no evidence whatsoever. I can just imagine an exchange between two people who hold to this school of debate:

You see, all your points are wrong.
-I don't see it that way.
-That's because you're wrong.
-No, I do believe it is you who is the wrong.
-No it isn't.
-Oh, but it is.
-Isn't.

You get the idea.

Hesiod "responds" to my post about the folly of deterrence with regards to Saddam, and especially Saddam with nukes. I use the term "responds" in the loosest sense possible, because Hesiod really didn't address any point I made substantively, besides seemingly pointing at things and shouting "NO!". I'm actually wondering if he actually read the post rather than just skimming it, thinking he got the gist and then responded. But no matter. I'll get my point-by-point groove on for a bit.

And away we go...

PUT SOME MUSTARD ON IT: Russell Wardlow doesn't understand deterrence theory very well.

First, he stretches to assume that saddam is irrational. Problem is, we already have a test case to prove he's rational: the Gulf War.

Buh-huh-wha-?!

Excuse me, I was choking on my own bafflement. Since at least myself and Demosthenes seem to have this problem, maybe we could start some sort of support group or public awareness campaign to highlight the dangers of the Blogosphere on the respiratory system. But anyway.

See, this is what I meant about him either ignoring points or simply contradicting them without offering any evidence as support. I used the Gulf War as an example of an irrational act by Saddam. He portrayed it as perfectly rational. The difference is he doesn't say why. As Michael Palin would say: "An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. [It's] an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says."

I'd imagine Hesiod would pause a moment here, and then rebound with "No it isn't."

I said that Saddam proved himself irrational during the Gulf War because he made at least one of two huge miscalculations: he either judged that no one (the US, the UN et al) would be willing to risk their money and their blood to oppose him, much like Hitler did when he said that there was "no solidarity in Europe, only submission" (myopia alert, Demosthenes!), and/or expected that he would be able to beat, or at least cause enough casualties to whatever international forces engaged him so that they would pull out, since they weren't actually willing to get their dainty kuffar hands dirty. He was completely wrong on both counts, and it ended up costing him just about his entire military at the time.

Now, one might say that this was merely an error in overall rational judgement, merely a strategic miscalulation (one can imagine him going back to his spiral notebook marked "Mother of All Wars," decorated with all kinds of doodles depicting explosions anmd Americans dying in droves. He opens it and looks over his math and slaps his forehead. "Duh! I forget to carry the one! Man I can be so oblivious sometimes..."). This would be no more than a semantic argument. Oh sure, he's actually quite rational on his best days, doing things that will ensure his survival and his place in power... it's just that when he skips his meds sometimes he goes a little... uh, let's say, 'bananner.'"

In the Gulf War, he made choices that could very well have led to his complete and utter anililation (and should've), thinkign what he was doing was perfectly reasonable and strategically viable. As I wrote in my post, even the dingbats in Al Qeada thought they were acting in their own enlightened self interest when they attacked the WTC. They weren't saying, "OK guys, after we do this, they're really gonna cook our goose, but hey, at least it'll be a fun couple of weeks because they start cutting our daisies." As Osama Bin Laden boasted repeatedly, they expected that the 9/11 attack would be so horrific that the Paper Tiger Americans would admit defeat and go home.

And is that what happened? Hmm, I don't remember... although I seem to recall there was something about it in a few newspapers...

They ended up doing something that was suicidal (yeah I know... I'm talking about the guys NOT in the planes here), thinking that it was a strategically viable offensive action. And Saddam did the same thing. In the same vein, I don't think it's unlikely that Saddam would reason that once something really bad happens to the Americans on their own soil, then they'll give up. For reals this time. Honest.

I'm not arguing this as a certainty, but as a possibility that is likely enough so as to constitute a significant threat, so no, we can't trust him to act rationally. Let's move on, shall we?

Second, he falls into the same "he could use his nukes to intimidate his neighbors or prevent the US from stopping him" trap. As I stated before, and as Russell ironically claimed in his post, Nukes have very little military value. They're a strategic weapon. And so long as your opponent can respons in-kind, you don't use yours, unless you have no choice.

I know they're a strategic weapon. I said that exact same thing in my post. And it's not a trap, it's a perfectly logical proposition. If nothing else, it makes us be a lot more careful about how we deal with Iraq, because there IS a chance that he would use them even if it wasn't a last ditch attempt to go out in a blaze of glory.

Think of Europe during the Cold War. Why didn't the US simply take back Germany from the Soviets? Why didn't the Soviets overrun France at any point (it wouldn't have been hard. All they would've had to do was speak in German and they would've been given the key to Paris)? Because immeadiately both sides would've started punching in launch codes and turning missile keys in response. And everyone knew it.

And an action by the Soviets or Americans had to, for instance, take back the rest of Germany could in no represent an immeadiate threat to the survival of their respective nations, yet they were ready let the ICBMS fly nonetheless over that scenario and countless others. Hell, we came within a hair's breadth of nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis, which wasn't even an aggressive action in the most technical sense. They didn't shoot anything at us and didn't try to take any territory away. They were just doing some interior decorating in Cuba ("Oh no honey, the SS-M20 would look much nicer next to the credenza").

Hesiod writes that "The key to deterrence is, you make sure you opponent always has a choice." Both the Russians and we had a choice in Cuba. We had the clear choice to let them just install missiles in Cuba, since by deterrence theory, there wasn't any real chance of them being used right? So what was the hubbub all about? Just a little too much testosterone in DC and Moscow? I'm sure a lot of people around me in Berkeley would say so. They derive thjat conclusion from their chief operating philosophy in life: idiocy.

Russell also ignores the most likely reason Saddam is seeking nukes: to deter the UNITED STATES and Israel!

I didn't ignore it. I just didn't mention it, because I took that as a given, like if I write about Hitler and the holocaust I don't have to mention the fact that Hitler wasn't too fond of Jews, because saying it would make everyone go "Well duh and look at you like a chimpanzee with a pencil stuck between its teeth.

OF COURSE he wants to deter us, because we're the ones who aren't particularly OK with him overunning his neighbors or gassing his own people into oblivion every time he gets that familiar tyrannical itch in his taint. I really don't see how you're taking this to be the trump card that you seem to think it is. I have a feeling if I talked about how bad Hitler was because he invaded the Ukraine, you'd triumphantly declare, "Ah HA! You're ignoring the crucial fact that he WANTED the Ukraine! That's why he took it!" Just identifying a motivation doesn't justify it.

Finally, Russell actually stoops so low that he defends the Soviet Union. Is this how far the neocon anti-communists have sunk? They are now actually praising the "evil empire" for it's rational self-interest in order to avoid the obvious question of why won't deterrence on saddam Hussein?

That's it. I didn't want to take it to this level, but you have left me no choice: Shenanigans! I call shenanigans on you!

You have either shamelessly distorted or pathetically misunderstood what I said. I said this:

...for all of its brutal faults, the Soviets were an entity that we could understand and deal with to a much better degree than Saddam. We could depend on them to do what was in their enlightened self-interest geopolitically, and to not make any particularly catastrophic errors in judgement with regards to it.

I did not defend the Soviet Union. You make it sound as if I was parroting the claptrap of the historical revisionists among which I live, as if I said something like "Yeah, Soviet Communism wasn't perfect, but they were just like us man, just trying to get by in the world and build a just society!"

Really easy to distort things when you don't actually quote them, isn't it? All I said about the Soviets was that we could trust them to act in a way that was typically more rationally calculated than Saddam. They were evil, they were aggressive, they were totalitarian, but they weren't total idiots. Yes, they made strategic blunders at times, and so did we, but nothing on the scale of,

-"Hey comrades, what say we go grab France?"
-"What about the Americans?"
-"I'm sure they won't mind."
"Yeah, you're probably right. Hey Vlad! Gas up the tanks!"

And I've already addressed the fact of why deterrence won't work reliably enough on Saddam. Here and in my original post. You might try reading it.

But, even if you go so far as to believe that deterrence will keep Saddam from using his nukes on a whim and that he can be counted on to be able to be dealt with on the same scale as the Soviets (and by the time you've become that naive, I'd expect you to own several deeds to bridges already), then you run into another huge brick wall which I discussed above: the fact that possessing nukes puts Saddam into a whole new league geopolitically.

Why did the Cold War last 40 years without a single engagement between the two main combatants? There has never been such a sustained period of open hostility and a state of being on the brink of war with two sides arrayed against each other ready to fight and not having them actually get into it. And the reason that happened was because we had to expend mass amounts of military, economic and diplomatic energy so as to tiptoe around each other, each giving the other side a wide berth, always careful not to let ourselves get drawn into a situation in which we'd be in open conflict with each other, because doing so had the real possibility of starting a nuclear exchange.

Is that the situation you'd want to see us in with Iraq? A little mini-cold war in the middle east? A scenario in which, when Iraq invades Kuwait, the most we can do is maybe supply some ill-trained and ill-equipped resistance fighters with some stinger missiles, and denounce them in the UN?

Does that sound like your idea of a good time, Hesiod?

2002-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

A pilot speaks

I'm sure tons of people have already linked to/posted this, but I can't help myself. It contains the honesty and sincerity of simplicity, and the controlled, focused rage that you'd find at the point of a knife. With people like this, I'd have a hard time believing that we'll lose.

Dear Terrorists I am a Naval Aviator. I was born and raised in a small town in New England.

I come from a family of 5. I was raised in a middle class home and taught my values by my mother and father. My dad worked a series of jobs in finance and my Mom took care of us kids.

We were not an overly religious family but attended church most Sundays. It was a nice small Episcopal Church.

I had a brother and sister and I was the youngest in my family. I was the first in many generations to attend college.

I have flown Naval aircraft for 16 years. For me the flying was never a life long dream or a "calling," it just happened. I needed a job and I liked the challenge. I continue to do it today because I feel it is important to give back to a nation which has given so much to me. I do it because although I will never be rich my family will be comfortable. I do it because many of my friends have left for the airlines and someone has to do it.

My government has spent millions to train me to fly these multimillion dollar aircraft. I make about 70,000 dollars a year and after 20 years will be offered a pension. I like baseball but think the players make too much money.

I am in awe of firemen and policemen and what they do each day for my community. I respect my elders and always use sir or ma'am when addressing a stranger.

I'm not sure about kids these days but I think that's normal for every generation.

I voted for George Bush not for his IQ but because I like him. I think I made a pretty good choice.

I tell you all this because when I come for you I want you to know me. I won't be hiding behind a woman or a child. I won't be disguised or pretending to be something I am not. I will be wearing standard US issue flight gear, and I will be flying a navy aircraft clearly marked as a US warplane.

