Friday, December 29, 2006

On Federalism

I occasionally stop by Ann Althouse's blog. She claims to be a liberal but clearly she means it in the Mickey Kaus tradition of a self-hating, liberal-bashing liberal, and her link affair with Instapundit annoys me greatly for some reason that I can't name (I actually thought she was conservative by her writing until she declared herself a liberal - go figure). But, even though I find her writing to be generally insipid, she is a fellow Midwesterner (Madison, not Chicago!) and I am therefore compelled to read her.

Apparently -- I don't know how I missed this -- there was some kind of brouhaha at the libertarian Liberty Fund Conference she was invited to attend earlier this month. Fellow attendee (and true believer) Ronald Bailey of Reason documents the atrocity here. The whole thing seems to stem from a structured discussion of the defense of Federalism, the gist being that Federalism lost credibility with its support of segregation. Althouse was apparently fixated on the pragmatic consequences of Federalism while the rest of the conference wanted to engage in a more lofty, scholarly approach.

In my lesser educated, more pedestrian mind they should have include women's suffrage in the discussion since that seems another blemish on the face Federalism, but I digress.

I can't say I blame Althouse's preoccupation with pragmatism. Many concepts are more attractive in the abstract than they are in reality. For example, communism is good in theory; if we left the discussion of communism in the abstract it would seem a moral thing. In practice, however, communism creates many evils. Like it or not, Federalism has allowed certain evils. To allow them as exceptions only reserves the likelihood that there will be more exceptions to follow. I'm not saying Federalism isn't worthy but let's understand its failings.

I am not passionate about states rights, probably due to my observation of the failings of Federalism and the way religious conservatives want to manipulate Federalism to achieve their vision of national morality. This is not to say I don't support individual freedoms under certain state initiatives: medical marijuana, assisted suicide, gay marriage. But to allow that the state guarantees those privileges is to allow that the state can also take them away.

I guess my belief regarding the purpose of the constitution is that it guarantees a broad spectrum of individual rights (and not just the laundry list of rights named). The states can't 'give' you what you already have and they can't take from you what is already yours under the constitution. Under the constitution, the government is allocated just enough power to function, to protect its people, and to protect the rights of its people. The government does not have the power to grant rights you were already born with, nor does it have the power to take them away. People screaming about activist judges have been hoodwinked into believing liberty is only to be dished out by the state. Or by the majority. And to that I say... WTF?

Our Federal government has a duty to see that personal liberty is not restricted, even when it's the will of the majority. It was the duty of the Federal government to step on the states for women's suffrage, women's reproductive rights, segregation, and civil rights. It is also the duty of the Federal government to defend legally recognized civil unions (or marriage, without the religious support) between gays. You don't have to like sharing lawful rights with someone to concede that they're entitled to them.

But all of this is not to say that the Federal government is without its own failings, prohibition being one that comes to mind. Constitutionally, prohibition was an aberration -- a limit of rights instead of a clarificaton. It should have raised all kind of red flags at the time, and it's one of the problems I have with the ridiculous knee-jerk proposal to create a constitutional ban against gay marriage.

Ultimately, I would have no problem with Federalism if we could reach some kind of consensus that individual liberty, already provided for by the constitution, is not open for reinterpretation by the states.

Old President vs New President: Smackdown

No, I'm not talking about Clinton Vs Bush, or Carter Vs Bush, or even Ford Vs Bush. This pretty kitty goes time traveling all the way back to 1992 to explode the "Presidents Don't Bash Other Presidents!" outrage myth. One month into Clinton's first term, Ronald Reagan wrote a 1009 word criticism and placed it in that most liberal rag, The New York Times:
I had every intention of holding back any comments on the new Administration until it was well in place and its policies became clear. Unfortunately, the policies are already becoming alarmingly clear. With campaign promises dropping like autumn leaves, I can't refrain any longer.
Shocking! Does Fox News know about this?

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Woodward Interview With Gerald Ford

Ford speaks candidly to Woodward.

I don't remember much about Ford's presidency (I was about 7 years old at the time) but it's interesting to hear another President's perspective on the Iraq war, especially the one who gave Cheney his start. I'm sure there are those who will say Ford was senile, or that his critique was inappropriate. By right wing news standards, Ford's comments could be considered downright treasonous. But the truth is there aren't many men alive who've been Leaders of the Free World (less by one now) and I think that carries some weight.

