Month: May 2011

A reader writes:

Dogs definitely have skin in this game, too. Do you remember the stories of the videos discovered after the fall of Kabul, of Al Qaeda "scientists" sharpening their chemical weapons technology by gassing dogs? That alone would send my dog and me out of the chopper after the bastard who gave those orders.

Another sends the above image. Another writes:

This is uber-geeky, but allow me to bring your attention to one of my favorite fictional war dogs, "Pooch", partner to "Gunner" and "Sarge", a pair of hard luck Marines stationed (mostly) in the Pacific during WW2. The "Gunner" and "Sarge" adventures are chronicled in the DC Comics anthology series 'Our Fighting Forces' beginning with issue #45 (published in 1959), and "Pooch"(a K-9 Corps German Shepard) joins the duo shortly thereafter in issue #49:

Another writes:

The SEALS may be jumping with their dogs, but just wait until the Russians perfect their air assault cat!

Slate anticipated the cat-lover backlash and made a satirical slideshow on "Cats of War".

Josh Green writes off The Donald.

Phil Gyford doubts that 2 billion people worldwide watched the royal event. Cory Doctorow summarizes:

In the UK, 39.6% of the population watched the wedding. For the two billion number to be real, the royal wedding would have to be 75% as popular in every country on earth as it was in the country in which it took place. To evaluate the likelihood of that, consider this: the most-watched TV event in Indian history (the 2011 India vs Sri Lanka cricket world cup final) was watched by 11.7% of India's population — is the British royal wedding likely to be 600% more popular in India than the most-popular TV event in Indian history?

Gyford takes the media to task:

Whenever real journalists complain that bloggers — mere amateurs! — couldn't possibly do the work of professionals who have been through proper training, it's exactly this kind of nonsense that permits you to stare at them, silently, before giving a little giggle and walking away.

There are lots of difficult and ambiguous things that anyone, professional or amateur, could understandably get wrong when reporting news. We all make mistakes and many things are complicated. But for all these very professional news outlets to repeat a "fact" that's plainly wrong, without even attributing it to anyone, makes you wonder about everything they write.

This pooch would make a terrible SEAL:

Scott Morgan fumes:

[R]ecent months have brought about what can only be described as the rapid collapse of the Obama Administration's support for medical marijuana. Following dozens of aggressive DEA raids, along with some unusual IRS audits, the Dept. of Justice has now begun openly endeavoring to destroy carefully regulated state programs before they get off the ground.

It's a sweeping intervention that instantly divorces the Obama Administration from its stated policy of not focusing resources on individuals who are clearly compliant with state law. Unlike the numerous recent dispensary raids, which could theoretically result from competing interpretations of state law, this new incursion constitutes a direct threat of arrest against state employees acting in good faith to administer perfectly lawful state programs.

Scott further discusses Holder's war on dispensaries here.

Daniel Levy speaks plainly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

We need to acknowledge that American domestic politics will not allow the US to lead on this issue in a way that is conducive to advancing a breakthrough. Most people would look at this as being patently obvious, this administration included. US leaders are sufficiently boxed in politically and lack maneuverability to carry the peace process forward. If that is the case, for anyone caring about Israel’s future and the Palestinians, it is worth considering what would get us out of the impasse, whether it is the UN or Quartet playing a more active role.

Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley put the $3 trillion price tag for the war on terror in perspective:

More than actual security, we bought a sense of action in the face of what felt like an existential threat. We staved off another attack on domestic soil. Our debt load was creeping up already, thanks to the early waves stages of baby-boomer retirements, but we also hastened a fiscal mess that has begun, in time, to fulfill bin Laden’s vision of a bankrupt America. If left unchecked, our current rate of deficit spending would add $9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That’s three Osamas, right there.

Douthat minimized the fiscal cost of bin Laden earlier in the week.

The Economist takes the poetic route to send-off Osama bin Laden:

Somewhere, according to one of his five wives, was a man who loved sunflowers, and eating yogurt with honey; who took his children to the beach, and let them sleep under the stars; who enjoyed the BBC World Service and would go hunting with friends each Friday, sometimes mounted, like the Prophet, on a white horse. He liked the comparison. Yet the best thing in his life, he said, was that his jihads had destroyed the myth of all-conquering superpowers.

… The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death. Whether or not he resisted when the Crusaders’ special forces arrived, their bullets could only exalt him.

Mark Vernon connects the two, by quoting Thomas Lacquer's essay on America's insistence on the death penalty:

Human depravity … makes it necessary for civil government to assume the power of divine authority. … In other words, a government here on earth can cast out and kill certain of its citizens under certain circumstances because God in heaven has ordained that this should be so. Capital punishment is the expression of both divine and communal outrage at those who have excluded themselves from full humanity through their acts.

Bin Laden was, obviously, not a citizen, but his absolute removal at the hands of special forces does feel like 'the expression of both divine and communal outrage at those who have excluded themselves from full humanity through their acts.' Bin Laden is finally consigned to the lowest circle of hell, and America can know, once more, that it is a city upon a hill.

I think that whatever the merits of this as an observation, as a moral statement, it is repellent. What defines a city on a hill is not vengeance. It is justice. And there is a vast difference between justice in domestic criminal matters and justice in a just war. It is perfectly possible to oppose the death penalty, as I do strongly, and to support the killing of enemy forces in a just war. The killing of bin Laden was an act of war against a man who launched a war against us. It was self-defense, and a way of preventing such massacres in the future.

All prisoners subjected to capital punishment are already detained and unable to wreak more havoc. They are also defenseless. And they are part of the criminal justce system, not the laws of war. These distinctions matter.

(Image by SABER from his Tarnished series)

Peter Moskos outlines his problems with Libertarianism:

I’m not fond of ideologies. I don’t like it when people have answers before they know the question. So why shouldn’t libertarianism be dismissed as just another ideology. Perhaps less government is the solution to many specific problems. But I refuse to believe anything is the solution to all problems. I’m willing to accept (or at least debate) libertarian positions on any policy issue. I’m not willing to consider libertarianism as the Correct Ideology.

That's roughly my position as well. I am essentially libertarian on many questions, but I still regard myself as a conservative, in as much as I am, before anything else, against ideology. I believe in a distinction between theoretical and practical wisdom; and I believe we live in a complex contingent world in which prudence is our only real constant.