Eqyptian Wankers

Masturbation is effectively the only sex happening in the Arab world’s only real country:

[A] marriage based on family interests — to appease the elders or keep wealth within the family — as opposed to genuine affection and understanding, is unlikely to sustain a healthy sex life.  For men, masturbating to porn or indeed Arab video clips — it costs no more than $20 a month to have private access to satellite television or, as Mustafa puts it, "marry the TV" — is a convenient alternative to both the hassles and expenses of matrimony, which are absurdly exhausting by any standards, and the moral agony of engaging in premarital sex… Masturbation may be perfectly harmless in its own right, but the fact that, abetted by pornography, it has come to replace sex in Egypt Mustafa finds alarming; and with the ever rising marriage age in this society, people grow up and grow older knowing only one sex partner — themselves.

The al-Ahram piece that prompted this observation is here.

One Problem With American Healthcare

According to Matt, it’s over-treatment. Yep: they’re making us too healthy, those fee-based doctors. Can’t have that, can we? Here’s the preferred policy:

Brownlee’s alternative is to turn doctors into salaried employees charged with doing the job of keeping people healthy, rather than into fee-for-service professionals whose level of compensation depends on how much treatment they prescribe. That seems appealing to me, but it’s considerably more radical than anything being contemplated in the political system right now.

And who would be paying their salaries? The government of course, in some form or another, looking over doctors’ and patients’ shoulders to make sure they don’t behave incorrectly, by over-prescribing, or prescribing one of those new, expensive drugs that actually cure or treat diseases. (Of course, if Matt and liberal Democrats have their way, there will be far far fewer new expensive drugs anyway.) It’s often clarifying to see the leftist mind at work: we know best; the profit-motive is inherently suspect; doctors and patients cannot be trusted with their own health decisions. Yes, I know insurance companies and HMOs make similar decisions. But if you think they’re callous and irrational, wait till you give the same powers to Washington D.C.

Deeper and Deeper?

Craigpauljrichardsafpgetty

This could get interesting. Larry Craig’s kids appear totally invested in the notion of their father as "not-gay" – a completely understandable if sadly delusional conviction at this stage:

Jay Craig, 33, told The Associated Press that he, his brother, Michael Craig, 38, and his sister, Shae Howell, 36, spoke candidly with their father about the June 11 arrest.

"Our conclusion was there was no wrongdoing there," Jay Craig said. "We understood the direction he was taking (by pleading guilty) and there was nothing illegal that happened there that would even convince somebody what he was doing was illegal. He was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time when this sting operation was going on."

The kids were all adopted, by the way. Then this:

Craig has hired a high-powered crisis management team that includes [Billy] Martin [Michael Vick’s lawyer]; communications adviser Judy Smith; Washington attorney Stan Brand, a former general counsel to the U.S. House; and Minneapolis attorney Tom Kelly.

Brand, who represented Major League Baseball in the congressional investigation into steroid use, will handle any Senate Ethics Committee investigation of Craig, while Kelly will assist the legal case in Minnesota.

That doesn’t sound like a guy on the edge of resignation. Of course, I can’t imagine that anyone in the GOP wants this story to continue running. Unless Arlen Specter has a very devious plot to reform the GOP by detonating its closet. He does seem to have played the pivotal role in changing Craig’s mind.

(Photo of Craig and attorney-general John Ashcroft March 9, 2006, by Paul.J. Richards/AFP/Getty. All alternative caption possibilities sadly anticipated.)

Hitch on Iraq Now

He’s for the surge, whether it’s working or not:

"It’s precisely when it’s going badly that the surge deserves support."

So we are required to support a military strategy regardless of its consequences? This does, I confess, seem to me to be the authentic Bush position at this point. But the decision to support something regardless of its effect, regardless of the criteria by which its architects urged it to be judged in the first place or only a couple of months ago, is a function not of judgment but of pure ideology. I agree with Hitch that we need to protect Kurdistan at all costs. I agree that we have serious enemies in Iraq that require tackling and preferably killing. But throwing more military tools at an internal Iraqi political crisis, risking American lives to support what Hitch calls a "sectarian thug" in Maliki, is not something we can continue regardless. Especially when Hitch concedes that the war is being run by a president who "doesn’t have a clue."

In the middle of the interview, mercifully, Hitch offers a compromise: that we can leave once we have assured Kurdish autonomy and have smashed al Qaeda. But it seems to me that the good news from Anbar is that many Sunnis have already turned on al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has already suffered major defeats in public opinion in Anbar and (before that) Jordan. Why this happened and what role the surge played in helping it happen is an interesting question. But it has happened. Which means withdrawal is now an option even on Hitch’s terms – as long as we maintain a presence in Kurdistan and Anbar remains opposed to al Qaeda. So it seems to me that Hitch favors withdrawal in the near future. He also concedes that his biggest mistake was assuming minimal competence in the Bush administration. I made that mistake too. And he says something that I’ve also been forced painfully to acknowledge: that "corners were cut" in presenting the case for war against Saddam. Bush decided to scare rather than educate people about the Islamist threat, in all its complexity and lethality. That remains his unforgivable sin. He’s still doing it, with his moronic, condescending rhetoric on the surge. Anyway, here’s the Hoover clip. See for yourself.

A Third War Coming?

Well, we have learned to expect the unexpected. One possibility in the next few weeks is that the president will acquiesce to a winter draw-down of US troops in Iraq, but only so as to remove them as potential targets in the war he is planning to launch against Iran. Money quote from Barnett Rubin:

Someone whose proximity to knowledge of such things is so great that I cannot identify him in any other way, told my interlocutor that President Bush would be inclined to accept suggestions for withdrawing some troops from Iraq and moving as many as possible into more secure bases, as a safeguard against reprisals in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

I don’t know what to make of this. I hear all sorts of rumors. But it is clear to me that a sane management of the Iran problem is not something we should expect from this administration. A third war – started by Washington – is a real possibility. Since the president believes he needs no Congressional authorization for this, there may well be no checks on him, barring a military revolt.