Sunday, December 12, 2004
[posted by jaed at 6:09 PM]A modest proposal
Noting speculation that Kerik actually had more damaging problems, and used the "illegal immigrant nanny" story to get out of the nomination without overmuch scrutiny, Kaus suggests: "Every public figure should keep at least one illegal housekeeper around, just in case! [...] No need to look any further! Just another nanny problem!" I have nothing really to say about this, except that "Nanny Problem" would make a superb blog name...
Saturday, November 20, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:40 PM]Darfur
Occasionally, I hear remarks to the effect that America doesn't care about democracy or human rights in Iraq - that all that is a sham - because if we did, we'd immediately invade the Sudan to put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.
I'm trying to imagine what the reaction would be if Bush emerged from the White House and announced that (after consulting with Britain, Poland, Tanzania and other willing partners) the US along with its allies was sending troops to Darfur to protect the Fur and evict or destroy the janjawid.
I don't have a hard time imagining it, actually.
- The cries of "No blood for oil!" would be deafening.
- NGO workers would be found who would claim that Darfur wasn't so bad off, and immediate attention would be paid to other disasters elsewhere. The question would arise "What is America's *real* motive in Darfur?"
- News anchors' brows would be furrowed.
- "The Arab street will explode."
- A "body count" site would be set up.
- Someone would discover a photograph of an American official shaking hands with a Sudanese minister twenty years ago; within five minutes, this would be used as "proof" that America "created" the janjawid.
I suspect eventually we'll do it. It won't be with the support of the UN, since France is a UNSC veto power, has strong oil interests in Sudan, and has already said it will oppose any such action. So the action will be "unilateral", that is, without the approval of France, and "illegal", that is, without permission from the UNSC. And all of the above and more will happen, and the post-humanitarian left will again be found in the forefront of protest. It is as inevitable as the tide.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:41 AM]Alternate history
The Diplomad speculates on what might have become of America had it experienced certain crises just a little later in history:
It’s quite possible that the USA would never have come into existence, its independence movement suppressed by “international peacekeepers.” A UN at the time of our Civil War almost certainly would have ensured the emergence of a Confederate States of America. On or about 1863 or 64, as the war seemed headed for a stalemate, we would have seen calls for a negotiated end to the conflict, and, perhaps, the intervention of “peacekeepers” to secure a shaky ceasefire.
Friday, November 12, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:30 PM]Quote du jour
"Why does France get a pass in its postcolonial interventions? Simply because there are no French to criticize them."
-- Victor Davis Hanson, "The Ironies Ahead"
Sunday, November 07, 2004
[posted by jaed at 5:55 PM]Silliest quote of the day
(And considering that we just had an election that the Democratic candidate lost, with the attendant obligatory wailing and gnashing of teeth, that's saying something.) This does not appear to be parody:
Perhaps the happiest people are those who do not have much choice: Sisyphus may have got used to his rock-rolling lot, rock-bound Prometheus might well have become philosophical about having his liver eaten by a bird for all eternity. They all got off the hedonic treadmill and, as a result, none of them was confronted by the misery of endless choice.Ah, to be chained to a rock having your liver gnawed on. In some superficial ways, this might seem like a bad thing, but at least you're spared having to choose a brand of ketchup.
It occurs to me that it's no wonder people like this did not have any pity for the Iraqis. Self-involvement of this level and degree just doesn't leave room for it, does it?
Saturday, November 06, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:46 PM]Worth reading
Remarkably thoughtful discussion at Democratic Underground on how the Democratic Party can attract a wider diversity of voter. (Yes, I'm serious. Democratic Underground and "thoughtful" don't often belong in the same sentence, but this one is worth a look.) There is some paranoid crap, of course, but much of the conversation demonstrates people genuinely struggling with the issue.
Most insightful post, by the DU admin who started the thread, concerning socially-conservative Democrats:
107. I think we first need to start respecting them.
And stop treating them like they are morally-repugnant cultural freaks.
Which makes me a hypocrite. One of the core values of DU is bashing socially conservative people. And it has made us very popular.
