The Opinionated Bastard

To the Left: Capitalism is not universally bad.
To the Right: Capitalism is not universally good.

We don't have a capitalist society in this country, we have a "democratic capitalist" society. Marx might have been right in that unfettered capitalism can lead inevitably to fascism, but not in a democratic society. In a democratic society, capitalism has lead to more wealth for everyone, and has proved its self superior to any other system.

So capitalism must exist in a system of checks and balances. The market always wins though, so those checks and balances must be carefully defined. You have to make tradeoffs. While the minimum wage raised the standard of living for some people, it also increased unemployment.

To the Left: Unions are not always right
To the Right: Businesses are not always right

Personal note: My mother was the shop steward in her union, but she hated their politics. My grandfather was imprisoned in Leavenworth for running a labor union, but though Communism was evil.

While workers are the means of production, that production is in competition with other workers. The market always wins. The union leadership is not always reasonable, neither is management. Don't shortchange your workers, don't strike yourself out of a job.

To the Left: Left wing totalitarian regimes are evil
To the Right: Right wing totalitarian regimes are evil

While the US did a certain amount of support for right wing regimes during the Cold War, its substantially backing off from that now. What both sides have yet to realize is that ALL totalitarian regimes are evil, and the US should now work to eliminate them. Both the right and the left should applaud whenever one of these regimes falls, not selectively applaud based on the stated politics of the regime.

To the Left: We are not all going to become slaves to a conspiracy of multi-national corporations. Even in cases where actions by someone can be traced back to the profit motive, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Capitalism works. It makes good movies, but the world is a lot more complex then Noam Chomsky thinks.

To the Right: Individual power is a precious and fragile thing. Freedom of choice is important. Its too easy for corporations to break the law with minimal consequences.

To the Left: The death penalty is appropriate in certain cases
To the Right: The death penalty as applied in this country is rarely appropriate.

To the Left: Being a Christian is not a bad thing, its a good thing.
To the Right: The first lesson of Christianity: Watch out for the church elders.

Being a Christian used to imply the virtues of tolerance, charity and compassion. While I think that's still true, that's not the Christians who show up on television, they are always judgmental, greedy and uncompassionate. Ironically, this is the same thing Christ told us to watch out for. Its the church elders who nailed him to the cross. For an extreme example of this, see Iran.

To the Left: Family Values Work
To the Right: That doesn't make them the law.

Children who can grow up in whole, stable homes in general will do better then others. That doesn't mean that should become the law. We all have to make our own way in the world, and its not clear that growing up in a whole but unstable home would be better.

To the Left: Abortion is bad
To the Right: Choice is good

Its shameful the number of abortions that are performed in this country. That doesn't mean it should be illegal, instead we should promote alternatives like emergency contraception. Ultimately, people have to have the freedom to live their lives, but we should work together to try to reduce the abortion rate by 75% (the effectiveness of emergency contraception).

Something that no one quite seems to get in this whole WMD thing.

Also Titled:

Even Saddam thought Iraq had WMD

After having dozens of Bush-hating friends tell me "Bush lied", and after reading pages and pages of everything Bush said (gotta love the internet), I have to say that Bush never lied. Nor did he say that we knew for sure that Iraq had WMD. Instead, Bush and his spokesmen were very explicit about we knew for sure and what we didn't know. The best you can approximate really is that Bush said:

"We think Iraq has WMD, and that's a bad thing".

Note that Bush's statements were summarized differently by the media, but you can't blame Bush for how the media edits his words. Of course, we know now that we were wrong, but the most interesting thing about all this is that what David Kay found Iraq was that while Iraq had plenty of programs _trying_ to make WMD. However, in general, the scientists were lying to Saddam. Specifically Jafar Jafar, the head of weapons research was lying to Saddam. This makes some of the statements by Saddam about "unleashing a rain of fire upon US troops if they invaded" make a little more sense. Saddam thought he had weapons he didn't have.

