Month: August 2013

Does America Plan To Oust Assad?

by Patrick Appel

Micah Zenko asks:

Even a limited cruise missile strike will not be merely an attack on Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities, but an attack on the regime itself.

Subsequently, the United States will be correctly perceived by all sides as intervening on behalf of the armed opposition. From there, it is easy to conceive how the initial limited intervention for humanitarian purposes – like Libya in 2011 – turns into a joint campaign plan to assure that Assad is toppled.

If this is the strategic objective of America’s intervention in Syria, President Obama should state it publicly, and provide a narrative of victory for how the United States, with a small number of partner countries, can and will achieve this.

Bret Stephens, for one, wants Assad eliminated:

The world can ill-afford a reprise of the 1930s, when the barbarians were given free rein by a West that had lost its will to enforce global order. Yes, a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss, just as the missiles aimed at Saddam did. But there’s also a chance it could hit and hasten the end of the civil war.

Larison pushes back:

One of the persistent flaws in hawkish thinking about foreign conflicts is that the foreign strongman is treated as the embodiment of everything wrong with the country, and consequently hawks tend to think that by removing the strongman the country’s problems will be remedied very easily. Killing off the leadership of the regime likely wouldn’t hasten the end of the conflict.

Would killing Assad prevent the U.S. from being drawn into the conflict? That seems implausible. If the U.S. killed regime leaders, it would probably invite retaliation that sooner or later would make U.S. involvement in the conflict almost unavoidable. Having taken the dramatic step of striking at the top levels of the Syrian government, would the U.S. then be content to leave Assad’s successor in peace? Not very likely. Stephens’ proposal is a recipe for sucking the U.S. deeper into an intense sectarian conflict.

Gillespie :

I don’t doubt Stephens desire to kill Bashar Assad; indeed, the world would not weep a single tear over that tyrant’s death, or the demise of his regime. But the cavalier attitude toward war is stunning, isn’t it, as is the foam-flecked invocation of “civilization.”

Indeed, if the best case for a U.S. war with Syria is that “the future of civilization” is at stake, it’s clear that pro-war forces have no argument other than overheated rhetoric. The simple fact is that Syria’s civil war (and that’s what we’re facing here) is not the test case for civilization, Western or otherwise.

Performances We Love To Hate

by Chas Danner

The fallout from Miley Cyrus’ hathos-intensive VMA performance has reached the Schraders:

Rich Juzwiak tries to put Cyrus’s performance in perspective:

Cyrus’ showing was essentially incorrect—physically, visually, politically. Her entire aesthetic was awkward. But that kind of awkwardness is something our hate-watching, mess-celebrating culture values. Something that Lady Gaga tried to unsuccessfully touch on with her own mess of a performance of “Applause,” which began with canned boos. But Cyrus outperformed Gaga on that front. I can’t remember the last time I saw a pop star throw herself around a stage like that. Watching Cyrus with a simultaneous sense of delight and horror, I thought of the sage words of Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge in the 1998 electronic-music documentary Modulations: “When in doubt make no sense. No sense is good. And nonsense is good.”

As far nonsensibility is concerned, no one even came close to touching Cyrus. Sexual coming out is a grand tradition in pop, and I’ve never, ever seen it done like this before. This is one of those awards-show performances that only the Video Music Awards seems to be able to spawn—like Britney’s “Gimme More,” or the Madonna-Britney kiss, or Prince in assless pants. We’ll still be talking about what the fuck was going on with Miley Cyrus last night for decades to come.

Kevin Fallon thinks America relishes the chance to overanalyze events like this:

[S]ometimes a VMA performance is just a VMA performance. We may be a nation clutching our pearls, collectively raising one eyebrow, and asking in hushed whispers over our cubicle walls, “Did you see Miley last night?” but all that means is that we got exactly what we wanted from the VMAs. We want unpredictability. We want provocation. We want Miley Cyrus to stick her face into a large woman’s butt crack because we want to be talking about it the next morning. That’s why we engage in heated debates over whether Miley Cyrus is racist based purely on a overly busy, tacky VMA performance. We look forward to overthinking it. We look forward to feigning outrage.

The Appeal Of Used Bookstores, Ctd

by Matt Sitman

Gracy Howard visits the pleasantly ramshackle Capitol Hill Books, which claims on its website that “[e]very bit of space in the store has a book, and there really is one here, somewhere, for you”:

The store’s sections are handwritten notes taped to the shelves, often with special “directions.” So often, these little notes anticipate my own thoughts. As I searched the fiction’s “D” section for Dostoevsky, I met this paper note Scotch-taped to the shelf: “If you’re looking for Dostoevsky” – with a friendly arrow pointing to a special section just a few shelves away. The whole store is like this: with unanticipated rabbit trails and person recommendations, all footnoted with a personal touch. If you want to discover a new unknown author, this bookstore is a perfect place to browse.

And those aren’t the only notes in the store:

One of my favorite notes in his bookstore offers the “Rules,” i.e. words prohibited on the premises: “Oh my God (or gosh),” “neat,” “sweet,” “like” (underlined several times in emphatic permanent marker), “you know,” “totally,” “whatever,” “perfect,” “that’s a good question,” “Kindle,” “Amazon,” and “have a good one.” [Owner Jim] Toole says when people use these words, he tells them to “get a thesaurus and stop being so mentally lame.”

Recent Dish on used bookshops here.

Interior Monologue Of The Day

by Patrick Appel

George Packer’s argument with himself over Syria is worth reading in full. It begins:

So it looks like we’re going to bomb Assad.

