Month: September 2009

Noah Millman goes another round:

The main reason we wouldn’t have simply packed up and left [Afghanistan] after (hypothetically) taking Osama bin Laden’s scalp is not that nation-building in Afghanistan was vital to defeating al Qaeda or ending the threat of terrorism, but that, our vulnerability having been demonstrated so dramatically, our response had to be grander than that. These guys had punched a hole in the greatest city in the world, and bombed the command center for our military decisionmaking. Whether a huge military response had any plausible war aims at all, we had to have one, somewhere. That’s why I describe the situation as a tragedy.

Fouad Ajami rather baldly states that the war on Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction or human rights, but about teaching "the Arabs" a lesson:

Those were not Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their financiers were Arabs, and so were those crowds in Cairo and Nablus and Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. Kabul had not sufficed as a return address in that twilight war; it was important to take the war into the Arab world itself, and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw. He had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a lesson was made of him.

Dreher remembers:

I remember going to a fire station in Brooklyn Heights…not far from where we lived at the time, to pay our respects to the surviving firefighters and the widows of those eight from the station who died. This was a day or two after 9/11. There we saw a young couple from the Heights walk up with a dish of baked ziti to give to the firefighters and the widows. The man's eyes were bandaged. He explained to me that when the first tower collapsed, he was nearby, and the pulverized glass abraded his eyes. He was functionally blind. A perfect stranger took him by the arm and led him, step by step, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through the streets of the Heights, up the stairs to his apartment, and into his bed. And he never got the stranger's name. He said that bringing food to the fire station was his way of paying back that good deed. That kind of thing happened a lot.

More throughts from Dreher here.

Bruce Bartlett ponders the question. This, at least, is reassuring:

Let's look at 1955, when the national debt equaled 69.5% of GDP, a little more than expected in 2019. That year there was virtually no inflation; the Consumer Price Index rose just 0.4%. Rates on Treasury bonds were less than 3%. Real GDP rose 7.2% and the Dow Jones industrial average increased by close to 20%. In some ways, 1955 was an anomalous year because the nation was still coming out of a recession that ended in May 1954. Nevertheless, it's clear that the nation was able to bear a level of federal debt that seems frighteningly large as we contemplate rising again to that level.

But that's the only sliver of good news. Much of that debt was from WW2, and that had ended. Most of our debt is in front of us, and one party is committed to never raising taxes and the other to never slashing entitlements. If he is to make fiscal progress in the next couple of years, Obama will have to struggle between a mighty rock and a very hard place.

Shafer is critical of 9/11 coverage. Ryan Sager counters:

[W]hy do we pull the memory of 9/11 out of a box once a year, as a nation, and run our fingers over it? Not to advance the story. Not to deepen our understanding. But to keep the memory accessible. To make sure we know where it is. To remember where we were that day. To trigger little details that might be lost forever if we don’t touch them again this year.

Is this an unequivocally good thing? Too much memory can be a bad thing; rumination seems to be a key factor in depression and PTSD. But within the normal range, there’s nothing wrong with ruminating on the sad events in one’s life — in fact, it’s much healthier than the alternative of actively trying to repress the ugliness of the past.

So, as 9/11 becomes more distant, and you ask yourself why we should bother remembering at all, remember this: We don’t remember to learn; we don’t remember to stay angry; we don’t remember to keep from moving on; we remember because we’re human, and that’s how we process our world and keep from coming unmoored.

I'm with Ryan. And I mourn those friends and a neighbor who died as well.

Tom Ricks asks the AP to apologize for running a picture of a fatally wounded Marine over the objections of the soldier's family (he also rounds up some dissents). David Harsanyi sides with the AP:

There is now some question as to whether the agreement with the AP stipulated next-of-kin permission to publish pictures of deceased or wounded military personnel. That issue should be investigated. But on the debate over the substance of these pictures, the press has one overriding question to ask: Do the photos help citizens better understand the story of the war in Afghanistan? Obviously, they do.

Ben Macintyre takes Harsanyi's side:

This desire to control the imagery of war reflects the capacity of photography to convey the blunt truth about conflict in a way that no other art form, including the written word, can achieve. At Etaples, in 1917, Wilfred Owen wondered how anyone would be able to visualise “the very strange look” on the faces of men before battle on the Western Front: “An incomprehensible look … more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look, without expression, like a dead rabbit’s. It will never be painted.” But it could be photographed. Half a century later, Don McCullin captured that bleak emptiness on the face of a shell-shocked GI at Hue in Vietnam. A single, stark photograph like this can encapsulate an entire war.

The Dish has long believed in maximum coverage of discomfiting images if they are relevant to public debate, and allowing readers to make up their own minds.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

In Maine's Catholic churches this weekend, there will be a mandatory second collection to strip gay couples of equal rights in that state. It's always sad to see churches rally to deny human beings basic protections under the civil law.

"I do not see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now," – general Stanley McChrystal.

A reader writes:

Your chart about most harmful effects of DOMA hits it right on the head. Two friends adopted an adorable boy this summer, and it struck me that their little guy, while loved and cared for as much as any other kid, would lose out were one of his fathers to pass away.  Both men make a good living and work for a progressive company (it provides ALL employees with adoption stipend) but one the federal and state level, they might as well be strangers who found a baby on the side of the road.  It is terrible.  They have been together as long as my wife and I, but my cheesy wedding in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator is somehow more respectful of 'family values' than a committed gay couple. Dammit. 

Thankfully their families and employer are extremely supportive, it would be nice if their government could get with the program.

Gays now have security in their family life only by the beneficence of others. Under federal law, we still don't exist as human beings in relationships.

"Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong… Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken," – Friedrich Hayek, The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

According to the current Republican orthodoxy, Friedrich Hayek was a socialist. David Ogles continues:

The reason intellectual conservatives oppose transfer payments like welfare is that they destroy incentives to work, and may encourage attitudes of entitlement which undermine the moral strength of the country. But universal health care does no such thing.

Being provided security against the risk of cancer doesn’t make us less likely to avoid getting cancer.  It doesn’t create incentives to be less healthy (more wasteful perhaps, but in the interest of health not pecuniary gain).  Catastrophic disease could befall any individual at any time, nearly any of whom could not possibly prepare for it with only his or her personal wealth.  Pooling the risk among everyone is of course the most efficient and humane solution, whether done through a public option, all through private insurers, or a competition between the two (this is why mandates are necessary).

There is a legitimate debate to be had about which of the three options above make the most sense for America.  All of them, however, jive with classically liberal principles, and none of them have much of a spillover effect on the free market system we’ve built for our society.  Unfortunately arguments to justify health care reform to conservatives are unfruitful because the Republican Party isn’t run by intellectuals, but reactionary politicos who murder language and truth to blindly oppose whatever the Democratic president supports.  In wartime, might I add!