Saddam and Pol Pot is a bad analogy

I recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Register Guard, Eugene, Oregon's local rag, commenting that I was personally not happy that Saddam was gone, not because he wasn't a terrible man, but that the consequences of Iraq being run by a terrible man were not as bad as having him removed have been.

Someone in Eugene bravely sent me an anonymous envelope, containing a clipping about Pol Pot and his murderous regime in Cambodia. The comment was, "Here's another one you can ad [sic] to your list of those who kept the 'lid' on."

Illogical thinking like that can, well, get you elected President of the United States. The analogue to Saddam in Cambodia is not Pol Pot, who came to power as the result of America's being unwilling to leave well enough alone, but Prince Sihanouk. Sihanouk headed a "neutral" regime that was too accommodating to North Vietnam for our tastes, so we ignored their neutrality and dragged them into the conflict. Sihanouk eventually lost control and was replace by Pol Pot.

Pol Pot is the analogue of someone yet to come to power in Iraq. Not a good analogue, because Pol Pot did control what everyone agreed was Cambodia, and it's unlikely that anyone will ever again assert overarching control of the old Iraq. There may not be anyone at all. This could be the Congo with oil.

Hurricane Activity

It is human nature to report research results that benefit you in the future. In the travel industry, there are prominent "research" organizations that consistently that every state agency in America runs highly effective advertising campaigns. They then get lavish checks from the people about whom they make these comments. Not surprisingly, they are always asked to do followup "research" which produces the same results.

So we might ask whether it's surprising that research by climatologists shows dramatic consequences to climate change. First, let me say that I have no doubt that CO2 is increasing. I'm willing to accept tentatively that it is causing an increase in average global temperature, although I'd be more comfortable if I saw an explanation for global cooling in the quarter century after WWII when CO2 was also increasing.

But there aren't going to be any conferences to attend or research budgets to spend just because we're getting a little warmer. The trend in American populations has been steadily towards warmer climates over the past half century. It's what people want in the place they call home. They aren't likely to panic if they face the prospect of a little more summer heat and less winter snow.

So research is stretched to devise consequences. We are constantly hearing about rising sea levels. The actual change in the average level has been trivial, less than the height of waves on the calmest day imaginable on the ocean. Here on the Oregon Coast, parts of the coastline are rising and others falling. Anybody who builds a structure next to the ocean on the assumption that nothing will change for 100 years is a fool. In actuality, the shoreline shifts and people rebuild a few years farther inland.

Then we have hurricanes. Those who have pointed out that we got warmer and then Katrina happened, from which they deduce that we got warmer and therefore Katrina happened, ignore the Butterfly Effect, which in its classic form says that a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and months later the pattern of Atlantic hurricanes changes.

The research that purports to show the increase in hurricane activity, which must be linked to global warming, fails many times as science. The first is that the trend itself shows up only over a period when sampling improved. They claim that this is a minor factor, but that's an assumption that can't be tested. They claim a causal relationship that can't be tested. I can hypothesize a variety of causes and provided my independent variable grows steadily over time, it will do just as well.

The "science" is that increased heat energy in the water will lead to increased hurricane activity. Sounds reasonable to me, but there doesn't seem to be a very good correlation. Last season we supposed to be hyperactive and although CO2 continued to rise, it was a medium season. This year, we were supposed to have a medium season. The hurricane guru for Wunderground predicted in late June that the odds of a named storm in the first half of July was 70%. We're about to finish the entire month of July without one. The last named storm was around June 1. I wonder what the last sixty-day period during hurricane season was when no named storms developed.

There are many reasons why hurricanes form. And don't form. However, a hundred people like me can say that no clear pattern has emerged and nobody will notice. One "research" result showing a connection, however, and it's a headline. People prefer to get headlines. We should all keep that in mind.

Gaza down the tubes

There's a book called "Collapse," or something like that, which explains why certain societies collapse. The author has a list of reasons, including wars and environmental problems. One of them is that at some point there are simply too many people to be supported by the resources available. I think Gaza is getting there.

It's an area that in 1948 supported about 100,000 people. It now has about 1.5 million and they are still breeding like rabbits. That's about 10 times what we have here on the Oregon Coast, with a tiny fraction of the land and no resources.

The world has no record of letting that many people die since World War II except in Africa, but nobody wants a lot of disaffected Palestinian refugees in their country and Hamas is likely to continue the Koranic theory of women-as-breeding-stock. Is it possible for an area to become human "black hole," which collapses upon itself and from which nothing escapes?

Fatah is corrupt and ineffective, but perhaps not unusually so by Arab standards. They may get control of the West Bank and Israel may actually decide to cut a deal just because they aren't Hamas. But Gaza? It's like Scientology with its own country. I have a really bad feeling about this.

Bong Hits for the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is being described as more conservative than in the past. I think a better description is fascist. A conservative court would have deep reservations about the role of government in guiding individual actions into "proper" channels. This one seems ready to leap right in.

