Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Sunday, February 09, 2003

What Would You Say? - Dave Matthews has always bored me stiff. His music is the type of dull, formulaic, Cities 97 fodder that sends me for the preset button every time. It's as if someone created genetically-modifed music product designed to appeal to the widest, blandest possible market segment.

So natch, he's all about foreign policy, too:
I hope this letter finds you all well and that in these uncertain times you find moments to be joyful.

I want to speak my mind about this war with Iraq, or I will choke on my conscience.

What is the motivation? Regime change? Shouldn't that be up to the people of the region and the people of Iraq?
That's right, Dave. Let the people of Iraq vote for a new president.

Right?
The only real threat from Saddam Hussein is to his neighbors and none of them support a U.S. invasion.
Kuwait? Oman? Turkey?
Is it to stabilize the Middle-East? Wouldn't it only do the opposite by causing further death and suffering in a country that has had more than its share?

Is it to weaken Al Qaeda? Saddam Hussein is a genocidal maniac but he is not Al Qaeda.
No. But he's a terrorist, a terror supporter, and has the means to use weapons of mass destruction to commit terror attacks.
He is certainly more visible though. Is he our target because he is easier to identify than the illusive terrorist network? Surely it is more likely that an attack on Iraq would only strengthen Al Qaeda by feeding Anti-American sentiment. Putting out the fire with gasoline, so to speak. It is certainly not to liberate the people of Iraq who suffer under Hussein's rule, unless we call killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis liberation.
And "Hundreds of Thousands" is certainly not how many will die, unless we call "lying" "truth".
Saddam Hussein is a barbaric murderous dictator. I wish the world were free of him. But the answer is not to bomb this great culture of Iraq out of existence to stop him.
Out of existence? Your hyperbole is as overwrought as your music.
Why must the children of Iraq die by the thousands to stop a tyrant? It is not justice. And if we kill him what will we achieve? We will have taken the most unpopular leader in the Middle East and turned him into the greatest martyr radical Islam has ever had.
Just like we did with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo.
The U.N. weapons inspectors must be allowed to do their job thoroughly and any military action should be internationally agreed upon.
Every nation that matters already does agree
I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge. It is criminal to put our servicemen and women in harm's way and to put the lives of so many civilians on the line for the misguided frustrations of the Bush administration.
So many strawmen, so little time.

And will it be any less criminal in five years, when Hussein can use Al Quaeda as the long-range delivery system for his first nuke?
Bottom line: this war is wrong and this war is un-American.
If anything Mr. Matthews said had any bearing on reality, it WOULD be a pretty dicey war.

Unfortunately, it didn't.
Peacefully submitted,
Dave Matthews
I have a list of things I could suggest Mr. Matthews could do, rather than write catalogs of strawmen about the war:
Write a song that doesn't sound like every other song you've ever recorded
Help the environment - share statements with Sheryl Crow and Barbra Streisand
Take more time for your incessant live jams.
Here's the part I'm looking forward to - the part where history proves us all right, and the detractors - especially the celebrity ones - have to face their utter wrongness.

Then I remember how they've fessed up to how wrong they were in Afghanistan, and I come back to earth.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/9/2003 01:49:11 AM

Saturday, February 08, 2003

Will the Real Ronald Reagan Please Stand Up - The Claremont Institute's Steven Hayward on Ronald Reagan's "Intellectual Rehabilitation" - from the left:
More comical is the way liberals now acknowledge Reagan as a deep thinker as a back door way of attacking George W. Bush. The Times' Keller wrote: "Reagan has been enjoying an intellectual rehabilitation. The publication in 2001 of Reagan's original, handwritten scripts for radio homilies he delivered caused many skeptics to concede that he was a better writer and thinker than most had generally imagined." Unlike you-know-who in the White House now. Keller adds: "Reagan's principles were developed over decades and fortified by a selective but extensive reading of history. [Reagan had] studied, lifelong convictions [and] arrived at the Oval Office pretty much a finished product." What happened to the charge that Reagan's only reading was Human Events and Reader's Digest? That he was helpless without his three-by-five cards, and was a creation of his handlers? It has been a cliche for almost three decades now that Reagan has exceeded expectations, and his becoming the oldest living ex-president in our history is another such occasion.
You know the world's changed when the left tries to claim a piece of Reagan.

The article is short, fascinating, and will lead me to much more reading.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/8/2003 07:50:14 PM

Antsy Days - Things feel wierd these days.

Let's think locally, then globally.

I just finished my fifth week of job hunting. I'm always close to getting something or another - heartbreakingly close, in some cases. And there are a lot of potential jobs out there. I say again - potential. There is a lot of work that needs doing - a lot of companies deferred a lot of project work last year, as the bubble burst, and most of that work still needs doing. But everyone, and I do mean everyone, is waiting to pull the trigger on any actual spending.

And all of that spending - and hiring - is waiting on either:
the beginning of most companies' fiscal years, in March, or
The beginning of the war...
...whichever comes last.

I heard from a friend last night that 3M, a Saint Paul employment staple, is sitting on something like 2,000 open positions, many of which need filling yesterday if not sooner. But nothing's going to happen until something breaks, war-wise. And when it does - assuming it doesn't turn into another Battle of Passchendaele, a lot of companies may just go on an orgy of hiring that will make the dotcom boom look like the Ford Administration - at least for a few weeks. I hope.

I read the other day that the US economy would be growing at a respectable annualized 3% rate today, if it weren't for the war worries. But now we're limping along at an annualized .7% growth rate - not a recession, but not a stomin', screamin' recovery.

So - for week five, the Berg index of consumer confidence is still hovering around a 0 on a scale of 0 to 100 - but could take off as soon as some of our local business luminaries get over their war skittishness.

We'll keep you posted.

And if you're an IT director who wants a good Usability person...
posted by Mitch Berg 2/8/2003 07:10:52 PM

Friday, February 07, 2003

Light Day - I was busy today, plus Blogger was having trouble (still seems to be, in fact), and I'm going to allow myself a rare night of debauchery.

OK, not exactly debauchery - a buddy and I are going to kill a sixpack.

Yaaagh. On a night like this, fifteen years ago, I was shooting pool with half of the Twin Cities punk rock scene at the CC or Liquor Lyles. Tonight - Michelob and Chips.

More blogging this weekend!
posted by Mitch Berg 2/7/2003 07:38:44 PM

North Korea - the plot continually thickens.

