McCain's Reasonable Honesty His Downfall?
by neolibertarian
Democrats are playing dirty, especially Howard Dean, who has led the charge to maliciously and blatantly misinterpret John McCain's comment that an uneventful, peaceful occupation of Iraq for 100 years would be acceptable.
In response to a town hall question about staying in Iraq for 50 years, McCain said "make it a hundred." Then he said "That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." Yet somehow Howard Dean, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as tons of media types, have twisted that into an endless war with troops fighting and dying.
McCain himself compared it to Korea and Japan, and we've had a presence in those countries as well as others like Germany and Iceland for over half a century - and those countries aren't overwhelmingly violent toward us. Iceland doesn't really even have a military, it relies on the US for that purpose.
I'm not certain that 100 years in any foreign country is necessarily a good thing. It can breed resentment - on the part of the military country for uncompensated support (most of Europe still owes the US for the postwar aid programs), on the part of the host country for an unwelcome presence, and it can heighten tension during periods of disagreement. But the presence can also have positive (if somewhat expensive) effects, such as projecting force, providing stability, and showing commitment.
Regardless of the merits of the issue of peacefully remaining in a country, though, the Democrats want to smear McCain as a crazy warmonger and will step on the principles of charitable debate and honesty to do so.
How is it that the Democrats can fight their entire campaign on the premise that Republicans are evil slanderers when they're willfully misinterpreting a mainstream opinion (if politically insensitive) into a hyper-extreme one? Clearly the Democrats are at least as bad when it comes to tough campaigning. In this case, though, McCain has alienated supporters and suspended staff in order to enforce his demand for a clean campaign, as well as defend Max Cleland and John Kerry from the unfair attacks Democrats cite. He defended both Hillary and Obama as good and patriotic Senators, defended Obama from using his middle name as a slur, and has gone out of his way to play nice with the two candidates. And the Democrats' high-minded response? Slander him as a heartless warmonger.
Of course, McCain does have support for argument that a prolonged presence is reasonable. At the time of the invasion, a General said this: "[W]e'll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right." That was General McPeak, Obama endorser and war critic, who has featured very prominently as a character witness for Obama in the last week.
Defunding the Iraqis
by neolibertarian
The House voted yesterday to approve $120-odd billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they included an enormous amount of criminally-abusive pork barrel, and of course a timetable that the troops have to be out before the 2008 election. Oops, technically it's August 2008 as the deadline, but I'm sure that it's just an amazing coincidence that they want the troops pulling out just as the Democrats are having their presidential nominating convention, and not some horribly transparent attempt at making political hay out of abandoning an entire regime to sword-wielding, suicide-bombing fascists.
I'm sure the Democrats would love to have Obama or whoever get up on stage in late summer 2008 to declare Democratic victory over Bush and declare freedom's defeat in Iraq. The Kossacks would go crazy at whatever applause line they turned the abandonment of Iraq into.
Fortunately, Bush will veto the bill if it even gets passed in the Senate. Let's all remember the LAST time the US decided to start the Iraqis on the path to freedom and then abruptly dumped them when the fight looked too hard: the 1991 uprisings and mass slaughter.
George H. W. Bush urged the Iraqis into revolution the day before the coalition started bombing Baghdad with this broadcast comment: "There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations."
These words, probably less than a throw-away sentence for the harshly-neorealist Bush-41, helped prompt the Shi'a and Kurds to rise up in the wake of the Coalition attacks. The Coalition, however, signed a separate peace with Saddam on February 28, and left the Iraqis largely to their own devices. Saddam was left in power and his forces were not disarmed.
The uprisings in the north and south of the country were violently suppressed. Although many segments of the Iraqi armed forces joined the rebels and they did have some weapons, Saddam had helicopter gunships and artillery. The Iraqi loyalist forces counter-attacked with indiscriminate violence. Gunships attacked civilians, artillery landed fire in residential areas, tanks fired through neighborhoods, soldiers roamed the cities and executed young men. Napalm and chemical weapons were used on the civilian populations and holy sites were desecrated, sometimes being used as centers for rape and torture.
The loyalist crackdown was itself a series of genocidal acts, aimed at weakening two ethnic-cultural groups, not at simply suppressing a rebellion. The Marsh Arabs, living in southern Iraqi wetlands, were targeted for ethnic cleansing; their marshlands were drained of water and something like ninety percent of their population was either killed, displaced or forcibly ejected from their ancestral home.
Why didn't the Bush administration help? Fear of repeating Vietnam is often cited, but I think a large part of it is the neorealism of the Bush-41 administration. They didn't want to lose Arab support, they didn't want to get dragged into regime change. This was the same administration that nearly ignored the former Soviet Union even though it clearly needed some guidance on democratization. The US leadership at the end of the Cold War went from emphasizing Soviet democracy and human rights under Reagan to ignoring them under Bush-41. It's no surprise that the same people who failed to capitalize on democratic hopes in the Soviet Union wouldn't really mind a bloody tyrant in Baghdad.
Moreover, Bush-41 emphasized balancing power over expanding liberty in his foreign policy. He accepted the extremely anti-liberty actions of allies and enemies in favor of the balance they supposedly provided (apparently displacing hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shi'a into neighboring countries was considered balancing).
Today, the Democrats are trying to withdraw amidst very scattered and unfocused arguments, the essence of which is that this war is unwinnable. They tell us that violence is getting worse, this is a civil war, these people will never stop killing each other, and the Iraqis must do this by themselves. In other words, let them all kill each other and leave us out of it. That's precisely what the Bush-41 State Department urged when it called the March 1991 genocide and war crimes 'internal Iraqi affairs.'
