JustinLogan.com

By The Company You Keep

In my job, I'm privileged to get to meet a lot of young people who are drawn to libertarian ideas, and I'm often impressed by how smart and conscientious they are. If the intelligence or critical ability of the people drawn to an ideology are any indication of its integrity, libertarianism is a pretty sound philosophy.

On that same note, I found this site this morning.

The Moral Arithmetic Of Regime Change

Imagine the earthquake in Iran had brought about regime change there, or had inadvertently killed Saddam (before he was captured). Instead of lamenting the loss of innocent life, and viewing it as a tragedy, would we be lauding it as a great victory in the War on Terror? Would Gen. Boykin say that it shows God is on our side? What is the calculus by which we can determine whether to celebrate or mourn? How many innocent deaths can be outweighed by the death of one tyrant?

Is the "collateral damage" in Iraq any less tragic? Who will carry moral culpability for their deaths? Sure, we were looking for Saddam, so we can try to put the blame on him, but the fact remains that American bombs dropped by American pilots from American planes under the command of American Generals by orders of the American Commander in Chief killed them. With the growing realization that Saddam presented no real threat to the lives of innocent Americans, isn't it that much more awful? Can the death of one evil man offset the deaths of thousands of innocents to turn the matter into something for celebration?

I guess we'll find out on the campaign trail...

Neocons vs. Christmas???

Ever notice the resemblance? Hmmm.

More Heat On Voronin

A week ago, Romanian President Ion Iliescu and the European Parliament issued separate statements on the situation in Moldova. Both got it right, at least to some degree.

Iliescu called out Voronin on the characterization of Moldovans as a discrete ethnic group. Iliescu called Moldova's ruling Communist Party "not only Communist, but also one with bad Stalinist habits and [a] mentality that reflects...denigration of its own state and own identity." Iliescu also took the bait on Voronin's recent renaming of the Romanian language "Moldovan", saying "Americans speak English, they were an English colony, they speak English, though this language now...contains Americanisms."

This escalation of the rhetorical war between Moldova's Communists and the Romanian center-left is welcome. Since their rather bizarre meeting in August, President Voronin hasn't been engaged by Iliescu, and Iliescu's strong words are needed. The protests in Chisinau are fizzling, and a boost from Romania may reinvigorate Iurie Rosca and the Committee for the Defense of Independence and the Constitution (CAIC).

The European Parliament, meanwhile, issued its own strongly worded statement (yes, that was "a strongly worded statement from the EP"), saying the Kozak memorandum "is an obstacle to the further development of democracy in Moldova and does not contribute to the stabilisation of the whole region." The EU also "deplores the fact that the Russian Government does not intend to withdraw its arms and troops before the end of 2003 despite its repeated commitments."

Though the point about "stabilisation" could indeed be quibbled with, the idea is there. The EU also called on Voronin and his cronies to "respect democratic principles, fundamental rights and human rights, including minority language rights, and intensify the process of economic and social reform." That might happen, and I might get peace on Earth for Christmas tomorrow...

In case you needed something to remind you to keep the people of Moldova in your thoughts or prayers tomorrow, have a gander at this. Anybody who can't shed a tear or at least shudder for those who are plodding slowly back towards bolshevism is simply heartless.

And in case that didn't do it for you, President Voronin is also apparently playing Scrooge to the Romanian Orthodox population of Moldova, presiding over the state-run Christmas tree factory that apparently won't deliver Christmas trees in time for the Romanian celebration of Christmas. The Russian Orthodox Christmas is observed a few weeks later, and the trees will, of course, be around by then. (I'm not even sure Russian Orthodox use Christmas trees.) This is the typical form of the subtle, demeaning cultural oppression of the new Communists.

Perry Farrell On The Demise Of The LP

NPR did a segment yesterday on the death of the concept album. It was an interesting piece, with Perry Farrell commenting thus:

"The record companies have gotten to be such hacks...they have made the idea of making a record almost impossible...the albums [today] stink."

Farrell said that the record companies effectively prevent albums, as such, from being made. Once they get a radio-friendly single, they put a tremendous amount of pressure on the artist to crank out another 10 or 12 poorly-crafted songs, and then they shrink-wrap the little puppy and send it to market.

I've been arguing for a long while that, not from a policy standpoint, necessarily, but from a business standpoint, the record industry has brought the whole file-sharing thing on themselves. They thought that they could fight the future of the industry, continuing to marry a few good songs to a pile of crap, not passing along their cost-savings in actually producing a CD, and running off to legislatures everywhere to seek legal relief when listeners seek to circumvent the record companies' (legal) extortion.

The fact is, one can't police the Internet. Already, since the demise of Napster, file-sharers have just gone underground, using smaller, decentralized communities that are harder to track, because the number of different communities is growing rapidly, and because of the lower number of members of each community. The IP question aside, the record companies have just been plain stupid in thinking that law enforcement officers are ever going to be able to patrol the Internet, looking for kids listening to music. Moby once said he was going to download a bunch of his own music, and see if he could get arrested.

