Month: January 2009

A reflection on what total war does to civilized people:

It is doubtful whether Hamas will be cut down to size as a result of this wretched war. Yet, the face of the state has been cut down to size, as have civilian elites who are apathetic and scared. The "peace camp," if it ever existed, has been cut down to size. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz authorized the Ghayan killing, regardless of the cost. Haim Oron, the leader of the "new left-wing movement," supported the launch of this foolish war.
 
Nobody is coming to the rescue – of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy. The statesmen, the jurists, the poets, the authors, academe, and the news media – pitch black over the abyss. When the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel: The blood pipeline it laid has been completed.

Manzi explains the danger of government funded pharmaceutical research:

Ezra Klein has an interesting post up in which he correctly points out the conflict of interest inherent in having pharmaceutical companies that develop new drugs execute the clinical trials that test for their safety and efficacy… Klein recommends a paper that presents a simple solution: the government should fund contract research directly. 

But the obvious point that this misses is that a government bureaucracy has its own conflicts of interest. Most directly, bureaucrats and politicians tend to have enormous career risk from an unsafe drug introduction, but almost none from a rejected drug that would have been effective had it been introduced. Publication and study design bias can be pointed in both directions.

Pshaw.

Today’s atrocity claimed at least 40 lives, mainly Shiite pilgrims. Over 24 tribal leaders were massacred by one of their own in a suicide bomb attack Friday. On December 27, a car bomb killed 24. So in the last week or so, close to a hundred people have been murdered by terrorists in Iraq, with hundreds more wounded. This is occurring even with 130,000 US troops still in the country. And this, remember, is "victory."

People keep asking me for predictions for 2009. Here’s one: we will either leave Iraq in a bloodbath or we will never leave Iraq.

Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi say it’s all about Iran:

If Israel successfully overthrows Hamas in Gaza, it would strengthen anti-Iranian forces throughout the Mideast and signal the region that Iranian momentum can be reversed. The Israeli military operation could begin the process that topples a terrorist regime that seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 and has fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli neighborhoods.

And whether or not Hamas is ultimately overthrown, Israel can achieve substantial goals.

The first is an absolute cease-fire. Previous cease-fires allowed Hamas to launch two or three rockets a week into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza through tunnels. To obtain a cease-fire now, the international community should recognize Israel’s right to respond to any aggression over its international border and monitor the closure of Hamas’ weapons-smuggling tunnels.

Above all, the goal is to ensure that Hamas is unable to proclaim victory and thereby enhance Iranian prestige in the Arab world.

 

The trouble with apocalyptic movements like Hamas is that they will proclaim victory regardless, no? Hamas will only be defeated by the Palestinians, in the end. Which is why Kramer’s notion of pitting the PA against Hamas makes more sense. But the idea that this time, pure violence and enforcement of a blockade will force a change of heart among Palestinians and Arabs more generally seems utopian to me. The risk is that this could ignite pro-Iranian Jihadism across the region.

As I scour the web to find one that makes sense, this piece by Martin Kramer pops up. It’s well worth reading, because it brings the West Bank more fully into the equation. The goal, according to Kramer, is to destroy as much of Hamas as possible, and get a ceasefire without any lifting of the blockade. The aim is to bolster the PA in the West Bank by opening up the border and rewarding coexistence with engagement – while at the same time pounding the Gazans into the dust. As a way to enforce the cease-fire, Israel might also want to use PA officials and military to go into Gaza. The trouble is: I’m not sure who would replace Hamas in "governing" Gaza. If it were the PA, there could be a brutal civil war in which the potential for more terror – as well as more human devastation – is real; and the threat to Irsrael could even worsen. Kramer himself acknowledges this:

What could go wrong with this scenario? A lot. Hamas assumes (probably correctly) that its Palestinian opponents fed Israel with much of the intelligence it needed to wage precision warfare against Hamas. There is likely to be a vicious settling of scores as soon as a cease-fire is in place, if not before, and which could approximate a civil war. This could open space for small groups like Islamic Jihad and other gangs, which could shoot off rockets at their own initiative (or that of Iran). If something can go wrong in Gaza, there is a good chance it will.

So Israel will have killed many innocents, wounded itself in international opinion, lost soldiers and treasure … to create an even more unstable and beleaguered Gaza. Maybe they hope to cede Gaza to Egypt; or maybe this is the beginning of a war Israel wants with Iran sooner than later. Or maybe it’s just another blind military leap whose full consequences were not fully thought through. Imagine that.

A wounded Palestinian boy is helped as he arrives at a hospital on January 4, 2009 in Gaza City, Gaza. Medics and witnesses have reported that Israeli shells killed at least 12 Palestinian civilians and wounded 40 others when they exploded in Gaza City’s main shopping area. By Abid Katib/Getty.

It’s the hand I can’t get out of my mind. Please pray for him – and for everyone suffering and dying in Gaza.

"You can go back to your, what do you call it, your Google, and you figure out all that," – president George H.W. Bush on the catastrophe of his son’s presidency.

The possibility – and we do not know for sure – that John Travolta refused his son anti-seizure medication raises broader questions of what responsibilities parents have to the bodies of their children. We rightly understand sexual abuse to be horrifying and a legitimate reason to intervene. But withholding vital medication from a child out of religious or ideological reasons strikes me as no less abuse. I’m reminded of this acutely by the case of Christine Maggiore, a woman I met and interacted with as another person with HIV. Christine adamantly denied that HIV was related to AIDS and refused anti-HIV medication on those grounds. She died last week. Of AIDS. That was her choice, it seems to me, however tragic it is.

What was also her choice, however, was to refuse anti-HIV meds when pregnant and then to refuse HIV meds for her daughter when she was born. Eliza Jane lived three years before succumbing to HIV-related pneumonia. Magiore was never prosecuted for negligence, since she had taken Eliza Jane to doctors. One of those doctors suffered mild professional consequences.

What rights did Eliza Jane have to protect her very life from her own mother? What rights did Jett Travolta have under the control of Scientologist parents? I find it hard to believe they had none; and I find the sympathy for parents under those circumstances to be misplaced.

A glimpse into the Cheney mindset, courtesy of Andy McCarthy. The world right now is about who will "crush" whom. McCarthy knows which side he’s on; and his moral guide is Osama bin Laden:

Remember bin Laden’s refrain about "the strong horse and the weak horse" — the fact that people (particularly those targeted for jihadi recruitment) are always drawn to the strong one. That’s the language jihadis understand, and no other.

And how easily some Americans seem to have picked it up.