Meathead dissent

So I guess rockers are supposed to be rebellious, but when you combine the lyrics of Phil Collin's "Land of Confusion" with the heavy metal sound of Disturbed, you get a rock ballad to strike a political power chord. The song itself kicks ass. But the video goes a mile further. You might remember the original viseo had a claymation Reagan sweating in his bed.

This video is not specifically targeted at the president, but it has even more anti-authoritarian punch. It's a cartoon designed to make our testosterone laden youth violently peaceful, and rabidly anti-totalitarian. I don't think either of those are bad traits.

It's probably the most subversive thing I've seen all year.

Not wearing uniforms. Vapid reflections on a vapid observation.

One of my least favorite conservative themes is that "bad guy X" doesn't deserve humanitarian treatment or application of the Geneva Convention because "he wasn't in uniform". The argument frequently gets applied to modern day bad guys, whether they are Gitmo detainees from Afghanistan or Hezbollah guerrilla fighters.

And to some extent, they have a point. A lot of these bad guys don't wear uniforms. (Excepting Hezbollah who kind of have a uniform in those creepy-ass ski masks. You just know anyone in a ski-mask is a bad-guy- that's like 8yr old TV comprehension level.) Anyway, the purpose of the Geneva conventions uniform clause was to distingush soldiers, who should be treated with dignity, from spies, who should get hung. You can argue if you want that guerilla fighters should be treated as one or the other, but me, I think it's the nature of war to evolve and they're another flavor of their own.

But here's what I don't like about the uniformed/non-uniformed distinction. When you invade a country, as we did in Afghanistan, or Israel did in Lebanon, you have to expect resistance from some sorts of irregulars. If some Islamic country were occupying your hometown, you might feel inclined to fight back. Admittedly, it's a ludicrous hypothetical from the get-go, but if it were to happen...do you really think you'd go out and find a uniform before waging armed resistance? Yeah, I doubt it. Just be careful you aren't caught, because according to conservative bloggers, if you aren't wearing a uniform the occupying army is free to do whatever it wants with you.

And then there's the intrinsic contrast with our treasured American lore.* When Washington wintered the Army in Valley Forge, they famously had trouble providing shoes for the men. I'm guessing if you have half barefoot soldiers, your uniforms aren't quite up to snuff. You think the Redcoats used to bitch that the colonials didn't all dress alike? Maybe they did. They used to fight wars by lining up and shooting each other like civilized people. (Probably the purpose of the red coats was to not show the blood when your army was getting shot. Call me silly, but I much prefer the concept of camoflage.) But those crazy Americans, they kept chaging the rules. Whether it was taking potshots at convoys on windy backwoods roads, or Washington's crossing of the Deleware on Christmas for a surprise attack on the hung-over Hessians, the Americans played to win. That's the nature of war. At the end of the day, people use whatever tactics they think are most effective.

And then there's the case of the Boston Tea party, where a bunch of Bostonites not only set out to destroy the the East India Tea Company's property (worth millions in todays dollars), they dressed up like Indians while they did it. (That had to be inspired by beer.) Full props to the colonials for giving our country such a great initiation, but if a similar stunt went down today, it would probably be labeled "terrorist". Anyway, our esteemed forefathers planned and launched these little attacks from annonmity and blended in with the civillian population to escape retribution. That's our very own history, and we've known it for hundreds of years. So let's try not to be so shocked when similar dynamics pop up in other occupation situations.

*Disclaimer: The last time I took a respectable US history class was 8th grade, so this really is more lore than fact. Maybe the colonials had real spiffy uniforms, and maybe the Sons of Liberty didn't dress up as Indians. Maybe Samuel Adams and his buddies never touched the sauce. Of course all of this can be checked through the power of the internets, and if you want to, go to it! But it's my blog, so I'm gonna go with what the voices in my head say. (Except the voice that keeps telling me it's wrong to start sentences with conjunctions. Or write in fragments.) Anyway here's your disclaimer. There's probably a 50% chance I'm full of shit. That's like David Broder odds, but at least I write a disclaimer.