Friday, November 05, 2004
[posted by jaed at 3:44 PM]The last line of defense
For the last couple of days I've been cruising Democratic blogs, as I did after the 2002 midterm election. Reading the comments, trying to gauge the mood among the party stalwarts. What I'm finding is causing me to think that the party really may be on the verge of becoming irrelevant.
I wondered about this after the spanking the electorate administered in 2002. In that year, for the first time, I voted for all Republicans on the national level. Ordinarily, I think divided government is healthier and vote accordingly, but the Democratic Party's national leadership had managed to convince me that it can't be trusted with governance in wartime. I wasn't alone in thinking that, and the Democrats lost seats when ordinarily they'd have expected the usual midterm gain.
I expected a reappraisal of policy and leadership due to that election. I expected that Terry McAuliffe would be booted out as head of the DNC, for example. I expected the leadership would reconsider their policy of obstructionism. But I didn't see that happen, and the first harbinger of that was blog comments and editorials: we can't let any judges get through. We need to prevent anything supported by Bush from passing.
When your party loses an election, you can respond in any of several ways:
- You can say "We really did win, but the other side cheated (or the rules are wrong, or their application was capricious." This was the majority sentiment in 2000. Jeb Bush somehow changed the results in Florida. Our candidate won the popular vote, so the electoral college should be abolished. The Supreme Court decision was bad and indefensible. We wuz robbed.
In this case, you'll go for more accountability, or changes in the process, or for a larger margin so that it can't happen again. You'll demand changes in voting law, such as provisional ballots and retiring of punchcard voting machines. GOTV activities will be a prominent part of your strategy, to increase your margin of victory. Politically, you will be obstructionist, blocking appointments and policy changes. - You can say "We would have won, if only we'd gotten our message out. The electorate simply didn't hear it, or didn't understand it." This was a very prominent sentiment in 2002. Fox News isn't spouting our line, and a lot of people watch Fox. Americans don't know anything about foreign countries and need to be educated. Our message isn't boiled down enough for the public to resonate with it.
The tendency if you believe this is to repeat what you've been saying, only louder and slower. You'll fund organizations to get the message out with ads, posters, and web sites. You'll hire spinners. You'll concentrate on the media. Obstruction will again be a part of your approach in the legislature. - You can decide, "We lost because the voters are evil or stupid." Southerners are all racists, and we're the party of justice, so no wonder we can't win the South. We lost because homophobes turned out for gay-marriage initiatives. They're all Jesus freaks anyway. Can we secede from the rest of the US?
This attitude is the last line of defense against taking a good, hard look at your policies. It's the last line because there really is no strategy to take if this is the situation: if your candidates lose because the electorate is irredeemably bad, there's no point in changing the message or the policies to appeal to it. By definition, policies that appeal to a bad electorate are bad themselves. (The only cure is to remove the electorate and substitute a new one.)
A political movement that finds itself in this position has three choices: move to a more enlightened country in order to be with fellow good people, mount a coup of the good people so that they may rule while ignoring the bad majority, or huddle with one's fellow good people and try to ignore the rest of the country.
The Democratic Party will become what a few people already call it, the party that hates America, and its national politics will be characterized by spitting at most of the country, alternating with invitations to become more like the blue states.
Needless to say, if this happens, the Democratic party will not be a national party any more.
More later....
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:17 AM]If Kerry is elected to the presidency of the United States today...
(This is related to something I wrote in comments at Allah is in the House a while back:)
I will not cheerlead American diplomatic defeats, express hope for American setbacks, or look on anti-American protests with creamy satisfaction. I also will not exaggerate American losses or use them to attack the president for the sake of attacking. I will not take the position that as long as Kerry is the American president, I'm anti-America.(Criticism is not insult, however, and I won't pledge not to say things like "Such-and-such a policy is a serious mistake and I believe it will get people killed." But I hope I'm above idiotic insults. Or any insults, come to think of it.)
This may be easier for me than for some, because I'm not anti-Kerry per se. I think the election of Kerry would be a disaster for this country. I think it will result eventually in many thousands, possibly millions of deaths. I think that this is true even if Kerry follows Bush's policies or even improves on them, because a Bush defeat will be seen by the world as a renunciation of the policy of fighting back, as an apology for dissenting from Chirac's foreign-policy dictats, and as a general loss of will. It will give new heart to our enemies, dismay our friends, and cause our allies to feel the sensation of a limb being sawed off behind them.