I wish we could meet up close in a small room where I could wrap my hands around your throat and slowly squeeze the life out of you but unfortunately you're hiding in a hole in the ground so we will have to do this a different way.

I want you to know also that I am very good at what I do. I can put a 2,000 LB weapon through a window from 10,000 feet up. I generally only fight at night so you may want to start sleeping during the day. I am not eager to die for my country but I am willing to sacrifice my life to protect it from animals like you. I will do everything in my power to ensure no civilians are hurt as I take aim at you. My countrymen are a forgiving bunch. Many are already forgetting what you did on Sept 11th. But I will not forget and my President will not forget.

I am coming. I hope you know me a little bit better, see you soon...sleep tight. - Signed a US Navy Pilot

2002-09-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Deterrence, De-Shmerence!

I would like to address in this space the issue of deterrence of Saddam Huessein, with regards to his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and what these events ought to prompt us to do.

Over the past few months, a steady accumulation of information has produced a mountain of evidence that Saddam is actively engaged in creating his own nuclear weapons. Recently, there have been no reliable sources that would contradict this proposition, and the most widely believed time frame attached to his program is about 3-5 years before he would have a working nuclear weapon.

None of this is seriously disputed, to my knowledge. However, the bulk of discussion from the anti-war side of the argument has not centered around preventing Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons (talk about new weapons inspections is largely irrelevant, as the past has shown conclusively that even with completely unhindered access - by no means a likely scenario - Saddam's weapons programs cannot be halted with any reasonable degree of certainty). Rather, the discussion has mainly made the claim that, even if Saddam possessed nukes, we could still work to contain him and any aggressive actions he might take by using the same methods of deterrence we have used with other hostile nuclear states, in order to ensure that the risk of him attacking us is very small.

This is a dangerous and foolhardy point of view, because it ignores (or just misses) the fact that nuclear weapons are not very good things for fighting wars, since their use between states who possess them will almost always result in unacceptable casualties on both sides but they are very effective strategic tools to possess nonetheless. As Rich Lowry pointed out during the missile defense debates that were raging more than a year ago in the world of "September 10th," r 10," if nuclear deterrence renders such weapons unusuable to any ruler who is not completely insane and suicidal to the point that he would love to see his country turned to glass, then why are so many of them still actively engaged in acquiring them?

People continually posit that Saddam is a rational actor, at least to the point that he is dedicated to preserving his own rule, and if so, then he should rationally realize that he could never really use his nukes without inviting total obliteration upon himself, yet he pursues them anyway. Does that mean he is irrational? And if he is, then there actually IS a noticeable danger that he would be willing to actually use them.

I think there is a persuasive argument to be made that Saddam might actually be willing to use nuclear weapons, and not as a last ditch, take-as-many-people-with-him, "top o' the world, ma!" type action. Drawing analogies of Saddam to the Soviet Union is not at all apt. First of all, for all of its brutal faults, the Soviets were an entity that we could understand and deal with to a much better degree than Saddam. We could depend on them to do what was in their enlightened self-interest geopolitically, and to not make any particularly catastrophic errors in judgement with regards to it.

This is not something we can depend on with Saddam, as his invasion of Kuwait clearly demonstrates. In deciding to invade he must have made what he thought was a rational calculation that either a) The rest of the world would not show sufficient resolve to get involved in the conflict or b) that even if entities like the US or Un entered the fray, that he could beat them or at least bloody them suffiently so that they would lose their resolve and withdraw. Both of these calculations were ridiculous, and they reflected the same kind of suicidal reasoning (pun intended) on the part of Al Qeada in perpetrating the WTC attacks: The Americans are actually quite soft and cannot stand the sight of blood, and hitting them hard will only make them cower and retreat, based on the fact that in the past, after smaller such attacks as those on the USS Cole and the bombings against African embassies, the US showed itself not really willing to fight back in any organized way, prefferring to look at those incidents as crimes rather than attacks, and follow up with ineffectual investigations which perhaps ended up capturing a few lone individuals for prosecution. They then made the calculation that a much bigger attack would only mean that the US would act even more timidly than before, and perhaps even simply admit defeat.

And of course, this miscalculation meant the total destruction of Al Qeada.

Similarly, I don't think anyone could put it past the mind of Saddam to reason that the United States has never really been hit hard at home, and so detonating a nuclear weapon in one of their cities will be on a scale of destruction and death sufficient to finally render them terrified and unwilling to respond, for fear of more attacks. He might even factor in the perfectly reasonable assumption that even after a nuclear attack, there would be a significant portion of the world that would say that the US had it coming as a response to their disastrous and unilateral foreign policies, etc etc, and he would depend upon the hectoring of the UN to stay us from a nuclear response. To a rational person, the idea that we would not immeadiately respond with nukes is absurd, but remember, Saddam's rationality is the beast at issue.

No one but Saddam can say that this kind of calculation is certain on his part, but I believe all who have monitored his behaviour can say that it is definately possible.

However, even if this notion of Saddam's supreme irrationality to the point of actually using nukes isn't true, then there must be a perfectly rational reason that he is so eager to get his hands on them, to the point that he would constantly risk action by the US or the UN in response.

The common deterrence model is based upon the idea that the mere existence of our nuclear capabilities exerts a strong influence on hostile states who are sufficiently interested in not being vaporized. I don't doubt that this is true. However, this being the case, how could it not be true that it works the other way as well? Namely that the possession of nuclear weapons frees a country to act in aggressive ways that they otherwise would not be able to.

For instance, had Iraq possessed nukes during the Gulf War, it would have been a much more delicate, much more difficult situation. There is the distinct possibility that we (both the US and especially the UN) would not have been willing to check his aggression because of the possiblility that it would prompt him to use his nukes. It would mean we would have to deal Saddam on a much more equal footing. It would mean possibly the beginnig of a new mini-Cold War in the middle east, where Saddam knows that there would be a slew of possibilities for aggressive military action for which he would not be seriously opposed, since the international community would not want to risk the possibility of taking the conflict to the nuclear level. In this way, the possession of nukes acts as a gigantic license for Saddam to act in any number of dangerous ways that he can't right now.

And that is simply unacceptable.

2002-09-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

Choke a bit more, Demosthenes

It's a mad mad mad Demosthenes tonight, responding to Paul Wright's post about the irrelevancy of the spectre of Vietnam in discussing the current issue of Iraq.

While not "choking on [his] own rage" (so you're saying you choke on other people's as well? You really have to learn to keep rage out of your bodily orifices), he's boldly and decisively knocking down the numerous strawmen he's erected to represent Wright's argument, which basically goes like this: all the things that made Vietnam what it was are nowhere present in this scenario, and people invoking it as an example of why the war against Iraq would be a bad idea are out-of-touch loonies who need to get their dates and their facts straight.

Demo chokes as follows:

I'm sorry, is there some sort of half-life for history that somebody neglected to tell me? Are we supposed to simply ignore the experiences and wisdom of our predecessors if they happened to live before a certain arbitrary (and obviously constantly-changing) date? Are we supposed to discard one war in favour of another because the other one is more recent? (Then again, that'd make perfect sense considering the number of bloggers who seem to think the only relevant part of history started in-or-around 1936, judging by all the dreadfully myopic WWII citations that pass for historical reference most of the time.)

Well damn; better throw out every piece of knowledge gained before the current generation (regardless of whether or not it's relevant to the current situation). Throw out Aristotle, Socrates, and Cicero. Throw out Herodotes, Thucydides, Hobbes, and Machiavelli. Throw out Franklin, Paine, Locke and Mill. Throw out all the painful lessons learned from the mistakes of colonialism, and the even more painful lessons learned from WWI. (Well, it's pretty obvious that that's already been done, but for the sake of argument...) Throw out pretty much everything. If it hasn't been done already.

I suppose I should be surprised that he scribbled all this without having even read the Wright post, just reading a tiny excerpted portion.

Anyway, he updated his post with a more detailed refutaion after having actually read what made him block his windpipe with ire.

Update: just read Wright's blog entry (which was unavailable when I first read this.) By and large it's simply identification of the ideals of the left with the worst of the beneficiaries of those ideals, despite the clear and obvious fact that nobody on the left actually liked the Taliban or Osama before the war began, and I doubt they're big fans of Saddam as well. They just know better than to believe self-serving justifications by those who wouldn't even pay lip service to the principles they use for justification were it not in their interest. They also understand that you can't discard principles that serve a universal purpose when it makes it more difficult to deal with those whom they dislike.

"The ideals of the left"? Hoo-boy, that's a knee-slapper. Or rather a Demosthenes-slapper, since he should be slapped for making such an outrageously false claim. I assume the ideals in which he so boldly plants the flag of the left refer to things like freedom and democracy, things which the left typically had no interest in besides grafting those words ridiculously onto images of Ho Chi Minh and Castro, who were, despite the convenient revisions done to history, unadulterated objects of adulation on the left. Hell, Castro still is. It was the left that paid lip service to those ideals, while either stupidly misunderstanding them or deliberately and dishonestly distorting their meaning.

So "nobody on the left actually liked the Taliban or Osama." Well they deserve a Freedom Medal for that brave stance. Nobody in England actually liked Hitler either, but that doesn't mean the strong pacifistic stance of the British intelligentsia wasn't foolhardy, stupid and morally repugnant. But oh, I'm sorry, that reference was horribly "myopic" wasn't it? I mean it's not as if they were using the same arguments then that people of your political persuasion are using now, is it? Is it?

And just what the hell do you mean about them not supporting any of those ideals unless it was "in their interest"? I dearly hope you're not suggesting this is all a matter of Bush and his cronies rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of acquiring yet more filthy lucre to line their pockets either from defense contractors or oil robber barons or some other boogeyman, because if that is what you're saying, I have to just shake my head in sadness while I add one more person to the rank of McKinney-level stupidity.

However, I'll give you benefit of the doubt on that score, Demo, but since you were so terribly unclear about just what you were trying to get at, I'll assume you were talking about the fact that attacking Saddam now would be in our geo-strategic interests, since it removes a threat to our security. And if that is the case (again, I can only guess since you didn't deign to actually explain your point), then I have to thank you, because you have conceded the pro-war people's point for us. In case you didn't notice, the whole argument has been about whether the attack serves our interest. Oh sure, people can moan about multilateralism, but in the end what they're really doing is looking out for themselves. The rulers in the middle east don't want a democratic state nearby, for fear that it would domino into their country once there is a viable Islamic counter-example to their craptocracy. The Europeans don't want to have to worry about their Islamic populations getting worked up, since most of the EUcrats, by all indications, are resigned to the fact that they'll have to accept Sharia as their new ethos. Russia doesn't want to lose the billions in outstanding debts it has on Iraq, and as a whole, just about every country that ever looked at the United States and sneered (albeit quietly) "Hmph, they think they're so big... well they're not the boss o' me!" doesn't want to have the fact demonstrated in living color that the US is currently, in terms of economic and military ability, essentially an unmatchable force. This talk about multilateralism is just this: an effort to counter, for their own self-interest, the power of the US.