PS: it looks like there's some controversy over whether the Indian bit was true. Seems like an odd thing to not know. Is someone whitewashing the shennanigans, or was the whole Indian thing just a PR smear against those vandalous Sons of Liberty? Of course, you can also ask whether being dressed as an Indian that counts as a uniform, or whether you're blending in with the civilian population and using them as shields.

Terrorist organization wins hearts and minds

Via Sullivan, this NYT piece explains how an Iranian backed Hezbollah is buying off the Lebanese with reconstruction.

In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.

“Completing the victory,” he said, “can come with reconstruction.”

Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.

“Today is the day to keep up our promises,” he said. “All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”

They may gotten whupped on militarily, but they're going to win the people of Lebanon, nonetheless. And in a democracy, that buys political power. So Israel fought to install democratically elected state-sponsored terrorists next door. Sounds to me like winning the battle, but losing the war.

Lastly, do I really need to draw the analogy between this:

Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.

And our reconstruction of Iraq? It's not just a matter of money: we've spent well over $10,000 US for every one of the 27 million people in Iraq. Could we have leveraged that differently, in a way which made their lives better? We'll never know. We can try to help Lebanon rebuild and compete with the Iranian influence, but let's face it: locally they're going to do better than we can. It's already more personal and better managed than our response to Katrina.

Duh

This morning it occurs to me that the line from Animal Farm is actually more like "Four legs good, two legs better." (probably still a misquote)

Someday I'll reread those books, but I'm a little afraid to at the moment.

Four legs bad, two legs good.

The Daily Show highlights the sudden shift in administration propoganda from "Stay the Course" to "Adapting to win". You've got to see it to believe it.

Says Steward: "You see that's the beauty of propaganda. It has no internal logic or integrity to violate."

It's a good clip if you've ever read 1984, (though one could argue that Animal Farm fits better).

"Fixing" the War Crimes Act

Not to bring up old shit, but I'd wanted to write about this before I left for Bermuda. While on the topic, I'll mention that while no one at the wedding had a problem with Americans, a few people expressed critical views of our administration. Very very critical.


Via Washington Post, it looks like Bush wants a "ammendment" (retraction) of portions of 1990's War Crime laws. The purpose is to reduce the chances that our institutions will be penalized for not following them.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.

"People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope," said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.

I soo want to hear the debate on this one.

Argument 1:
Dear Sirs and Madams of Congress,

We need to rewrite the 1996 War Crimes Act to reflect post 9-11 reality. The simple truth is that we are at war with an insidious enemy, an enemy who is evil to the core and wants to destroy us and all we hold dear. These evil terrorists have no remose and are utterly devoid of any human qualities. They are more demon than human. These evil demons of Islamofascim are the greatest threat the nation has ever faced. They are a bigger threat than the Communists, the Nazis, and homosexuals all combined. Fortunately we have discovered a way to combat Commie-Nazi gay demons, and that is to strip them naked, place women's underwear on their head and make them form a pyramid.

Without this crucial tool in our arsenal, the fight on terrorevilradicalbadness will be doomed. Some might say that these measures have never been required in the past, that our forefathers would look upon us with shame for treating people this way. Some might point out that as recently as the eighties we were involved in a Cold War and nobly faced down our enemies in a world perpetually on the brink of human annhiliation without resorting to such treatments. But those people are on the side of the islamo-fascist commie-nazi gay demon enemies! If the only way to protect the world from anarchy and keep from shitting our beds in rank cowardly fear is to use women's underwear as a weapon then we must find the resolve to do it!

Thank-you and God bless.

Argument 2:
Dear Sirs and Madams of Congress,
It has come to our attention that it might be determined in a court of law that we're been committing War Crimes right and left. If it's not too much trouble, could you pass some legislation to cover our ass? Thanks. Oh by the way, we're not running for elections anymore, but Congress is in a few months. Step in line quick, because if we go down we're taking you with us.