People are dying now. The Iraqi forces are already dying in greater numbers than Westerners in this battle. They're trying to get involved in the fight, but we can't label the Iraqis as one big group that's either 100% with us or 100% against us. They have their violent elements and they have their democratizing elements, and without our help you know which side will probably win.
A retreat now would be demoralizing for those we wish to win in Iraq and a supreme morale boost for those we wish to see defeated. Are we going to leave the Iraqis to die, just as Bush did in 1991?
This isn't just an Iraqi fight. This is our fight, too. They're fighting for freedom and against Islamists. It isn't a perfect fight by any stretch of the imagination, but we can't run just because victory doesn't fall into our laps. The enemies of Iraq are the enemies of the West, the enemies of tolerance, the enemies of women, the enemies of gays, the enemies of Jews, the enemies of free speech, free religion, free thought, free markets and free people. They are the enemies of freedom.
Will America continue to stand as freedom's protector, or will we succumb to isolationism, apathy, intellectual sloth and racism and abandon the Arab world to the steady advance of nihilism, theocracy and fascism?
Yeah, That Looks Like A Bomb
by neolibertarian
I was wondering just what the ATHF boxes that caused Boston to have a fit looked like. Before seeing this from YTMND (warning: this link has sound) my take was that Boston was overreacting in trying to prosecute the advertising guys, but not necessarily in being over-cautious about the ads themselves.
Now it's hard to not think that the Boston cops way overreacted. Who puts bright lights and images on a bomb that isn't going to go off quickly? And why would they be in places where people can clearly see them? It's understandable that they reacted with some caution, but you'd hope that SOMEBODY would have pointed out that, even attached to a bridge, having a big light show on a bomb doesn't fit any traditional bomb profile. And none of the other cities in the ad campaign had this problem, and neither did Boston for the first couple weeks they were up.
Now that the danger is clearly nonexistent Boston shouldn't be blaming the ad guys and throwing them in prison. At most, we're talking about graffiti charges (except the boxes are presumably far easier to clean up) and more likely criminal 'leaving-things-on-other-people's-property.'
Whoever the Mayor of Boston is (Thomas Menino), he comes off like a self-important jerk on TV, trying to criminally prosecute a couple weirdos from an ad agency when it's his own cops that decided to blow up a bunch of Lite-Brites.
The Mayor of Boston is probably just trying to deflect criticism from the fact his cops thought these things were bombs, yet they didn't notice them for a full two weeks. If the cops never assumed they were bombs, that would be one thing, and if they assumed they were bombs but caught them within hours (or minutes) of being set up, that would be another. What we have here is a bad combination, telling us that it takes Boston police two weeks to notice overtly placed, self-illuminating objects that they confuse with bombs.
God help us if the terrorists actually, you know, HIDE bombs, or god forbid use a fuse that's less than 14 days long. Those monsters probably won't even have the courtesy of attaching brightly-lit images on top of the bombs. Bastards!
This Menino guy, though, needs to cool off. The ad guys look weird but they didn't do anything all that serious, and certainly don't need jail time. Moreover, Menino shouldn't have extorted money from the Cartoon Network by threatening to go to the FCC and get their license to broadcast revoked. If anything, that sort of bullying should be criminal extortion. Menino should be kicked out of office and indicted for that.
The wikipedia entry on this whole issue lists reaction of six other cities besides Boston. It's funny that the three listed West Coast cities all have official reactions that there was no threat and/or no crime here. Chicago, Philly and New York, however, all got pissy and said that this is dangerous, Turner Broadcasting should pay for it, etc.
Seattle, WA: "To us, they're so obviously not suspicious ... We don't consider them dangerous."
Los Angeles, CA: "[N]o one perceived them as a threat."
Portland, OR: "At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred."
Maybe Boston needs to give its bomb squads more training in actually identifying bombs. Whatever happens, some people in Boston need to be fired, reorganized, retrained or something.
GOP Victory
by neolibertarian
There's some talk of how the Republicans might deserve to lose the House and that sometimes divided government results in leaner government (see VC here).
I can't say the GOP deserves to win, given its mistakes and misdirection on damn near everything. I can say, though, that a Democratic House would assume that dissatisfaction over Iraq propelled them to victory - and then proceed to block funding the President requests for Iraq reconstruction.
Failure in Iraq is dangerous to the region and the world. The Democrats' defunding of the reconstruction could virtually end the regime. With Islamists worldwide already beating the path to Iraq, a drawdown, pullout or defunding of the Iraqi democratic regime would incite them further.
Until Iraq can stand itself up, we have to be there to help. It's interesting that the same people who claimed in 2003 and 2004 that we need more and more and more allies in the War on Terror are trying to alienate our newest ally.
Defeatist Democrats
by neolibertarian
I've been reading in a theme pattern lately. This week I read and finished American Slavery by Kolchin (edited by Eric Foner) and the week before I read and finished Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution by Foner. I'd also read Foner's more famous Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men. Now I'm just beginning Death of Reconstruction by an author whose name escapes me (she's female and has three names, I recall). So the theme is generally books covering the fight and struggle over black civil rights and slavery.
What's interesting is the parallels I can draw between the Republicans and (Northern) Democrats regarding the Civil War and the Republicans and Democrats in the War on Terror (plus the Cold War Republicans and Democrats, for fun). In all three comparisons, the Republicans are:
- supporting greater military action and preparedness
- pushing patriotism as a key part of their arguments
- placing liberty and democracy as the ultimate justification for military action
- on the winning side (forgive my assumption that the West will win the War on Terror, but come on, we're freakin' rich and we're morally right)
And in all three, the Democrats are:
- complaining at every setback that the fight must be surrendered
- consistently trying to diminish or reduce the reformist goals and tendencies of the Republicans
- trying to defend and prove their patriotic credentials
- pandering to nativism and to cost, rather than patriotism, as a reason to halt the fighting
Of course, it breaks down a little with post-WWI and pre-Pearl Harbor comparisons, but three critical struggles of this nation and the Republicans dragged whiny Democrats to victory and greater liberty.