Happy New Year!

Saddam reported to be dead by Sunday... couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

icasualties

Michael White has a website. From Reuters:

Nothing in his background suggested White had anything to contribute to an understanding of the Iraq war.

The 50-year-old joins the traffic every morning to get to work as a software engineer at a firm outside Atlanta. He's never been to the Middle East, has no military training and speaks no Arabic.

But his "Iraq Coalition Casualty" site, which keeps a log of the dead and wounded among the military and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, gets a million hits a day on peak days and at least four million hits a month, White said.

It attracts analysts, journalists and defense departments as well as ordinary readers with its near real-time updates, statistics, and the names of casualties. Web audience measurement firm Hitwise calls it "one of the most visited non-partisan sites aimed at U.S. politics junkies."

Myths and Truths

Juan Cole posts the 10 top myths about Iraq. He had me at #1.

Meanwhile, General William Odom gives us his 6 truths.

5 More Minutes

The Corner gets busted for fraudulent email posting.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if our troops did still think they were winning -- and that's not really a bad thing. It reminds me of my former life as a manager of computer technicians. What's interesting about computer technicians is that they always think they can solve a problem in 5 more minutes. No matter how long they've been working the issue, if you ask them what the status is they will say, "Give me 5 more minutes." I always liked that about my techno geeks, the absolute confidence and optimism that they could fix whatever they were up against if they just had 5 more minutes. Of course, my job in these situations was to make sure that their 5 more minutes didn't become an endless chain of minutes leading to a business damaging outage.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

It's Armageddon Week!

This week the History Channel is featuring the end of the world. Tonight we're watching "Last days on Earth," which looks at the world's greatest threats. It says the top 4 threats (starting with greatest) are global warming, biological war/pandemic, nuclear war, and an astro event. Interesting that 2 and maybe 3 out of the 4 extinction threats are of our own creation.

Googling a quote from Stephen Hawking led me to find a transcript of this interesting interview. This is the quote I was looking for:
Hawking: Up to now, aggression has been an attribute with definite survival advantages. So it has been hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, it may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war, if we cannot control our instinct by our reason.
Fascinating comment. Our natural state of (male) aggression, when paired with the absolute destructive power of our new weaponry, will likely kill us all. Ponder that one for a few moments in the context of our most recent evolutary turn, sexual androgyny. I intend this term in the cultural sense, in the way that some might refer to as the 'sissification' of men ("not enough guns and football and too much talk about feeeeeeeeelings"). If the male is aggression and the female is reason, then perhaps it is natural that our evolutionary journey would, at this juncture, begin to shift value from one to the other. Maybe instead of fighting the trend as unnatural we should be embracing it as an entirely natural progression. Interesting theory, whether it's true or not.

Regarding the threat of global warming, I have been slow to recognize it -- not because I don't believe it's happening but because I haven't been sure we're the cause of it (weather patterns being cyclical over the millennia, and all). I've been starting to come around lately, however. In the same interview I referenced above, Stephen Hawking had this to say on the topic of GW:
Hawking: The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere.

The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.
Scary stuff. It makes me sad for Al Gore, who has been one of the most prescient thinkers of our time regarding the potential of the Internet, saving social security, and now global warming, and yet has such a difficult time being heard above the Republican smear and jeer machine. I think I'm going to make a point of seeing his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Here's another quote I'll juxtapose with the others, just for fun. This one is from Fox's Sean Hannity:
Is global warming real or is it just a liberal scare tactic?
They report. We decide.

23 Months and Counting

I remember when I was a kid and the day after Thanksgiving marked the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Quaint idea, that. Then, for a while, seasonal Christmas decor was unveiled immediately after Halloween. Now Christmas commercialism seems to start the day after the "Back to School" sale signs come down.

The American political cycle is experiencing the same trend. Primary season used to be March - June but it's now compressing to a January-February time frame as states compete for early primary influence (and therefore candidate attention and promises).

