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wSunday, June 16, 2002 |
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Interesting review of Christopher Hitchens book on Orwell. Its now known that had the Bolsheviks taken over Spain, the first thing they would have done was had show trials and murdered the entire communist left. The irony is that the communist left hated Orwell more than anything for telling the truth about this. But the left never changes. If the Islamofacists ever took over, the first people they would hang would be Edward Said and Norm Chomsky. Said and Chomsky now spend all of their energies trying to ensure that the Islamofacists get their chance to do just that.
posted by
John at 1:46 AM
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You have to love the Washington Times. Some days its really second rate compared to the more liberal Post. However, some days it covers issues and ideas that no one else in the mainstream media has the guts to cover. Not only do they propose lack of logging as a cause of forest fires, but also on the same day, they cover the on going malaria tragedy in the tropics caused by the banning of DDT. The world bank, as usual trying its best to take on the mantel of "focus of evil in the modern world", is cutting aid to countries that won't ban DDT. Environmental activists argue that the Third World should not use DDT because it is a "known carcinogen". You know they don't have many cancer cases in places like Uganda. That is because people die of things like maleria before they are old enough to get cancer. The continued ban on DDT is one of the great unknown tragedies of the last thirty years.
posted by
John at 1:20 AM
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The Washington Times gives some much needed coverage to a possible reason why forest fires seem to get bigger every year. There are too many trees. I am not a forester so I am not sure how scientifically valid this theory is, but at least superficially it makes sense. Even if its true, the forest service will never allow logging to thin out the trees and prevent the fires. Moreover, there will never even be a serious debate about whether thining the forests could be helpful. This is because it is impossible to have a serious policy debate on this or any other environmental issue in this country. The environmental movement is so fanatical and unreasonable about the subject they will allow no posibility that the truth might be somewhere outside their dogma. I had a friend who worked for DOJ doing environmental litigation. He worked on a case in Indiana where the forest service planned to harvest juniper trees. Junipers were crowding out the native oak which provided food and habitat to an endangered bat. Cut down the junipers so that you have fewer of those and more oaks and hopefully more endangered bats. Sounds pretty reasonable. Not for the Sierra Club. They were suing to stop the juniper cutting even though the juniper were a weed species that shouldn't have even been there. Didn't matter. Sierra Club saw a logging plan and they wanted to stop it. Its no longer about NIMBY (Not In My Backyard), its BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). Meanwhile, Colorado burns and we can't seem to have an intelligent debate on what caused it or how to stop it from happening in the future.
posted by
John at 1:08 AM
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John Derbyshire. lives up to the reputation that got an award on AndrewSullivan.com for most radically conservative statement named after him in his comentary on "Cargo Capitalism" and why people hate America. He hits the nail on the head about the Arab mentality. Why else were Arab terrorists so fixated on the World Trade Centers in the 1990s? Sure, they killed lots of people by blowing them up, but they could have highjacked planes and flown them into a crowded football stadium and killed even more. Yes, they were tall buildings but the Sears Tower was taller. It was reverse Cargo Capitalism. If we destroy their skyscrapers, they will be poor. I firmly beleive that if those buildings had been named the Empire Towers, they might never have been attacked. The terrorist really thought that if they could destroy the "World Trade Centers", then they could end world trade and bring down America.
posted by
John at 12:51 AM
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Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs sites bribery as the reason why no one seems to want to do anything about Saudi Arabia. Instapundit thinks this could be a great issue for the Democrats if they want one. It would be a great issue for them and running to the right of Bush on the war in the November elections would be a brilliant strategy. However, the Democrats are consitutionally incapable of doing this. The Democrats have lossed the ability to support and wage a just war in the name of the United States because the post Vietnam left does not have the self confidence in the rightness of the United States to support an agressive waging of any war. Bill Clinton did wage war against Yugoslavia, but caught a lot of criticism from the left and the ones who supported him did so only because not supporting him might have helped the Republicans. In order to wage a war you have to believe that your side is right and that your country is morally superior to the enemy. There was a time in this country when this was taken for granted. Someone may disagree with Roosevelt regarding the new deal or Johnson regarding the great society, but there is no doubt that if those two men were alive today, they would say that, despite its faults, the United States is the greatest nation on earth and superior to and worth defending against communist and facist countries. How would someone from the modern left be able to make such a statement? Someone who beleives that the United States was founded on racist and sexist ideals and built on the back of slave labor? Someone who believes that all cultures and societies are equal and that there is no objective truth? Someone who with a straight face argues that concepts like truth and logic are racist, sexist constructs created by white males to oppress women and minorities? They couldn't and that is why the radical left will never bring itself to argue for a more agressive waging of this or any war. So dream on Mr. Reynolds.
posted by
John at 12:42 AM
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A Houston jury has found Arthur Anderson guilty. Anderson is probably toast. Thank God. Hopefully this verdict and a timely demise of Arthur Anderson will putt an end to the idea that some things are too big to fail. Nothing is too big to fail if its crimes are sufficiantly egregous. I am sorry for the honest people at Arthur Anderson who have or will be loosing their jobs over this. However, the auditing and accounting work done by Anderson still has to be done and will get done by more reputable firms. The honest employees at Anderson should be able to eventually find work at other firms. Arthur Anderson should now be stuffed and mounted. Its corpse standing as a stark reminder that just because you are 89 years old and part of the mainline doesn't mean you can be crook and stay in business. Arthur Anderson should also be a reminder that just because a law firm or an accounting firm has a bunch of Ivy League graduates and a long history doesn't mean it can't be imcompetant or worse. I love their lawyer on the courthouse steps today anouncing to the media that "Arthur Anderson is not guilty of any crimes". Yeah, other than the laundry list handed out by the jury. Amazing.