Israel and Hezbollah
by neolibertarian
Israel's attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon is justified. Most everybody acknowledges this, even UN officials, but some people are having problems with the violence reaching Lebanon. But as long as Israel is careful about targeting attacks, this is all reasonable and justified. Let me break the issue down, so forgive the numbering.
First: Hezbollah is dangerous. Until September 11th, it was responsible for more American deaths than any other Islamist organization. It used suicide bombing tactics against the US. We withdrew under Reagan from Lebanon, and Hezbollah took that as a sign of our weakness and their strength. We validated their terrorism.
Second: Hezbollah will not go peacefully. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 after a difficult 18-year struggle. They invaded in response to PLO terrorists based in southern Lebanon, though the UN and others heaped criticisms and resolutions on Israel despite the clear justification and the inability of Lebanon (amid a bitter civil war) to stop the terror itself. Israel withdrew and the UN verified the withdrawal to the Blue Line (including siding with Israel and Syria on the Shebaa Farms issue). They don't exist -as they argue- to keep Israel out of Lebanon, which was guaranteed by the UNIFIL force on the border. They used the UNIFIL sites as human shields to launch attacks on Israel and not be targeted themselves (and the UN knowingly allowed Hezbollah to use them). Hezbollah is not a reasonable actor or a good faith negotiator. They are violent terrorists who repeatedly provoked Israel into this conflict.
Third: Lebanon cannot and will not remove Hezbollah. The Lebanese armed forces are not capable of defeating Hezbollah. Moreover, the fear of another civil war, as well as losing to such a dangerous group, is enough to deter the government from trying to fight Hezbollah. It's not even clear that the Lebanese non-Shi'i leadership is entirely on-board with the hypothetical idea of diarming Hezbollah, though it's at least clear the leadership is afraid to say much in that direction.
Fourth: Hezbollah must be disarmed for the good of Lebanon, Israel, the region, and the West. Hezbollah has shown its violence toward the West, and is classified as a terrorist organization by the US, Israel, Canada and Australia, and the militant wing is widely recognized as a terrorist group. Israel will not be secure as long as Hezbollah is an armed threat; it opposes the mere existence of Israel. Hezbollah has effectively declared war on Israel, and there's no reason why such a group of people should continue to exist. Further, Lebanon is not going to be an effective democracy while Hezbollah exists as a military force.
Fifth: Hezbollah's destruction helps clear the path for Lebanese democracy. Though Israelis generally disagree, the spread of democracy is critical to defeating terrorism. We can kill terrorists fairly easily - they seldom have training as good as our soldiers, they cannot risk open warfare or even wear uniforms in sight, they hide in houses and caves and cannot generally base their troops in permanent establishment, they have no access to higher technology like satellite networks, and they focus on weak or exposed targets instead of military ones. But to truly defeat the ideology Islamism itself, as we did with monarchism, fascism and communism, we must once again show the moral and practical advantages of liberalism. That means bringing democracy to the world, especially the Muslim parts of it. If we can remove Hezbollah, the major obstacle to a democratic and empowered Lebanese government after the Syrian withdrawal, then Lebanon has a good chance. Advances and successes in Lebanon and in Iraq can reinforce each other, and inspire movements in iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsehwere. This is in our long-term interests for defeating Islamic terrorism.
Finally: Islamist terrorism is violent and reprehensible. It must be opposed, rooted out, and defeated.
In 1974, armed PFLP men entered an apartment building in Kiryat Shmona (a border town common in the reporting the last few days) and killed eighteen people. Nine of them were children.
The proximate cause for Israel invading Lebanon in 1978 happened when 11 Palestinians with Fatah (the military wing of Arafat's party) went on a murderous rampage. They landed by boat, killed American photograhper Gail Rubin, then killed a cab driver and his passengers. Then they attacked a bus, hijacked it, and drove it toward Tel Aviv. En route, firing at other cars, they pulled over a second bus, killed some of the people on it and moved the rest to the first bus. They got into a shootout with the Israeli army (a unit led by Ehud Barak) and all of them died. The Coastal Road Massacre saw 37 Israelis killed and 73 wounded. There are Palestinian summer camps and a girls' school in Hebron named for the (female) leader named for the leader of the Fatah unit.
In April, 1983 a delivery van driven by a Hezbollah man detonated 400 pounds of explosive in the US embassy at Beirut, killing 63 people and wounding over 100. This attack was a clear act of war, and ended 17 American lives, in addition to the later bombing of a US barracks that killed 241 American peacekeepers. Twenty seconds after the barracks bombing, a second truck attacked the French forces and killed 58 paratroopers. A third truck that day leveled the HQ building.
We're dealing with violent people, and they must be stopped. I say we let the Israelis root out Hezbollah. If they ask, we should help the Israelis out with arms or funds.
It should be our job now to figure out what to do with Iran. It's funding and directing this whole mess and we need to step up our efforts there. Diplomacy is moving slowly for such a fanatical regime. Hopefully our European allies will realize that force and the threat of force may be required. If they never do, then we must, regrettably, go it alone yet again. Attacking Iran is hartdly an attractive option, though, so let's wait a while before getting into that whole mess.
Zarqawi Dead
by neolibertarian
I didn't blog on it, but Zarqawi is dead. Good. He was a murderer and a fool.
Hopefully the US will take this opportunity to push ahead and kill more terrorist leaders. Assassinations would be good at this point, on the style of Israel taking out Yassin.