But I don't hate the man. I'm bothered by some aspects of his background - his post-Vietnam conduct in particular - but I don't dislike him. Under other circumstances he might make a perfectly decent president. It's not nearly as hard for me to forswear this sort of thing as for someone who has a visceral dislike of him. And I know that tit-for-tat is a powerful human motivation and that the last four years have seen anti-Bush hatred - raw hatred - the likes of which I'm not sure this country has ever seen.
However. "Nyah, they did it first!!!" is no justification for the sort of pernicious nonsense that's been coming from Bush-haters, nor will it justify anything similar aimed at Kerry. This is not a child's game of tit-for-tat. This kind of personal attack on the president - any president - DAMAGES THE COUNTRY. It encourages the enemy. It diminishes, in the eyes of neutrals and friends, the man who speaks for the country. It gives America-haters in other countries plentiful raw material - "see, even the Americans themselves..."
I'll be blunt: if DAMAGING THE COUNTRY seems like a small price to pay in order to vent your spleen about the Democrats, you're no better than the average DU troll and I'm ashamed to call you "countryman".
May whichever candidate wins the election become the greatest president in the history of the United States of America.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:53 PM]Read This Now
This blog emerges from its months-long sloth to point to this, at Peeve Farm:
I don't think Kerry's going to win, but I'm bracing myself nonetheless. I'm bracing for condescending, patronizing head-patting from European acquaintances, which is a good deal worse than such acquaintances simply ignoring me out of disgust. I'm bracing for Michael Moore riding the wave of celebratory euphoria and becoming a political celebrity of unprecedented stature for someone from the filmmaking industry, rather like Oliver Stone winning a Senate seat, only with the added bonus of making our philosophical leaders look like the stereotypical fat, loud, obnoxious Americans we're already seen as. I'm bracing for Barbra Streisand, Janeane Garofalo, Arec Bardwin, Martin Sheen, MATT DAMON, Bruce Springsteen, and a thousand other actors and artists being filled with giddy joy and the sense that through the power of movies and songs and petulant theme concerts and appearances on The Daily Show they can change history, even if they haven't given a moment's thought to what they're fighting for except "change". I'm bracing for our troops (who support Bush by a margin of something like five to one) waking up in their barracks two weeks from now to find that the man who flew to visit them on Thanksgiving, who called them by name and saluted them and shook their hands until the tears streamed down their faces, has been kicked out of office by the American people in favor of someone whose promise to bring the troops home by any fixed date speaks more loudly and reassuringly to the enemy than to our soldiers or their families. I'm bracing for history books ten years from now to refer to the brief Bush II years as an unmitigated disaster during which the economy crashed, 9/11 occurred, and America embarked upon an inexplicable series of hideously unpopular foreign wars that were mercifully cut short before anyone could see any long-term results to prove what they were intended to achieve.Read the rest. Particularly the last line.
It won't be the end of the world, no. But it will suck.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:36 AM]I am no longer surprised...
...by press reluctance to confront the depraved nature of the actions of the enemy. The NYT, however, may have just set a new low in this regard.
It was the headline that caught my eye: "Russian Official Says Beslan Rebels Were Addicts". Rebels. If this is indended to refer back to Chechnya, recall that at least some of the killers were Arab, not Chechen, and that all of them left Chechnya to attack outside its borders. Reading the story, I see that they are also described as "militants", "attackers", and "hostage-takers".
But the truly shocking thing for me was the description of their deed: the story tells us that they "seized a public school". It says nothing at all about what they did after they seized that public school. If you had never heard of the massacre at Beslan, and missed the single reference to "survivors" in the next-to-last paragraph, you might well think that the only people who were killed were the "rebels".
Can such a crime disappear down the memory hole in only a few weeks? At the New York Times, apparently it can.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:05 PM]Quote of the day
It's a bit buried in the middle of an NYT op-ed by Tommy Franks, so let's pull it out:
The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction.This is so essential a concept, and a novel concept to so many people, that it deserves to be called out on its own. Bush and the rest of the adminstration should be finding a way to work this in, every time they give a press conference, appear on a talk show, or speak to a reporter.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:27 PM]Department of "O Jesus" moments
On occasion since 9/11, I've come across something, some statement, that makes me physically sick for a moment. This is an ad for the El Pais newspaper of Spain:
"You can do a lot in a day. Imagine how much can happen in three months."
