Month: August 2010

Today on the Dish Andrew used David Stockman's op-ed to jab the GOP for fiscal irresponsibility and outed Mike Pense as a fiscal fraud. James Antle III took a hard look at the Republican party and declared it unready to take back the majority. In international coverage, Frum gave China its due, Argentinians got hitched, Drezner watched Israelis head to the beach, some Palestinian children tagged along, and David Cameron addressed the gay community. Obama is zero for four on foreign policy thus far. 

Time's cover continued to provoke strong feelings about the war in Afghanistan; a slew of readers begged the US to call it quits, but a Marine made the humanitarian case for staying. Mankiw compared the importance of teachers to that of parents, and Jonah Lehrer celebrated preschool. A reader criticized Andrew's coverage of the Mel Gibson affair. Others shared their experiences with living wills and dying relatives. Shiny rocks are not the biggest problem in Congo.

Andrew echoed a yawn over the NPR and Fox News White House seating fight while Douthat and Yglesias debated Breitbart's whiffing it. Giuliani parroted the Palin line on the NYC mosque, as did Seth Lipsky. Peter Beinart called out the ADL. Andy McCarthy painted American Muslims as the new Reds while Marc Theissen advocated crushing Wikileaks – the sovereignty of our allies be damned. Julian Sanchez wanted to bring sunlight to the dark side.

Abortion is not like slavery. The unemployed may be organizing. The Christian Science Monitor brought us the latest in monkey annoyance research . Antoine Dodson went from the local news to autotune superstar in a matter of hours. Pot sounds an awful lot like an Intel Processor.  Doonsbury toyed with Palin. Rainer Maria Rilke slowed down to meditate on the sweetness of life. And here is the ugliest coat hanger of all time.

— P.A.

What does one do when one realizes that the man who planned the Clinton wedding also planned one's own? Except when it's Bryan Rafanelli, politics really doesn't matter at all. Congrats, Bryan, on a huge triumph.

A reader writes:

Speaking as one of the soldiers (actually a Marine) who have borne part of the burden you refer to, I don't have a problem coming back to Afghanistan if it means girls don't get their noses cut off.  We are all volunteers and every single person in the US military either joined since the war in Afghanistan started or has had multiple chances to get out.  We knew what we were getting into and we did it for a reason. 

The consequences of either leaving Afghanistan completely or pulling back to a purely counterterrorist strategy have been glossed over for far too long. 

Personally, I'm pleased that Time has begun to add some balance to the debate.  It's not a case of war with the US and its allies in Afghanistan or peace with them gone, it's war either way.   War without deep US involvement at the ground level would likely be bloodier for civilians.

It is true that women's rights are not the main strategic priority in Afghanistan.  We invaded first and foremost to prevent future attacks like September 11th.  But to suggest that the presence of the US military has no effect on the safety of Afghan women is ridiculous. 

This outrage was ordered by a Taliban court.  If the Taliban did not feel secure enough to administer justice in a semiofficial manner, Aisha's nose would not have been cut off.  Contrary to what Matthew Yglesias suggests, extreme violence toward women is not a cultural trait that exists in southern and eastern Afghanistan independently; it was introduced by the Taliban 13 years ago.  The Taliban are not an expression of normal Pashtun culture any more than the Nazis were an expression of normal German culture. We don't need to alter the social fabric of southern and eastern Afghanistan to prevent this sort of barbarism; we just need to remove the Taliban. 

I say this as someone who has Pashtun Afghan friends that I work with every day.  Yes, their views on the proper place of women in society are inherently offensive to most Americans, but they don't believe in senseless brutality anymore than we do.  Where the Taliban have more power, they are more of a threat to women; where they have less control, they are less of a threat.  Providing security and extending the rule of law throughout Afghanistan is exactly what the US military and its ISAF and Afghan allies are trying to do and is exactly what will prevent things like this from happening.  (If we really aren't making a difference, why did a collection of influential Afghan women tell Code Pink that international forces were absolutely essential for their continued freedom and safety?)

Again, I am baffled by how people like you can express profound outrage when civilians are accidentally killed by US forces in spite of the very substantial risks we assume to reduce civilian casualties, yet blithely shrug off the fate of Afghan civilians under a Taliban regime because "we put in 10 years and we're tired so it's not our responsibility".  If we have the means to prevent it from happening, than it is indeed our responsibility.  Either these people's lives are important or they aren't. 

