September 29, 2007
Dollars and Cents
"Government Accountability Office analysts have made a preliminary estimate of a ten year cost of U.S. military strikes against Iran, including economic effects and the incremental debt service. They conclude this new war may cost at least $4.7 trillion." [Not a real quote.] A story coming to your newspaper soon... Of course, the immediate costs of bombs and sorties would be relatively minimal. But it's reasonable to assume wider repercussions, particularly regarding oil prices. And in a worst case we could see regional conflicts explode, including possibly a revolution in Pakistan and the beginnings of WWIII. My own guess is that a war with Iran would cost the U.S. a minimum of ten trillion dollars. That's a lot of fancy cigars, cognac, private jets, and assorted luxuries for the parasitic military industrial complex, but would be ruinous for 99% of Americans. I haven't seen much speculation about specific dollar costs, but perhaps the notion should be thrown a bit more forcefully into the mix when discussing the possibility of the White House launching a new war against its favorite Nazi Voodoo bogeyman.
September 26, 2007
The Senator from Likud
In a 76-22 vote, the U.S. Senate today approved the so-called Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the 2008 Defense appropriations bill. Kyl-Lieberman is a non-binding "sense of the Senate" statement which nevertheless carries a moral weight easily translated into policy. In effect, the amendment identifies the government of Iran as a threat to the vital national interests of the United States, suggests a number of specific areas where a confrontation with Iran should be undertaken, puts a large bipartisan majority of the Senate on record favoring such confrontation over diplomacy, and generally invites the White House to provoke Iran wherever possible.
September 24, 2007
Pardon Our Dust
At about 9:00 a.m. DC time EP will upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type. The upgrade — if all goes well — should take approximately half an hour for the site to work normally, though probably things will still be under adjustment in the background for several hours. In terms of EP's layout the most visible change is on the Archives pages, where secondary pages make navigation to a year and month easier, and guests are listed with the headlines instead of independently. A more subtle but much more important change has to do with comments, where not only is Typekey login finally working, but there's now much more flexibility in posting comments. Essentially, we've leapfrogged a couple generations of comments technology. This new platform is really cutting edge. And I hope that with it being easier to post comments the EP community can find new ways to connect. A little change, things look pretty much the same, a lot more flexibility: Please let me know what you think and whether it works!
September 18, 2007
Now He Tells Us!
Alan Greenspan Writes a Typical Beltway Memoir
By Werther*
As the Bush administration comes corkscrewing back to earth, like one of the early V-2 test shots that nearly obliterated its own launch team, the trickle of self-justifying memoirs from the perpetrators is widening into a flood. For sheer three-hanky mawkishness, nothing will probably be able to match the forthcoming cri de coeur of that noble martyr, Colin Powell. And Douglas Feith's impending autohagiography will doubtless win the championship for impudent effrontery. But until then, we can satisfy ourselves with Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence, now on sale at your local bookstore.
September 12, 2007
Now We Know Who's Nuts
The people ruining the planet are, it turns out, just as nuts as we thought. Perhaps not absolutely necessary, but nice to have some empirical confirmation. Exhibit "A" is research reported the other day in the Los Angeles Times, showing that liberals and conservatives have two different, seemingly hardwired, cognitive styles. To paraphrase: liberals are able to think critically while conservatives are not. Exhibit "B" is a different sort of psychological analysis very much in line with the above — research undertaken over forty years by Dr. Robert Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba (an inspiration for much of John Dean's current writing), which shows that perhaps up to 25% of the population is made up of 'authoritarian followers' impervious to rational argument. Bob's work is first-rate, central to our understanding of our predicament. He'll be my guest on the EP podcast the show of September 28th, but before then I commend to you the free e-book (pdf) he wrote in 2006, putting his findings in context for the general public.
September 9, 2007
Remembering 9/11
To the profound consternation of the political establishment, 9/11 skeptics have not only not gone away but are flourishing. A site that keeps track, worth noting, is Patriots Question 9/11, run by the persistent Alan Miller. To date, he's amassed the names of about 800 prominent individuals who to varying degrees question the official story — recent additions include Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, a former senior staff member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Dr. Lynn Margulis, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, J. Marx Ayers, former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council, and Commander Ralph Kolstad (USN, Ret.), former 'Top Gun' trainer. Needless to say, the mainstream media hasn't covered any of these defections. If you're curious and open-minded, or perhaps even already a 9/11 skeptic, it's definitely worth browsing through Patriots Question 9/11 to see the mix. There may be a few raving nutballs but it would be grossly unfair to impugn such a distinguished group with a broad brush. In short, it's reasonable to suppose that unless and until better answers are forthcoming 9/11 skepticism will continue to grow louder.
September 8, 2007
Dealing With Mass Murderers
In Washington's fevered hallucination, process — purely mechanical process stripped of abstract principle — replaces substance so insidiously that even the overwhelming majority of administration policy critics accepts the conventional debate. Arguments over Iraq, however, should not be about whether the surge has worked, about what might happen if US troops leave precipitously, about the myriad enticing possibilities of carving it up in order to bring peace, or about any such details. No, the real argument should be, and has always been, that it was wrong to attack Iraq. Period.
September 2, 2007
A Peeper's Paradise
If you include the occasional stool pigeon, at its height the East German secret police, or Stasi, may have employed as much as one quarter of the population. Among regular informants, an astonishing six percent of the total (roughly) had not yet reached the age of eighteen. The "shield and sword" of the Communist Party, the Stasi nevertheless failed to prevent Germans on both sides from tearing down the Berlin wall in November 1989, and today what can be recovered of Stasi files is open to public inspection while at least a few former Stasi officers have been brought to justice for their crimes. One wonders: if the Stasi had only possessed the kind of information technology routinely used by the American government in 2007, would its fate have been the same?
September 1, 2007
The Buzzing Flies
Sarko's New French Foreign Policy
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — One of the best known fables by the 17th century French poet Jean de la Fontaine tells of a fly that buzzed naggingly around a horse pulling a heavy coach up a steep hill. When the horse made it to the top, the self-important fly gave himself, and his buzzing, credit for getting the coach up the hill.
The new French foreign policy of Nicolas Sarkozy looks like that. Flies buzz around, looking for some event they can claim to influence.