El Pais' editorial position seems to be solidly anti-American. That's one thing. This... this is something else. I don't even know what to name it.
(via Barcepundit)
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:33 AM]Dept of "I may never vote for a Democrat again"
Senator Carl Levin has been talking to unnamed foreign leaders about the upcoming election:
Levin said he has talked to foreign leaders about potential changes in their Iraq policies after the U.S. election. "Nobody is going to say what the details of the deal are. They simply report to us that distrust of the administration is so intense that you can't take a risk" and deploy troops to Iraq, he said.So much for the general courtesy of noninterference in other democracies' elections, when some of our officials seem to be downright inviting it. He says, when asked, that he's "not going to negotiate" in the name of the United States, but it sounds to me as though that's exactly what he's been doing. (And when Kerry was saying similar things a few months ago it likewise sounded like that.)
"I'm not going to tell you which foreign leaders, because I'd be breaking the confidence of foreign leaders that I've met," said Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Which leads us inexorably to the next question: have these gentlemen made commitments to these unnamed foreign leadcrs in exchange for their assistance? Perhaps for their public or private support, or for statements in opposition to Bush? Perhaps for a commitment not to cooperate with Bush, since such a commitment at this point would be helpful to him? (Of course, it would be helpful to the country too... but then, if you've decided ABB is the only policy, would that matter? "Partisanship stops at the water's edge" is only meaningful to those who see a value higher than their party's interests.)
Rather ugly thoughts, but these sorts of comments followed by coyness about the details seem to me to invite such thoughts.
Particularly after, on the eve of war, three Democratic congressmen went to Baghdad and announced to the world that they considered Saddam Hussein more trustworthy than George Bush, and the Democratic Caucus didn't bat an eyelash over it. They may have forgotten that incident, but I have not, and it's of a piece with what Levin is saying and what Kerry has said.
Friday, July 30, 2004
[posted by jaed at 12:17 PM]Very brief Kerry speech reaction
He lost me at "...reporting for duty". Condescension to serving military, check. Self-importance, check. Non-sequitor, check. It would of course have been worse had Kerry never served in the military. But it was bad enough as far as I'm concerned.
Monday, July 26, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:43 PM]What the...?
I thought Tim Blair was having a little fun with his readers. I mean, yes, we see references to the Jews controlling the world... in Egyptian papers and in the weekly khutbas and occasionally in ANSWER missives. Not in mainstream Australian newspapers, usually.
Comes now Margo Kingston, who writes for the Sydney Morning Herald(warning: evil registration involved; follow the link to Tim's site above for quotes if you don't wanna bother). In this column, she responds to a reader note:
Hi Margo. Please see below our e-mail to Minister Downer today concerning Australia’s vote in the UN General Assembly on the West Bank wall. This one has really slipped under the radar. Why, we can all ask, was there no public debate about this? (Margo: Because the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia. A chapter in my book by Antony Loewenstein includes an indictment of the tactics of these people by Bob Carr. For an example of the Libs in the Zionists pockets, see Award honours PM’s support for Israel.)(bolding mine)
This week, the followup. It seems Ms. Kingston just has no ahhDEEEahhh why y'all are so upset:
I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact. Is there a language problem here? [...] I admit I'm at a loss to understand the anti-semitic charge. Is it the use of the 'Zionist' lobby? After all, there are Zionist Federations everywhere. Or is it the suggestion that this lobby controls politics and silences the media on the Israel issue? I'd really appreciate your advice on this - it seemed so uncontroversial when I wrote it - I suppose because I mix largely with left wing Jewish Australians. Is there another form of words which won't offend people but makes the same point?Well, no, Margo, I don't think there's any form of words you can use to express the thought that the Joooooz and their sekrit Jooooo cabal run the world that won't be offensive. And no, I don't think this is a language problem. Even though some of your best friends are Jews. Good God.