The irony of all this is incredible to me. Currently, I keep fantasizing about having Tommy Chong play Hussien, with Cheech Marin as Jafar in a Saturday Night Live skit.

Saddam (played by Chong): Dude, I need to score some killer weapons to keep these Americans off my back, man.

Jafar: (played by Cheech): No can do, dude.

Saddam: Well, then I'm going to have to kill you then, dude.

Jafar: No, wait dude, I know how to build some killer weapons, but its going to be expensive. I just thought you wouldn't want to spend the money.

Saddam: Cool, Man, here's $1B.

Jafar: (bugs eyes) Bitchin' Man, I can get...uh...make some killer powder with this man...

(...Time Passes...)

Jafar: (snorting from bag of white powder, his "digs" are much nicer now...) This is some killer stuff man.

(Saddam Enters)

Saddam: Hey, dude, how's it hanging? Got any cool weapons for me.

Jafar: (looks nervous, looks around wildly, sees white powder, looks back at Saddam) Uh.... Yeah man! I got this killer powder, its, uh, Anthrax. Yeah, it will really fuck you up man...it'll totally waste 'em.

Saddam: Great! Give me that (takes bag of white powder) I'm going to load it into my Scuds right now!

(leaves)

Jafar: (dials phone) Hello, Travelocity? I need a ticket to Kuwait...

Because I refuse to be spoon fed by the media, I subscribe to the DOD, State Department, and White House mailing lists that send out transcripts of briefings and interviews by administration officials. Recently, I received this, which has to be one of the best descriptions of the administrations strategy in the War on Terror I’ve read.

The key insight President Bush seems to have had is what I would call the Vince Lombardi strategy: The best defense is a good offense. If we react defensively to terrorism, gradually our civil liberties will erode, because the only way to prevent terrorism in America would be to implement all the things we’ve fought against for years in America.

While some politicians (Kerry for instance) have argued that terrorism should be handled as a police activity, that’s exactly the wrong tactic. It gives the terrorists all the initiative and us none. Given the strong sense of liberty in this nation, a defensive strategy against terrorism is the same thing as doing nothing, because too many Americans would be to resistant.

Once you realize how much more sense it makes to take an offensive strategy in the war on terror then a defensive strategy, then the invasion of Iraq makes a lot more sense. Its merely one battle in a wider war.

Anyways, here’s the original text:

Transcript of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith’s Speech to the Political Union, University of Chicago, April 14, 2004

I’ll be writing for awhile about why I’m supporting Bush in this election, and trying to talk about both his good and bad points. This first part is about Iraq, because I consider that the most important issue this election. I probably won’t be talking about Kerry much, because he seems to be running on the I’m not Bush platform. That doesn’t impress me, Joseph Stalin isn’t Bush either, that doesn’t mean I’d vote for him if I was upset at Bush (which I’m not).

To me, the number one issue this election is the war in Iraq. To me, this issue breaks down into four parts:

• The decision to enter Iraq in the first place. Grade: A
• Building Worldwide Support. Grade: C-
• Winning the War. Grade: A+
• Planning for the Peace. Grade: A
• Winning the Peace. Grade: B
• Going the distance. Grade: A

I’ll cover each of these in detail.

Come to think of it, that’s most days.

So Bush announced that we’ve figured out that Russia isn’t going to invade West Germany any more, probably because:

1. The Cold War ended 13 years ago.
2. West Germany doesn’t even exist any more.

That is, he announced he’s going to move about 70,000 troops from where they are in Europe back to the US. Basically, it costs us a lot of money to have bases in Europe that make less and less sense every year.

So this should be a no-brainer, right? Clinton or Bush Sr. should have done this years ago. Instead, we have these political flacks talking about how its a bad idea. And by political flack, I mean Retired General Wesley Clark.

One of the things that bugs me the most about the Kerry campaign is that they just don’t seem to know how to pick their battles. Why are they arguing about this? All Bush has to say is “Well, none of the people at the Pentagon seem to be worried about Russia invading Germany anytime soon, so it was time to reduce our presence in Europe.” If he does that, or more likely, if his proxy does that, it will just be yet another time I’ve seen the Kerry campaign make an issue of something Bush does that is obviously the right thing.

