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

Thursday, September 26, 2002

WhoNeedsSpaces?-IneedtoruntoBestBuytogetanewkeyboard.Ican'tseemtofixmyspacekey.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2002 09:51:47 PM

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Why Iraq? - People ask many questions about the apparently-looming invasion of Iraq. Perhaps the best one is "why Iraq at all?"

There are many states in the region that are tied to terrorism. Syria, Iran and North Korea all been intimately linked with state-sponsored terror. Iran is also involved in supporting resistance to our efforts in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, large parts of Saudi, Yemeni, Pakistani, Somali, Sudanese and Algerian society actively support terror, including an incriminatingly-large piece of the Saudi royal family.

So why not invade them?

So many reasons. Where to start?

Saudi Arabia: There's a sort of simplistic moral calculus to the notion of attacking Saudi Arabia. Parts of the House of Saud actively support terror, and most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis. The Saudi military is tiny. Why not attack them?

Because it'd make our problems in that part of the world vastly worse. Bin Laden used our presence as invited defenders of Saudi Arabia in the birthplace of the Moslem world as grounds for his anti-Americanism. What do you think'd happen if we conquered Saudi Arabia by force? The sight of Marines guarding the Qa'ba in Mecca would sit about as well with Moslems as the notion of Arab terrorists occupying Manger Square would with Christians...er, wait. Maybe the Vatican is a better example.

And if we invaded them, we'd still have Iraq, WMDs and all, to deal with.

But we don't have to do that. Saudi power is not military, it's economic; namely, oil. And if we have bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and, soon, Iraq, then Saudi access to the world oil market is completely at our pleasure. We'll control the House of Saud without firing a shot.

Iran: The fiscal paper trail leads directly from Iran to Hamas, Jamiyat-e-Islami, and many other world terrorist groups. Why not invade them?

Two reasons: First, Iran is more populous than Afghanistan, and almost as mountainous. Militarily, it'd be a lot to bite off. But - second -
we don't have to. There are signs, as I noted in this space yesterday, that Iran's internal schisms are ready to split the country's mainstream
from its ruling theocracy. We may see Iran dropping its support of theocratic terror on its own, without needing to act directly.

North Korea - They're behind a lot of terror. They are also the world's largest military, per capita, and while their equipment is 1960's-vintage Soviet and Chinese stuff, they have one of the world's most ruggest countries to defend. Unlike equally-rugged Afghanistan, it's very unlikely that we'd find any internal forces ready to rise up against dictator Kim Jong-Il - his police state seems utterly Orwellian in its thoroughess.

But they're also on the brink (possibly) of collapsing under their own weight. The South Koreans seem satisfied with the headway they've made. Although Clinton's caving-in on their nuclear program has potentially created danger, North Korea can, it seems, wait.

Syria: Syria has backed Arafat, and worse, for decades. There are those, whose opinions I respect, who advocate attacking Syria instead of Iraq. It's a hard case to attack.

But as with the Saudis - if you attack Syria (which has a relatively large, modern military that was not attenuated by the Gulf War), you still have Iraq and its WMDs to deal with. Syria is also harder to get to - we have bases in the Mediterranean, but aside from Turkey they're not as close, and it's doubtful the Turks would grant us carte blanche to use their territory to launch such an attack. If our "war on terrorism" has any integrity, we will truly need to deal with the Syrians. But the Syrians have no chemical weapons, no nuclear program that anyone's heard of, and no oil wealth to prop them up. They are solid candidates to fall into line, if a huge American presence in neighboring Iraq threatens.

I'll take off my armchair general hat now, and see what really happens...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2002 06:03:35 AM

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Zogby + Ooops- Ugh, I was wrong before - the new Zogby Poll of 500 Minnesotans shows Norm Coleman leading Paul Wellstone 47-41, with a plus/minus 4% margin of error.

Must make sure brain is connected before typing...

Zogby is a lot more painstaking about isolating variables than most of the other polls, certainly moreso than the very unscientific MPR/PiPress polls that show the two in a dead heat. A few DFL sympathizers have indicated that this poll is the worst news Wellstone's gotten in this campaign so far.

So there's hope...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2002 04:07:38 PM

All About Saddam, Part IV - The British Government has released its official dossier on Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

The part that Senator Wellstone should read? Paragraph 6 (scroll down):
As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has:

continued to produce chemical and biological agents;
military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population. Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them;
command and control arrangements in place to use chemical and biological weapons. Authority ultimately resides with Saddam Hussein. (There is intelligence that he may have delegated this authority to his son Qusai);
developed mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents;
pursued illegal programmes to procure controlled materials of potential use in the production of chemical and biological weapons programmes;
tried covertly to acquire technology and materials which could be used in the production of nuclear weapons;
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it;
recalled specialists to work on its nuclear programme;
illegally retained up to 20 al-Hussein missiles, with a range of 650km, capable of carrying chemical or biological warheads;
started deploying its al-Samoud liquid propellant missile, and has used the absence of weapons inspectors to work on extending its range to at least 200km, which is beyond the limit of 150km imposed by the United Nations;
started producing the solid-propellant Ababil-100, and is making efforts to extend its range to at least 200km, which is beyond the limit of 150km imposed by the United Nations;
constructed a new engine test stand for the development of missiles capable of reaching the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus and NATO members (Greece and Turkey), as well as all Iraq's Gulf neighbours and Israel;
pursued illegal programmes to procure materials for use in its illegal development of long range missiles;
learnt lessons from previous UN weapons inspections and has already begun to conceal sensitive equipment and documentation in advance of the return of inspectors.

