Month: March 2011

Iowahawkblog:

Barack Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined

But it is worth recalling this passage from his Nobel Prize speech:

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.

And "cruise missiles' may be true. But Kissinger murdered and had murdered countless more.

(Hat tip: Joyner via Stephen Bainbridge)

Josh Marshall, while not quite the drama queen that I can be, comes to roughly the same provisional conclusion:

Maybe the introduction of outside force to buoy the rebels will shake things up and turn the momentum against Qaddafi. Things are so fluid in the Mideast today that I do not discount that possibility. Maybe there's more our people know that makes them think that's likely. But from the outside, I don't see it. Or more specifically, it's not clear what steps we can take to make it more likely.

It looks more like once we've closed down Qaddafi's air forces we've basically taken custody of what is already a failed rebellion. We've accepted responsibility for protecting them. Once we recognize that, the logic of the situation will lead us to arming our new charges, helping them get out of the jam they're in.

So let's review: No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.

Josh may be wrong here. So may I. As bloggers, we do not have the luxury of staying quiet for a few days and penning a judicious column. My job here, as I see it, is not to get everything right, but to be as honest as I can in real time, and ensure that contrary views are also fairly aired and discussed. And to acknowledge when I am proven wrong.

I should add, of course, that I hope this ends well. Of course I do. Qaddafi is a monster; to see him be toppled by his own people would be immensely satisfying. But that cannot happen now. If he falls, M Sarkozy and Mme Clinton will be responsible. If he doesn't, then we've just created another oil-rich protectorate in the Middle East, a source of new grievance and terror and suspicion.

(Photo: A Libyan rebel holds the rebellion flag as he stands over wrecked military vehicles belonging to Moammer Khaddafi forces hit by French warplanes on March 20, 2011. Dozens of Kadhafi military vehicles, including tanks, were destroyed in morning air strikes by the coalition west of Benghazi, as a semblance of normality returned with cars out on the road and street markets reopened in the rebel bastion. By Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

The secretary of state knows as well as any reasonably well informed observer that the Arab League is subject to many conflicting pressures– not least the fact that barring a military crackdown Moussa will soon be running for the Egyptian presidency. The significance of the original Arab endorsement of a "no fly zone" was that it cleared the way for a U.N. resolution. Today's criticism was just bet-hedging by regimes that must not only serve their outside patrons, but also large domestic constituencies hostile to any affiliation with Europe and the U.S.

But we were told there would be clear Arab cover for the war itself, not just the Resolution, and that it would include Arab militaries, precisely so as to undermine the usual anti-Western backlash my reader refers to. So far, I don't see any such thing, although Qatar is saying it will help. Everyone else seems to be keeping their head down.

Brian Moriarty defends Ebert's dismissal of video games as art:

It took many decades for photography and cinema to earn their places among the Hegelian fine arts of painting, sculpture, poetry and drama, music, dance and architecture. Now, it's natural and tempting for us to expect that games will follow the same pattern. But there's a big difference. Photography and cinema were new technologies. Games are not new. They've been part of our culture for thousands of years. They're much older than the belles arts of the Renaissance, older than the representational art of the Greeks, older than the cave art of prehistory.

By what right do games suddenly demand the status of great art? If Chess and Go, arguably the two greatest games in history, have never been regarded as works of art, why should Missile Command?

(Van Tino by Gigart for Spoke Art's upcoming Quentin v. Coen show, via Popped Culture)

Dana Goodyear profiles Barry Michels and Phil Stutz, who apply Jungian psychology to Hollywood's troubled creative class:

Using esoteric precepts adapted from Jungian psychology, he and Phil Stutz, a psychiatrist who is his mentor, have developed a program designed to access the creative power of the unconscious and address complaints common among their clientele: writer’s block, stagefright, insecurity, the vagaries of the entertainment industry.

“The Jungians I’ve always been uncomfortable with, because they kind of drift,” Stutz says. “They say that the dreams will tell you what to do, and that’s bullshit.” Instead, he and Michels tell their patients what to do. Their brand of therapy is heavily prescriptive and not always intuitive. “I had one guy who was terrified of public speaking,” Michels says. “He had to learn to make more passionate love to his wife. If he could expose himself to his wife and really let go, I knew he’d be able to speak publicly.”

A reader writes:

The Arab League has played us well. Our intervention in Libya is the perfect distraction.