The latest buzz is that Hillary and Obama are currently in a NH primary poll dead heat, with Obama taking the general election poll over McCain or Giuliani. I'm surprised that people seem surprised but there's a lot of distance to travel between now and NH and anything could happen. You can bet your ass that the pundit class, failing to find anything legitimate with which to nail Obama, will go into smear and ridicule overdrive. Expect to see more insinuation about his name and family history, some nonsense about his ears, some bullshit about his religion, and, of course, a dash of misleading crap about how he's the most liberal senator ever in the history of the whole wide world including Ted Kennedy (a talking point people will mindlessly repeat without understanding the context of his voting record while Republicans have controlled the House and all of the legislation that's gone to the floor since 1994).

I'm curious to see how far Obama will take it. Will he try to go the whole distance or will he step aside for the current DLC fav, Hillary, like McCain did with Bush, for a pledge of support from the DLC in 2016? I just hope he doesn't get sucked into a Clinton-Obama ticket.

To Draft or Not to Draft

There are currently 140,000 US troops in Iraq and 100,000 private contractors. This mix is due, I think, to the "gutting" of the military under Clinton which was actually part the the 'greater efficiency' vision long shared by Cheney and Rumsfeld. You know... building a new kind of military. It all reminds me of our hero, Steve Austin, from the old TV show The Six Million Dollar Man:
Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.
Except it only ever worked on TV.

A smaller, highly specialized military supported by privatized services is a beautiful concept. In theory it eliminates the need for a draft -- We gut the military of bureaucrats and menial labor and leave nothing but an elite fighting machine, allowing the invisible hand of capitalism to fluidly provide the other types of support according to demand. The war machine is no longer flirting with capitalism... they're doing it on the kitchen table.

Hyper-capitalists tend to forget that while efficiency is inspired by profit, so is corner cutting -- and thus I would not entrust, let's say... a little thing like national security... to private contractors. And it's not just about profiteering, it's also about allegiance and competing resources, direction, accountability, and the same old issue of how to ensure you've got enough supply to meet demand when its needed (repeat after me: JIT is not a military term).

The point is that the grand theory has been proven wrong at our first run out of the gate. The means to fight war may have evolved over time but the concepts of war itself are timeless. And so, it seems, is the ages old question of what to do with the conquered. While killing the men and impregnating the women is a quick and highly effective method of subjugation and eventual integration, it's not a technique we employ in this civilized day of nation building. What's still required post-conquer is to occupy; to move in and set up shop. To secure. To fill the power vacuum until it can be allocated. To quell the urge to rebel until it can be replaced by the urge to prosper. All of this takes four things: a clear objective, a clear victory, a great deal of time, and a great big, accountable army. There are no shortcuts.

So all of this in the context of Bush's contrived 'troop surge' has got me to thinking. If he really means to win this, why has the size of the military not been increased to ensure it? If this is truly WW III (as certain folks are fond of saying), and if Iraq is truly the Central Front in the War on Terra, why not run a WW II-era "Uncle Sam Wants YOU!" campaign? If defeat is unthinkable, why not reinstate the draft? And since it takes time to get new recruits up to speed, why wasn't it started at least a year ago when we knew the situation was going downhill?

The cynic in me believes it's politics and anyone who says Bush is above polls is either a fool or a liar. Clearly we've been in need of additional troops for a long, long time but the November Congressional elections were paramount. And now, with support for this FUBAR'd war at about 30% (probably the same unshakable 30% who still think Bush is doing an OK job) it would be political suicide to ask for the people of this country to start offering up their children and grandchildren in the name of Iraq. Not that I agree with Bush (on almost anything) but I might have some respect for him if he actually did that since it would show an actual iota of real, honest to God leadership. So far he's only asked us to shop. Not to fight and die for this legacy war of his, or even to starve the beast by conserving energy. We've only been asked to mindlessly run around spending money.

I really don't think a recycling/rearranging of the troops (um, I mean "surge") is going to make much of a difference in Iraq. It would be nice if it did but I don't think it will. The time to have affected the outcome of the war was in the planning, before the invasion. Perhaps even a few years into the "peace". But now I think the course is set. Even if they enacted a draft and took my daughter (or quite possibly, in a few years, daughters) and fully and officially occupied that country, it would take a decade or more to weed out the sectarian seeds that have begun to germinate. And make no mistake -- while we babysit Iraq for a decade, al Qaeda will be establishing roots and growing strong and hearty elsewhere.