I'm seeing two big possibilities here:
Kim Jong-Il is taking advantage of our distraction to push for concessions.
The long-time
The Guardian says:
The Stalinist regime could have triggered the crisis principally to force concessions from Washington. It certainly made no effort to disguise the lorries that pulled up to the nuclear storage area at Yongbyon and were spotted by US satellites. In that case, its nuclear brinksmanship has succeeded. The Bush administration broke off contacts with North Korea soon after coming to office and then in January 2002, the president famously labelled Pyongyang as part of the "axis of evil". This week it climbed down, and Mr Armitage confirmed that Washington was ready for direct talks.

However, some analysts, like David Albright, a physicist and the head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, believe that the North Korean government is determined to build itself a significant arsenal of nuclear warheads. "The reason we see those trucks at the storage facility might be that they just don't care whether we see them doing it or not," Mr Albright said.
Nukes would certainly give Kim a type of strength that, even with his masses of obsolete conventional forces, he lacks.
Kim Jong-il may have come to the conclusion that his regime may be next on the Pentagon's to-do list, whatever he does. In that case, it may make sense from his point of view to accelerate his efforts to build up his nuclear deterrent at a time when Washington is fixated on Iraq.

Once he moves the fuel rods into Yongbyon's reprocessing plant, it immediately raises the risk involved, should the US try to carry out its long-standing contingency plan of bombing the plant. An airstrike would send a plume of highly radioactive dust into the atmostphere. The North Korean leader is almost certainly right in believing that the Bush administration's current conciliatory approach will not last. Mr Bush has expressed his personal loathing for Kim Jong-il, and North Korea is far more suitable as a target for the Bush doctrine than Iraq. It almost certainly already has nuclear weapons, and it is far more starved of cash, making it more likely to sell its warheads abroad.
The big difference being that North Korea is surrounded, either by US allies and bases, or by countries either friendly with us (Russia) or who may not be friends but who may hold Kim at arm's length, too (China). Iraq, on the other hand, is in missile range of half the world's economy - a Sarin bomb over Dahran, Saudi Arabia would send the western economy into freefall.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned Pyongyang against assuming he had taken his eye off the Korean peninsula. "To the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on problems in Iraq, it's conceivable someone could make a mistake and believe that's an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided," he said, confirming that he was putting the B-1 and B-52 bombers on alert for deployment to the Pacific.

But Mr Rumsfeld is well aware that the post-cold war US forces - already stretched by policing work in Afghanistan and the deployment for Iraq - are not necessarily capable of fighting and decisively winning two major conflicts at the same time. Instead, the US is likely to wait for the dust to settle in Iraq, before turning on North Korea, and Pyongyang is readying itself for that moment.
Here's my biggest worry.

In Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, World War III begins when the Soviet (at the time) leadership, facing a crushing internal economic crisis (caused by Moslem terrorism, ironically), lashes out at the West to prevent their own extinction, at the hands of their own people.

Not to transfer too much pulp literature to reality, but this seems all too plausible at the moment.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/7/2003 12:53:20 PM

Thursday, February 06, 2003

The Haggard Masses - JB Doubtless of Fraters Libertas weighs in with some cogent analysis - via Merle Haggard.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/6/2003 10:52:03 PM

Warped Priorites - PETA is at it again; this time, it's asking Yassir Arafat to take it easy on animals:
Your Excellency:

I am writing from an organization dedicated to fighting animal abuse around the world. We have received many calls and letters from people shocked at the bombing in Jerusalem on January 26 in which a donkey, laden with explosives, was intentionally blown up.

All nations behave abominably in many ways when they are fighting their enemies, and animals are always caught in the crossfire. The U.S. Army abandoned thousands of loyal service dogs in Vietnam. Al-Qaeda and the British government have both used animals in hideously cruel biological weaponry tests. We watched on television as stray cats in your own compound fled as best they could from the Israeli bulldozers.

Animals claim no nation. They are in perpetual involuntary servitude to all humankind, and although they pose no threat and own no weapons, human beings always win in the undeclared war against them. For animals, there is no Geneva Convention and no peace treaty�just our mercy.

If you have the opportunity, will you please add to your burdens my request that you appeal to all those who listen to you to leave the animals out of this conflict?

We send you sincere wishes of peace.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid Newkirk
President, PETA
Riddling Israeli children with shrapnel? No problem. A donkey?

As Volokh (where I found this piece) says:
Now wait a sec: Palestinian terrorists are willing to kill innocent men, women, and children, and Arafat hasn't been willing or able to stop them. And the point of asking Arafat not to kill innocent donkeys is . . .?
The speciousness of these people never fails to astound.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/6/2003 09:25:29 PM

Reactions - So much to say about the Powell speech.

I'll try to write a more detailed synopsis of my point of view (we know how important that is, don't we?), but for now I'm just going to list some of my favorites:

The NYPost's Schanzer on the Al Quaeda connection
George Will with a wake-up to the appeasers and deniers
Jim Hoaglund in the Houston Chronicle
The NY Times editorial that seems to indicate the Paper of Record is recanting its earlier opposition.
Much more to come. The speech was dynamite on many levels.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 2/6/2003 05:24:05 PM

Broad Support - So now Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia have joined the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the UK, Italy, Denmark, Spain and Portugal in supporting the war on Iraq.

So the score looks like this:
Supporting War: 18 European nations, plus Kuwait and Oman
Opposing:France and Germany
On the fence: Six NATO countries (counting Turkey and Greece) and a bunch of Middle-Eastern countries that'll be on the fence until we're in Baghdad
Given those numbers, I have exactly one question for the New York Times, for the "Peace" movement, and for Ted Kennedy: Who's going it alone, here?

Sure, Robert Scheer calls them "Nations you can guy on E-Bay". But it's much more significant to note that most of them are nations with recent experience with tyranny - and, like the Baltic States, Poland and the Czechs, nations who know who to thank for their own newfound freedom.

Sullivan has a great take on that today.
in a way, the coalition to disarm Saddam is a sign of a changing world. Terrorism tends to threaten societies that value freedom more powerfully than those who don't. Citizens of free societies have more to lose from terror - more civil liberties, more personal freedom of movement and thought. A fatwa on an author is not as keenly felt in countries with a weak tradition of freedom of thought; but in countries like Britain and especially America, threatening free thinkers with death is a horrifying assault on a deeply shared value. Religious terrorism is also particularly anathema to free societies, because it threatens freedom of religion by equating it with violence and intolerance. So I don't think it's surprising that, say, China and Russia are more ambivalent about disarming Saddam than, say, America or Australia. And it's equally unsurprising that the European Eight keenest on ridding the world of Saddam's weaponry are those most sympathetic to an Anglospheric worldview.
As always, the whole thing is worth a read.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/6/2003 10:17:59 AM

Happy Reaganmas - Today is Ronald Reagan's 92nd birthday.

