Month: May 2011

Jackson Diehl joins the "do something!" brigade. Yglesias sighs:

[Diehl's] column is like the Platonic ideal of a DC foreign policy column. He’s really, really, really furious about Barack Obama for not doing “more” to block the Syrian government’s violent repression of anti-government protests and he goes on for some length about it all without mentioning a single efficacious step he’d like to see Obama take.

Well, duh. That's neoconservatism in a nutshell. Scream loudly and … well, not invade, but … well, a speech or something like that. Meanwhile, the EU does something:

[It] has listed 13 Syrian officials on the bloc's sanctions list, including a brother and a wealthy and influential cousin of Bashar al-Assad, the president, and intelligence chiefs. … The measures, asset freezes and travel bans, are part of a package of sanctions, including an arms embargo which went into effect on Tuesday, as part of EU efforts to try to force Syria to end violence against anti-government protesters.

The latest updates from Syria here and here.

"Europe’s political elites are afraid to tell a truth that economic historians have known forever: that a monetary union without a political union is simply not viable. This is not a debt crisis. This is a political crisis. The eurozone will soon face the choice between an unimaginable step forward to political union or an equally unimaginable step back," – Wolfgang Munchau.

Fenit, Ireland, 10.30 am

Here's an email typical of its genre:

So let me get this straight: You're against the enhanced interrogation and/or waterboarding of someone like KSM, but you're in favor of the murder of an un-armed bin Laden? This is who we are now? These are our values now? Please explain yourself.

In a just war, enemies are killed. Someone who has orchestrated the mass killing of thousands has declared war on us, and we are morally permitted to defend ourselves with violence. But equally in a just war, if someone is captured, whoever he is, he is treated humanely in captivity.

The difference is between an enemy at large where he can still inflict casualties and an enemy already detained, where he cannot. This used to be well understood. But for pacifists on the far left and for torture advocates on the far right, violence is either all equally wrong or all equally right. But the ability to make distinctions is what makes a civilization in a fallen world, where evil endures and also seduces.

In the same universe of debate, late last week Glenn Greenwald questioned "how the bin Laden killing fits into broader principles and viewpoints about state power and the War on Terror." Along the same lines, David Ax asks whether killing bin Laden was legal. Adam Serwer rolls his eyes while responding to Greenwald:

[T]here is no need for a "bin Laden exception" owing to his particular evil, because he was already a lawful military target. It is the law, not his being evil, that justifies the use of lethal force in this context. The emergence of non-state entities capable of engaging in armed conflicts against military forces poses a genuine legal challenge, but bin Laden cannot shake his status as a legal target simply by being a criminal anymore than that terrorists being criminals would allow the Bush administration to disregard standards of humane treatment for those captured in such a conflict. It is one thing to argue that capture and trial would have been preferable, another entirely to argue that the killing was illegal.

Serwer's reply to Ax is more circumscribed.

But he sure has had his moments. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean Avery’s greatest hits:

A reader writes:

I have been a staunch supporter of your inquiries into the identity of Trig's mother and want to pass along this further piece of proof regarding your insistence that male candidates who tout war stories, such as Richard Blumenthal, be asked by the media for proof of such. Well, this one is about a pastor who had lied about being a Navy SEAL. After the capture of Osama, the local paper asked around and were led to this man because he had touted his past, now proven to be false, in the Navy. The most interesting quote in the piece is in the introduction:

We do not regularly ask those we interview for proof of their service, believing these men and women would not lie and dishonor those who have fought bravely defending our country.

That just about captures the press's view of military service and motherhood. Too sacred to investigate.

Mo Costandi reports on what could have been:

The idea of using crows to find the world's most wanted man was based on the work of John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington who has been studying crow behaviour for over 20 years. Working with a population of wild American crows on the university campus in Seattle, Marzluff and his colleagues noticed that birds which they had previously captured seemed to be wary of them and were harder to catch.

Marzluff ran some tests, having the crow-catchers all wear the same mask. Months later, the crows would attack anyone in the mask, "scolding them with loud squawks and even mobbing them":

What's more, their memory of the mask was persistent – nearly three years later, they continued to attack anyone who wore it. Marzluff says that he has been scolded by far more birds than had been originally trapped, suggesting that they not only recognized the mask, but had transmitted the information to their offspring and to other birds in the flock.

Apropos this thread, these kids seem pretty with it:

One more reader reflects:

There's no surprise that my son doesn't know who Osama bin Laden is: he's only 21 months old. But looking at that happy, laughing child, just learning to talk, would anyone want him to know who bin Laden is?

I know who bin Laden is, because I remember that confused day in New York, and I remember all the terrible things that followed: the war, the bloodshed, the torture, the lies for which we had to invent the word "truthiness".  All the terrible things that happened in the Aughties – that stupid, horrible decade. I know who Osama bin Laden is, because I remember all those things. I'm sure my son will learn who bin Laden is – as history, as the reason why things are the way they are in his world. And this history will always be with us. But he will never have those painful memories: he is free of them.

I was one of those initially put off by the gruesome glee of people celebrating OBL getting shot in the head; I was more glad about the capture of his documents and computers. But thinking about it this way, I broke down and had to take a moment, just in sheer relief that this is done with: our children won't have to remember who Osama bin Laden is and what he did.

Nate Silver continues to argue that there "is a fairly strong relationship between the candidates’ [early] polling and the number of states and votes they won during the primary process — as well as their chances of winning the nomination." Brendan Nyhan objects:

[T]he evidence … suggests that early polls don't tell us much about who will win party nominations — they're largely the result of name recognition and the structural (dis)advantages held by candidates before they enter the race. My headline "Early primary/straw polls don't matter" may have been too strong, but I stand by my conclusion that "At this point in the election cycle, the preferences that matter are those of the activists, elected officials, donors, and party elites who take part in the so-called 'invisible primary.'" Among the subgroup of viable GOP candidates, that's where the most important action is taking place right now — and it's why I'd bet on Tim Pawlenty despite his low poll numbers.