November 30, 2005
What the Heck is Wrong with These People?
I guess it's normal in Texas to think that human beings were waltzing with dinosaurs six thousand years ago on the surface of the earth. Or to find Jesus in mud splatters on a pickup truck.
Seriously, these people should be called 'radical fundamentalists' and their leaders 'radical clerics'. There's zero difference between them and their erstwhile opponents who espouse radical Islam.
Rendition Update
Now the London Times and the BBC are reporting allegations that UK airports have been used for torture flights. Investigations continue, the scandal widens...
November 28, 2005
Fallows in Atlantic Monthly
People who are concerned about the US invasion of Iraq should not miss James Fallows' article "Why Iraq Has No Army" in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Along with what Gen. Odom has been saying this is one of very best analyses out there. One gets a bonus in this issue from Nir Rosen, "If America Left Iraq," also well worth pondering.
My only critique of these views, and most other anti-war comment, is the presumption that things have not gone well because of 'mistakes,' or 'poor-planning,' or 'lousy staff-work,' or whatever other reason there may be. Odom probably comes closest to nailing my objections by pointing out that the strategy was flawed from the start, but even he doesn't go far enough.
To my mind it seems eminently reasonable to assume that those really in charge -- not the hamster generals and ambassadors kept at spinning the wheels in their cages -- that is, the gang in charge at the White House, knew perfectly well from the outset how the war was going to go, and preferred it that way. Yes, I think they deliberately set out to obtain a failing, more or less perpetual war against not only Iraq but the Muslim world. Why they did it is the really interesting question.
Rendition Blowback
Ever since Dana Priest's revelations about US run torture camps in Europe interest has been building as more details emerge. Planespotters are already making a pretty good job of tracking the rendition flights. Local and national European authorities are asking questions. Naturally the Bush gang thinks it's above the law and can continue to torture and kill any detainee it chooses with impunity. (This has been obvious for years, but it's nice to get recent confirmation from Secretary of State Powell's former aide, Col. Wilkerson.) The EU, however, is more culturally constrained to resist government-sponsored torture and murder, and there's the rub.
November 27, 2005
Congress and You
This is the last article I'd had published in the MSM. The idea is that the size of the House of Representatives should be expanded, by a lot. I'd originally had the idea (on my own) when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Encouraged by the Chicago Tribune's publication of my first ever Op-ed submission (on Paul Douglas and US trade policy) I tried to think of a sure-fire subject for a second column. Somehow I asked myself enough questions about basic assumptions in politics to come up with the notion, which I researched and wrote up. That would have been sometime in 1986. Since then I often had opportunities to float the idea in D.C. and while I was posted abroad. In all that time, in what must have been hundreds of conversations (seemed like, but at a minimum many dozens -- it was my standard ice-breaking 'you won't believe this, but' talk) I never met anybody who'd thought of it before, including staff on Capitol Hill and even members themselves.
Every once in a while, about three times in total, I think, I noticed an article along similar lines in the press, but none of these led to anything. I would've gone on more or less minding my own business about the subject but in the last presidential campaign I had the opportunity to sit down at a small dinner for Dennis Kucinich. Gamely, I seized a moment to try to explain the problem with Congress -- starting, as usual, with the question 'can you tell me the last time the size of the U.S. House increased?' which, of course, nobody ever knows -- only to be met with resounding silence.
The subject changed immediately to defense policy and that was that. The incident peeved me to the point where I thought I'd try writing the idea up and sending it around. One recipient, Dr. Halton Arp (a renegade U.S. astrophysicist now more or less in exile in Germany) liked it quite a bit and suggested I try to publish. Until then I hadn't taken publishing it as a serious option, but I remembered that I still knew an editor at the LA Times who was kind of friendly towards me, so I sent her my draft. She liked it and indicated they might publish it, but at that point I did something I've never done before: I kept sending her revised versions. Normally you just send your final draft to an editor and if they accept it you work back and forth off that copy. Here, I must have sent in about seven rough drafts before she said 'Stop!' Anyhow, they still published it, and though they cut a lot I must say I think they did a great job editing.
The Op-ed was later repeated on the Common Dreams site, where it remains.
Here is the text (note that the email at the bottom is no longer valid):
