Random Fate

Pointed parody wherein I suspect the targets will completely miss the humor

I wonder if this will give the Darwin Fish a run for the money?

Jim Leftwich's Flying Spaghetti Monster T-shirt at Boing Boing store

Just what is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you ask?

Well, here is one depiction:

From Wikipedia:

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a parody religion created to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution.

The "religion" has since become an Internet phenomenon garnering many followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sometimes referring to themselves as "Pastafarians", a pun on Rastafarians) preaching the word of their "noodly master" as the one true religion.

It originated with an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Given how poorly most American high school students understand the science that is taught in the schools, what sane person wants their faith taught in the schools?

Their beliefs would get distorted beyond all recognition. Believe me, I had to "unteach" all the strange things that the students in my college class had "learned" in high school about science; it was not pretty.

Be careful when you advocate teaching belief in a science class.

Technorati Tags: commentary, evolution, humor, intelligent design, parody, science

Corporations have rights that over-ride those of real people?

In the interests of full disclosure - I work at creating IP (intellectual property) and therefore am among those who might be affected by the outcome of this legal wrangling.

As Shaggy would say, "Zoinks!!!":

Legal argument could hamper high-tech job-changers
Published: August 26, 2005, 12:29 PM PDT

By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Buried in Microsoft's lawsuit against its former executive Kai-Fu Lee and Google is a legal doctrine that could make tech professionals shiver.

The high-profile dispute largely hinges on a noncompete agreement Lee signed with Microsoft. But in court filings, the software giant has also mentioned the theory of "inevitable disclosure," which holds that in some circumstances people can't avoid sharing or relying on trade secrets from their former employer when moving to a competitor.

Thanks to this increasingly popular legal argument, techies and other employees could be in for a surprise when they try to switch companies. In states that accept the inevitable disclosure concept, employers can sue defectors even if they've signed only a confidentiality agreement--or even if they haven't signed an employment agreement at all, said Robin Meadow, an attorney with the firm Greines Martin Stein & Richland.

"It's sort of an unwritten noncompete contract, in effect," Meadow said. "The fact that you haven't signed something doesn't mean you're safe when you move to another company."

Chief scientists and engineers at high-tech companies, as well as executives, are particularly vulnerable to the inevitable disclosure argument, according to Martin Foley, an attorney with the law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal. Courts making inevitable disclosure rulings tend to bar a worker from a new position for a year or less, but the concept conceivably could keep someone from taking a new job in their field forever, Foley said.

"Inevitable disclosure is ultimately, potentially, a form of indentured servitude, if it's applied in an extreme manner," Foley said.

A few years ago, Foley himself helped convince a California court of appeals to reject the inevitable disclosure doctrine. But it has been upheld in federal court. Employer suits that call on the inevitable disclosure doctrine are on the rise and now number in the hundreds each year, said Johnny Taylor, partner at the law firm McGuireWoods. It's difficult to say how many state courts have ruled in favor of at least a limited version of inevitable disclosure.

"It's become a trend," said Taylor, also chair of the Society for Human Resource Management professional group. "This theory or doctrine is taking hold."

Read the entire story.

Did Shakespeare really have it so right centuries ago when he wrote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (Henry VI -Part 2, Act IV, Scene II)?

Where do the "rights" of "corporations" or "companies" (constructs of legal fiction, at best) end and the rights of an individual to have gainful employment in his or her chosen profession begin?

Is the "intellectual property" gambit of corporations getting out of hand, as evidenced both by this legal wrangling along with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was essentially written by corporations?

We have known for quite a while that money has had an overweening influence on lawmaking in the United States. Has it finally crossed the line to where corporations now have more "rights" than citizens, including the "right" to keep individuals from being able to find and hold jobs in their profession?

Technorati Tags: politics, science, science & technology, science and technology, technology

Some on the right are beginning to notice...

...that they are not getting what they voted for.

In other words, the neoconservative agenda is not what it promised to be.

Warning - this one is long... with subheadings...

Anyone who thinks this is black and white has not read up on the subject...

Professor Bainbridge, at his eponymous weblog, has apparently stopped toeing the party line:

It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence with tripe like this:

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said in his weekly radio address. {Ed: Full text here}

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war," he said.

I guess that's all he has left. After all, if Iraq's alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren't we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam's cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren't we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush's justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they'll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we'll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper. If Iraq has proven anything, it has confirmed for me the validity of the Powell Doctrine.

---

While we remain bogged down in Iraq, of course, Osama bin Laden remains at large somewhere. Multi-tasking is all the rage these days, but whatever happened to finishing a job you started? It strikes me that catching Osama would have done a lot more to discourage the jihadists than anything we've done in Iraq.

These are points that if made by someone on the left side of the political spectrum, they would be immediately be dismissed as "partisan politics" by the right-wingers in blogworld.

With them coming from an avowedly and proudly self-proclaimed conservative from the old mold, if the discussion quoted above is any indication of his provenance, can the accusation of "partisan" continue to be leveled at any and every one who condemns the new-mint neoconservative policies that appear to have if not completely failed, have fallen far, far short of what was promised by the acolytes of the new faith?

It's hard to answer what is wrong, when nothing is right...

Meanwhile, political science professor Dr. Stephen Taylor (who from my reading at least appears to be right-leaning) at PoliBlog offers this concern regarding the current draft of the proposed Iraq constitution:

I have long wondered if the usage of “federalism” in the press is accurate, and have thought for a while that it was not (and Shugart’s post today confirms it). Indeed, what seems to be on the table is a form of confederalism or a strange hybrid of kinda-sorta-federalism with a unitary government–neither of which is a very good idea.

Indeed, this sounds like a potential disaster–but I will think some more on the topic and wait and see what is actually in the document.

In short: the confederal version (a Kurd zone, a Shiite zone and a Sunni zone) is a recipe for breakup, and a Kurd + the rest of Iraq version seems to equal a relatively quick exit for the Kurds, which would cause problems with the rest of Iraq, not to mention Turkey and Iran.

Did they not consult with anyone who knows something about constitution design and institution arrangements? It would appear not.

And at this point I am more prone to believe the negative assessment vis-a-vis getting a draft to parliament, rather than the optimistic one.

To say that his analysis and questions are troubling is an understatement.

Elsewhere in the world, since both Iran and Kim Jong Il, the dictator in charge of a North Korea that likely has the very nuclear weapons that Iraq was discovered to NOT have, a regime that desperately needs hard currency incidentally, has already been mentioned by Professor Bainbridge, perhaps we should discuss what I have often argued is the true medium to long-term existential threat to the United States, which is China, not terrorism (a tactic, not an ideology) or Islamofascism:

China today differs from Japan in 1980s
Country may be a far tougher force to reckon with going forward

Associated Press
Updated: 4:59 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2005

NEW YORK - It sounds like history repeating itself: The United States faces a huge trade deficit with an Asian country, which is also under intense scrutiny for its interest in buying U.S. assets and having a currency many deem undervalued.

Today, that best describes how China is viewed. Two decades ago, Japan came under similar attack for its growing global presence, and that spurred all sorts of protectionist talk out of Washington.