Now that we're enmeshed in Libya, we will have far less attention to pay to Saudi intervention in Bahrain, or to the regimes' responses to protests in Jordan, Syria and Yemen. And what easy marks we are. We find it impossible to sit on the sidelines as critical events unfold in other nations, and we are desperately afraid that the Middle East, and its oil, is slipping away from our control. Libya, with a madman for a tyrant, is an easy intervention target. Here, the Arab League seemed to say, do you need to make a stand for human rights in the Middle East? Take Libya. We all hate him anyway.

We are gullible beyond belief. Did Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Sarkozy ever stop to ask themselves who really benefits from our intervention in Libya? No, a bottomless stockpile of missiles combined with a sincere, if narcissistic, belief in ourselves as a "force for good" in the world, made us ripe for the con.

Charles T. Rubin reacts to Robot Companions, developer of “soft-bodied 'perceptive’ robots as companions for the lonely,” which could win an EU competition for one billion Euros:

Strictly speaking, lonely people are those who feel they are missing human relationships. They want those relationships, at least at some level, but something in their will or their circumstances stands in the way. Imagine one society that puts time, effort and money into overcoming those impediments, and allowing people who are lonely to get real human companionship. Imagine another where some large portion of those resources is expended on giving them ways to avoid the real human companionship that defines their loneliness. Which society is actually doing more about loneliness? Which seems to be the more humane?

(Video: Alpha the Robot from 1934)

Mistermix at Balloon Juice writes:

Yesterday, some beagle slander was committed on this blog, and today I want to correct a possible misperception that may have arisen about this excellent breed…

My next door neighbor has a beagle, and I’ve watched him be pulled around by that fine animal for years. My neighbor is in his 80s and frail, so his beagle added hours of entertainment for my family as we looked out the window and wondered if today would be the day he gets dragged across the yard. And let’s not forget the mellifluous baying that is typical of the breed, at all hours of the day or night, which adds a special tone to the neighborhood.

My neighbor is having a few health problems so I’ve been walking his dog at lunchtime. Even though his dog is now getting older, it’s still driven by its nose and loves to go on walks. Yet I’m not having any problems walking him, and the reason is simple: my neighbor overfeeds that dog to the point of morbid obesity. If you’ve never seen a dog with a pannus, you obviously haven’t been to my neck of the woods, because this dog’s gut hangs almost to the ground. Because he’s so fat, his sniffing sounds like a pig on a truffle hunt, and the rolls of fat that encase him keep his walking pace down to a trot rather than his usual flat-out run.

So, if you’re thinking of getting a beagle, just lay in a double supply of dog food and feed that thing until it looks like a beer keg supported by 4 popsicle sticks. Then perhaps you’ll have a dog that’s a barely tolerable pet.

The comments section is all aflutter. I don't blame them. Beagles eat what they are fed. Their obesity is a function of their owners' weak wills – against, yes one must concede, pathological eating disorders. Dusty is obsessed with food. As a puppy, the vet told me to just let her eat at will, and leave the bag of dog food available. Tiny Dusty would simply scarf as much as she could before vomiting; then she would eat the vomit; then more food; then more vomit. She was in heaven, of course, but I quickly realized this was not a good idea. I've kept her on a strict diet ever since, and her belly is much more impressive than my AIDSy distended tummy.

Xavier Marquez ruminates on why dictators like Qaddafi cultivate them:

[I]t is hard for dictators to gauge their true levels of support or whether or not officials below them are telling them the truth about what is going on in the country because repression gives everyone an incentive to lie, yet they need repression if they are to avoid being overthrown by people exploiting their tolerance to organize themselves. … The dictator wants a credible signal of your support; merely staying silent and not saying anything negative won’t cut it. In order to be credible, the signal has to be costly: you have to be willing to say that the dictator is not merely ok, but a superhuman being, and you have to be willing to take some concrete actions showing your undying love for the leader.

Henry Farrell responds:

I'm not sure that the argument is entirely right on the demand side – it seems to me entirely plausible that dictators (like, in a much more attenuated way, Hollywood stars) may find themselves in their very own reality distortion field, and believe more strongly in the love of their people than the facts would warrant.

Michael D. Fay, member of the International Society of War Artists (ISWA), draws the wounded soldiers rehabilitating in hospitals:

We introduce ourselves simply. We’re war artists and have been out in the fight multiple times with you guys; living under the same conditions and capturing your combat experiences in art. We then give them our basic vision of why we’re here: You guys are still in the fight and what you do every day to recover and make the absolute best of your new reality is important to your fellow Americans. The wounded Marines get it.