Surging the Troops

I sort of agree with Kevin Drum. It's an obvious, crazy-ass Hail Mary scheme if ever there was one but apparently we're determined not to walk away in quasi-defeat... it must be a totally embarrassing defeat that will yield even more unpredictable results. And yet, if we don't give it this last effort, it will be Vietnam all over again where the establishment casts itself as Monday morning quarterback to blame everything from the media to the American people for its own blundering strategy and failed execution.

Personally, what bothers me most is that we're backing into the plan solution first, i.e. we know what we're asking the military to do (surge the troops) but we still haven't defined the objective. This should scare anyone who has even the vaguest idea of the complexity of the situation we face in Iraq beyond "defeating the insurgents."

I can't imagine that 20,000-30,000 recycled troops are going to make that big of a difference in the scheme of things but I guess we're about to find out.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

RIP

The arrogance of the religious, to impose their faith onto our living and dying, is unforgivable.

RIP, Piergiorgio Welby.

November 14, 1970

Found this 1999 Chicago Trib story when reading up on the details behind the new movie, "We are Marshall."

So very tragic...

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

What Would You Do?

You have been named Benevolent Dictator of America... what would you do in Iraq?

Would you draw back over the course of 2007?
Would you stay the current course?
Would you provide a temporary "surge" in troops in order to attempt a few targeted strikes?
Would you ask for an increase in volunteers to permanently grow the military large enough to lock down Iraq?

Do you think Iraq will be won with US military power in combination with trained Iraqi troops?
Do you think Iraq will only be won by the will of the Iraqi people (with a political solution)?
Do you think Iraq will be won with a combination of US military and Iraqi political solutions?
Do you think Iraq will require a regional solution to resolve its current issues?
Do you think Iraq will be unstable as long as US troops remain in the country?

What does it mean to "win" in Iraq?

Is Iraq in a "civil war" or is it just suffering from "sectarian tensions"?

Friday, December 15, 2006

Guns in Schools

I read stuff like this from Insty and I can't help but roll my eyes, cringe, and sigh -- in that order.

I don't have a problem with gun ownership in general (although I do dislike the idea of concealed weapons -- somehow I just know I'd be one of those unfortunate souls who'd accidentally spill a beer on an angry, gun-toten' drunk guy in a bar).

But I really have a problem with the twisted and disingenuous logic that guns in the home (or school) are great deterrents to crime. Sure, every once in a while you hear about some intruder getting shot by a gun owning homeowner and a great cry rings out through the universe, "See! Guns are necessary to protect your home and family!" But statistically that doesn't wash. Many more people are killed every year by guns in the home as the result of an accident or a hot-headed argument than are killed as an act of self-defense.

Think of it this way: I have lived in my own home for 20 years. Number of days my home has been broken into: 0. Number of days that I've had my kids and/or their friends in my home: 6,570. Go ahead and calculate the odds and tell me if my family is safer with a gun or without one.

Not that I have a problem with other people owning guns -- just don't use bullshit logic to try to sell me on how they're going to make my world safer.

On Parents

Mary Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, are going to be parents. Pass the popcorn while we watch the right's collective head explode.

I really don't understand the fuss. Cheney and Poe will probably do just fine as parents. Sex and sexual identity have so little to do with good parenting that if I had to name the top 100 traits that good parents exhibit, they wouldn't even make the list.

I do think a two-parent family is crucial but that's more a statement of practicality than ideology. It is damn hard work to raise kids and no matter what anyone says, it's just way easier for everyone involved if you've got more than one person doing it. Bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan, and feeding it to a screaming toddler with a dirty diaper borders on humanly impossible. And no matter how well you do it, you can definitely do it better with a partner.

This is not to say that a male-female unit isn't desirable, especially when raising a child of the opposite sex. For example, I love my son but he's a bit mysterious to me, and me to him. I don't think he'd be damaged goods for not having had a father but I'm glad he gets the experience of having a good one. And that's really the key, right? A good one. We hold the male-female pairing up as the ideal but really there are very few ideal parents. It's almost a moot point from the start.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Joke's On Me

Oh. My. Gawd.