The kid in Alaska was penalized for displaying the phrase "Bong Hits for Jesus," which his school administration interpreted as advocating drug use. He did it on his own time, outside the school. The school is a government agency with a semi-monopoly on a vital service. There is a lot of coercion involved in making students show up in the first place.

There is no common English usage that leads from "Bong Hits for Jesus" to advocacy of anything. It doesn't make sense, as the kid pointed out. One would think that for words to show a specific intent, they would need to show some intent unambiguously, but apparently not in Alaska. It is not a sentence. It isn't even an intelligible phrase. There is no history of this student otherwise advocating drug use. The phrase does not match sentences or phrases used by others who are advocating drug use.

All we have is that some school administrator chose to assign a meaning to words, used outside the school, to which they then ascribe an intent on the basis of which they impose a punishment. This is scary stuff and certainly not something that a small-government advocating conservative should find appealing.

Democracy as Panacea

I'm working on a visitor guide to the Oregon Dunes, so yesterday morning I was having breakfast in a Reedsport cafe. A number of Reedsport's senior citizens were enjoying breakfast at the same time and I couldn't help overhearing the conversation. It covered Iraq, and if Bush expects to hold the support of generally conservative old geezers, I think he may have trouble. They were not happy about Iraq.

Then the conversation turned to politics. "Did you hear that Obama announced that he's running for President?" "No, who's Obama." "He's this black guy. He's in Congress. I don't know if it's the Senate or the House, but he's there. Looks like he's figured out that the problem is graft and corruption. And he's only 35!"

Based the opinions of such people, we will run a primary process that determines two candidates, between whom the contest will be settled by who has the best media consultants and the most money to buy advertising. This is democracy. It's what we're trying to give the Iraqis. It's what the UN was trying to give a tribe of pygmies in the Congo, helping them vote for the next government, when the pygmies clearly did not understand either (a) what a government was or (b) what the Congo was.

Democracy is a concept that Americans are in love with. We think it's indispensable to an advanced society, although Singapore does rather well without one. I think it's more an inevitable condition, when enough people gain such a high opinion of themselves that they feel that they must be allowed to participate in decisions. In most advanced society, this works better than any alternatives. In places like Iraq and Congo, it's a dangerous fairytale.

Pre-War Iraq Intelligence

The current controversy over the quality, sources, and purposes of the pre-war "intelligence" that wrongly linked Iraq and al-Qaeda does nothing to change my original assessment. The United States spends thirty or forty billion dollars a year on spying. A portion of this is used to prevent criminal acts, and I consider it police work rather than espionage. It is the latter that I regard as useless.

Advances in research are made by professionals, mostly working in universities, due to the process of peer review and an insistence on replicability. This is the basis for quality assurance. A single piece of research is checked for such things as inappropriate research methods or simple errors in analysis, and all research is regarded as no more than a piece of the puzzle. The puzzle, whatever it is, is gradually solved to the satisfaction of the participants by an accumulation of evidence from assorted sources. Or not. Sometimes, as we so often see in medical studies, initial studies are refuted or at least modified by later ones.

The problems of espionage are the subject of congressional hearings, closed or open, and the consensus always is that there has been some structural flaw which can be fixed by a better structure. This is not and never has been true. The problem is that espionage relies explicitly on special knowledge, from sources that cannot be verified through processes that cannot be replicated. Its quality can therefore never be relied on.

That's the problem. Not whether on any particular day, the espionage turns out to be correct, but that a nation like the United States cannot have public debates about issues when the "facts" are private. I argued at the outset of the war that the rationale was wrong for reasons that the White House could have determined for perhaps $29,999,999,999 less by buying a copy of the International Herald Tribune and reading what William Pfaff was saying. They could save a dollar more than that now by going online and checking with Juan Cole, who gets most of the information by himself going online and checking Arab newspapers and blogs.

One of my favorite lines goes "... an oxymoron, like Catholic education or military intelligence." The latter is a play on the two meanings of intelligence. The United States puts faith in the definition I've been discussing, analysis drawn from secretly obtained information. The second meaning is the ability to draw from many sources, assimilate the data, and be smart about drawing conclusions. If the United States had shown more of the latter kind of intelligence, we wouldn't be in the quagmire that we now find ourselves in.

I was just checking Google to see if any of my earlier posts showed up, and I discovered that looking for "Charles Krauthammer" and "predictable" yielded my post of four days ago, along with with many more than I had anticipated. Predictable seems to be a word that people associate frequently with the man, and that he uses himself.

There was a particularly interesting article from Charles himself, discussing reparations for African-Americans. He proposed, not entirely seriously, to trade off a payment of $440 billion to African-American families for the terminaton of affirmative action. He commented that although a steep price, it represented only a thirteenth of the projected ten-year federal surplus.

That was in April, 2001, before W. had worked his magic on the federal budget. Less than six years, but it seems so long ago.

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.