by Chris Bertram on January 14, 2004
Slate has a round-table entitled “Liberal Hawks Reconsider the War”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2093620/entry/2093641/ with Jacob Weisberg, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Fareed Zakaria. It is definitely worth a look, though some of them are clearly smarter or more honest than others. Some of the reasons they advance for war are also better than others (with the human rights argument the strongest of all — whether conclusive or not). Thomas Friedman’s reasons, though, are indefensible, indeed criminal:
bq. The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the “terrorism bubble,” which had built up during the 1990s. This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as “martyrs,” and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it’s not very diplomatic—it’s not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as I also wrote before the war: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.
If I read that paragraph correctly, Friedman is advocating that a state kill people (including innocent people) for demonstrative purposes. He thereby shows complete disregard for the humanity and individuality of those who have died. It is a peculiar way to demonstrate the impermissibility of the very acts he deplores.
by Eszter Hargittai on January 14, 2004
Sometimes I wonder how companies come up with names for their products. I just noticed that the shower knob in my bathroom is called Monitor. (I just moved so most things at my place are new to me.) I guess that may seem innocent enough, but not after having just watched this episode of The Practice. In it, one of the characters finds out that her superintendent has been making video tapes of her in the shower (using a hidden camera in the vent) and has been posting these online. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we find out that there is nothing illegal about such videotaping as potentially relevant laws only apply to audio recordings. So it’s not that I’m overly paranoid, but I would’ve probably preferred a name with less meaning on my shower knob (except who runs around thinking about shower knob name preferences?!;).
by Brian on January 14, 2004
Every spring my main hobby is working out my travel plans for the summer. Right now I’m seriously considering a travel plan that involves, among other things, the following.
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by Ted on January 13, 2004
A few thoughts on Paul O’Neill vs. the person who leaked Valerie Plame identity:
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by Chris Bertram on January 13, 2004
A few months ago I had lunch with a US army officer who told me that the Germans were “basically running Afghanistan for us.” No doubt having the “Germans in Afghanistan”:http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_1067481,00.html is somewhat useful when the US wants to get on with other projects. I was reminded of this when reading the “latest egregious anti-European outpourings from the Victor Davis Hanson”:http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200401090840.asp . The French come in for most of his venom, but the Germans get it too, and then this:
bq. We are in a race for civilization like none other since World War II. And yet, due *solely* to the courage and skill of an amazing generation of American professional soldiers battling in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are winning — as this difficult war is beginning to resemble 1944 far more than 1939.
Such gratitude! No wonder Hanson Davis finishes by calling for
bq. a much-needed honesty that will soon curtail both the deceitful rhetoric and hypocritical behavior that have insidiously warped us all in the West during the last 20 years.
Chris Brooke has “another snippet on Hanson Davis”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_01_01_archive.html#107374838360931087 .
by Chris Bertram on January 13, 2004
I came across the following quote recently, the person uttering it is described by blogger Michael Totten as articulating a “moral dilemma” and the following words are uttered as part of the elaboration of that dilemma:
bq. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.
Karl Marx expresses similar sentiments at the very end of his “The Future Results of the British Rule in India” (different Indians) but it isn’t him. And no, it isn’t Lenin or Stalin or Mao.
by Brian on January 13, 2004
by Chris Bertram on January 13, 2004
Many aeons ago I posted on a controversy about crime and the new urbanism (“here”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000696.html and “here”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000761.html ). David Sucher has “an update on that argument over at City Comforts Blog”:http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2004/01/welcome_to_new_.html .
by Kieran Healy on January 13, 2004
Ted asks:
bq. O’Reilly has repeatedly lied about the interview in which he told Jeremy Glick to “shut up” and cut off his microphone. As it turns out, transcripts can be checked on this intergummy thing. Someone should make up a phrase about that.
I propose that Bill is here speaking a dialect we shall call reverse transcriptese.
by Brian on January 13, 2004
From the NY Times:
Tim Hurd, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a branch of the Transportation Department, said a vehicle either met the specific technical requirements of being a light truck, or it did not.
by Ted on January 12, 2004
Need a couple of fresh reasons to dislike Bill O’Reilly?