Plus, to be perfectly honest, its time the EU nations started providing for more of their own defense instead of mooching off us so much. Bush probably can’t say that publicly, but the line about us not being worried about the Soviet Union, since it no longer exists, is just too obvious.

Here are some sites that have much better military analysis then the news media. One of the reasons I’m supporting GWB in this election is that I’ve found that the people who do that sort of analysis on TV are terrible. These guys aren’t. They’re not a pretty boy given a briefing on terrorism, they’re guys who have been doing this for real for a long time.

GlobalSecurity.org This is the place to go if you want the sort of no-nonsense analysis you’d expect a cigar-chomping Tom Clancy character to provide.

Strategy Page These guys know their stuff when it comes to military strategy.

Kerry calls for Rumsfeld to resign:

“Yesterday, the Schlesinger panel released their report which found that much of the responsibility for setting the conditions for the abuse at Abu Ghraib can be attributed to failures at highest levels of our government. Today the Fay report will be released and will recommend punitive action for those in our military who were directly involved.

Er, actually, the report said that most of the responsibility was the fault of the guard and supervisors of the prison, but that the Pentagon should have done a better job of managing in the first place.

“But what is missing from all these reports is accountability from the senior civilian leaders in the Pentagon and in the White House. From the bottom of the chain of command all the way to the top, there needs to be accountability. The Schlesinger report makes clear that Secretary Rumsfeld was responsible for setting a climate where these types of abuses could occur.

Er, no, it actually didn’t go all the way to Rumsfeld. As the civilian head, he’s not supposed to be messing with operational details. ScrappleFace has the funny version of this.

“By failing to plan to win the peace, by failing to make sure our troops received the proper training, equipment, reinforcement and command guidance, and by failing to take corrective actions once all of this became apparent, Secretary Rumsfeld did not demonstrate the leadership required from a Secretary of Defense.

Well, he fired the person in charge the prison, and started the investigation that brought up all these charges.

“That is why today I am calling on Secretary Rumsfeld to resign effective immediately. In addition, I call on the President to appoint an independent investigation to review the entire decision making process that led to these abuses and provide a comprehensive set of reforms so that we can ensure that this never happens again.

Did anyone here read “Plan of Attack”?

One of the things I like about Rumsfeld is that he is constantly questioning himself and the Pentagon. While Woodward’s thesis was that Rumsfeld made it “too easy” to go to war, I didn’t see that. What I saw was the ideal Secretary of War (we haven’t had a Secretary of Defense since 9/11): Someone who brought the military around to the diplomatic and political realities. He pushed the Pentagon to give the President real options. The original plan which read like a 1950 invasion plan: bomb the shit out of the Iraqis until they surrender. There would have been 100,000 civilian casualties, easy.

So while 150 prisoners may have been abused, its also true that it was the Pentagon that independently found out it was going on and shut it down. Meanwhile, because Rumsfeld pushed the Pentagon out of their comfort zone, thousands of Iraqi lives were saved vs. the original battle plan.

If you fired everyone who made a mistake, there would be no one working. Rumsfeld’s job is to be the bad cop to Powell’s good cop. That is, don’t mess with the US or we’ll sick Rumsfeld on you!

One of the reasons I started blogging was because I signed up for email transcripts of press conferences by the State Department and Military a year before the Iraq war, and I was stunned by the distortions of the media.

So while I’m not taking any position on whether Rumsfeld is right or wrong in this case, I think that its worth reading what he actually said, instead of having it spoon fed to you by the media. So here is a transcript as emailed to me by the DOD.

From Here:

While I’m (sort of) on this topic, why doesn’t the United States address the Afghan opium trade by just buying the stuff up? Presumably, farmers would be just as happy to sell their poppies to us, and that would keep them off the market, as well as depriving bad guys of a revenue source. Am I missing something here?