I was so, so wrong when I wrote this:
Which explains, I think, the broad, rockstar appeal of the article's subject, Barack Obama. People gravitate toward him like moths to a candle (myself included). He is a phenomenon everywhere he goes. I cannot argue against his relative inexperience but he has a lightness that is rare and desirable... there appears to be no animus in him whatsoever. And I find it highly -- highly -- unlikely that the right will find much in him to make fun of.
Naturally it took the right only 3 days to come up with this crap, proudly displayed by Drudge and other righty sites. Hey morons -- it's a humor technique called self-deprecation. Try it sometime.

It's going to be a long 23 months.

Obamaphiles

This little segment by Samantha Bee made me laugh since I am one of the legions of Obamaphiles she's poking fun at.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Wild in the Country

Another bout of insomnia enabled me to watch Wild in the Country last night/this morning. I was surprised to see what a talented actor Elvis was (my memories are mostly of sweaty, jumpsuited Elvis).

A commenter on the IMDB site noted how often Elvis was paired with older women on film. Watching him in a drama last night it wasn't hard to see why... his sultry, sexually charged presence was probably too much for the asexual nature of the era's movies. To pair Elvis with a virginal ingenue would have made people uncomfortable. Pairing him instead with a (fictional) experienced widow like Irene Sperry allowed people to enjoy his sexuality without feeling threatened by it.

The Art of Ridicule

A provocative article in the Huffington Post today -- not that it provoked me to agree. Yes, I know... in the last post I was agreeing with Michael Medved and now I'm calling out the Huff Po. Black is white. Up is down.

If the right has mastered the smear, what they've really excelled at is ridicule. Gore, Kerry, Hillary, Murtha, Pelsoi, Carter, et al... it's a non-stop festival of sneers and jeers for the Republican media machine. Pushing ridicule through their finely tuned echo chamber has become an insidiously effective technique for spinning ordinary smears into conventional wisdom. They say things like "Gore said he invented the internet!" and suddenly everyone is creeped out to think Gore actually said that. They say things like, "Kerry said 'Who among us does not love Nascar!'" and people believe it as if it were actually true. I don't know which angers me more, the liars or the rubes, but surely we've got plenty of both.

The Republicans have not cornered the market on ridicule, though. They may execute with deadly precision but they don't own the field. The left is growing more proficient in the art, although in an awkward and uncoordinated way. Bush has made the learning easy... it's like he put training wheels on ridicule and encouraged the Democrats to take it out for a ride. The secret, you see, is that the act of ridicule is reserved for those on top.

Part of me enjoys the burgeoning trend since I find few so deserving of ridicule as Bush, Cheney, Santorum, Delay, et al. Occasionally I engage in it myself. But part of me is exhausted by 14 years of see-saw animosity. Political retribution has become less interesting than political virtue.

Which explains, I think, the broad, rockstar appeal of the article's subject, Barack Obama. People gravitate toward him like moths to a candle (myself included). He is a phenomenon everywhere he goes. I cannot argue against his relative inexperience but he has a lightness that is rare and desirable... there appears to be no animus in him whatsoever. And I find it highly -- highly -- unlikely that the right will find much in him to make fun of.

The Christmas Spirit

Although I'm someone who openly mocks O'Reilly's much heralded "War on Christmas" sensationalism every year, I thought Michael Medved had a uniquely sensible take on the Seattle-Tacoma Airport situation. I may never again utter the words "Medved" and "sensible" in the same sentence but since I, too, was saddened by the recent Christmas tree removal, I thought I'd 'fess up.

It is Christmas, after all.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Improvising in the Military

This is so cool... a woman is collecting silly string for soldiers in Iraq who use it to detect trip wires on bombs. And the ingenuity of the troops doesn't stop there:
In other cases of battlefield improvisation in Iraq, U.S. soldiers have bolted scrap metal to Humvees in what has come to be known as "Hillybilly Armor." Medics use tampons to plug bullet holes in the wounded until they can be patched up.

Also, soldiers put condoms and rubber bands around their rifle muzzles to keep out sand. And troops have welded old bulletproof windshields to the tops of Humvees to give gunners extra protection. They have dubbed it "Pope's glass" — a reference to the barriers that protect the pontiff.

Our Tangled Web

I have been reading over ISG excerpts and various related news clips, pundit analysis, and bloggerisms. As Abraham Lincoln might have appreciated, for a report that is so proud of its bi-partisanship it has succeeded in satisfying exactly no one.

