Author: Dish Staff

The Relentless Warmongers

by Dish Staff

Matt Steinglass sighs at the aimless hawkishness of American foreign policy elites when it comes to the Middle East:

William Kristol, as ever, manages to distill the rot down to its ludicrous essence: “What’s the harm of bombing them at least for a few weeks and seeing what happens? I don’t think there’s much in the way of unanticipated side effects that are going to be bad there. We could kill a lot of very bad guys!” No doubt the Americans could. Drop enough bombs and you are guaranteed to kill some very bad guys, and probably some good guys, as well as a lot of guys who, like most, fit somewhere in between. But simply bombing areas when the emerging powers prove bloodthirsty, and hoping that a better sort of power replaces them, isn’t very promising.

Conor Friedersdorf outlines the many questions interventionists aren’t bothering to ask, let alone answer:

After the decade-long, $6-trillion debacle in Iraq, you’d think Congress and pundits would be pressing the Obama administration for figures:

If the U.S. fights ISIS in Iraq and Syria, what would be the odds of victory? How much would it cost? How many U.S. troops would be killed? How would it effect nearby countries like Iran? And how much of a threat does ISIS actually pose to the U.S. “homeland”? Yet much coverage of Syria is narrowly drawn. Vital questions are studiously ignored, as if they have no bearing on the merits of intervention, while dire warnings are presented with too much hype and too little rigor.

And Steve Chapman remarks on how ISIS’s global threat is, in his view, being wildly oversold:

We are supposed to be impressed that the Islamic State controls a swath of land, which al-Qaida never did. But Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller says that’s not the advantage it appears to be. “The fact that they want to hold territory and are likely to deeply alienate the people in their territory means that, unlike terrorists, they will present lucrative targets while surrounded by people who are more than willing to help with intelligence about their whereabouts,” he told me. It’s often forgotten that al-Qaida proclaimed its own state in Iraq in 2007, but its brutal ways alienated fellow Sunni insurgent groups so completely that they switched to our side. The Islamic State is equally vulnerable to a backlash. As for the prospect that it could hit the homeland, our usual problem in deterring terrorists is that their bombs have no return address. The Islamic State, by contrast, is adorned with a neon bull’s-eye.

White Lady Makeovers

by Dish Staff

Linda Holmes saves her readers the trouble of watching a new reality show that involves black women making over white ones:

The black women on Girlfriend Intervention, like the gay men who did the work on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, are supposedly being saluted for their (stereotypically) superior style and knowledge and backbone, but are cast as helpers and facilitators for the benefit of, respectively, white women and straight men, valued for what they can offer and required to display sass at all times in sufficient amounts. (Among other things, it’s unfortunate that other than Thomas being the loudest, they don’t much distinguish the four stylists from each other, either.)

Popular entertainment targeted to white women is thick with obnoxiously other-ish fairy godpeople: the gay friend, the keeping-it-real black friend, the Latina neighbor, the wise black boss. There’s always some earthier, real-er, truer person whose task it is to flutter around to provide perspective, to fix what’s broken, and often to embarrass you for your foolishness. This is problematic for white women who don’t care to be cast as badly dressed, helpless dummies who need constant life coaching, but it’s no better for black women who don’t care to be cast as flashy-dressing, finger-waving, fast-talking fixers whose mission is making Cinderella presentable for the ball, or for gay men who don’t care to be asked to tag along on shopping trips.

Holmes spells out why such a show might send the wrong message:

It’s not your black friend’s job to tell you how to believe in yourself and keep your man (the concept of not having a man one is desperate to keep is seemingly foreign to the interventionists); it’s not your gay friend’s job to style you. Friendship is not quite so transactional.

Inconsolable In Islamabad, Ctd

by Dish Staff

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Tim Craig doubts the long-running anti-government protests in Pakistan will achieve their goal of ousting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who’s actually pretty popular:

The annual Pew Research Center survey of Pakistan finds that 64 percent of residents have a favorable view of Sharif, a solid rating that has essentially remained constant since Sharif’s returned to power last year. Perhaps even more important in Sharif’s bid to hold off the demonstrators, led by former cricket star Imran Khan and firebrand cleric Tahirul Qadri, Pakistanis’ positive views about the economy have risen dramatically over the past year.

About four in ten residents now have confidence in Pakistan’s economy, compared to just 17 percent who felt that way last year. Moreover, Pew notes that 36 percent of residents are optimistic that the economy will improve over the next year, twice as many who felt that way compared to last year.

But as Shuja Nawaz points out, the outcome also depends on whether and how the military decides to get involved:

A senior general, communicating with me directly, summed up the situation succinctly: “This is a small-time riot against a small-time government. The army is neutral and not in a position to confront a crowd, nor intends to do so. The government has gradually conceded on every point as the pressure continued to build up, except on the matter of the PM’s [prime minister’s] resignation. The stand-off now is about the PM holding on. All arguments about democracy or constitution are irrelevant since the sitting government is there in spite of the law and not because of the law.”