I have to admit I'm at a loss. What planet is this again? And what decade is it supposed to be? (@#$%! malfunctioning time capsules. Set it for 2004 and it decides you really want 1938, every time...)
Sunday, July 11, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:12 AM]We interrupt this blog for a moment of pure self-pity
It's one in the morning here. The next-door neighbor is having a party, with loud music, directly opposite my bedroom window. (Not for the first time, and I know from experience that asking him to crank it down is pointless.) There is a loud drunk standing in the yard shouting insults about Condoleeza Rice, alternating with screams of "We're fucked! We're fucked!" Someone is arguing with the drunk, but half-heartedly and tentatively - the drunk says "I love it" about Bushitler signs, if I'm following the discussion correctly, and the woman arguing with him is saying "I love it - but I hate it". I am feeling guilty for not going over there, sustaining this woman in her argument, and inviting her to become a full-fledged RWDB. I should have gone to bed over an ago. I am far too exhausted to do anything constructive with the next three hours, or however long it will be until these people shut up and turn off their stereo. I hate my life.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:54 PM]In the Middle East Quarterly, archaeologist Alexander Joffe revisits the looting of the Iraq National Museum (and the outraged narrative that followed in the press), using the events and their interpretation as a springboard to examine the relationship of archaeologists to the Baathist regime:
[...] archaeologists submitted paperwork to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, knowing full well that staff lists would be vetted by Iraqi intelligence. European and American Jews, among the pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century, were systematically excluded from participation, as they still are in Syria and Saudi Arabia. No one protested.It seems journalists and businessmen are not the only ones who may experience moral hazards as a result of trying to gain access to a country ruled by a totalitarian regime.
The teams did their fieldwork under the watchful eye of government minders, came back, kept their mouths shut about whatever they might have seen or heard, and not infrequently sang the praises of Hussein, at least his treatment of archaeology. Access was everything.
There's also an interesting historical parallel that I hadn't been aware of from the Gulf War:
As it happened, very little damage was done to archaeological sites by the U.S.-led war. The Iraq National Museum in Baghdad safely removed most of its holdings to storage within the building or to other locations such as bank vaults.(via Cronaca)
But in the aftermath of the local uprisings against Hussein in 1991, looters pillaged many provincial museums, and their contents quickly appeared on antiquities markets, primarily in Europe. Thousands of artifacts bled out of Iraq after 1991, and only a tiny handful have been recovered.
Monday, July 05, 2004
[posted by jaed at 9:50 AM]Paragraph found in an NYT article
The NYT today has an article on security preparations for the Democratic and Republican conventions. Fears of terrorism, possible disruption in NYC and Boston, etc. Paragraph four is this:
New York is regarded as a higher risk than Boston by counterterrorism officials because President Bush is a Republican and because of consistent intelligence.And that's it. No explanation, no discussion, no supporting quotes for the allegation. Dropped into this story, the bare assertion that the Republican convention, qua Republican, is more likely to be attacked by terrorists.
I mean, it's not like the NYT is shy about putting analysis into its news coverage. Why are Republicans more likely to be attacked? The argument could be made that the Rs are more likely to pursue the war, certainly. But doesn't that deserve a sentence or two of explanation, if that's the point the writer is making?
(My paranoid side has spoken up, pointing out that this may be a bit of ground-preparation in case of an attack during the Republican convention. The accepted NYT wisdom then becomes, "It's their fault for bringing their dangerous selves here! The Republicans had no right to selfishly risk New York! They should have held their convention in Houston or somewhere, where the only ones hurt would be other Republicans!" I think my paranoid side is getting maybe a wee bit spooked by the spike in partisanship in the country lately.)
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:19 PM]Compromise
Brian Tieman at Peeve Farm has a long, thoughtful piece on the prerequisites for compromise - and why it's fruitless to keep calling for negotiations if one side is not willing to compromise - and also discusses why, politically, we sometimes have so much trouble accepting that compromise isn't going to work when the prerequisite isn't there.