So exactly which "universal principles" are we discarding then? It seems to me those in favor of going after Saddam are the only ones sticking to their principles. They're following through with the mandatory dictates that the UN passed more than 10 years ago, dictates which have been frequently ignored by both Saddam and the UN, and replaced with verbal hectoring and stern looks of disapproval. You've got a funny idea of what principles are.

(He also pulls out that ridiculous "you won't accept any argument or justification" strawman, which is not only abundantly silly but neatly misses the point that there may be justifiable conflicts, just not this one.)

So what would make this a justifiable conflict? To turn this question on its head, what would make this conflict unjustifiable? Joe Katzman has made a good case that you'd have to believe six impossible things in order to not be a suicidal dove in the current situation. I find them highly convincing. I haven't yet seen a credible refutation of this proposition.

In the next paragraph, Demo actually makes a somewhat relevant criticism of Wright, who wrote the following:

Armies have always fought as far away from each other as possible. The entire history of military technology has been killing at greater and greater distances. Because that makes it harder for the other guy to kill you. No commander has an obligation to his men but to kill the enemy at the longest distance he can arrange. Anything else is dereliction of duty, and any talk of a "fair fight" displays a fundamental lack of understanding of tactics.

Hand to hand combat isn’t honourable, or desirable. Killing up close is men in the dirt scared out of their minds, biting, scratching, gouging to get a grip on eyes, balls, ears anything you can get at. It’s screaming as he turns the knife back on you and it presses closer. It’s begging sweet Christ to make it stop and let you go home and talking to rubber muscles to force it back and down. It’s stabbing a man one inch at a time, a man whose face you will see every day for the rest of your life. So close you can feel his breath fall away, and smell his shit. It’s crying in the blood and the stink because you’re alive and you’ll have to do it again.

Demosthenes is right that this selection rings hollow. The fact that we can kill men from hundreds of miles away without seeing their faces doesn't change the fact that they still explode and die and it's still gory and ugly. However, Wright makes a completely valid point, justifying his original thesis when he writes:

There are no more draftee soldiers wasted on acid, no more draft card burnings, no moratorium marches. No-one cares if you’re a Conscientious Objector. Today’s military specialist is likely to be a college graduate with skills so rarified to be near magic. The soundtrack of the war will not be Hendrix or Joan Baez on a transistor. It’s industrial-techno downloaded at the base internet café, played on a personal MP3 player. Or maybe a Spanish language course for a final college credit. These are motivated, angry volunteers who fought hard and long to get where they are, and are as far removed from a conscript army as they are from Venusian Amazon women.

That is a huge difference, and Demosthenes doesn't address it. As such, Demo, your claims about Wright trying to just wipe away all of history ring incredibly hollow.

As for your conclusion, again, you just make some assertions about not buying arguments that aren't persuasively made, never having actually addressed any such arguments in your post. You carp about not throwing aside national sovereignty, because then everyone will etc etc, neatly disregarding the fact that it is the UN trying to impinge our soverign right to defend ourselves against a belligerent enemy, who has aided those who attacked our country and killed thousands of our citizens, and would do so again.

You really should just make a template for these kinds of posts so you don't have to go through all the empty motions of actually writing something that addresses the points raised and forming cogent responses.

Oh wait, you've already done that haven't you?

2002-09-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

They play Creole

If only the Middle East were ruled by these, the Sultans of Swing.

2002-09-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

The face of the modern US military

Matt Welch pointed me today to this relatively new blog. It's a site maintained by several soldiers in a medical unit in Afghanistan. I was struck by the first post I saw:

Our guys live in a tiny camp next to a large field hospital set up in tents about 20 minutes outside of town. There are dramatically jagged mountains reaching for the sky a few miles to one side of their position, rolling grasslands spread out to the horizon in the other. They awake each morning to the hauntingly beautiful call to prayers sung over the hospital loudspeaker system. They hear this repeated throughout the day as the Imam at the Hospital calls the faithful to their prayers. SGT G. has returned "home" with me after doing one hell of a job taking care of the medical resupply needs of these medical professionals from Jordan. SGT R. is there temporarily repairing some medical equipment. SPC C. has replaced SGT G. as the primary medical LNO. Several other of our team will eventually serve as LNO's or make customer assistance visits to this Hospital in the coming months. I guarantee there will be plenty of stories about Mes when your guys return.

A professional soldier, courteous, respectful and even somewhat in awe of the beauty of this alien culture around him. From the portraits of the supposed "backlash" against muslims in this country replayed endlessly by the media, you'd think that he, a soldier, apparently trained to be blindingly hostile to any and all possible threat against America, wouldn't be able to see these foreign people as anything but backward animals.

And yet here he is, describing them in human, even admiring terms. The rest of his post displays more "understanding" of the people around him than Robert Fisk ever could. I'm more convinced now than ever that bringing the US military to Iraq as well as Afghanistan is the most humane thing we could do.

2002-09-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

A new meme for Tim Blair

Tim Blair wants the Blogosphere to come up with a new word.

WE NEED a new word or phrase - something to describe people who routinely refer to the September 11 attacks on civilians as attacks on America or the US government, but characterise US attacks on al Qaeda leaders or Iraq's government as attacks on civilians. Send in your ideas. Bear in mind that "fucking stupid bastards" is already claimed for the chuckleheads over at Warbloggerwatch.

I admit the first thing that came to my mind was "stupid lying bastards," but threw that away in search of somehting more original and pointlessly arcane. So I suggest the following: "apatarian," from the Greek apate, meaning "deceit" or "fraud," so as to refer to the types of people who try to subtley confuse what often should be clear moral distinctions by switching terms. This could also apply to whomever calls Israel a country of Nazis, or uses the term "Israeli terror" and "Palestinian resistance."

2002-09-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

Eric Blair is a jerk

He also reveals himself to be a High Priest in the Cult of Idiocy in this post from WBW, in which he gives the world a bright shining flash of just what a humorless and sniping troll he is (and I mean the kind that live under bridges and eat children), as he makes an immaturely sincere but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at excoriating the Pej, who (no doubt with his tongue more than half-way in cheek) proposed a new Adopt-a-Bomb program to aid in the war against terror. What follows is the relevant bit of Pej's modest proposal:

So with that, I introduce to you, a new website I have created, and which is currently in extremely crude form: Adopt-A-Bomb. Perhaps for pennies a day, you too could adopt a thermobaric weapon, or even a Daisycutter. Based on the amount you give, you would be able to receive a picture and file discussing your adopted munition in detail. You could even get your name or message inscribed on your adopted bomb before it is dropped in the search for Islamofascists and/or Republican Guard contingents.

So then of course Mr. Blair has to reach deep into his ass and pull out this little shit-encrusted gem of moral equivalency:

And if Palestinians had come up with an adopt-a-suicide-bomber program would not the words "death-cult" be endlessly iterated through the warblogger hive mind?

Oy.

Once again, a member of the anti-war crowd completely discredits himmself by not being able to recognize any difference between scum-of-the-earth terrorists seeking to purposefully kill as many women, children, and other innocents as possible by the hundreds, and those using focused military force to stop such people, targeting only those that would do such harm, and actually using sizable resources to prevent innocent casualties. Zeal in the pursuit of justice is no vice, and Blair has revealed himself to be either blind, stupid or both by not recognizing that.

And no, war isn't something that should be thought of as a light or fun matter, but it can't be all grim resignation either. Once you've established who your enemy is, and that it is necessary to fight them, enthusiasm for the cause is a welcome and necessary quality. You can attack the justifications given for war (though not credibly in my opinion), but you can't attack zeal for the cause of war when you haven't established that it's an unjustified endeavour.

Pej's idea doesn't strike me as fundamentally different than the exhortations for the citizenry to buy war bonds during WWII. Do you think people were at all confused about the fact that the money acquired through war bonds was for any other purpose than to buy guns and bombs to put in the hands of our soldiers who would use them to kill as many Germans and Japanese as possible?

And I suppose, Blair, that your blood would begin to boil in adolescent self-righteous outrage whenever you saw pictures of bomber crews during WWII writing things like "Here you go, Tojo" and "Up your ass, Hitler" on their ordinance. What exactly would your reaction be? "Oooh look at them! They're delighting in killing, those bloodthirsty animals!"

I strongly suggest you see a proctologist immeadiately to get that head removed from your ass as quickly as possible.

2002-09-14T21:17:00.000-07:00

Gonna quote Patton next?

I've been peripherally aware of Warblogger watch for a while, but haven't actually checked it out before today. Partly because I was busy in the non-blog world. Partly because there was so much good stuff to read elsewhere. And partly because any group/website that has "watch" in the name often tends to lean in the annoyingly shrill, self-righteous and adolescent-fantasies-of-rebelliousness direction.

But what the hell, it's Saturday night and my girlfriend has to study.

So I gave it a whirl. The first thing that caught my eye was a couple pictures of William Tecumseh Sherman on the left hand bar. Being one of the more effective wagers of war, I thought to myself, well ain't that a bright shade o' queer!

They serve up this quote to go along with the pictures:

"There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell."

Now, I've heard this before, and several other quotes by Sherman describing just what an ugly business the world's oldest profession is (that's right, it's soldiery, not prostitution. Once there was a large group of soldiers standing around looking to get some before their next battle, voila! the world's second oldest profession is born). However, considering the distinctly anti-war message the site expounds daily, I'm not sure the proprietors realize that Sherman, recognizing that war was hell, was a strong proponent of the Jacksonian dictate saying that 1) war is, in many cases, a necessary measure, 2) nations should not go to war friviously, but that 3) having decided that a war is necessary in a certain context, you go in full tilt, and don't stop until you've achieved complete victory. There's no such thing as half-measures or armistices signed when the enemy is still on a footing that will allow him to rebound in a decade or two. You pound at him until he's begging to surrender, and impose a just peace on your terms. Sherman's march to the sea is the perfect example of this. He was the possibly the first practitioner of "total war".

Now, I'm pretty sure the folks at Warblogger Watch are aware of this (if not, they should be mighty embarressed), and are using the Sherman quote to suggest that the Warblogger foot soldiers are just overzealous and immature kids who want to see lots of big noises and shiny things on TV blowing up mosques and riddling with bullets anything in a turban.