Protests in Iran; Press the Contrast
by neolibertarian
Iran has been experiencing a lot of protests in the last week. The US ought to act quickly to capture the initiative in the inter-disciplinary struggle with Ahmadinejad. Giving active support to the reformist groups (offering them tons of air-time, both in the US through copious press conferences about them and with them, and regionally (maybe through US-backed media like Radio Sawa and Al Hurra tv).
The theocracy's opponents ought to be directly supported, because they show the lie of Ahdmadinejad's vision of Islam as the virtuous alternative to liberal democracy. If he can't even rally his own co-nationals to support the system they've had for over two and a half decades, how can he put forth Iran as the aegis for the Islamization of the West?
Ahmadinejad is, by his own choosing and design, a figure in the War on Terror. He hopes to be the main figure (kind of how Hitler was the main figure of World War II or Napoleon the main figure of the Napoleonic Wars). And the War on Terror, before anything, is an ideological struggle on par with the Cold War and other global conflicts. The US must be the promoter of freedom, individualism, and representative government - to contrast with the apparent Islamo-fascist values of nihilism, bigotry, misogyny and of course fear.
They stand directly opposed to freedom, including freedom of religion, of speech, of protest, of occupation, of residence, and of so many other things. Our job as supporters of freedom is to press the contrast.
Pressing the contrast means we show ourselves in support of freedom and our other values like tolerance and democracy. We must celebrate democracy and democracies by rhetorically and actively supporting new and emerging democracies and by chastising and excluding nascent dictatorships. We need to show the world the contrast so that they can see what the choices are.
Either you can be led by horribly violent and hateful people that will ban music, clothing, dancing, parties and entertainment they find distasteful (as has happened recently when terrorist-affiliated groups get influence of localities) or you can live your life as you please.
We pressed the contrast in the Cold War. Berlin was the best example, and a microcosm of the East-West German split, itself a microcosm of the East-West World split. West Berlin and the FRG (BRD) enjoyed an economic 'miracle,' democratic reformation and high levels of technology, safety and luxury by the 1960s. East Berlin and the GDR (DDR) were mired in comparative depression, horribly authoritarian politics that competed with the Nazi-era for Most Repressive Ever, and effectively stagnant levels of technology and luxury. Safety was widespread in the GDR, except for the omnipresent abuses of the Stasi secret police.
Pressing the contrast between East and West was what led to a huge stream of refugees escaping East Germany into West Berlin, until the Wall went up. The Wall itself was an amazingly clear example of pressing the contrast, one the East German leaders stupidly lobbied for themselves. To paraphrase Reagan addressing the House of Commons: in Europe the West's armies faced East to defend from invasion, while the Communist forces also faced East to stop their people from fleeing to the West.
The contrast between freedom and tyranny is the motivating power of the conflict. It explains to everybody why we fight, to ourselves, to our soldiers, to the people we're fighting, and to the people we fight to save. It should always be our policy to press the contrast in the War on Terror. Being the good guys is more important than actually killing the bad guys in a conflict like the war on terror.
They're already weak, that's why they use terrorism instead of armies, and remote training camps instead of countries. We need to stem the tide of terrorist creation, and a great way to do that is to press the contrast.
If I had my way, we'd also get our allies (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc.) to agree to a joint statement that any person in a Muslim-majority country that isn't making satisfactory steps toward liberal democracy can apply for refugee status to live in one of these free countries. That should put a little fire under 'em. Of course, that wouldn't happen because too many people are unable to separate the terrorists from the other Muslims (and the Japanese aren't terribly thrilled with the idea of Korean migrants, let alone other migrants). But it would be effective overall; it would show these authoritarian countries we mean business, it would show people around the world we're serious in our commitment to liberal democracy, and it would provide lives of wealth and education to countless people (many of whom could return to their countries and join the reformist movements).
Ahmadinejad's letter to the President was defining the terms of an ideological struggle. The Islamists have seen themselves on the level of a global ideology at least since Qutb argued it in Milestones. He placed Islam on par with Western democracy and Eastern socialism. He characterized Islam as an ideology and not a religious or ethnic distinction. Ahmadinejad pretends to believe the same thing, challenging Bush to convert the US to a Muslim country.
If he wants an ideological struggle, then let's give him one. Let's press the contrast. Give aid to democrats and reformers who want it; keep up a continuous rhetorical defense of freedom and democracy; publicly and loudly praise Muslim advocates of liberty; emphasize in press conferences every instance of honor killing, every small-time thug band that breaks up a coed party, every person blown to pieces by a Palestinian suicide bomb; don't let up the heat.
The difference between sides is what animates a conflict.
We knew the South was wrong, socially and economically, and we knew that slavery was the heart of it all. The conflict was easier because slavery was the degrading difference (even well before the war, the vast majority of Northerners were opposed to slavery, they just didn't want to take it from the South - but to say the strong majority of Yankees were anything less than anti-slavery is mistaken). This is the best stanza from battle Hymn of the Republic:In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
We knew the Central Powers were undemocratic, and it was in part the fall of the Czar that helped the US into World War I. The Germans were imperialist and anti-democratic, threatening peaceful, democratic countries like Belgium, France and the UK. Granted, the conflict was hardly clear-cut because it didn't seem to be about anything, but the clear moral difference was there for most Americans. Even before entering the war was a possibility, the US population was largely rooting for the republics to prevail against the empires.
The contrast in WWII was especially clear, with new democracies falling left and right before fascist tyranny. Ike had this to say in the D-Day order:The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine; the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe; and security for ourselves in a free world... The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
The Cold War, of course, has a great model for pressing the contrast. Reagan knew perhaps more than any other President that we had to press the contrast with the USSR, and I have tons of quotes, lengthy and articulate, of Reagan and Shultz pressing the contrast. But I think this one from Reagan is especially appropriate here:Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.
