Charles Krauthammer was predictable

Early on, those of us who thought the rationale behind the war in Iraq was phony also thought that the promoters of the war would follow one or more predictable patterns when they were trying to avoid eventual responsibility. Among them would be the classic notion that by criticizing the war, we encouraged the opponents just enough that they hold on until we leave. They don't bother showing any examples of insurgencies against foreign troops that have died out from lack of motivation.

Another would be that we just needed a little more and victory would have been ours. It's always a little more than whatever we've committed. Just a little more money, more troops, more time. It's an impossible argument to completely counter, but I'm grateful that Bush asked for more troops and more time and seems to be getting them. There will be those who will argue that we need just a little more yet, but the argument will be more hollow.

Finally, there's the approach of blaming the Iraqis. The ingrates! We gave them freedom and they chose civil war. No fault of America! We abolished their army, their police, their civil service, and much of their economy. Things didn't work out. Time for us to home.

Krauthammer is taking this approach. For him to do so, after being one of the flag wavers for this splendid little war, is morally repugnant.

The Backwardness that dares not speak its name

Dinesh D'Souza is at it again. Ten years ago, I thought he made some intelligent points about the excesses of political correctness, but as so often happens, he ran out of bright ideas but kept talking. His editorial in the Eugene newspaper today is a case in point.

It seems that some time ago, D'Souza wrote a book identifying American liberals as one of the causes of the hatred that Muslim extremists feel towards this country. He argued that they pushed for an extension of relaxed American views towards such topics as abortion and homosexuality and that conservative Muslims interpret this as an attack on their religion.

This overlooks the tiny fact that America's official government policies on these issues are almost as "conservative" as the supposedly offended Muslims and that Europeans are far more tolerant than we are. However, none of this addresses his notion that if a country has "conservative" values, they should be respected.

He is from India, and noted that he enjoys far more freedom in America than he would had he remained at home. A telling point. When the British arrived, it was the "conservative" practice in India to burn widows on their husband's funeral pyre. It is still the "conservative" practice in parts of the Muslim world to mutilate the genitals of young girls to prevent their ever enjoying sex.

Such practices have endured for centuries and would have continued, and in some cases do continue, without pressure from the "liberals" in the West. Evidently, Mr. D'Souza feels that our obligations to the rest of the world do not extend beyond our commercial interests. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are grateful that he is incorrect.

Is Obama Black?

The question was posed by a newspaper columnist that I read online this morning. Then again, is Tiger Woods black? Is Mayor Nagin of New Orleans black? If the question is, do they trace 100% of their ancestry to black Africans, then no. If more than 50%, the answer is no for Osama and Tiger, and I have no idea about Nagin.

But on the more important question, would they be perceived as black in America, then the question is yes across the board. Next question, was Senator Biden off-base by saying Obama is the first clean and articulate black candidate? The columnist offered Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson and, remarkably, Al Sharpton as precedents.

Let's leave Shirley and Jesse alone, but Sharpton? Does no one now remember the Tawana Brawley hoax, which Al Sharpton largely orchestrated and exploited? Clean is a term that applies to more than personal hygiene.

More to the point, none of those three had any credentials for office apart from being black. Would Jesse Jackson be taken seriously if he represented farmers from Minnesota? Be serious. Obama, on the other hand, might be a candidate regardless of his color. He is articulate and thoughtful at a level with any other candidate I've seen the Democrats offer.

With Jesse Jackson, the question for any progressive minded individual was whether it was worth ignoring his shortcomings to express solidarity with the aspirations of black Americans. The answer was always no. With Obama, it's possible to consider him without any mental affirmative action fudge factor. I think that's what Biden was trying to say and it's a correct statement.

Global Warming Insurance

On the question of global warming, or "global heating" as the new politically correct phrase would have it, I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, we seem to be warming. It's perhaps due to humans. Maybe even probably due to humans. I'm still puzzled why in the first 25 years after CO2 starting rising (corresponding to the onset of World War II), there was a global cooling trend. I've never heard a good explanation of that which also blames CO2 for current warming.

I'm also wondering why there isn't more evidence out here on the Oregon Coast of the rising oceans we were told to expect. Why aren't the waves lapping over the jetties at the mouth of the Siuslaw River? Why hasn't the Columbia River started to back up and flood Astoria. Why isn't there anyone in the Pacific Northwest who has an actual problem, 20 years after the alarm was first sounded?

That said, I support a lot of conservation and research. Three reasons. One is that oil will run out sometime and we need to be ready. Another is that we get our oil from people I don't really like. It's worth something not to depend on crude oil from crude people. Finally, it's like life insurance. You don't expect to die young, but you get life insurance anyway. I'm not expecting catastrophic effects from global warming, but if we invested as much in at least slowing it down dramatically as we do in ipods and big screen TVs, we could reduce what may be a small likelihood of disaster. Seems worthwhile to me.

Neahkahnie Mountain

Neahkahnie Mountain has generated a lot of stories that you could tell your grandchildren. According to one of them, an 18th century Spanish ship wrecked near here and the survivors buried their treasure somewhere. Treasure hunters have been looking for it ever since without any luck. It may be there, but nobody has found it. A better bet is the treasure of the view from one of the turnouts in Oswald West State Park along Highway 101. Built during the Depression, they're pretty cool by themselves and the view down the Oregon Coast towards Rockaway Beach is spectacular. Manzanita is right at the bottom of the mountain. Consider Manzanita vacation rentals as a good way to spend a vacation on the Oregon Coast.

OId Fort Stevens on the Oregon Coast

Fort Stevens was built during the Civil War, although exactly what it was supposed to defend America from at that time isn't entirely clear. It was named after Isaac Stevens, an important general in the Union Army who got himself killed during the Civil War. From the Civil War through the end of World War II, Firt Stevebs defended the mouth of the Columbia River, but eventually it became obvious that submarines could do the job much more effectively. It has since been converted into a pleasant 2800-acre Oregon State Park. You can still see some of the gun batteries. I think the Japanese once lobbed a few shells at it, but otherwise it had a very peaceful existence during all those years. It's even more peaceful now, with plenty of camping spots. There's also a KOA across the road, if you prefer that kind of Kamping.

Iraq choices -- Extremely bad and even worse

David Brooks, in this morning's edition of Eugene, Oregon's daily newspaper, the Register-Guard, offered a solution for Iraq. "Soft" partition. Sounds good, but we've been there before.

It fails on the fundamental calculus of Iraqi oil and population. The Kurds are 20% of the population and control 40% of the oil. The Shiites are 60% of the population and control 60% of the oil. The Sunni Arabs are 20% and have nothing to speak of. These are rough numbers, but they illustrate the problem.

The Kurds hate the idea of Iraq. They are not interested in giving up anything in order to make it viable and they have negotiated a national constitution that gives them what they want. Asking them to give up Kirkuk and some of their oil in order to achieve something they don't want doesn't sound reasonable.

The Shiites would take a strong national government, because their 60% of the population would give them control. Even if they shared nicely, they would get 60%. However, if the Kurds exit with their oil, the pie shrinks. The Shiites can still get 60% if they follow the Kurdish model, and if it's good enough for the Kurds, why not them? They in fact have also enshrined this in the sacred Iraqi constitution that we helped bring about.

Leaving the Sunni Arabs. Brooks thinks that if they agreed to stop fighting, the other parties will give them things. The Sunnis doubt this. The Sunnis may harbor thoughts of a final arrangement in which they get more than 20% of the action. They've had it in the past and they have much more military expertise per capita than the Shiites.

There are two possible scenarios. A bloody Civil War in which America participates for some time before giving up, and a bloody civil war in which America takes an early exit. I suggest the latter. Won't this lead to a humilitation for America and a blow to our economic and strategic interests in the Middle East? Yes, it will. Next question, please.

Who is the danger?

The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon's daily newspaper, had two items today. One was an article about a gentleman from Canada who was wrongly identified as a terrorist, intercepted at an airport in the United States, and sent to his native Syria where he was tortured into making a false confession. The government of Canada has apologized and made compensation. The United States government refuses to even take him off the watch list.

Secondly, there was a letter to the editor, chastizing those of us who can't remember that we're in a worldwide war against terror and bemoaning the fact that some of us can't distinguish between those who attacked our freedoms and those who lead our country.

Remember the first item. When Osama's crew attacked on 9/11, they didn't attack our freedoms. They attacked our property and our sense of safety. Our freedoms are also being attacked, but the attackers are our national leaders.

Best Weather on the Coast

When is the best weather on the Oregon Coast? It probably isn't July or August. That's when the weather is hottest in the Willamette Valley. The winds blow in from the Pacific Ocean and bring cold and fog. Sometimes, just watching the fog climb over the hills can be fascinating, at places like Pacific City and Cape Kiwanda, but for the most part, it's not all that warm and pleasant. September is often better and maybe October, although the famous Columbus Day storm that hit Oregon in 1962 was on October 12. It actually happens to be the most pleasant on the beach in February, many times. The main reason is that a wind from the east will bring quiet decent temperatures and no fog.