I come to this conclusion based on the short list of who they identify as Warbloggers worth watching, with such sites as Gene Expression, Instapundit, and James Lileks. Seeing as how these folks write consistently well thought out, incisive posts about the terrorism/Islamofacism situation, Warblogger Watch comes out looking pretty stupid (oh, and as for their practice of not linking to those sites in their warblogger column and instead linking to unfunny, non-sequitur pictures/sites: lame. Tim Blair's name linked to a picture of a Crocodile Dundee lookalike? Oh that's just hilarious. Get it?? Cuz he's Australian!).

WBW tries to suggest by that Sherman quote that these people, upon first learning about the WTC attacks suddenly whooped it up and shouted "Wooo!, Let's go kill us some Ay-rabs!" They don't seem to be able to entertain the notion that people such as these (myself included) have looked at the situation, striving to evaluate it critically and realistically and come to the conclusion that military action is necessary to keep the US, and the rest of the world safe from the cancer that is eating away much of the middle east and parts of Asia.

Now some of what WBW does is valuable. They provide fact-checking on the excesses of the Blogosphere. That's all well and good, but they also serve to distort the reality of the Warblogger community.

2002-09-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Thank you, come again

This story from The Guardian is of course making everyone in the US and Britain shake in their boots at the prospect that Saddam Huessein isn't going to cooperate with weapons inspectors. And what's more, they're shocked -shocked!- at the possibility that military force might be necessary.

Heaven forfend.

I somehow think that America's reaction will be somewhat different than the UN's, who may be likened to Apu in that scene from the Simpsons where Homer is going through every piece of candy in the Kwik-E-Mart, looking for a sweepstakes prize.

Hey! Hey! I have asked you nicely to please stop mangling my merchandise. If you don't stop you will leave me no choice but to... ask you nicely again!

2002-09-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Guardian: providing you with eminently Fiskable material 24 hours a day

John O'Farrell, apparently a Mad Magazine flunkie, strains his humor and logic muscles in a recent Guardian commentary about GWB and his rough-'n-ready cowboy speechifyin'. Now before you roll your eyes and say, "Oh, he's making fun of the Guardian again... that's like hunting milk cows with a high-powered rifle," I think this this little ditty deserves a response. After all, it seems the author is trying to be funny... or something. I couldn't really be sure. Probably a British thing. Yeah, that must be it.

American officials are currently lobbying hard at the UN. It's the name they don't like: "United Nations" - there's something not quite right about it.
"We're prepared to compromise..." they say. "You can keep the first word."

"United?"

"Yeah, but that second bit sounds wrong - what other words are there?"

"United Countries?"

"No..."

"United Places?

"No, no, there must be another word for nation or country..."

"State?"

"Hmmm... United States, yes that has a ring to it. So we'll call it the 'United States' with its HQ in the United States... Now this UN flag; we're prepared to compromise - you can keep some of the blue, but it needs a bit of red and white in there as well."

Oh delightful.

Now, I'm sure O'Farrel isn't seriously suggesting that America truly wants to partake in a little smash 'n grab with the UN's "authority," because that means we would be held responsible for all the deep and serious things the UN has to think about, and we can't be bothered to do that, when all we really wanna do is shoot guns and watch things blow up real good. Rather, it seems O'Farrel is suggesting that our propensity for spending a weekend shooting howitzers at the beer cans lined up next to the wheel-less Trans-Am on the front lawn is not really leading us to usurp the power of the UN (note to readers: whenever the words "power," "authority," "effectiveness," or any such other term that means something besides ineptitude and irrelevance is used in conjunction with "UN," you can assume that there were meant to be scare quotes there. I'd put them in myself, but they're currently over $5.99 a pound these days, and I just afford to maintain that kind of volume). Rather, it's giving us the gumption to say "screw you, hippie!" and go it alone, which is basically what we'd been planning on doing before. The only difference now is that George Bush kinda sorta made it sound like we were framing our reasons in that fashionable Newspeak lingo of Unese, multilateralism.

Now personally, I wasn't too enamored of Bush's tact in this matter. I realize that it was based on a certain amount of realpolitik strategizing, and as such I accept it. But I think people were, for the most part, way too gushy about the whole thing. "He's turning the tables on them. Look at them squirm!"

This isn't to say that I don't enjoy the prospect of watching EU bureaucrats and African gangster-dictators scratch their heads and go "Huh?" trying to figure out the what rogue hombre really just said, it's just that there is a distinct part of me that is always hoping Bush would say what was really true about the situation: "We're right and you're wrong, and if you can't understand that, then you can sit this thing out and not help, but otherwise, shhut teh FCUK up n00b!!!!!11."

George Bush is trying to hijack the UN. Delegates thought it was just a routine peacetime trip. They were settling back in their seats for a snooze when suddenly a scary-looking American president broke through the flimsy doors into the UN's cockpit, grabbed the controls and tried to steer it into a catastrophe. Will anyone have the courage to overpower him or will they nervously sit it out, hoping that they might somehow survive?

I truly hope he isn't trying to be clever and create the metaphor I think he is, because then I'd have to find him and kick his pathetic little ass for being such a disgusting piece of inapproriate human trash.

Of course he tried to appear conciliatory and courteous. But Bush's speech to the UN this week was like a headteacher pretending to respect the newly formed school council. It's not that he was patronising to the UN, but at one point he stopped his monologue and shouted: "Canada! Are you chewing? Get up here and spit it out!"

Humor again. Wonderful. Let's take this delightful metaphor to its logical conclusion....

Canada comes to the head of the class when Schoolmaster Dubya finds out that he's been passing notes for little Alan Qaeda, and letting the school trouble maker hide cherry bombs in his desk. Francis, a smelly little beret-wearing kid who insists on sitting at the front of the class and thinks he could run the school better than the teacher (and has no qualms about saying so, loudly and frequently), even though he secretly depends on Professor Dubya to protect him from the likes of Ira Quincy, since Ira Q. has a propensity for frequently giving wedgies and wet-williesto the kids who refuse to fight back and occasionally walking right up to them, socking them in the stomach and taking their lunch money.

His message was that the only way to ensure UN policy was implemented was to change it to American policy. Some of the more subversive translators were having great fun. Bush said: "Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant?" And into the headphones of one European minister came the translation: "Listen, suckers, I'm going to bomb who the bloody hell I like, so sod the lot of you!"

Perhaps what the UN folks need is a little bluntness of that variety to jerk them out of their fantasy world of caviar and champagne dinners while they make serious faces about the world's problems.

And as for that first bit, that is exactly the opposite of what he was doing, you jackass. In his speech he enumerated instance after instance in which Iraq flagrantly disregarded mandatory resolutions by the UN, which were passed with the threat of force to back them up. See, the difference between us and you is that when we say "Do something or get your head kicked in," we actually mean it.

The world now faces a test and the UN a defining moment..." continued Dubya as African leaders heard him apparently saying, "I've never heard of half your countries! Why are you wearing those funny costumes? I might bomb you next! I've got B52s and sidewinders and everything. Neeeeeoooow, boom! Bang! Ker-pow!"

"Funny costumes"? You mean like their Gucci suits that they buy after having leached whatever life they can from the veins of their countries? What the translator really should've said was: "Why the hell should I give a fuck what any of you people think when most of you would rather let your people starve by the millions rather than eat genetically modified food given to you for free because you're afraid it might have an impact on the money you skim off the top from the honest hard-working farmers who break their backs year in and year out so you can supplement your lifestyle?"

Despite his efforts, Bush does not have the backing of the international community and so makes the most of his support from the British foreign secretary. Diplomatically he is a drowning man clutching at Jack Straws.

I suppose then it's a matter of relief to Bush that being on sure footing "diplomatically" doesn't really matter. If the UN was a highschool, the US wouldn't win homecoming king. However, I can bet we'd be voted Most Likely to Overthrow Brutal and Stagnant Dictatorships. And that's what matters.

The UN, admittedly, is not the speediest means of deciding policy.

You'd have to be pretty incisive to make as profound a statement as that. I don't pretend to be so surgically cogent, but I'll give it a whirl: "The Earth, admittedly is not the squarest of planets."

Well whatdaya know? It's not so hard after all.

At the beginning of the Afghan conflict a UN committee sat down to hammer out a resolution and this week they nearly agreed on whether it was "Taliban" with an "i" or "Taleban" with an "e". But changing the world takes time. It is a laborious and painstaking process.

Well at least Mr. O'Farrel isn't the soft-headed type who thinks that a few choruses of "We Are the World" will do the trick.

In north London an extended campaign by local residents recently managed to prevent a branch of Starbucks opening in their area. In my road another Starbucks has just opened and someone keeps smashing the windows. (It's amazing what you can get the cubs to do in Bob-A-Job week.) Bombing Baghdad is the diplomatic equivalent of protesters who smash windows. It makes them feel tough and hard; it's quick and easy but it doesn't actually make anything better for the people who really need help. It's instant espresso politics to go.

Oh I see. So it turns out he's the soft-headed type who thinks that putting significant amounts of blood and treasure on the line in order to free countries from ruthless dictators is akin to attending your neighborhood's bi-weekly meetings of "Citizens Against Coffee That Doesn't Taste Like Something I Stepped In On the Subway" (remember, this is England we're talking about).

And exactly where did this fact-impaired fellow get the impression that our campaign against Iraq is going to include just lobbing some missiles into children's hospitals to so we can get our jollies? I'm sure it will come as a shock to you Mr. O'Farrell, but there's been a continuing debate in this country about just how much involvement it will require for us to make sure that Saddam goes and something better takes his place. I sincerely doubt that Iraq will suddenly become some sort of shining beacon of enlightened government and freedom, but we would have to try pretty hard to find someone who could make a bigger mess of the country than Saddam. I honestly don;t know where you got this notion of just throwing some bombs at them indiscriminantly to make ourselves feel better. Perhaps you confused Bush with Clinton.

Saddam might seem a little harder to shift, but quick wars don't bring long-term peace. American foreign policy is like their television. It has to keep jumping from one thing to another because the president has the remote control in his hand and his attention span is very limited. That thrilling adventure Take Out the Taliban! held his interest for a short while, but now the explosive opening action sequence is over and it's got bogged down in the complex story of rebuilding a war-torn country. Bush's finger is hovering over that button itching to see if there's any more exciting stuff somewhere else.

Thank you for that tiresome bit of claptrap. Excuse me while I weep for your stupidity.

It's really striking how two people can be working off two completely different versions of reality. In Mr. O'Farrell's world, the United States rumbled up to Afghanistan, shot at everything that twitched, blew up any standing building, and then pulled out, looking for their next violent video-game fix of explosions and blood.

If only life were that much like Duke Nukem.