Which sounds most likely to you?

Alright, while on the toture theme- the honest truth is I'd rather people be stripped naked and stacked like a pancake than be waterboarded, or stripped naked, sprayed with water and put in a 50 degree room. But on top of the message it sends the world when we back out of legislation based on the Geneva Conventions, on top of ecouraging mistreatment of our POWs, and on top of the implication that the government should be allowed to first break the law and then use that as impetus to force a change in it, I doubt this stuff is all that effective. You really think these hardcore, "trained in terror camps to lie and use the media against us" terrorists are going to crack over underwear games? We might get the less sophisticated bystander or accidental pick-up types to break with psychosexual mindfucks, but do those people know anything useful?

As a bigger point, what kind of assholes don't follow a War Crime bill that's only a decade old and then go back to the very people who passed it and ask for a repeal? Those criminal embarassments are not making the US a better place, and their rank ineptitude implies they probably aren't making us any safer either.

Once upon a time the greatness of the US was self-evident in that we not only took the moral high road, we owned it and protected it with the force of law. This? This is pathetic.

Math...harder than it looks.

Kevin Drum indulges in a bit of wishful thinking and hopes that next-generation lie detectors can help catch terroists in airports.

Even in a test environment, the machine missed 15% of "terrorists" and incorrectly flagged 8% of innocent travelers. Cogito's goal is to get that to 10% and 4%, which is still far too high to be of very much value.

This technology isn't ready for prime time yet, not least because sticking people inside an MRI machine at airports isn't exactly a feasible concept. But I wouldn't be surprised if a better and more reliable version of this technology were available within five to ten years. If, say, it could replicate Cogito's planned accuracy, and the two were combined, the resulting device might have a 99% chance of catching terrorists and only a .1% rate of false positives. That would be genuinely useful.

Let's see whether this holds up to a quick analysis. The 99% end looks pretty good. Even a large terror cell with say 2 dozen memebers would be unlikely to get a member through. Looks promising. However, a 0.1% rate of false positives is 1/1000. That sounds pretty good at first, but a decently sized airport like BWI gets 54,088 passengers a day. That's 54 potential terroists to process every day, from a single airport. So you're looking tens of thousands of suspects per year, just from one airport. Multiply that by a few dozen airports, and you're in for a pretty big haystack to search for that same 24 member terror cell. How many hundreds of thousands of people a year can we delay, detain, or investigate?

So on Thursday morning my girlfriend and I got up at 4:30 to catch a plane to Bermuda. After a sleepy but uneventful subway from Manhattan to JFK, we discovered that Thursday was a really bad day to travel internationally. Bermuda was beautiful: more on that another day. As for the airports, imagine how much faster it would be if we all just traveled nude. I’m joking of course, but follow the hypothetical. Even with buck naked passengers, a terrorist on a suicide mission probably wouldn’t quibble over stuffing a condom full of “liquid explosives” up the poop chute. So unless you add cavity searches to the already ridiculous proposal, it probably won’t make us any safer.

So while, I don’t object to the regulation of liquids when there is a good reason, I think naked transit (preceded by a cavity search) is the only way to be sure no one has smuggled explosives on a plane. That having been said, it seems like the better method of protection is to be less reactionary, and go after the source. That’s why I support the war in Iraq, which has finally brought Saddam to trial for 9/11. (Ha, ha, just messing with you.) In fact, it's why I support the solid policework of the UK that identified the terrorists and then their plot. It’s difficult to identify the bad guys and learn their plans, but ultimately that's more effective than guessing the plans and hoping to identify them perpetrating. Two minutes of brainstorming will show that we’ll never be prepared for every terrorism disaster that could occur. Our best recourse is to identify the the terrorists before they strike. Beyond that we have a few other things to deter terror. We can limit the number of people who want to be terrorists by promoting pacifying institutions. By that I mean not just democracy, but Baywatch, Jack Daniels, the Beach Boys, air conditioning, dentistry, peace, love, rock’n’roll, and all the other mindless shit that effectively opiate the Western Hemisphere. We should limit terrorist capabilities by having informants among them, limiting their travel, and cutting off their funds. But most of all, we should limit their accomplishments by not shitting ourselves and invading an unrelated country every time they say “boo”.

