Category: Politics

I’ve mentioned before that the key to Dean’s success is redirecting the blog energy out into the real world. Here’s an example. The Internet is just a tool for communication. Using it as such works. No mystic special nature, no slogans needed, no marketing fluff. It’s just a way for people to talk more easily.

I get value out of asking my friends about movies they’ve seen and reading newspaper reviews; thus, I get value out of using movie review aggregators. Presidential candidates get value out of recruiting get out the vote workers; thus, they get value out of doing the same damned thing online.

It’s just that communication which previously had to be local can now be global.

Your reading material for the morning: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s New American Strategies for Security and Peace speech.

The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes in my view to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind.

I find his practicality particularly compelling. His comments on Russia make it crystal-clear that he is not a dictator-loving leftist stereotype. His comments on intelligence and the requirement for a competent intelligence service are spot on.

The significance of today’s casualties is not so much that it’s the worst attack so far, although it was a terrible thing. What worries me is that we knew it was going to be a bad weekend, and we still couldn’t stop the worst attack of the occupation.

Saith noted pacifist and anti-war activist E. E. “Doc” Smith:

Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers not stationed at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait—wait in instant readiness—until she was actually attacked.

— Triplanetary, 1948, page 90 of the Old Earth Books edition

First, read this post.

OK. So, yeah, blogfight. I don’t really want to get into the question of who’s a Democrat and who’s not, since I’m not a Democrat — y’all can have your own arguments. I will say, tangentially, that I do not think Kevin’s comment regarding liberal qualifications is any more divisive or damaging than the belief that criticizing Bush is traitorous. And that’s all I wanna say about that.

What I really wanna talk about is the whole “war of civilizations” thing. Bluntly, it’s hyperaggressive mouthbreathing. There is a relatively small Muslim population that would like to see the West wiped out. This does not constitute a war of civilizations any more than the existence of the Patriot movement constitutes a war of civilizations. It’s terrorism driven by ideological motivations. That’s all.

By calling this a war of civilizations, you imply that the entire Islamic civilization is at war with us. That’s not true. It is, in fact, a lie.

The flip side of that question — whether or not we’re at war with Islamic civilization — is murkier. To rephrase: who’s the aggressor? More on this later.

This is a hopeful sign. New York City is considering outlawing the party primary; rather, they’ll have one big primary for everyone after which the top two vote-getters will face off in the general election.

There are plenty of flaws with the idea, of course, and it’s not mathematically strong. Consider the following preference breakdown:

Candidate A: 20% first choice but nobody’s last choice
Candidate B: 45% first choice but 55% last choice
Candidate C: 35% first choice but 45% last choice

You could pretty easily argue that Candidate A is the best candidate, since nobody hates her, but she wouldn’t make the runoffs. Still, getting rid of party politics is a good sign and it’s not as if we don’t have similar mathematical inequities in the current system.

So, I ask myself on the way into work, what’s up with Iraq these days? And what do I think about the recent run of suicide bombings?

I don’t think it’s a Vietnam style quagmire. The situation is rather different; for one thing, the opposition isn’t funded by a superpower. We’re unlikely to see the kind of open warfare we experienced in Vietnam. The terrain wouldn’t support it and the technological gap has widened.

On the other hand, we are pretty rapidly approaching the kind of quagmire in which Israel and Palestine reside. Suicide bombers are now part of the Iraqi landscape. There are substantial and popular local resistance movements; if you don’t think the Shi’ite clerics are ready to stand four-square against the US, you’re not paying attention.

We need to expect that we will experience the kind of ongoing terrorist pressure that we see in Israel. It will continue, directed at our troops, as long as we have troops in Iraq. This includes troops based in Iraq after we turn over control of the country to a native government.

If Israel has been unable to stop such attacks, it’s folly to think we can do a damned thing about them. We are an occupying power in a foreign culture, and we do not have a MacArthur. We do not have a Hirohito, a powerful symbolic leader, to tell Iraq that this is for the best. The Iraqi Hirohitos are saying exactly the opposite.

Discussion about the Iraq occupation must, to be useful and relevant, acknowledge this fundamental fact. It’s going to be contested, and it’s going to be contested in the same way that the West Bank occupation is contested. That’s not a political point, it’s a reality.

More good commentary from Phil Carter and Juan Cole.

Gary Wolf is doing a piece on the Dean campaign and coming up with some fairly interesting stuff. He’s writing a post-facto manifesto in an attempt to capture the magic. I particularly like “You’re not a leader; you’re a place.” Of course, Dean is a leader — that’s in part a clever bit of spin to keep people from thinking of the campaign as a cult of personality. But there’s a nugget of truth to it as well. Community-building on the Internet requires a seed figure for a leader. It also requires that seed figure to make the place comfortable. Good mailing lists have a list mom.

Hm. I think he’s missing the “push” element of the campaign as well. In order for Dean to succeed, he needs to push his message out to non-connected people via his Internet community, which is why you see a lot of exhortations to put up posters and hand out fliers and so on. It’s a vital part of the Internet campaign.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Or possibly the Saudi/Pakistan nuke story is completely untrue.

We can still invade, though.

Hm. On further thought… why would Israeli intelligence want to spread that story? The implications are unpleasant. Not that I’m saying I don’t think Israeli intelligence would do that, it’s just worrisome. Weren’t we supposed to be stabilizing the Middle East?

I’m not sure what I think about Pakistan providing nukes to Saudi Arabia, other than that I can’t be sure if the article is even accurate. One anonymous source is a thin reed.

You could claim that this is the result of recent Israeli saber-rattling, but really, it’s not. It’d be more accurate to claim that a nuclear Israel will inevitably encourage other Middle Eastern countries to get the bomb.

And, of course, a US-occupied Iraq changes the balance of power in the Middle East. This sort of thing is an inevitable consequence. It’s not clear that it’s an unacceptable consequence; Saudi Arabia with nukes is hardly the end of the world. But this move certainly shouldn’t be unexpected.