Actually Mr. O'Farrell, the problem is YOUR attention span not Bush's. The fact is that the work going on in Afghanistan right now is quiet and constant, with US advisors gradually working to teach the Afghans how to first build a stable military, and then a stable civil society, and American special forces protecting the new Afghan president so as to ensure that the long standing Afghani tradition of "Kill whoever is in power" doesn't repeat itself. The problem is this isn't as exciting as B-52s thundering overhead and daisy cutters making the ground look like God himself himself just took a major crap, and so it isn't as heavily reported because it wouldn't hold the attention of simple-minded folks like yourself. However just because you're too busy writing painfully unfunny and obtuse commentary doesn't mean that the US government is working steadily to make Afghanistan something more than it was under the Taliban.

"Don't you want to stick with this and see how Afghanistan turns out?" asks Colin Powell.

"Nah, it's got boring now."

"But we don't even know if they catch Bin Laden..."

"Ooh wow, look what's on CNN! 'Bombers Over Baghdad!' Let's see if this baddie Saddam gets it instead..."

First of all, by all reasonable indicators, Bin Laden is Bin Laiden to rest, and whatever is left to be caught of him would likely fit into a petri dish. Secondly, since this is just another sad attempt at humor to say the same thing spoken above with the utmost sincere solemnity above, I won't comment on it further.

A war on Iraq will not make the world a safer place. Perhaps the only way to make US policy successful is radically to change the aims. Then as the troops are brought home and the flags are waved the White House could declare that it had definitely achieved all the objectives in Operation Kill All the Wrong People and Make the Problem Much Worse.

"A war with Iraq will not make the world a safer place." Well, I'm glad you didn't jump ahead and make an absolute claim without providing some evidence of it first!

Sorry son, but you can't just assert something is true and expect us to believe it without any logical support. In case you noticed we're not wearing our church clothes. Of course O'Farrell conveniently leaves out the bit about Unilateral American Foreign Policy already in a quick war causing substantial improvements in the lives of normal Afghans. And just what does "Kill All the Wrong People" mean anyway? So Saddam and his Republican guard are the wrong people to kill (the latter most likely won't even be killed because they'll surrender to CBS before that happens)? This suggests that there are "right" people to kill, don't it, and if not Saddam, then who? I suppose, like Michael Moore, he's referring to people who voted for Bush.

2002-09-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

Just a second Kofi, lemme get my Fisking hat

In a bold and decisive moment, Kofi Annan said.... well basically the same ridiculous drivel he's been dribbling out for the past couple of months. You're shocked, I know, but just sit down for a minute and take a deep breath and I'm sure the world will begin to make sense again in no time. While we wait for the sedatives to take, let's have a gander at what the never-shallow-minded diplomat had to say:

The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, today delivered a strong defence of multilateralism to world leaders gathered at UN headquarters, in the face of a widely predicted US military campaign against Iraq.

Oh, I'm sure he offered up a defense of multilateralism. That's like saying an Arab newspaper columnist offered up a defense of suicide bombing, it's just something you expect, but "strong"? Ahem, I'll be the judge of that.

Speaking to the world's most powerful politicians at the UN general assembly, he underlined the UN's importance in sanctioning action in the fight against terrorism.

A most unconventional use of the word "sanctioning" here, for sure. From context, it can only be taken to mean "not approving of anything, at any time, anywhere." Seeing as how they were multilaterally against every step the US took in the war against terrorism, from using force in Afghanistan, to holding al-Qeada prisoners, and now to Afghanistan, I defy Mr. Annan to cite a single clear example where the international community went along with the War on Terrorism, and weren't dragged kicking and screaming, or else berated us endlessly until it was clear we had achieved a clear-cut and effective moral victory, and then decided to join the party. If you want to constantly be nipping at our ankles and generally make an ungodly nuisance of yourselves fine, but don't pretend that you're somehow actively engaged in fighting terrorism.

He called on Iraq to admit inspectors who have been banned for nearly four years or face any consequences the security council decides to impose.

Well fuck! Why didn't we think of that?! Especially since I'm absolutely certain that Saddam is just wetting himself over the possibility that the UN might impose some, like, sanctions or something!

In a clear warning to President Bush, who is due to address the assembly shortly on case against Iraq, he said:

"When states decide to use force ... there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy [provided by the UN]."Even the most powerful countries know they need to work with others."

Hehe... "unique legitimacy" of the UN. Boy, he sure can pick his phrases. It's amazing how from the same set of words people can come to completely different conclusions. The UN's legitimacy is certainly unique. Qaddafi is their Human Rights chairman. The US got kicked off the committee and replaced with Syria. That qualifies as unique in my book any day.

The secretary general also accused Iraq of continuing to defy mandatory council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII of the UN charter, which allows the use of military force - and he indicated that time was running short for Iraq to admit weapons inspectors and dismantle any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Mr. Annan, I know that becoming the Secretary General of the UN requires a mandatory frontal lobotomy before assuming the office, so I'll be crystal clear about this: Iraq is yanking your chain. Saddam knows all he has to do is stall inspectors for a few more years and then he'll have his nukes and suddenly it'll be a whole new ballgame. He knows that if you're so scared to piss him off now when he's got a third rate military and can't even keep his own people under control, you'll probably give him the giant gold key to the UN once he's got some of the Big Boys. He also knows the glacial pace at which he can keep this inspection process going. At the last minute, he'll let in some inspectors, who will subsequently be lied to, hectored, threatened, and then eventually ejected from the country again. And he knows that after that happens there will be perhaps a year of more diplomacy, and then the cycle begins anew, until his nukes are done. And then all bets are off.

Did you get all that? I brought some visual aides in case you need them...

"If Iraq's defiance continues, the security council must face its responsibilities," Mr Annan said.

Did you hear that boys? It's time to face up to our responsibilities. We really didn't want it to come to this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Have you got your most stern-looking frown ready? Excellent. Ok, here we go: ready, aim, GLOWER!

Well that did it! See, right now Saddam is laughing in terror. Now he's pointing guns at us in submission. And now he's shooting at us in surrender!

The UN triumphs once again.

2002-09-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

A cause for hope

Time to balance the Yin of the last post with a little refreshing Yang.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran details the atrocities of the mullacracy on their website. It's grim stuff, but, like the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran that I linked to yesterday, the very fact that such an organization exists is a reason to hope.

Spread their message as far as you can.

2002-09-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Delusion in the arab world

I keep telling myself that i will not be surprised the next time I hear about yet another in a long series of stories that illustarte just how dysfunctional, how pathologically crippled in mind and spirit the arab world and culture is. I keep telling myself that, and I'm inevitably proved wrong.

Jay Nordlinger of NRO recounts an email he recieved from an Egyptian aquaintance the day of the attacks:

A friend of mine in Alexandria sent me an e-mail. She's as educated, as Westernized, as liberal a person as you're likely to find in that great city. Has traveled all over the world, speaks perfect English and French, lectures at the university - etc. She wrote and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I hope you're all right. I hope you know that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda couldn't possibly have done this. It must have been the Jews."

Sigh.

I know that this view is painfully common in the Arab world, among those so well versed in their own doublethink who can simultaneously deny that the Holocaust ever happened and then praise Hitler for it and express sorrow that it didn't completely succeed. I know this, and I even know that among the intellectuals, those as Westernized as any, still they would likely publicly proclaim such nonsense as is stated above, since it is often a requirement of even remaining in any position of influence. The way public figures in America say they support diversity, their counterparts in the Arab world feel as much obligated, if not more, to proclaim that Jews are the world's all-powerful, omnipresent boogeymen.

I've become acutely aware of all this in the last year, and I like to think that at the least I'm not grotesquely naive. However, I realize now that still, somehwere deep down, I tenaciously held on to the most cautious of hopes that someone like this friend of his: educated, Westernized, liberal (at least for her culture), when speaking privately to her friend would somehow own up and face the truth that couldn't be any more obvious if it walked up and slapped her with a dead fish.

I could even be content with the typical "Yes, OBL did this, and it was wrong to kill innocents, but it is a response to the root causes of terrorism, and of your unacceptable support of Israeli imperialism" etc etc. But this... this complete denial of basic reality... this ensconsing oneself in such an idealized fantasy-world...

Any kind of useful communication is not possible without a shared belief in at least some basic tenets of reality, and I'm convinced that we currently do not share any such belief with the vast majority (perhaps virtually the entirety) of the Arab world.

Many in the Blogosphere who heard such an appraisal would say "Well duh." I still held out a modicum of hope however, which is rapidly slipping away.

Perhaps no such shared vision will be possible until the uglier facets of that reality they so ardently deny begin to rain down upon their heads and their society after it has slipped even more towards barbarism and implosion. Hopefully by then it won't be too late for them, but I'm not making any bets on that score.

2002-09-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

Another day

Well, this being a place that exists for the purpose of airing my premature thoughts and poorly-formed opinions, I feel like I should say something about the first aniversary of 9/11, but there really isn't anything for me to say. I woke up, did the same things I do everyday, went through the same motions, and most importantly, felt the same resolute cold fury at the deliberate slaughter of innocents by scum whose goals are anathema to civilization itself.

Nothing special. I didn't remember 9/11, didn't have to reach down into my memory banks and dredge up those images from a year ago because they've been with me for the last 365 days. They've lived, always somewhere in my mind, or in the pit of my stomach, a furnace that keeps the mind clear and resolute on what needs to be done, as clearly as if it was written in a manual: "Step 1) Find the bastards wherever they hide, Step 2) Terminate with extreme prejudice Step 3) Find any that are allied with or support them, Step 4) Repeat Step 2 as needed."

These thoughts were with me before today, and they will be there after it.

2002-09-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

You say it, sister!

Lucianne Goldberg (who, if for no other reason should thanked for giving us her son, Jonah) says essentially what I wanted to say below, except much more eloquently and effectively in this NRO Symposium piece.

Read, and be thankful she writes:

As the days and weeks moved on I experienced, to a lesser degree, the same feeling of impotence and weakness every time I witnessed the skirl of a bagpipe, the face of a dead fireman's child, or God Bless America sung by a children's chorus. The only time I was able to dissipate the feelings of inadequacy and self-pity was to look at the pictures of the flaming towers, of the dust-coated people fleeing, and the jumpers falling as they held hands. Then blind rage became the antidote to misery and I could function.

Prayer and pity for loss is a cleansing thing but it is fire of outrage than fuels forward motion. It dawned on me in the buildup to the nonstop theater of anniversary angst how manipulative sentimentality can be. Those whose goal it is to make us miserable weaken our resolve. Those who convince us that we are cold and unfeeling if we even for a moment entertain thoughts of justice, and yes, revenge, seek to disarm us. They seek to subjugate us by making us inadequate to any task other than weeping and rending our garments.

Read the rest of it. Do it now.

2002-09-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hobbits? I wish...

