A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Friday, April 30, 2004

Simple Man's Burden

As noted elsewhere, our president said this on Thursday:

There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.

This is a reiteration of a theme first brought up at the April 13 press conference:

Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing and free. I strongly disagree with that. I reject that, because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and, if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.

This is not about accusing the left/democrats/not us of racism. We're the civil rights party, for chrissake. Only a very few people would ever believe that charge, and they didn't need further encouragement to hate us. It's not about democrats' supposed racism.

Closely read, the quotes condemn only the purported a priori ruling-out of a democracy for the alien Iraqis because they are Muslim and/or brown, not for noting the very real possibility that they won't wind up with one. No one of any consequence is on record saying the former. Acknowledging the argument as something that one needs to distance oneself from is itself dirty. Still dirtier is bringing it up out of the blue. Raising it gives it dignity, legitimacy. Imagine if he had said that he held no truck with people who believed that blacks were subhuman.

It's about getting the words "different," "color," "brown," "white," and "Muslim" out in the open. They're not like us. It's nothing we don't already know, but the repetition in the context of the possibility of having democratic government is useful to Bush. Setting up a dichotomy between white democracies (are we, really?) and brown dictatorships/theocracies is a rhetorical device that equates the supposedly neutral "white" with the unquestioned good of democracy. Nice trick, that.

If, horrors, the government of Iraq somehow turns out to be less than ideal, he can say that he aspired to the best things for the [brown, Muslim] Iraqi people, but they failed. Also, the possibility opens up that the racists were, wink-wink, right.

This is a not-so-indirect appeal to racial and religious bigotry, and it's disgusting.

Billmon is all over this line of thinking. I see another Koufax in his very near future.

posted by David at 4/30/2004 11:09:00 PM ::

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Doonesbury

I saw something today I never thought I would.

This week, something changed in Doonesbury. For the 30-odd years of the strip--all through Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran Hostage crisis, Panama, Gulf War I, Somalia, Oklahoma City, Bosnia, and everything else--there's always been a punchline. With the exception of a tribute strip (no longer online) for 9/11, the strip has always featured humor.

This week, the strip follows original cast member B.D. after he is wounded in Iraq. There has been nothing funny about it. Today, Trudeau dispensed with Doonesbury's other never-been broken convention.

B.D. was shown without his helmet.

For whatever reason, that was what got me. It took me another 30 or so seconds to notice his left leg was gone.

posted by David at 4/21/2004 12:48:00 PM ::

Monday, April 19, 2004

Bad Campaign Strategy

Mark Kleiman passed along a missive from fellow UCLA professor Amy Zegart, who suggests that Vice President Gore wasn't as focused on terrorism as statements by former Clinton administration officials would seem to suggest:

One way to test the Clinton Administration claim is to look at the 2000 presidential campaign. After all, next to Cheney, Gore has been the most involved Vice President in decades -- with a particular interest in and focus on foreign affairs. When I was on the Clinton NSC staff, Gore's own staff was in the loop. It stands to reason that if terrorism were job #1, (especially with all that Millennium tree shaking going on), then it would naturally figure prominently in the Gore campaign. It didn't. In fact, Gore's campaign foreign policy rhetoric consistently emphasized "new vital national security interests" such as HIV/AIDS in Africa, environmental degradation, and humanitarian crises. And where was Osama? Nowhere on the campaign trail, that's where.

I would suggest that, the more Gore viewed terrorism as a threat, the less he would have emphasized it on the stump. For better or worse, republicans have a long history of being widely perceived among the electorate as more competent on national security issues than democrats. Even given the diplomatic and strategic debacle that the Iraq Adventure has been from the start, Bush still has the approval of the plurality of Americans for his handling of the issue, despite the fact that he has given no coherent rationale for invading in the first place.

There had been terrorist attacks against Americans during the Clinton presidency. Having no record of his own to defend, Bush could have easily turned any Gore warning on the subject into a further indictment of the outgoing administration. Without the benefit of post-9/11 hindsight, who would Gore have been to tell anyone that Bush wouldn't take terrorism seriously enough? I doubt even he would have entertained the possibility that terrorism would have been strictly back-burner stuff in a Bush administration.