Miss Iraq
by neolibertarian
Apparently the Miss Iraq pageant went through some troubles. First nine of the 20 contestants got scared and didn't show up at all. Then the winner resigned and fled amid threats on her life. The first and second runners-up declined the crown and now it's down to the third runner-up to be the face of iraqi beauty pageants. Both the reisgned winner and the current queen are Christian.
The queen is very concerned both with extremists' threat to peace and with the perception of Iraqis and of beauty contestants. She wants it to be clear that the contestants were not stupid and were professional women. Moreover she wants to show the world a more positive side of Iraq.
Inspired by She's A Lady, by Tom Jones:
She's got style, she's got grace
Muslims won't ler her show her face
She's Iraqi
whoa, whoa, whoa, she's Iraqi
Racial Profiling In Ports Deal
by neolibertarian
I can't believe I didn't formulate the words before, but Glenn Reynolds has it right on. The idea that a government enterprise can't run a half-dozen US ports because of race and nationality is (at best) racial profiling. Of course, that's just a narrower version of racism (discrimination on the basis of race), whatever you might call it.
As the Instapundit pointed out, it's interesting that Democrats (traditionally viewed as opponents of racial profiling in, say, airports or subways) would be more supportive of racial profiling against Dubai Ports World than Republicans. Obviously a huge portion of the issue has to do with the President, and were President Kerry making this decision we can assume most Republicans and most Democrats would be likely to reverse sides. But that's awfully revealing in and of itself.
If the opposition to a UAE enterprise's involvement, then racial profiling is fairly obviously a big factor. After all, if it were based on the UAE as a country then we'd see that they're a good ally, allowing our ships access to their ports, giving us support in the war on terror, and generally being an ally (as far as Gulf States go). They do, naturally, have some human rights problems (such as a few religious freedom issues, though comparatively few for the region) but one of their larger human rights abuses is the manner of arrest and detention of suspected terrorists, meaning they potentially abused human rights FOR the US. The only real reason to single out the UAE here is because they're the Arab.
It would appear that a lot of people think we're at war with Islam or Arabs (or Arab Muslims) and not just with radical Islam or hostile Arab regimes. That's unfortunate, because we need Muslim allies to show that liberal democracy is the superior alternative to Islamic fascism.
Buy Lego!
by neolibertarian
Christopher Hitchens has an article at Slate on standing by Denmark. I have to strongly agree.
More politicians should put themselves up at the front of this dispute and support Denmark and free speech against the lies, hatred and threats of violent mobs. They can work themselves into a frenzy about an Arab ally taking over the non-security aspects of our ports, but when the very basis of liberal democracy is attacked by rioting Muslims they're nowhere to be seen.
Free speech will of course survive Islamic extremism, if only because free speech has fewer internal contradictions and allows for a more prosperous society. But that doesn't mean it's inevitable, or that radical bigoted Muslims shouldn't be put in their place.
Mosque Bombing in Samarra
by neolibertarian
The Wednesday bombing of al-Askari mosque was obviously an attempt to try and kick off a civil war. Unfortunately, it does seem like it could become a contributing factor or catalyst to one. I don't think it'll happen, though, since the majority of elites, citizens and politicians in Iraq are committed to a multi-ethic, multi-sectarian state. Iraq the Model's description of Iraq's reaction shows how serious it is. Riots, reprisals, protests, calls for solidarity and attempts to rebuild are all part of the situation. The fact that so many calls for Iraqi unity have been heard from the beginning gives me real faith in the Iraqis to weather the storm. It's especially encouraging that they're doing this as a country, with their own politicians, civil society groups and civic leaders getting involved; that's one mark of a society ready for liberal democracy.
Here's the damage:
So what's the deal with the mosque? Well, it's named for the Eleventh Imam, Hassan Al-Askari. He's buried there, along with his father, the Tenth Imam, Ali Al-Hadi. Al-Askari's son (if he did indeed exist) was/is Muhammad Al-Mahdi. The Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, is supposed to be of the Prophet's house (family/bloodline), sharing Mohammed's name, and to bring about a world of peace, justice and Islam before judgment day. So in Shi'ism, the Mahdi is a sort of messiah, one of the more important and unique parts of the religion, and a major point of contention with the Sunnis.
The 10th and 11th Imams died (most likely) from poisoning, after living all their lives under house arrest by Sunni Caliphs. As the father and grandfather of the Mahdi, not to mention the last two adult Imams (the Mahdi supposedly fled the Abbasids at the age of five), their importance is quite high. Now factor in the history involved, since the two Imams were killed over 1,100 years ago. Al-Askari mosque is one of the holiest sites in Shi'ism.
Given the depth of the situation, it's noteworthy and impressive that the Shi'ite clerics are calling for restraint and condemning counter-attacks. Sistani, Sadr and others have all told their followers to leave Sunni holy places alone, with Sadr even send segments of his militia (The Mahdi Army) to protect Sunni shrines in majority-Shi'a areas (even though he sort of blames the occupation for the bombing).
Of course, over 100 people have been killed in reprisals already, most of them Sunnis. So there's a lot of emotion and it's already boiled over. Remember, the Middle East still has a lot of the old desert-tribal culture to it, where an eye for an eye is more about seeking revenge than achieving it. A lot of people are pissed off and they'll take it out on people who don't deserve it.
And of course, as anybody could have guessed, it looks like this was done by foreign Islamists (most likely in Iraq working for Zarqawi and Al Qaeda). Foreigners have already been arrested in connection with the bombing.
Well, to the Iraqis, all I can say is good luck. You've got a lot of good signs, but responding to terrorism with internal violence against Iraqis is hardly one of them.
UAE and USA Ports
by neolibertarian
I really don't get the trouble with the UAE government-owned corporation running the ports here. They won't be running security, so the only potential problem is what, that they'll destroy our country by running the ports inefficiently? Just strikes me as UNOCAL all over again.
