Month: April 2009

Musings On Iraq reads through the UN's humanitarian report.

Word comes through that marriage equality has come to another European country, in a vote minutes ago in the Swedish parliament. Belgium, Holland and Spain also give full marriage rights, making a total of around 82 million who live in European countries where full equality now exists (and I'm excluding countries where they grant full marriage rights under the separate-but-equal moniker of civil partnerships/unions).

Alan Jacobs weighs in on news that T.S. Eliot refused to publish Animal Farm for political reasons (the Russians were WWII allies at the time). Larison responds:

Would Animal Farm have offended the Soviets? I assume that it would have to have been offensive to them and was offensive, but why should a publishing house in the West care about that? What a telling and sad statement about the power of wartime political correctness that even a mind such as Eliot’s, which obviously had zero sympathy for the system being attacked in the novel, could reach the conclusion that he was not convinced that “this is the thing that needs saying at the moment.” When would have been appropriate?

A reader makes a point I've long wondered about:

The point made by Goldfarb about deterring Iran by threatening the holy city of Qom got me thinking: how on earth could a government like the one in Tehran expect to destroy Israel without destroying Jerusalem, the third-holiest city in Islam? Even at his blustering worst, Saddam Hussein only threatened to incinerate "half" of Israel because he knew he could not attack Jerusalem. Does Netanyahu really believe than an Iranian government bent on becoming the leader of the Muslim world would risk incinerating a city holy to Muslims like Jerusalem? Why not launch nukes at Mecca and Medina while they're at it?

Are the Israelis crying wolf? Is that wise? Or is this so unknowable that their existential anxiety is as understandable as it is tragic?

Grim scenes of populist/anarchist violence in London.

Nate Silver gives horse race junkies a 2010 preview:

Many of the voters who went to the polls in 2008 did so because of Barack Obama; almost 90 percent of those voters also happened to vote Democratic for Congress. But many of those voters will not turn out next year without a presidential race to pique their interest. Some of the same Democratic representatives who most benefited from Obama’s coattails in 2008, then, are also the most vulnerable to an upset. Their fate may depend on how much this president can personalize that election — and, of course, how much he can mobilize his powerful voter-turnout operation for them — and how well liked he can remain. Obama’s popularity is the Democrats’ greatest asset heading into the midterm elections in 2010 — but it is also in some sense their greatest liability.

A reader suggests. Gotta work on that beard tho.

The NYT tries to figure out what's going on below the surface in Iraq. The key is distinguishing between what might be incidents of low-level terrorism – something that probably cannot be eradicated in a place like Iraq – and a new sign of incipient sectarian warfare. This is worrying:

In interviews with 14 leaders of the Awakening movement, which has been credited with helping to reduce violence, all said they believed that the jihadi presence in their areas had increased, as American troops began to close combat outposts or hand them over to the Iraqi Army, a first step toward withdrawing entirely. The Awakening leaders reported signs of trouble: assassination attempts, homemade bombs placed near their homes or under their cars, leaflets urging them not to work with the Iraqi government.

The key issue is whether the Sunni Awakening has been integrated into the national security forces and government in sufficient numbers and strength to prevent a new phase of the civil war when the US departs. So far, the signs are not great:

While the province is far more secure than in 2006 and 2007, when the provincial capital, Baquba, was known locally as “the city of death,” attacks are now increasing. Forty-three people were killed in Diyala in March, up from 29 in February and 6 in January, according to the Diyala Operations Command.

I'm just trying to imagine what happens when the US is gone, when the Shiites fail to pay sufficient bribes to the Sunnis, and when some incident sets off a sectarian spat. Will it escalate? Your call. I see no reason why it won't. And once that dynamic takes off, we're back to where we started, barring a few trillion and a few thousand young American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.

Welcome to Empire. It never ends. Until it does.

Is it imaginable that the Bush Justice Department would ever have dropped a conviction of a Senator of the opposing party?

E.D. Kain counters Nattavudh Powdthavee:

Having children is not like winning the lottery.  The happiness we experience from our children is lasting, constant, omnipresent, and far deeper than any material gain.  It is also hard, and frustrating, and the most tiring experience of my life, which makes it all that much more meaningful.