The Japanese hysteria eventually died down as the country fell into a long recession. But don't look for that to happen with China, where its politics combined with its potential for growth may make it a far tougher force to reckon with going forward.

---

There are also significant political differences between the two. While the Chinese have been more open to foreign investment than Japan, there are some concerns that the communist political structure means that the Chinese won't embrace all kinds of foreign involvement such as an American company buying a big Chinese company.

In addition, Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss points out that China's huge population — which he estimates is 10 times as large as Japan's — means that China has the capability of taking over world production of just about everything.

So talking about China today as though it were Japan 20 years ago might not accurately size up the situation of this fast-growing empire. China's might just be beginning to build its power as an economic force.

To the dismay of many Americans, that will likely mean a bigger, bolder China to contend with for many years to come.

If we do not defeat ourselves through our over-reactions to perceived dangers by passing or making permanent laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act that arguably are unconstitutional (the requirement of judicial approval for search warrants, anyone?) and other ineffective but freedom-denying actions that degrade the very liberties we proclaim to be defending, then we may very well not be able to combat the economic threat posed by China.

Recall, we did not defeat the Soviet empire through a direct war. We won through other means.

In other words, "It's the economy, stupid."

Think of the Web as a big bathroom wall, and everyone has a marker...

Those bloggers and professional editorialists who repeat the current right-wing talking points blame the so-called "liberal media" for poisoning the atmosphere regarding Iraq by the insidious plan of the heinous MainStream Media (MSM) to only present the bad news out of Iraq while completely ignoring the good news.

An aside here, if I had to don body armor and only go out with an armed platoon of the US military to "report" on the situation outside the infamous Green Zone in Baghdad, I would question the efficacy of the occupation of Iraq, too.

However, returning to the substance of the accusation of a "biased media", it is interesting to observe that many of these same writers who are claiming that the supposedly biased media are turning the citizens of the United States against the policies of the administration in Iraq, implying that citizens are incapable of making their own judgments and instead swallow what they are fed by the MSM whole, are the very same writers who were proudly proclaiming that those very same average citizens are now miraculously smart enough to make their own choices regarding retirement planning and investing, so it is vital (according to the right-wing talking points) for both fairness and the future of the retirement system that we make Personal Accounts a key part of the Social Security system.

Do you sense an inconsistency here that is rather insulting to the "average Joe", just as insulting as is the arrogance of the left-wing?

At times I suspect that both extreme wings suffer from the same syndrome of hubris and smug certainty that they are the only ones who know what is right, but the right-wing is better able to come across as "folksy" while the left-wing doesn't hide their own version of the same elitist arrogance at all.

I wonder, which is truly more honest...

Anything can be put to use, even the dead...

In an ironic symmetry, recently John Donovan of Castle Argghhh!, a milblogger who leans right but is happy to engage in reasonable discussion, posted on his agreement with a Christopher Hitchens article in Slate decrying using the dead to make a political point, a condemnation that I agreed with if applied to both wings equally. Hitchens wrote:

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

Yet today, Blackfive, a milblogger who also leans right but doesn't seem to drink the right-wing kool-aid wrote this at his eponymous weblog (NOTE - bolded italics added):

One point (and not critical of the above post by my pal Andi), I really do object to using the name "Sheehan" to identify the protests. I doubt very much that Army Specialist Casey Sheehan would appreciate that. Instead, let's call it Cindy-fest or something else. Cindy-land. Cindy-stock. Anything but Casey's name.

To put it bluntly, Blackfive has just ventriloquized the dead by stating that he knows better than what the mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan knows her son, the dead Casey Sheehan, would appreciate.

Ventriloquizing the dead? Everyone is doing it.

I know the irony was unintentional, but that is what makes it all the more cold and hard.

The only lesson history has taught us is that man has not yet learned anything from history...

Even though I did not like George W. Bush even before he became President of the United States, recent trends are not good for our nation (thanks to Jonathan Singer posting at The Moderate Voice for the link):

George W. Bush's overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove.

This is the second month in a row when improving economic ratings have not been matched by higher job approval ratings for Bush. A total of 24% of Americans now say their personal financial situations are getting better, up from 17% in July, and 27% say they believe that their personal financial situations will be better off a year from now, which is up from 21% in July.

(Full disclosure: I lived in Texas long before George W. Bush became President and observed his performance then... along with the very American tendency that I do not like sons of privilege who have never held a real job, or even any job that was not acquired through who your father is rather than what you have actually accomplished on your own... I ask the hyper-partisan among you to give me an example of where any business that George W. Bush was in charge of prospered under his leadership, or indeed any job he did not get through who he was related to but instead based upon his qualifications and what he had achieved)

How can any American who is interested in the success of his nation, regardless of his partisan leanings, take joy in this?

I take no joy in it, because it shows the failure we are undergoing despite the price we have paid in treasure and, far more importantly, lives both lost and damaged beyond any repair we can give them.

It only gets worse, however:

Militias wrest control across Iraq’s north, south
Newly empowered Shiite, Kurdish forces hold mixed allegiances

By Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru
The Washington Post
Updated: 6:19 a.m. ET Aug. 21, 2005

BASRA, Iraq - Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, forces represented by the militias and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents say they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

Militias gain power, but authority unclear

The parties and their armed wings are sometimes operating independently, and other times as part of Iraqi army and police units trained and equipped by the United States and Britain and controlled by the central government. Their growing authority has enabled them to seize territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers. Their rise has come because of a power vacuum in Baghdad and their own success in the January elections.

Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, claiming members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed men in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a trash-strewn parcel known as The Lot. The province's governor said in an interview that Shiite militias have penetrated the police force; an Iraqi official estimated that as many as 90 percent of officers were loyal to religious parties.

Across northern Iraq, Kurdish parties have employed a previously undisclosed network of at least five detention facilities to incarcerate hundreds of Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and other minorities abducted and secretly transferred from Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and from territories stretching to the Iranian border, according to political leaders and detainees' families. Nominally under the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, the militias have beaten up and threatened government officials and political leaders deemed to be working against Kurdish interests; one bloodied official was paraded through a town in a pickup truck, witnesses said.

Violence a black mark on U.S.?

"I don't see any difference between Saddam and the way the Kurds are running things here," said Nahrain Toma, who heads a human rights organization, Betnahrain, with offices in northern Iraq and has faced several death threats.

Toma said the tactics were eroding what remained of U.S. credibility as the militias operate under what many Iraqis view as the blessing of American and British forces. "Nobody wants anything to do with the Americans anymore," she said. "Why? Because they gave the power to the Kurds and to the Shiites. No one else has any rights."

There is more, and none of it promising.

In other words, if not a complete and utter failure of the administration's handling of the post-war situation in Iraq, the reality there is far, far from a ringing endorsement of the policies and leadership.

Yet, the warbloggers who chanted "weapons of mass destruction" for months and months before and after March of 2003 until ultimately they were proven completely and totally wrong continue their drone of unquestioning support despite the incompetence their revered leaders have shown.