Over at Redstate, etc, we have the "Kill them all and let God sort 'em out" contingent predictably lamenting that the ISG doesn't have the guts to recommend accepting a few more civilian casualties to quell the insurgency. The lefties are unhappy with the ISG report since it doesn't specifically state "GET THE HELL OUT NOW" with a gratuitous "Bush is an idiot." The neocons (Krauthammer, Kristol, etc) are openly mocking the report for stating the obvious and recommending the unthinkable: a working relationship with Syria and Iran.

The popular Redstate position that we need to use overwhelming force and show Iraq a little tough love is an interesting one. It's kind of a romantic notion, really: If we'd nuke Fallujah and/or Anbar province it would resolve the problems with the insurgents and that nasty arab-on-arab violence so we can get on with the business of spreading democracy. Sure, the Iraqi people would be a little pissed off at first but they'd learn to love us just like the Japanese did. Right? Right??? (One dissenter brings up a few inconvenient facts about the Japan-Iraq comparison but the commenters conveniently choose to ignore him.)

The bottom line is that we haven't positioned ourselves as conquerors of the sovereign state of Iraq. We deposed Saddam and in that regard we've met our objective. The wisdom of having done so (relative to our national interests) is now the subject of much debate, but destroying Iraq in order to 'save it' was never part of our mission. In fact, the fallout of such a pursuit (if one thinks about it in terms of cause and effect) would likely run counter to everything we hoped to gain by installing Iraq as a model of democracy in the Middle East. That's the reason the Bush administration (and I'll give them credit for it here) has not pursued it. Contrary to pundit opinion, the Bush administration has not held back because their hands are tied politically... they're holding back because it would be a stupid move with very bad long term consequences. Lebanon is a fascinating study in this regard -- Hezbollah was only marginally popular outside of the southern region until Israel attacked. Suddenly Hezbollah support skyrocketed and the party's opportunistic response was to leverage the support for an attempted government coup. I'm sure there's a lesson for us in there somewhere.

The lefties don't quite have it right either. There are going to be ugly consequences for immediate troop withdrawal, not the least of which is the potential for genocide while the sectarian factions fight for power and control of Iraq's future. Add Iran to the mix, whose influence in the region has already grown dramatically and emboldened them to give us the one finger salute over objections to their announced nuclear intentions. Troop withdrawal may turn out to be the best option going forward but the consequences must be acknowledged, planned for, and mitigated... not wishfully ignored.

Stay-the-coursers are off track, too. Often complaining about American impatience toward the war, these folks believe that if we just stay there long enough the Iraqis will get the hang of nationalism and democracy and put aside their petty differences for the greater Iraqi good. These are the same people who believe the "We'll stand down as the Iraqis stand up" line of bs without bothering themselves to understand why that plan has made so little progress over the years.

As for the neocons, their preferance for unilateralism and their distaste for political diplomacy has blinded them to reality. I think one of Andrew Sullivan's readers summarized it best:

You missed the biggest flaw in Victor Davis Hanson's statement, which is its historical inaccuracy. This country did not fight and defeat Germany, Italy and Japan all at once. We defeated Japan with some help from the British Empire and Commonwealth, and China; we defeated Italy with substantial help from the British Empire and Commonwealth, as well as Free French, Polish, Czech and other forces; the Soviet Union defeated Germany, with major help from us as well as the British Empire and Commonwealth, as well as Free French, Polish, Czech and other forces.

Had the Soviet Union not broken the back of the German Wehrmacht and its allies before Moscow, at Stalingrad and at Kursk, and thereafter, there is serious doubt whether even the combined forces of the U.S., the British Empire and Commonwealth, and their allies, could have defeated Germany in northwest Europe. Read Max Hastings.

This is an example of the pride and hubris in an all-powerful U.S. that does not have to resort to mere diplomacy and alliance building as it goes boldly forth to impose its military will abroad - pride and hubris that directly led us to the dire circumstances in which we now find ourselves in Iraq.

The Iraq situation is a very complex one and I'm wary of anyone who thinks the answer is going to be found in any one action. The most dreadful solution I've heard proposed to date is to undo the results of the last election and replace the current Iraqi government with one of our choosing (think for a minute about the ME fallout from that mind f*ck).