If enough generals in the high command share these views, the portents are not good for Sharif.

Mosharraf Zaidi, on the other hand, highly doubts the military would ever pin its hopes on Khan:

[T]he best thing Sharif has going for him is the quality of his competition. Pakistan with Khan at the helm would be a disaster of epic proportions — and that’s even with the country’s extremely high tolerance for shambolic leadership. Khan may be the world’s oldest teenager, with a captive national audience. He thumbs his nose at political niceties and employs an invective that dumbs down the discourse. Like Justin Bieber, Khan focuses on electrifying the urban youth who genuinely believe him to be a messianic solution to the disenchantment they feel about their country. And Khan’s understanding of Pakistan’s problems is probably only slightly more sophisticated than Bieber’s. Khan does not have the policy chops to fix what ails Pakistan: The crux of his efforts during these few weeks has been that he, not Sharif, should be prime minister.

Class In The Classroom

by Dish Staff

Jesse Singal flags a new paper wherein “sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco writes about what she saw when she observed a bunch of third-through-fifth-graders in a public school”:

Crucially, she only studied white kids — she wanted to isolate the effects of socioeconomic class. What she found, as McCrory put it in the study’s press release, is that “Middle-class parents tell their children to reach out to the teacher and ask questions. Working-class parents see asking for help as disrespectful to teachers, so they teach their children to work out problems themselves.”

The natural question, she said in an email to Science of Us, is why working- and middle-class parents give their kids different sorts of guidance about proper behavior in school. “What I found was that middle-class parents were deeply involved in their kids’ schooling, and as a result, had a lot of detailed knowledge about what today’s teachers expect,” she said. “Working-class parents tended to be less involved and, as a result, relied on their own experiences in school to gauge what teachers would expect (i.e., ‘My teachers used to yell at students if they asked for help’).”

Nine-Year-Olds And Uzis Don’t Mix, Ctd

by Dish Staff

Beutler wants the full video of this week’s tragic shooting released:

Horrendous, unnecessary gun deaths are so common in the U.S. that some of them get caught on tape. The videos can have tremendous power to shape the way people think about public policy. Just last week, the filmed shooting death of Kajieme Powell by St. Louis, Missouri, police reignited a national debate about police training. The video of an Uzi destroying Charles Vacca’s life would serve as a visceral reminder of the fact that when a bullet enters the human body, that body is very likely to die.

Nicole Flatow points out that “a lack of age restrictions isn’t the only way gun ranges are safety-free zones, and potentially the sites of preventable deaths”:

Inside gun ranges, individuals can also “rent” a gun without any of the precautions that happen before an individual buys a gun. They don’t have to pass a criminal background check. There’s no check of their mental health records, although some require individuals to attest to their mental competence. Many gun rangesdon’t even collect names or identification. And that’s not even the worst part.

Even those gun ranges that want to check the backgrounds for rental customers are not permitted to. Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services told Politico Magazine earlier this month that individuals who rent guns don’t actually “possess” them because they don’t take them off the premises. So federal background check law doesn’t apply, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is not permitted to conduct a check. Many states, including Florida, take the same position that they will not conduct background checks for gun rentals.

She goes on to list numerous instances where this state of affairs has lead to deaths. Meanwhile, Dan Baum argues the benefits of teaching shooting to kids:

A single-shot .22, while easier to control than an Uzi, can kill you just as dead. So how can such rifles possibly be appropriate for use by children? Again, context is everything. Under proper instruction, shooting is a ritual. You do this for this reason and that for that reason, and you never, ever alter the process, because doing so is a matter of life and death. Learning to slow down and go through such essential steps can be valuable developmentally. The very danger involved gets children’s attention, as it would anybody’s. But there’s an added benefit to teaching children to shoot: it’s a gesture of respect for a group that doesn’t often get any.

Becca Morn pushes back:

The detail that boggles me, even among the gun aficionados who acknowledge it was criminally stupid to let a 9-year-old fire an Uzi on automatic, is how many insist that children need to be taught how to handle and shoot a gun safely. I’m sorry, but as a gun owner myself, and even given the family I grew up in, this is a bs statement.Very young children do not need to be taught how to ‘handle and shoot’ guns. Their first lesson with firearms should be: “Do not touch or go near a gun. If you see a gun, find an adult because these things are dangerous.”

When a minor is old enough to qualify for a hunting license, that’s another matter. (In many states, the age is 12 years and up.) Even then, questions of physical ability and mental fitness of the kid, and appropriateness of the specific firearm need to be addressed. I remember a time when my kid brother was demoted by our father to pack-carrier, because he carelessly wouldn’t pay attention to where the barrel of his 20ga was pointed. That’s how you teach a kid to use a gun.