As Roger says:

This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW [4th generation warfare] struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.It's now part of our life.

Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.

It seems like practical advice to me. That’s why I’m pretty sure we won’t follow it. You never know though, once we all get used to the cavity searches, maybe they’ll turn out to be fun.

Link Credit: Battlepanda

Never thought I'd say this...

...but I miss the days when conservative bloggers used to whine that the press just isn't reporting the good news out of Iraq. Without the cheerleading, all we have is the depressing news reports, and even more depressing charts. (data via Iraq Index) Violence is at to the point where a country 1/10 our size is getting 9/11 scale casualties every month. What is the exit strategy for the average Iraqi?

Faith in the internets restored

Faith in graduate school, gets a minor boost as well.

Grad School Fatigue and a Failure of Google

Sucks writing a thesis. So close, and yet so much left to do. As I scrolled through my mind for a suitable image, I remembered the tough-guy sailor in Master & Commander who had "Hold Fast" tattooed across his knuckles. I could really use something like that. I wanted to at least get an image of it, but I can't find one on Google. Notice how disapointed I become when Google can't immediately serve up whatever ecclectic reference pops into my head? That's a testimony to the power of the internet and the fickleness of humans (or at least me). I'm still miffed though. Google, when you become self-aware, you've got a scolding coming.

Hillary Clinton

I haven't much liked H. Clinton since she cosponsored the flag-burning bill. (Isn't it just my luck that I'll be moving to NYC soon?) Her move towards central social conservative values (video game hearings) is a calculated effort to garner some bipartisan support without really sacrificing any Democratic sacred cows. Just the same, Kos talks about a sweeping undercurrent of discontent in the rank and file.

That was actually my first thought when I heard Bill Clinton was campaigning for Lieberman. There are plenty of reasons why Joe is going down. He's pro-war and socially conservative, with closer ties to the DC establishment than his constituency. Suppose he goes. Who is next? Maybe a senator from New York. I think Bill Clinton supported a man who largely stabbed him in the back during the impeachment days mostly to provide political cover for his wife's move to the center. If voters decide they need fresh blood, well there aren't many politicians more "establishment" than Hillary Clinton.

Comic relief

Since the last comedy link was a little heavy on the soul, I give you something a little different. This 1965 film on the evils of pornography (approximately PG 15, I wouldn't view it at work) is meant to be scary, but is really quite funny if you think about it. If you like the 9 minute sampler, you can look for the whole half-hour program.

Credit Link: Hit and Run

UPDATE: My labmate sends me an edited version that's even funnier.

Anti-Semitism I

I really didn't understand why neocons were so quick to play the "anti-semitism" race card against various people who have pointed out that the Irsraeli incursion into Lebanon is against US interests. On the other hand it may be anti-Semite racism is more prevalent then I've been led to believe from (and I hate this phrase) "The Ivory Tower" at UPenn. Maybe surrounded by a large Jewish population my local experience is just too mixed to carry the level of bigotry found elsewhere (kind of the way New Yorkers aren't as homophobic as the South). Anyway, I've been very dismissive of the concept that people are opposed to the Irsraeli war out of anti-Semitism.

And then comedy stepped in. Watch this video from Borat/Ali G (link credit: Atrios). Certainly that's not the most liberal or enlightened crowd, but it is scary to see a pack of Americans singing, clapping, and cheering along to "throw the Jew down the well". It's a bizzare sort of comedy: I guess meant to be funny, but really kind of scary if you think about it.

Anyway, now I wonder whether anti-Semitism is more than just a convenient shield, and might actually be a valid issue.