California epithets

There's a big controversy over something that actor Isaiah Washington said during production of "Grey's Anatomy," of which he is one of the stars. Evidently, it had something to do with the sexual orientation of one of his fellow actors. I don't, however, know what the word was.

Because amazingly, in a world in which the filthiest language imaginable is used routinely on television, when a word gets written down it becomes too hot to handle. So this is now referred to as an "epithet." Which one, we don't know because no one will print it. It's unfit.

Out here on the Oregon Coast, we look carefully at people who seem to be moving in and if they don't meet out standards, we say, "Not from Oregon, are you? You from California?" And we siddle slowly across the street. We say that such people are Californicating our beautiful state. I think it's healthier. Californians! There I said it. I feel better.

The State of the Union

I make it a policy never to listen to a State of the Union address. Or a candidate's acceptance speech at a national convention. Some things are just too stressful. So rather than talk about yesterday's speech, I'll hold forth on what fun we have on the Oregon Coast.

When Jason Lee and his friend Cyrus Shepard got married in 1837 in Salem, they decided as many others would later that the Oregon Coast would be a great place to honeymoon. There were no roads at the time, so they packed up some horses, hired a guide, and made their way out to a site near Lincoln City where they spent a week with their new brides. This makes them the first known honeymooners on the Oregon Coast. Nowadays, people are just as likely to come to the Oregon Coast for the wedding. Wren Smart will help you if you need to make arrangements.

History on the Lower Columbia

The Columbia River Maritime museum is one of the "can't miss" attractions in Astoria. Located at the east end of town, right on the river, it has been designated Oregon's official maritime museum. The building is in the shape of a wave, in case you were wondering why it seems so unsquare. The purpose, according to museum director Jerry Ostermiller, has been to break out of the box of a traditional museum. If you've ever seen their display of a Coast Guard boat, simulating its passage through a breaking wave at the Columbia River Bar, you'll agree that they've succeeded.

There are lot of museums on the Oregon Coast, and you'll get quite a few articles about them in Oregon Coast Magazine.

Seaside Excursions

Once upon a time, the Seaside Aquarium was a "natatorium," or indoor swimming pool. Natatorium is one of those words that you were taught if you took Latin in school, just to show that Latin gave you something useful. Anyway, the natatorium was a great idea in 1924, but during the Depression, times got tough and the swimming pool business didn't work out. So the pool was converted to an aquarium, which it remains today. It's one of the few private, family-owned aquariums around the Oregon Coast.

Seaside has been another hot spot for Oregon Coast real estate in the last few years. There isn't a lot of available oceanfront, most of which is taken up with hotels and resorts.

Confessions of a Global Warming Sceptic

I've always been a little sceptical of global warming. Particularly the dire and fairly specific predictions about what would result, such as rising oceans. It's been about 20 years. CO2 keeps increasing and the average temperature does seem to be trending a bit upwards. But the oceans? I'm here on the Oregon Coast and frankly I haven't noticed it coming an iota higher up on the beaches.

But on the other hand, I have enough respect for the basically unstable and sensitive balance of the climate that permits humans to populate as much of the planet as they now do. Maybe things will be OK. Maybe, but maybe no. It seems like a silly gamble.

Particularly when the U.S. economy seems unable to produce as much as it consumes, year after year, and we go increasingly in hock to foreigners. Don't get me wrong. Love foreigners. Wonderful folk. But I just don't want to see them own all our assets, which is where we'll end up at the current rate.

So even though I'm not a global warming hawk, I'm a Thomas-Friedman hawk for a mass program to achieve energy self-sufficiency. This is the sort of thing we do. We're the top techno country and this is a techno problem. Let's fix it, be proud of it, and screw the Arabs. Also, maybe we won't melt the Arctic.

The Big Brother Incident

Everybody in India and UK seems to be upset over an episode of a "reality" TV show called "Big Brother," in which an actress from Bollywood (the Indian version of Hollywood, located in Bombay) is seen to receive snide remarks about her ethnic heritage. She breaks down and appears distraught.

Politicians in both countries are now jumping on the bandwagon. Indian politicians are declaiming that racism has no place in a civilized society. British politicians at the highest levels are harumphing that Britain is not a country that tolerates such attitudes, although of course, it does.

Meanwhile, three things seem to be getting less attention than they deserve. The first is that this is a "reality" TV show, which means that it has nothing to do with reality and all the participants, who are getting paid, realize that the show will die, and they will not get paid, if nothing happens. The show doesn't work if everyone is polite and accommodating. It's essential to have assholes. Some of the participants obliged.

Second, the actress is, to restate the obvious, an actress. She might have said, "Oh, don't worry, sticks and stones may break my bones, ..." Instead, she had a breakdown due to the anguish caused by racist remarks. Which apparently she had never heard in Britain before. We should take her anguish with a grain of salt.

Finally, the criticism is coming from India, which defines racism. India is riven by prejudices based on language, religion, and caste. Britain collectively does not treat its most despised groups the way Indians treat dalits. The pot is definitely calling the kettle black here.

Of course, out here on the Oregon Coast, we know all about racism, having mistreated our Indians a century and a half back. However, we have decided to rectify the situation. Since we once corrupted them with liquor, they have now been given the inside track to corrupt us with slot machines. What goes around, comes around.

Sunni vs Shiite: The Ku Klux Klan analogy

There's an interesting analogy to be made between the current situation in Iraq and the Reconstruction Era in the American South after the Civil War. In both cases, an outside armed force overthrew the established, traditional power structure and attempted to install a new arrangement under which the formerly oppressed people would exercise freedom.

There are many points on which the analogy does not work, but there's no question that the officers of the Confederate Army were white, and the officers of the old Iraqi Army were primarily Sunnis. People who are accustomed to military leadership are easily persuaded that the interests of their people require them to crush the aspirations of the those formerly oppressed. I'm sure the Sunnis, just like the Southern whites, consider their fight a noble one.

Whether it is or not isn't relevant. We're talking about practical matters, and just as blacks in the South could not hold their own against the militarily trained and economically advantaged whites, so is it unlikely that the Shiites, even with a greater preponderance of the population, will ever defeat the Sunnis militarily. Our policy, which has been to back the Sunnis into a corner and convince them that they couldn't prevail, is based on a fallacy. Which is that the 20% of the population that the Sunni Arabs represent cannot defeat the 60% Shiites. Time will tell, but in a war, I'd still bet on the Sunnis.

Cherry Picking Democracy in Iraq

Soon we will be hearing Bush's until now secret plan to fix Iraq. There doesn't seem to be much doubt about the nature, only the numbers. We're going to send more troops. Bush has consulted with lots of people before making this decision.

Except the Iraqi government, which clearly doesn't want it. Iraq being a democracy [sic], the government in sensitive to the wishes of its people. Those people are now clearly in favor of America packing up and leaving. They may also be fearful of the likely consequences, as well they should, but they want us out. They watched America stay for almost four years and continue to lose, or not to win as quickly as we'd like as the administration prefers to put it. They see no prospect of good results from America's continued involvement, which they would like to see terminated.

But we won't, because whatever nonsense we spew about the sovereignty of the Iraqi government, they have none. We are the occupiers and we will decide how many troops conduct the occupation and for how long. This creates a fatal contradiction. We want to raise the legitimacy of the Iraqi government we have created, but because we have created it and won't let it tell us to leave, its illegitimacy becomes transparent to every Iraqi.

Ashley Treatment

The parents of the disabled girls Ashley in Seattle are catching hell from the self-righteous over their decision. Ashley should be glad, if she's capable of being anything, that she lives at a time and in a country where keeping her alive is given a moment's consideration, let alone whether it's unethical to provide her with anything less than the maximum lifetime experience of which she's capable.

I suspect that the "advocates for the disabled" have spent very little time in the type of situation which Ashley's parents have experienced. I have only done a small bit myself when my aged mother was dying and the task was less, was shared, and was clearly time-limited. I wouldn't consider doing what Ashley's parents have done, let alone face a lifetime of continuing to do it. But that's their choice.

However, let's put that choice in context. It's the same context as keeping Terri Schiavo alive. This is not a world with unlimited resources. When you decide to maintain someone in a vegetative (Schiavo) state in some vague hope of a better outcome, or near vegatative (Ashley) because you somehow enjoy the relationship, you spend millions of society's dollars. The spenders seldom pay it all or even much of it; it's passed on to everyone else in medical bills and insurance. But it's a ton of money for every such decision.

Meanwhile, in India, about 750,000 children under the age of 6 die annually as a result of bad water. Hardly anyone considers it a moral obligation of America to fix this problem, but we could do it easily for the amount of cash lost annually in Nevada casinos. On a smaller scale, we could have devoted the cash required to keep Terri Schiavo staring at the walls for years to saving thousands of young lives.

But we don't. We are ethnocentric, which is why we don't save children in India. But even in the United States, we have an infant mortality rate that is among the worst in the advanced industrialized world. For the cash we spend on silly grand gestures, we could save many American babies who would have the prospect of actual, full and productive lives.