It should be obvious—it really should—that negotiations between one party who's willing to make concessions, and another party who isn't willing, will fail. But we seem unable to look this problem in the face. Those of us who think all problems can be solved by negotiations and compromises continue to demand that both parties sit down and hammer out an agreement; those of us who accept that at least one of the sides is driven by absolutism recognize the futility of yammering around a table and repeating over and over the same immovable demands, and take the decidedly less satisfying road that leads toward military conflict, long and broad social change obviating the problem, or other less feel-good solutions. Yet it's hard to argue that the less feel-good solutions have been less successful throughout history than the solutions that involve waving signs with rainbows on them.
[posted by jaed at 12:54 AM]
Occasionally, I read a short sentence somewhere that causes me to stop for a moment, all thought knocked out of my head, feeling as though I'd just run painlessly but firmly into a brick wall.
One ricpic does it to me today, on a recent Roger Simon post on Ellis Island. In the midst of a group discussion of ancestry and everyone's families' immigration experiences and history:
If it weren't for America I would be nothing but a heap of ashes.
I may post more on this subject later.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:07 PM]O Times, o mores,...
The New York Times offers an email service, a daily summary with brief quote of top stories. Here's the summary of one of today's op-eds:
OP-ED COLUMNISTAnd here's the first paragraph of the actual piece:
All Hail Moore
By DAVID BROOKS
A beacon in the form of Michael Moore has appeared on the mountaintop, and tens of thousands have joined in the adulation.
In years past, American liberals have had to settle for intellectual and moral leadership from the likes of John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. But now, a grander beacon has appeared on the mountaintop, and from sea to shining sea, tens of thousands have joined in the adulation.Just a wee change in meaning there, no? Were I Brooks, I'd consider suing for libel.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:59 AM]The seduction of narrative
Eugene Volokh, scourge of Slate's Bushism/Kerryism of the week feature, speculates on why these columns are often so laughable:
Part of the problem, I think, is precisely that these are regular columns, with constant plots -- not just constant subject matters (the war, the economy, or whatever else), but constant points (Bush misspoke, Kerry spoke in too complex a way, someone lied). This means that their authors are constantly looking for something that fits the plot.
He goes on to opine that this attitude - figure out what the story is, then go looking for facts or quotes to fit it - doesn't make for good journalism. I won't argue with that - but I suspect, both from listening to journalists talk and from looking at the result, that almost all journalism is done this way. You decide what the story is - then you go get the facts to illustrate it, and plug them into the story.
This doesn't necessarily mean the story is one-sided. If there's controversy, you will probably see a quote from the "opposing side" for balance. But the narrative frame of the story - what is this story about? what's the main point? who is considered to be the opposing side here? - will be determined before the reporter ever picks up the phone or fires up Lexis-Nexis.
I've seen this approach with stories I've been peripherally involved in, I saw it over and over with the Great Internet Censorship Controversy of the mid-90s - before journalists realized that the story was not "the Internet is all porn", but was instead "the Internet will make us all rich", and started writing that one instead. (And God knows I've seen it with the war. The NYT's approach to the recent 9/11 staff report is only one case in point.)
Friday, June 04, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:29 PM]Whimper...
Air marshalls ride along on commercial plane flights to stop hijackings. Unfortunately, if the hijacker's first move is to shoot the air marshall, they are of limited usefuless. Comes now an informative article on just how easy it is for hijackers to spot these "undercover" officers:
As they settled into first class on American Airlines Flight 1438 from Chicago to Miami, they were supposed to be the last line of defense against terrorists -- two highly trained U.S. air marshals who would sit unnoticed among the ordinary travelers but spring into action at the first sign of trouble.Apparently it's not just the clothes - since the marshalls are armed, they can't go through the ordinary security gate, and they generally go through the "exiting" side in full view of the public. Also, they get on the plane first, which also makes them easy to spot. But the clothes don't help, and the fancy clothes are actually policy:
Imagine their chagrin when a fellow passenger coming down the aisle suddenly boomed out, "Oh, I see we have air marshals on board!"
[...]
In an era when "dressing down" is the traveler's creed, air marshals must show up in jackets and ties, hair cut short, bodies buffed, shoes shined.
Jack Webb would be proud, but the marshals say they stand out like shampooed show dogs among the pound pups.
Professional demeanor, attire and attitude gain respect," said spokesman David M. Adams. "If a guy pulls out a gun and he's got a tattoo on his arm and (is wearing) shorts, I'm going to question whether he's a law-enforcement officer."We're doomed. Doomed, I tell you.