In this typically resonant VDH piece, Hanson in effect says: "Things are still bad. They're likely to get worse before better. Keep buggering on."

This portion struck me sorta queer though...

The truth is that Europe, out of noble purposes, for a decade has insidiously eroded its collective national sovereignty in order to craft an antidemocratic EU, a 80,000-person fuzzy bureaucracy whose executive power is as militarily weak as it is morally ambiguous in its reliance on often dubious international accords. This sad realization September 11 brutally exposed, and we all should cry for the beloved continent that has for the moment completely lost its moral bearings. Indeed, as the months progressed the problems inherent in "the European way" became all too apparent: pretentious utopian manifestos in lieu of military resoluteness, abstract moralizing to excuse dereliction of concrete ethical responsibility, and constant American ankle-biting even as Europe lives in a make-believe Shire while we keep back the forces of Mordor from its picturesque borders, with only a few brave Frodos and Bilbos tagging along. Nothing has proved more sobering to Americans than the skepticism of these blinkered European hobbits after September 11.

I have to say, I think calling the Continentals hobbits is being too generous. To my mind, the hobbits were more like America pre-Pearl Harbor. They sought mostly to live an isolationist existence, but once danger was truly coming and they all recognized that fact, all those who actually were in a position to recognize it (ie Frodo and his companions) without a moments hesitation threw themselves grimly onto the path of peril. Gandalf explicitly marks this as a sign of the hobbit character. The fact that only a small collection of hobbits actually embark on the journey is due to the fact that the reality of the threat of Mordor is not yet apparent to the Shire at large, much the way Japan's threat didn't seem real until after December 7th.

Currently however, the Europeans who now disregard, even after the stark lesson of 9/11, the danger of islamic fundamentalism, their cowardice and stubborness to not confront aggression even while staring them in the face goes far beyond anything the hobbits ever did. I'm not sure there's an apt parallel within LotR fpr the Continental attitude, but one might find similar sentiments in the figure of Saruman. Granted, the Euros are of course not wholeheartedly joining al-Qeada's and the Islamic extremist cause, but they have, in many ways, given up (both ideologically and militarily) rather than face them down.

2002-09-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Mourning? Sorry, not here, mate...

The chief reason I opted to not watch any 9/11 coverage on the news today, as well as turning a blind eye to much of the online content, offered up by large news outlets, is the seemingly ubiquitous enshrinement of grief and bathos. Now, I want to make very clear that I in no way want to denigrate the suffering of those who lost loved ones. They deserve sympathy and consideration. No doubt the naturla empathy of the country should feel something for them.

However.

What I can't stand is the way the entire nation (or at least those who are paid to look good on TV and speak for the whole nation) channel all the emotional energy of the nation into feelings of sorrow, loss, grief. And they do this continually, never allowing any other kind of feeling to break through the oppressive black fabric of their 9/11 funeral clothes.

I for one can say that grief isn't the emotion that boils its way to the forefront of my brain most of the time. It's rage. Focused, controlled, and mediated by what I hope to be an intellectual grasp of the issues facing us, but rage nonetheless. However, you'll never see this reaction in popular media outside of the occaisonal country song. Because, well, rage is ugly and unpleasant, right? Eye for an eye leaves the world blind, etc etc, no? Violence never solves anything, neh?

But even for those who don't subscribe to such ridiculous notions, I believe there is still exists the opinion (at least among those identified as more "enlightened" in some way, and who happen to permeate the mainstream media) that any zealousness in the pursuit of violence, any emotion besides a complete and regretful resignation to the fact that, as unpleasant as it may be, we may have to visit war upon the heads of some people, is seen as reckless and dangerous and just plain ugly.

So call me an ugly American. I'm angry. Pissed. Enraged. Even now, one year later. When I think of the pictures of people throwing themselves from the burning windows of the twin towers, when I think of the scum slitting the throats of pilots and stewardesses and the fire raining down upon office workers whose only transgression against their attackers was living in a country that devotes itself to liberal democratic ideals, my teeth grate and my fists clench. Of course I feel sorrow for them and their families, but more often then not that sorrow is honed and sharpened to a burnished point whose only possible words are "Let's get the bastards."

And I realize, all the while, that such rage must be tempered to some extent, if only so that it is focused and not ineffectual. So that it serves a worthwhile purpose. But that does not mean it is to be discarded or sublimated into feelings of sorrow and remorse. Down that road lies despair.

Several weeks ago, I sent a news story to a friend of mine, about how the PA had taken a Palestinian woman accused of collaborating with the Israelis and riddled her full of bullets, after having gotten her name as a collaborator from her son, who was tortured for hours until he gave up some names just to make the pain stop. So they dragged her in front of a wall and let their AK's sing.

After she read it, her exact words were "That is really sad."

No. Not sad. Infuriating. Maddening. Outrageous. Not sad. I think her response is more typical these days than it ever has been. More and more people react by feeling pain, hurt, loss, but nowhere is it accompanied by the all-too-appropriate righteous anger, the kind that would spur one to resolute action rather than empty tears.

We've had enough sadness. Bring on the rage, and make sure to keep the fires stoked, now more than ever.

2002-09-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Better allies than Europe

I usually try not to get too sentimental. Though it isn't necessary, sentimentality often goes hand in hand with a forsaking of rationality, since in most cases one has to discount the many inconvenient facts on the periphery that would mediate such feelings. In relation to many things 9/11 however, the sheer magnitude of honor that was raised in response to the attacks is more than enough to really get me in the heart as well as the mind.

I felt that way when, a week or so after the attacks, I read an email where an American sailor described watching a German destroyer fly the American flag, sail parallel to their own ship with all hands saluting. Even then I had that nagging feeling in the back of my head, whispering that "You know, a year from now, they'll only be lecturing us about "root causes" and our "unilateralism." I told my nagging to shut the hell up at the time, and occaisonally I still do.

Now today, I find something that inspires the same feeling of gratitude, fraternal affection and honor, and with not a peep from the cynical lobe of my brain... and it's coming from Iran.

"The Student Movement Coordination Committee For Democracy in Iran."

If an organization with such a name existed on an American campus (and I'm sure it does in many places), just hearing those words "student movement" would send me into nauseated convulsions, bringing up irritating images of SDS and other such malcontent nonsense. But in Iran, those words "student movement" and "committee for democracy" actually mean something, or at least mean something other than a bunch of spoiled middle class kids going to college on their parents' dime and using it as an excuse to experience a few responsibility-free and romance-laced fantasies of sticking it to The Man. If I were a member of such organizations on an American campus that calls itself something like "The Democratic Student Action Network" or "The Student Action Network of Democracy" (Judean People's Front, anyone?), which actually has nothing to do with democracy but instead concerns itself solely with the propagation of various facets of the Idiotarian philosophy, I would feel an instant and overwhelming swell of shame with the realization that I even had the gall to think that I was doing something a thousandth as noble or taking a risk a millionth as dire as those kids are doing right now in Iran.

But of course, if I had the capacity to feel that, I probably wouldn't have joined one of those organizations in the first place.

Now, with the first anniversary of 9/11 tragedy upon us, as SMCCDI expresses its sympathy to the families of the victims and survivors of that ungodly event, and the honorable nation of America; it invites all free spirited Iranians to honor the memory of the victims of that day by gathering and lighting a candle in front of the main entrance of the Tehran university and major public squares in Tehran, and the main squares in other cities and townships, from 6:00 PM till 9:00 PM, on Wednesday 11 September.
Also, from all those Iranians who feel they share the sorrow and pain of the American nation, it is requested that they turn off all their light on that same night from 10:30 PM till 11:30 PM in a silent, but much telling gesture of sympathy and solidarity with the bereaved nation of America. Without a doubt, in this age of high-resolution satellite cameras, your message of sympathy will reach the Americans loud and clear!

Just a taste. Read the whole statement, and realize that this is a nation of people siding with America not because of political or economic expediency (as Europe eventually will), but because to them, democracy actually means something. If it doesn't get you right there in the chest, I'd suggest checking your pulse.

2002-09-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since I blogged and rolled...

A particularly busy few weeks has just ended for me. Regular blogging to resume... (wait for it!) ...now!

2002-08-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

A new word for the Blogosphere

I humbly suggest we need a new word in the blogosphere. After reading Mark Steyn's latest call to arms against the more pernicious aspects of multiculturalism, I thought to myself, "Wow, he really Steyned that one."

A typical example:

And so this 11 September, across the continent, millions of pupils, from kindergarten to high school, will be studying such central questions as whether the stereotyped images on 1942 War Bonds posters made German-Americans feel uncomfortable. Evidently, they made German-American Dwight D. Eisenhower so uncomfortable that he went off and liberated Europe. But I don’t suppose that’s what the NEA had in mind.

I don’t think the teachers’ union are ‘Hate America’ types. Very few Americans are. But, rather, they’re in thrall to something far craftier than straightforward anti-Americanism — a kind of enervating cult of tolerance in which you demonstrate your sensitivity to other cultures by being almost totally insensitive to your own. The NEA study suggestions have a bit of everything in them: your teacher might pluck out Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’; on the other hand, she might wind up at the discussion topic about whether it was irresponsible for the media to show video footage of Palestinians celebrating 11 September as this allegedly led to increased hostility toward Arabs. Real live Arab intolerance is not a problem except insofar as it risks inflaming yet more mythical American intolerance.

"steyn" Pronunciation Key: (sti¯n)

v. steyned, steyning, steyns
v. tr.
1) To incisively, with generous helpings of wit and style, criticize and ridicule a cherished concept or cause of the Left, revealing it to be even more foolish and detrimental to society than it was previously believed to be.

2002-08-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

"Ohhhhh, confused, would we?"

I owe much to NRO. Completely aside from the excellent commentary, wit, sparkle and delightful mix of somber professionalism and adolescent silliness, there's the daily "cool site" feature, a breeding ground for bookmarks if there ever was one. Today, they highlight the Social Issues Research Centre.

Now before you say to yourself "'Social Issues Research Centre'? That sounds more boring than watching my grandmother doing tax returns in church! And what's with that "-re" ending, huh? It couldn't be that they're- oh, no they're British, too! Initializing Yawn-Nap defense mechanism..."

It's really quite a good reference source. Indeed, the first thing I looked at was timely, relevant and interesting: The Dietary Timeline. This has to catch the eye of a few people. I can't be the only one that sputters in annoyance every time a different food guru tells the public at large to spit out whatever it is they had been stuffing themselves with for the last few years or so because a similar-looking nutritional specialist, presumably the latest from the vast cloning vats that they use to churn out a steady stream of health professionals every year, as if the evil scientists from The Boys of Brazil finally discovered a truly evil plot to unleash on the world.