* Thankfully, there seems to be a widespread agreement that Nazi comparisons are inappropriate for our domestic political opponents. Last week, columnist Ralph Peters was criticized for his comparison of Dean to Hitler, and MoveOn was criticized for failing to remove from their server homemade commercials that compared Bush to Hitler.
Ladies and gentlemen, O’Reilly on the ACLU:
“The ACLU is the most fascist organization I have seen in decades. They want to tell you how to live. They don’t want to abide by the Constitution. They want to go AROUND the Constitution. They’re intellectual fascists. And they use the courts as their Panzer divisions.”
Nothing expresses faith in our nation of laws like comparing “courts” and “Panzer divisions”, does it?
* O’Reilly has repeatedly lied about the interview in which he told Jeremy Glick to “shut up” and cut off his microphone. As it turns out, transcripts can be checked on this intergummy thing. Someone should make up a phrase about that.
by Ted on January 12, 2004
The Paul O’Neil book is an instructive case. President Bush has been accused by his ex-Treasury Secretary of being disengaged, over his head, and led by advisors who put political calculations over the good of the country (cough, Mars mission). Furthermore, O’Neil says that the Bush administration had made its decision to invade Iraq almost immediately after the inauguration.
Glenn Reynolds sees the issue as such:
As I understand it the big hype is that he says (1) that Bush can talk a lot in meetings; and (2) the Administration wanted to topple Saddam before 9/11.
First of all, Glenn has point (1) exactly backwards (which he later admits). O’Neil says that Bush was unengaged and unresponsive, sitting through large and small meetings without questions or comments. Reynolds’ comprehension of stories he doesn’t want to hear doesn’t give one a lot of confidence in the rest of his analysis. And, in fact, confidence is not warranted.
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by Brian on January 12, 2004
There’s been much hand-wringing over Chris’s post and related links about the role having a blog might have when it comes to getting an academic job. I think it’s all much ado about nothing, but since I’ve done very well professionally out of blogging I suppose I might think that.
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by Harry on January 12, 2004
The New Statesman (subscription required) just published this article about why school vouchers would not have a beneficial impact in Britain. I wrote it in a fit of irritation after hearing the know-all Melanie Phillips on the radio expressing her support for vouchers, and invoking the Swedish and Dutch experiences. The Swedish voucher scheme has been evaluated positively (and frequently) by Bergstrom and Sandstrom. But it is tiny, and if you read the version of their study put out by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation you’ll find no evidence of improved scores, and that it is regulated in a way that is unimaginable in the US or UK. The Dutch experience is very different — most children attend private schools on what is effectively a voucher system, but the State subjects all schools to heavy regulation, and the vouchers are highly progressive (schools get paid much more for low-income kids, kids from homes with low levels of parental education, kids from non-Dutch speaking homes). The Netherlands is consistently a pretty high performer in international comparisons of children’s achievement. But there is no particular reason to think this is due to their having private schools. The virtual elimination of child poverty, for example, might be responsible. My response to Phillips on the comparison is this: you give us high marginal tax rates, low levels of inequality and child poverty, etc, and I’ll give you progressive school vouchers.
Anyway, that’s the background — the article ignores the other Northern Europeans, and concentrates on the differences between the US and the UK. Here it is:
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by Brian on January 12, 2004
Katherine at Obsidian Wings has three good posts up (one two three) about the Maher Arar case I mentioned yesterday. I’m feeling a little guilty about that post because I let my outrage over the administration’s treatment of allied citizens get in the way of proper scepticism about the story. Obviously I don’t know that Arar was innocent, for example, though if what’s reported is true it’s still outrageous even if he’s guilty. I’m still of the old-fashioned school of thought that says a fair trial and all that is a good thing even for the most vicious of criminals. But we need to know a lot more about the case before leaping to conclusions, and Katherine is doing a very valuable service in putting together the available evidence from all sides.
UPDATE (13/1): Katherine has three more links up (four five six) which are again recommended.