Baiting The Enemy

One consequence of fighting a guerrilla war against an enemy with total contempt for the rules of warfare is that you find yourself slowly adapting his tactics to win. So it is no big surprise to learn this:

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

No possibility of that tactic going wrong, is there? One dimension of committing to an indefinite occupation of Iraq, which means an indefinite war against Jihadist insurgents, is how their depravity seeps back into the US military. We’ve seen what has happened with torture and abuse. Even if it hadn’t been authorized by the president, it’s likely some of it would have crept in because of the very nature of the enemy we are engaging. Fighting this war without having it corrupt us is the great challenge we face. It gets harder and harder the longer we stay.

Americans For Polarization

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"[Obama] detects an enormous weariness among Americans about their internal divisions in a time of war…"

There seems to be an assumption that politicians are divided, but Americans wish to be more united. The problem is: we are the divisions. There is no "us" (citizens) and "them" (national politicians). The pols reflect our divisions.

This is not to say that Obama’s gamble isn’t worth taking, nor that what he is doing isn’t noble. Obama is an exceptional man for all of the reasons you have articulated on your blog. But I am not convinced that Americans want to be brought together. They may not want things to be as divided as they are now, but we still are divided on many key issues. And we’re divided on what we should care about: economics vs values, for instance.

Remember: It was just 3 short years ago that 61 million people voted for GWB — well after it was evident that his presidency was a disaster.

The fact is, Hillary vs Rudy may be exactly what the electorate wants.

It seems to be what Bush wants.

Libertarians In The Haidt Matrix

Ravi Iyer, one of the researchers involved in the YourMorals test, along the lines of Jonathan Haidt, has responded to this blog’s curiosity about the test. He compared the scores on the test from NYT readers and from Dish readers. The results are pretty similar – with you being ever-so-slightly slightly more libertarian – and somewhat less pure – than the average NYTer. Then Ravi wondered what the results of self-described libertarians look like. Here’s the result:

Libertarians2

Libertarians score roughly the same as conservatives on the harm and fairness scales; and roughly the same as liberals on the loyalty and authority axes. Libertarians are distinguished from liberals by being a little less concerned about purity. All in all, you can see how the current culture war puts libertarians in a very tight spot.

The Drug War Intensifies

The Marijuana Policy Project reports the following:

For the fourth year in a row, U.S. marijuana arrests set an all-time record in 2006, according to the just-released FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. Similar to previous years, 738,916 or 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture, and marijuana possession arrests again exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined.

NPod Spinning

And bragging about meeting POTUS:

The meeting was not on the president’s public schedule.

Rove was silent throughout, though he took notes. The president listened diligently, Podhoretz said as he recounted the conversation months later, but he "didn’t tip his hand."

"I did say to [the president], that people ask: Why are you spending all this time negotiating sanctions? Time is passing. I said, my friend [Robert] Kagan wrote a column which he said you were giving ‘futility its chance.’ And both he and Karl Rove burst out laughing.

"It struck me," Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, ‘No, no, it’s not futile, there’s a very good chance.’"

Iraq and the Neocons

A sobering editorial from the right-wing Claremont Review. Money quote:

It is a judgment of prudence, not of categorical moralism, which countries are worth our blood and treasure. (In principle, most neocons would agree, but they do not draw the right conclusion regarding Iraq.) Germany and Japan after World War II were worth it. We did not want a third world war with them, and besides, they stood at the ramparts of the actual third world war, the Cold War, that was then about to begin. We wanted and needed to keep them on our side. And finally, they were good candidates for democratization, having enjoyed high levels of economic and social development and national unity, and having had some experience of parliamentary government.

As an abstract matter, Americans would like to see every nation in the world enjoy the blessings of liberty and democracy, because we know how fine these are. But the matter at hand is a question not of good will but of good policy. Is Iraq worth it?

President Bush and the neocons make a strong case that Iraq is important to America’s own security, but the case for toppling Saddam was much stronger than the one for staying indefinitely to buy time for the Iraqis to democratize.

But the case for toppling him was made a lot weaker by the absence of WMDs; and the case for democratization has been rendered moot by the disintegration of Iraq under American occupation. So what else do they have left but categorical moralism? (Hat tip: Pacopond.)

The Queer Left Backs Ahmadinejad

Ever since Michel Foucault’s repulsive embrace of the Iranian revolution, the pomo gay left has had a soft spot for Islamo-fascists. This is an email sent out by the Columbia Queer Alliance. It beggars belief. Here’s the throat clearer:

"We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women."

That’s a relief. But then the pomo knee jerk kicks in:

"We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely.

Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

President Ahmadinejad’s presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

Ahmadinejad was right, you see? There are no gays in Iran.