Apostate day

Slightly skewed reflections on a mixed bag of events:

First up, is RobertFarley’s post, “Condi”. (I still object to the trend where powerful women are called by their first names rather than their last.) He points out that Dr. Rice has not managed to quell the violence in Lebanon/Israel, (assuming that was her intent). A lot of liberals are reading into that, and finding her weak or ineffectual. All of which is possible. Mark me down as undecided. The Middle-East is tough. Still, I can’t help but wonder what Bill Clinton would have done had he been president. I’m betting he would have had his ass flown out there for peace talks by day 4. He was so a lover, not a fighter.

But really, I introduce Dr. Rice only to segue into the most bizarre link to her I’ve seen in a long time. Evidently, she keeps a hand in with the theoretical physicists, and participated in one of their little joke prognostication sessions for a conference. They have a panel to judge the most surprising discovery in the field, and she suggested “the discovery of stable black hole remnants with associated physics indicative of noncommutative spacetime”. I don’t like her politics, but I do give her credit. That's some high power intelectual bullshit. Most places she goes, she’s going to be the smartest person in the room (with increasingly better odds the closer she is to the White House).

Second, here’s credit to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who in the course of her unusual letter detailing why Middle-Easterners hate us, includes this tidbit:

The Iraqi's perception is that we are all powerful. We watch them from space with technology they cannot even imagine. Surely if we wanted to turn on his electricity we could do so. He has no idea how large the problem is but he knows we can do anything. He was angry. Eventually his air conditioning began running and his anger cooled.

Overall the letter is a little…um, overgeneralized? Pedantic? I hate to copy Ann Driscoll, but “sophomoric” hits the nail on the head. (Side note: Evidently it’s ok to rip on Iraqis on the internet. Probably it’s a technology they cannot even imagine.) And so while it pains me to agree with her, I must confess that I too have a pet theory that Iraq would be much better off if we’d managed to get them better electricity. I recently suffered the loss of my home air conditioning, and it made me rather pissed at the world. If I’d lost not just AC, but all power, and I lived in an equatorial region where people are shot for wearing shorts…well, I’d probably go apeshit after the first year or two. So Lanky’s pet theory on counterinsurgency: provide AC. (Also, I get mean when I have a toothache, so dentistry is also key.) Air conditioning and dentistry. It doesn’t escape me that these sound simple and stupid. And pedantic. And it’s outrageous that some asshole sitting at a computer (ie me) might suggest to a country with 14,000 casualties in the last 6 months, that the “real issue” was a lack of air conditioning. But at some level, I believe AC is really important. People do crazy shit in the heat. So whatever craziness prompted Schmidt’s epistle, that part at least resonated with the craziness in my head. (I share because I'm honest, at least I have the grace to be embarassed.)

Third. I hadn’t wanted to blog about Mel Gibson, until my girlfriend asked why everyone is talking about the bigoted nonsense coming out of Mel Gibson’s mouth, rather than the fact that he was risking people’s lives by drunk driving. Perhaps she noticed because she’s a physician. I’ve blogged before on the Draconian punishments imposed on California physicians caught with a DUI. They can lose their licenses and have their careers destroyed. Since Mel’s a celebrity, people seem to not care about irresponsible life-endangering behavior. He will probably get probation and a few weeks on a shady ranch. Yes, Mel’s worldview makes him an asshole. But it’s supposedly within his rights to be that kind of asshole if he chooses. If he wants to dress up in a white hood, or burn crosses on his lawn, that’s his individual choice. But when he decides to go twice the speed limit while drunk, it crosses the line from a simple asshole to public menace asshole (also known as a "criminal"). I have no objection to people pointing out he’s a reprehensible person, but let’s not lose sight of the fact than he was arrested for a substantial crime that goes way beyond racial slurs. (Even if he’s a psycho like Tom Cruise, at least Cruise isn’t putting people’s lives in danger.)

And finally, there’s this gem from The Hill. A Republican’s military service record is being questioned by Democrats. When conservatives do this isn’t it called “swift-boating”?