Would it have served Gore any purpose to sow apprehension among the populace regarding a threat they could themselves do nothing to counter? Bush would likely have rolled any such warnings into the familiar 'Democrats are negative and unappealing' narrative, which wouldn't have won Gore any points, either.

The Clinton adminstration, Gore included, may not have had its collective hair on fire as their recent statements suggest, in fact it's likely they weren't. But they did take it seriously. During the transition, Clinton's NSA Director, Sandy Berger, warned his successor Condoleeza Rice, "I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.''

posted by David at 4/19/2004 07:11:00 PM ::

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Fish, Barrel, Howitzer

Jesus, David, make up your goddamn mind already.

The first thing to say is that I never thought [the situation in Iraq] would be this bad. I knew it would be bad. On the third day of the U.S. invasion, I wrote an essay for The Atlantic called "Building Democracy Out of What?" I pointed out that we should expect that the Iraqis would have been traumatized by a generation of totalitarianism. That society would have been brutally atomized. And that many would have developed a taste for sadism and an addiction to violence. On April 11, 2003, I predicted on "The NewsHour" on PBS that we and the Iraqis would be forced to climb a "wall of quagmires."

Nonetheless, I didn't expect that a year after liberation, hostile militias would be taking over cities or that it would be unsafe to walk around Baghdad. Most of all, I misunderstood how normal Iraqis would react to our occupation. I knew they'd resent us. But I thought they would see that our interests and their interests are aligned. We both want to establish democracy and get the U.S. out.

You didn't think that the practical upshot of running roughshod over a country full of people with "a taste for sadism and an addiction to violence" might be organized, armed resistance?

Second, let me describe my attitude toward the Bush administration. Despite all that's happened, I was still stirred by yesterday's Bush/Blair statements about democracy in the Middle East. Nonetheless, over the past two years many conservatives have grown increasingly exasperated with the administration's inability to execute its policies semicompetently.

When I worked at The Weekly Standard, we argued ad nauseam that the U.S. should pour men and mat?riel into Iraq ? that such an occupation could not be accomplished by a light, lean, "transformed" military. The administration was impervious to the growing evidence about that. The failure to establish order was the prime mistake, from which all other problems flow.

Yes, David, we all want democracy in the Middle East. But just saying so doesn't accomplish anything but threaten the dictators who run the place. You argued "ad nauseum" that we had to use overwhelming force to successfully occupy Iraq, and we didn't do it. Had the situation we're now facing there occurred to you as a possible result of understaffing the occupation? If not, what did you think was going to be the result? What is force good for, anyway? Keeping order and deterring and countering armed resistance leap effortlessly to mind. Didn't they occur to you?

On July 21, 2002, my colleague Robert Kagan wrote the first of several essays lamenting the administration's alarming lack of preparation for post-Saddam Iraq. Yet the administration seemed content to try nation-building on the cheap.

But a week ago, you said everything was going to be fine.

Many of us also assumed, wrongly, that the administration would launch a fresh postwar initiative to globalize the reconstruction effort. My friends at the Project for the New American Century urged the U.S. to go to the U.N. for a reconstruction resolution, to build a broad coalition to aid rebuilding and to establish a NATO-led security force. That never happened.

Um, Dave? The PNAC'ers in the Bush administration were the ones who kept the UN and NATO out of reconstruction. They blocked the awarding of contracts to countries that might have been helpful. They told the world that the UN was irrelevant. Are you high?

Despite all this -- and maybe it's pure defensiveness -- I still believe that in 20 years, no one will doubt that Bush did the right thing. To his enormous credit, the president has been ruthlessly flexible over the past months and absolutely committed to seeing this through. He is acknowledging the need for more troops. He is absolutely right to embrace Lakhdar Brahimi's plan to dissolve the Governing Council and set up an interim government. This might take attention away from the U.S, and change the atmosphere in the country.