We should not expect Ashley's parents to work any harder than they have, and we should not as a society consider extending more services for the severely disabled until we've taken care of our reasonable priorities.

Be careful what you ask for

We are within the next few hours going to execute Saddam Hussein. We have within the past few days occupied Mogadishu through our Ethiopian proxies. There are probably a bunch of happy neocons around.

Unfortunately, executing Saddam will achieve nothing except the further alienation of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. They will note that Shiite death squads go around unpunished. Hell, they run the departments where law and order is supposed to be delivered. If the Sunnis have any doubt as to how the New Order is going to work in Iraq, Saddam's execution is going to clarify things for them. People talk about the expected "spike" in violence. The "spikes" seem to go up but never come as far down. Expect more of the same.

And in beautiful downtown Mogadishu, who exactly do we expect to take over? After it all falls apart, and the largely Christian Ethiopians have gone home, and what was once the effective national government has been dispersed, and the warlords return to their traditional pastimes of rape and pillage, will the United States face less threat from extreme Islam than it did last week?

There's a pattern here. There are times when it's better to have an effective government that you don't like that no government. We got rid of Saddam and are about to kill him. We've driven out the Islamic Union. Things are doubtless now going to be peachy. Details to follow.

Consistency, a hobgoblin that does not bother small minds on the far Right

The peace activists who were just rescued in Iraq have been denounced on far right talk radio for not sufficiently thanking their rescuers. They were on record, before they were kidnapping, as stating that violence in Iraq was due to the Coalition troops and if captured, they didn't want to be rescued.

Afterwards, they stuck to their story. Why shouldn't they? They really believe the teachings of Christ in a fairly literal way. This is in contrast with the so-called Christian fundamentalists, who believe exactly what the Bible says except where it talks about "Thou shalt not kill," and the part about not trying to get rich. Shouldn't Christian Peacemakers be allowed to practice their faith?

Now it seems that another one wants to go back. The following comes from an online article based on BBC coverage:

Despite the kidnappings, another CPT member, Jan Benvie has told BBC News she intends to go to the country in July.

She said she did not accept her presence should mean an extra responsibility for the security forces.

Let her go, I say. And if she gets kidnapped, leave her alone. American soldiers are being asked to die in Iraq in defense of an American belief system. Pacifists should be allowed the same right.

Who are the terrorists now?

Even the US Ambassador to Iraq now thinks the "militias" are killing more than the insurgents. Of course, by "militias," we mean the Shiite dominated police. It's not happening in Kurdistan. It's also not surprising, statistically, that if you piss of the Shiites, they will wreak more havoc than the Sunni arabs because they outnumber them 3:1.

However, all this begs the question, who are the terrorists in Iraq that we're fighting? The Bush doctrine of a universal fight against terrorism involves a rough definition of what a terrorist is. It includes state-run terror, which is how we roped Saddam into the definition. We now see that semi-official death squads are involved in ethnic cleansing. We supported intervention in Yugoslavia for that reason.

Now, of course, it's a little trickier since we trained them. Except the ones who got trained in Iran. Which brings up the fact that in the 1980's, we were supplying support to Saddam against the Iranians, so the "remnant Baathists" in Iraq may owe some of their training to the US as well. Not to mention the jihadists from Afghanistan.

Am I trying to make a point here? Yes. Let's get out now.

Alice in Iraqiland

Joost Hiltermann, writing in the Baltimore Sun, has put forward four steps to save Iraq from distintegration. Juan Cole mentions him, although it isn't obvious if it's approvingly or not.

I hope not, since I generally appreciate Cole's realism. Hiltermann's four points are:

• Iraqi political leaders renounce violence and so inform their followers,
• an inclusive and representative government must be formed,
• the constitution must be revised to meet everyone's objectives, and
• the security forces must be trained by the US to replace the militias.

That's the gist of it. Cole describes Hiltermann as "veteran," which sounds like the guy should know what's up in Iraq, but his four points have been US policy for years and all four are proving to be unachievable. What's the point in laying them out again?

Perhaps the logic is to demonstrate that the disintegration of Iraq is now inevitable and that the US should simply try to figure out the least damaging exit strategy. If these are essential and all are out of the question, let's go home! George Will called on President Bush to give Americans the unvarnished truth. I doubt he meant that we've lost and should high tail it out of town. Americans are approaching that realization, but you don't sell newspapers or attract TV audiences by being pessimistic before the time is ripe.

I've been saying for three years and I'll say it again that Iraq will fail over two non-negotiable issues -- control of Kirkuk and control of Baghdad. The Kurds have wanted nothing from Iraq except to be out of it and they need Kirkuk. They got it from the constitution last fall and they aren't going to negotiate it away now. Nobody has anything to offer them that's worth as much.

This is a national destiny issue and the Kurds won't back down. The Iraqi arabs are going to be very unhappy as are the Turks, which may make life very interesting for the US, a NATO ally of Turkey. There could easily be civil war over Kirkuk with a dangerous international flavor.

If not, then the Sunni arabs will have lost one of the two things they need to obtain and Baghdad will loom even larger. They need to control Baghdad, which in turn must control some semblance of national government with oil revenue from the South. That's not going to happen peacefully.

There are three groups and two oil regions. The historic ruling group, which has abused and oppressed the other two for decades, is the one with no oil in its natural geographic base. This isn't going to be settled amicably. Every day brings us closer to the inevitable civil war. Let's get out now.

Pfaff makes sense on Iran as usual

William Pfaff continues to write calmly and rationally about issues that tend to disturb so many editorial writers in this country. He recently commented that the prospect of Iran getting nuclear weapons is a non-issue. I especially liked his brief comment about the security issues connected with a state providing nukes to non-state terrorists.

Think about it. Countries take steps to prevent people, mostly their own citizens but including anyone else on their soil, from doing dangerous things. They license automobile drivers. They station police within easy range of banks.

Now imagine the danger inherent in letting psychologically unstable people get their hands on nuclear weapons. Governments have their own enemies within the borders of their countries. A workable nuclear bomb would be hard to get across an international border, but much easier to stuff into a Ryder truck and drive to a domestic location. The logistics of getting a nuke into the hands of al-Qaeda so as to pose a threat to foreigners only are daunting.

For states themselves, nukes are strictly defensive. The North Koreans may bluster, but they know that if they ever lobbed a live one at anyone, the United States would turn Pyongyang into a glowing heap of radioactive dust in an hour. A nuclear armed Iran is not a pleasant prospect. But then, any Iran is not a particularly pleasant prospect under its current regime. Being nuclear armed is not enough worse to start an actual war over.

Iran's claim to have only peaceful intentions for its nuclear program is laughable. They need nuclear power for their economy? They sell gasoline to their citizens for about ten US cents a liter. Not exactly the policy of a country concerned about its energy supplies. On the other hand, we don't have much room to talk. Bush now wants us to develop cars that run on booze. Maybe he'll hire Kate Moss as a consultant.

When we think of Hamas, let's think about IRA

The American press is stressing out over the prospect of Hamas forming the next government of Palestine. Meanwhile, other reports make it appear that the Irish Republican Army is sticking to its agreement to disarm and disavow violence.

One should remember that not long ago, the IRA was committed to removing the last British soldier from Ireland and considered the occupier and their collaborators to be fair game, whether in Ireland or England, and viewed collateral damages to be an acceptable price whether they were men, women, or children. Now they've given that up. Things change.

Think about China. The Chinese Communist Party has come so far down the road to capitalism that they make Wal-Mart look like a social services agency. Things change. Hamas in power is not going to be Hamas in basements packing explosives into vests. This is actually going to make life more difficult for the chauvinist element of Israeli politics, but it shouldn't be a problem for the United States.

Roy Blunt, as in Dull, Obtuse

Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri is an announced candidate for the job of majority leader in the US House of Representatives. I live in Florence, Oregon, population about 8000. It's 15 miles from Mapleton, population about 1000. Almost two years ago, I wrote the following:

Congressman Roy Blunt, the third ranking Republican member, told a joke to the Missouri Republican Convention. "How many Frenchmen would it take," he asked," to defend Paris? It's not known. It's never been tried." The audience laughed and applauded.

I was in France in September, 2001. I recall vividly a monument in a small French village, definitely smaller than Florence, perhaps the size of Mapleton. It commemorated the young people from the parish who had died defending their homeland in the Great War. There were more than 50 names.

On September 11, fewer than 3000 Americans died. Between July, 1914, and November, 1918, the French lost 1,357,000 defending Paris. In proportion to their smaller population, they lost as many as we have lost in the war on terrorism. Every day. For 50 months.

During the battle of Verdun in northern France, a ton of high explosive was dropped on every square yard. Decades later, nothing grew there. A half century later, one could still sometimes see green chlorine gas collecting in the bottoms of old shell craters after rain.

The French know something about death during war. They know something about chemical warfare. Representative Blunt, who represents the Ozarks, is the sort of person who gives hicks a bad name.

If this moron is the best that the Republican Party can find to lead them in Congress, they deserve to lose control in November.

Spooner predicts Iraq cost at $100 trillion!!!

