Japan has threatened to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea. This is pretty much right on the edge of violating the World War II surrender terms. Possibly those are obsolete and should be reconsidered anyhow, but I’d like to see that done under less frantic circumstances. Man, I’m glad I don’t live in Northeast Asia right now. Edit: Thanks to my anonymous commentor for correcting my geography.
In honor of Jon Carroll’s 2/11 column, and inspired by my friend R. Francis Smith, I present the Candidate X Store (original). Candidate X: he doesn’t like killing people. It is, in my mind, a perfectly chosen phrase. Everything there is priced at cost; I don’t make any money off ‘em. The slogan is thanks to R. Francis.
Eugene Volokh provides me with an excellent launching point for some stuff I’ve been mulling over lately. He’s discussing recent polls which may show that the British public is not behind the US war on Iraq. In his wrapup, he says “I hope British public opinion is not being accurately reported here. But if it is, then just reflects the errors of the British public, not the errors of a hawkish policy.” ...
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.