It's funny that so many people who criticize the Administration for not garnering more allies in the Mideast think we should needlessly alienate one of our better allies on the Arabian peninsula.Update: We have troops and vehicles in UAE territory, potentially allowing them to see our state of readiness, see some technological advances, or to sabotage our ships. If we trust them enough to have warships and the like there, then why don't we trust them to be the titular owner of the non-security aspects of some ports? Just seems ridiculous.
Update Again: The most common argument against the UAE here seems to be that they recognized the Taliban before 9/11 (they promptly halted recognition after 9/11, as did Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). I guess people forget that the US gave millions to the Taliban to fight the drug war in mid-2001, even after they began tearing down ancient Buddhist statues, harboring terrorists, and brutalizing women. Not everybody makes good decisions. Saudis are tied to the funding and the violence of terrorism around the world, and are one of the most repressive regimes anywhere, yet they are a main ally for us.
Plenty of European states have relations with Hezbollah, which killed Americans with terrorist bombings several times in the early 80s. Japan, which is widespread in the electronics and automotive industries here, has a policy of maintaining close relations to oil-producing and Arab states since the oil shocks of the 70s. And tons of countries, including the US, have expanding economic ties with the PRC.
Frankly, it comes off as racist or something, to only apply these standards to an Arab country. Whether or not it's substantively racist is another question. Certainly, though, it's a poor argument.
Uh Oh
by neolibertarian
Looks like TIA, the Total Information Awareness Database, wasn't canceled after all. It was alone as one of the few constitutional violations that Congress nixed in the year after the attacks.
The plan was to build a database using all available information - records from libraries, travel agencies, banks, credit cards, ISPs, and so forth - and thereby to have information on all citizens in the US. The information could be used for intelligence purposes in the war on terror, presumably for evidence and connections, and for finding ostensibly innocent behaviors with statistical connections to terrorism (for example, having a large amount of money in a checking account, booking flights to certain airports, etc.)
Obviously this is a huge infringement of privacy, since all this stuff requires warrants. So, a constitutional no-no that Congress defunded. It was run by Poindexter, of Iran-Contra infamy, under DARPA. Perhaps creepiest of all was the logo.
How Orwellian; and the "TOTAL" part doesn't help. It was later changed from 'terrorist' to 'total.' Also, 'Iao' is allegedy the name of some Masonic-related god. Basically, it's like somebody was trying to scare people.
DailyKos has the story
here. He presents this problem as the executive subverting the legislative (only natural, for one whose main issue is hating the current occupant of the White House), but that's horribly simplistic. The suggestion is that it'd be ok if only Congress had authorized it.
The real breakdown here is that Congress regularly authorizes, participates in and demands constitutional violations itself, and pays little attention to issues of rights or privileges that don't play to pet issues or inmterest groups. Congress doesn't pay attention to the Constitution, why should the White House?
So now we're stuck in a very scary situation, made scarier by the fact that government in general doesn't faithfully abide by the limitations of the Constitution. If the ends justify the means, as many on the left have suggested happens when the Constitution seems to not authorize or to forbid certain of their pet projects, then all somebody needs is a good intent. Since it's obvious that defending the country is a good end, the established precedent allows unabashed privacy invasion.
The ends, of course, don't justify the means. But it's awfully hard to explain that when government is infested with people who selectively decide that REALLY REALLY WANTING TO! is a valid argument for overriding natural liberties and constitutional rights.
Fortunately, this is such a scary project that I think Congress will act more decisively to stop it this time. Here's hoping.
Ask Imam!
by neolibertarian
Doing some wikipedia browsing on legal schools of Muslim thought, the Hanafi entry led me to AskImam.org. It's apparently a website for questions on moral/religious law under the Hanafi school of sharia. The Hanafi school is generally considered the most liberal of the four main schools.
What I find funny is that even a relatively liberal school, targeted toward anglophone Muslims (there seem to be quite a few US and UK questioners) is still pretty out of sync with basic western values like equality of the sexes. They seem to stick with the general Muslim view that divorce is almost wholly the province and prerogative of the husband, for example.
Still, it's interesting to read through the questions. It makes me realize how very dogmatic and ritualistic Islam practitioners can be. There ought to be a Reform Islam, like Reform Judaism, based on the principles more than the forms of the religion.Update: This is a good example of how even the Hanafi system has what would be considered in the US a horribly reactionary view (and what is objectively an unequal and sex-discriminatory perspective).
Second Update: Of course, on the other hand, this entry is at least reasonable in denouncing honor killing and mob justice like stoning.
"The Power of Ridicule"
by neolibertarian
I've often thought how interesting it is that we don't see more mockery of terrorists like Saddam or bin Laden. Obviously they've both been made fun of a lot. Saddam's scruffy face was an easy shot, and in Sept/Oct 2001 there were a lot of jokes describing Osama as an ugly goat-fornicator.
After WWII broke out, caricatures of the Germans and Japanese were rampant and common - though often overtly racist. And when the Germans rampaged through Belgiums, images of the 'Hun' slaughtering Belgium babies were widespead. Nobody rational wants to chracterize Arabs or Muslims as a group, but sometimes I think more people should insult Osama a little more.
Well, somebody else seems to have had the same idea. Maybe ridicule doesn't project the image the governments wants of itself, but here's a spirited defense of why ridicule could help the larger abstract conflict.Little if any American World War II-era ridicule had much effect on continental Europe, but it was still vital to the war effort. Ridicule can be a defensive weapon if it helps calm the fears of the public at home and give hope that they can indeed defeat the enemy. British and American boys sang anti-Hitler songs, mostly mocking the fuehrer’s private parts, as one might expect from adolescents, but laughing at the enemy during wartime helps one become less fearful and more optimistic of victory.