Prehistoric
"As food is a basic biological necessity, our early ancestors undoubtedly learned through observation and much trial and error how to identify safe sources of nutriment from among the vast array of natural products available to them. They discovered that some of these products were toxic and caused illness and even death. At the same time, they learned how to cope with several potentially dangerous foods and other dietary problems - Oral transmission of such information can be viewed as the earliest form of dietary advice."

Loosely translated, it seems prehistoric society at large was sorta like 7 year olds in the backyard.

"Hey Grog, dare you to eat little crawly thing on rock."

"Mmm... taste gooey, and Grog not go blind."

According to Grivetti, before 3200 B.C. Egypt consisted of two distinctive geographical-cultural entities: a pork-consuming north or Lower Egypt, and a pork-avoiding south or Upper Egypt.

Didn't I read something like this in a Dr. Suess book once?

Anthimus, a 5th century Greek physician, wrote a tract entitled The Dietetics in which he advised Christians to be moderate in eating and drinking, and argued that foods selected should be easily and readily digestible.

He warned Christians against eating eight items: bacon-rind, cheese (especially aged varieties), eggs (hard boiled), fish (old fish), mushrooms, oysters, pickled meat, and pigeon.

I can imagine the Christians of the 5th century complaining "No more pigeon? Oh come on! You doctors have been telling us for years to eat 3 servings of pigeon a day. Next you're going to say we shouldn't be eating rats."

And then we skip all the way to 2002...

Vitamins could help beat cataracts. Cataracts can be corrected by surgery. Eating properly could help preserve your sight, according to a new study linking vitamin C deficiency to cataracts. Researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at nearly 500 women aged between 53 and 73. Cataracts are common among over 65s and form when cells in the lens of the eye become cloudy. The study suggested long-term vitamin C intake lowered the risk of cataracts, but was inconclusive.

Also, further study indicated that eating a healthy serving of pigeon daily could help reduce the risk of heart disease.

A shiny new donkey to whomever can guess which part of that was bullplop!

2002-08-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

The nails in the coffin of "moral equivalence"

Anyone, and I mean anyone who still clings to the woefully ignorant and morally repugnant notion that the Israelis and the Palestinians are somehow equal proponents of violence and hatred in the middle east needs to read this second installment of Larry Miller's chronicle of his trip to Israel.

If the last paragraph doesn't bring you into either a state of tears or rage, nothing will.

2002-08-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Investment, Russian style

Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer joins the naval reserve and by chance winds up at the helm of a US nuclear sub, accidentally steering it into Russian waters?

Russian delegate to the UN: The Soviet Union would be happy to offer asylum to your wayward wessel.
US delegate: Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up...?
Russian delegate: Mm, yes that's what we wanted you to think!

...followed by scenes of the Berlin wall magically reforming, hidden tanks appearing from under parade floats, and Lenin breaking out of his glass coffin and muttering "Must crush capitalism!"

Well, this AP story about Russia investing billions of dollars in Iraq reminds me of that. Sure, it's not about them reverting to communism again, but it definately is a case of an old dog resorting to old tricks. "Come on boy, counterbalance the hegemony of the west! Good dog!"

I'm more baffled by this than bothered. They must actually believe that Iraq can weather a concerted effort to get rid of Saddam and create a new government, or perhaps they've got the "Texas oil millionaire who likes to make foolish purchases" syndrome. If so, perhaps they would be interested in buying Seattle Sloth, the world's fattest racehorse. Only 3.5 million.

I guess this really isn't out of character for the Russians. They've pissed away trillions of dollars in the past. Like with that thing they did... what was it called? Really big on college campuses for a while... oh right, communism.

2002-08-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

Synergy!

Tommy Franks seems to think that we'll be in Afghanistan a long time. Well, this is cause for relief for me at the very least. I'm glad to see there isn't as much of a concern with getting ourselves out quickly than with effectively finishing the job so it doesn't turn around and bite us in the ass in 10-20 years.

2002-08-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

Head for the hills?

Armageddon in the Middle East!!!

Oh. You mean the end of the world, not that crappy Ben Afleck movie. Whew, well that's a relief.

Not sounding hysterical at all is Republican foreign policy advisor Brent Snowcroft, who warned that action against Iraq would cause the pressure cooker that is the Middle East to boil over and explode, coating the walls of the kitchen in stuffed tomatoes, peppers and meatballs.

"Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty, as in 1991 when Saddam sought to bring Israel into the Gulf conflict. This time, using weapons of mass destruction, he might succeed, provoking Israel to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East," Mr Scowcroft wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Now I don't doubt that Saddam would likely try to bring Israel into the conflict, hoping that their inevitable retaliation gets the rest of the Arab world seething. And I do not dispute that the use of nuclear weapons by Iraq, and the retalitory use of said weapons by Israel, can be completely ruled out. That being said, I think the likelihood of that scenario is remote. While it's clear that Iraq is bent on joining the nuclear club, according to the testimonies of recent defectors it doesn't seem like he'll have working nukes for a couple of years. This, I believe, is all the more reason to go after him sooner rather than later.

But even assuming that he does possess nukes that he is willing to use right now, and did so during an invasion, which prompted the retaliation by Israel, while this would be a monumental tradgedy in terms of Israeli and Iraqi life lost, it would not ignite the entire Middle Eastern region into a state of armageddon. For one thing, no other middle eastern state has nuclear weapons.

It's a remote possibility that other nations such as Syria may use this occaision to launch another unprovoked conventional war against Israel, but at this point there would be massive US military presence in the region, which would significantly deter them from even attempting it, and cripple their effort should they actually commit to it.

The fierceness of his attack on current administration policy illustrates the gulf between the elder Bush and his son, who has surrounded himself with far more radical ideologues on domestic and foreign policy.

Sigh. This is a Guardian article, so I suppose you can forgive this sort of extreme editorializing, sort of the way you forgive Jimmy's low grades ever since he got kicked in the head by that mule.

"Radical ideologues" eh? Yeah, that's one way you could put it. Of course I would say that the only thing they're radical about is a stark and mature acceptance of reality, which says that by removing Saddam now is the wisest and safest option, despite the current risks, which will only become more pronounced as time goes on while he works tirelessly to multiply his WMD capabilities.

2002-08-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

You're going to have some rat feces

Sometimes I wonder if there's anything to this whole karma notion. Usually I wonder that whenever I have to deal with the administration here at Berkeley. It inevitably causes me to wonder whether I'd done something truly reprehensible in a former life. It then makes me wish the cosmos had decided to punish me by just turning me into a tape worm for a few lifetimes rather than consigning me to deal with the dead-eyed and dead-and-buried-brained folks that inhabit the marbeled corridors of Sproul Hall.

Here's the deal: I still haven't got my Spring grades yet, because of a problem that first sprang up in the administration's records more than a year ago. During my junior year I declared my major. I went down to Campbell hall and jumped through every hoop that they could think of, which was an ordeal in and of itself. It took me until the end of the semester to actually finish the process because when I ordered a copy of my transcripts they first seemed to take that order and throw it into the trashcan, because nothing ever happened. I ordered them a second time and then, after a only a few weeks of delay, they sent it to my parents' house instead of my residence in Berkeley, which I specifically asked that they do. And they sent it somewhere else because, well... it couldn't just be because they're stupid and lazy could it? That just seems too easy. Please... please let me believe it's due to some kind of misalignment of the planets or a voodoo curse. It would make the whole experience so much less distressing. In the name of all that's holy let there be some kind of angry little hobgoblin that lurks under the desks and behind the coffee machines in college administration buildings and whose only desire in life is muck up the works and make the workers only seem horribly incompetent.

But anyway, I eventually got my hands on the things, and then had a wonderful time clawing my way through the normal everyday bureaucracy of Berkeley, kinda like the way that a private in WWI mucked through the normal everyday mud and barbed wire and machine gun nests and poison gas clouds of the Western front. At least he was allowed the chance to occaisonally shoot at those throwing misery his way.

Wait in line, sign this, talk to advisor, get signature, wait in line again, talk to Sproul goon, turn your head this way, cough...

But I did it. I declared. I placed myself in the exalted position of the blessed many, the majored, and awaited the milk and honey that was sure to rain down from the skies, now cloudless and lined with gold.

...Registration block? What the hell is that? Why can't I register for classes?

Trumped on down to Campbell again.

"Oh, you're not declared."

Yes I am.

"No, you're not. It's right here on the computer. Not declared," she said, with a confident assurance hinting that if the screen said two plus two equals a bananna, she would've started arguing with math professors about it.

So it didn't go through. Fine. Very well. I'll just go through the whole process again. Just lemme undo my belt here so I can properly bend over... ah, there we go. Ok, got the hot poker? Good, let's do this thing.

So I did it again. Since my registration was blocked, I had to do go through a process called "late enrollment," which entailed sitting in some lady's office while she chided me, apparently as far as I can tell for not being more aware of the fact that everyone who worked in that building had the combined IQ of a comatose donkey and the work ethic of a stoned sloth. See, for them, late enrollment is for those irresponsible students who don't sign up for classes on time.

While her back was turned I was silently screaming about how I would've just loved to have signed up on time, except that big red "REGISTRATION BLOCKED" message sorta got in the way. Shaking your fist in impotent rage at someone's back is a singular experience. You simply must try it.

But in the end, everything seemed to work. I was allowed to sign up for my classes, though I had to go through the metaphorical equivalent of writing "I am a very bad student" a hundred times on the blackboard. That was the beginning of the Spring, but at least for the next couple of months, I could feel secure and concentrate on doing well in school for my final semester.

It's just that every single time I tried to do anything that had the least bit to do with the administration, I kept getting the same message: What are trying to do here? You're not a student. Security!

I tried to check a book out from the library. "I'm sorry, but this says you're not a student here." Fine.

I tried to charge my school gym fee to my student account with my ID card. "Looks like there's a block on your card." Very well.

And now, I still have not been given my Spring grades. I talked to my advisor the other day and she assured that it would all be taken care of soon, though I had to allow 24 hours for this sort of thing to correct itself. It's now 24+48.

(sigh)

And so it goes.

2002-08-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

Why Arabs lose wars

This excellent article pointed out by Den Beste lays out in detail, from first hand experience, how certain backwards aspects of middle eastern culture have contributed to Arabic militaries being ineffective on the battle field. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the coming conflict in Iraq or any other military issue in the middle east. For that matter, it should also be required reading for all Arabic generals, if they cared at all about transforming their armed forces to be something besides cannon fodder.