Is it any wonder that this poem from almost a century ago, written in the wake of the First World War seems even more applicable now?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
   -William Butler Yeats, January 1919

After pulling together all of these seemingly disparate threads and slogging through all of this text, one must ask what is the pattern?

The answer is simple.

We are being distracted by things that are not true threats, and neglecting the real perils to our nation.

Islamofascism?

Yes, it is dangerous, but will it ever overthrow our government unless we help it from within through ill-considered laws that are contrary to the liberties envisioned by our founders?

No.

China and other rising powers in Asia (including India, the largest democracy in the world)?

That is where the real confrontation to our current pre-eminent position of power technologically, economically, and militarily (for the three are linked far more profoundly than most realize) in the world lies.

How do cultures die?

When they are more concerned with internecine conflicts over ideologies that are more similar than the fundamental culture is to the external threats opposed to them.

We have to step outside our ideology, outside our partisan talking points, and deliberately choose to look at the world as it is.

The consequences if we do not?

I leave the rest of the math as an exercise to the reader.

Technorati Tags: commentary, patterns in the white noise, politics, right-wing, right-wing politics, right-wing weblogs, some thoughts

Trying to wrap my brain around something

I've spent most of my evening trying to wrap my brain around several things I've been piecing together, along with much of what I've read over the past week in both blogworld and in the world at large, attempting to reconcile what I'm thinking with both rationality and with what I'm trying to accomplish in blogging by splitting my opinions versus my commentary between Radio Saigon and Random Fate respectively.

The world refuses to be so neatly categorized.

I'll work it all out, but not until tomorrow at the earliest.

Technorati Tags: commentary, weblogs

A warning we ignore at our peril

When a culture become factionalized, when it becomes us vs. them, everyone starts setting up consistently smaller camps...first it's democrats vs. republicans...then it's mainstream republicans vs. conservative republicans...then it's conservative republicans vs. religious right republicans (with the democrats having equal problems on their side). As soon as we forget that we're *all* US, it begins to fall apart.
   -J. Michael Straczynski

Technorati Tags: quotes

What a maroon...

Senator Frist is demonstrating that he has no core beliefs beyond those that might get him nominated as the Republican candidate for President of the United States in the 2008 elections.

It would be pitiful, if it were not so disgusting...

Technorati Tags: commentary

After seeing the developments since the year 2000...

...this song title from King Crimson around 30 years ago seems rather prescient, don't you think?

21st Century Schizoid Man

...or is it just me?

Technorati Tags: commentary

Separating the method from the message

Two different bloggers that I find insightful have posted links to the same article in Slate by Christopher Hitchens on the protests of Ms. Cindy Sheehan.

The key passage from that article:

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? (a claim that has brought David Duke flying to Ms. Sheehan's side.) This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

Since I am in France, I haven't been subjected to the media overload that accompanies any "news" which has a "human-interest angle" along with being related to the big story of the day, the continued conflict in Iraq.

Because I'm not suffering from the same overexposure (although the international outlets are starting to pick up on this, CNN International had several multi-minute pieces on it today, when they had given it a mere 30 seconds or so during their news reports on the US up until now), I feel I can offer a relatively abstract view on the matter.

In inverse order of time, I present what was posted that caught my eye.

Dr. Steven Taylor at PoliBlog posted today in part:

I have heretofore avoided commenting on the Cindy Sheehan situation, but after a while these things become nearly impossible to avoid. I have compassion for Ms. Sheehan's grief and recognize that I cannot fully grasp her feelings. Still, she has allowed her grief to translate not only into a political opinion, but she has clearly made herself into a public figure. And, since the media have decided to cover the story ad infinitum, I find myself with thoughts on the subject.

Some thoughts (some more developed than others):

* I am not big on stunts and this is a stunt-and made moreso by Ms. Sheehan's supporters (and by politicians).

* What, exactly, does she hope to accomplish? What will meeting with the President do for her? I sincerely would like to know what it is she thinks she is going to accomplish.

Although I will only address a few points he makes here, please read his entire post.

Even though it has turned into a media circus, and even though I am no better than the next person at reading the hearts of those whom I have never even met, somehow I doubt Ms. Sheehan had intended this to be a "stunt". Her recent remarks make her appear (to my eyes, at least) a wee bit unhinged; however, it is difficult for me to believe that any remotely rational person would expect the kind of "stunt" that this has turned into.

In other words, it may be a "stunt" now, but I doubt it was intended to be so at the beginning by Ms. Sheehan.

The more critical and key point regards the accusation of "ventriloquizing the dead" as Christopher Hitchens so eloquently put it.

Before I write more on this topic, however, I should present the first place where I saw link to the Slate article, where John Donovan at Castle Argghhh! wrote his opinion on the matter (John, since Dr. Taylor uses his "Dr." handle on his weblog, I'll be happy to use your rank here, but I don't know what it is!!! Let me know by email and I'll update). Read what John had to write, here is a short excerpt:

I'm from a military family, I don't really think I'd have that problem... but I was prepared, nonetheless.

The few times I was ever sent to places where people might conceivably wish me harm... I left instructions for the family, left with my soldier father to be opened in the event of "The Visit".

In the event I have been captured or killed:

1. Please don't talk to the press.

2. If you must: Remember I was a soldier, and a volunteer. I went willingly, eyes wide open.

3. I believed in the mission - even if you may not.

4. Do not put words in my mouth that I cannot refute: I forbid you that, above all else. Say what you will of your own opinion, but beyond 2 & 3, do not presume to speak for me. My actions say all that is needful.

5. Lastly, please don't be mad at me - I really *did* mean to zig, but apparently I should have zagged.

There was lots more sentimental stuff, depending on what my point in life was, but that was all that's applicable here.

I do not want to quote out of context, so please read everything that John wrote, then read the comment I left:

John, this indirectly touches on my objection when the Bush campaign ran ads early in the Presidential race last year showing a dead fireman being carried away from the rubble of the World Trade Center. It was a way of "ventriloquizing the dead". The situations are not identical, but the underlying methods of gaining credibility by using the dead are very similar.

I believe the anti-war crowd that is using the situation with Ms. Sheehan are just as wrong as the Bush campaign was.

In response to my comment, Beth wrote:

But Jack, No one said that the fireman believed this or that or had this or that political opinion - it was a strong and valid reminder of what happened on 9/11 - I don't think the two are at all related.

I've been round and round with this, trying to compose a response that will not ignite a pointless conflict but instead try to explain fully the point I was trying to make.

I have not come up with something that I find satisfactory to meet the requirements I have imposed upon any reply, so I must ask those who read this to take in the spirit intended rather than in the emotional response that an issue of this nature will inevitably engender on such a political matter held close to so many hearts.

You see, I believe that while there are many surrounding Ms. Sheehan who are cynically manipulating the situation for momentary political gain, I want to believe that at least in the beginning Ms. Sheehan was honest in her intentions, no matter how unrealistic they were.

Having said that, I must point out that those surrounding Ms. Sheehan are practicing the same cold, politically calculated emotional blackmail that I perceived in the early advertisements by the Bush campaign in 2004 that used images from the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.

