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August 31, 2005
"Buy Blue And Loot Red"
John Hawkins at Right Wing News presents the Leftist Guide To Looting:
IanDB1: I suppose they could Buy Blue and Loot Red? I don't blame them. They were abandoned before the storm.
They were abandoned during the storm.
Why should they believe that they won't be abandoned AFTER the storm?
They'd be foolish to assume that they'll be given all the food and water they need, or that the government and insurance companies will put their lives back together.
"Buy Blue and Loot Red"--that's pretty funny. Maybe after all the failed theories and revolutions of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot--the looters of New Orleans will carry the day.
I feel deeply for all of those suffering unimaginably in the disaster area--but I continue to feel nothing but contempt for the college educated amateur anarchists of the DU.
NOLA And The Corps Of Engineers
I've been doing some armchair engineering and second guessing about the design of New Orleans' levees and the emergency plan for breach repair. Jonah Goldberg at The Corner found this Q&A from the Army Corps of Engineers. Highlights:
Q.2. Why did the levees fail?
A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.
These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.
Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?
A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.
I can easily imagine Houston using a "fast cat 3" as a design benchmark--we're about 50 feet above sea level. But New Orleans' conditions are unique and loaded with potential for disaster, which now has unfortunately been realized. Doesn't one have to weight the cost versus the potential (even if unlikely) outcome?
And it seems like there could have been better contingency plans in place for a breached levee situation. How about several hundred large precast concrete blocks? Or concrete barges that could be towed in and sunk?
I'm sure there's a lot more information I'm not aware of...but these questions have been bugging me. I'll try and find out some more on this.
Connecticut Education: Incompetence Lobby Outflanked
By now everyone know that the No Child Left Behind act is an "unfunded mandate" foisted off on the states by the backwards-looking, Bible-thumping, chain'em-to-the-desks conservatives of the Bush administration. It's all that evil testing, you see. Of course in a postmodern world, facts and figures, achievement and knowledge are all outdated concepts. And testing just prolongs their inevitable demise.
Or so say the "progressive" professional educators who have allied themselves with their enabling politicians and union leeches to form an armored front that's been resistant to almost all reform efforts.
But in a promising development, the forces of institutionalized incompetence has been seemingly outflanked--from the Left. From yesterday's Wall Street Journal Online (subscription required):
When Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a liberal Democrat, decided to sue the federal government over testing provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act, he probably wasn't expecting flak from his political left. But that's exactly what he's received since filing the lawsuit last week.
As first reported in the Hartford Courant, two national civil rights leaders, William Taylor and John Brittain, fired a letter to Mr. Blumenthal calling the lawsuit "ill-advised" and disputing his claim that the federal law is "an unfunded mandate." Messrs. Taylor and Brittain run civil rights organizations based in Washington but are veterans of Connecticut's school-desegregation wars. Their threat to break with traditional political allies is welcome as a change from the lock-step fealty of black leaders to the education status quo.
"The fact of the matter is that a couple Democrats, in particular [Senator] Ted Kennedy and [Representative] George Miller, helped twist the arm of this administration and brought about a really large increase in appropriations for No Child Left Behind," said [national civil rights leader William] Taylor, dismissing Connecticut's plea for more money. "I also think the National Education Association," which agitated for the suit, "is really doing damage to the interests of kids and to the interests of its own members. We've got to figure out a way to get really good teachers into central schools, and this law pushes for that."
The proponents of public school reform desperately need more voices like those of Taylor and Brittain--they represent those most affected by our pathetic public schools: the poor inner-city minorities.
And there's another reason Connecticut doesn't want accountability reform: the state's well-educated rich kids are masking a gap between low-income kids and their better-off peers that is among the worst in the nation. No wonder the incompetence lobby is mortally afraid of testing.
Slow But Sure Progress In Afghanistan
Austin Bay reports on the slow but sure rise of of democracy in Afghanistan and on the vital efforts to create and train the Afghan National Army(via Instapundit):
Part of the "much to do" is creating and training the new Afghan National Army (ANA). The U.S.-led Coalition Joint Task Force-76 (CJTF-76) has that responsibility. Coalition officers rate the ANA as "very effective at the platoon level" (30 to 40 troops). As in Iraq, the goal is to build effective combat battalions (600 troops).
But training isn't a one-way experience. "The Afghan soldiers are able to teach us how the enemy fights," CJTF-76 commander Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya told me. "The Afghan troops are also very physically fit -- and they will work the daylights out of us."
Kamiya, a 101st Airborne Division vet, also praised their morale. "They have enormous fighting spirit, and when they are in contact (with the enemy), they do not let up."
Emphases are mine.
It's interesting to compare how the two new armies, Iraqi and Afghan, are progressing. It seems that both are currently more successful at the small-unit level. I don't know about the Afghans, but I've read the larger problem in Iraq is with the officers: they are not used to taking responsibility. But these successes at the bottom of the pyramid are encouraging; that's the place to start, in any event.
August 30, 2005
Some Badly Needed Perspective On Iraq Casualties
I was thinking just today about the 1700 or so military deaths in Iraq, and wondering what proportion were actual combat deaths--because I knew that a significant fraction of the death toll was due to accidents, perhaps 200 or so. In the military this is a constant danger, no matter where you are stationed.
This evening I found over at The Ten O'Clock Scholar this astounding post. Referencing Powerline, RDS notes that
...normal training exercises in the military killed TWICE as many American soldiers per year from 1983-1996 than the vaunted, undefeatable, deadly "insurgency" in Iraq has been able to do.
It's only because of media reporting that we think, say, 40 deaths a month from combat is something to get all hyper about, when every month 120 were dying just accidentally in the military for the previous 20 years. The media could have made that front-page news every day -- another 4 soldiers killed! -- but they didn't mention it, so nobody got demoralized. But now they make sure you hear about EVERY SINGLE DEATH, without context.
Absolutely right. John Hinderaker amplifies this point at Powerline:
One wonders how past wars could have been fought if news reporting had consisted almost entirely of a recitation of casualties. The D-Day invasion was one of the greatest organizational feats ever achieved by human beings, and one of the most successful. But what if the only news Americans had gotten about the invasion was that 2,500 allied soldiers died that day, with no discussion of whether the invasion was a success or a failure, and no acknowledgement of the huge strategic stakes that were involved? Or what if such news coverage had continued, day by day, through the entire Battle of Normandy, with Americans having no idea whether the battle was being won or lost, but knowing only that 54,000 Allied troops had been killed by the Germans?