I don't mean to be presumptious, David, but do you think you could do me a favor and RULE OUT "pure defensiveness?" If it is "pure defensiveness," then it's just self-serving bullshit, and Bush didn't do the "right thing." Could you give us something more to go on than "maybe?" You're writing an op-ed column in one of the nation's two Newspapers of Record. Could you at least pretend to be objective? You used the word "I" 18 times in this 744-word column. See, even though it's an opinion column, it's not supposed to be about you.

Bringing democracy to Iraq is a great idea, but doing it badly and making things worse in the process isn't. What is the "right thing" Bush did that will require 20 years to figure out? Is it all the wrong things you so helpfully warned us about before the war, and that he did anyway?

Also, what, exactly, does "ruthlessly flexible" mean? Will you be applying that approving turn of phrase to Kerry anytime soon, or will you call him a flip-flopping waffler?

We hawks were wrong about many things. But in opening up the possibility for a slow trudge toward democracy, we were still right about the big thing.

I wonder if anyone would have thought invading Iraq was a good idea if Bush had said our objective was to "[open] up the possibility for a slow trudge toward democracy."

posted by David at 4/18/2004 02:06:00 PM ::

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Maxism: The Master Plan

It's a great program, a narrowly-focused social welfare system that doesn't have its head up its ass. What the world needs now is a Maxist party. I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

My fundamental organizing principle is class, though not of the Marxian variety, of which my knowledge is not deep. Perhaps it's bowdlerized marx. To me the working class is not a group of people. It's a role. There are those who play productive roles (will play, did play, or would play if not for physical adversities), and those who leach off the rest of us. Society progresses as the productive process expands, coincident with the human development of all. Universal human development is the condition of freedom. All would eventually join the working class, if conditions made alternative roles of moochery and scumbaggery impossible to maintain.

I agree that a lack of attention to the blight of moochery and scumbagerry is intolerable, and it's gone on too long.

Update:Not that I take the position that any of the other utopians had his/her head up his/her ass. I just like Max's vision.

posted by David at 4/14/2004 09:11:00 PM ::

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

The News Conference

Is W. growing his hair to compete with Kerry?

The violence in Iraq "is not a popular uprising."

He thinks there's still a cease-fire in Fallujah. That was so, like, 6 hours ago.

"Secretary of State Rumsfeld?"

"I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing."

"If he wants to keep troops [who have been there a year] there, I'm more than willing [to help]."

Q: When will we get the troops out of Iraq? A: "Eventually"

"Saddam Hussein was a threat."

"I went to the U.N. and said 'if you won't, we will.'" Great, you told them what to do, and they didn't do it. You're a master diplomat, pal.

Q: 2 1/2 years later, do you feel any personal responsibility for the attacks?
A: I was angry and sad. I feel grieved when I meet family members. There're some things I wish we'd done, but we didn't. Homeland security department. The Patriot act is an important change in law that will allow the Stovepiped. Because of law. We're on a war footing. We must deal with gathering threats. The other lesson is that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense. We must bring the killers to justice before they kill us again. We've got to be right 100% of the time. Our government has changed since 9/11. We've still got a lot of work to do.

Q: You never admit a mistake. Fair criticism. Any thing you [regret]
A: The country was on a war footing. That was the situation before 9/11. We didn't think we'd be vulnerable to an attack like 9/11 from Osama. No one could think of airplanes into buildings. I want to know why no WMD's. Iraqis think they're better off without Saddam in power. It's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that our mission is important and vital to change the world for the better.

Q: PDB: Any specific actions on your part
A: I asked for the briefing because there was stuff from overseas. I was going to be in Europe, so I wanted to know. About Overseas. Genoa. Reports concern me. I was dealing with terrorism "a lot" from Tenet. In the PDB there was a warning. I didn't think that was anything new. The FBI was conducting field investigations. Had there been an actionable threat, I'd have done something. Reduced to a where. [ed: Airports, maybe?]

Q: PDB: 70 field investigations, but Freeh says that # was wrong. Too high. Do you believe you were falsely comforted?
A: I expect to get valid information. The 9/11 commission will handle it. The 9/11 commission is great.

(running)

Q: Apology?
A: I think about what I could have done differently. If we had known, we'd have done everything to stop it. Person responsible is Bin Laden. That's why we'll stay on the offense.