Beth wrote, "... No one said that the fireman believed this or that or had this or that political opinion - it was a strong and valid reminder of what happened on 9/11 - I don't think the two are at all related."

While I readily admit that I have not had access to all that Ms. Sheehan has said, I have yet to read or hear anywhere that she has said, "Casey believed" whatever.

So... The argument that "No one said that the fireman believed this or that or had this or that political opinion," is rendered invalid, because both Ms. Sheehan and the Bush campaign used similar tactics, raising specters of the dead to say, "If you don't listen to their message, there will be more of me." In other words, threatening that there will be more of the dead to haunt us.

I am saying that we need to separate the message, which you may or may not agree with, from the methods used to deliver the message.

BOTH the Bush campaign in 2004 and Ms. Sheehan now have used the specters of the dead in an emotional blackmail of "this might happen again if you don't listen to me" to get their message out.

If you are willing to separate the message from the method, I am sure you will see the similarities.

It is a common trait, a human trait, to let the message and our view of it affect our opinion of the method used. That tendency is seen every day, in blogworld and in the larger real word. Methods that are decried when used by opponents are applauded when used by "our side".

I say that we must divorce the message from the method, and evaluate each independently.

If the method is unacceptable, regardless of how much we approve of the message, we must condemn the method.

If the message is unacceptable, regardless of the source of the message, we must condemn the message.

In this case, with Ms. Sheehan, just as in the case of the Bush campaign in 2004, the dead are being used as a source of credibility, and this is unacceptable, in BOTH cases.

As I condemned the Bush campaign in 2004 for their use of the imagery of a dead fireman to give credence to their message, I condemn those cynically using Ms. Sheehan now to give some kind of legitimacy to their message.

"We seem to have a botwar on our hands"

This sounds like something from a cyberpunk science fiction novel:

Computer virus writers at war, security firm says

News Story by Reuters

AUGUST 17, 2005 (REUTERS) - HELSINKI, Finland -- Computer worms that have brought down systems around the world in recent days are starting to attack each other, Finnish software security firm F-Secure Corp. said today.

"We seem to have a botwar on our hands," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. "There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines."

Hypponen said in a statement that varieties of three worms -- Zotob, Bozori and IRCbot -- were still exploiting a gap in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 operating system on computers that had not had the flaw repaired and were not shielded by firewalls.

"The latest variants of Bozori even remove competing viruses like Zotob from the infected machines," Hypponen said.

In the larger scale of things, while this is creating disruption, it is nothing compared to the lives that are lost every day to hatred and stupidity.

Yet, this adds to the feeling that things are going too fast, running off the rails, barreling towards a wreck we do not want but are not taking any action to avoid.

As the world population rises and technology improves, the complexity inherent in the interaction of various societies, cultures, sub-cultures, and other groups increases, misunderstandings grow, and the potential to do harm blooms geometrically.

Is the human race wise enough to survive?

A sad commentary of the times

Google Earth A Security Risk

Nothing more to add...

Is it a sign?

Well...

A balanced political cartoon.

Next thing you know, we'll have all kinds of strangeness... Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Nick Anderson (at MyComicsPage.com, a subscription service, but inexpensive and worth it!):

Hopefully, with both extremes frothing at the mouth, perhaps the sensible middle can take the reigns.

At least, that is my forlorn hope...

Technorati Tags: commentary

This comic is no funny paper

When I started my job with my current company, back in 1996, I met a man who is now one of my best friends. He had fought in the 1991 Gulf War, and for a time, we (his friends and I) were concerned in late 1996 through around 1999 that he was going to drink himself to death.

According to one of the women I was dating at the time, a psychiatrist, my friend showed all the symptoms of PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

So, despite his definite left-leaning viewpoint, do not dismiss Gary Trudeau and what he has been trying to illustrate from our latest foray into Iraq out of hand.

It is important that we remember THIS COST, not only in life and limb, but in peace of mind as well.

We must be very careful when we ask for these kinds of sacrifices, and we must be fullly aware of what the sacrifices are if we are to ask for them again.

Technorati Tags: commentary

Collective insanity?

As someone not directly exposed to events in the US currently, I'm forced to ask:

Why is this being written about as if it were news?

Technorati Tags: commentary

Forests and trees

In my post "Some Thoughts ...on using Newtonian Physics in an Einsteinian universe" my attempt at "showing instead of saying" has been misinterpreted by some as a moral equivalency argument. In focusing on the trees, the forest is being missed.

Leaving aside all attempts at eloquence and stating my point simply, I was not making any moral equivalency arguments. In fact, I was contending and still do assert that we must remove "morality", aka "evil", completely from the equation if we wish to win the war against the quasi-ideology of Islamic-inflamed hatred of the United States and Western culture in general.

My use of the history of World War II was intended to show two things:

1) It is possible to use the language of "evil" when confronting nation-states, but impossible when confronting a stateless, inchoate enemy whose commonalities lie mainly in hatred of our culture. In using this language, we are using the same language they themselves use to recruit their suicidal attackers, and this language requires apocalyptic resolutions to the conflict. The resolution of World War II was indeed apocalyptic to the regimes in Germany and Japan, yet how can that total physical destruction be wreaked on ideas that are not even coherent enough to be called an ideology and shadowy groups that are spread worldwide?

2) The tactics used in World War II by the US and Allies were justified, but they were indeed tactics of terror when viewed by those on the receiving end, and in many cases the fear-inducing nature of the tactics was deliberate on the part of the Allies. In other words, we are not lily-white virgins when it comes to deliberately creating fear and death among civilians in the communities of those we perceive as enemies. The very approach we used in the Cold War, MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, was itself based upon a "Balance of Terror". If we allow ourselves and our strategies to be driven emotionally by the tactics used against us, not only will we not win, but we are at risk of committing actions that in the end will prolong the conflict rather than end it.

We must remove the "moral" aspect of this conflict and take the Machiavellian approach. If we continue to frame it as a "good versus evil" conflict, the victory conditions imposed thereby force the use of tactics that will be counterproductive and require the avoidance of strategies that would result in the accomplishment of our ultimate goal, to reduce the danger of attacks against our citizens.

The recent announcement by the Irish Republican Army to disarm can provide us with some lessons.

This development, which hopefully marks the end of large-scale terrorist activities in or because of Northern Ireland, did not arise out of killing or imprisoning most of the members of the IRA.

The history of Ireland is long and complex, but a large component of "The Troubles" arose out of the historical domination of the island by a foreign power, England.

Much of the support for the IRA in Northern Ireland was driven by a feeling of powerlessness in a community that had historically been oppressed by England. At the time of the beginning of The Troubles, that community was not necessarily being "oppressed" in the definition we currently associate with the word, yet there was still a feeling that their culture was attacked and they had little or no say in their future.

The road from the start of The Troubles to the recent announcement of disarmament by the IRA was long, rocky, and even recently looked to lead to more violence and death.