Not really, but as long as we're playing competitive prognostication, why not take a kick at the can. I'm on record as estimating that the cost of the Iraq invasion will be about a half trillion dollars. I'm sort of taking the official guesses of a couple hundred billion and adding a large fudge factor.

But I have been completely upstaged by a new study that says it could be a couple trillion. "Economists say ..." begins the headline in the Boston Globe. It sounds so much more authoritative than "Astrologers predict ..." but it isn't a lot better founded.

The problem is that the study has wandered into "economic impacts," a practice that has less and less connection with reality as the subject gets larger and larger. The economic impact of a new mill being built in a small town may make some sense. The gross long-term impact of the war in all its guises? Compared to what?

Two trillion dollars is a big number. I have the same reaction to it as I do to the prediction of rising oceans due to global warming. I've been hearing about this for 20 years. I live next to the ocean. If the problem will eventually become huge, then it should by now be noticeable. It isn't.

The study (although I haven't seen the details) evidently includes a consideration of the impact on US productivity. This is perhaps based on calling up guardsmen and reservists and thereby removing important skills from the civilian economy. Unfortunately for the study, productivity has continued to rise while we've been at war.

The war is presumed to have a bad long-term impact on the federal government's finances. Here's a contrarian thought. The war will cause a fiscal crisis that will force Americans to deal with the entitlement problems facing the country. The Social Security crisis looming two decades hence will be avoided.

Sheer speculation? Of course. It's all speculation. I could probably hit $500 trillion if I tossed in the compounded additional interest expense for 500 years. It might earn me my fifteen minutes of fame.

A dozen is a dozen is a dozen. Except in the Media.

Twelve American servicemen have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq. It will make the news today and perhaps tomorrow. Twelve miners died in a coal mine in West Virginia, and it has been covered extensively, every day, in our local newspaper for a week. We're nowhere near West Virginia.

Twelve people in California are killed on the highways on a typical day. Every day, all year. Unless it was somebody famous, a dozen traffic deaths wouldn't be much noticed in California, and not at all outside the state.

GOP: Without DeLay without delay

Tom Delay is out. I'm actually surprised there have not been more puns on his name. It may be an indication of the fear he engendered in so many people. Anyway, he's gone and good riddance.

His letter to fellow GOP solons, giving up his idea of regaining power, reeked of hypocrisy. According to the story,

In a letter to colleagues on Saturday, DeLay said that he had always "acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land" and that he was "fully confident time will bear this out."

A more objective statement would have been that he has been advised by a well compensated lawyer that no action of his to date has been technically sufficient to result in a conviction, although that may change.

Ethical? His wife accepts $115,000 for a grade-school homework assignment about the preferred charities of congressman, from a "charity" that does no charitable work but takes money from Russian oil oligarchs who want (and get) some kind words from DeLay. No problem here, I guess.

All of this from a guy who lead the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Here's just a random thought. How many congressmen would be left if we eliminated every one of them who has lied to his wife about sex? I think the ranks would be badly depleted. God's ministry would probably also pass into new hands if we eliminated all the preachers who have been banging church secretaries.

I always like to think there's a rule (if not quite a moral) to be learned from such experiences. Maybe it's that whenever someone says he's more ethical than the ordinary guy, you should watch your back and keep a hand on your wallet. But that's really not a new rule.

Time to amend the US Constitution

The Jack Abrahamoff scandal promises to be the gift that goes on giving for us scandalophiles. The depressing side note is that although quite a few members of Congress may be implicated, the chances of Democrats winning their seats is small because most house seats have now been gerrymandered to be safe for one party or the other.

There's an obvious problem with letting politicians decide the prospects of their losing their own next elections, but it's been perfectly legal at both state and federal levels. Amazingly, when Arnold tried to fix the problem in California, the voters trounced the idea. It fared even worse in Ohio.

In the words of H L Mencken, American politics is dominated by the "boobocracy." Do Americans really want corrupt government by entrenched politicians? Probably not, but most of the time the average voter is too inept to see the connection between "entrenched" and "corrupt." With luck, Abramoff has delivered a teachable moment which can be converted, during the notoriously short attention span of the voting public, into action.

I suggest a constitutional amendment that requires the redrawing of districts for both Congress and state legislatures to be conducted after each decennial census by a panel of retired judges. They should be instructed to consider only the need to create compact districts of nearly equal size, without any consideration to racial, ethnic, economic, or political composition.

This is the political equivalent of the flat tax. The argument for progressive taxation with many exemptions is that the result should be fairer to vulnerable elements of society, but in fact everyone becomes a special interest and the cost may be greater than the benefit.

I'm not a flat tax fan, even though I understand the argument for it. Impartial redistricting, on the other hand, is solid. The preference that politicians feel towards doing the job themselves is obviously self-serving. The idea that minorities are best served by "reserving" some seats in Congress for them by creatively drawing district lines is harder to disprove, except to use Congress as a whole as an example of failure.

If I were a betting man, I'd give 1000:1 against this idea right now. But if we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and if it entangles enough Democrats to make it bipartisan, maybe there could be a spasm of political morality. Then, who knows?

If we need more air raids in Iraq, we should get out

During the past year, the US has turned increasingly to air raids to wage war against Iraqi insurgents without incurring US casualties. Air raids are, unfortunately, blunt instruments, prone to error. In the latest fiasco, we seem to have killed 12 civilians while aiming for three insurgents.

People who give customer service training to places like restaurants and retail stores like to say that customers are much more likely to tell their friends about an instance of bad service than good. Same in war. We're probably rebuilding a school somewhere in Iraq right now, but that's not the headline. It's 12 civilians killed by a US air strike.

Let's be honest. If that house had contained 12 Americans, we wouldn't have bombed it in the hopes of getting 3 insurgents. We don't view Iraqi "collateral damage" as being as important as the lives of Americans.

I'm not saying we should, but we don't and it's no secret from the Iraqis. We're not going to win a war for "hearts and minds" while we regard our allies as less important than ourselves. On the other hand, you can't run an army any other way. Soldiers are trained to kill enemies. There's no practical way to deliver democracy to a hostile population on the point of a bayonet.

So let's get out now.

Nuclear Waste? Dump it in the Pacific!

There are several problems plaguing the nuclear power industry, but the most intractable seems to be where and how to dispose of waste. People keep looking at locations around the United States and, since no one wants it in their backyard, finding an acceptable site will probably be mired in controversy forever.

A very simple option exists on paper. Wrap it in something fairly solid, take it out somewhere in the Pacific, a thousand miles from the closest inhabited land, and dump it in 13,000 feet of water, the average depth. Then go home and sleep the sleep of the innocent.

What, I hear you cry, don't I care about the purity of our sacred oceans? Somewhat, but in this case, not a lot. Or rather, I know enough about geometry to realize that there is essentially no way for mankind to pollute the volume of water that the oceans contain.

With a great deal of work, we could pollute its two-dimensional surface, although it's hard to do even that over a serious portion. We can, and have, polluted its shorelines, which are one-dimensional. But in three dimensions, our puny efforts could not mess up the ocean an iota.

The volume of water in the oceans is about 1.37 billion cubic kilometers. In scientific notation, 1.37 x 10⁹ km³. Or 1.37 x 10¹⁸ m³. Or 362 billion billion gallons.

The DOE estimates that it is storing 100 million gallons of nuclear waste. That would certainly already be diluted and would not consist entirely of radioactive molecules. If you stupidly sank it in a manner that it would leak rapidly, you would be diluting the volume of waste to one part in three trillion. Radioactive molecules would be much less concentrated. Even this assumes that essentially no effort is made to contain the waste, so that it leaks quickly before radioactive decay kills it. Any decent containment process would reduce the impact by orders of magnitude. In short, you could easily get rid of our entire Cold War legacy and it wouldn't even be detectable with current technologies.

Unfortunately, this reasonable solution is banned by a treaty that the United States signed in 1993. Thank you, Bill Clinton.

This is why Democrats aren't surging

I subscribe to the Register-Guard, the only daily newspaper in Eugene, Oregon. The editors seem to be nice, well meaning sorts with a definite bias toward Blue politics. Like most Democratic politicians, their thinking on Iraq seems hopelessly muddled. Today's editorial was typical.

They begin by saying that the cost, $8 million per hour, is staggering and cannot be sustained. It is staggering, but sustainable. It's about what we lose gambling each year. It's less than we spend on tobacco. We could do it if we wanted to, and we would want to if it was securing our oil supply and thwarting terrorism. We could spend it next year, and every year thereafter.

But we won't, because it is doing neither of those things. The RG correctly notes this and proposes two actions for President Bush to take. One is irrelevant and the other is impossible.

The irrelevant suggestion is that the United States should declare in writing that if the Iraqi government asks it to leave, it will leave. The Iraqi government has had "sovereignty" for a year and a half. What does sovereignty mean if not the right to exclude foreign troops? We might not have taken such a rebuff from our puppet interim government (not that they were ever likely to deliver it), but if the government, quasi-freely elected under a quasi-legitimate constitution, tells us to go, then the game will be up. It doesn't help to put it in writing.