But of course, there's "no evidence" that he's of any danger to us.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2002 03:09:36 PM

Wellstone on Iraq - In a Strib article today, Senator Wellstone and challenger Norm Coleman talk about their stances toward Iraq.

Coleman nails the point that the left seems to miss:
"We can ignore the snake...We can even say we'll just wait because he has not bitten us yet. But the fact is this: Ignoring, avoiding and prolonging the situation only benefits the snake. It only increases his chances of slithering within striking range undetected. It only increases the sheer number of opportunities he has to do evil."
I'm convinced the left won't see a problem until we see mushroom clouds rising over New York. And then you can be sure Joe Lieberman and John McCain will be demanding an independent commission to find out what the problem was, too...

In the meantime, Wellstone says:
"Nobody believes that Saddam Hussein should be ignored," Wellstone said. But he also said that no connection has been established between Saddam and Al-Qaida and that he has seen no evidence that Iraq has, or is close to getting, weapons it can use against the United States.
Nobody but the head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the German CIA), anyway.
Wellstone said an international program of unfettered weapons inspection can be designed and would work against Iraq.
Question, Senator; how does one propose to make this round of inspections any more "unfettered" than the last batch?

Anyone?
He favors the adoption of a U.N. resolution demanding Iraqi cooperation with inspectors and warning Saddam that if he does not comply, "consequences will follow." Wellstone said the administration should give priority to getting such a resolution adopted by the Security Council.
Well, at least we'll have another resolution.

We can use stacks of resolutions to rebuild the first American city destroyed by a terrorist bomb...

posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2002 10:49:40 AM

Unrelated? - Two stories that seem at first blush to be unrelated - but maybe aren't.

Cathy Young writes about the decline of feminism after 9/11 in Reason. The money quote:
Maybe the real gender-related message to be gleaned from Sept. 11 is this: However much we would like to see women's liberation as a natural right, it is the achievement of a complex, advanced civilization. Recent events remind us that this civilization is fragile and that its enemies are hostile to freedom for anyone—but especially women. Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, should realize that the West is worth defending. Perhaps if they did realize it, they wouldn't be so irrelevant.
And, as Young notes, perhaps seeing what real gender-oppression was about - Burkas, public executions, confinement to houses - was a bucket of cold intellectual water to some feminists.

In the meantime, the new Miss America is - heavens to Betsy - a conservative!

Why do I think there's a link here? Because while the post-9/11 reports of the death of irony and insignificance were greatly exaggerated, I think people are taking some of the more life-or-death aspects of our daily lives more seriously. It's harder to call dirty jokes in the office "oppression of women" when we just fought the real thing. And if, indeed, the Miss America pageant wants to pretend to have some semblance of relevance to life today, what would be the point of having yet another blah cheesecake for Miss America?

Feminism - as in "the quest to make women politically and legally equal, and taken seriously", as opposed to whatever Catherine McKinnon and company practice - may be one of the real victors of the post 9/11 world. Just don't tell the feminists.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2002 10:41:08 AM

Monday, September 23, 2002

From the Left - Kenneth M. Pollack was Director for Gulf Affairs on Clinton's National Security Council.

And he supports the invasion.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2002 01:09:31 PM

Film at Eleven - Al-Jazeera is beefing up the staff at its New York Bureau.

Do they know something we don't?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2002 12:24:33 PM

The Iranians - Iran's theocratic dictatorship has funded much of the terrorism in the Middle East; they're behind Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, among others.

The country's in immense flux - the people apparently are massively discontented with the rule of the mullahs, while the government itself has begun playing Saddam's two-faced game of proposing peace while readying itself for war.

Michael Ledeen has an excellent article on the subject.

Just...Plain...Wrong... - The National Abortion Rights Action League has a new ad campaign.

Now, for a conservative, I'm relatively moderate on abortion - I think it's wrong, but I'm not sure that government really has a place in the issue.

But these ads are just plain wrong - using exploitive images of children and patriotism to pimp for infanticide. It'd be like putting Susan Smith in an ad for Prozac.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2002 12:12:41 PM

Best and Brightest - Amid anti-semitic incidents breaking out on our campuses, Harvard's president is nervous about what he sees.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2002 10:49:17 AM

Comeback! - US census data shows that St. Paul rebounded in a big way in the 1990s.

Thanks to changing demographics — including an influx of foreign-born residents, a growth in the educated population and a sharp rise in median household income in several neighborhoods — St. Paul's ethnic and economic diversity is beginning to mirror cities in California, according to the latest 2000 census figures.

In fact, compared with other cities with populations of more than 100,000, St. Paul most closely resembles Berkeley, Calif., says Mark Vander Schaaf of the city's Department of Planning and Economic Development..

Oh, good Lord, let's hope we're smarter than that.

It's worth noting that I moved back to St. Paul in 1990. Coincidence? You be the judge.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2002 10:40:54 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