Yes Glenn, you are. In a capitalist society, you have to watch out what you reward. If we started buying the poppies, that would just drive up the price, but the poppies are cheap. If the price rose more farmers would start growing poppies instead of say, food. In other words, in a capitalist society, if you start rewarding something, you get more of it.

You’re obviously not a professor of economics. :-)

I wish the Democrats would learn this simple fact. Paying money to single moms leads to more single moms.

Read about it here:

Endorses him for fighting terrorism.

Wow.

Isreal. Kerry didn’t.

It’s audio

This is by the guy who wrote Losing Bin Laden. He makes the point that most of the guys on Kerry’s team are the same guys from the Clinton administration who dropped the ball for 8 years.

It's official, the terrorists are morons

The Russians are now going to ally with Israel. First they pissed off the French:

only now they want money

Now they've pissed of the Russians, who are going to get advised by Israel.

You know, it didn't really matter that Bush left the Europeans behind, it looks like they're going to catch up.

Here's Kerry on Foreign Policy: If I Were President—Addressing the Democratic Deficit

Americans’ security depends on helping the people of the Middle East see and act on a legitimate vision of peace.

Yeah, we should have democracy in the middle east so that can happen! Oh, wait, that's Bush.

I often fantasize about what would happen if I was the questioner at the Presidential Debates…

Not even a soldier, but some working for an NGO: Inside View From Iraq

Hat tip: pawigo

Weather you support the war or not, all our soldiers lives should be precious.

Here’s a great site with the actual numbers. icasualties.org

It interesting that non-hostile deaths are still about 1/4th of all fatalities in Iraq.

There’s some weird stuff if you look at cause of death by detail. 12 soldiers drowned in Iraq.

September 11, 2001

Madrid, 2003

Beslan, 2004

I admit it, I lost heart today when I heard about the 700 Iraqi police candidates being killed by a car bomb.

Then I read this from The Strategy Page. Yes, we're winning the war on terror. The War in Iraq has helped, but its tough, just like President Bush said it would be.

A while ago I subscribed to the DOD newsbriefs. Rumsfeld is constantly holding Town Hall meetings with soldiers, who universally are better informed, and ask better, tougher questions then the news media. Through that I've learned that Rumsfeld gives our soldiers straightforward, honest answers to some tough questions about what we're doing.

Here's one from yesterday: [go to dod]

First, Read This Article.

One of the things that has bugged me as a righty about the lefty criticism of Iraq is that what we need in Iraq is less bureaucracy, not more oversight.

I think this cartoon says it all:

We need to reform the state department. For decades, they've been the completely useless, filled with rich kids who have never had a real job. One of the main reasons that the rest of the world sees us as so militaristic is because the government ends up relying on our military to do much of our diplomacy because the State Department is such a joke.

How bad is it? We had to put a General in charge of the State Department...

Atrios asks:

When Bush keeps giving speeches saying that “we’re making progress” in Iraq, just what the hell is he talking about?

Here you go Atrios:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

From Centcom:

Iraqi National Guard troops patrolling in the Wasit Province area of the Polish-led Multi-National Division Central South, reported that anti-Iraqi forces blew themselves up as they prepared an Improvised Explosive Device in Suwayra Sept. 19.

The explosion occurred just after midnight killing several anti-Iraqi force personnel as they prepared the IED for Iraqi forces, Iraqi citizens or Multi-National Forces to come upon.

Here is a link to a 90 page FBI document showing a variety of concealable weapons.

Ever since 9/11, I've thought that most of the airport security nonsense was just a placebo, meant to reassure the populace that it was "safe" to travel. That PDF showing me knife after knife that could be slipped past security convinces me even more. Remember that the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters, not guns.

Perhaps the "Arizona" solution is correct, in that the real way to prevent hijacking is not through more airport security but through arming the pilots, and perhaps the passengers.

Either way, I'd rather we spent the billions of the TSA budget elsewhere, perhaps even Iraq.