The second suggestion was that we tie our withdrawal to concrete progress. If we were making concrete progress, we'd be leaving! Nothing would make the United States happier than to have the conditions exist for a graceful departure, but since that's not happening, the departure is likely to become less and less graceful. Sooner or later, you get Saigon. Let's get out now.

Baby Noor and Overkill

I know I'm going to sound like a grinch again, but Baby Noor was not a good candidate for treatment in the U.S. Iraq is full of children who are going to die for want of ordinary medical treatment. How many millions of dollars will go into the effort to save Noor's life? She may die anyway. How many normal babies will die for want of the attention that the same money could have bought?

It would be worth the effort if it would fool the Iraqis into believing that we really care about them. I can't believe they're buying it. An awful lot of them died for lack of medical supplies during the period of sanctions. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find just what the Arabs think of this ploy, but I've checked three mideast news sites and can't find a word about this exciting event. I assume this means they aren't impressed with our benevolence.

We aren't going to win their hearts and minds this or any other way. Let's get out.

Except for the French Quarter, New Orleans isn't coming back.

After all the emotional response, it's time to think this out. New Orleans was where it was because the French thought this was a good spot. It was the shortest distance upstream that could support a major town. Remember that the site was chosen before steam, when going upstream was much more of an undertaking than it is now.

Once a major metropolis is formed, it tends to stay put. Part of what it has is a large stock of lousy but low-rent housing. In New Orleans, most of that is gone. Anything that we replace it with will be at least newer and mostly built to higher standards. The poor people who were there won't be able to afford it at market prices.

Furthermore, it's below sea level and sinking. It's worse than a flood plain. If it weren't New Orleans, people wouldn't even be allowed to build there. It makes no sense to relocate lots of poor people someplace where they probably can't get jobs at a cost far above what it would take to settle them on really dry land.

The French Quarter should be protected by levees and the rest of it turned into a theme park. Lagoonland. I like the sound of that.

Making Commitments We Haven't Paid For

Oregon is all a twitter over the state welfare agency being off $172 million in its budget estimates for the biennium. Editorialists are calling for a special session.

Although $172 million is not chump change, it pales in comparison with the annual fluctuations in the Unfunded Actuarial Liability (UAL) of Oregon's Public Employeement Retirement System (PERS). Oregon has created exceptionally expensive retirement programs for all public employees, local and county as well as state. It hasn't been paying enough into the program to cover liabilities, hence the huge UAL. This year, with assets of around $40 billion (last time I looked), the plan needed an 8% return to avoid falling behind. Based on the stock market indices, it probably earned about 2%. Being short 6% on $40 billion is $2.4 billion.

For PERS, 2005 was a lackluster year. The previous two had been good. The two that preceded those had been disastrous. Looking at NASDAQ, S&P 500 and Dow Industrial averages, the equity earnings over five years have been negative, so even including some bond revenue (30% of PERS assets), it's been about a wash. The actuarially assumed return of 8%, compounded for 5 years, would have been 47%.

Taxpayers have picked up the tab so far, but if the 8% can't be regularly achieved, this is a nightmare that will never end. It's the same all over the country, in both private and public sectors. Executives promise employees fixed payouts that are only possible if the modest funds paid in earn good returns, consistently, forever.

There's a very tidy logic behind the 401(K) strategy of pensions. People today, whether they are paying an autoworker to build a Chevy or a teacher to instruct first graders, include something for that person's pension. What it yields as retirement income depends on whether America prospers. We're all in the same boat.

First Kirkuk, then Baghdad

John Maynard Keynes once said something to the effect that any reasonably intelligent man could make a fortune in the stock market by reading the newspaper every morning. The premise of this blog is similar; that an ordinarily intelligent person can perceive trends in public affairs which may confound well paid commentators.

It doesn't work 100% of the time, just as Keynes didn't predict the stock market precisely, but the Occam's Razor of analysis with respect to the Middle East is that things will not work out well in the end. Deep-seated pessimism has so far given me a better batting average than Thomas Friedman or Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan developed reservations about Iraq long after the invasion that he supported, blaming his misjudgment on the "surprise" that politicians lie and the military wasn't efficient. Friedman is withholding judgment for six more months for reasons that are unclear.

Unfortunately, this record may hold up with Juan Cole as well. In Cole's blog today (12/29/2005), he reports that the fix may be in in Kirkuk. The Kurd's are putting the Peshmerga in place to assert military control when Iraq dissolves and civil war breaks out. The religious Shiite leaders seem to have largely ceded the region to them in exchange for enough votes to give them control of everything else of importance.

Of course. So why is Cole quibbling about whether civil war has already begun? I'm guessing he is reserving the phrase for a later stage of the conflict, because he wants something identifiable that our continued, albeit reduced, presence can prevent. He believes it is within our capacity, and our moral duty, to forestall the worst.

Not gonna happen. The Sunnis are now participating in every election and it is certainly not because they expect to win. They must have a reason, and it is most likely world opinion, or at least the Arab street. They know there will be fraud in any Iraq election, so by participating and losing, they can wrap themselves in the flag of democracy (considerable irony there). The Iraqi winners aren't going to buy it, but that doesn't matter. As the insurgency escalates, the Sunnis will want a patina of legitimacy.

The US will not be able to intervene against the insurgency with its air power. While the Sunni Arabs may be a 20% minority in Iraq, they are the dominant group in the region and their coreligionists are not going to stand idly by while they are crushed in Iraq.

Making actual predictions is dangerous. Fox picked Michigan by three touchdowns over Nebraska and now they're stuck with it. However, I'm not a public figure and I don't need to worry about the next election, so I'll just observe that all parties have been going through the motions that the US has dictated -- interim government, first unelected and then elected, constitution, national vote -- and they're running out of reasons not to take what they think they deserve. I predict that after a few months to form the government and a few more to go through false motions of renegotiating the constitution, things will get ugly. Six months, tops.

Not quite Afghanistan, which won't happen until after the US pulls its ground forces and that depends on when GW Bush gives up. As Senator Lieberman accurately says, he's our commander-in-chief for three more years and he's a stubborn man.

The Pope does the Limbo

My interest in theological discussions is one step removed. To actually care about the outcome, you need to at least give some level of credence to the premises. I'm simply intrigued that the debate goes on at all.

Take Limbo, that nifty solution to some of the hard edges of Christian theology. Nothing in the Bible suggests its existence, but the logic of original sin and redemption through Jesus brought the Catholic Church to a difficulty that it resolved by inventing a place that's not as nice as heaven but not as nasty as hell. Now, they are rethinking it.

All of this takes place within an institution that has declared the Pope's views on theology to be infallible. Change within an infallible structure entails certain contradictions, but Catholics have been adept over the centuries at reconciling them. It isn't easy to tap dance your way around the fact that the church arrested Galileo for saying that the earth wasn't flat.

So the current Pope, having inherited the position that the Pope is infallible, needs to work his way around the fact that, according to the IHT article,

It remained strong in 1905, when Pope Pius X stated plainly: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either."

The current Pope thinks Limbo was just an unofficial hypothesis. Pius X seemed to think it was pretty clear, but maybe it didn't come through the Latin that well. All in all, Catholics are in a difficult position compared with Protestants, who can start a fresh church for the cost of renting a large tent and who can select from among the Biblical phrases they like to produce a marketable product. Being Number One has its disadvantages as well as its advantages.

Why Col. Muhammed Wasif Taha matters

This morning's newspaper had the report that Col. Muhammed Wasif Taha, a well regarded military officer, had failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to become the commander of a brigade responsible for some of the most sensitive security situations in Baghdad. The colonel is Sunni. The government is Shiite.

Colonel Taha is the choice of the Americans. From this, we can assume that his Baathist record is mild and his actions since the fall of Saddam impeccable. If this man cannot continue in his chosen profession because he is Sunni, then the message cannot possibly be lost on his coreligionists that there is no future for them in an Iraq governed democratically under the constitution that has been adopted. Their peaceful options are limited to deciding what to do with their time as they rot in futile impotence in the middle of a million acres of stinking desert. They will more likely opt for continued violence.

This analysis should not be mistaken for sympathy. The Sunnis are getting nothing worse, and generally much better, than the deal they parcelled out to the Shiites and Kurds when they held the whip hand. They have no moral basis for expecting anything better.

But this is an issue of realpolitik and morality has nothing to do with it. The United States has gotten itself into a situation where civil war is inevitable and nothing we can do (Juan Cole respectfully to the contrary notwithstanding) will prevent it or even materially retard it. Let's get out.

Support for Intelligent Design from Dubai

It will doubtless comfort the ID enthusiasts that, despite their defeat in federal court and the near universal rejection of ID by real scientists, their views resonate in the archaic minds of the muslim world. Khaleej Times, the largest English language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, asked editorial, "What's wrong with Intelligent Design?" They were unable to find anything.

