News Brief, Pretty In Pink Edition
Joshua Foust on Aug 29 2007 at 12:33 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Digging for gold over at The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War
- Kevin Drum wonders what I do about General Petraeus’ report next month: “Will everyone swoon? Or will they demand more than just anecdotal evidence and unsupported statistics?” I know of at least one guy who has already pre-swooned.
- I wonder if they’ll account for the higher levels of violence that are borne out by the higher levels of death?
- There has been some confusion, even doubts, over whether or not we are over reliant upon airpower in Afghanistan. I explore how there really should be no doubts about this, over at Registan.net. But it’s not only the Air Force—the Navy is fond of buying multi-billion dollar obsolete misnomers as well.
- Now this is keen: “I just think the Pentagon’s acquisition strategy over the last six years has been to schizophrenically jump from one technology to the next in search of silver bullets. As a result, we let the insurgents set the technological tempo in Iraq, forcing the U.S. military to expend a premium of blood and treasure playing catch-up.” Indeed, until the surge we have been primarily reactive—a losing strategy if one ever existed. Even now, the focus tends to be on tech (like the MRAP) instead of on doctrine or strategy… despite the surge.
Around the World
- An alternative take on the designation of the Revolutionary Army as a terrorist organization. The gist is that by doing so, the Bush administration is uniting fractions within the government in opposition to American goals. This shouldn’t be surprising: Iranians are as patriotic as Americans are, and nothing makes them forget their differences like a foreigner trying to keep them down. It is worth considering, especially as the calls for “regime change” intensify.
- Kim Jong-nam, who is apparently just done with living on his estate and gambling away flood money in Macau, has moved back to North Korea for “high level” work in the same department where his father, The Dear Leader and General Kim Jong-il, got his start. If North Korea suddenly begins publishing 10,000 page hagiographic biographies, we’ll know who will be the next Dear Leader of Satan’s Paradise.
- Is it neo-orientalist to accurately describe the horror of Afghani gender relations? We’ve seen before the (to us) odd ordering of sexual sin: many Afghans would rather their boys be gay than look at a woman improperly; as such, I see little wrong with portraying the horrid state of women under the Taliban as exactly that. Plus, Hosseini is a beautiful writer, and I almost cried at the end of The Kite Runner. And I need to get to this new work soon—it is sitting on my nightstand, unopened.
- Speaking of which: how awesome is it that a major reformer in Iran might be destroyed for the crime of shaking hands with a woman?
- The environmental catastrophe of communism in Europe. The horrors of making a left turn in Beijing.
- A pilot in Afghanistan is distributing soccer balls to children. Problem is, the balls have a Koranic verse on them… and some Muslims find kicking the Koran disrespectful. More over at Registan.net.
- Uncle Pervy might trade his Army role to remain President. Ahem.
- Part three of Barnett Rubin’s excellent analysis of the UNODC report on opium in Afghanistan is up.
- Bonnie Boyd on the coming troubles of ENI in Kazakhstan.
Back at Home
- LOL: “If your man’s a conservative Republican who gets off on bemoaning the deleterious societal epidemic that is same-sex marriage, he’s PRETTY MUCH GAY.” It certainly seems that way these days. As Nick Gillespie puts it: “[Conservatives] should re-learn their supposed political philosophy, which is that government should leave people (and their money) alone as much as possible to pursue happiness.” Then again, Mr. Craig has apparently been denying this since 1982. So, for 25 years, we’ve known Pages were being abused by Congressmen? And we continue letting it happen, like Altarboys?
- If I may say so: it is fracking cool that we now upload embarrassing archival footage to YouTube within hours of these things coming out, so to speak… and that a book about the sexual abuse of minor Pages was published on 9/11/79. Wow.
- The pathetic legacy of Alberto Gonzalez.
- I hope everyone loves South Park as much as I do. But how can you talk about brilliant South Park episodes without mentioning Grey Dawn, or the Mormons, or the Scientology one? Actually, the more I think of it, the less I think I could narrow it down to 10. Heh.
One Response to “News Brief, Pretty In Pink Edition”
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Heh…
The biggest chuckle I’m getting from this is thinking that… you know your next campaign is in trouble if your first campaign slogan is,
I didn’t do anything wrong in the men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.