News reporting on the war consists almost entirely of itemizing casualties. Headlines say: "Two Marines killed by roadside bomb." Rarely do the accompanying stories--let alone the headlines that are all that most people read--explain where the Marines were going, or why; what strategic objective they and their comrades were pursuing, and how successful they were in achieving it; or how many terrorists were also killed. For Americans who do not seek out alternative news sources like this one, the war in Iraq is little but a succession of American casualties. The wonder is that so many Americans do, nevertheless, support it.
I have often asked the question about the Iraq war and its naysayers: "Why is the measure of success been determined to be the number of soldiers killed per week; or the number of IEDs exploded?" As Hinderaker points out, the undisputable goals of WWII would have been completely undermined if we had focused solely on casualties.
In my recent "inside-my-head" arguments with Cindy Sheehan, I've made the following point: Let's say today an IED goes off and kills three Marines. This is without a doubt a tragic event--for us as Americans, for the Marine Corps, and most of all the families of those killed. Yet on this same day, roughly 100 people were killed on our highways, and they were equally tragic events.
Tomorrow (my argument went), it's quite possible that no American will be killed in Iraq; yet it's dead certain that another 100 people will be killed on the roads of the US. And another 100 the day after that...700 a week, roughly 35,000 a year--men, women, and children.
So, indeed, RDS's point it a good one: where is our perspective?
Education, Facts, And Figures
Having just returned from my daily one-hour commute to take our son to school (his local public school is 5 minutes from home), I was in no mood this morning to find this NY Times piece profiling Dr. Jon D. Miller, who studies the state of Americans' science knowledge (hat tip: Instapundit):
While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.
Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
Emphases mine. Well, who really needs to know all those facts and figures, anyway? After all, you can always look it up, right? "Progressive" educators refer to what E.D. Hirsch has called the "tool conception of education": the idea that facts and hard knowledge are not necessary and are even detrimental; it is far better to equip students with "critical thinking" and "problem solving" skills. But Hirsch responds:
This tool conception, however, is an incorrect model of real-world critical thinking. Independent-mindedness is always predicated on relevant knowledge: one cannot think critically unless one has a lot of relevant information about the issue at hand. Critical thinking is not merely giving one's opinion. To oppose "critical thinking" and "mere facts" is a profound empirical mistake. Common sense and cognitive psychology alike support the Jeffersonian view that critical thinking always depends upon factual knowledge. (E.D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, Anchor Books, 1999, p. 247.)
Again, the emphases are mine. These ideas seem self-evidently true, but no one's told the deadenders that extract from our household an outrageous amount of property taxes to support my local school district.
Here's a mission statement of a typical public elementary school in the Spring Branch Independent School District here in Houston:
Collaborative efforts help children reach their fullest potential by producing critical thinkers, academic risk-takers, problem solvers, and life-long learners. Every member of our learning community takes pride in Valley Oaks--a place where students are responsible for their actions, have positive self-esteem, and demonstrate a high regard for others.
Reaching potential...producing critical thinkers...risk-taking...problem solving...life-long learning. These are all processes--there's not one iota of a hint that any substantive, enduring, or measurable knowlege will be taught.
When I told my wife about the Times article she said, "Well, at least our kiddo won't have any trouble finding a job. Of course, he might have to move to Taiwan to find one."
And thus the hour commute each morning and evening.
Posted at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)August 29, 2005
Anti-war Groundswell And Sheehan's Handlers
So...does Cindy Sheehan speak for millions of Americans? Is she the catalyst for a massive uprising of protest that will force the evil neocon cabal to withdraw "support our troops by withdrawing" them?
Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House takes a look at some of the evidence and says that there are about 200 people camping with Sheehan, and another fairly steady 1500 in outlying camps.
The other night, folk singer and legendary anti-war activist Joan Baez drew around 200 people to a free concert near the camp site. Also, this blogger took the trouble to add up names from three Guest Books which had been placed around Camp Casey and discovered 750 signatures – not from one day but from more than 2 weeks of protests.
It’s like this “mass movement” exists only on a Hollywood sound stage. When the cameras are turned off, it disappears like smoke from a fog machine wafting up into the rafters.
Rick says it time for the Left to put up or shut up: present some hard numbers on the anti-war movement. And he correctly notes that poll questions that ask about "Bush's handling of the war" are essentially bogus:
Hell, any conservative blogger worth their salt is criticizing the President’s handling of some aspect of the Iraq War. It’s a silly question that doesn’t mean anything. The question that really matters is how many Americans want to cut and run from Iraq – the position being advocated by Cindy Sheehan and the leftist lickspittles who are shamelessly using her grief to advance their radical agenda.
Emphasis mine. That is indeed the real question, and I'll bet the numbers are just a little different for answers to that one.
I was thinking about Sheehan this morning in the car as Laura Ingraham mercilessly skewered her appearance on Bill Maher's show. I tried to imagine trading places with her; tried to imagine my state of mind if my only child was killed fighting for our country in a foreign land. I realized that I'm not angry at Cindy Sheehan personal actions--I would almost certainly be more unhinged than she is; I expect I would be catatonic with grief.
But what makes me angry almost beyond words is the cynical and truely heartless way in which the anti-war Left is using her for advancing their own agenda. We've seen example after example of the hypocrisy of these caring "progressives"--and this example takes the cake.
If I had the money, I go to Iraq and bring some real witnesses over to Crawford to talk to Cindy--real Iraqis who suffered real torture and death under Saddam. That'd take care of the professional anarchists, I bet.
Posted at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)August 28, 2005
News Flash: Liberals Control Law School Faculties
Jim Lindgen comments at The Volokh Conspiracy about a new study that documents the political imbalance of our law school faculties (via The Corner). The study, conducted by John McGinnis, will be published in the upcoming Georgetown Law Journal and will show that an overwhelming majority of law school professors identify with liberal/Left causes. Lindgren wonders:
Now consider this thought experiment: [Imagine that in 1988 all but one of the Harvard Law faculty had favored Bush1 over Dukakis. And] Imagine that over the same period of a quarter century [mid 1970s through early 2000s], the Harvard Law School had hired at the entry-level only those who leaned Republican. Imagine how different the Harvard Law School would be, how different legal education would be, how different the government (and public policy) would be, populated with lawyers trained by an overwhelmingly Republican Harvard faculty. Somehow I think it would be a different world.
