A Second Hand Conjecture

Cross-posted at The Conjecturer

Defense

• Doug Bandow has a pair of great pieces up, on how the GWoT and Iraq are actually opposed to a free society, and more precisely just how badly the Iraq War has distorted us as a society—like, perhaps, the newly self-granted power to seize the property of anyone who “interferes” with the war (Bush then granted himself +10 Dexterity and equipped a new amulet to get +1 Attack). Because who needs a Fifth Amendment when there’s a war to be fought? I hope Doug doesn’t come home to find his house sacrificed to Iraq. The ever-cogent Ms. Boyd has more.
• Related questions—the argument that questioning the government is tantamount to treason (i.e. “aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States”) has a worrisome corollary: no one can or should ever question the President. That seems deeply unamerican somehow.
• Unfortunately, moving goalposts has been a defining characteristic of the way the administration has pathetically fought the war. But blaming Petraeus or his staff isn’t directing the blame properly—blaming Bush, for treating Petraeus as a messiah who has until September to work an unworkable miracle, on the other hand, is.
• Why, of course a brand new way of looking at warfare would require fundamentally new doctrine. This shouldn’t be a surprise. But notice, too, how “network-centric warfare” has been softened: no longer “eliminating the fog of war,” which was how it was conceived under Art Cebrowski’s pie-in-the-sky ideal, and not even “every unit the node of a network.” Now it is merely empowering units on the micro level to become more autonomous and self-directing—very 4GW, if you will, with network capabilities. It makes a lot more sense, and I’m glad this is how it’s wound up evolving.

Around the World

• I’m curious as to why we don’t get coverage like this in the U.S. Of course, they’re a bit too “up” on Malalai Joya, which isn’t necessarily bad, but she’s also not exactly the paragon of virtue they’ve made her out to be. Still, there is a lot happening in Afghanistan you don’t hear about in the western press: new mass graves from who-knows-when, the rising tide of opium addicts, or the regionally persistent problem electricity.
• The courts in Pakistan are in full-blown rebellion against Musharraf. I wouldn’t write him off just yet; he still has a few tricks up his sleeve to cling to power.
• Is it a global labor shortage, or an unwillingness to pay higher wages? It’s usually both, in fact.
• Venezuela is facing a brain drain. Well if you were smart, with in-demand skills, would you want to stay there either? I didn’t think so. I just wish these things were successful ways of influencing the behavior of autocrats.

Back at Home

• The Plame suit against Dick Cheney has been dismissed, not because what he did was ethical and caused no damage, but because the laws are structured to protect him from civilian reprisal. Of course they are. He’s the f*cking Vice President, unaccountable to no one, outside the separation of powers, beyond the branches of government.
• My state’s drive to punish drivers (ha!) has spurred massive protests, as it should: today at lunch, one of my friends was wondering if it was going to cause a lot of Northern Virginians to move just across the river to Maryland. Why? Out-of-staters don’t pay the extended fines, which means all the people from Maryland and West Virginia and the DC who work in this state would be exempt from the $2500 add-on. In other words, these fees are really just punishing people for daring to live in Virginia. More importantly, from a libertarian perspective, there is the problem of turning the police into armed fee collectors (though some of the crazies already think of them that way).
• The Bush administration hates your broadband.

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