A Second Hand Conjecture

This news brief is cheating on you over at The Conjecturer.

The War

• Support the Troops—that is, unless they happen to say the war isn’t going well. Then they’re just naive but well-meaning fools, limited by their narrow perspectives on a war they couldn’t possibly comprehend from being there in person. Have I mentioned yet how much I thoroughly dislike what debate has been reduced to these days?
• The DIA, which has just decided it shall outsource $1 billion of its functions to private contractors, has a thing for extracting intelligence from captured operatives. It should, shouldn’t it? Only, the way in which they do this matters a great deal as well. And they’re not behaving like an agency selflessly concerned with the nation’s (I refuse to use the term “homeland”) security, but rather like they’re out for a naked power grab. Much as I enjoy and appreciate what the DIA does (and it really is cool), I don’t like the idea of them grabbing U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, then torturing and interrogating them for months without a trial. We have a Constitution that says they cannot do that, and if we decide that needs to change, then we need to amend the Constitution.
• The ban on military blogs—which I was against, since it was really a ban on military blogs that aren’t relentlessly pro-war vehicles for propaganda (I like hearing what actually happens to the men I ask to risk their lives on my behalf, not what the DoD wants me to hear)—is more than just useless, it misses the point. DoD websites, run by the brass and not soldiers on the ground, have several orders of magnitude more breaches of OPSEC than any soldier blogs. But like all things in this war, saying the leadership is inept is tantamount to hating America.
• There was an interesting discussion at Drezner’s blog over the role of experts. I find it most interesting to examine the rigor of these experts’ views—do what they say have a strong foundation, in both literature and original study? Michael O’Hanlon, who was the original target, does not—and among a lot of IR scholars I know his views are discounted, much like Tom Friedman’s, as that of a reckless media whore. Unfortunately, most of the people you see flapping their mouths on TV really don’t know what they’re talking about, or are too concerned with making a friendly soundbite they cannot accurately describe the situation they’re commenting upon. Even more unfortunately, this habit continues into the op-ed sections of many newspapers, including The New York Times, where the emphasis seems more on wit than accuracy. I have no solutions, aside from the collective wisdom of the crowd in determining whose commentary is objectively right and whose is not. But the crowd still flocks to Tom Friedman, and to O’Hanlon, and to Juan Cole and Instapundit, and any number of other fools who are best right a small number of times. I have no solution for this, aside from experience in critically reading what people have to say about the war, and how honest they are when they get things wrong.
• That, by the way, is why news that “more than half” of 100 “experts” interviewed for the Terrorism Index think the surge is failing should be taken with a grain of salt. The surge could fail and we could still lose Iraq; on the other hand, both could wind up just fine. I have my own opinion (the surge itself is going well, but will ultimately be futile given the increasing rate of political deterioration), but there is no reason anyone should listen to me.

Around the World

• Somalia remains one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, one we are just as powerless to address as the situation in Darfur. Don’t let that stop anarcho-capitalists from calling it a liberty paradise. I’m not joking when I say I consider these sorts of men, who crow about the wonderful human indicators in Mogadishu like it’s something to be proud of, on par with Walter Duranty, in terms of inventing glorious excuses to exalt unimaginable human suffering for a pathetic cause no sane man would possible advocate. Naturally, they teach undergrads.
• Related: Foreign Policy sat down with some of the ambassadors from countries on its Failed States Index. It is interesting to hear, say, the representative from Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, which cannot even control Mogadishu (to say nothing of the south and east of the country) eagerly deny his country is failed. There remains so little government there, one Peter Leeson (who defended the anarchy of pirates and Somalia as preferable to American representative democracy) has lept to its defense. Of course, Leeson also thinks that all of Somalia’s problems involve the exogenous imposition of government (neglecting, of course, of the horrendous human cost of the rise of the Islamic Courts under the anarchy he so clearly loves)… which tells me he clearly knows nothing of Somalia. That he also wants to abolish government in the U.S. in the belief that we would remain a happy, healthy, functioning society without any chaos or misery speaks volumes of his maturity as a thinker and his perception of human nature outside the great anarcho-capitalist essayists (and I can’t get over the fact that his professorship is bought/sponsored by BB&T).
• Is anyone surprised secret negotiations with the Taliban came to nothing?
• While exploring the seemingly annual North Korean floods, OFK exposits an interesting idea: “In the ruined fields, there is an unprecedented humanitarian, political, and diplomatic benefit to be reaped. What if, instead of pouring cash and aid into the black hole of North Korea’s Public Distribution System, thus leaving the people vulnerable to its corruption, diversion, and political manipulations, international donors insisted on distributing their aid directly?” Unfortunately, that’s been attempted, and (in its most mildest form, which was requesting to see how the government was distributing aid) it resulted in the World Food Program being expelled. I don’t have any better solutions, however. And maybe he’s right—because this time the flooding is hitting the elites, they might have been willing to allow aid agencies to distribute their own aid. At the very least, I don’t see how the country could be any worse off. Unfortunately (it would be weirdly comforting to think it could slide even further into total unimaginable misery).
• Zimbabwe is facing total anarchy within a matter of months. The authors are referring to Congo-style anarchy, which means rampant raping and murder during a mad scramble for non-existent resources… and, as seems to be the norm with anarchy (there’s that word again) unimaginable misery. I wonder if Peter Leeson will gleefully extol how Congo’s years of madness are preferable to living under Mugabe because of a functioning telephone system.
• The Stiletto Races pandemonium spreads, now to Berlin. I still must state my preferences (and not for the stereotypical reason) for the far more hilarious DC Drag Races.

Back at Home

• Putting the cops in their place, one videotape at a time.
• Is surrender the right option in the War on Drugs? It might be, for many things—a lot of forms of drug use hurt only the user. At the least, the ban on marijuana is needless, expensive in terms of both money and humanity, and totally illogical while cigarettes and alcohol are legal. But drug legalization advocates must come to grips with the very real problems some of these drugs pose—contra the Reasonoids, who cheerfully describe casual heroin users, that drug has had a resoundingly negative impact on every country where its use has become endemic. It’s one thing to argue people have the right to destroy themselves; it’s another to argue we have a sacred duty to allow them to destroy us. Some drugs are genuinely dangerous and their use does genuinely hurt and impact other people—and I’m not sure there is a “responsible” way to use something like crystal meth. That being said, restricting my beloved Claritin to get the meth labs was bone headed and counterproductive, and hurt all the wrong people—namely allergy sufferers. Oh hell, I don’t have any solutions, but totally banning and totally legalizing are not solutions either.
• I gotta say, even though he’s a crazed innumerate racist pig, reading Wonkette hate Ron Paul makes me want to vote for Ron Paul, who was born today or something. Also kudos to them for the random reference to one of the better Ryan Adams songs.

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