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Monday, January 26, 2004
The Draft Inches Closer The Army Reserve, once thought of as a way for enlistees to earn some extra money while serving only one weekend a month except in cases of war or serious emergency, will be radically different in the future, if its commander gets his way. Under a plan spelled out Tuesday by Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, the mobilization system would be changed fundamentally so that Reserve members would be scheduled for mobilization every four or five years for periods of nine to 12 months. I don't really see how this is going to work. People leaving the regular Army are doing so because they'd rather take their chances in the dismal civilian job market than face continued deployment and war. They've watched the Bush administration cut combat pay and medical benefits for both regular and reserve units. Deployed reservists are widely perceived as being given fewer resources and less support than their full-time counterparts. If future deployments are to be longer and more frequent, current laws regarding employer nondiscrimination against reservists will need to be reevaluated. Skilled workers (i.e., more desirable recruits) aren't going to want to give up their paychecks, and companies are going to balk at having their productivity pulled out from under them. This announcement raises another question: between Bush's calls for increased military spending and professed desire to get out of Iraq quickly, why is there a need to squeeze more out of the Reserve? It's possible there are plans for one or more additional regime changes that will keep our troops occupied for the foreseeable future, but I don't think the administration is going to risk it too soon after being so badly burned in the Iraq fiasco. More likely, people are opting out of the Army in droves, and this initiative is a stopgap measure to slow the bleeding. Whatever the reason, it looks like the recently replenished draft boards may soon have something to do. Sunday, January 25, 2004
Made It! "Um...er...ah...[Do you think the media will be affected by bloggers' calling them on their omissions and misrepresentations?] Jeff Jarvis gave a typical rah-rah internet response that didn't really address the question or admit that there is often a bias in media. Oh well. I'd hoped Josh would be the one doing the responding. I even forgot to mention my blog. [smacks self in head with large trout] But Atrios will be on, so it will have been worth it. Arrrgh! I got through on the Blogging of the President show. I told the screener that I thought it wouldn't be possible for the media to recreate what happened to Al Gore this time around. He told me to sit tight while the guests were on, and they'd get to me. The show played while I was on hold, but out of sync with the radio (and I didn't want to hold the phone to my ear for an hour +. So I got the other phone that had the speakerphone capability, plugged in the power and unplugged the phone I was on... Arrrgh! Wednesday, January 21, 2004
2004 Koufax nominee. A very important post from David Neiwert that reminds democrats what their constituency is. Shorter: A lot of people's living standards are falling because of republican policies; if this continues, we're going to wind up like Latin America, with few rich and many poor. It will be the end of the American Dream. We know what to do. Why aren't we doing it? Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Safire Gets Something Right Stop the presses! William Safire has written a thoughtful, reasoned column on the Kurdish problem in Iraq, that gets most of it right, and offers the framework of a potentially workable solution. Now Americans and Kurds need each other's understanding. The U.S. is committed to helping to build a unified Iraq, with no path to secession, and with representation based on geography, not ethnicity. The Kurds, a 20 percent minority in Iraq, are committed only to autonomy within a federal Iraq: they refrain from declaring independence, but require constitutional and security guarantees that they will not be tyrannized again.This is evidence of the capablility of rational thought on the subject of a repressed and dislocated minority. Safire seems to understand the defiance of those determined to resist tyranny, and the justice of reparations for forced relocations and brutality. Given the sympathetic tone of his column, it seems he has even found room in his heart to forgive Kurdish terrorism. Where, then, does his utter contempt for Palestinian aspirations come from? Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Dear Mr Brooks: One reason Democratic voters might be divided is that they have more than one candidate to choose from. Some of them support preemptive war, some support holding terror subjects without trial, and some supported the war in Iraq. One of them might even be nominated. If you're trying to figure out how Democrats will really vote, you might want to get a little into the nuances of their opinions. Find out from those who answered in the affirmative to "Do you support the war in Iraq?" and "Do you support preemptive war" whether they think it was a good idea to invade an unthreatening country based on false premises. I assure you the vast majority do not. They might have very different ideas from the president's about what constitutes a "terror suspect" as well. Pro-life Republican voters hold their noses at Bush's stem-cell policy and small-government Republican voters hold their noses over Bush's Medicare expansion, both to advance their broader interests. Democrats will likewise line up behind their candidate, just as they did in the last election. Although your column is as usual misleading and bereft of any relevant content, please continue to spread the idea that Democrats are in disarray and should not be taken seriously. Every little bit helps. Yours truly, David P.S. If you really want to find out something interesting, take a look at what Republicans think of the defecit. Friday, January 09, 2004