My biggest problem with ridicule as a weapon is that it tends to emphasize the irrational and emotional, rather than a well-reasoned critique of the enemy. Of course, making a 10,000-word critical rebuttal in response to a crude sketch or one-liner has its own drawbacks.
Stethem's Honor
by neolibertarian
Muhammad Ali Hammadi was just released by the German lander Nordrhein-Westfalen, most likely under orders/pressure from the federal government under Merkel. It appears the Germans released Hammadi, a convicted murderer and terrorist who ought to have been extradited to the US, but was instead convicted by the Germans, in exchange for the release of one of their agents, recently taken hostage. If so, this is an extremely dangerous practice, and one that does little good for the process as a whole, for the people involved, or for the victims of Hammadi (past and future).
This letter from Stethem's brother needs to be read to get a sense of the man the Germans released (tip to Barone).Mr. President,
I would like to provide you with an explanation as to why Muhammed Ali Hammadi's recent release by Germany, and your Administration's lack of any attempt to prevent it, is so upsetting to our family and to Americans everywhere. I am not writing you out of grief or anger but out of a hope that his example will inspire you to follow act on your own words and the dictates of your conscious in this War on Terror.
Robert Dean Stethem was singled out, beaten beyond recognition and tortured in order to make him scream into a transmitter (so that the tower would send a fuel truck). Not a cry was heard to come from him, despite the brutal beating he endured. Instead he chose to remain silent and endure the beatings because he knew that the only way a rescue attempt could be conducted by U.S. forces was if the aircraft remained on the ground.
After Robert was beaten and tortured and bleeding from puncture wounds all over his body, he was placed next to a 16-year old Australian girl. As bad as Robert was beaten, he had the courage and strength to comfort and console her. He told her that, "She would be okay and that she would get out of here alive." When she tried to return the comfort, he said, "No, I don't think so. I am the only one in my group that is not married and some of the guys have children, too." Some time later, Robert was again taken up to the cockpit and tortured in order to get the fuel. But it didn't work, he would not give in to them.
One of the hijackers, Muhammed Ali Hammadi, was so enraged that he dragged Robert to the door, pulled a trigger and shot Robert in the head. Then he dumped Robert's body onto the tarmac. While Robert was being dragged to the door, he knew that all he had to do in order to live was to cry into that transmitter, but he wouldn't do it. He would not give in to the demands of the terrorists. He would not allow the honor and dignity of America to be intimidated by the fear and pain that Hammadi and terrorists everywhere represent. Robert sacrificed his life in order to protect our liberty and defend our way of life.
You have rightly said, "Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done." You have truly said that "We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them." Robert lived by them. Robert also died by them. The motto of the USS SSTETHEM (DDG-63), named in Robert's honor, is "Steadfast and Courageous." I hope that his example, and the example of other heroes like him can inspire you to understand why allowing Germany to release Hammadi was a wrong. Justice was not done, Robert was not honored and Americans are not safer by allowing Hammadi to return to Lebanon and Hezbollah.
You know this, we know this and the American people know this.
The Stethem family
In other words, Hammadi is like a bad stereotype of a bloddthirsty terrorist, and he killed an American hero. The fact that the Germans wouldn't extradite appears (from the facts at hand) to be a small insult. But it may have been a fairly calculated attempt to hang onto bargaining chips.
I know the Israelis tend to engage in this sort of prisoner exchange deal, but it only strikes me as hopelessly entrenched in combat. If the coalition captures a high-ranking terrorist, then it increases the pressure on the terrorists to capture enough bargaining chips to get him back. It tends to institutionalize a conflict, and make hostage-taking an almost defensive move - a way to neutralize captures of your guys by trading away your captives.
The immediate consequence is that hostage-taking pays off, so hostages become far more valuable. That means more danger to the people in Iraq and elsewhere.
There's also something downright wrong about negotiating with terrorists - they refuse to respect the rules of combat or the neutrality of noncombatants. We shouldn't be standing a quarter mile away from a gang of terrorists with the respective captives doing a slow march past each other; we should take any such opportunity to detain or kill the terrorists.
I realize it's incredibly difficult to tell the mother of a hostage that we don't negotiate with terrorists, but if we're going to let grieving mothers set foreign policy we'd just elect Cindy Sheehan Jewhater-in-Chief. Grieving mothers don't make good decisions for other people, for the countless soldiers and journalists and reformers who are safer from capture precisely because capture has so little payoff.
Even the impression that Germany made a trade could potentially raise the risk of kidnappings in hostile areas. Merkel needs to step up now and condemn such trades, and restate that Berlin will not negotiate with terrorists.
Chest-Beating Republicans
by neolibertarian
A lot of conservatives are getting creepingly aggressive about the Patriot Act, and are trying to assert some connection between it and security. But what's more disturbing is when they say that warrantless invasions of privacy are constitutional.
This is absolutely ridiculous, and it shows why the Republicans have so much trouble holding the line on spending and so forth. The libertarian principles that undergird the GOP are not really held by a majority of its members. While spending holds some emotional reserve with many conservatives (probably out of their affection for Reagan, who did hold libertarian principles in high regard) other principles are far higher.
Many conservatives believe what they believe without a libertarian system of self-policing ethics (by which I mean, certain basic principles that dictate one's wider beliefs, and that would override contradictory beliefs in the same way the Constitution invalidates laws). Since there's a lot more emphasis in conservative circles to "get the terrorists" than to "obey the Constitution," any question of liberty versus security often gets framed by the value of an aggressive foreign policy.
But there are plenty of things we would never do that certainly could be of use to the government in fighting terrorism. We could put cameras in all homes, all businesses, all bathrooms and all bedrooms in order to catch crimes, plotting and so forth. We could put every Muslim in the country or in the world in concentration camps or death camps, which (if instituted universally) would end Islamic terrorism. We could nuke a half-dozen countries around the world. I'm sure there could be any number of things - immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, imprudent, or any combination thereof - that we could do to potentially fight terrorism. That doesn't mean we run out and do it.