This argument holds for universities in general, as well as law schools, and it is devastating to lib/Leftists' nonchalance in adressing this problem: if they had to send their precious children to universities whose faculities were 80 percent conservative or Rebublican, there would be a nuclear explosion of outrage pulsing through the MSM.
No TV For LLWS
Is anyone else out there as appalled and downright pissed off as I am that they are televising the Little League World Series on national TV?
Show the final game on tape after a few weeks if you want, but putting the entire event on live TV just fosters mimicry of pro ballplayers and all of their attendant selfishness, along with deflecting attention away from pure love of the game.
Posted at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)The BBC's Blinders
OK, I admit it--there have been times when I've allowed a British accent to favorably affect my thinking. It might arise from the fact that I also believe Brits, in general, to be better film actors than Americans, which is at least an arguable position (differences in training, for instance).
But world events of the past decade or so have shown that the BBC's perfectly modulated voices mask a fairly virulent anti-capitalist, anti-American attitude. Curzon at Coming Anarchy adds to the evidence that when it comes to penetrating analysis, the BBC fails miserably. Curzon thoroughly fisks BBC correspondent Justin Webb's visit to Crawford, Texas. Webb:
A few years ago, one of President Bush’s neighbours gave me a tour of the outskirts of the presidential ranch. [...] In Crawford, Texas, I was shown into the back of a tractor trailer and taken off for a half-hour lurch through the dust.
Of course, the presidential compound and land are secure [...]. But, outside the perimeter of the ranch, this is rural Texas. There are shacks, there are rusting cars, there are other ranches. There is dismal, hardscrabble landscape – flat and huge and visually unstimulating. And there are Texans, real Texans.
As a Texan myself, I know what's coming, and Webb delivers by predictably telling the story of a rural man who shot his brother and then hanged himself (this is illustrative, you see, because this only happens in Texas). Webb continues:
The president’s neighbours are not, in other words, a bunch of city slickers. They are not sophisticated thinkers on world affairs, they are at home with guns. I cannot imagine a more hostile environment in which to set up a peace camp.
The emphasis is Curzon's, who notes acidly:
Don’t you love that logic? Texans are hospitable yokels, but there was one [...] crazy case where two brothers killed each other. This means they love guns and hate peace. Oh yeah, and they are, sniff sniff, “unsophisticated.”
Webb then gleefully reports that Senator Russ Feingold's call for a firm withdrawal date from Iraq has added weight because Feingold "is not a maverick, he is a mainstream Democrat with presidential ambitions."
Curzon corrects Webb's placement of Feingold in the political spectrum:
Wait, you’re the Ameican correspondent? Do you know anything about US politics? Feingold was the only member of the Senate to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001 and the Democrat co-sponsor of the McCain campaign finance bill. He is one of the most progressive members of the Senate. Allow me to direct you to this link for a taste of how wrong you are..
Webb's lazy perpetrating of the standard Texan myths is hardly the issue here; all distinctive cultures are subject to the treatment, even Brits themselves. But the BBC is a key node in the matrix that provides the world with a view into America, and if that view is habitually unbalanced and inaccurate, it can't help but have a real and adverse effect.
Posted at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)The Future Of The Dems
After digesting the latest pronouncements from Cindy Sheehan, my reaction once again was, "Let's have more, please." In the same manner as John Kerry, the more she speaks (especially as an almost official spokesperson for the Democratic Party), the more most mainstream Americans realize she is not to be taken seriously.
And so goes, evidently, the Democrats. It still boggles my mind that the party of FDR, Harry Truman, and yes even John Kennedy has sunk to falling in lockstep behind these pathetic nihilists.
Keith Burgess-Jackson at AnalPhilosopher crunches the numbers and observes:
Between 1952 and 2004, inclusive, there have been 14 presidential elections. The Democrat candidate received at least 50% of the votes in only two of them: 1964 (61.1%) and 1976 (50.1%).
And from this he concludes:
Democrats are in trouble. Their coalition may seem large, since it’s composed of many distinct groups (labor unions, abortionists, teachers, trial lawyers, blacks, homosexuals), but in terms of overall appeal, it’s failing. Repeatedly. Embarrassingly. A party that can’t recruit at least half the American people has the wrong principles and policies for this country.
Increasingly, it looks like a race to the bottom: the Dems have no inherent appeal and are recycling tired and negative obstructionist policies; and yet the Republicans seem to be, if not throwing away their advantage, refusing to take advantage of the opportunity to consolidate their postition and insure a majority for years to come.
Posted at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)August 26, 2005
Bochco's Weasel Words
In the Houston Chronicle today there appeared a pretty fair assessment of Over There, Steven Bochco's "reality" TV series on the Iraq war. David Carr of the New York Times gives close to equal time to Iraqi vets' outrage over the inaccuracies of the show, and he (wonder of wonders) highlights a couple of milblogs: Boots on the Ground and Mudville Gazette. But he still fails to illuminate the fundamental nature of the vets' complaints: although Carr accurately notes that a soldier's very existence depends upon precision, quick reaction, and attention to details, he still lets Bochco off the hook with soft passages like:
Much of what Bochco is taking hits over has to do with the generic requirements of television. To create story lines, he uses characters who scan to some people as clichés — the gung-ho all-American white kid who is maimed, the bitter dope-smoking black guy. And necessarily, action must be compressed, which does not reflect the grinding reality of real-time soldiering, a mix of weeks of boredom interrupted by occasional moments of terror.
I can't buy that. The "generic requirements of television" aren't forcing Bochco to construct scenes where ten soldiers are pinned down by insurgents for three days. The "generic requirements of television" didn't make Bochco conveniently flag the IEDs in his show, or cause the soldiers in the squad to forget they were equipped with mortars or .50 caliber heavy machine guns. From the Chronicle:
Bochco, who was lauded for the authenticity of his cop shows — Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue — is a bit mystified by the response. "Anecdotally, we have been getting a good response from soldiers, but some of them tend to get hung up on the specifics of what you are doing, whether that piece of equipment or that particular weapon is wrong," Bochco said. "But by and large, I think they are impressed with the show's reality, our attempt to convey the truthfulness of the experience and portray their emotional lives as well."