Last year, I took cupcakes to the office. Since I'm not working...well, it's cheaper this way.

Here's why you need to care about it in the first place. It's an Andrew Sullivan piece from the Times of London from two years ago. And I, living in the Twin Cities, controlled by a Democrat party that is mired in relentless groupthink, particularly like this Reagan quote from the article:
"Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by govt. decision but by the mil's. of decisions customers make when they go into the mkt. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried."
And as a Minnesotan, I hope Tim Pawlenty takes this lesson (via Sullivan) to heart:
The contrast with Clinton couldn't be clearer. Clinton was a group-hugger, a man in command of every detail of government, a sex-addict, even to being fellated by a staffer in the White House itself, obsessed with the press, fixated on spin, devoted to polls. Reagan was aloof, distant even from his own family, focussed on a few important themes and a delegator of everything else. He was devoted to his second wife with a romantic zeal that even now impresses, a man who wore a coat and tie at all times in the Oval Office, a room he considered something close to sacred. He was also pricelessly funny. It is not apocryphal that, as he was wheeled into the operating room after a bullet almost took his life, he looked at the solemn, green-suited doctors and said, "Please tell me you're Republicans." The morning after, respiratory tubes stuck down his throat, he could only scribble jokes.On a pink piece of paper, he wrote to his wife, "I'd like to do this scene again - starting at the hotel." The other week, in preparation for Clinton's farewell address, the television networks included a snippet from one of Reagan's last speeches as president. He said of his impending retirement, "I'm looking forward to going home at last, putting my feet up and taking a good long nap." Pause. "I guess it won't be that much different after all."

Reagan cared about public opinion, but only so he knew best how to challenge and shape it. It never shaped him. He didn't need spin. He had faith.
As Pawlenty goes into what may be the biggest crisis of his administration - the budget crisis and his possibly-impending unallotment of state budget funds - it'd be worth it for Governor Pawlenty to remember Reagan's lesson.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/6/2003 08:30:22 AM

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Happy Birthday... - to Shot in the Dark!

I had no idea - but I flipped through the archives today, and today is, in fact, the first anniversary of this blog!

And indeed, it's been an interesting year - although it's hard to think of it as a full year, honestly. I look at the traffic records, and see that I was averaging maybe eight hits a day until September, then maybe 20 or so up until the elections...

...when things took off, with a couple of cites from Instapundit that really put me over the edge.

So thanks to all of you! I would still do it if I had no readers - I did, for a long time! - but it's a lot more fun this way.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 06:32:12 PM

Kennedy - Ted Kennedy is bloviating now about how our bombing campaign would cause civilian casualties. "No bunker in Baghdad is safe!".

Nice of Chappaquiddick Teddy to be so concerned about Hussein's well-being.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 01:56:27 PM

Gag - The Syrian Ambassador is speaking. "How can we threaten the innocent of Iraq?"

This is the same Syria that is supporting suicide bombers in Israel, of course...
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 12:37:08 PM

The French - Ever watch a cat after it's fallen off the banister? It gets up, looks around, licks its fur as if to say "I planned that. What are you looking at?". Then it walks on to its next agenda item.

The French representative to the UN seems to be setting the stage for more or less the same thing - allowing the French government to recant its opposition to war without making it look like they're giving way on anything. "We will not rule out any option, including the use of the rule of force - as we've said all along...". Indeed.

As I type this, the French are revealing knowledge of chemical, biological, and long-range missile construction and acquisition efforts - and speaking up for the UN role, playing both sides of the fence.

More to come.

UPDATE: The CNN analyst has it right; the French are playing "Good Gendarme/Bad Gendarme", and trying to buy more time for the Inspection plan and their middle-ground approach.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 11:39:45 AM

Our Next Conflict? - This is chilling:
"Satellite photos confirm that the North Dakotans have been quietly harboring an extensive nuclear-weapons program," said Blix, presenting his findings in a speech to the U.N. Security Council. "Alarmingly, this barely developed hinterland possesses the world's most technologically advanced weapons of mass destruction, capable of reaching targets all over the world."

After initially offering no comment on the report, North Dakota officials admitted to having a stockpile of 1,710 warheads at two military sites and confirmed that the state has been home to an active nuclear-weapons-development program for decades.

Blix called the revelation a "terrifying prospect for the world at large."
Of course, there's a strongman involved:
The man at the center of the controversy is North Dakota's leader, Gov. John Hoeven. Having risen to power in 2000 after amassing tremendous wealth in the private sector, Hoeven lives a life of comfort and excess inside the heavily patrolled North Dakota governor's mansion, a lavish dwelling paid for entirely by the state, while many of his people engage in subsistence farming.

Some suspect that Hoeven is using the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to gain badly needed economic benefits for his state. Hardly at the forefront of technology in other aspects, North Dakota has a largely rural population and a child-poverty rate of 14 percent�a fact critics have been quick to point out.

"North Dakotans live a horrible life of isolation and deprivation, struggling to grow crops in a hostile, sub-zero climate while their indifferent government routinely prioritizes bolstering the state's military might," BBC World correspondent Caroline Eagan said. "There are people starving there, and yet high-tech weapons laboratories and military bases abound. It's deplorable."

Added Eagan: "And, no big surprise, the U.S. played a major role in arming this place. I hear most of the missiles are American-made."
It's a dangerous world.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 11:20:57 AM

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back - "The League of Nations, like the United Nations, was built on great ideas. It failed because it couldn't support those ideals with force...Mr. Secretary, we owe it to posterity not to repeat the same mistake" - Jack Straw, just a few moments ago.

Exactly.

The Russians and French are coming up soon. They've been on the fence; this should be interesting.

The Terror Link - I think the link to Al Quaeda has been made. You?

"The Evil Isn't Big Enough..." - ...until the Evil is too big.

Powell's linking of Hussein to Hitler was manipulative - and apt, and deft.

Speaking of Manipulative - North Korea sent word, just as Powell took the stage, that they're reactivating their nuclear program.