I also found a letter to the editor, criticizing the paper for its extensive coverage of Elton John getting hitched to a man. The writer pointed out that this was a muslim family newspaper and it would be hard for parents to explain this stuff to their kids. Gee, Intelligent Design, homophobia. Maybe between Pat Robertson and the islamists there are only distinctions without differences.

Round and round we go again.

The Shiites in Iraq are unhappy about those who deny the validity of the election they just won. This shouldn't surprise anyone, but evidently some are easily shocked. The article includes the following:

But the Shiite religious bloc also deepened the post-election turmoil by claiming that Islamic extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists were at the forefront of those questioning the results.

This seems odd. Those questioning the results are, with a few interesting additions, the political front men for the insurgency, which as Donald Rumsfeld has been assuring us consists of Islamic extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists. Why does it add turmoil if the Shiites say the same?

The interesting additions are the "secular Shiites," who got their heads handed to them in the election. Somehow "secular Shiites" seems akin to "liberal Southern Baptists." There doubtless are some, but you aren't going to win elections appealing to them.

The United States keeps hoping that something good and democratic will emerge from the muslim countries of the Middle East. Our theory is that everyone yearns for democracy and that we can succeed if we simply "enable" these aspirations. In fact, you could gather all the truly pro-democratic Arab leaders in a phone booth. In both Iraq and Egypt, the struggle is between secular dictatorship and theocratic dictatorship. The remnants are mostly corrupt pro-Western CIA flacks.

Let's get out. The money we're spending militarily could be spent on technology to replace oil and we'd be way ahead of the game.

The US Constitution Applies to Florence, Oregon

This may not seem like news to people from outside our area, but it has been the basis for a lawsuit that has just received a ruling in federal court. As background, a local Indian tribe has constructed a casino on the outskirts of Florence. The center of local opposition has been People Against a Casino Town (PACT).

PACT has tried various legal avenues to block the casino. The governing federal legislation is IGRA (Indian Gaming Regulation Act) and it requires the tribes to attempt to negotiate a compact with the state in which they will operate, which will determine certain intergovernmental protocols. Note that they are required to try, not to succeed. Oregon's governor negotiated such an agreement some years back.

The Oregon Constitution says that the legislature (and by extension the governor) must not permit a casino to operate in Oregon. PACT's remarkable position is that this means that the governor acted illegally by signing the compact.

Relations with Indians were ruled by the Supreme Court to belong exclusively to the federal government almost two centuries ago, so the position of the Oregon Constitution on casino gambling is moot. PACT, nevertheless, took it first to the Oregon Supreme Court, bypassing the ordinary lower court procedures, and were tossed out. When they started over at the appropriate level, they were told to take it to federal court instead.f

People with more sensitive minds would have seen a fatal problem at this moment. If the state courts, where issues of the Oregon Constitution are ordinarily resolved, didn't even see this as coming under their jurisdiction, that is just one step short of calling it frivolous. Undeterred, PACT took their case into the federal system and have just been told, unsurprisingly, that it is meritless.

A PACT spokesman said that they now have two options. One is to appeal again to the Oregon Supreme Court, another is to head to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. A third option leaps to mind. How about giving it up?

Oh, and to get back to an earlier point, should all of American jurisprudence since Independence be stood on its head and PACT prevail, it would mean that the local Indians would be under no obligation to deal with local governments at all, except under a compact which they would write and submit to the Secretary of the Interior for approval. IGRA is very clear that the failure of negotiations for a compact does not stop the casino. But people who are battling in court for a new Constitution would probably be hopeful about a new IGRA in the bargain. Who knows what they have in mind.

Greatest Mideast Election Fraud? Get real!

The Sunnis and secular Shiites in Iraq are now claiming that the December 15 election was the greatest election fraud in the history of the Mideast. Really? What about the final election under Saddam, in which he got nearly 100% of the vote, in a process run by the same people who are now protesting.

Or Egypt? Where people were gunned down for trying to get to polling places. And where the main opposition leader has been jailed.

The story notes that:

Nur spent most of time in court instead of campaigning and lost his seat in his Bab Al-Shaaria stronghold in the first round.

"They announced my defeat on public television half an hour before the counting had even started," he said in an earlier interview.

Worst fraud in the history of the mideast? That's a rather high standard. This wouldn't even qualify as the worst election fraud in Patterson, New Jersey.

Why Thomas Friedman and Juan Cole are both wrong.

Juan Cole seems to be pretty accurate in his analysis of the situation, past and present. I think his prescription for future action is wrong philosophically, although I can't argue with his critique of our options. Friedman is just wrong.

Friedman first. I can't seem to find his column online, but in this morning's newspaper, he argued that the jury is still out as we wait to see what sort of country the Iraqis voted for, united and compromising or splintered and confrontational. As Aaron Brown put it during Katrina, doesn't he watch television? Or read newspapers?

The vote divided on sectarian lines and tended to go strongly for religious lists. The secular candidates that the neocons hoped would do well were crushed. The hope was that Allawi and Chalabi would get 20% and 5%, respectively. Allawi is under 10% and Chalabi has dropped out of sight.

The Sunnis only have a negotiating position if they can obtain something by violence. Otherwise, they get a million acres of stinking desert as their patrimony. Civil war will continue and grow.

Cole sees this outcome, but thinks we have a moral obligation to keep it below the level of conflicts that were seen in the Balkans and Lebanon. I lack his deep knowledge of the region, so I won't contest the notion that if we leave, there will be a bloodbath. I am a little queasy about the minimal interference option, which Cole and Rep. Murtha seems to like, since it sounds a lot like Vietnamization.

Rather than trying to negotiate with the winners, the non-Kurd losers are complaining about fraud. Their concerns will be considered by an electoral commission controlled by the winners. Good luck!

I can't fathom why Friedman thinks another 6 months will be needed to sort out the results. The Kurds and Shiites won again. They have been winning consistently and they have no reason to give anything up. The promise to renegotiate was always a farce. They held and still hold all the cards.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel and the Holocaust

President Ahmadinejad has attempted to clarify his remarks about the Holocaust, but nobody seems to be listening. It's unfortunate that we have devoted to much attention to the word "myth" and not to his message. Since he spoke in Farsi, it's certain that he didn't use that word, and whatever he used could probably have been as easily translated as "legend." With that phrase, his position would have been easier to understand.

Those paying attention to both the original statement and the clarifications will note that Ahmadinejad is not saying that the Holocaust didn't happen. He used a word which was translated as "myth," but he is simply saying that it's been given a holy status above discussion. That's true. It may not be a bad thing, but it's true.

However, what he is strongly objecting to is the conclusion drawn from the Holocaust that the Jewish people deserved a homeland that would be carved out of Muslim lands, as a result of something inflicted on them by Europeans. That is the unexamined premise behind American, and to a lesser extent European, support for Israel.

Suppose for a minute that the Aztecs had lived a little farther north before being overwhelmed by the Spanish, and that after centuries of wandering, they had ended up in China. And that the Chinese, to compensate them for all their mistreatment in China, had decided that they should get Texas as a homeland. Would the Texans have been empathetic and understanding to the repatriated Aztecs? Have Muslims been empatetic and understanding to Israel? Are we surprised?

Hamas Wins Free Elections! Be careful what you ask for.

It seems that the Palestinians are leaning towards Hamas in municipal elections, and now the European Union is thinking about removing its financial support. The problem with democracy, which we keep saying we want to see springing up in the Middle East, is that the freely expressed will of such people may not correspond to America's announced interests.

What did we expect? Why are we surprised that Fatah, which exists on international welfare, should be corrupt and unresponsive to the needs of the Palestinians? We should also not be surprised that people welcome anti-corruption with a "law and order" theme.

Think Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein played a democratic role simultaneously with the IRA's violent role in the Troubles. Despite all the posturing, they were at the table and it was better to have them there.

Hamas has killed Israelis and announced its wish to obliterate Israel. The Likud has harbored politicians who wanted to obliterate Palestine and its founder and leader Ariel Sharon is deeply implicated in the Sabra and Chatila massacres. If the Palestinians can negotiate with Israel, nobody has the right to shun their chosen leaders, even if that turns out to be Hamas.

Southwest Airlines hasn't made me feel safer.

In the defense of the safety of the flying public, Southwest Airlines stopped a flight that was about to depart from Los Angeles because some wiseacre was joking with his friends about having a bomb. Everybody got off, the man was arrested, and the plane was searched. Nothing was found, but the guy is in deep doo-doo and will face serious consequences.

Do you feel safer because our airlines operate this way? If so, please join me in a mental experiment. Imagine a person who has decided to destroy an airplane in flight by bringing a bomb onto a flight which he himself will take. He is going to die along with everyone around him when, according to his intent and expectation, the bomb explodes. Do you have him in mind? Now, can you imagine him telling jokes about bombs after he's boarded the plane?

I can picture him sitting nervously, sweating profusely and not making eye contact. I can imagine, although I've never heard of an instance, of a terrorist changing his mind and confessing to a flight attendant. But joking?

During the last 10 million commercial flights within the United States, nobody has ever brought a bomb onboard and detonated it. A certain number of people have been detained for making remarks. Has any one of them ever been found to actually have brought one along? Not that I've ever heard.