"Anectdotally"?..."I think they are impressed"? In other words, Bochco's hearing what he wants to hear. What contemptable bloody arrogance.
Yes, Steven, you willfully missed these details--details on a par with the type of suture your heart surgeon might use in binding up your just-unclogged arteries; or the wind shear alarm that goes off in the cabin of your flight back into LA in seemingly clear weather, that you never notice as you read your copy of the LA Times.
If you want to read about what a soldier is really experiencing in Iraq (both good and bad) read the blogs mentioned above, or the superlative Michael Yon.
On the other hand, if you want to further enable Steven Bochco's disaffected masturbatory paean to the LA limousine leftist version of our military, by all means continue to tune in:
Bochco said that within the limits of television and his budget, he is proud of what he and his team have accomplished.
"Let me put it this way," he said. "If I had even a small amount of the money that the country is spending to fight this war," Bochco said, "every detail would be there, and it would look amazing."
I think this adequately exposes his agenda.
Posted at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Like Father, Like Son
Speaking of Rumsfeld and Joseph P. Kennedy, I'm not the only one noticing a connection. Academic Elephant points to this exhilerating email a reader sent to The Corner, who noticed Rumsfeld's sarcastic reference to the execrable Joseph P. Kennedy's defeatism during WWII. Academic Elephant goes on to relate Rumsfeld's take on Chuck Hagel's ill-founded remarks comparing Iraq to Vietnam:
Having made this case [that the jihadist violence is not a nationalist movement like the Viet Cong], when asked subsequently, "[a]nd what do you say to Senator Chuck Hagel, a prominent Republican, Vietnam War vet, who over the weekend compared what's going on in Iraq now to the Vietnam War?" Rumsfeld could flatly dismiss the parallel: "[t]he differences are so notable that it would take too long to list them." Dana Milbank, no particular friend to the administration, admitted that Rumsfeld had "cut down the senator with one sentence."
The Vietnam meme, like other tired canards of the lib/leftists (tax cuts help the rich at the expense of the poor; Bush lied) is just a lazy way to dodge one's intellectual dishonesty.
Posted at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)For The Wobblies On Iraq
RDS at The Ten O'Clock Scholar has an in depth analysis of why we fight in Iraq.
First, let's review the "mistakes" of the war. There was a plan for the postwar, namely that certain exiles would quickly take power being welcomed by the people. Events however turned out to make that plan worthless, as the exiles had no clout, so a new plan for the postwar had to be improvised. Also, no large WMD stockpiles were found, which is (incorrectly) given as the only "justification" for the war. These two facts are taken to make the whole effort a "failure."
It turns out, however, that many things happened to work in our favor as a consequence of the war that we even had no idea about -- they were the "unknown unknowns", as Rummy would say.
"Unknown unknowns..." What a typical on-the-mark Rumsfeldism: the phrase speaks to the corrosive confidence of hindsight; and to the extent to which intellectually lazy (or malicious) people accept without question conclusions based on hindsight.
That phrase also points to the impossibility of proving a negative. France had the largest army in Europe in 1934, yet France allowed a vastly inferior Wehrmacht to occupy the Rhineland--if France had acted, WWII would have been prevented. But at that time, the historical judgment of Hitler had not been registered; the 60 million killed in the war were still alive. There were a lot more defenders of Hitler in 1936 than there were of Saddam in 2003 (Lindberg and John Kennedy's dad, for starters).
Picture yourself as a citizen of the Allies in 1936, and contemplate sending the French army to oust the Germans--the scope of destruction of WWII is hard to imagine from our current standpoint. It would have been utterly inconceivable to anyone living in 1934. Yet it could easily have been avoided if only the French had acted.
So we will never know what would have happened had not Saddam been ousted. But RDS meticulously lays out the reasons for, and results of, our calling "enough!" to appeasement.
August 25, 2005
Dems On A Leash
George Will on The Left's Folly:
MoveOn.org, which claims 3.3 million members and is becoming a tone-setting tail that wags the Democratic Party dog that is mostly such tails, adopted Sheehan during her Crawford demonstration, organizing 1,627 vigils around the country to express solidarity with her. But the Democratic Party [...] is not ripe for lessons in temperate rhetoric, which may be why the Republican Party has far fewer worries than it deserves.
[The Republican Party] is showing signs of becoming an exhausted volcano. Regarding Iraq, it is mistaking truculent asperity and tiresome repetition for Churchillian wartime eloquence. Regarding domestic policy, intellectual anemia has given rise to behavioral patterns not easily distinguished from corruption, as with the energy and transportation bills. Yet the Democratic Party, which by now can hardly remember the far-distant past when it was a volcano not of molten rhetoric but of serious thought, seems preoccupied with the chafing around its neck. The chafing is caused by the leashes firmly gripped and impudently jerked by various groups like MoveOn.org that insist the party adopt hysteria as a policy by treating the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts as a dire threat to liberty.
The emphases are mine.
In a recent post, I expressed my worry that this administration is stretching its luck--it is wasting too many opportunities, opportunities hard-won in Iraq by our exemplary military, and here at home by people like Ken Mehlman and all the grass roots Republican election volunteers.
But the Republicans remain the only rational choice. Until the Dems rid themselves of the hysterical antiwar anarchists (and until the remainder of the party quits enabling them) they will continue to lose elections. As Will points out, it will be interesting to watch Hillary in the coming months: Since the hysteria-mongers are a threat to her effort to recast herself as a moderate, she might be the one to initiate the purge her party so desperately needs.