Q: NATO - Not much support. You have lots of mercenaries. Are we going to get help?
A: Don't demean participation. I'm proud of our coalition. They're getting their guys killed "for the good of the world." There's more involvement by the United Nations. I want them to help us get others to participate. There's a "heartening resolve" among our allies. A free Iraq is going to be a major blow to terrorism. I was having dinner with Koizumi, talking about North Korea. He's a threat. What do we do? It dawned on me that World War II had something to do with it. Our legacy is based on our belief that people want to be free. If you're muslim or brown you can be free. I believe that. I'm really progressive.

Q: Why Bush/Cheney together for 9/11 commission?
A: Because they want to ask us questions. Uh, because it's a good chance for us to answer questions. I'm not going to answer that.

We took preemptive action on Afghanistan. After 9/11.

We couldn't base in the Caucus region. It would have been difficult. 9/11 changed things. Oceans will not protect us for the 15th time. We're a hard country to defend. Never mind. uh...um...decision...president..."I fully understand the consequences of the decision [to use military power]."

The AQ Khan bust that we uncovered was a victory in the war against terror. Not putting him in jail or doing anything to him made the world safer.

Iraq is a part of the war on terror, even if it didn't have any terrorists.

Q: Will it have been worth it if you lose your job?
A: (immediately) I won't lose my job. I will not even entertain the possibility. I console people. It's...uh...uh...a chance to hug and weep and console. They need to know their sacrifice was for the safety of America. We should never allow our youngsters to die in vain. Historic significance. Men and women in uniform. Soldiers.

Q: About biggest mistake in your life. After 9/11, what is it.
A: I wish I could have had someone else answer this question for me. I'm sure historians will say you could have done it better. There's a lot of pressure. Nothing's come into my head. I would have gone into Afghanistan the same way. I would have done Iraq the same way. We'll find weapons. They could be hidden like the 50 lbs. of mustard gas on a turkey farm. The Iraqis won't talk because they're scared of being killed. Saddam could make weapons. That bothers me. He's a dangerous man. I'm confident I've made mistakes. I'm not quick enough to come up with a mistake.

Q: FBI begged you not to split up law enforcement and counterterrorism. But you want to reform. How?
A: The MI5 (?) I look forward to listening to other people talk about this. I am not a leader. I only encourage and foster discussions because I want to leave behind a legacy that will help other presidents. This is a war on bad people. They kill to affect people's behaviors. That's the definition of terrorists. Later presidents should do everything the same as we do. Of course we can win the war on terror. It's against Muslims. Free societies are great. I'm pressuring the Middle East Reform Initiative, because freedom is not our country's gift of the world, but of the almighty's. But our country has an obligation to provide freedom. We're feeding the hungry and curing AIDS. My job is to lead this nation. My message today to those in Iraq is that we'll stay the course and complete the job. Also to the troops and their loved ones.

Last Q: Those who yell will not be...Don, I've never heard of you.
Q: With support falling for Iraq, do you feel in any way that you've failed as a communicator. Lots of speeches, that vary little. They're upbeat. Have you failed in any way. You don't have many press conferences. Have you failed to make the case?
A: The voters will decide. If I follow polls, I'd be ineffective. I'd be disappointed in myself. I have conviction. I look forward to debate. (!) Should we lead or look like pussies? I look forward to talking about that.

If there was any doubt remaining about W.'s inability to admit mistakes, I think that about killed it.

posted by David at 4/13/2004 08:34:00 PM ::

Explaining Fallujah and Najaf

Sean-Paul brings us chilling news: we've broken the truce in Fallujah and it looks like we're about to launch an assault on Najaf.

There is a growing consensus that our forces in Iraq are insufficient to maintain order. Why on earth would their leaders heave more bricks at the hornet's nest?

Do they think that a redoubled show of aggression will cow the insurgents like it has in Israel?

Do they think the Sadrists are bluffing when they say that the arrest or killing of Moqtada will double their resolve? Do they think the Sadrists will melt away once their leader is taken care of, like the Ba'athists did?

Do they think the Sunnis will ever forget the images of hundreds of dead women and children in Fallujah and decide to work with the occupiers?