But, you may say, all this security makes us feel safer. Safer than what? People in this country die from earthquakes, tornados and earthquakes. Roughly 80 people die in a typical year from being struck by lightning. These are real dangers, and I for one do not lose sleep over them.

Being on an airplane that has the bad luck to be selected by a dedicated and skillful bomber, one capable of evading security and ready to die to make his point, is a much lower probability than any of the above. I don't worry at all when I get on an airplane. If possible, I would worry even less if the guy in the next seat started joking about bombs.

Iraq Elections - UIA wins or UIA doesn't win. Both bad.

At this point, it's not clear whether the UIA, the united front of the religious Shiite parties, will form the next government, but it's not likely that either option is going to work out for the United States.

Option one is they win. They are distinguishable from the Iranians, but there is a lot more in common between them and the ayatollahs in Tehran than between them and the United States. They will be inclined to tolerate a nuclear weapon program in Iran. They will disregard the rights of religious minorities to sin, i.e. to buy liquor or adopt Western standards of dress. They are going to prosecute the campaign of de-Baathification, which will keep the insurgency alive and well.

Option two is they lose. Remember that the Iraqi constitution has been adopted and for it to be modified, the Iraqi parliament must first approve the changes and then the Iraqi voters. It can be defeated by three provinces. Any effort to reduce the Shiite gains thus far made is going to fail.

I'm sure the UIA would love to run all of Iraq, but they already have what they most need, the right to establish regional control over the provinces with the most oil. As have the Kurds in their region.

So the only way the Sunnis can have a strong voice in the central government is if that government becomes irrelevant to the other two blocs. They have no voice or a voice that doesn't matter. Either way, civil war. You say tomato, ...

Domestic Spying -- George Bush doesn't get it.

George Bush has acknowledged spying on US citizens but wants us to think it's OK because it's part of the War on Terror. That's not the point, as even members of his own party in the Senate are pointing out. It's the constitution, stupid.

There's a principle in the constitution that certain things cannot be done by the executive branch without the approval of at least some element of the judicial. Bush wants us to believe that because his tactics may have contributed to frustrating terrorist plans, he's on safe ground. However, there are virtually no restrictions on what he can do if he can convince a judge. I'm going to assume that the secret court established for just this purpose is not stacked with pro-ACLU types.

So if he isn't willing to run his decisions past even such a captive court, it raises serious questions about their merits. But more importantly, it's a precedent that cannot be allowed to stand. If Bush can do it, then a later President can do it, and not refer it to anyone except people in his own administration, appointed by him.

There are short-term dangers, like some fanatic islamist blowing up something or someone near and dear. There are long-term dangers, like subverting the institutions that have protected against governmental excess for over 200 years. Frankly, I'm more concerned about the long term.

Why are Italians so much smarter about medical costs?

John Kitzhaber, the former governor of Oregon, is seriously considering another run for the office. The foundation of his campaign, we are told, would be an effort to resolve Oregon's health care crisis, which is just a microcosm of the one national problem.

One of the points he is making is that we could probably cobble together about $2000 per person in Oregon through existing government expenditures, between actual expenses and tax breaks for medical insurance. That's about the amount Italy spends per capita to provide health care for all its citizens, with better health outcomes than we have in America.

I just saw a doctor about a problem and was given a prescription. I think it's a fairly new drug and it seems to be helping. A few years ago, it would not have been available. If I knew what it was costing and was paying out of pocket, I would consider whether the new drug was enough better than the old ones, or none at all, to be worth the price.

But since I have health insurance that includes prescriptions, I don't face that choice. If I decide to be frugal, the beneficiary will be my insurance company. Next year, my decision will be averaged statistically over everyone, both frugal and indulgent, to calculate the undoubtedly higher premiums that companies will pay.

The American system combines the bad aspects of private enterprise and socialism. The health care industry has little incentive to control costs, since they will be recouped from almost everyone, and in fact a doctor who prescribes less than the best may get sued, even if the increment is not worth the cost. Congress recently exacerbated the situation by denying states the right to insist on cheaper and nearly equivalent mental health drugs.

A single payer system would control some of the waste, but when it went on the ballot in Oregon, it was crushed. We need single payer and also a change in attitude. Everyone deserves a basic level of health care. For things that are optional, consumers should understand the costs and bear them personally. I'm not optimistic that we can achieve that in Oregon or anywhere else.

How Determines US Policy Towards Cuba?

That's what people want to know when I talk to them in places like Canada and India. They're curious how it's possible for the United States, which talks to North Korea about assistance without regime change while keeping a multi-decade embargo against Cuba, to be so out of step with the rest of the world.

The answer is simple. The most adamant opponents of Castro are Cuban expatriates in Miami. They are so vocal and united that they can influence the outcome of national elections in Florida. Florida has enough importance to swing the nation. With so much in the balance, it's much easier to accommodate them than confront them, so the mild wishes of the majority are subordinated to the vocal demands of a minority.

Nowhere could this be plainer than in the fiasco of the international baseball championships, which the Bush administration now intends to prevent Cuba from participating in. As offensives go, it may not compete with the Bay of Pigs, but it to almost everyone except the Miami Cubans and Rupert Murdoch, it must look pretty silly.

How long are we going to continue this farce? There isn't a country in the world of any consequence that supports our embargo. The universal feeling outside the United States, and the majority feeling outside Miami, is that Castro is a doddering dictator in clearly declining health whose regime will probably not survive his death. This will be good news for Cubans, although they are not likely to open their doors to the exiles and return their lost possessions.

Apart from assassination, there is precious little the US can do to hasten that day. We may even be helping to prop him up. Nothing better for someone with domestic problems than to have a foreign adversary to point to.

Republicans frequently deride the roles that "special interests" play in Democratic Party politics. I guess they have granted a special exemption to Miami Cubans.

The Smoking Gun

The International Herald Tribune did a piece on the Congressional "debate" over Iraq withdrawal that included the following quote:

But Kingston [Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia] said Republicans forced the vote out of frustration with Democratic tactics. "We had just had it with Democrats running around saying President Bush lied. It was time for us to call their bluff," he said.

Remember Watergate. Up to the end, Republicans in Congress were saying that no one had found the "smoking gun." Then as now, the landscape was littered with bullet-riddled bodies, spent cartridges, and the smell of gunsmoke, but there were then, as there apparently are now, those who would dispute the sufficiency of the evidence.

What do they need? The LA Times is now reporting that German intelligence people, five of them, all confirm that Berlin warned Washington not to believe "Curveball," the Iraqi source who dreamed up some of the later discredited claims about Saddam's WMD.

Like Watergate, we have the original events and we have the coverup of those events. Bush is still telling the American people that all the world's intelligence services joined him in being wrong about Iraq. Clearly not true and three years after the fact, Bush knows it now whether he did at the time or not.

This comes under the heading of "everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten." It's not true and he knows it, but he says it anyway. That's called lying. President Bush lied about when he persuaded us that an invasion of Iraq was necessary. He is lying now about whether he lied about Iraq then. Mr. Kingston, you need to come to terms with that.

At long last, have you no shame?

Mark Twain said, as best I can recall, "Suppose I was a member of Congress. Suppose I was an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself."

The Republican vote on Iraq hits a new depth. I'm sick. Not a political ploy, says Rep. Hunter, who introduced the resolution and intended from the start to vote against it. A legitimate question, he says. Has he never heard of the phrase, putting words in other people's mouths? How can there be a debate on a resolution that both sides oppose?

Three members voted in favor anyway. Does anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? It passed the senate 98-2. Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening were the only two senators who voted no. This resolution went down 3-403. Some day we may remember those three.

Shiites torturing Sunnis -- Why didn't anybody look?

The important thing about the newly uncovered Iraqi torture centers is not that they existed, which was almost predictable, but that they were discovered by accident by people who weren't looking for them.

Reuters is reporting that not only were people being tortured, but they were being released back into society. Evidently, the Iraqi Interior folks weren't too worried about being found out, or the consequences if they were. A quote from the story:

Sunni politician Omar Hujail, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said it was not the only place where Sunni Arabs were held and tortured. "We have been telling them for ages that there are people wearing the uniforms of the interior ministry raiding houses at night and arresting people but everybody denied it."

There now isn't much doubt that the Sunnis were generally right. There may be questions about specific stories, but not the general outline. Several questions arise immediately.

Why weren't the people doing the torturing worried about letting torturees back out? Obviously, they were going to tell people. Sunnis would be outraged. Did these people care? Did they ever conceive of a society in which Sunnis would be able to take such grievances into a judicial system and get fair treatment. Obviously not. And just as obviously, the Sunnis have known so, which is why they don't believe this "constitution" is going to do anything to protect them.

But this is only surprising to those Americans who have believed for two and a half years that things were going to somehow work out. We can't do much about it. But as Americans, we ought to consider this. We are spending conservatively $50 billion on this war per year, not counting its unbudgeted aftermath. We have an intelligence establishment that sucks up $30 billion or more. It may be $40 billion, but let's use 30 to avoid arguments. The primary mission for that $30 billion should be to learn whether things are going properly in our expenditure of $50 billion to execute the war.