Posted at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)August 24, 2005
Over There: Fumento Takes It Up A Notch
I recently pointed to Michael Fumento's demolition of Steven Bochco's "reality" TV series Over There. Now check out this pointed exchange between Bochco (US Army Airborne '78-'82, embedded with the Marines in Iraq) and John Solberg a PR flak for FX networks. Solberg, writing to Fumento:
[...] It's obvious to me that you have no knowledge about the background of the military technical advisor for Over There. I think if you would have asked, you would know that he is, to use your word, a "true" military technical advisor. He is a former U.S.M.C. Staff Sergeant and his ten years of service included an 11-month tour in Iraq where he was a Fire Power Control Team leader with an ANGLICO unit.While there have been some complaints with regard to the authenticity of the pilot (first) episode, the majority response from soldiers and military personnel was much more positive/favorable with regard to episodes two and three. [...]
Fumento isn't buying it, and proceeds to bury the Hollywood guy:
Right. That's why a unit couldn't get air support for 36 hours, instead of the usual less-than-30 minutes. That's why the squad had no reinforcements, no artillery, no armor, and even the heavy machine guns on the two Humvees present weren't used. That's why the enemy marks its IEDs with white flags, to make sure to warn off Americans. That's why the Humvee gunners (yes including episodes two and three, the "more accurate" ones) have no shielding? It's why a missile or bomb would be used to take out 20 Stingers in episode three, making it virtually impossible for forensics to determine all could be accounted for. (Yes, I know that was necessary to the plotline to make the intelligence officer a liar and make the Americans ruthless killers of civilians.) It's why even though some members of the squad carry grenade launchers only one grenade was fired during episode one with none during those oh-so-accurate episodes two and three. [...]
If your military advisor does give accurate advice, then you're overriding him at every turn and he should have resigned in disgust. Since apparently he hasn't, he sold out the uniform I and so many others have proudly worn. But maybe a firing squad would be too harsh; he should just suit up and have a real soldier rip every patch off his uniform.
Solberg replied that 1) he stood by his military advisor; 2) Fumento was wrong because he hadn't bother to read an LA Times story that evidently was more positive toward the story; and 3) his dad had been in the Air Force, and he himself "supported the military". Fumento:
I briefly listed 14 errors in the first three episodes, some small and some stunningly huge. Your response is that of the consummate politician: "I will stand by what I said." [...]
To repeat: We have three alternatives concerning your carefully-selected "military advisor." He's totally incompetent, he's a liar, or he's willing to see his advice constantly ignored for the 200 pieces of silver you tossed him. I suggest putting him in a locked room with a real Marine for 15 minutes and let's see what "conversation" ensues. [...]
I've quoted at length from this exchange because I believe it's a perfect example of the intellectual dishonesty displayed by a lot of Hollywood limousine Leftists. As Fumento pointed out, Solberg failed to address even one of Fumento's factual objections.
So I guess to a Hollywood producer, "reality" is anything you want it to be--whatever exists in one's head. Too bad they can't walk alongside of a real squad of Marines for awhile.
Posted at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Arggghh!
Do you know what I can't stand?
"Press 1 to continue in English..."
In general, I hate having to do extra work solely because of someone else's preventable failures.
Posted at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)August 23, 2005
Islam And The Iraqi Constitution
The role of Islam in the new Iraqi Constitution has been the source of much hand-wringing by bloggers--myself included.
But Bill Roggio over at Fourth Rail thinks a little chillin' is in order, at least for now. Bill says that, just as Christianity was an influence on the laws and governments of western nations, so too is it reasonable to expect Islam to have a similar influence on a middle eastern country. Bill:
The real test of Iraq’s commitment to both democratic principles under the influence of Islam will come with the implementation of the constitution by the next elected assembly. But to state an Islamist regime has been created based on the text of the constitution is unfounded. A simple reading of the document will reveal this.
As usual, a crystal ball would be handy.
MORE: An emailer to Rich Lowry makes some more encouraging points:
-- The Afghanistan Constitution contains strong Islam-based provisions, including a blanket provision saying: ‘In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.’ But the Afghan constitution also contains strong human rights protections and is facilitating the emergence of a peaceful and vibrant democracy.
--The Iraq draft appears to be similar. In addition to the broad bill of rights, our translation of the Islam provision states that ‘no law shall be enacted that contradicts [Islam’s] established provisions, the principles of democracy, [or] the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this constitution.’ This is actually a better formulation than Afghanistan’s model.
-- The same provision also protects ‘all the religious rights of all individuals in the freedom of belief and religious practice’ – a provision consistent with international standards and identical to the widely praised Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the interim constitution signed by the Iraq Interim Governing Council in 2004.
-- In addition, Islam is declared to be ‘a’ – not ‘the’– source of legislation, a victory to secularists and roughly in line with the TAL formulation.
--Finally, we are confident that the final interpreters of the Iraqi constitution will be non-religious based courts and the elected legislature – not unelected clerics.
Sorry for the lack of original comment--gotta get my main machine back up and running. Ugh.
Posted at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)My Feelings, Exactly
On a day when my office computer crashed and required a clean Windows install, From My Position...On The Way sums up my feelings with a little tank porn.
On a much more serious note: From My Position...On The Way is written by Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss, who was critically wounded in Iraq back in June. And check out this WaPo story about Soldiers' Angels, a terrific organization that's helping our wounded troops. After reading the Post story, I think you'll agree that they're definitely worthy of your donations.
August 22, 2005
If Roe v Wade Was Overturned--Then What?
The nomination of John Roberts and the potential retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist have been at the top of the political news heap lately, mainly because of the intense speculation over the future of Roe v Wade.
So what exactly would happen if the case was reversed? Larry Elder does some digging and the results are very interesting.
[Meet the Press host Tim] Russert discussed the Roberts nomination with former Gov. Mario Cuomo, D-N.Y., among others. On the issue of abortion, Russert quoted Justice Antonin Scalia. Russert said, "[Scalia's quote] may surprise some people. . . . 'If a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law. . . . I have religious views on the subject, but they have nothing whatever to do with my job.'" Note Russert's assertion that this "may surprise some people."
So if the federal right to an abortion is overturned, abortion will be governed by the laws of each state. Is it really reasonable to assume that all fifty states will vote to ban abortion in all cases? Or is it more reasonable to assume the converse: that most states would allow abortion in at least some cases? Elder lays out the numbers:
USA Today conducted a state-by-state analysis. Their analysis expects 11 "conservative states" to immediately pass laws prohibiting abortion. But those "conservative states" only had 122 abortion providers in 2000, less than 7 percent of the nation's 1,819 abortion providers. "Most of those 122 providers (65) are in Texas," writes USA Today. "If pro-choice forces can hold on to Texas (not unlikely, given the feisty Democratic minority's tendency to flee to Oklahoma to deny the Legislature a quorum when its members are miffed) we're down to 57 providers. If the Democrats controlling the Alabama and Arkansas legislatures decided to act like Democrats, not Dixiecrats, that total could fall to 36."