posted by
John at 12:05 AM
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wSaturday, June 15, 2002 |
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William Gaston, a former domestic advisor for Bill Clinton argues against a strike against Iraq in Saturday's Washington Post. I wonder sometimes if the people who write this drivel actually are dumb enough to believe what they write or do they just write it because someone has to be against the war. Gaston makes the standard equally uncompelling five arguments against invading Iraq
1. That a regime change in Iraq will require occupation forces for years.
This seems to be taken for granted by everyone on either side of the Iraq debate. I am not sure it is such a given. Hussein is a brutal sociopathic killer running an unpopular police state. Once Hussein is removed from power who is there going to be left to fight? Are the Iraqis going to take to the hills to bring back the glory days of starvation and international pyria status? The only people who might do that are terrorists and radical Islamists who we want to kill anyway. I don't think a regime change in Iraq necessarily entails a long occupation. Certainly its going to take some nation building and a lot of money, but not necessarily a long term, large occupation. Even if an occupation is necessary, why does this make invasion impossible? We occupied Japan and Germany. We have been in Balkins for nearly a decade now. If a long and expensive occupation is the only alternative to a homocidal lunatic like Hussein getting nuclear weapons, that is an evil we will have to live with.
2. That the United States have failed to show that Iraq has both the capability and specific intent to harm necessary to justify an invasion under the doctrine of anticipatory self defense.
We know that Hussein is actively working on both nuclear weapons and WMDs and has specifically threatened the U.S. on numorous occasions. Hussein also tried to kill form President Bush in 1993. Hussein also has broken the terms of the 1991 cease fire in the Gulf war numorous times and refused U.N. inspections despite his agrements to do so. While that may not meet the strictist definitions of the doctrine, it doesn't exactly eviscerate it either. More importantly, why should we risk the lives of millions of Americans and Isrealis over the principles of International Law? International Law only means something to those countries who aren't intent on killing one another anyway. International Law has not prevented one war in the entire history of the world. France and England had a much weaker case under International Law for removing Hitler in the 1930s than the United States has now for removing Hussein. Would Galston argue that France and England were right in giving away continental Europe to the Nazis. International Law is a wonderful thing when it is being applied among civilized nations. However, when there is a Mao, Hitler, Stalin or an Hussein, it is nothing more than a useless facade which benifits the tyrant at the expense of the civilized.
3. That Husssein, even if he had nuclear weapons, he would never use them because he knows it would be suicide on his part.
There is a certain truth to this argument. If terrorism were not an issue, I couldn't care less about Hussein having nuclear weapons, MADD works when you are dealing with nations. However, terrorism changes the entire equation. If Hussein gave a four or five nuclear weapons to terrorists and they went off in the United States, how would we really know that he was responsible? How would the United States be able to justify to itself, the obliteration of Iraq when it had only a suspicion that it was responsible? There is no gaurentee that there would be anyway to tell who was responsible for such an attack. Hussein does not want to destroy the United States as much as he wants to humiliate it and destroy its ability to influence the middle east. A nuclear attack would go a long way to doing this. Worse, what about four or five weapons? How would the United States recover from the loss of say, New York, Chicago, Los Angelos, and Houston? Hard to imagine the United States in such a state being able to do much about Huissein taking over his neighbors or North Korea invading the south. Terrorism changes the entire equation relating to nuclear weapons and makes them much more dangerous than they ever were during the cold war.
4. That an invasion of Iraq would hurt the war against terrorism in the long run because countries friendly to Iraq would be less willing to assist the United States through intelligence and arresting terrorists within their borders.
Implicit in this argument is the idea that middle eastern countries, to the extent that they are, are assisting the United States in combating terrorism because they like us and are sympathetic to our cause. This is simply not true. These countries and their populations hate our guts. They hate the United States because they cannot accept that their culture and relgion are backward failures that will never be successful in the 21st Century. Nothing is going to change that. The leaders of these countries, however medieval and backward are not stupid or suicidal. They may privately celebrate the events of Septmber 11th, but they are publicly going to toe the line as long as its in their best interest. Invading Iraq would send a message to all of these countries that if you sponsor terrorism and try to build WMDs, you are going to end up dead. Not sanctioned by the U.N. Not in exile in Switzerland, but dead. That is something these regimes will understand. To allow Hussein to build these weapons and thumb his nose at us, sends the message to that the United States is weak and can be defeated. Appeasement is what causes wars, not strength. One side appeases the other causing that side to miscalculate and believe that it can do something and get away with it until finally the appeasing power has not choice but to act. Invading Iraq and killing its leadership woud send the simple, understandable, brutal message that promoting terrorism will not be tolerated and terrorism will never be successful in destroying the United States. That message will do more to end terrorism and ensure cooperation in combating it than anything else.
5. That we are best served by an international system that is lawlike and collaberative as possible and such a system would be hurt by "unilateral action" against Iraq.
The government needs to amend the Constitution to ban the word unilateral. If I have to read it one more time, I am going to throw my computer out of my window. First, people like Hussein and Islamofacists terrorists are not going to care about or be bound by any set of international laws. Therefore, these laws do nothing to protect us from them and only inhibit our ability to defend ourselves. Further, while cooperation is nice, it is not an end in itself. The end is for the people who want to harm the United States and its citizens to be dead. Cooperation from the rest of the world makes that task of killing these people a lot easier. However, the cooperation is only a means to an end. If elimating this threat entails acting on our own and stepping on a few toes, then that is the price we have to pay to win this war. Ultimately, the people who respect international law aren't going to be a threat. This is a cold calculus and it would be nice to be loved by the entire world. But, I would sleep a lot better at night knowing that the United States was disliked but feared than I would knowing it was loved but not respected or feared.
posted by
John at 11:48 PM
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