Their diplomatic brinksmanship is amazing, and a little intimidating. But I suspect that's all it is. While we're occupied in Iraq, they'll play for every economic and political concession they can get.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 11:09:59 AM

The Weapons - Although Iraq was tied to tens of thousands of liters of biological weapons, they "have not accounted for one teaspoon" of it. Powell cites Blix in noting that Hussein has not provided any documentation of this material's destruction.

Powell is now talking about Iraq's mobile - truck and rail - biowar production laboratories. While UNSCOM was in Iraq in the nineties, production facilities would begin work on Thursday nights - certain that UNSCOM wouldn't stage inspections on a Moslem holy day.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 10:09:06 AM

Damning - "False statements, or failure to cooperate fully shall constitute further material breach of Iraq's obligation" is a statement from Resolution 1441. Powell has spent the last ten minutes documenting Iraq's failure to comply.

This is amazing - Powell is showing before and after shots of chemical storage facilities. Before the inspections, the bunkers in the satellite photos showed definite signs of chemical purposes - decontamination equipment and monitoring gear.

After: all the evidence of chemical purposes was gone, just in time for the UN inspection team. Powell says "it seems the Iraqis were being tipped off".

He's now showing a truck caravan at a suspected Bioweapons site, explaining a pattern of such activity at 30-odd other sites. "why would Iraq suddenly move this equipment if they were interested in showing what they had?" Indeed.

Powell's now talking about Iraqi's intransigence in the face of the UN's demand that Iraq allow its scientists to talk with inspectors, even outside Iraq. Iraq declared only about 1/7 of the number of scientists that western intelligence knew of - and the threats against scientists who cooperated. Scientists were also specifically trained in counterintelligence tactics - or in some cases, replaced with Iraqi intelligence officers. The laundry list of evasions relating to the scientists goes on and on...

"The question is...how much longer before we say enough".

Powell's now talking about the weapons themselves.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 09:57:45 AM

Inspectors, Not Detectives - I'm listening to Powell's speech to the UN right now. That was one point the French seem to keep missing - Blix is not Sherlock Holmes (although the Hercule Poirot resemblance is amazing).

Now, they're playing the tape of the Republican Guards talking about hiding material from the inspectors. One tape refers to attempts to conceal material. The other - tapes last week, according to Powell - is a discussion of instructions to clean up signs of forbidden materials, and destroy the order message.

I can hear the "peace movement" already: "So what? They're hiding things! We do it all the time!", or "It's all out of context!".

Still, so far Powell's speech seems to be building the legal case - the one the UN is most concerned with - that Iraq has flouted the UN's resolutions, and actively hindered the inspection process. Powell claims evidence that senior members of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam's son Qusay - were actively involved in hiding WMDs, including on their own private property. Powell asks "Are inspectors expected to inspect the property of every single government official?" Indeed.

UPDATE: Powell is now getting ready to show satellite imagery of Iraqi military units actively involved in dispersing WMDs.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/5/2003 09:51:50 AM

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Full Court Press - The local "welfare rights" and galloping entitlement crowds are circling the wagons against Governor Pawlenty.

From today's Strib:
Lee Pao Xiong, president of the Urban Coalition, said the pilot project in Dakota County is in a demographic area not representative of urban and rural Minnesota. It has a relatively small number of families on welfare, relatively easy access to transportation, and better job prospects, he said.
Unanswered - and presumably unasked: could anyone get away with such a project in the core area, given the opposition to be expected from the "Welfare Rights" crowd?
Likewise, the coalition criticized the governor's plan to completely cut welfare benefits from families not complying with the rules. Families that are sanctioned typically are those with the most problems, studies have shown, they said.

"For us, the sanction is a red flag that the person needs more help to get them on track," said Kingsley.
What a hopelessly broad statement! "More help?" Is there a focus to this?

Mr. Kingsley no doubt knows that the number of exceptions to his rule are dizzying - and that, in any case, there is no mechanism for separating "Those who need more help" from those who are simply coasting, knowing the state will do nothing about them.
Coalition members voiced concerns about a proposal to beef up work requirements for parents who are studying. The governor's plan would require that welfare recipients who go to school also work at least 25 hours a week.

But working, training and parenting can take a toll, said Matt Gladue, public policy manager for the office for social justice of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul. "You're putting in 25 hours a week at work, going to school for 20 hours a week, and then taking care of the kids," Gladue said. "That's a strain to put a 60-to 70-hour week on families."
Now, I'm just plain mad. What does Mr. Gladue think working a regular job, off the system, and raising kids is like? I wish my week, between work (or, currently, job-hunting) and parenting were only 60-70 hours a week - and that I could squeeze more school in in any case.

Powerline says:
The inevitable failure of Pawlenty's proposal was announced yesterday by "a coalition of social service, labor and religious groups." Why? Because it is based on "a failed experiment in welfare reform in Wisconsin." The groups attacking Pawlenty were particularly incensed by his proposal that people who refuse to follow the State's work rules should have their welfare benefits cut off. (At present, the worst that can happen if someone repeatedly refuses to work or to participate in training is a 30% cut in benefits, and that sanction is rarely applied.) Yesterday's "coalition" explained that "For us, the sanction is a red flag that the person needs more help to get them on track." So that consistently flouting the State's rules results in "more help," not a loss of benefits. As to Wisconsin's "failed experiment," that state's "W-2" program reduced welfare rolls by 90%. We call that success; the fact that the welfare "rights" lobby calls it failure speaks volumes about their real agenda. These "anti-poverty" groups are in fact pro-poverty.
In the meantime, the trusty tool of the far left, the City Pages, is wheeling its own arguments into position against Pawlenty.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/4/2003 06:03:43 PM

New Europe/Old Europe - Instapundit is wondering - did Rumsfeld's "New Europe/Old Europe" comment start something overseas? "Reader Ted Nolan quotes Robert Heinlein: "It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired."

At any rate - Rumsfeld's meme seems to have given voice to a movement on the continent among those who are resisting Europe's sclerotic bureaucracy. European blogger Wax Tadpole says:
The sputtering outrage from the establishment and the chattering classes serves only to highlight the difference between the dynamic and forward-looking "new" Europeans and stodgy, reactionary old Europe. I'm sure the "age is wisdom" tack seemed clever in the heat of battle, but by using it they've endorsed the notion that there really is a "new" Europe and placed themselves firmly in opposition to it. Once tempers have cooled, they'll find themselves on the wrong side of a real and growing divide.