And where does that end? Which countries are not worth saving? How many lives is the appalling toll in the Congo worth? The premise here is that ending suffering in the world is a legitimate foreign policy goal. If you can on the cheap, fine. If it takes a century of neo-imperialism, not so much.

Edward Niedermeyer's op-ed against the Volt from a few days back is the most damning to date. Money quote:

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

Cohn defends the Volt by mostly sidestepping the above criticism. His bottom line:

Could the Volt still turn into a boondoggle? Absolutely. But, right now, it's wrong to assume it will be.

Marc Thiessen continues his tough guy act by suggesting the US use "military assets" to arrest Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Eva Rodriguez scratches her head:

Does Thiessen think we're going to send in Special Ops to pluck Assange from Iceland, Belgium or Sweden, where he's known to hang out? Or is he thinking that a drone strike might be more effective or efficient?

Thiessen asserts that the United States does not need "permission to apprehend Assange or his co-conspirators anywhere in the world" and that the U.S. should act alone if allies won't cooperate. I'm not sure this is legally accurate, but let's assume it is. Is Thiessen suggesting it would be a good idea to disregard an ally's sovereignty, perhaps do irreparable damage to our relationship with it and the international community just to get our hands on Assange?

Thiessen backs a president-as-global-dictator, above the law and capable of doing anything. Nothing would surprise me. He's a Cheneyite.

Jim Manzi parries Ryan Avent:

If by “innovation” in response to higher gas prices, we mean switching to smaller cars and taking the bus and riding bicycles more often, then I agree entirely that higher gas prices in the U.S. will induce innovation.

Avent dissects this response. Jim sharpens his point in the comments:

I was trying to question the often-asserted belief that raising the price of carbon any politically conceivable amount would induce the creation of enough new technology to materially address climate change for decades. While I wouldn’t state it as strongly as you do when you say that “No cost can induce the kind of vision that leads to new ways to solve problems”, I laid out a couple of reasons why I believe a rational observer ought to be very skeptical that adding $5 to a gallon of gas in the U.S. would do it in this case.

Jacob Sullum provides a thumbnail sketch of American drinking.

Ambers has the latest.

Christine Rosen reflects on humanity’s changing relationship with machines:

In the early age of machines, they inspired awe by proving capable of doing what man could never do alone (such as power an entire factory), or what we once believed only man could do (play chess). Now we expect our machines to do just about everything for us, from organizing our finances to writing our grocery lists. Our machines not only ease the mundane burdens of daily life (cooking, cleaning, working), but also serve, increasingly, as both our primary source of entertainment and the means for maintaining intimate relationships with others. Henry Adams’s dynamo has been replaced by Everyman’s iPod, and awe has given way to complacence and dependence. Your computer’s e-mail program doesn’t inspire awe; it is more like a dishwasher than a dynamo. Nineteenth-century rhapsodies to the machines that tamed nature, such as the steam engine, have given way to impatience with the machines that don’t immediately indulge our whims.

The decline in humility toward our machines comes at a time when we know almost nothing about how or why they work.

Although overwhelmed by its power, Henry Adams nevertheless had a basic understanding of how the dynamo operated. Most of us know very little about how our laptop computers run or how to repair our washing machines. Today we are less likely to feel awe in the presence of our machines than we are to experience what historian Jacques Barzun called “machine-made helplessness.” This, too, is a form of blind faith, like the people who, devotedly following the instructions of their car’s GPS device, drive right off a hill, all the while certain that this must be impossible – how could their perfectly calibrated machine be wrong?

David Gelernter anticipates the arrival of thinking machines, and argues that Jewish tradition can help guide our relations.

Margie Omero runs through polling on obesity. Americans overwhelmingly see childhood obesity as a major problem worthy of investment but are against taxes on fatty foods. One reason why:

Despite rising obesity rates, and increases in the percentage of people who say they are trying to lose weight, Americans overwhelmingly [pdf] (89%) believe obesity "is something people can control." And this poll [pdf] for the University of Georgia shows few fault marketers for these trends.