In the end, the IRA had lost the support of the community, as evidenced by the outrage over the murder of Robert McCartney. This outrage would not have existed if the community that had supported the IRA for decades continued to feel attacked and that they had no say in their future.

In other words, the underlying problems were assaulted and at least a partial resolution achieved so as to deny those who practiced the terrorism of the support they needed to continue their violence.

The current, fragile peace is a result of using the indirect approach of which I have written before, a strategy that works not solely in the context of war.

Yes, there are IRA murderers out there who likely will never come to justice. Which is more important, vengeance, or creating a situation where there are no more murders?

If you take the emotional response path of framing it in terms of "evil", the conflict must continue because the "evil" has not been destroyed.

Is that path better than the situation now, where it appears that the terrorist tactics have been rejected by the community and likely will not continue?

It is an old Chinese proverb that those who seek revenge should first dig two graves. The repeated and seemingly endless conflicts in the Balkans, based in part upon grievances centuries old, should provide us all the object lesson needed. Still, much of the "discussion" regarding the current conflict, which cannot be a "War on Terror" if we wish to win, has sounded like a clarion call for retribution instead of seeking to develop ways to remove the wellspring of support for our enemies, developing ways to reduce the risk of terror by stopping the source of the attacks rather than ineffectually attempting to prevent attacks once planned.

As is taught in every class on Military History, victory is not achieved by killing the enemy, it is by removing his ability and will to fight.

The Cold War was not won by a direct attack, but instead by allowing the internal contradictions of our enemy to destroy them from within. If we do not create internal contradictions in ourselves through poorly thought out reactions to terrorist attacks, then the internal contradictions of our current enemies will put them on the road to defeat.

History rarely repeats itself exactly, however, that does not mean there is nothing to learn from history. Yet, equally important, using the wrong analogy from history can lead you father astray than even ignoring history would.

In focusing on my examples, some missed the point of my argument. I hope the trees here don't distract from the forest this time.

Reality Distortion Fields

It is often said of Steve Jobs, the charismatic founder and current leader of Apple Computer, that he has a so-called "Reality Distortion Field" (or RDF) around him, where susceptible souls can be caught up in his enthusiasm for whatever he is proselytizing at the time.

I now wonder if each extreme of the political spectrum has its own RDF, because what I see from both sides has little to do with the reality of blood, death, danger, and loss that I see.

Of course, I could be within an RDF of my own.

Such is our curse, we never know for certain anything other than death and taxes.

Technorati Tags: commentary, weblogs

For a view on the Bolton recess appointment...

...from outside the United States, Spiegel Online, the English language, Internet edition of the German magazine Der Spiegel, is a useful source:

On Monday, US President George W. Bush bypassed Congress and installed the pugnacious John Bolton as UN Ambassador. While diplomats are trying to smile graciously, academics and European specialists insist the appointment is a direct slap in the face to Europe and to the UN.

To put it in other words, Europe is reacting to this appointment exactly as I predicted, as Bush giving an upraised middle finger to the international community.

For those who feel this appointment is "needed" to "shake things up", allow me to remind you, pissing off allies, even if they do not agree with you in all respects, is not a good way to ensure continued success.

The article continues:

Officially, politicians in Germany, France and Spain are being quietly diplomatic about United States President George W. Bush's somewhat back-handed installation of the controversial John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations on Monday. But political scientists and academics fear the move could increase tensions in trans-Atlantic relations.

"Bush is sending the message that the UN in general is not on the front burner anymore for the United States," said Professor Frank Unger, a professor at Berlin's John F. Kennedy School of Foreign Relations, who specializes in international relations and US policy. "It's not a message Europeans like hearing."

Europeans still believe in the idea of the UN as an independent world player, an institution that can and will act independently from the US, he said. "For Europeans, the UN is a body that can function as an antagonist to the United States. What Bush is saying is that is not true. He's saying the UN is not a real power and cannot replace the power or influence of the US." He's also showing his disdain for international diplomacy in general, Unger said.

But others disagree, pointing out the UN's many scandals and its inability to act quickly enough to stop the genocides of the 1990s in the Balkans and Rwanda. The UN, they say, is in desperate need of serious reforms.

"The reason why Bolton was nominated is because Bush needs a tough guy at the UN, and wants bottom up reforms," said Jan-Friedrich Kallmorgen of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "Bush is committed to reform, that's why he put someone like that in there. I don't agree with some analysts who say it's a punishment of the Senate or because he's anti-democratic or all that ... He chose Bolton because he needs someone tough enough to take on the bureaucracy."

As is plain to see, there is more than one opinion in Germany on the motives behind Bush's appointment of Bolton as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

However, this is not the only ambassadorial appointment causing heartburn in Germany. Again from Spiegel Online:

How Bush's Berlin Ambassador Pick Profited from Protective Tariffs against German Companies

By Georg Mascolo and Juergen Dahlkamp

Washington's choice for future US ambassador to Germany has all the makings of a political bombshell. For years, a company owned by the multimillionaire and newly-appointed diplomat William Timken, Jr. has been profiting from anticompetitive tariffs — at the direct expense of German companies.

As Washington's new ambassador to Germany, William Timken, Jr. will face, among other things, the task of patching up damaged relations between the two countries. But there's one small problem with this picture. The multimillionaire who US President George W. Bush nominated to the position two weeks ago also happens to be Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Timken Company, an Ohio-based firm that claims to be the biggest manufacturer of roller bearings in the world. And ever since the 66-year-old Timken, a major donor to the Republican Party and decorated with the honorary title of "Super Ranger," (reserved for those who contribute more than $200,000) has been slated to take over the position in Berlin, his company's questionable business practices have suddenly become taboo among German politicians and industry lobbyists.

Here are some good examples: Last Tuesday, the usually outspoken Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs Otto Wiesheu said he was not the right person to talk to about the Timken Company. On Wednesday, Randolf Rodenstock, the head of the Bavarian Business Association, also declined to comment on the matter. Even Germany's federal Minister of Economics and Labor, Social Democrat Wolfgang Clement, has opted to discreetly downplay the issue.

In other words, no one wants to talk about the fact that the Bavarian roller bearing industry is suffering because it's being forced to pay protective tariffs for products it exports to the United States as a result of charges of price dumping. To make matters worse, the Bush administration is funnelling the proceeds directly to the Bavarians' US competitors, primarily Timken. In response to a complaint filed by the European Union and other states in January 2003, the World Trade Organization, or WTO, ruled that this practice is clearly illegal. Yet, no one dares speak out against it — or against America's newest ambassador.

Fascinating, an accusation of a "conspiracy of silence" by the German Government with respect to how the company for which the newly minted US Ambassador to Germany serves as chairman of the board profited from certain tariffs imposed by the US on German products.

More details from the article:

Jürgen Geissinger, CEO of the Schaeffler Group in the northern Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach and also president of the Federation of European Bearing Manufacturers Associations, complains: "Timken, one of the biggest beneficiaries of a trade policy that violates the WTO ruling, has been named ambassador to a country whose businesses suffer as a result of this policy."