The self-satisfied tone of the old European response is out of touch with the reality of Europe today - it probably wasn't, um, wise to smugly defend the policies and policy makers that gave us the massacre at Srebenica (not to mention widespread unemployment, dissatisfaction and economic stagnation in the West). Most Europeans understand the serious problems facing Europe and the failure to date of European diplomatic efforts, even if many are uncomfortable with the "American" prescription for addressing those problems. We just might discover that the necessary bitter medicine is easier to swallow if the label reads "New Europe" instead.

I'm starting to wonder if we'll look back on this as a turning point similar to Reagan's "Evil Empire" - a statement so simple, stark and true that it ends up changing the world.
It makes sense to me.

This was what Barcelona lawyer Miguel Roca said in an article in Vanguardia (Translation provided by Spanish blog Iberian Notes):
Old Europe must learn that in the new Europe, the anti-Americanism that, more or less covered up, has characterized its policy for decades, can no longer inspire the Union's common policy.

It isn't Bush's fault, it's all of our fault, the Europeans' fault. We have been more capable of criticizing the United States than of formulating alternative, functional, and efficient policies. We don't trust American military power, but we disarmed because we trust the US to protect us or substitute for us internationally. We debated about Kosovo but we sent the Americans to pacify it; we lament what is happening in Palestine and we accuse the United States of not guaranteeing peace with its own military intervention.

New Europe has suffered the oppression of both totalitarianisms, the Nazi and the Soviet. It would be difficult for it to be anti-American, too. We're not talking about right and left; Havel's signature is right there to ally with Bush. We can't extend Europe and think that nothing is going to change. On the contrary, New Europe gives Old Europe hope for a better understanding of the world.

Europe cannot be, simply, a suburb of Paris or Berlin.
Regarding the Heinlein quote: The various states of Europe seem to exhibit personalities that remind me of people I've known over the years:
Germany reminds me of someone who did hard time for a wild youth, and is now very careful to obey the letter of the law - he doesn't want to go back in the joint. He makes absolutely certain that he's not screwing up in any way.
France reminds me of a very smart person who was jilted by a spouse or lover early in life. Embittered, fading fast, but still kind of a conrol freak.
Britain - the recovering alcoholic, doing well in his 12 step program...

posted by Mitch Berg 2/4/2003 05:30:31 PM

La Mode Francaise - Despite the mewling of the anti-Bush...er, anti-war left, the only significant "allies" currently opposing invasion of Iraq are France and Germany.

And it's possible that the French may, at the worst, abstain when the time comes to vote at the UN. Tony Blair is negotiating with them now.

Middle case - to preserve the illusion of strength and independence, France may abstain from the final UN resolution vote. In effect, they won't vote with us, but won't oppose us either. This may lead quite a number of other states that are squishy on Iraq to follow suit.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/4/2003 07:45:35 AM

Bills Introduced - The Minnesota Personal Protection Act was introduced last last week into both houses of the Minnesota state legislature:
Here's the text of the House Bill
Here's the Senate version of the bill
This bill would require county sheriffs to issue concealed-carry permits to any Minnesotan who:
is at least 19 years old
passes a skills course offered by a licensed insructor, teaching basic operation, marksmanship, and the laws related to self-defense
has no significant criminal record
has no record of violence
has no record of being a drug or alcohol abuser (a legal definition exists)
isn't violently mentally ill
pays a nominal fee
Read the bills for the details. I need to read both bills in greater depth. But I'll be covering the debate on these bills as it develops.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/4/2003 07:17:08 AM

Monday, February 03, 2003

View from Europe - If international understanding has a problem in this country, it's that it tends to be seen as a binary, black or white thing.

And yet, just as with our own stances on issues, the truth is like an iceberg - much less visible than you think.

France and Germany are both squabbling with the US over the course of action to take in Iraq.

And yet - says Doug Bandow in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, all is not visible on the surface:
Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der says Germany �will not take part in a military intervention in Iraq,� although it is less clear whether his government will oppose war when the UN Security Council votes. France also offers resolute ambiguity, threatening, but not promising, a veto.
Yet Washington remains skeptical that its critics are serious, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that he expects Paris to give in - as it always does. It is noted that Schr�der won reelection by running against the Bush administration's plan for war in Iraq but later promised to send German troops to Turkey to crew AWACS planes sent by NATO. Even the refusal of NATO to approve America's request for assistance is seen as only temporary.
Over the years, Washington has learned that it can browbeat most any nation into submission on most any issue, but the coming showdown over Iraq offers Europe another chance.
Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and would seem to oppose the "rush to war". But there are some interesting insights in the piece, as there are indeed throughout the Allgemeine, a relatively conservative paper.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 02:51:24 PM

Whither Minnesota? - Yeah, I haven't been covering a lot of Minnesota stuff this last week or two. Perhaps it's being out of work - in the moments I spend blogging, I want to think about stuff far from where I am...

But I'll be making up for lost time shortly.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 01:31:23 PM

The Hero Returns - Ilan Ramon, Colonel in the Cheyl Ha'Avir (Israeli Air Force) and Israel's first astronaut, has a long history of heroism.

Nissan Ratzlav-Katz writes about it - and what it means to us in America, as well as in Israel.
Ramon himself exuded tremendous national, local, and Jewish pride. He brought with him into space symbols of his state, his people, and his history, including a miniature Torah scroll, which, he said, "60 years ago a little boy in Bergen-Belsen [concentration camp] received from the rabbi of Amsterdam...." During a press conference from space just last week, Ramon related to a rapt Israel, "That boy, Yehoyachin Yosef, survived the Holocaust, arrived in Israel, fought in the country's wars and then went on to become a distinguished professor of planetary physics." The Torah scroll that survived the European inferno, the Israeli air-force colonel said, "symbolizes more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive everything, including horrible periods, and go from the darkest days to days of hope and faith in the future."...

...Ilan Ramon is more than a local Israeli hero, however. If justice is to be done to his legacy, he should be memorialized by all peoples of the free world, but especially by the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. For were it not for Ilan Ramon, and other still-anonymous fighter pilots, the U.S. military would today be facing an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons.