Here's the NPR piece, Perry's segment starts 2:55 in.

"Just Make A Left At The Cato Institute, Then A Right At Hotel Number 4"

DC Mayor Anthony Williams has a plan to build and own DC's largest hotel.

So Adrian Fenty thinks he knows how to run a bar better than bar owners, and Williams thinks he knows the hotel business better than the Hiltons?

Yes, that was a gratuitous Hilton reference to generate scads of traffic, thank you very much.

Queer Eye For The Haggard Guy

Brooke gets a gem, apparently via Gene.

Neocon Straw Men

Radley's remarked at Andrew Sullivan's straw man fest, as Sullivan has been pointing out all of the dopey hard Left responses to Saddam's capture. Radley's taken the high road, pointing out many of the thoughtful, lucid responses by anti-war bloggers.

But I'll take the low road. How about this self-indulgent chattering from The Corner's John Derbyshire? After calling Saddam's capture a "wonderful Christmas present for all Americans" (seems more like a gift to Iraqis, no?), he laments the facts that we didn't shoot Saddam in cold blood, and that we won't be sexually assaulting Saddam's wife.

Derbyshire has been one of the most strident opponents to the equal treatment of gay people. Perhaps Mr. Derbyshire is the one "outside of the mainstream", to judge by his own words.

Catharsis or Two Minutes' Hate?

AEI tees off on Saddam.

Gooooldsteeeeeein!!!

Conspiracy Theory Friday

Amid bomb threats on the Metro this morning, it occurs to me once again that it's truly odd that we haven't had another significant terrorist attack in the US since 9/11. It seems like every day, a story about somebody boarding a plane with fake plastic explosives, a gun, box cutters, scissors, et cetera surfaces. There's no doubt in my mind that the law of averages ain't in our favor here.

For a long time, it's been a favorite mantra of Republicans that Reagan intentionally escalated the arms race with the Soviets, knowing that the economic deficiencies of socialism would eventually choke out the Soviet government if it tried to keep up with capitalism. That's been a pretty contentious assertion, but let's accept it for now, if not as the truth, as a viable possibility.

What's to say that Bin Laden isn't doing the same thing? It's often been pointed out that al Qaeda has a pretty clear line of sight into American culture and politics. Isn't it possible that Bin Laden sees in Bush a man who is willing to overstretch our "defense" department to near its breaking point, entrenching hundreds of thousands of troops abroad, and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars down foreign rat-holes? Isn't it possible that Bin Laden sees in Bush a man who is eager to throttle the very foundation of American power (our system of free enterprise) with multi-trillion dollar socialist boondoggles?

Is it not reasonable to assert that Bush is precisely the type of man Bin Laden wants to be up against -- because Bin Laden thinks he's a foolhardy opponent? Seriously, imagine that five years from now Bush has kept the hundred-or-so thousand troops in Europe and on Okinawa, defending the citizenry from, well, nobody. Imagine there are still sixty thousand or so troops in the Middle East, mostly trying to build schools and dodge RPGs in Iraq. Imagine that Bush has taken his 2004 election victory as a mandate for the neoconservative view of America's role in the world, and decides he's had enough of Assad or Khameini, and so we have, say, another hundred thousand troops in Syria or Iran, and the requisite spending boondoggles for continuing to try to force that part of the world into the eighteenth century.

In that scenario, how could we have a vital, serious force dedicated to defending our country? Last I checked, Tom Ridge doesn't have any battalions at his disposal, and if TSA is supposed to be fighting the terrorists at home, then maybe it's time to just head off to Verseilles and call it a day. Rumblings about conscription (scroll up slightly) have surfaced lately, but one can only hope that even this Administration can't be THAT insane.

The flypaper strategy ("taking the fight to the terrorists where they live") clung to by such theorists as Andrew Sullivan seems to be the foundation for all of this, so it's a shame that it's doomed to failure. Its fatal conceit, as Gene has pointed out, is that it assumes a fixed number of terrorists. If there were only (and could only be), say, 5,000 terrorists hell-bent on destroying America, and if, in fact, we were effectively luring them into fighting our troops in Iraq instead of taking out soft targets in America, then the policy might carry some strategic weight. But it doesn't account for the fact that our adventure in Iraq and elsewhere might actually have pissed a couple of people off. In sports, when somebody gets hurt, even in the course of fair play, the offended team will often rally around their hurt comrade, and clear away the offending team members. When we kill innocents in Iraq (or when Israel does so in Palestine, or vice versa), the last thing the offended team wants is to have the killers nosing into the crowd, clearing away the offended team, marching proudly and occupying the scene. I can only imagine how frustrating and outrage-inducing that must be. It seems like that might marginalize those who would otherwise be on our side.

Once again, I'm calling for Bush to kick out Rummy, Perle, Wolfie, Condie, Scooter, Feith(ie?), and all the other neocon operatives from positions of influence in the Administration. I'd tell them in person, but --oop, that's Howard Dean calling, I've got to go...