Stunning Hypocricy Watch There's a lot to say about the future of the Kurds in Iraq, but for now I'd just like to point out that their welfare doesn't even factor into the equation. It's all about the inconvenience they might cause other countries. You can get a sense of this listening to Saudi Prince Faisal: "Regimes founded on a confessional or ethnic basis do not help bring stability and territorial integrity to a country," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal said Wednesday. "The danger of starting on the confessional and ethnic road will consequently partition Iraq, threatening our own security."This is from a guy whose country, in an attempt to placate religious extremists (bring stability), allowed religious police the power to summarily punish any and all deviations from orthodox religious practice, even among unbelievers. There isn't a country in the world based more thoroughly on religion, nor one in which ethnic identity (Arab) is more central to the notion of citizenship. Faced with bullshit like this from people who blissfully ignored decades of their suppression and degradation, the Kurds are right to be wary, and to use their current leverage for all it's worth. Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Underclass? What Underclass? I saw this tidbit at WTF Is it Now??, "Army offering sh*tloads of cash to get soldiers to re-enlist." Before clicking on the link, I imagined the sums that would need to be involved to get rational human beings to be away from their families in a distant, hostile desert. Turns out it's "lump payments of between $5,000 and $10,000 for enlisting for at least three years of additional Army service." Out of the $100+ billion we're spending on the Iraq adventure, keeping the I don't know what makes me sicker, that there are people out there for whom such a pittance would be enough to endure up to three more years under enemy fire, or that $63 million is all the Pentagon thinks they're worth. Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Things That Make You Go Ralph While I was sidetracked by the second-worst column, of the day, it seems like everybody else was taking a whack at the worst one. For my money, Billmon hit it the farthest. Brooks Distorts, I Decide Do you ever get the sense that David Brooks is becoming unhinged from reality? Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans. The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.Poor David is only a political commentator. How was he to know that signatories to PNAC's founding statement of principles included Bush's Vice President, Secretary of Defense, his Assistant Secretary of Defense, and his brother, Jeb? Maybe David only paid attention to the Jewish (or "Yiddish") supporters of PNAC. I wonder why. Brooks also thinks Richard Perle has "had almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings." Gee, David, I guess the guy who was chairing the Defence Policy Board following 9/11 and during the run-up to the second Gulf War, had little or no influence on administration policy. What does the DPB do, anyway? Excerpt of Objectives and Scope of Activities from charter:Maybe Perle had meetings with Donald Rumsfeld, who, then communicated with Bush and Cheney. Anything's possible. Or, maybe Brooks' selective use of information supports the point he's trying to make, which would not be supported otherwise. What's that called again? All I can come up with is "filthy" and "disgusting." Update: Quiddity at Uggabugga has a diagram of Perle's microwave apparatus. Monday, January 05, 2004
A Good First Step This is encouraging: The Bush administration has decided to let the Kurdish region remain semi-autonomous as part of a newly sovereign Iraq despite warnings from Iraq's neighbors and many Iraqis not to divide the country into ethnic states, American and Iraqi officials say.As indicated, it's more the result of a desire to keep a lid on tensions in the short term, rather than a principled (or pragmatic) move toward federalism. The idea that the Iraqis will be able to "resolve" the issue in favor of a more, rather than less, unified nation is more hopeful than realistic. After the fall of the Hussein government, the centers of power have arisen from groups with scores to settle and/or threatened interests to protect. Thus we have the Shi'a demanding a full democracy in which they would presumably dominate, Kurds calling for autonomy and recompense for their forced relocation from (coincidentally oil-rich) Kirkuk, and Ba'athists trying to wreck the stability of the whole thing so they can pick up where they left off. As soon as the hand holding the lid on this kettle is removed, it's all too likely to boil over, and that's the case whether provisions are made for regional/ethnic autonomy or not. If they are made, however, the two major groups comprising the vast majority of the population will be in more secure positions, which should be good for stability. Otherwise, there's the grave prospect of a free-for-all in a centralized model that would make governing all but impossible. Saturday, January 03, 2004
Why A Unified Iraq? Juan Cole has an excellent post up concerning the major tasks remaining in the US "war on terror" which includes the following paragraph: 3. Iraq must be given a stable and united government. Allowing it to split up into three parts would guarantee future terrorism. The Sunni Arabs would be left poor and without a petroleum income, and would watch as the Kurds (1000 wellheads) and Shiite Arabs (500 wellheads) got rich. They would have every reason to try to take Kirkuk, where they are about a third of the population or more, by force, to get its 100 wellheads and its pipelines. If they failed, they would be left without a visible means of income, and would quickly become poorer than Jordanians. Their resentments would fuel massive terrorism in the Middle East that would almost certainly eventually touch the US.Unfortunately, what he outlines cannot be accomplished through democratic means. The Shi'a are an absolute majority and, given the chance, would push their advantage over the Sunni (especially) and the Kurds. The latter two groups understandably see themselves as legitimately entitled to the areas under their control, and as owed recompense for Saddam's depradations. In the case of the Kurds, the compensation would include the return of Kirkuk to them. There is no just rationale for a unified Iraq, only the practical considerations Juan enumerated. Iraq is a bogus state, crafted according to British colonial and balance-of-power considerations obtaining in the early 20th century. The only reasons people come up with now have to do with the fact that the world community's gotten used to it as it is (was), and it would cost us a lot of inconvenience adjusting to any change. Sunni Iraq was given preeminence over the rest arbitrarily. The Ba'athists used their position to steal from, bully, and murder their compatriots. Their potential "resentments" pursuant to losing their advantage have no greater intrinsic legitimacy than the likely resentments of the (much more numerous) Shi'a and Kurds at having sovereignty over themselves and their land diminished, which would be a prerequisite to a united government. On top of this, the Bush administration has been talking about "liberation" and "democracy" for Iraq and the Arab world generally. In order to wind up with a unified Iraq that doesn't inflame Sunni resentment, it will necessarily have to be led by a Sunni, which implies a steady diet of repression and expropriation of and from the Kurds and Shi'a. Instead of Iraq becoming a beacon of American-created Democracy, it will become to the Muslim world a (-nother) beacon of American perfidy. The Shi'a will most likely turn to Iran-style fundamentalism, and the disenfranchised Kurds aren't likely to sit on their hands waiting for things to get better, either. If the situation implies big negatives either way, why can't we err on the side of justice rather than perpetuating the arbitrary minority control that got Iraq this way in the first place? |