Good.

Really? Why good?

Did you see the videos of those kids? I heard that ten thousand people were gassed. Hundreds of them died. This time, we have to do something.

Yes, I saw the videos.

And you don’t want to pound the shit out of him?

I want to pound the shit out of him.

But you think we shouldn’t do anything.

I didn’t say that. But I want you to explain what we’re going to achieve by bombing.

Continued here.

Why Do Chinese Tourists Have Such A Bad Rep? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A group of men enjoy a smoke as they joi

A reader keeps the thread going:

One issue we’ve encountered is the lack of respect for No Smoking sign/rooms/hotels by Chinese and other Asian tourists. That is beyond annoying, as I react horribly to cigarette smoke and will be ill for days and even weeks after being forced to breathe it (sometimes even through hotel ventilation in the wee hours of the morning).  One time we were outside DC and a busload of Chinese tourists arrived after midnight to our completely non-smoking hotel.  They made a loud ruckus settling in on the floor above us, and within minutes we could smell smoke in our room.  Calls to management resulted in demands to stop smoking, which I can assure you were followed for maybe 10 minutes.  Headaches, coughing, and bad sinus congestion were my reward for the next four or five days.

That anecdote brings to mind a Dish post from a few years ago:

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco. The 2010 Global Adult Tobacco Survey, conducted by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control in partnership with the US CDC and the World Health Organization, estimates that China has 350 million smokers, or more smokers than the entire population of the United States.

(Photo: A group of men in Hong Kong enjoy a smoke as they join a crowd of people watching a large video screen showing footage of the landing of China’s astronauts back to Earth on October 17, 2005. By Samantha Sin/AFP/Getty Images)

A Short-Lived Victory For The Homeless?

by Brendan James

Stephen Lurie calls the recent drop in homelessness – 17 percent from 2005 to 2012 – “nothing short of a blue-moon public policy triumph.” But it’s all reversible:

In the next few years, as Washington looks to cut spending across the board, the public’s aversion to homelessness could contribute to its return. We have seen that some constituents have successfully lobbied to overturn some parts of the sequester, such as the FAA cuts. But the homeless population has notoriously low voter turnout, and certainly has little money to spare for campaign contributions. They are unlikely to have much power in an age of austerity and there seems to be little recognition or reward to be gained for politicians by serving the homeless.

As quietly as homelessness has fallen, so too it will go up quietly – unless there is major intervention.  The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that sequestration cuts from homelessness programs are set to expel 100,000 people from a range of housing and shelter programs this year. That’s nearly one sixth of the current total homeless population. Far from gently raising the homeless rate, it would undo a full decade of progress.

What You And Detainees Have In Common

by Tracy R. Walsh

A_book_from_the_Guantanamo_captives'_library

Elias Groll considers why so many Americans are interested in the library at Guantánamo Bay:

[Books] have the ability to humanize and establish connections between people. Browsing through the GitmoBooks Tumblr, you might realize, suddenly, that you and a detainee have something in common – you both read and loved Harry Potter. Derek Attig, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois, has written about this phenomenon on his blog:

A main point of the Guantánamo system … has been to make it seem as though Americans have nothing in common with the men being held within it. But books connect. Not as strongly as some theorize – reading the same book as someone else doesn’t make you inexorably and totally connected-but shared experience of a cultural artifact is, indeed, a powerful thing. Scrolling through photos of Danielle Steel novels, of Narnia books, of Harry Potter and 300 Orchids: Species, Hybrids, and Varieties in Cultivation, I’m struck by the intense familiarity of these shelves that I’ve never seen, in a place I’ve never been, used by people that I do not know or, by design, know much about.

(Photo: An Arabic edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince held at Guantánamo Bay. By Michael Billings)

“A Gay Rapper Who’s Better Than Everybody”

by Brendan James

That’s what rapper Talib Kweli predicts it will take to end the stigma of homosexuality in hip-hop:

Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever’s the best. So before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible. You had people like 3rd Bass and other people came through, and people respected them for their dedication to hip-hop. But people didn’t really take white rappers seriously until Eminem, because he was better than everybody. Like female emcees, you need to be like Lauryn Hill or Nicki Minaj or killing everything before somebody takes you seriously.

Previous Dish on hip-hop and homosexuality here, here and here.

Throwing In The Trowel

by Tracy R. Walsh

477824main_SturmandTuckerwGPR

Today’s archaeologists can “dig” without breaking ground:

A major concern in archaeology has always been the potential damage caused by excavation – Indiana Jones may have trampled through ruins without a care in the world, but real-life archaeologists try their best to preserve the remnants of the past as best they can. In recent years, scientists have begun testing out quite a few different non-invasive techniques to analyze archaeological sites. Ground-penetrating radar, or GPR, allows archaeologists to see what’s underground without ever needing to dig. Back in 2002, researchers successfully used GPR in Petra, Jordan to locate underground structures and guide later excavations. People have also used the technique extensively for the Duffy’s Cut Project, which seeks to learn more about the lives of Irish immigrants who were buried in Duffy’s Cut, Pennsylvania almost 200 years ago. And recently, scientists used GPR to try to map undiscovered ruins in Pompeii – they believe the technique could be used to provide detailed maps of the subsurface ruins, which will probably never be excavated.

(Photo: Earth scientist Compton Tucker and radar specialist Jennie Sturm use GPR during an archeological expedition in central Turkey. By NASA/Joe Nigro)