In 1981, Col. Ilan Ramon was one of the eight Israeli pilots who bombed and destroyed the French-built Iraqi nuclear reactor, at Osirak. It was a shocking blow, as brave as it was audacious, and it set back Iraqi plans to acquire nuclear-missile capability by decades. While it provoked the wrath of the world at the time � with the U.S. State Department even condemning the strike as endangering peace in the region � ten years later, the Israeli incursion into Iraqi airspace was a bit better appreciated. Dick Cheney, U.S. secretary of defense during the first Gulf War, wrote to David Ivry, the commander of Israel's air force at the time of the Osirak mission, "For Gen. David Ivry, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 � which made our job much easier in Desert Storm."
As the Middle East heads through perhaps its most difficult time in 30 years, the real status of the Israeli/US relationship will be under stern scrutiny. This incident sets it off.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 01:30:00 PM

Due to Gun Control, Part II - The Saga of Ronald Dixon continues.

Dixon - a Navy veteran from Brooklyn who worked two jobs to try to support his family - shot a burglar in his home.

His crime? He didn't complete New York City's niggling paperwork required to own the firearm. Not carry, mind you - own.

The New York Daily News - which seems to support Dixon - takes up the story:
Dixon, a Navy veteran who holds two computer jobs, was charged with misdemeanor gun possession. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes offered him a plea bargain that would require four weekends on Rikers Island, a deal Dixon and his lawyer flatly rejected.

Hynes' office has been besieged by hundreds of E-mails from angry gun activists as far away as Texas and California, and from people in Brooklyn who are ready to elect Dixon mayor.

Standing firm

But Hynes will not budge from his tough anti-gun policy.

"If you get caught with a gun in Brooklyn, you're going to do jail time," said Hynes, who has held that stance since taking office in 1990, when, he says, "Brooklyn was like Dodge City."
Earlier stories on this subject mentioned that Brooklyn had over 450 shootings last year. Dodge City wasn't that bad.

The DA doesn't mention how many of those "Dodge City" shootings were the fault of law-abiding, employed fathers of two kids. Nor does he illuminate how Brooklyn became "Dodge City" after sixty-odd years of some of America's most suffocating gun controls.

I'm sure we'll get to that.
"Depending on the circumstances, at the very least you're going to do some weekends, but no one is going to be able to take a bye," added Hynes.

Hynes said he questions parts of Dixon's account.

"He did not apply for a gun permit in New York," the district attorney said. "I don't know where exactly he got the gun."
Just so we're clear on this: Dixon is not being charged for the shooting. This is about failing to fill out paperwork. Call it "Felony Flaking on Paper", perhaps?
Dixon's lawyer will move to have the charge thrown out in a hearing Tuesday. Dixon will bring his girlfriend, Tricia Best, and their two children to court.

"I'm just hoping we get something positive," Best said.

"If the judge denies the motion to dismiss, we will ask for a trial," said lawyer Andrew Friedman. "They're insisting on criminalizing him. A criminal record would be ruinous for his career."

Hynes said he would consider reducing Dixon's jail time to two weekends.
If this were an episode of "Law and Order" (and you can bet that it will be, next season!), you could hear the Chief District Attorney bellowing "Take the Deal" right about here.

The ADA handling the case probably knows what Dixon's lawyer knows - that a jury of Brooklyn residents is not going to give a felony record to a neighbor who defended his children - over more niggling government paperwork. To prevent such a jury, the ADA would have to challenge to exclude all jurors that had ever stood in line at the In fact, Dixon's story may foreshadow the ADA's task:

The ADA is doing his best to spin this:
"Clearly he was justified in shooting this burglar, and the burglar is going to get as much jail time as we can get him," said Hynes.
Note the qualifier. What do you suppose the Brooklyn ADA's record is for locking up burglars?

If Thompson hadn't been shot, it's for sure he'd never have been caught. Had he been caught, the chances of him being prosecuted are minimal.
Thompson was indicted for burglary and criminal trespass and is being held on $75,000 bail. He allegedly broke into Dixon's house about 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday and was rifling dresser drawers in 23-month-old Kyle's bedroom.

Dixon took his pistol, which he bought in Florida and says he was in the process of registering here, and confronted Thompson, who allegedly lunged at him.

Dixon said he fired two shots because, "The only thing I could think about was my family - there was no telling what he would do to my children or girlfriend."
Thompson lunged at a man with a gun. Indeed, there is no telling what he'd have done.
Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes saw the story in The News and had Dixon and Friedman on their Fox News show. Dixon said the TV news magazine "2-0/20" called to profile him. He was the subject of an article in the National Review.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 09:38:34 AM

Time To Yank the Shuttle? - Gregg Easterbrook, in Time Magazine, writes that the Shuttle is essentially a make-work program, for which safer and vastly more efficient replacements have existed for years - and have been ignored, to the benefit of politicians and the prime contractors.

An exerpt:
Switching to unmanned rockets for payload launching and a small space plane for those rare times humans are really needed would cut costs, which is why aerospace contractors have lobbied against such reform. Boeing and Lockheed Martin split roughly half the shuttle business through an Orwellian-named consortium called the United Space Alliance. It's a source of significant profit for both companies; United Space Alliance employs 6,400 contractor personnel for shuttle launches alone. Many other aerospace contractors also benefit from the space-shuttle program.

Any new space system that reduced costs would be, to the contractors, killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Just a few weeks ago, NASA canceled a program called the Space Launch Initiative, whose goal was to design a much cheaper and more reliable replacement for the shuttle. Along with the cancellation, NASA announced that the shuttle fleet would remain in operation until 2020, meaning that Columbia was supposed to continue flying into outer space even when its airframe was more than 40 years old! True, B-52s have flown as long. But they don't endure three times the force of gravity on takeoff and 2000 degrees on re-entry.

A rational person might have laughed out loud at the thought that although school buses are replaced every decade, a spaceship was expected to remain in service for 40 years.
The politics behind the extension of the Shuttle and Space Station programs are also amazing.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 07:58:27 AM

Rice and Affirmative Action - Brent Staples has an excellent, provocative article in this morning's NYT on Condoleeza Rice's angle on Affirmative Action.

Sample:
There were several points at which her blackness (and her gender) doubtless helped to open doors that might well have remained closed to brilliance alone. To put it another way, her blackness and her gender added to her appeal, especially in the context of the white, mainly male foreign-policy boys' club.

Like Ms. Rice, I have spent my professional life in jobs where I was the only black person in the room. Nestled snugly among the powerful, many of us are tempted to assert that the best always rise to the top � and that those who do not reach the apex themselves are held back by lack of merit alone.
The whole thing is interesting. I don't agree with it all - but read it anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 07:47:32 AM

Moyers - Some of this is a bit redundant to things I've posted in the last few days. Some isn't.