That leaves eight "conservative states" with only 36 abortion providers between them -- an already difficult proposition for any woman seeking an abortion in those states. In six of them -- Mississippi, Kentucky, the Dakotas, Missouri and Nebraska -- a woman cannot find an abortion provider in 97-98 percent of those states' counties. In other words, as it stands now, conservative states reduce abortion to almost non-existence, so a post-Roe world, at least in those states, changes little.
Elder goes on to quote numbers from a CBS poll that shows that a majority of Americans favor more, not less, restrictions on abortion. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that Roe v Wade should be overturned: 1) abortion, at least for the first trimester, would almost certainly remain legal in a clear majority of states; 2) abortion-on-demand (i.e., the right to abort a six or seven month fetus) would be restricted, as most Americans desire; 3) the right to abortion on demand, or a "right to privacy" is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and therefore falls to the states for legislation.
And before my social conservative readers flame me for excusing first trimester abortions: I'm not arguing the bedrock moral question here. I think it's clear the Supreme Court has no business making abortion law; the states' prospective laws would more closely reflect the will of the people; and it's probably easier to get abortion banned on a state by state basis anyway. And besides, if Roe v Wade is argued to be outside of federal jurisdiction, then a federal ban on abortion would be too.
The IFC: Whose Advice Is Relevant?
The insidious forces of multicultural relativism are still at it. Solomonia highlights a piece in the NY Daily News on the International Freedom Center proposed for Ground Zero:
A global network of human rights museums is urging the International Freedom Center to downplay America in its exhibits and programs at Ground Zero, the Daily News has learned. [...]
"Don't feature America first," the IFC has been advised by the consortium of 14 "museums of conscience" that quietly has been consulting with the Freedom Center for the past two years over plans for the hallowed site. "Think internationally, where America is one of the many nations of the world."
How wonderful. I can sense the looming presence of words like "hegemony", "privilege" and "arrogance".
"We have many, many advisers who have given us lots of advice," Richard Tofel, Freedom Center president, said last week. "Some of it we've taken and some of it we haven't - that's the nature of advice."
He said the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington had most inspired the IFC's vision, and that the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Illinois was also offering extensive advice.
Fine. But it remains to be seen whose advice will be followed--that of the Nation Constitution Center, or recommendations like the following from the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience:
"Help distinguish between American people and the U.S. government in exhibits ..."
"Involve the United Nations, UNESCO and other international bodies."
"Distinguishing between the American people and the U.S. government" is of course an tired old canard trotted out by authoritarian groups of all stripes. As much as we like to believe otherwise, our government is actually very representative, compared to most of the rest of the world--that's why our presidential elections are decided by a few percentage points in the center. And getting the U.N. involved in the ground zero museum is laughable on its face.
On September 11, the United States was attacked by a group of Islamofascists. The targets were all located in the US. Why isn't a simple memorial to the dead enough?
We do not need a museum on the site, much less a museum that involves the U.N. and helps distinguish between the American people and our government.
August 21, 2005
Troublesome Thoughts
Andrew McCarthy has not been happy with the direction the US is taking in the war on terror. As further evidence he cites this Washington Post story (all emphases mine):
Kurdish politicians negotiating a draft constitution criticized the U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Saturday for allegedly pushing them to accept too great a role for Islamic law in his drive to complete the charter on time.
Although a Sunni delegate made similar charges, U.S. officials declined to comment publicly while they worked with politicians as a Monday deadline loomed. [...]
Kurds also contend that provisions in the draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high court, which would interpret the constitution. That would potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and other civil matters to religious law and could harm women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and some women's groups.
Khalilzad supported those provisions and urged other groups to accept them, according to Kurds involved in the talks.
"Really, we are disappointed with that. It seems like the Americans want to have a constitution at any cost," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitutional committee. "These things are not good -- giving the constitution an Islamic face.
Other delegates also complained about pressure from Khalilzad.
"His main interest is to push the constitution on time, no matter what the constitution has in it,'' said Salih Mutlak, a Sunni delegate who has been outspoken against some compromise proposals.
"No country in the world can draft their constitution in three months. They themselves took 10 years," Mutlak said, referring to the United States. "Why do they wish to impose a silly constitution on us?"
Now, these are individual delegates' opinions and interpretations. They could be motivated by their own agendas; even if sincere, those comments and their implications might take a different turn in reality. And, I'm certainly not qualified to do an in-depth cultural analysis of the interrelationships of all the factions in Iraq.
But there are a couple of big picture issues here that bother me a lot. There is a strong sense here that the constitution is being rushed to completion on an American schedule. As the Iraqi told Austin Bay and as delegate Mutlak pointed out, writing an effective and fair constitution has taken other countries years.
And secondly, there is the baffling US acquiescence to the idea of an official Islamic presence in the government when there are considerable segments of the society who oppose it. Andrew McCarthy:
It is not our place to fix what ails Islam. But it is utter recklessness to avert our eyes from the fact that militant Islam thrives wherever Islam reigns. That is a fact. When and where militant Islam thrives, America and the West are endangered. That is also a fact. How can we possibly be urging people who wisely don’t want it to accept the government-institutionalized supremacy of Islam?
If these reports prove to be true, I will have some serious personal analysis to do. I and millions of other people in this country (both Republicans and Democrats) are gravely concerned with the current inability of the US to control its borders. If it turns out the administration is pushing a flawed constitution on the Iraqis just for the sake of political expediency, the combination of these two issues might cause a sea change in my evaluation of this president.
But don't worry, I won't be joining Cindy Sheehan's camp.
Our "Children" In Iraq
I don't have a military background and don't even know anyone who currently serves. But based on my reading and on interviews and clips from TV, I can't help but be impressed by the overall professionalism of our military. Of course there are still screw-ups and bad apples among both the enlisted and officers, but I'd bet big money that that percentage is at historic lows.