Are they criminally stupid?

I don't think so. They're looking to bug out. They just need enough chaos and blood to make Iraq look ungovernable and our position there untenable. And then we can flush our 600 dead soldiers and our $200 billion right down the fucking toilet.

The saddest thing is, leaving aside the bloody charade unfolding at the moment, it's probably the smart thing to do.

We don't have enough troops there. We don't have any more troops to send there. The rest of the world can't get out of Iraq fast enough. We've accomplished exactly nothing in terms of setting up a working polity in Iraq.

All of which reduces our options to: 1) Continue what we're doing, with no real prospects for any improvement in the situation; or 2) Leave and let the Iraqis sort it out.

posted by David at 4/13/2004 06:52:00 PM ::

Monday, April 12, 2004

What We Did in Fallujah

From the BBC:

A group of five international charities estimated that about 470 people had been killed, while hospital officials put the death toll at about 600.

Reuters television footage from Falluja showed corpses of children, women and old men lying in the street beside body parts no one has had time to collect.

"Hospitals and medical staff are overwhelmed," the five charities said.

They added that they were "asking desperately for blood, oxygen and antiseptics".

The group said that at a conservative estimate, about 1,200 had been wounded, according to Reuters, which did not name the aid agencies involved.

Residents of Falluja have reportedly been burying the dead in their gardens and a football field because it is too dangerous to go to the cemeteries on the outskirts of town.

Ok, fine. We're in a war, and killing is a part of war. But what were we going to get out of the operation in Fallujah? We were told the objective was to punish those who mutilated the bodies of 4 U.S. contractors last month, and deter them from additional attacks on our forces. Sounds good.

But somehow, I don't think that indiscriminately killing up to 600 people and wounding 1,200 more, many of them civilians, was the way to go about it. Especially given that it was our treatment of them in the role of occupier and peacekeeper that incited them to attack our forces in the first place.

American behaviour had helped provoke ordinary people to join the resistance, she said, adding that even she and her older sister wanted to join the fighters.

A New York Times report corroborates her claims.

The US newspaper says that many people - perhaps tens of thousands - who did not consider themselves full-time resistance fighters were now prepared to join the insurgency.

Khalif Juma, a 26-year-old vegetable seller, told the newspaper he was angry about the US treatment of radical Shia religious leader Moqtada Sadr, for whom an arrest warrant has been issued.

"To be honest, we weren't like this before. But we're religious people, and our leader has been threatened," he told the newspaper.

"We would be ashamed to stay in our houses with our wives at a time like this," he added.

He and his cousins have bought a crate of Kalashnikov rifles, he said.

We can't be that stupid. What are we really trying to accomplish?

posted by David at 4/12/2004 12:14:00 PM ::

Saturday, April 10, 2004

Brooks, You Ignorant Slut

This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!

Maybe we should calm down a bit. I've spent the last few days talking with people who've spent much of their careers studying and working in this region. We're at a perilous moment in Iraqi history, but the situation is not collapsing. We're in the middle of a battle. It's a battle against people who vehemently oppose a democratic Iraq. The task is to crush those enemies without making life impossible for those who fundamentally want what we want.

Oh, you've talked to people who say everything's ok. Imagine my relief. I've been reading stuff like this and this and this that say things are getting worse. Thank heavens there's someone out there who won't buy the obvious falsehoods put forward by people on the ground in Iraq (traitors, all) in favor of some prudently anonymous "people who've spent much of their careers studying and working in this region." I was almost beginning to believe, with the enormous upsurge in violence, defections of Iraqi police, resignations of Interim Governing Council members and near-universal expressions of hatred for the U.S. occupation, that things were going badly. Thanks for setting us straight, you ignorant slut.

The Shiite violence is being fomented by Moktada al-Sadr, a lowlife hoodlum from an august family. The ruthless and hyperpoliticized Sadr has spent the past year trying to marginalize established religious figures, like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who come from a more quietist tradition and who believe in the separation of government and clergy. Sadr and his fellow putschists have been spectacularly unsuccessful in winning popular support. The vast majority of Iraqis do not want an Iranian-style dictatorship. Most see Sadr as a young, hotheaded murderer who terrorizes people wherever he goes.