But I received this piece is from Bill Moyers' latest newsletter, and I thought it deserved some comment:
GOING IT ALONE?
President Bush made his case for war this week, and the first scores are in on how he did. The Gallup poll shows that by a two-to-one margin Americans who watched the speech say he made a convincing case for military action against Iraq. But the President must also bring around two other important audiences - America's old allies in Europe, and the rough and tumble Middle East. NOW reports on foreign reactions to the State of the Union and what the President is saying to win support around the world. Georgetown University professor Charles Kupchan says, "The real peril ahead is that [Bush] will do so much damage to the international system in attacking Iraq that the gains to American security achieved through the fall of Saddam Hussein will be quite small compared to the fact that the United States wakes up in a very lonely world."
Let's look at this:

Interesting.

In the past two weeks, the leaders of the UK, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Portugal signed on with the President's vision for the war with Iraq. (Prediction: look for the Dutch and Norwegians to follow suit soon enough). These eight nations represent over 240 million people within NATO, while Germany and France together comprise something like 140 million. Each of these nations' economies are doing relatively well (in some cases because they had noplace to go but up from Communism), each has a growing population and a dynamic political system.

Germany and France are both declining nations. France is important today only because of its vote in the UN, an artifact of it's position in the world in 1945.

Our erstwhile allies in the Middle East, predictably, are stepping very lightly at the moment. It's understandable. But while each puts on a very neutral face to stave off unnecessary problems with Moslem fundamentalists, they are helping in ways that truly matter far beyond the symbolic; Turkey is contributing bases and, sub rosa, their very capable troops; Jordan's well-regarded special forces are already reportedly involved in southern Iraq, alongside US, British and Australian troops.

In short, the President already HAS the support that matters; some of our "old allies" (UK, Australia), our traditional NATO allies, both overt (Denmark, Italy, Spain and Portugal) and covert (Turkey), our newer and if anything stronger NATO but former Warpac allies (the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians), and traditional but quiet friends in the region (Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait). We are opposed by a sclerotic France whose importance is only vestigial, and a Germany whose opposition is ideological (and, judging by its latest round of L�nder elections in Niedersachsen, short-lived).

I predict that not only will the Dutch and Norwegians sign on - so will the Russians (they owe us, but they have to delay for diplomatic reasons - they'll come on board when Powell releases the smoking gun info at the UN), and, eventually, the French and Germans (when it becomes time to have a place at the table - probably after the bombs start falling).

So we have nine nations overtly on board now, six more that support us covertly...opposed to two that oppose us.

Who's "going it alone"?

posted by Mitch Berg 2/3/2003 07:18:33 AM

Sunday, February 02, 2003

What It Means - Iraq, and the Anti-American "Arab Street", haven't had much to cheer about lately. The Iraqi administration's doom is creeping up on them like liver cancer about to metastatize to the brain - they can rant, they can fight, they can give up, but there's not much they can do.

But the Columbia disaster has given them something to cheer about.

Still, hidden in this disaster are the roots of our greatness - and the reasons they hate us. The crew included a black man, two women (one an Indian immigrant, both highly-educated professionals), and an Israeli Jewish war hero, the son of a Holocaust survivor. They were, like most American endeavors, a cross-section of humanity. But unlike some PC-leftist "diversity" lesson, they were seven people working toward the same, greater goal. Their strength was their goal, their training, their belief in their mission. Their diversity was merely a byproduct of living in the only society in the world (I'm talking Western Civilization, here - although we and the UK created and led that civilization as we know it today) that could even try to put such different people into a room together, much less the nation's pre-eminent technological symbol.

Let the "Arab Street" cheer while they can.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 11:44:21 AM

Empty Reality - "Reality" TV is the latest sign that civilization is doomed. Of course, it's the latest in a string of signs going back to roughly the invention of fire.

Still, as this article by the NY Daily News' Wayne Robins describes it, it's disturbing watching "He-men and she-women from the Health Club from Hell eat near-raw duck embyos and crispy silkworm cereal, and wash it down with liquefied pig liver. For money..." on "Fear Factor".

I've never really watched much "Reality" TV. I saw the "reindeer testicle" episode of "Fear Factor", and the first episode of "Survivor II", and I'll confess a brief fascination with reruns of the first season of "Road Rules".

Robins' piece puts the craze in historical perspective:
In 1973, the PBS series "An American Family" showed reality as documentary filmmakers dreamed it could be: Put cameras and audio equipment in a family home and let them roll for a few months. The Louds, an upper-middle-class family from Santa Barbara, Calif., agreed to be guinea pigs for this experiment. The nation watched with rapt ambivalence as the Loud marriage began to fray. And son Lance became a lightning rod as his homosexuality emerged in public. The program was immensely popular and controversial, though, oddly, spawned no imitators.

"At the time, there was more ethical concern for [television's] subjects," says Susan Murray, an assistant professor of communications at New York University and co-editor (with Laurie Ouellette) of "Startling! Heartbreaking! Real! Reality TV and the Remaking of Television Culture," which will be published this year by NYU Press. "It was sold as a documentary, an anthropological study. People wondered if this was exploitive � would the Louds have gotten a divorce if cameras weren't in their house? It was more of a cautionary tale."

Now, anything goes, leaving many mature viewers aghast.
Not so much aghast as depressed. I couldn't quite put my finger on why I found it depressing. Fortunately (!), Robins puts his on it:
"I think the loss of authentic heroes � people who devoted their lives to improving the world � is notable," [Harvard professor and expert Dr. Howard] Gardner says. "People who take Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. seriously are less likely to spend their time playing video games or watching video junk. Life is so short when you have goals, so long when you are just a couch potato."
Perhaps that's part of the problem.

What sort of heroes does our age have?

What are the models for heroes? I'm no social historian, but I'm seeing three archetypes:
Regular people who rise above and beyond themselves to accomplish the incredible - often under duress. Think Audie Murphy or Todd Beamer or Stanislaus Schmaizner or hundreds of NYC firemen and cops.
Regular, and not-so-regular people who surpass the norms pretty spectacularly. Think Michael Jordan or Brett Favre.

Leaders who excel at leading their people. Depending on your level of cynicism, think Martin Luther King or Fidel Castro.
American society was designed to downplay the latter of the categories - and it's largely a good thing. And we're so heterodox, it's difficult to get a big enough number of people to get a King or Gandhi-like leader to gather behind anyone that can be broadly considered a "hero". Ronald Reagan is a hero to the right, and Paul Wellstone to the left - but never shall the twain meet.