Schaeffler's holdings include roller bearing manufacturers FAG Kugelfischer and INA which are responsible for about 26,000 German jobs. According to Kugelfischer, the company has already paid more than $35 million in tariffs, with most of the money going into the coffers of Timken's company. And, according to Geissinger, the proceeds from the tariffs could even enable the Americans to sell their products at rock-bottom prices on the world market, "which would not only deprive us of revenues, but would also jeopardize German jobs on a massive scale."

To this day, hardly any other US company has insisted so steadfastly that the United States should continue to ignore the WTO's 2003 decision. More importantly, no other US company has profited as much from America's anticompetitive protective tariffs since 2001 as Timken (including its subsidiary, the Torrington Company, which Timken acquired in 2003). But the companies that are paying the lion's share of these tariffs include German industrial bearing manufacturers — and at $70 million in tariffs, the Germans are only in second place behind the Japanese.

Merely by filing the appropriate forms, Timken managed to cash in on $52.7 million from the US customs jackpot in 2004, twice as much the second-largest beneficiary of the tariffs. Timken's take was even bigger in 2003 — $92.7 million, or five times as much as the number two company on the receiving end. Even President Bush believes that there is something wrong with this practice of milking the competition despite the WTO decision. He attempted — albeit unsuccessfully — to overturn the 2000 legal basis for the tariffs, known as the "Byrd Amendment."

So, to put it simply, in addition to nominating as Ambassador to the United Nations a man who said in a speech that the top stories of the UN building could be removed with "no loss" to the world, the President of the United States nominated as Ambassador to Germany, nominally an important ally, the chairman of the board of a company that not only profited from tariffs imposed upon German imports to the United States, but a company that also lobbied to continue the punitive (from the German point of view) tariffs.

If that is not a second upraised middle finger to our allies in Europe, especially Germany, I do not know what else would be.

Think about it a while. Do what your mother always asked of you, put yourself in their place.

Is there any wonder that the United States is losing support in the world, even among formerly strong allies?

Is this any way for us to win a "war of ideologies"?

This ain't rocket science....

Technorati Tags: commentary

For the alternate history buffs...

...an interesting question arises.

Stephen Green, at The Vodka Pundit, attempts to puzzle out the true motives underpinning the joint military exercises to be held by Russia and China later in August.

In his musings (with much before and after the quoted passage below that is well worth reading in entirety), Green writes:

A quick look around the map shows that China and Russia don't share many goals in common. Taiwan? There's nothing to benefit Russia in reunification. Post-Soviet Central Asia? That's a place where the Chinese and Russian are in competition with one another (although we'll get back to this later). India? Just like China, India is a profitable export market for Russian weapons. Indochina? Trapped in oppression, poverty, and violence, there's little reason for either country to get involved in the region. The South Pacific? It's true that China would like the ability to project power there, to protect its oil imports. But Russia is a net oil exporter - China's oil worries have nothing to do with them. Eastern Europe? NATO and the EU will continue to gobble up all the choice bits of the old Soviet Empire, leaving Russia with nothing but their retarded step-sister, Belarus. Inasmuch that the EU is increasingly China's bitch (think military hardware sales), and that NATO is a mostly-paper tiger, Eastern Europe isn't any of China's concern.

I'm not so sure that NATO is the "mostly-paper tiger" that Green proclaims, but the question arises in my mind, what if?

The majority, if not all (I haven't checked each and every nation), NATO members offered more than simple moral support for the war in Afghanistan, to be brushed aside by the Bush administration as if completely irrelevant.

When viewed from the standpoint of the NATO nations, supposed "allies" who were rejected in the "go it alone" approach that the Bush administration chose in Afghanistan to avoid the troublesome complications that arise when troops of multiple nations are involved, is it any wonder that subsequent actions were regarded with great suspicion and doubt?

In an alternate history, what if the NATO allies were not brushed aside so brusquely? What if they were instead drawn into the Afghan War, both involving their troops directly in the conflict while simultaneously freeing up US troops?

As I have said before, you discard a helping hand offered at your peril, especially if that offered hand is from an old friend.

Did the "lone ranger" approach taken by the Bush administration ultimately undermine their designs for the (even then euphemistically-termed) regime-change in Iraq?

An interesting question.

Technorati Tags: alternate history, commentary

Requiem

Requiem.

A word with many powerful connotations to those who fully understand its meaning.

No man is an Island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee.
   -John Donne, Meditation XVII

Think upon this for a while, the whole of it.

All meanings.

My posts here are all part of a whole as well.

Think about it a while.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee.

Technorati Tags: commentary

For those who like to say "We're number one!"...

...here is an FYI for you:

U.S. burned in branding survey

Overseas Consumers Increasingly Shunning U.S. Brand Name Products

The decline and decline of Brand America

Read all of them, thoroughly, and then stop looking through the prism of your own beliefs to see how the rest of the world views America.

And think about how that just might affect us economically.

We won the Cold War through our economic strengths.

We sustain our powerful military through our world-leading economy.

What if the economy is no longer world-leading?

Do the math, in this case, both figuratively and literally.

Technorati Tags: commentary, patterns in the white noise

...on "rebranding", learning, cynicism, and loss

Joe Gandelman, of The Moderate Voice, has written of his opposition to the apparent rebranding by the current Administration of President George W. Bush of the so-called "Global War on Terror".

Gandelman writes:

The idea that this battle is more than just military, is a sound one.

But I thought that just a few months ago conservative commentators were up in arms about the BBC and Reuters refusing to use the word "terrorist." TMV isn't a conservative (OR a liberal) blogger and he thought it was silly too. But he knows Rush, and Sean and all the others (including bloggers) will now be falling all over themselves saying what a genius idea it is, but we must say:

It was dumb when the BBC didn't use the "t" word and it's dumb when the administration tries to recast this conflict now. The enemy is terrorism. Free and democratic societies may have to fight it on many levels — but the enemy is TERRORISTS and TERRORISM.

OH: We know it's a terrible sin to be consistent on these things, so we'll plead guilty. And we'll save you the trouble: "How can you call yourself a moderate if you don't accept the new definition of the global war on violent extremism?" Answer: EASILY.

While I recommend you read the entire post, I cannot comment on his position without quoting his ending statements:

People who want to blow up innocent men, women and children in sneak, sucker-punch like bomb attacks? Extremists.

People who want to group jump bound screaming captives and saw their heads off? Extremists.

People who want to use planes as missles, get nuclear materials and blow up U.S. cities? Extremists.

People who threaten and (if they) attack judges whose opinions they don't agree with? Extremists.

If you don't agree that "extremist" includes the last one, then I have a great idea:

Why don't we just call it the "global war on terrorism?"

While I don't dispute his definition of extremists, the general tone of Gandelman's comments is that he opposes the "rebranding".

Joe Gandelman is indeed a true moderate, and he is not trying to take some partisan advantage of the change of public strategy by the current Republican Administration.

There are others, however, who are not so generous, and I find myself forced to disagree with what Gandelman has written in this case.

For me, even though I have many reasons to oppose the current Administration, I welcome the change in nomenclature, if it is indeed a true recognition of the need for a change in strategy.