But more importantly, just because you're not willing to subvert all resources, values and energies to fighting terrorism doesn't mean you're against fighting terrorism. We could probably end terrorism by establishing a federal martial law force, erecting thousand-foot walls around the entire contiguous 48 states, instituting a travel bad on leaving or entering any county, and enforcing a 6pm-10am curfew.
But I wouldn't call you weak on the war on terror for opposing any of those measures, and it's unfair that libertarians get lumped in with the socialists and postmodernists just for sticking up for warrants and the 4th Amendment.
Weak-Ass Democrats
by neolibertarian
The Democrats are trying to be clever in the Patriot Act debate. Their plan is to extend the Patriot Act for three months, so that it won't end now. I'm not fully positive why they think this is a good idea, but my guess is they want it to be an issue in 2006 so they can get it closer to the election. Or, if the extension is declined, then they could blame Bush for the act failing.
My guess is that they want to blame the President if the Patriot Act expires, or they want to force him to weaken the act if he gives in to the extension (giving them time to mount more amendment efforts). But all it looks like is they're craven, political and unprincipled.
If the Democrats care so much for the Constitution and our civil liberties (they don't) then why aren't they just voting against it? They could surely help pull the tide of public opinion against the bill by exposing items such as the warrantless searches involved in it.
And if they wanted to keep it, why not vote to renew it for another four or five years or whatever?
This is just craven politics, little more.
Republicans and Democracy
by neolibertarian
The Democrats are against the war in Iraq, and have trouble cheering too loudly for the development of democracy in other countries - especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon where independence and democracy are very strongly linked to Bush specifically and Republican rhetoric generally. Is this a fluke? After all, in the 1970s and 1980s a lot of lefties were criticizing the US and then the Reagan administration for not supporting democracy, for harboring authoritarian allies, and for being overly pragmatic in foreign policy. Surely that's the real left, and this is all just a departure, right?
Well, not really.
The criticism of Reagan was more on grounds of hypocrisy, since Reagan spent more time talking about democracy and freedom abroad (as relates to concrete American policy) than perhaps any President before or since. The left, by which I mean academics, activists and people near the fringe but not quite within it, criticized Reagan and the Republicans for holding onto right-wing authoritarians as a favorable alternative to left-wing totalitarians. It was primarily a way to criticize Reagan.
Between the Republicans and Democrats, it's overwhelmingly been the Republican preference to emphasize democracy, progress and freedom. While it's easy for leftists to glom onto democracy when they think Republicans are abandoning it, it's just as easy for them to run to isolationism when Republicans are weak there. That's certainly not to say that no leftists have objective or principled views on foreign policy, but there's a far more defined themerefor Republicans.
The Civil War, the first Republican-led war and a war that came about BECAUSE of the Republican victory in 1860, was characterized by pro-war Yankees as one or both of two things. First, it was often argued as a way to save the union and thus representative government; without the union, the argument went, there could be no republic. So the Civil War was then a fight for popular governance. And second, it was a fight for the freedom of both the western territories and of the slaves. The unionism/republicanism argument was more persuasive overall in the earlier parts of the war, but since then the freedom/abolition argument is all but universally favored (even to the point where few people know republicanism was put up as a justification at all).
The Cold War, heavily favored by Republicans, was also characterized as a struggle for freedom and democracy. While the Democrats were pushing the strategy of containment (hold the Soviets where they are, fight their expansion), more energetic Republicans were pushing the rollback/liberation strategy. The idea was that communism is an evil, and no person deserves to be enslaved under that system, therefore it's good on grounds of both morality and security to try and free peoples living under communist dominion. Moreover, the moral differences between freedom and communism must be exemplified, because that's the real fight.
Well the same thing applies in the Global War On Terror. We need to emphasize the difference between the world the terrorists want to create versus the world we'd like to create. Republicans are making this point much more strongly (though few politicians besides McCain and Bush are making it enough) than Democrats, and that's normaly, par for the course.
The Democrats, in the Civil War, the Cold War and the Global War On Terror - three conflicts that epitomize conflict between American-style free democracy and backwards-looking feudalism, totalitarianism and nihilism, respectively - took and are taking more "nuanced" stances.
A number of northern Democrats ('Peace Democrats' or 'Copperheads') in the Civil War wanted immediate peace negotiations with the South. They thought reuniting the union wasn't worth the cost of lives and property that it was taking. They differ from anti-GWOT Democrats by forthrightly admitting that they didn't think blacks should be emancipated. Modern Democrats don't usually say that foreigners don't deserve freedom and democracy, even if tyranny would be the result of their proposals. The Copperheads also thought that Lincoln was destroying the country and ruling as an anti-republican despot (where have we heard that before?).
In the Cold War and the War on Terror, the Democratic/anti-war position is generally one somewhere between conciliation/retreat and muted conflict. By downplaying the evils of the enemy, and laughing at those who do (whether it's Reagan calling the USSR an Evil Empire, or Bush calling three terror-backing countries an Axis of Evil) they refuse to enter into heightened conflict, anbd by extension don't put a great deal of pressure for liberal democracy. Sure, they want it, and they'll talk about it, but when there's any major cost beyond a simple spending program or diplomacy most of them aren't interested enough.
So it's no surprise that the anti-war left, which falsely seemed synonymous with democratization in years past, is almost totally uninterested in the natural and civil rights of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's always been Republicans who embrace freedom and democracy in foreign policy - though, unfortunately, even among Republicans there is a sizable number that will use any pretense to 'fight the enemy' and who don't see freedom as the motivating force in world events. But that's neither here nor there.