Yet, if they knew, they didn't tell us. We have two possibilities. They didn't know, in which case we should send all our overpaid spooks home and devote the $30 billion to deficit reduction. In the past, they have made excuses about not being able to find where Saddam had WMD in a country the size of Texas (or Alaska or California, I don't recall). But this place was in the ministry's compound in Baghdad. Not hard to find. People were reporting the stuff in the popular press. Not hard to get a lead.

The second possibility is more likely. We knew. How could we not know? We have satellites that can show a man reading a newspaper and this could have escaped our notice? Not damned likely.

So if we knew and didn't stop it, why? Surely not because we thought this was a good way to reconcile the Sunnis. The only explanation is that we have lost all control over this government, we know it and they know it, and we're just hoping like hell that something turns out right and we can leave.

Whether Saddam had WMD was never the question.

President George W. Bush wants us to believe that since a great many people considered Saddam likely to have WMD in the winter of 2003, those people must have agreed with his rationale for war. Now that is rewriting history.

Looking back at the evidence, much of it still available on the Web for anyone who cares to look, it seems clear that the majority opinion in January 2003 was that Saddam had some WMD somewhere in Iraq. It also looks as though that opinion was eroding as the weeks passed and nothing was found. However, there's no getting around the fact that many people thought he had them. Looking at his archives, Juan Cole, hardly a fan of the war, appears to be saying that not finding WMD, although possible and worth considering, was still speculation.

What separated George W. Bush from most of the rest of the world's leaders at the time was his willingness to invade a sovereign nation based on hunches. As his supporters keep saying, this is a global war on terror and what better idea do you have?

In an active Washington Post blog this morning, a number of people took up that challenge. Finding Osama bin Laden, fixing Afghanistan, etc. Personally, I don't know about either of those. My guess is that Osama is semi-retired. We give him too much credit if we think he can pull a lot of strings from a location in Pakistan which, almost by definition since we can't find it, has no modern communications. Dead or alive, who cares? And while reconstructing Afghanistan may be an admirable goal, I don't see that worldwide terror has risen because we haven't.

But the question posed a false challenge. Are opponents of the war obliged to devise more effective positive actions? I don't think the alternatives mentioned were really dependent on Iraq. For instance, we haven't found bin Laden because we haven't invaded Pakistan to find him. The reasons not to do so are the same with or without Iraq.

The alternative to invading Iraq was not finding bin Laden. The alternative to invading Iraq was not invading Iraq. It was clear how we could contain his threat; ongoing inspections. We would have done just as well in preventing terror attacks, probably better, and it would have been a lot cheaper than half a trillion dollars.

The Arab League solves Iraq? Not likely.

Milton Viorst, writing today in the International Herald Tribune, suggests that we might get ourselves out of Iraq with the assistance of the Arab League. He cites the "successful" end of the Lebanese civil war in the late 80's as evidence that it can be done.

Dream on! The most intractable problem working against a peaceful, united Iraq is Kurdistan. The Kurds are not Arabs. They are distinctly unhappy with having been kept in an Arab-dominated country, so they are most unlikely to view the Arab League as a legitimate power broker. It seems necessary to say this over and over; they have what they want, which is de facto separation, and they have the military means to retain it. There is never again going to be a united Iraq with the Kurds accepting "majority rule" over more than some nominal aspect of their life.

Andrew Sullivan has the bright idea that all we need is to "seal the borders" with Syria and Iran. The administration officials with whom he speaks say it can't be done, but Sullivan knows better. He knows this, we presume, based on the vast expertise in military operations that he developed as an editor of the New Republic. We have a gung-ho military in this country, and when they say they can't do something, I'm inclined to credit them.

The pattern, however, is familiar. When people talk us into a war that we're supposed to be able to win easily, and then we can't, they start to say that all we need to do is X. This doesn't mean that X is their final demand. If we did X and it was not enough, they would tell us that all we needed was Y. Or Z. Always something more.

Then when the dust settles, they'll pontificate that we lost the war because we didn't have the "will to win." It's an intellectually bankrupt strategy, harking back to Vietnam.

Speaking of Vietnam, Sullivan shares with us the news from Iraq that our troops are happy and confident, based in part on a 20:1 kill ratio. General Westmoreland must be turning in his grave. Twenty to one was roughly what we achieved in Vietnam. Which was a victory, right?

Pat Robertson Warns Dover, Pennsylvania

The word has come from Pat Robertson that Dover had better look out. They've voted out the pro-creationism (masquerading as Intelligent Design) school board members and God is pissed. As Robertson put it, "God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever."

In other words, God is tolerant and loving but not infinitely tolerant and loving. Dunno. That sounds to me like it's starting down a slippery theological slope.

On a more practical note, Robertson is ripping away the fig leaf that Intelligent Design was anything except an effort to introduce Christian theology into public schools. If it weren't, why would he be invoking the wrath of God? It was rather funny when one of the defeated pro-ID board members said that the issue had absolutely nothing to do with religion and that this was merely a misconception on the part of its opponents.

Indian Congress is Corrupt! This is News?

The Volcker Report on the Iraq Food-for-Oil program has discovered that high officials in India profited privately from arrangements that also benefited Saddam Hussein personally in ways not envisioned when the program was established. The foreign minister Natwar Singh seems to be singled out.

The foreign press is understandably isn't paying much attention to this. Everyone in India knows that Congress is corrupt, top to bottom, stem to stern, except for a few unrepresentative individuals. The only reason that this is a big story in India is that it comes from sources that are going to be difficult to impeach. Not that they won't try. Narwar Singh's response has been to attack Volcker and the UN, and wrap himself in the Congress' history in the Independence movement.

It would have been astounding if a program like this had not involved corruption. Corruption is the standard modus operandi throughout the world. Billions of dollars were moving around either through official government channels or with government approval, and in much of the world there simply wouldn't be non-corrupt options available.

Relatively clean and efficient government is a very recent phenomenon and is still limited to the nations with advanced economies. And not uniformly even there, as we are likely to discover as investigations of the New Orleans levees bring things to light.

Why the Pakistan Earthquake Doesn't Move Us

President Musharraf is reported in the Statesman to be ready to slow down the purchase of F-16 fighters from the U.S. in order to handle relief and reconstruction after the earthquake. He had been planning to buy 75 planes for $3 billion, which works out to $40 million each. Our government says this is OK, because Pakistan is our ally in the war on terror.

F-16's in the war on terror? What exactly does that mean? The only possible threat for which such aircraft would be appropriate would be India. China at the outside. Certainly not Osama bin Laden.

But leaving aside the question of how Pakistan spends its own meager resources, it does appear that the world is not rushing to send aid. I can think of many reasons. One is that the Indonesian tsunami victims included Westerners. No doubt about it. We are more sympathetic when our fellow countrymen are involved. Call it racist or whatever, but it's a fact of human nature.

But I think there are two other factors in play. One is the sense from westerners that maybe the Arabs should take care of this one. The amount by which the price of oil exceeds the prices which OPEC says it would like to see (although that itself seems to be climbing upwards) is at least $20/barrel. Nearly the entire amount that the UN is trying to obtain could be provided by OPEC with the excess earnings it receives in one day.

But the other is that Pakistan simply doesn't present a sympathetic picture. George Bush may regard Pakistan as an ally, but ordinary people watching TV aren't going to see that. Osama is still probably hiding out in Pakistan. The country doesn't protect its own women from gang rapes "for honor." Its Shiites and Sunnis attack one another in their mosques. In the midst all this, Pakistan-based terrorists killed dozens of innocent civilians in Delhi.

I think I reflect the views of a lot of people when I say I just don't especially like these people. Anyone with a hundred million odd citizens must be dealt with, but except by the most cynical calculations, Pakistan is not an ally of Western nations, the ones who have kept their wallets largely shut after this disaster.

Having said that, cynical calculations are appropriate for foreign policy decisions and one should be made here. We are flushing billions through Iraq as we try to win their hearts and minds. For a few hundred million, we could ensure that the Pakistani countryside is littered with cartons reading, "aid provided by the American people," for years to come. The illusion that American care about the sufferings of ordinary Pakistanis, even if untrue, would bring our country more lasting benefit than blasting flat a dozen intransigent Fallujahs. Cheaper, too.

We're getting better in Iraq, says the Pentagon

The New York Times reported today that the October death toll for Americans in Iraq was 92, the fourth highest on record. Most deaths are roadside bombs these days, which the insurgents have become much more adroit at producing. That's true, say the military spokesmen, but don't worry. We're getting better at countering this threat.

Let's do a reality check. If we're getting better at this, why are we losing more soldiers. If we're being successful in disrupting the influx of foreign fighters, why are there just as many of them. If we've pacified Fallujah, why can't we enter the city except in armored vehicles? If we've broken the back of the insurgency, why are they still standing. If they are in their final throes, ...

This is starting to sound all too reminiscent of Viet Nam.