News Brief, Do You Realize?? Edition
Joshua Foust on Nov 06 2007 at 1:48 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Notes on the war
Cross-posted to The Conjecturer.
Defense & the War
- While it’s easy to snipe at the State Department for the freak out over being told to serve in Baghdad (and there are legit complaints, as well as good counterpoints), it is also useful to examine the institutional reasons the Department is such a mess. Indeed, the massive transformation she promised years ago—of an American consulate in every city of a million people, with more officers assigned to Africa and Asia than Europe, among others—has, at best, fizzled. What’s more, the State Department has neglected its own role in wartime, which is to serve as an outpost of American official presence. This entails risk, and it is risk most FSOs did not volunteer for the way soldiers have, but it is also not beyond their call of duty.
- The Army contracting system is a horrid mess. But you knew that already.
- Oh look, Heinlein has fans in the USMC. How practical. Also the soundtrack makes me want to find my old Poison albums. Just kidding! I never owned any!
- John Robb has more on the open source guerrilla revolution.
Around the World
- I’m not a big fan of obsessively tracking every tiny development of an unfolding crisis; too often the first, even fifth, reports out are misleading or outright false. So with the simmering political turmoil in Pakistan, I’ve taken instead a look at the personalities and causes of this latest incident, rather than the minutiae of every 30-second update. And, of course, complained about the over-hyping of “coups” and whatnot among the hyperventilation (i.e. partisan) blogs and cable news stations. Nitin has excellent coverage of India’s prudent response, and piles on the scorn for our limp response.
- “Rare instances of international cooperation among adversaries deserve great (and inappropriate) headlines.”
- I also took a peak into comparative English-language TV coverage (hint: the U.S. does not come out looking good), the protests surrounding Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the giant robots of post-communist industrial wastelands. All posted, naturally enough, at Registan.net.
- Vadim Sadonshev on the confluence of (electrical) power and corruption in Tajikistan.
- Michael hates on American missionaries to Xinjiang.
- Look at that crazy Russian winter. The WSJ ran another installment of a family they’ve been tracking since the Fall, and it’s pretty incredible.
Back at Home
- I was disillusioned by the majority of the liberal blogs very shortly after 9/11. But Kevin Drum deftly shows how the Iraq War has left me totally disillusioned with the Right as well. Now I’m… well, I couldn’t say. Definitely anti-incumbent, no matter the party, and anti-statism, whatever the party. Argh, I don’t want to vote…
- Did you know the Arcade Fire were once not huge?
- Lance has given me a lot of grief for not properly condemning Bush’s domestic activities, namely in that he’s not nearly as bad as, say, Woodrow Wilson. I’m not sure I can say that, though: while Wilson’s minions actively harrassed poeople by the hundreds of thousands, Bush’s minions instead quietly slip inside network operators to spy on their activities without their knowledge or a constitutional review. This can’t even be considered a response to 9/11—the NSA was doing this seven months before the September attacks. So which is worse? Open extra-Constitutional meddling, or quiet behind-the-scenes extra-constitutional meddling? I know I tend to prefer the devil I know, but I’ve also slowly realized I hold unconventional views on these things.
Josh,
Thanks for linking to my posts on the international responses to the martial law in Pakistan. But I’d like to clarify that I did not intend to pass value judgments on either the Indian or the US reactions.
Nitin,
No worries – I didn’t mean to imply that you did. They were my value judgments, not yours
I would suggest the scale and actual intimidation factor was far higher then, but I think that is a very valid observation. Thus I don’t want to vote either. In fact, I haven’t voted for either party for some time. I don’t mind your complaint here, it is mine as well, I just like it in context, as you have just done.
By the way, I think that applies to the waterboarding and interrogation issue as well. While I have lost patience with those who have used incomplete information to further their partisan ends, that does not mean we should be happy that so little about what is being done in our name is available for us, or our representatives, to observe or have input into. It has also allowed misinformation to be all that we have to go on. Even what we have heard we cannot trust. I don’t find it unusual or unique, but as you say, that hardly justifies it.
Man, I guess I am a hater.
Perhaps, but I say own it. I am a Christian, and the vacation missionaries in Kazakhstan bugged the hell out of me too (so to speak). There is a fine art between feeling called by faith to serve people (which I fully support) and just being a boor (which I do not support).
I would, however, say that the majority of missionaries are generally not assholes, and do truly care about the people they live with, regardless of their ultimate decisions on religion (I also found this in Kazakhstan, and they are a credit to the cause). Serving people with no expectation of reward, simply because they are worth serving (in my view, simply because they are people created by God, and therefore of infinite value), is to me the height of honor.
That is certainly my experience.
Something to keep in mind even when they are being boors. Well put.
mmmm, people.
Oh, sorry, my lizardness was coming out there for a second.
Correct, and to a certain extent what we ought to expect. Although I thought there were committees that oversee the secret operations of the executive branch. So, wouldn’t they have already known about the use of water boarding, and its frequency? Obviously, they should have known, the question is did they, and what could they publicaly state knowing.
On the other hand, when you enter a fight with one hand publicaly tied behind your back, you are at a disadvantage. I want terrorists to fear what we might do to them, even if we never do it to them. I know the arguments about torture not giving reliable evidence, but from what I understand, we are doing our best to verify any info we gain this way.
Like saying, nukes/invasion/carpet bombing are off the table with regards to _____(any autocratic/theocratic state.) They ought to be worried we’ll go that far, if pushed that far. Of course, then you get into the chicken and the egg problem of escalating arms.
Is Iran developing offensive capabilities as a result of our not taking violence off the table, or would they still do that because Israel, Pakistan and India have the capability, and they don’t want to be the weak ones in that neck of the woods. Are we just a convenient excuse for their actions?
I hear conflicting information on this, so I blame the committees as much as I blame the administration. Once again, exactly what was known, approved of, etc., is being deliberately manipulated for partisan purposes. By whom is not altogether clear. If it was secret, and the committees were happy with what was going on, then it is they who deserve the lion share of the blame if things they didn’t want going on were going on. The administration could help here by being straight with us, and very publicly, about what the relevant committees were briefed on. That they have not feeds my suspicion that they did not fully brief the committees. I really just don’t know, if anyone can shed some more light on this, please do.