(via GeekPress and Dave Farber's Interesting People list.)
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:58 AM]"Gentlemen of the press..."
Sometimes the media, cynical as I am about it, still manages to astonish me. Such a day is today, with the current jawdrop moment thanks to an unbylined reporter at AFP. The story describes Ghazi al-Yawar, the transitional president, thus:
Announcing his cabinet, Allawi hailed what he described as the country's first step towards democracy."Saddam's replacement".
"After 35 years of tyrannical regime ... we are starting now our march towards sovereignty and democracy," he said.
But there was no celebrating on the streets of Baghdad as a series of explosions echoed across the capital immediately after Saddam's replacement was named.
(The title is a reference to "The Front Page"...and whoever has seen it, can tell what comes next in that particular line of dialog....)
Monday, May 24, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:21 AM]Step by step...
Instapundit passes on a note from a reader about the NYT's new formulation, "No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion.
So that's the new standard, I guess -- and a tacit admission that WMD have been found. But unless Bush can produce "stockpiles" now, it'll have all been a lie, you see. . . .Oh no. That's not far enough. There are steps in these things, you know. Fallback positions.
- "No evidence that Saddam Hussein ever possessed weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." This one is pretty much confined to people ignorant enough to never have heard of al-Anfal, or crazy enough to deny it happened. Most media outlets are neither, and started instead with...
- "No evidence that Saddam Hussein was currently involved with weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." Pretty much put paid to by David Kay, frantic though the spinning was there. He certainly had active programs, primed to start production as soon as sanctions were lifted, and Kay said as much. So...
- "No weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion." The sarin and mustard gas pretty much demolished that one, although some media outlets were a bit late to hear the news. It became necessary, therefore, to resort to the next step...
- "No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." As noted above, this is the current stage. But suppose we track the origin of the sarin-filled mortar shell to the building it came from, and find, oh, a hundred more like it? Then we will move on to...
- "No LARGE stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion." There were only a hundred or so, the reasoning will go. Probably just leftovers, never mind that Saddam never declared any binary mortar shells of this type. Nothing to worry about. And if we find a more massive cache, say those truckloads that may have been moved to Syria? No problem - we still have...
- "No evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists has been found since the invasion." This is the crowning move, since it both changes the subject and opens up a whole new sequence of possible goalpost moves:
- In the face of any evidence that he did so intend, we can simply switch to saying there's no evidence that he actually did it.
- If evidence turns up that he did do it, perhaps there's no evidence that his beneficiaries called themselves "al Qaeda".
- And if we find a photograph of Saddam himself handing a large box labeled "Smallpox" to Mullah Omar, we simply do another switch and point out that these weapons haven't actually been used to attack the US "since the invasion".
Thursday, April 15, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:53 PM]Something to remember
An Italian hostage was murdered today. This is an aspect I haven't seen emphasized in the news, but at Roger Simon, commenter TmjUtah points out:
That the Italian's last words were in defiance ("Now I'll show you how an Italian dies!" while trying to rip off the hood covering his face -http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAWP2B43TD.html ) violates the terror style book; they look for abject fear and hopelessness in their victims. Remember his name: Fabrizio Quattrocchi.
Monday, April 12, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:50 AM]The difference
Someone asked me the other day, "You compared building democracy in Iraq to the US experience with Germany and Japan after WWII. How come it's not going like that?"
People have come up with a lot of reasons - both before and since the fall of Saddam - why Iraq would not be like Germany or Japan: level of previous exposure to democracy, degree of international legitimacy for the effort, presumed cultural incompatibility of Arabs with democratic polities. Some are more plausible than others, of course, but most of them are quite subtle.
But there's one reason no one talks about, that's about as subtle as a neon sign: the war isn't over.
Imagine if, during WWII, we had tried to occupy and reconstruct France before defeating Germany. Imagine Vichy collaboraters being funded by German money and smuggled German weapons. Imagine German special ops units coming across the border periodically and blowing people up. Imagine the press telling us that all this proves the French didn't want us or our "liberation" in the first place and we should give up and go home.