So when Mark Steyn writes (via Powerline) about how the antiwar Left characterizes our soldiers as "children", he sets off in high relief chronic intellectual dishonesty of the Left:
They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing. [...]
The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.
Steyn reports that he receives many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and "they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd...". After hearing these men and women on TV and reading their blogs, it's clear that Steyn is right. As usual.
August 20, 2005
Cindy Sheehan's Friends
At Cindy Sheehan's side since Aug. 6 when she began her antiwar protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch have been three groups that openly support the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. troops: Code Pink-Women For Peace, United for Peace & Justice, and Veterans For Peace.
Those organizations were represented at a mock "war crimes" trial in Istanbul that on June 27 produced a joint declaration backing the insurgency. Based on the United Nations Charter, it said "the popular national resistance to the occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom."
The Istanbul statement also rejected U.S. efforts to leave behind a democratic government in Iraq, asserting: "Any law or institution created under the aegis of occupation is devoid of both legal and moral authority."
Emphases are mine. No further comment necessary.
Posted at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Posner vs. Keller
Bill Keller of the New York Times has openly attacked Richard Posner's essay that appeared in the July 31 edition of the New York Times Book Review. Posner noted the precipitous decline of newspaper readership, and proceeded to analyze the stresses and strains becoming apparent in the MSM in light of the competitive pressure being applied by the new media, particularly blogs.
Keller will have none of it, and basically accuses Posner of being incapable of understanding the special status that Keller thinks the MSM deserves:
The saddest thing is that Judge Posner's market determinism leaves no room for the other dynamics I've witnessed in my 35 years in newspapers: the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better, the intellectual satisfaction of puzzling through a complicated issue, the competitive gratification of being first to discover a buried story, the pride in striving to uphold a professional code of fair play, the quest for peer recognition and, yes, the feedback from attentive and thoughtful readers. He makes no allowance for the possibility that conscientious reporters and editors are capable of setting aside their personal beliefs or standing up to their advertisers (and the prejudices of their readers) to do work they believe in.”
The two most important points about what Keller is saying here are: 1) Keller clearly abhors any hint of "market determinalism". What he's referring to is competition, of course. This is special status writ large: Bringing News To The Public is the job of professional journalists, a calling evidently closer to academic intellectuals (with their shield of tenure) than to ordinary jobs in the market economy. 2) First in Keller's list of special considerations is "the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better..." And exactly how does a journalist "make" the world better? Whose "better" are talking about? Who gets to define what a "better" world is? I'd love a world in which there is no designated hitter, where cretinous drivers didn't run red lights, and in which I never had to hear rap music again. Is that the world you had in mind Mr. Keller?
Of course every reporter and editor has some inherent prejudices, but I want no part of news journalists wanting to change the world. Keep it on the editorial page, and off of the front page.
Posted at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)Are We Rushing The Iraqi Constitution?
I wonder sometimes: is the US making a mistake in holding the Iraqi constitution writers' feet to the fire to keep them on schedule? Austin Bay's correspondent, writing as The Iraqi, points out that it took five years to create the first Iraqi royal constitution under the British, and that the Japanese under MacArthur took seven. The Iraqi concludes:
The big silent majority are trying to live day by day and hope for a better future; they lived for 50 years under temporary constitutions (AKA None) changed by will of tyrants. Federal Iraq? Fine with me, but no loopholes, no secession, one army, no lebanization, and Islam should be a source not the source.
Women and men should be treated equal unequivocally, no turnaround or ambiguous articles elsewhere.
I add my humble voice to the number of respectable Iraqi intellectuals www.elaph.com [in arabic--Jeff] who proposed a 5-year waiting period before writing a constitution, mean while we can still use the interim one.
As Austin Bay notes, his friend knows that his opinions are just that--opinions. But his ideas are provacative. After all, the interim constitution provides for a representative Iraqi government; it's not like Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority were still in charge. The whole point of this operation was to give Iraqis an effective government. I'd hate to see something less than ideal enacted just to give us Americans a nice tidy schedule.
Posted at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)August 19, 2005
Conspiracy Theories
I am deeply suspicious of conspiracy theories. I've heard otherwise rational people calmly state their belief in whoppers that are just beyond belief--you'd think that if these folks would extend their thinking just a little bit, they'd realize their pet theory would have to overcome astronomical odds for the outcome to align with their expectations. For example, I've never heard how Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld were actually profiting from all that Iraqi oil. What's the mechanism? Swiss bank accounts? Secret wire transfers? Carrier pigeon?
But Streiff at Redstate.org makes the most succinct summary of why conspiracy theories are invariably bullshit. This sums up my feelings perfectly (emphasis mine):
I have been in fairly responsible positions in the Army and the federal government in my career thus far and this experience has made me a complete skeptic on the subject of conspiracies. The military and the government are just too big to organize anything more complicated than a two-car funeral and they just never paid us enough money to keep our mouths shut. These two immutable facts conclusively explain why the government neither found alien bodies in Roswell nor did it kill JFK.
The two key points are 1) most conspiracy theories require large numbers of people to keep absolutely silent about a Very Big Secret. It's just unreasonable to expect a group of more than a few people to keep quiet. 2) In this age of instant cable media celebrities, the larger the group of supposed conspirators, the greater the odds that someone will spill the beans to make a buck.
Another point: think Woodward and Bernstein. Those two guys were made for life after they broke the Watergate story, and there are countless bright, aggessive reporters who'd love to follow in their footsteps as gods of journalism.
But belief in conspiracy theories is emotion-driven, so I expect we'll never be rid of them.
Posted at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Reliable Ol' Krugman
Mark Coffey at Decision '08 dismantles yet another Paul Krugman column. Really, Kruggie is so lacking in intellectual honesty that Mark had it easy--he was probably writing two other posts at the same time he was writing this one.
There's something pathetic about a person who would continue to harp about settled election results--from two elections ago. Yet the New York Times columnist and professor of economics does exactly that. Krugman:
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.
Mark responds with his version of the facts--and provides real sources for his claims. Pity the Ph.D. economist didn't do the same.
That’s not what the media consortiums found, anyway; Krugman is just flat lying.
What are the facts?
(1). In the first full study of Florida’s ballots [after the 2000 election] ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.
