Category: Politics

Another one of those “hey, look who’s anti-war” bits here. I find ‘em interesting and in many cases telling. It’s important not to let the right paint all protesters as stupid hippies, much as it’s important to remember that the right isn’t comprised purely of Neanderthals. Anyhow, Warren Langley is getting involved in planning anti-war civil disobedience designed to shut down San Francisco’s Financial District. This is interesting, since Langley used to be president of the Pacific Exchange. More recently, he was almost named CEO of a Nasdaq/Liffe venture, although apparently they couldn’t come to terms on a contract. Langley also served in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Damned pinko.

It’s been a busy few days in the Iraq debate. Let’s summarize — no, is not enough! Let’s predict!

Turkey declined the opportunity to help out with the war over the weekend, but now the Turkish military is pushing for a revote. Remember, in Turkey, the military is a political force unto itself. Now, there’s no chance that Abdullah Gul, the current Prime Minister, is going to call that vote this week. Gul has no leverage to push for a revote; he’s a lame duck. There’s a by-election coming on Sunday, in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan will undoubtedly gain a parliamentary seat. As leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party, he’ll be elected Prime Minister immediately. (Up until quite recently, he was banned from running for Parliament, largely because of — wait for it — the Turkish military. Now you know why the government has been in favor of aiding the US; the JDP needs to keep on the military’s good side.)

The US has not shifted troop ships away from Turkey and towards Kuwait as of this writing, which tells you that someone expects there’s still a chance Turkey will change its mind.

Is pushing for a revote undemocratic? It depends. The Turkish Constitution says you can’t allow foreign troops to be based on Turkish soil for a war unless there’s international consensus behind that war. Right now, this means UN approval, like it or not. If a new resolution authorizing war is passed, then the situation has changed and another vote is reasonable. If that happens there’s no doubt that Turkey will OK the northern front. If the situation doesn’t change, there’s no grounds for another vote and we may see another Turkish military coup yet.

Meanwhile, Capitol Hill Blue reports that Colin Powell wants an exit strategy. If the US brings a new resolution to the floor and loses the vote, it’s bad. It means we don’t get a northern front, and it means that Blair’s government very likely falls if the invasion still takes place.

A side note on that last, since there’s some confusion on the topic. A significant portion of Blair’s own party just voted against him despite being told in the strongest possible terms that they should vote yes. Labor Party MPs were afraid that their local parties will de-select them — the rough equivalent of being kicked out of (say) the local Democratic Party — if they voted for the war. Blair did not weather the worst of the storm. He got a warning of very bad weather ahead. He needs UN authorization just as badly as the Turkish government.

Is it any wonder that the US is feeling the utmost urgency regarding the second resolution? Despite the hordes of warmongers (including Bush) who claim that this is really just a chance for the UN to decide whether or not it’s relevant, the second resolution is make or break for the war. The UN has already demonstrated that it’s relevant. There should be no doubt of that after the Turkish vote and the Labor Party revolt. Which, I note tangentially, is pretty interesting. Since when do citizens and politicians care so much about an extranational organization? Since now, I guess.

Another parenthetical: a 9 member majority vote for the resolution is more important than an unvetoed resolution. If the resolution is passed but vetoed, then it can be spun as a success even though three of the permanent members of the Security Council are against it. I would in fact agree with that stance — in the same way as I object to the repeated US vetos of resolutions concerning Israel. Mind you, the results of such a stance would weaken the US’s ability to effectively veto anti-Israeli resolutions, but that’s a smaller problem right now.

So, we’re seeing a lot of propaganda and politics on both sides. France, Russia, and Germany are hanging tough. Meanwhile, the US and England are predicting success. Nothing you wouldn’t expect on either front. The real news this morning is the UN plan to reconstruct Iraq, first revealed by the London Times. The US role in that plan is discussed by the Financial Times (link may expire, read quick!).

Read that as Bush admitting that he needs the UN: it’s a concession. I’m glad he’s making it and I’m not surprised that he was forced to make it. The next week or so will tell us if it’s sufficient. Blix will be reporting again on Friday, and it’s unlikely to be a favorable moment for the pro-war countries, but you won’t see any decisions before then in any case.

And that, my friends, is realpolitik.

The Observer has a story on US war plans:

America intends to depose Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi opposition forces across the country… the plan, opposed by Tony Blair and other European Union leaders, threatens to blow apart the increasingly shaky international consensus behind the US-led ‘war on terrorism’.

It envisages a combined operation with US bombers targeting key military installations while US forces assist opposition groups in the North and South of the country in a stage-managed uprising. One version of the plan would have US forces fighting on the ground.

Despite US suspicions of Iraqi involvement in the 11 September attacks, the trigger for any attack, sources say, would be the anticipated refusal of Iraq to resubmit to inspections for weapons of mass destruction under the United Nations sanctions imposed after the Gulf war.

Well, there you go. Date: 12/2/2001.