Juan Cole wrote this great piece called If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

Until the end:

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?

The problem is, in order to make that comparison you also need to talk about what Iraq was like under Saddam. So I've taken Juan's article and interleaved it with a Before and After so you can understand where the Iraqi people are coming from, and why in all these opinion polls they are so positive towards the US. If you look at where they're at now, yeah, its pretty bad. But if you look at where they've been, you can see why they feel they're making progress.

Kerry has been saying that Bush will reinstate the Draft. That's a damn lie.

The short and sweet answer:

We have 140,000 soldiers in Iraq.

Hypothetically, say we want to bring that up to 200,000. That's 60,000 more people.

We have 1.4 million soldiers on active duty. Why would we need to draft anyone?

The long answer:

What we need in Iraq is not soldiers, we need policemen. Most of our soldiers are trained to be soldiers against the Soviet Union (which doesn't exist anymore). Its even worse for NATO soldiers because the Europeans have been much slower to adapt to the end of the Cold War then we have (and we adapted too slowly as it was). So the reality is that while it might be nice to have more soldiers, of a certain type, those people don't exist. A draft wouldn't help that.

We need policemen who speak Arabic, and who understand the Iraqi culture. It turns out there's a whole country full of people willing to be policemen in Iraq. It's called...Iraq! President Bush's plan isn't to send more soldiers to Iraq, President Bush's plan is to train more Iraqis to be policemen.

This has some advantages beyond the obvious ones of language and culture. If an American soldier loses his temper and hits an Iraqi with a nightstick, its a war crime that reflects badly on America. If an Iraqi does it, its a personal crime that reflects badly on that policeman.

Bringing back the draft is just a damn lie by a damn fool.

Check my Stats

Kevin Drum is complaining, but as usual, the left is criticizing a Bush that doesn't exist except in their own imagination.

According to this:

9 Million

New math and science textbooks printed and distributed with pro-Saddam propaganda extracted

Through extensive research, I've been able to recover and translate one of those pro-Saddam textbooks. Here's a quote:

In the late 1600's, our glorious leader, Saddam Hussien, traveled back in time to Poland, and, posing as a man named Leibniz, invented Calculus and then traveled forward to lead our glorious nation to victory defeat against the evil Iranian Kuwati American menace.

When I read the media, I hear things are going to hell.

When I read the soldiers viewpoint, I hear things are going great.

Here's an entry from the WaPo:

The writer, an Army lieutenant general, commands the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq. He previously commanded the 101st Airborne Division, which was deployed in Iraq from March 2003 until February 2004. [read]

The best thing about Monday's is Chrenkoff's "Good News from Iraq" which is also reprinted by the Wall Street Journal:

Good News From Iraq

Here's news on Iraq straight from Iraqi's websites:

Carnival of the Liberated

Nope, you're not reading ScrappleFace. Here's a quote from the Bill O' Reilly Interview from last night:

PRESIDENT BUSH: That’s when you’re supposed to vote. You’ve got to stand tough with these terrorists. You cannot allow the terrorists to dictate whether or not a society can be free or not. Do you remember what happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban pulled the four women off the bus and killed them because they had voter registration cards? I think there had been about three million Afghan citizens who had registered at this point in time. A lot of people said, well, the elections look like they’ve got to be over in Afghanistan, because the Taliban is, too violent to allow the elections to go forward. Today ten million citizens in that country have registered to vote, forty percent of whom are women, which is a powerful statistic.


O’REILLY: The South Vietnamese didn’t fight for their freedom, which is why they don’t have it today.


PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah.

See, we didn't lose the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese were just pussies.

(Yeah, Yeah, I know, I'm a pro Bush website, but this is just politics don't take live so seriously. Besides, its not President Bush who said it really, its Bill O'Reilly.)

In reality, President Bush has learned a lot from the Vietnam war. and one of the biggest lessons is that we've turned over as much as possible to the Iraqis as soon as possible, if not earlier. I think the benefits have been obvious.