(2). A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.
The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.
So when Krugman tells you a new book says Gore won, keep the above FACTS in mind (and note my citations are from PBS and CNN, not exactly the most friendly venues for Republicans).
I've copied the links into my quotation from Mark's site--and they are still worth following after four years, just to see it in writing.
Citing sources is so pesky; things flow so much easier when one is unencumbered by backing up one's argument.
UDATE: Ouch! Evan Coyne Maloney at Brain Terminal wonders what the Times' editors are doing to earn their paycheck. Certainly not performing rudimentary fact-checking:
The Times should know better than to print Krugman's blatant misrepresentation. After all, the paper is listed as the first sponsor of the NORC study [that concluded that GWB would have won a statewide recount--Jeff]:
Included in the group are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Tribune Publishing (which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and a number of other newspapers), CNN, the Associated Press, the St. Petersburg Times and the Palm Beach Post.
Of course, because Krugman doesn't actually name the studies he's apparently citing, he might not be talking about these two, which were widely regarded as the most thorough, comprehensive and credible. Maybe the consortium of Mad Magazine, Cracked and Comedy Central came to different conclusions.
Two studies on Ohio 2004 that Krugman does cite were performed by (...drum roll...): the Democratic National Committee; and John Conyers Jr.
Laughable.
August 18, 2005
Intellectual Dishonesty
Keith Burgess-Jackson writes about intellectual dishonesty:
The commitment to truth imposes discipline on intellectuals. It rules out any methods that are not reliable in producing truth. It casts suspicion on emotions. It imposes strict standards on the investigation, discovery, analysis, and presentation of facts. It requires logical consistency (for if two propositions are inconsistent, then at least one of them is false). It prefers the simpler account to the more complex account, other things being equal. It prohibits certain fallacies, such as evaluating a belief on the basis of its origin and dismissing claims or arguments on the basis of the personal character of those who make them. It requires charity in interpretation, which means, among other things, giving the benefit of the doubt to one’s interlocutors. Intellectually honest people focus on propositions and arguments, not persons, character, or motives. This is not to say that we don’t or shouldn’t care about persons, character, or motives; it’s to say that these things have nothing directly to do with truth.
This is a topic that's always in the back of my mind when I listen to politicians or read about current affairs; it was even more pertinent last year, as the tortuous election cycle ground on and on. Professor Burgess-Jackson's definition is rigorous and fully developed, as it should be coming from a professional philosopher. My conclusions on the subject are simpler, but echo his most important points: high standards of discovery, analysis, and presentation of facts; logical consistency; avoidance of explanations requiring unnatural complexity; and the avoidance of logical fallacies.
Here's an example: "Yes, Saddam was an evil despot and killed many of his fellow Iraqis, but the US has killed over 100,000 civilians. We're no better than Saddam."
1) The 100,000 civilian deaths has been discredited, and no support for the claim is made in any event.
2) Justifying immoral behavior by citing other immoral behavior is a fallacy, whether the cited behavior is true or not.
I'm not a expert in logical argument, but the anti-war left and candidate Kerry made for easy practice.
Hand Wringing By The 9/11 Commission
AJStrata at The Strata-Sphere continues his recognized excellent coverage of the Able Danger affair. By the second paragraph AJ is on a roll:
Basically the commission is saying hurry up and tell us what you know because our reputations are being fried out here. My two cents to the Pentagon: take your time, get it right and ignore the has beens - they had their chance.
Emphasis mine. They had their chance, indeed.
Posted at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)The Fine Art Of Bullshitting
Dave at Logical Meme has a great analysis of a piece by Jim Holt in the New Yorker. The topic is the ongoing battle over the validity of objective truth, and sub-battles and ramifications thereof. Holt discusses the essay On Bullshit by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, and Dave notes:
While Frankfurt playfully argues for a rigid distinction between lying and bullshitting, bullshitting is really a more sophisticated form of lying, one that provides the bullshitter with escape-hatches of plausible deniability and room for counter-accusations that one’s accuser has “misinterpreted” what one has said.
Dave goes on to give some examples of non-bullshitters: Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, and George Bush. Their positions are easy to discern, and at least relatively consistent--there are principles guiding what they say, even though the principles themselves may be faulty, or worse. (I'm not sure that I agree completely--consistency alone might not be enough. At least there should be a variant strain: "Bullshitting by outrageous premise.")
On the other hand, Bill Clinton and John Kerry are bullshitters (Dave cites Clinton's "the meaning of 'is'") who basically let the needs of each situation govern their pronouncements--consistency of ideas is not something to fuss over.
Dave continues with a sharp discussion of the Garden of Eden for bullshitters: the liberal arts academy with its embrace of postmodern relativsm.
Very interesting stuff.
Posted at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)A Good Suggestion For GWB
Cal Thomas has a good suggestion for the President:
There are many valid reasons why President Bush should not meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq. There is one reason he should and that reason trumps the others. [...]
Yes, the media would love to have her meet with the president in private. It would duly record her predictable statement that he was insensitive and uncaring and that he did not respond to her concerns or complaints. It would be a well-choreographed attack on the president.
Here's the reason he should meet with her, but not alone. Other relatives of dead and wounded soldiers and some of the soldiers, themselves, should be included. He might also invite a few Iraqis who support the effort to free a people long held in bondage by Saddam Hussein and who face new bondage under the totalitarian dictatorship of Islamofacism if this effort fails.
The president should hold the meeting in a public place. Let the criticism flow, but let Iraqi women tell their stories about rape and torture at the hands of Saddam's now-dead sons. Allow Iraqi men to tell about life under Saddam and how grateful they are that he is gone. Wounded soldiers and families of the dead would speak in support of the war effort. Members of Sheehan's own family could come. They posted a letter on the Drudge Web site in support of the president.
Emphases are mine.
I think this would be stunningly effective...Imagine having someone there like Mohammed at Iraq the Model, who recently gave a memorable reply to Sheehan:
I know how you feel Cindy, I lived among the same pains for 35 years but worse than that was the fear from losing our loved ones at any moment. Even while I'm writing these words to you there are feelings of fear, stress, and sadness that interrupt our lives all the time but in spite of all that I'm sticking hard to hope which if I didn't have I would have died years ago. [...]
Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not