So it's just Sadr we're worried about. Whew. We can lick any "lowlife hoodlum" they can throw at us. When you think about it, it's kind of funny how he got all pissy and started beating his chest when we shut down his newspaper and arrested his spokesman. Funny, little, ineffectual man, that Sadr. Iraqis won't support a guy who wants to install a theocracy, unless the uprising is actually about getting rid of the oppressive, dehumanizing occupation. Which it isn't.

Nonetheless, Sadr faces long odds. Iraqis may be frustrated with the Americans, but they don't want to jump from Baath fascism to theocratic fascism. In a February poll, only 10 percent of Iraqis said it was acceptable to attack Americans. In Kut yesterday, CNN reported, local tribesmen, disgusted by Sadr's violence, rose up against his troops. If you'd listened to the recent hysteria, you never would have expected that to happen.

It's only 2.5 million Iraqis who want to kill our troops and drive us out of their country. That's managable. Things couldn't have changed that much since February, anyway. Our little collective punishment drive in Fallujah didn't make things worse.

One of the strongest pro-U.S. voices on the council, Adnan Pachachi, denounced the U.S. siege, launched after Sunni insurgents killed four U.S. contract workers and a mob dragged their burned and mutilated bodies through the streets and hung two of them from a bridge.

"These (U.S.) operations were a mass punishment for the people of Fallujah," Pachachi told Al-Arabiya TV. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."

None of this matters, because our side is steadfast. We've got what it takes to win.

Most important, leadership in the U.S. is for once cool and resolved. This week I spoke with leading Democrats and Republicans and found a virtual consensus. We're going to keep the June 30 handover deadline. We're going to raise troop levels if necessary. We're going to wait for the holy period to end and crush Sadr. As Joe Lieberman put it, a military offensive will alienate Iraqis, but "the greater risk is [Sadr] will grow into something malevolent." As Charles Hill, the legendary foreign service officer who now teaches at Yale, observed, "I've been pleasantly surprised by the boldness and resolve."

Even if the IGC disbands, we'll find someone to hand the government over to, so everyone stop worrying. When we stomp Sadr, even if we "alienate Iraqis," it won't be a problem. If we kill a bunch of women and children en route to purging the Mahdi army from every city in the south of Iraq, armed resistance to the occupation will not swell enormously, ok? We've got "boldness and resolve," sayeth the Oracle of New Haven, and no amount of well-armed vengeance-fueled blood fury can hope to stand against that. So there.

Nonetheless, yesterday's defections from the Iraqi Governing Council show that populist pressure on the good guys is getting intense. Maybe it is time to pause, to let passions cool, to let the democrats marshal their forces. If people like Sistani are forced to declare war on the U.S., the gates of hell will open up.

Over the long run, though, the task is unavoidable. Sadr is an enemy of civilization. The terrorists are enemies of civilization. They must be defeated.

Ok, maybe they are pressuring us some. Maybe we should just cool it with the shooting and the shelling and the 500-lb. laser-guided bombs for a bit. We have the boldness and resolve to step back and do nothing while those determined to get us out of Iraq continue to blow our soldiers and mercenaries to bloody hell.

And let's not forget one thing: even if the enemy is fighting a foreign occupation in their own country that currently has no legitimate government, they're terrorists. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.

All links courtesy of the indefatigable and indispensable Agonist.

posted by David at 4/10/2004 01:20:00 PM ::

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Shorter Thomas Friedman:

"Mexico is screwed."

What kills me is that Friedman can say that, as cheaper-wage countries, such as China, improve the quality of their workers and infrastructure, Mexico must either invest heavily in its own or lose out, while saying nothing about the exact same situation here in the U.S. We're losing jobs here because our stratospheric wages render us less competitive than workers from other countries. Do we have some kind of magic bullet or something that Friedman isn't telling us about?

For more on outsourcing, see my column for today over at Daily News Online.

"Shorter" format via D^2

posted by David at 4/01/2004 11:40:00 AM ::

HOME

Links