I commented many times in the run up to the last election in November of 2004 of how President George W. Bush could not acknowledge ANY mistakes, no matter how minor, and of how this was (and is) a huge issue, to the extent of being a personality defect, because recognizing mistakes is the first step in learning from those mistakes and changing behaviors.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
   -Albert Einstein, attributed

I would be completely remiss if I did not recognize and indeed, praise the Administration for actually recognizing a flaw in current "strategy" and at the least trying to change direction, even if they do not publicly acknowledge in the process the tremendous mistakes they made in reaching this point.

This is a change we need.

This is what is best for the nation as a whole.

Those on the Democrat side of the spectrum should NOT be playing this change for some kind of advantage, instead they should be applauding any change away from a stubborn adherence of former policies that have been shown to have failed and celebrating this change as the right thing for the country.

Why is this change needed?

From a book review of a history surrounding the Fauklands War, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: The 1982 Falklands War and Its Aftermath, at The Economist magazine:

The French have a saying à la guerre comme à la guerre: when you're at war, act that way.

We have been fighting the wrong war.

As has been said countless times by many others far more eloquently than I can write now, terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
   -Sun-Tzu

From where I stand, we have failed in knowing both ourselves and the enemy.

Any change in that is to the good.

The only "leadership" we've gotten to date for the home-front in our so-called "War on Terror" is an exhortation to "keep shopping" while our best and brightest are sent to an abattoir of our own making to die, or if not to die, to lose limbs or something else almost as precious, in a cost we still do not count.

We like to say that we are in an "age of irony", but that is mere self-deception, a pleasant illusion presenting a fiction that is more desirable than the unattractive reality. Irony has complexity, whereas what is typically shown by those seeking to be ironic is instead a knee-jerk rejection of concepts without thinking, a simplicity that is both stark and stupid.

In my first draft of this post, I told a story of how in history, one nation attacked another nation based upon an analysis that the success of the first nation in its goals would be thwarted by the actions of the second nation, in other words, the second nation presented a "clear and present danger" to the long-term survival of the first nation. An ultimatum was to be delivered, but was delayed, and the attack undertaken turned into a "day that will live in infamy."

I had hoped to present the irony in contrasting the attack on Pearl Harbor, which even today from the point of view of history as taught in Japan was a pre-emptive attack because the United States had embargoed several key materials in an effort to force Japan to modify its behaviors, and many parts of the Japanese government felt a war with the United States was inevitable, so a pre-emptive attack was the only way to ensure national survival.

Sound familiar?

If not, read on, and perhaps it just might...

The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq that have proven illusory, but there are many who stubbornly adhere to the WMD motivation for the war, despite the evidence to the contrary, even to the extent that many who proclaimed the existence of Iraqi WMD before the war still refuse all reason and claim the WMD were ported over the borders to Syria or Iran, both of which were mortal enemies of the overthrown regime of Saddam Hussein.

I deleted that long passage illustrating the irony inherent in the parallel motivations of "survival of the country" in the face of threats that existed only in the mind, and yes, what I had written was much longer. I chose to throw that work away because I suspect the irony will be lost on those who need to understand it the most, and will be merely preaching to the choir for those who already see it.

There are other, more recent, yet perhaps not fully recognized ironies at hand that may help in illustrating my point, however.

Ann Althouse has a post today titled, "Nothing we're doing is evil." According to what she wrote in the comments (the post itself is remarkably brief), the post title is something she heard "in a context."

Her entire post beneath that title:

How do you like that as a statement intended as reassuring? Does it hit you in an "I'm not a crook" way?

Although it may not have been her intention, nor the context in which she heard the statement, that simple sentence, "Nothing we're doing is evil," it does indeed sound remarkably like much heard from the right-wing in defense of the prison at Guantánamo, among the defenses of other questionable actions taken in our newly renamed "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, née the "Global War on Terror".

Before you start on your knee-jerk defense of torture perpetrated in the name of a "greater good", consider this statement:

Rear Adm. Michael F. Lohr, the Navy's chief lawyer, wrote on Feb. 6, 2003, that while detainees at Guantánamo Bay might not qualify for international protections, "Will the American people find we have missed the forest for the trees by condoning practices that, while technically legal, are inconsistent with our most fundamental values?"

What, a "bleeding-heart liberal who sides with the terrorists" is a Rear Admiral in our Navy?

TREASON!

This is the level we are reduced to now in a discourse dominated by the cheerleaders of Ann Coulter and Michael Moore.

The current defense mounted for Karl Rove is of a similar vein.

What is missing is this: The "leak" is NOT the issue, the issue is the nature of the "truth" from this Administration.

We were told the President had not firmly decided to go to war until "after all other avenues were exhausted."

They were apparently exhausted much sooner than the last statement that "the President has not yet decided to go to war" was issued, if we are to believe the evidence available to date.

So much for the "truth", especially as spun by the smear-meister, Karl Rove, who in a moving of goal posts unprecedented even in this post-Watergate era is not being held publicly responsible after the Administration publicly said that Rove did NOT discuss the Plame matter with reporters, and after the President himself said he would fire anyone responsible for leaks associated with the matter.

The "leak" is NOT the issue, despite the incredible amount of verbiage directed, the issue is the nature and reality of the "truth" from this Administration that claimed it would "restore honor and integrity" to the White House.

An Administration that at the least was not fully truthful about when the decision to go to war with Iraq was truly made.

An Administration that at the least tacitly accepted the results of an active smear campaign against a man opposing Administration policies if not outright approving of the smear publicly.

Apparently, this Administration has a different interpretation of "honor and integrity" than I do.

All of this, combined with Althouse post title, reminds me of something I heard in a movie, long ago:

When a man lies, he murders a part of the world.
   -Merlin (in the movie Excalibur)

We are reaching the point to where the cynics are right, we cannot trust anything from any "spokesman" representing any elected official.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
   -George Bernard Shaw

Is this the reality we want to accept? For it is in our acceptance that any reality is created.

Twisting of facts...

Distortion of truth...

Cherry-picking the information and patterns in ways that are obvious to those willing to take a step outside their own perspective, but which satisfy the echoing crowds who don't want to take the time and energy to think...

There are those, such as John Cole, who are valiantly making an effort to confirm what is known and agreed upon in the Rove/leaking to the press matter.

I admire Cole for his perseverance, but ultimately it is pointless.

I try to not let my natural pessimism overwhelm me, but we are now to the point where it is no longer pessimism but instead realism.

The Afganistan War was necessary and justified.

The Iraq War was neither absolutely necessary beyond all dispute, and the justification was weak even at the time and is failing the smell test more often as time passes.

Otherwise, the irony of comparison with the attacks made by Japan in 1941 would not arise to those who read and take the time to understand history in the context of those experiencing it at the time it was occurring.

It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There is one large-scale event in recent history I think we could well do to repeat:

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.
   -Sun Tzu

We defeated the Soviet Union without having to engage directly in a "hot war" that would have cost countless lives and possibly rendered significant portions of the planet unihabitable.