The Turkish Parliament voted today on the motion to allow the US to base troops in Turkey for the war on Iraq. Initially, the motion appeared to pass by a thin margin of 264-251, with 19 abstentions. However, Speaker Bulent Arinc quickly announced that the motion failed because it failed to gain a majority of yes votes. I.e., the abstentions had it.

Bulent Arinc is a member of the majority Justice and Development Party, whose leader publicly backed the motion. The narrow margin along with his actions has to represent a fairly sizable division within the party, which is no surprise, but I’m sure Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hoping that it wouldn’t be quite this painful.

The Turkish Parliament has adjourned until Tuesday.

Think you know when the war’s gonna start? Put your money where your mouth is. March To War has a pool; it’s five bucks to buy in. 20% of the pool goes to the player who comes closest in the form of prepaid gas cards; the rest goes to humanitarian activity in Iraq. The agency overseeing this is Boston Mobilization — just the kind of progressive activists the right wing loves to hate. But hey, they’re not planning on keeping the money, they’re planning on funnelling it to relief organizations.

I’m in for March 23rd, midnight Baghdad time. Alas, it’s presently Massachusetts-only.

Thanks to Jon Carroll, I’ve uncovered another incidence of shameful French history. Feast your eyes on this artifact, and be reminded why we must scorn the French and mock their history.

Den Beste misses the point yet again. “What I think is that they [the nations of the world] already do hate our guts, and that at this point acting unilaterally won’t increase that to any significant degree.” OK, let’s let that be a given for the purposes of argument. Now cast your mind back a year and a half. How did we squander all that good will?

Kevin Drum highlights a different problem with that statement here.

(And yeah, I know the nations of the world don’t hate us. Den Beste doesn’t, though, and I don’t want to argue points I’m not trying to make.)

The FBI is warning of lone extremists, who “represent an ongoing terrorist threat in the United States.” Well, it’s a good thing we’re going after all those rogue states to eliminate terrorism, then.

These remixes of the new government warning labels cracked me up harder than anything I’ve seen or done all week. New-clear’s knocking but no-body’s home! (Via regis.)

So where do we go from here? Terrorism is a real problem, and one that will only get more dangerous. I’ve argued that terrorism is well within the capabilities of the individual, with or without backing from rogue states. I don’t think removing Hussein will make us appreciably safer. Even if stopping rogue states is the best way to combat terrorism, we’re literally months away from seeing North Korea get more than enough nukes, and Pakistan is one coup away from being very unfriendly. As has been accurately observed, the problem of regime change in a rogue state with nukes is a far cry from the problem of regime change in a rogue state without nukes.

Or, in short: regime change in Iraq ain’t gonna make that much of a difference in the terrorism threat. It would feel good to believe that it does. Terrorism scares me. But the war on Iraq is not making me feel any safer.

So where’s safety?

One really obvious approach is to surrender our privacy to the government. Central London’s a good example of this; there are cameras everywhere. When you go down into the subway, there are posters encouraging people to pay the television tax — and they identify specific streets and specific numbers of people who haven’t paid the bill. It’s a surveillance society. There is not a lot of crime in Central London. It works.

The Patriot Act, Operation TIPS, and other such bills would work. There would certainly be ancillary damage to our rights. Some innocent people would get caught in the net. Misguided Presidents would use the technology to crack down on legitimate actions. Terrorism would be sharply reduced. It wouldn’t be worth the price.

So what’s worth the price?

David Brin proposes one method in The Transparent Society. He says we should give up our privacy — but not to the government. Rather, we should give it up to each other. He argues that we have nothing to fear from large databases and cameras, as long as they’re open to anyone who wants to look at them.

It’s an interesting argument. When I originally read the book, I didn’t think that there was any benefit to such openness that would be worth the sacrifice. My opinions have shifted somewhat since 9/11. It might be an emotional reaction, but I don’t think we’re as safe as I once assumed we were. I think that in the face of terrorism, maybe it would be worth giving up the privacy in a way that doesn’t force us to give up our freedoms.

A libertarian response (I hesitate to say the libertarian response) is withdrawal. Jim Henley, whose blog I linked above, argues that we should take a step back from our various international entanglements, thus reducing accidental resentment. There’s a lot to this; while Osama would probably still be a terrorist if we hadn’t stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, he might not have focused quite as hard on us. On the other hand, I think our relative wealth would still make us a target for resentment.

My anarchistic belief is that we’d be well served by going a step further (and one step sideways), and devolving as much responsibility as possible back to the states. The United States is a very large target. Few terrorists talk about going after the EU. Perhaps we should draw some conclusions from that. And, frankly, if the State of North Carolina feels compelled to involve itself in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I’d just as soon that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is clearly not involved in that decision.

Combine both approaches — decentralization of responsibility, and a transparent society — and you’ve gone a lot further towards preventing and combatting future terrorist attacks without spending tens of billions of dollars on bribing Turkey to let our troops attack Iraq from the north. Kind of radical concepts, I’ll admit, but it behooves me to fess up to what I have in mind given the amount of time I’ve spent criticizing Bush.