The most intriguing idea I've heard uses a strange combination of Keynsesian economics and socialism to flood Iraq with prosperity in hopes of easing tensions. The idea seems to be to parcel out 30% of oil profits directly to the Iraqi people. I read this over at Iraq the Model but his sources are in Arabic so I have no way of knowing if it's truly on the table. If so, I think it's the first winning idea I've heard in a long, long time.

Terror At Home

Back in September I wrote this:
"And, proving once again that you never know how bad it can get, the latest foiled UK terrorist airplane plot revealed a new threat from disaffected local psychos now converting to Islam in order to participate in terrorist activities. That's a business with frightening growth potential, one that the evil Al Qaeda has spotted and is suddenly keen to exploit."
I never guessed that it would hit so close to home! It seems Mr. Derrick Shareef of Rockford, a local converted muslim, was interested in committing acts of violent jihad at our local shopping mall. It sounds like the guy was unaffiliated with any actual terrorist organization -- merely a lunatic in search of a cause. Fortunately he didn't get very far with his plot (thanks to a co-conspirator turned informant) but it did earn us a spot on Drudge with the sensational headline, "Christmas Mall Terror Attack Thwarted."

I'll say one thing... even this idiot was able to zero in on one of our two softest underbelly sites: malls and schools. I shudder to think what would have happened if someone with a few more IQ points than Mr Shareef had heard the call to jihad.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Hit 'em Where it Hurts

Defeating terrorism doesn't require a slickly packaged war or decades of nation building (with unpredictable results), and we don't need puppet regimes or evil bed fellows to secure our national interests in the Middle East. What these things require is for us to get off the oil.

Ah, my cynical friend... yes, it is that simple.

And here, just in time, is the Tesla Roadster -- which makes my heart go from 0 to 60 in four seconds, even at it's wildly unaffordable price. The point is that the technology is available and the product is good. With some of that famous American ingenuity and rolled-out mass production, this type of alternative car could be available to the majority of us within a few years.

Why in the name of all that's holy would Ford, our oldest and sickliest American car company, not rebuild itself on new technology and become a profitable force for national good? As opposed to the omnipotent billion dollar oil companies that propagate our national problems year after year while bleeding us all dry for only their benefit.



Sunday, December 03, 2006

Iraq Predictions

1. With reality setting in and the ISG results pending, I predict Bushco is backed into a corner on Iraq (both politically and strategically) and will have to find a way to change course without looking like it's a course change. Furthermore, it must be spun in a way to look like it's Bush's idea, proactively, rather than as a reaction to reality or the IGS results.

2. I predict we'll hear a lot more about the U.S. standing down as the dysfunctional Iraqi-militia/army stands up, which is to say we'll start seeing the seeds being sown for a dump and run strategy ("dump and run" being preferable to the Democratic position of "cut and run" since "cut and run" implies US failure whereas "dump and run" implies Iraqi failure).

3. I predict that the next talking point to emerge from the Republican water carriers will be that the failure to "win" in Iraq is due to the lack of will among the American people (and I also predict that it will piss me off greatly every time I hear it).

4. I predict that the current defenders of "Stay the Course," those who make up the 40% of the population that still doesn't think Bush and his Iraq folly were a bad idea, are going to be a bit uneasy when they realize that everything they've been led to believe about Iraq, daily, by the spinmeisters, is just not true.

Friday, December 01, 2006

What Do The Iraqis Say?

As we in the U.S. continue to tussle, more or less comfortably, over just how bad (or good) things are in Iraq, perhaps we should look to the Iraqis for their perspective.

I have blogged before about Iraq the Model, one of several active Iraqi blogs and one of the most pro-American. I also provide a permanent link to their site from this blog.

I have read Riverbend over at Bagdad Burning with some degree of regularity as well as Bagdad Treasure and the truly inspired Healing Iraq (his most recent posts are staggering... and apparently there's some concern over what has become of the Iraq the Model bloggers).

It is somewhat eerie to check back and see once popular Iraqi blogs abandoned, their news and opinions frozen in time. I have no idea why they stop writing but it's a reminder of the courage it takes to speak openly in a society that does not value the individual and, in fact, seeks to suppress individual voices.