We defeated the Soviet Union without resorting to open war.

We conquered the enemy with strategy.

What are we doing now?

Is it the same path of victory?

Is it a path to victory that is truly worth the price paid?

Come to your own conclusions, and act upon your own conscience, but do not take a knee-jerk talking-points response as your answer.

Your conscience will remind you in the end.

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, patterns in the white noise, rants

...on thoughts better left unsaid

There are a large number of posts I have started and abandoned in the past weeks, often abandoning them not only because of my dissatisfaction with the quality of my writing, but also because of the lack of symmetry and balance in the posts themselves. The titles include, but are not limited to:

Confusing appearing with being

Long ago...

It's past time we accept that ALL reporting is biased...

And one that actually has a quotable passage:

An odd linkage of popular culture and politics of the day...

...comes from Salon.com (you can watch an ad to see the entire story, to me it's less obnoxious than a registration):

But before we all hail George Lucas for raising the level of political discourse in American cinema (and on that score, the accolades have already begun to roll in), let's remember that all of the "Star Wars" movies -- even the genuinely superb "The Empire Strikes Back" -- have a relatively simple piece of rhetoric as their backbone: Good must triumph over evil.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that as a theme for a series of fantasy movies. But it's much too simplistic to be taken seriously as a political statement. And it's the kind of oversimplification that plagues both sides of the current political divide. Neither of the Georges -- Lucas or Bush -- seems to realize that a black-and-white ethos is no template for a world that too often includes shades of gray.

I've read the published script for the soon to be released, ostensibly last-ever Star Wars movie, and there are some not-so-subtle digs that are sadly made more relevant by the recent passage of the Real ID Act as an amendment to a military spending bill along with many of the other bills passed into law, executive orders, and other changes in how the government exerts its power over citizens in the years since September 11, 2001.

Lost innocence?

The Star Wars movies going from good non-political popcorn-movie fun to a political statement on freedom in the United States is an unintentional metaphor that almost perfectly describes the path trodden in the years since the release of the first movie, going from the apparently clear and seemingly symmetric dichotomy of "good guys-bad guys" inherent in the Cold War to the confused moral and factual ambiguity of a so-called War on Terror that appears to be more of a fabrication of the spin-machines than a true conflict of civilizations, regardless of how some wish to portray it.

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I write a lot, and I delete 90% of what I write.

Theodore Sturgeon once wrote, "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

I often fear that more than 90% of what I write is crap, which is why at least 90% of it is deleted.

An unusual case of symmetry in areas I have wished to post has arisen where others have posted on the topics from their respective points of view and I can retain the balance, and despite the seemingly unrelated nature of the posts there is more than one thread connecting them.

The fundamental connecting thread, the weakening of their respective arguments by naked partisan (and more than quasi-extremist) attacks on "the other side", which if not undertaken could have actually persuaded those not of similar political persuasions to support the cause outlined.

First from Thoughts in the Daedalnexus (thanks to Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice for the link), where there are a few swipes at "the right" that were not needed to make the fundamental case:

I have a question. Are we at war, or aren't we? We have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan killing and dying on the President's orders, so in that sense we are at war. Bush II says we're at war, and when the President says so, his authority gives his words more weight than, say, mine. But in almost every way I can think of, we're not at war. Engaged in a dangerous conflict, yes, not actually at war.

How have we, as U.S. citizens, been asked to sacrifice for the so-called war on terror? We've been asked to give up some civil liberties in the pursuit of "homeland security," but that's pretty much it. Cutting our per-capita gasoline consumption would dramatically reduce the profits of nations like Saudi Arabia, nations that have been shown to bankroll Islamist terrorism. Reducing the flood of money going into terrorist bank accounts would probably have a dramatic effect on the conflict. Instead, Congress has refused to even consider raising fuel efficiency standards, and the IRS still gives a tax credit for the purchase of large trucks and SUVs purchased by small businesses, making gas consumption MORE attractive, not less.

We're running a huge budget deficit that is partly the result of our continuing military actions abroad, yet the President and Congress have not asked the American people to pay the higher taxes required to make war. Not only that, but taxes have actually dropped dramatically since the supposed war started.

Perhaps most damning in many respects is the fact that we have not been asked to sacrifice ourselves, our children, our husbands, or our wives to the war effort. Our professional, all-volunteer military (read "mercenary army composed of the undereducated and the poor") has not yet been supplemented with draftees, something that is all but inevitable in a real war. Instead, our government is requiring year-long tours of duty in a combat zone with six months or less R&R before being redeployed to another combat zone. This tactic is gradually killing military preparedness, driving the most experienced soldiers out of the military altogether, and making recruitment more and more difficult for the Army, the various National Guards, and the Reserves.

If the United States is truly at war, we should behave as if we are. Instead we're cutting our own throats economically and militarily, and we're bankrolling the very enemies we're in conflict with. We cannot continue to destroy ourselves this way. Unfortunately, I have little confidence that the federal government can change this suicidal course. It will take the people realizing that they've been led astray by ideologues and idiots before a new course out of this conflict may be charted.

A not unreasonable set of questions, but unfortunately diluted by the remarks starting with the parenthetical "read 'mercenary army composed of the undereducated and the poor'". I know more than a few of those who have served and still serve in the Armed Forces of the United States, and they have NOT been undereducated, poor, nor mercenary. To a man (and yes, all the ones I know are male) they have been intelligent patriots who are well educated and serve because they believe in the underlying principles of our nation, not because they are being "mercenaries".

So, even though I am predisposed to accepting the argument presented, the partisan swipe renders it almost unappealing to me without a tremendous effort to overcome my emotional negation.

Similarly, a post from Donnie (now posting under his real name) at Cadillac Tight, in a post on 24 July that seems to have disappeared from the post chain but still exists in the RSS feed and on his server, again the underlying theme of the post has merit, and is something I have been meaning to post upon for a long time, the inadequate (to say the least) compensation we offer to those fighting for us, but the argument is weakened by the partisan swipes, this time directed at "the left":

Not so fast, Chomsky...

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Well, yeah. Recruiting is a problem in wartime, after all...and I'll discuss that a bit further down in this post. First, though, let me point out to the left side of the blogosphere that they may not want to climb too many steeples to shout this news from, as one of the article's points is:

an improving economy

Sigh. DCSPERS, what can we do with 'em?

Gah! Remember, lefties, your "worst economy since Hoover" posts of the past (we do, you know, we remember), and consider how we'll jam them down your throats once you start gibbering and capering about as if this Times article is GOOD news for your side.

Now then, recruiting. Yes, there's a war on, and before I get into any suggestions about how to address the recruiting problem, let me just say for the record that I think this administration has made a very big mistake in this regard. I understand the rationale behind the "go about your normal lives" approach to handling the domestic side of the war, given I have a pretty good understanding of the terrorist's goals - they'd like to fuck up our infrastructure something fierce, and rationing, et. al. would do a large portion of that job for them. Where I disagree with the president's approach to "business as usual" is in how he's neglected to reinforce the fact that while those of us who have already served our time, or who can't serve an