Month: March 2011

Christopher Dickey begs Obama to intervene in Libya:

So what’s a leader like President Barack Obama to do? Well, one might say, “lead.” Because, whether war-weary Americans want to believe it or not, the lack of direction in American policy right now—opposing Gaddafi but finding every excuse not to act against his forces—is going to be hugely damaging to their interests. … Just for starters, Washington’s reluctance to take concrete action against Gaddafi’s forces confirms the idea that a dictator (a Ben Ali or a Mubarak) is more vulnerable if he is America's friend than its enemy (or in Gaddafi's case, it's frenemy).

But why would we want America to be known as the indispensable nation in keeping tyrants in power – because it has more leverage over them? Larry Diamond is less restrained in an article that almost refutes itself:

Presidents do not get elected to make easy decisions, and they certainly never become great doing so. They do not get credit just because they go along with what the diplomatic and military establishments tell them are the “wise and prudent” thing to do. 

Take a couple of Ikes and call me in the morning. David Kopel seconds Diamond:

Barack Obama’s America is showing itself to be a paper tiger; and every one of America’s enemies, especially the tyrants in Iran and Venezuela, are realizing that they can step up their aggression. If Gaddafi stays, he will resume his nuclear and chemical warfare plans and his support of global terrorism, secure in the knowledge that this American President will do nothing to stop him, unless the Russians and Chinese give permission. This week is may be one that will cause terrible problems for the United States for decades to come, comparable to the week when Khomenei seized power in Iran.

My response to all this is here. I think these individuals have simply failed to assess the new global reality.

"I mean, seriously. An editor-in-chief wrote these words: “we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them”. Actually, Patricia, you only have two loyalties: one is to your readers and one is to the company that signs your paychecks. That’s it. You do not – emphatically do not – have a responsibility to “stay on good terms” with movie studios. On the contrary, when a movie company asks you to try to strong-arm a colleague into dialing down her editorial voice, it’s in your best interests as a professional editor to tell them to go fuck themselves. The fact that you didn’t do that is bad enough, the fact that you’re so bad at your job that you still believe you acted correctly is unforgivable," – Paul Carr, AOL's TechCrunch editor to Patricia Chui, editor-in-chief of AOL's Moviefone.

Nome, Alaska, 9 am

Max Boot gets yet another chubby:

As the enforcement of no-fly zones over Bosnia and Iraq should have proved, the risks of such an operation are minimal—especially if we first neutralize Gadhafi's air defenses.

By itself, a no-fly zone might not be enough to topple Gadhafi. At the very least, however, it would dishearten Gadhafi's supporters and buy time for the rebels. We could further tilt the balance in their favor by bombing Gadhafi's installations and troops.

It may also be necessary to send arms and Special Forces trainers to support the rebels. Without committing any combat troops of our own, we could deliver the same kind of potent combined-arms punch that drove the Serbs out of Kosovo when NATO aircraft supported ground operations by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

This is an act of war. If such a thing were begun, it would require a vote in the Senate. And notice how Boot starts with a "minimal risk" no-fly zone and within a few sentences has US forces on the ground. I do not doubt Boot's sincerity and good motives. What simply boggles the mind is that such an argument can be made with a straight face after Iraq and Afghanistan. Boot, to coin a Gatesian phrase, needs his head examined.

Charlie Sheen’s porn star lover Kacey Jordan tweeted her suicide attempt. Maureen O’Connor psychoanalyzes society:

Kacey wanted someone to “save” her, and in the process, she turned her low point into entertainment. We are no longer gawking at famous entertainers’ occasional meltdowns; the meltdowns are the entertainment, and barely any fame is required to participate. Charlie Sheen didn’t invent this genre (Dr. Drew preys on it, Tila Tequila clings to it), but he is its most successful practitioner. This is Charlie Sheen’s legacy. Not his acting, not his wives and children, not even his meme-generating catchphrases. In the course of a few weeks, Charlie Sheen proved that the most transfixing version of a reality TV show is the one that airs in the real world, live, and amounts to a serialized slapstick snuff film.

Joe Klein perks up at news of presidential hopeful Haley Barbour deciding he "has had enough of Afghanistan and wants to start drawing down troops":

When Barbour decides that Afghanistan is a loser, you can bet that more than a few Republicans are heading that way–and that means interesting times for the trigger-happy neoconservatives who have dominated Republican foreign policy thinking in recent years. It also means that the foreign policy debate in the Republican primaries may be a real eye-opener.

“[The Obama administration’s] refusal to act will go down as one of the great mistakes in American foreign-policy history, and will have dire consequences for our own national security in the years to come. I truly fear the decisions they are making today will come back to haunt us,” – Lindsey Graham, the unrepentant backer of the Iraq war.

The war cost up to a trillion borrowed dollars, thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of American casualties, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and seems to have resulted in replacing a crazy anti-Iranian dictator with a smarter, Iranian-influenced one.

A reader writes:

A complex question.  There is much less sense of individuality in Japan, and this is reinforced by social and legal norms.  For example, each family has an official record that is registered with the police.  It is customary upon application for admission to college or for employment to produce a certified copy.  If your sister were divorced, say, or your brother had a conviction for shoplifting, this would appear on your family's record and would likely endanger your own prospects for education and employment.  Each Japanese is, in essence, his brother's keeper.

Another points to this passage:

"Looting simply does not take place in Japan," says Gregory Pflugfelder, an expert in Japanese culture at Columbia University, as quoted by CNN. "I'm not even sure if there's a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear 'looting.'"

Another:

My Japanese wife has been glued to the TV since Thursday. 

All of her extended family is in Tokyo. She called her father and sister, imploring them to stock up on food, sundries, water, batteries, plastic wrap, and duct tape in anticipation of the Fukushima nuclear power plant failing and releasing tons of radiation into the atmosphere.  In addition, the chance of a major aftershock in Tokyo is quite high, so they should be prepared. 

Her sister's response: That would be selfish.  If they hoarded, others would go without.

(Image: Getty search)

Conor asks:

In a more connected world, where faraway people and events are less abstract than ever before, is familiarity going to breed more empathy or contempt?

His live-blogging Japan sparked the thought: 

[S]eeing video of communities as they were ravaged by the tsunami, reading tweets from Japanese survivors and nervous Hawaiians that streamed in beside photographs of their faces, seeing Vimeo profiles of people that shot hand-held camcorder footage of waves destroying their town — it changed how I thought about the people affected. They were less abstract than the faceless victims of the 2004 tsunami, and a lot more like the high school kid who drowned while surfing at a nearby beach, or the families up the street whose houses burned down during the last wildfire, or the folks in the hills across town hoping the first rain of the season doesn't bring mudslides.