 

Is Obama Fumbling Ukraine?

by Dish Staff

Christopher Dickey isn’t impressed with the president’s response to the Russian invasion, which he still won’t call an “invasion”:

Obama knows invasion is a “fightin’ word,” as they used to say in old Hollywood Westerns. And he knows — and we all know — a shootout in the Ukraine corral against the world’s other great nuclear power would be beyond foolish. But under the circumstances, even such a stalwart of administration policymaking as Ivo Daalder has run out of patience with the vague language coming out of Foggy Bottom and the White House. Daalder doesn’t recommend military action, certainly, but he does recommend NATO members step up their defense spending and deploy their vast military resources throughout the alliance in a way that makes the threat of force more credible. After all, Putin has shown his imperial appetite knows no bounds, and the tactics he’s used to shave off portions of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine could be turned on the NATO-member Baltics. Daalder also calls on Western countries to supply advance weapons and a steady stream of intelligence to Kiev. And finally the U.S. and the E.U. need to impose full-scale economic sanctions on Moscow.

Noah Rothman faults Obama for tying his own hands diplomatically by revealing too much:

One never takes a tool off the table during a negotiation without reciprocity from the negotiating partner. To do otherwise is to set a bad precedent, one which a smart negotiating partner will make you repeat. President Obama insisted that the sanctions regime he has imposed on Russia is working, that he will not approve a military solution to the crisis in Ukraine, and that providing lethal aid to Kiev’s forces is not under immediate consideration. What, then, is on the table? Our options are increasingly limited while Moscow’s freedom to escalate or de-escalate as he sees fit remains robust.

Steven Pifer recommends an assertive response, including more sanctions and military aid to beef up the Ukrainian army:

First, the West should adopt additional economic sanctions on Russia. Those applied to date have had an impact, as evidenced by increasing capital flight, a rising inflation rate and an economy that teeters on the verge of recession. The prospect of additional economic pain will cause greater unease in Moscow and could press Putin to reconsider his course. Second, the United States and Europe should provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance, such as light anti-armor weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The West cannot give Ukraine enough to defeat the far stronger Russian army, but it can enable the Ukrainian military to drive up the cost of aggression. The Kremlin has tried to cover up reports of Russian casualties in Ukraine. Although the Russian people have supported Putin’s policy toward Ukraine, polls show that an overwhelming majority do not want the Russian army there. That could be significant, especially if the number of Russian casualties grows, which could well erode the political support that Putin enjoys. That might push him to change his calculus.

But Marc Champion is not so sure that arming Ukraine is a good idea:

The U.S. and Europe have made it clear that they will not go to war with Russia — a nuclear superpower — to defend Ukraine’s borders. That may not be fair, but it is rational. And no matter how many weapons the U.S. and European allies supply to Ukraine, Russia will deploy more of them, wielded by better trained troops. The logical progression of a NATO armament program for Ukraine is broader conflict. Putin would proceed, knowing that, in the end, Ukraine’s allies would not have its back. The calculation could change if Putin decides to push his military deeper into Ukraine — realizing fears of a wider conflict while heightening the security concerns of nearby Poland. For now, however, a formal arms program seems unwise.

NATO, meanwhile, isn’t exactly speaking with one voice here:

All NATO members oppose Russia’s destabilizing role in Ukraine. But they don’t place the same priority on stopping it, nor have they agreed on a strategy to address it. The annexation of Crimea has sent tremors through the Baltics, and rightly so: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all home to sizable ethnic Russian minorities. Eastern European leaders have called on NATO for assistance, but the allied response has been mixed. Before arriving in Wales, President Obama will visit Estonia to “reassure allies in Central and Eastern Europe” and “reaffirm our ironclad commitment to [Article 5] as the foundation of NATO.” Meanwhile, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that NATO would begin building up its military presence along its eastern borders. But Germany, Italy, Spain, and France—far less vulnerable than the Baltics—are reluctant to further antagonize Moscow.

“The Problem Is I’m Black”

by Dish Staff

Dan Savage passes along the disturbing video above:

A man was sitting in a public place waiting to pick his kids up from school. He wasn’t breaking any laws. A shop owner asked him to move—which the shop owner had no right to do—and the man got up and moved. He was then stopped by a cop who asked him his name. He refused to give his name. “I know my rights,” the man said to the cop. And he did know his rights: he was under no obligation to identify himself to her. “Minnesota does not currently have a ‘stop and identify’ statute in place” that would give police the right to arrest someone for [not] identifying himself,” RawStory points out. The cop, unfortunately, didn’t know his rights.

Conor is rightly outraged:

The City Pages explains what happened after the arrest. “The man was charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and obstructing the legal process,” they write, “but those charges were later dropped. On Twitter, the St. Paul PD’s public information officers said no formal complaint has been filed in connection with the incident.” A police administrator who sees that video, which Lollie’s attorney brought to court, should not require a formal complaint from the victim to discipline the officers involved and acknowledge that they engaged in inept policing!

Yet the police department–which held on to Lollie’s phone, with the video on it, for 6 months–is defending the officers.