Now imagine ignoring all this and doggedly proceeding with rebuilding French infrastructure, hoping all the problems will Just Go Away. Folly, yes?
In Iraq, we've got Iran funding an uprising and, most likely, sending in commandos under cover of the pilgrimage. In Fallujah, we've got a lot of old-line Saddam collaborators, and possibly Syria funding and providing military fighters, via Hamas. We've had Saudi-funded terrorists coming across the borders all this time. (Ask the Iraqis - they know Arab from Arab, and they know the people coming in to blow up Iraqis aren't Iraqi.) And we wonder why there are problems in Iraq?
There are problems because the war is still going on; winning one campaign does not conclude a war, and (media and politician nitwits insisting on locutions like "the Iraq War" notwithstanding) we ought to know better than to think it does. To whatever extent we succeed in Iraq, it becomes an ally in this war - and to whatever extent it becomes an ally, it becomes a target for the enemy.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
[posted by jaed at 12:29 PM]A thought about proxy war
At Roger Simon's site, commenter Peony makes the following point:
Ted Kennedy is correct to the extent that Vietnam was a proxy war between China and the US and later the Soviet Union and the US. Iraq is very much a proxy war between states (Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) masked behind an ideological movement and the US.This wasn't the case a year ago, of course, but it seems largely true of the current stage of conflict. The Saddam Fedayeen seem to have quieted down after Saddam's capture; he might or might not have been directing them, but I suspect he was paying them. But the "spectaculars" aimed at Iraqi civilians have continued at about the same level, and those are Saudi tactics; and the Iraqis themselves say these are due to foreign Arabs. Now, with Sadr, the Iranians have made their move. The current situation, yes, can be analyzed largely in terms of a veiled war with Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia with the other.
Which raises some immediate questions. One reason proxy wars are fought is because it's too dangerous to fight the actual enemy. (See: Cold War. Direct war between two nuclear-armed powers being a bad idea, the Cold War, when hot, was fought out in other countries. See also: Vietnam, where no one thought war with China was a good idea.)
This factor can also make a proxy war impossible to win. ("Winning" the Vietnam war would necessarily have involved reuniting the country, but going right up to China's border was too dangerous again. So the Vietnam war was a holding action, continued until we decided to cut our losses. Our problem in Vietnam was not the lack of an exit strategy, but the lack of a victory strategy.)
It's dangerous to fight Iran and Saudi Arabia, and there are good strategic reasons for waiting (in the case of Iran, for the possibility of an internal Velvet Revolution; in the case of Saudi Arabia, until Iraq can take up the slack for disruption in Europe and Japan's oil supply). But is it more dangerous than what's happening now?
Saturday, March 27, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:46 PM]Quote of the Day
Mark Steyn sayeth, quoting Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan - in October 2000:
"The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa'eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?"Apparently.
(via Instapundit
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:07 PM]The Great Divide (continued)
I've written before here about the submerged differences in fundamental assumptions between European and American political thinking, and how these tend to appear as unpleasant surprises in crisis situations, sometimes after a long period of both sides erroneously thinking they agreed with one another when, in reality, they were simply following the same path of action from completely different motives.
I've been thinking some more about this lately, and Mark Steyn has encapsulated one of this differences very neatly today:
When an American Jew stands at the gates of a former concentration camp and sees the inscription "Never again", he assumes it's a commitment never again to tolerate genocide. Alain Finkielkraut, a French thinker, says that those two words to a European mean this: never again the führers and duces who enabled such genocide. "Never again power politics. Never again nationalism. Never again Auschwitz" - a slightly different set of priorities. And over the years a revulsion against any kind of "power politics" has come to trump whatever revulsion post-Auschwitz Europe might feel about mass murder.Which sheds some light on the American indignation over European indifference to the bones in the mass graves of Saddam. As well as on the European indignation over American indifference to the differential of military, economic, and cultural power between America and Europe, and the European horror over Americans' open expression of patriotism.
The post-WWII alliance between western Europe and the US was thought by all concerned to rest on a fundamental philosophical accord, but - with these deep rifts in basic assumptions now popping up under the stress of circumstance - it seems to have been an alliance of convenience instead. With the USSR gone, Europe's dependence on the US went, and so did the relationship.