It provides some truly startling (at least to me) anecdotes from the author's experience in training programs with middle eastern militaries, and information gathered from other American officers' experiences:

On one occasion, an American mobile training team working with armor in Egypt at long last received the operators’ manuals that had laboriously been translated into Arabic. The American trainers took the newly minted manuals straight to the tank park and distributed them to the tank crews. Right behind them, the company commander, a graduate of the armor school at Fort Knox and specialized courses at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds ordnance school, promptly collected the manuals from those crews. Questioned why he did this, the commander said that there was no point in giving them to the drivers because enlisted men could not read. In point of fact, he did not want enlisted men to have an independent source of knowledge. Being the only person who could explain the fire control instrumentation or bore sight artillery weapons brought prestige and attention.

And this:

Head-to-head competition among individuals is generally avoided, at least openly, for it means that someone wins and someone else loses, with the loser humiliated. This taboo has particular import when a class contains mixed ranks. Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class. Often this leads to “sharing answers” in class — often in a rather overt manner or in junior officers concealing scores higher than those of their superiors.

American military instructors dealing with Middle Eastern students learn to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he is an officer, the student does possess the correct answer. If this is not assured, the officer may feel he has been deliberately set up for public humiliation. In the often-paranoid environment of Arab political culture, he may then become an enemy of the instructor, and his classmates will become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation — and learning becomes impossible.

Though the author doesn't use the term "shame society" explicitly, he details countless examples of how this social construct serves to hamper any kind of innovation and essentially cripples the effectiveness of their militaries, as also does in the economic and political spheres as well. Perhaps a thorough trouncing of Iraq and the installation of a westernized political system might help change this.

Now I don't want to seem naive. I realize that the roots of culture are extremely deep and one can't simply instill the rules of a liberal democracy and hope for the country to suddenly start functioning like America. At least as important as the exact political rules of a society are the people and the culture that exist longside (or above) them. It's a chicken-egg scenario: did our culture and tradition create the Constitution or vice-versa? I don't have a clear answer, for I believe there is a significant amount of interplay between the two, but this much is clear: you can't expect to just write a completely new set of rules and expect people to play them when there's been a much different system ingrained into their collective conciousness for centuries.

However - over time, these kinds of mass changes are possible. Turkey is a good example, though it's still clearly a work in progress even after 80 years. But that country started on its road towards modernization because, when faced with the overwhelming superiority of Western political/economic culture and traditions, a few key individuals recognized that their option was to convert or stagnate.

One can hope (perhaps realistically) that a similar thing will happen in Iraq.

2002-08-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Can we please give the pilots guns now?

Since this USA story about the Air Marshal program has effectively destroyed the myth that this agency is the key to airline safety and anti-terrorism in the skies, it seems even more sensible now to arm the pilots of commercial airliners.

The reasons for doing this have been extensively detailed in the past:

Most commercial pilots (70% or more) are ex-military and have experience and training with firearms.
There is commercially available "frangible" ammunition that pierces flesh but not metal surfaces, negating the fear that a bullet could create a hole in the fuselage.
The mere knowledge that pilots might be armed would likely be enough to deter terrorists from planning a hijacking in many instances. Just as with the instance of concealed-carry laws for private citizens, the possibility of facing an armed target is often enough to significantly steer criminals away from even attempting a mugging or rape.

At the very least, the benefits inherent in giving pilots firearms by far outweight the risks involved, especially in light of these recent revelations about the Air Marshal program.

2002-08-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Asking for trouble

I just got an Israeli Airforce T-shirt in the mail. It's actually quite a nice piece of comfortable clothing, methinks, but I almost want to not wear it until I hear about some silly pro-Palestinian rally happening on campus. Considering how belligerent these folks have been in the past, it's sorta like carrying a sign saying "Hey, I'm overdue for an ass-kicking!"

I was talking to a friend about this, and he said, "So is that why you work out? So you can get confidently confront people?"

Of course not. That's ridiculous. I work out to compensate for my pitifully small genetalia, just like everyone else.

Duh.

2002-08-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Perfunctory Berkeley commentary #3645

I honestly don't savor talking about Berkeley here. I really don't. For one thing, it used to angry the blood but not anymore. Now, having lived here for more than 4 years, it just seems so pointless to try to make fun of a place that is already a parody of itself. But what the hell, I don't have a hell of a lot to do today...

So a performance artist wants to pass a tautalogic law stipulating that "A=A," which would apparently lend itself to the stipulation that things have to be themselves. A dog must be a dog, a chair must be a chair, etc. He's doing this in an effort to create a law that no one could ever break.

My, how whimsical and Berkelean. How refreshing that he's challenging our commonly held notions about the meaning of law and society... etc etc, you get the idea.

Seeing as how I love trying to ruin people's fun, a few stickler points:

Saying "A=A" cannot legally translate to mean all things. Legal statutes don't use variables very well. There's enough interpretation that goes on even without unknowns thrown in.
If he's hoping to get people's attention with this and "make them think" or soemthing equally pretentious, he has his work cut out for him. Most people in Berkeley have been bludgeoned over the head with silly legislation so much that their eyes glaze over and their jaw goes slack whenever the words "Berkeley city council" come up in a sentence.
He will very likely get many to disagree with him about the claim of his law. Any rhetoric student can attest to the idea that "A=A" is an oppressive power structure perpetrated by the dominant paradigm of "objective reality."

2002-08-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Fact-checking their asses into oblivion

The Volokh Conspiracy claims another victim: the quickly vanishing credibility of Handgun Control Inc. in this excellent, brief rundown of factual errors in an interview with Michael Barnes.

My favorite correction was old hat: Barnes cites that 80 people die per day by gun violence in America. What he doesn't mention is that 45 of those 80 people die by suicide, something for which it is doubtful that the lack of a gun would have stopped.

2002-08-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

A (very) few good men

This AP story details the problems facing the creation of a stable and workable Afghan army. Particularly, the problems seem to center around disagreement among generals about the size and organization, but even moreso on the dilemma of paying soldiers' salaries, which the Karzai administration can't even afford to pay at a less-than-living wage on the scale the nascent country calls for.

Perosnally, it seems to me that this is just one symptom of the problem of rapid-fire nation building. The US had origonally hoped that after the defeat of the Taliban, we could have a workable Afghan military, and subsequently the beginnings of a country within a year, which would allow the pullout of American forces from the area. I honestly don't know how they thought this was possible.

America officially occupied Japan for 7 years after the end of WWII, and the argument could certainly be made that, even with all the devastation of infrastructure and the almost pathological militarism of its culture, Japan was still better off then than Afghanistan is now, where 20 years of constant war and 4 years of a regime that specifically sought to return the country to the dark ages turned the place into a bombed out shell of a nation. Even before the communists, warlords, and then the Taliban left their bloody stamps on the country, there wasn't much infrastructure or civili society to speak of, so exactly what made us think there'd be a workable country within a year?

Even completely forsaking any humanitarian concerns, it would be a worthwhile investment for the US to spend several years in Afghanistan rebuilding its physical and cultural infrastructure for many of the same excellent reasons that we should foster revolution in Iran and forcibly remove Saddam from Iraq: a modern, Westernized example of a nation in southern Asia would go a long way towards encouraging reform in the entrenched and stagnant regimes of that region.

Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan... all horribly corrupt, autocratic, repressive and aiders and abetters of terrorists. With any luck, Iand Iran will be well on the way towards this much-needed change by this time next year, but the other four, while trying to hide cracks in their veneer of absolute power, have nevertheless achieved a seeming permanence.

Bashar Assad of Syria keeps his hold on the country by continually using the existence of Israel and its struggle with Palestinian terrorism as justification for a state of emergency that keeps the country in an autocratic swamp. As long as Saudi Arabia (as well as Iraq for that matter) foster their armchair intifada with hundreds of millions of dollars going to fund terrorist activities in Israel, Assad can rest easy in his postion of undemocratic rule. Stoking fires in Israel is a similar goal of Jordan, where the Hashemite king Hussein no doubt recalls how the PLO once set its sights on creating an independent Palestine upon the ashes of his regime.

All these dictators and "kings" rely both on the lack of any kind of viable alternative to their crapulent rule, and the focusing of the country's attention outward as a means of sustaining their power. "You need me to keep you safe from the belligerent Zionists... look what they're doing to your Arab 'brothers' in the West Bank." Nvermind of course that none of these countries have any interest in actually helping the Palestinians beyond encouraging them to continue blowing themselves up along with more Israeli civilians.

With a reformed Iraq or Saudi Arabia would come normalization and formal peace with Israel, and followed by more demanding cries for the same thing across the middle east. And if staying in Afghanistan for 5-10 years is one of the things that could encourage this process to begin, I'm all for it.

2002-08-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

So lazy and surly...

Yeah, I've been gone. Vacations, and work preparing for the semester, LSAT prep, all that good stuff.

2002-07-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

And now some financial commentary

An email from a friend, an economics grad student at UCLA...

So MSNBC does a segment on whether mutual funds should be allowed to short. This is just another pop-cultish-fad that some enterprising journalist decided to look at because it's the cool thing to do in a bear market, but lets ignore that and examine the philosophy behind mutual funds and exactly why MSNBC annoys me.

Definition: shorting is like borrowing cars from your car salesman and selling them at a higher price, and buying them back later at a lower price to repay him. Now substitute stock for cars, car salesman for brokerage, and assume no physical depreciation.

MSNBC attempts to "objectively" examine both sides of the coin by bringing in two "experts" to discuss the topic. EXPERT ONE says he's here to make money in this bear market, and so shorting makes sense. EXPERT TWO says shorting destroys small american companies, leading to a loss of jobs. Nowhere have I heard such gibberish, except in English 90, otherwise known as the sexual predilictions of shakespeare.
Mutual funds were created during the 80's during the random market phase, when the BIG IDEA AT THAT TIME was that no one could beat the market, mainly through timing, or stock selection. Because of this, one would be better off just buying an index, or basket of stocks and holding them for 10 years, trusting in a statistical 8% average a year. The holding period would be about the length of one's life. Under these assumptions, it would be insane to short, because the odds of an index going to infinity are much greater than an index going to zero within 50 years or so. And these assumptions are very very realistic over the long run. The average investor doesn't have enough money to place in a basket of stocks and so mutual funds took their money and consolidated with the money of other's into a "fund."
When people talk about mutual funds being allowed to short, they're talking about ripping out the fundamental concept behind mutual funds -- destroying their very reason for exising. AND mutual funds are safer, because most active money managers DO underperform the market. It just puts me into conniptions when people see this bear market and rush into the "newest" fangled idea of "shorting." What I would like to do, is remind them (in a violent manner) that bull/bear markets, buying/shorting, bubbles/crashes have been around since market inception, and these current conditions are just a drop in the bucket of time. The danger that people face whenever they think they have a new idea, is that the experts have already taken the idea, ruminated on it, and passed it out to the journalists. Case in point: if you want to short, you should've started shorting two years ago.