As to the second category - this sort of "heroism" has become commonplace. Athletic ability like that of a Satchel Paige (whose race precluded him being a "hero" to the culture of the day, as richly as he deserved it) or Lou Gehrig or Jim Thorpe was freakish in its day. Professional sports have created a mass market (albeit an exclusive one) for people who are born with or develop that level of talent - and the marketing apparatus has made it too commonplace for true heroism.

So it's the first category that really matters in this country. Right?

Perhaps. And in the days after 9/11, commentators thought that perhaps the time was again becoming right for that sort of heroism, that the speciousness of post-ironic society would give way to a society that respected this sort of thing on a more concrete level.

But can it happen? The last two years' events have given us ample opporunities for heroism of the most genuine sort, and Americans (and others) have stepped up to the plate.

But hundreds of them - Todd Beamer and Tom Burnett and the rest of Flight 93, the NYC firemen and cops) are dead, now - and Americans prefer to emulate living heroes, which isn't a bad thing; when we start creating a nation of kamikazes and Suicide Bomber martyrs, we're in trouble. Hundreds of others - the special forces troops that overthrew the Taliban against immense odds - are professionally anonymous; their stories will come out in years, if at all. Current military practice is to de-emphasize such things for security reasons. Quick - name a military hero from the first Gulf War. Can you? Probably not. There were acts of incredible heroism during the war - who were they? The biggest popular, non-command American military hero of the last twenty years is Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot shot down over Yugoslavia - and his actions were those of self-preservation and training, not inspiration. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But I wonder this discussion isn't happening as the debate is already decided? Think about it - the nascence of the "Reality TV" business was before 9/11. The imitators are on the air today, but the originals were in place before. Perhaps - maybe? - our western-media-addled attention spans don't allow us to be patient enough to notice that the ennui that makes "Reality" TV so popular is waning.

Or perhaps the recent growth (and, possibly, current collapse) of Reality TV is a symptom of peoples' need for heroes to fill that vacuum. If they're the only ones available...

What do you think? I'll be writing more about this in coming weeks. It'll be an issue, with a war coming on.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 10:55:30 AM

Ritter Turned? - Democrats.com, a hate site run by a number of Democrat party insiders, is carrying this quote by Scott Ritter:
"This [war with Iraq] is not about the security of the United States, this is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation."
Now, here's my question. Given that:

Ritter's line is so drastically different that of any other "UN Weapons Inspector", and
he's been given such immense play as this crisis moves to denouement, and
that he has some issues with his personal life and legal status, and
intelligence services and business that require working in sensitive areas routinely reject applicants with sexual peccadillos because they can be "turned" and blackmailed,
I have to wonder if there isn't a connection between Ritter's hobbies and his sudden, prominent, and self-contradictory reversal of course on Iraq?
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 09:52:00 AM

The Allies - Two weeks ago, the leaders of eight European nations signed on with President Bush's views on Iraq. A correspondent on a discussion list to which I subscribe - a fellow who ridicules Bush at most turns - asked "So what next? Vanuatu will sign on, too?", implying that the eight nations were penny-ante banana (or borscht) republics.

They were the UK, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Italy. As to their commitment to fighting terror - sorry, Ann Coulter - several of them have troops or ships in the Gulf and Afghanistan. (Trivia note: Believe it or not, Danish special forces not only participated, but have a very good reputation in these things).

Says George Will:
What is the pedigree of the idea that France, more than, say, the United Kingdom or Italy -- whose leaders visited the White House last week -- speaks for "Europe," more than do the eight nations whose leaders on Wednesday endorsed U.S. policy? (The combined population of Britain, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland is 232 million. The combined population of France and Germany is 143 million.) France has a population significantly smaller than, and shrinking relative to, the populations of, among many other nations, Vietnam and Egypt. France has a per capita GDP smaller than that of Denmark or Japan, among others. So why should France referee the game of nations?
Other things the media (and my friend on the other discussion group) ignored: while the media and the left obsess over French and German intransigence, both countries are shrinking - in population, economic clout within the EU and the world at large, militarily (although it's worth noting that German special forces were also in Afghanistan) and economic and political influence, while many of the newer countries - the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians - are dynamic, growing (admittedly from post-communist lows) and largely pro-US. I think it's also signficant that Hungary, Denmark, the Czechs, Italy and Spain, along with the UK, have governments that are farther to the right than Germany or France, led by parties that aggressively question the European Union's cant.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 09:09:16 AM

Incredibly Sad - Once the adrenaline of the immediacy of disaster passes, the depressing constant of the cleanup begins.

As it does in East Texas today.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 08:32:53 AM

Intolerance - One of this blog's big themes since nearly the beginning has been discussing examples of intolerance - mainly from the left, naturally (Everyone from the New York Times to the Minnetonka Sun-Sailor is busy illuminating conservative intolerance).

One example we've looked at: a Texas Tech professor who refuses to write recommendations for Biology students who don't profess a belief in Darwinism. This conceit seems to be a strange throwback to the pre-Scopes Trial era, when Darwinism was seen to be a path through a wilderness of superstition.

But today, Darwin's theories face mountains of legitimate scientific skepticism, while even the most empirically acceptable theory of the origin of our species can't begin to speculate how life on Earth, and the wondrous process of its evolution, began (which, of course, is perfectly acceptable to people of faith who regard their Bibles, Torahs and Qurans as allegories rather than literal pre-history). A few scientists furtively admit that nobody can empirically refute the existence of God - which horrifies a lot of scientific fundamentalists.

Nonetheless, the battle lines on this issue, as many others (abortion, social issues, politics of many stripes) are drawn around a very fundamental split - faith in God versus faith in Institutions. Institutions include government, academia, whatever.

The guys at Powerline have a great piece on this split - as reflected in the TexTech flap - today:
The great fault line in our society is not economic. It is cultural, and specifically, religious. What motivates liberals to launch their increasingly wild and intemperate assaults on conservatives is, in most cases, their fear and hatred of the "religious right." (This is, I think, what principally motivates the Bush-haters, whose venom is so puzzling to those of us who see the President as--whether one agrees with his policies or not--an obviously good man.) It is an article of faith (and I mean the word "faith" very literally) that religious people are dumb, irrational, retrograde, and doomed to extinction.
The article - and the pieces they link to - are all worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/2/2003 08:13:58 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive