william kristol's persian fantasy

The fact that anyone takes William Kristol seriously anymore is as terrifying as it is depressing.

And one routinely hears how very, very dangerous any use of military force against Iran would be.

Would it be so dangerous? That is a debate the country needs to have, publicly and frankly, before it’s too late.

Critics of military action against Iran argue that it would open up a third front for American forces in the Middle East. Our troops would be at risk from Iranian missiles. Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz (causing oil prices to skyrocket) and use its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to carry out attacks well beyond the Middle East, including perhaps on the U.S. homeland.

Yet if we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, against sites used to train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited.

It’s unclear, for example, that Iran would want to risk broadening the conflict and creating the prospect of regime decapitation. Iran’s rulers have shown that their preeminent concern is maintaining their grip on power. If U.S. military action is narrowly targeted, and declared to be such, why would Iran’s leaders, already under pressure at home, want to escalate the conflict, as even one missile attack on a U.S. facility or ally or a blockade of the Strait would obviously do?

Why, indeed? After all, acquiescence to American power has a been a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy since it's founding.

If the Iranian regime's first priority is maintaining its grip on power--to the extent that they will not retaliate against targeted strikes against nuclear facilities by the US--doesn't that also suggest that they can be contained even if they did possess nuclear weapons?

Either the Iranian leadership are rational, or they aren't. Either they are willing to risk immolation in some sort of apocalyptic showdown with the Great Satan, or they aren't. But you cannot argue that they are both too irrationally belligerent to be contained AND rational enough not to fight back when directly attacked.

Note that I'm not saying there is no plausible scenario in which military action against Iran should ever happen. However, Kristol's formulation that we really have nothing to lose by erring on the side of preemption is as crazy as it is familiar.

One is tempted to wonder how dangerous it really would be to have the entire editorial board of the Weekly Standard shot. After all, it is unlikely that particular flock of chickenhawks are especially well-armed themselves, and even if they were, surely the instinct for self-preservation would lead them to attempt to talk their way out of it, rather than engaging in a firefight that would almost certainly end in their destruction. Surely that would make the world a safer place, too, to have the leading voice for war in the most powerful country on earth neutralized. And I'd like to think that given the Marxist roots of neoconservatism they could at least appreciate the irony.

our country, in our name, on our dime

If this is even 30% true, then there are American officials who need to be brought up on war crimes charges at The Hague. If for no other reason than the Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that they aren't going to do a damn thing about it.

And so the torture was intensified, with individuals tortured by combinations of sleep deprivation, repeated near-drowning, slamming against plywood walls by the neck, forced to stand in a stress position by shackles, etc. Was this sadism? No. It was bureaucracy. You have to monitor what is being done to prisoners, especially to avoid future prosecutions for doing what every legal authority had previously understood to be war crimes. Michael Chertoff told John Yoo in 2002 that

... the more investigation into the physical and mental consequences of the techniques they did, the more likely it would be that an interrogator could successfully assert that he acted in good faith and did not intend to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

Thoreau, always at his best at his most intemperate, sums up my feelings rather nicely:

Screw it, I’ll just go ahead and Godwin this right now: If the allegations in this report by Physicians for Human Rights are accurate, then we’re talking Mengele stuff here.

how we treat foriegners is a leading indicator

Greenwald:

What's most amazing about all of this is that even 9 years after the 9/11 attacks and even after the radical reduction of basic rights during the Bush/Cheney years, the reaction is still exactly the same to every Terrorist attack, whether a success or failure, large- or small-scale...

It really is the case that every new Terrorist incident reflexively produces a single-minded focus on one question: which rights should we take away now/which new powers should we give the Government? We never reach the point where we decide that we have already retracted enough rights. Further restrictions on rights seems to be the only reaction of which our political and media class is capable in the face of a new attack. The premise seems to be that if we keep limiting rights further and further, we'll eventually reach the magical point of Absolute Safety where there will be no more Terrorism. For so many reasons, that is an obvious myth, one that ensures that we'll reduce rights infinitely and with no discernible benefit.

Sadly, this is old news. I can't really say I find the Obama administration to be a disappointment in this regard, but only because my expectations were so low to begin with:

And herein lies the real problem. The political center in this country, if the actions of the political class are any indicator (and is there any reason to think that they aren't?) is still so irrationally afraid of terrorism that there is broad support for shredding the Bill of Rights in the name of the appearance of security.

And no politician is going to fix that. This is a cultural problem. The politics merely reflect that.

cum hoc ergo propter hoc

It's really pretty astonishing that there is so much crime in Jackson, MS, what with the leadership they've got over there:

Councilman Kenneth Stokes sponsored the saggy-pants ordinance. He said many of the young men who wear saggy pants also get in trouble at school or with police.

He said the ordinance was an attempt to "save all the children we can."

I think this is roughly equivalent to treating AIDS with collagen injections.

What's even better is that there is actually discussion over the constitutionality of the ordinance, leading the mayor to remark that "I certainly respect the Constitution, but we have some issues that are much bigger than the Constitution." Note that His Honor is not arguing that, you know, the Constitution is pretty much mute on the issue of whether the waistband of your skivvies is showing (go ahead, call me a strict constructionist), but that this issue is bigger than the United States Constitution.

We tend to get the government we deserve.

(via)

about that economic freedom...

"The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism."

--The President, on the current financial whatsit.

Sadly, not our President.

Paris is lovely this time of year...

nothing to see here...

So just as the FBI is about to charge the (latest) alleged mastermind behind the post-9/11 anthrax mailings, he offs himself. Just some things to think about:

1) Speaking as a scientist with access to stuff a lot less carefully monitored than anthrax, I'm pretty sure I could get my hands on a much more pleasant way to kill myself than Tylenol with codiene, were that my inclination, and since I wouldn't plan on sticking around for the consequences, probably wouldn't hesitate to do it, either.

2) The FBI has a pretty spotty record of settling on the wrong suspect in high-profile cases, including this one.

3) The narrative of a troubled scientist with access to the stuff being responsible for the mailings, and electing to kill himself at the news of impending prosecution, naturally, makes complete sense, and may very well reflect reality. The only reason I (and I suspect many others) feel skeptical about all of this is because our government has lied to us repeatedly about any and all things relating to terrorism for the better part of the last decade.

I'm just sayin'.

i'd like retroactive immunity for my primary vote, please

I really hoped Mr. Obama would at least get to the convention before he did something to talk me out of voting for him in November.

Oh well...that was fun while it lasted.

I'm sufficiently pissed off about this that today I think I would retroactively vote for Ms. Clinton, given the option (she voted "no" on the FISA bill)...though I also can't help but wonder how each of them would have voted were she the one making a mad dash to the middle in advance of the general election.

And herein lies the real problem. The political center in this country, if the actions of the political class are any indicator (and is there any reason to think that they aren't?) is still so irrationally afraid of terrorism that there is broad support for shredding the Bill of Rights in the name of the appearance of security.

And no politician is going to fix that. This is a cultural problem. The politics merely reflect that.