Politics

I dunno, it’s like I feel some weird obligation or something. Saith Professor Reynolds: “essentially a pro-democracy, anti-dictator — and hence pro-war — student organization…” It’s kind of hard to tell, since that’s a pretty terse argument, but I think that’s a fallacy of composition — he’s pro-war, as a consequence of his anti-dictator and pro-democracy stance, so everyone who’s anti-dictator and pro-democracy must therefore be pro-war. But since he doesn’t lay out the steps, preferring to just leap to the conclusion, one can’t be sure.

You gotta love these little self-fulfilling prophecies. The New York Sun tells us, in the course of arguing that anti-war protests should be forbidden, that “His [Thomas Friedman’s] point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be ‘enormous and unstoppable.’ What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they’ll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around.” ...

OK. I didn’t particularly want to poison the Columbia tragedy by saying something partisan, and I kind of hoped I wouldn’t find myself wanting to. For the most part, nobody in the blogosphere has gotten political about this. There’s been idiotic froth on both wings in comment sections, but you have to expect that, and for the record I find “Bush will use this to push the war!” and “This is Islam’s fault!” equally repellent. ...

This story pretty well summarizes the state of affairs in Turkey; it’s a country with two ruling factions. The military is very wary of Islamic rule and has in the past led coups to prevent Islamic government. The most recent military action was in 1997. The current government is rooted in political Islam. What Turkey does will depend on who wins the current power struggle, and it may be a military victory. ...

The London Times published this thoughtful discussion of reasons to be anti-war; it sums up a lot of what I’ve thought and said, but better, cause they’re the Times and I am not. (The epitome of blogging, here: all I’m really doing is pointing to an article that agrees with me. But damn, it’s a good article. Oh, and yeah: via The Volokh Conspiracy. Now it’s a real blog post…)

It occurs to me that one of the large obstacles in the way of invading Iraq is the Security Council veto. It further occurs to me that the rationale behind the veto, that being the great power status of the Allied nations after World War II, is somewhat antiquated. I don’t think any pro-war pundit can deny that the veto is tremendously frustrating. As so many have pointed out, it seems ridiculous that France can effectively stand in the way of UN action. That ability — the ability of one nation to unfairly stop debate in its tracks — prevents the UN from being effective. Again, many argue that the UN’s inability to press the issue of Iraq is ruining the UN as we watch. ...

I think I’ve pinpointed the problem with Bush’s drug addiction treatment voucher proposal (original), and can explain it in fairly unmistakable terms. Here goes. Under Bush’s proposal, federal money for drug treatment could wind up going to Narconon (original). Don’t look at me like that. They’re faith-based.

I should note that my tentative approval of the current multilateral diplomatic efforts should not be taken as approval of the rumored methods by which the war might be prosecuted. Nor am I unaware of these issues. It is simply necessary that any war plans include a serious, concerted effort to minimize the impact of the war on the Iraqi people, for all kinds of reasons. But if we condemn the possibility of torture on the part of the US — and I do — we must be at least as concerned with Saddam’s practices. That’s not just propaganda. Saddam is well documented as a torturer.

The theme of US policy over the last few days, despite Bush’s tough talk in the State of the Union, has in fact been multilateralism. (Which is driving some people nuts.) I think the most important speech delivered in the last week was by Colin Powell at Davos. That’s the administration speaking for an international audience, not for a US audience, and that’s where we need to look for the administration’s real position. ...

Who knew the Pentagon had a futurist? Wired interviews Andrew Marshall (original), who has been Director of the Office of Net Assessment since Nixon. Interesting stuff. My favorite quote: A friend of mine, Yale economist Martin Shubik, says an important way to think about the world is to draw a curve of the number of people 10 determined men can kill before they are put down themselves, and how that has varied over time. His claim is that it wasn’t very many for a long time, and now it’s going up. In that sense, it’s not just the US. All the world is getting less safe. ...