JustinLogan.com

Should Rumsfeld Be On Trial In Iraq Tomorrow, Too?

Something Robert McNamara said in The Fog of War is making me think about the Saddam trial set to start tomorrow.

Curtis Le May, who comes out looking like quite the barbarian in the movie, once remarked that if the Allies had lost the Second World War, Le May and others would have been justly tried as war criminals for the firebombings of Tokyo, Dresden, yadda yadda yadda. McNamara incisively asked what makes the morality of killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians different when you win than when you lose?

Which makes me think: If those who supported Saddam Hussein's deployment of chemical weapons against the Kurds and during the Iran-Iraq War are thugs and deserved to be tried for war crimes, where do Donald Rumsfeld & Co. fit into this? If the acts were intrinsically wrong, we should do a quick sweep of Northern Virginia and pick up a few score of former DoD officials and put them on the next transport to Baghdad. I mean, after all, we gave him the weapons in the first place.

Oh, and don't try to pull a realpolitik/reason of state defense, because you have to apply the same standard to Saddam.

Court Jesters on Barbiturates

Surfergirl has a pretty good take on last night's craptastic Queer Eye.

Remember February 2003?

Umm, does anybody know where Randy Barnett's been?

Would You Have Had Sex With This Woman When You Were 14?

***Sorry, I couldn't find a pic of her without hubby that would fit. If you pervs want to see the mugshot, follow the link below.***

And would it have been okay? That's pretty much the question. Remarkably attractive 23-year old reading teacher consensually screws 14-year old male student off school grounds.

Much of the discussion on this has been along the "Damn, I should have been so lucky!" lines, and I can't say that I'm not largely in that camp.

The problem comes, though, when you apply the ol' reductio: What if the kid was 12? 9? How young is categorically too young? Inevitably with an age of majority you're going to end up infringing on the rights of some who are mature enough to make decisions for themselves, and failing to protect some who are not. But what's the right balance of liberty and security? What if honoring the rights of some means infringing on those of others? A lot of people have said there should be a different standard (lower) for boys than girls.

But I think that ceteris paribus, girls are generally more emotionally mature than their male peers. So why should it be that girls have to be older to consent? (I don't even like young women, you frickin' pervs...)

And I should say that since I've blogged child exploitation before, I believe that this case is entirely different than impoverished, illiterate children being whisked off by adults to a country where they don't speak the language and being forced to schtup several times a day.

Regardless, I'm not quite sure how to think about this. But she sure is kinda hot...

Quote of the Day

“We Americans tend to get involved quite blindly, with little real understanding of ends or thought of consequences. We plunge emotionally into conflicts, lose thousands of lives, spend billions of dollars, help wreak enormous damage on the world and its peoples. Then we go back and spend more billions trying to put things together again. What an inane cycle! And look at what happened after World War II: we destroyed one set of tyrants only to build up another! We "won" that war only in a limited military sense.”

-Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer

Ch-Check It Out

I'm on a shitty dial-up connection, but this is really interesting. It's a program called "Free Internet TV," and it streams live (I think it's live) TV from all across the globe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, out of Argentinian, Bahrainian, Chinese, Kurdish, Russian and even Icelandic TV, Kurdish is by far the weirdest. Regardless, for those looking to brush up on a foreign language, learn about TV in other countries, or just trip out on how weird foreign TV is while staying up late, it's worth a look.

I'm really looking forward to trying it out on broadband, though.

Hat tip: Dad.

"Are You Better Off Today Than You Were 18 Months Ago?"

For the poor folks trying to endure our enterprise in Iraq, I'm becoming increasingly doubtful the answer is yes. Let me explain what I'm thinking. (This is a rumination, not an affirmative claim. I'm thinking out loud here.)

During the barbaric times of Saddam's regime, there were oppressive, countless prohibitions that could get you killed, disappeared, raped, et cetera. But it seems to me everybody pretty well understood what those were. Don't say anything against the regime, try to "vote" for anybody but Saddam, et cetera. As long as people were willing to muddle through the tyranny and bullshit, it's my understanding, at least, that they were pretty much okay. Yes, life sucked, and yes, the sanctions were throttling the citizenry, but there was some degree of security.

So for the average schlub who kissed Saddam's ass when told to do so, I'm not at all sure that he's better off now than he was then. With maniacs targeting people at random, the average person who sets out in the morning to forage for a living is exposed to any number of dangers. The United States has been unable to protect that average joe. It seems to me, though, that the average joe (who was willing to suck up when told to) was by and large protected under Saddam.

Now, it seems to me this could cut one of two ways: First, the people who are getting attacked now could understand that there are thugs who are just bloodthirsty and lashing out against anything that moves in an effort to destabilize the country, drive the US out, yadda yadda yadda. Second (and I'm afraid more likely), the people actually staging the attacks will remain largely faceless, while the force that's seen as presiding over this whole clusterfuck drives a Hummer and wears an American flag. Now, I'm not at all sure that the second perception is at all widespread, but as I think about the priorities of the average Iraqi, and how they probably rank in his life, it seems to me that being subject to murderous attacks every time you leave your house is worse than having to kowtow to Saddam Hussein, not that either is particularly tolerable.

***NB: None of this is to attempt to draw any sort of moral equivalence between the US failure to provide security and Saddam's thuggery, nor to blame the US for the terrorist attacks taking place in Iraq currently.***

Do Not Pass Go

Go read Healy. Now.

It's Come to This

Michael Rubin now says that we may have to destroy Fallujah in order to save it.

These noble men...

We've Finally Found the Connection Between Saddam and al Qaeda!

It's Tupac! No, wait, but his name is Shakir...umm...but that other guy is Shakir, too. Umm...wait a minute, can one of you guys go get some of those damned Arabists from the State Department to come in here and tell us what all this chicken scratch means?

Sayeth the WaPo:

An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday...

One of them is Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, identified as an al Qaeda "fixer" in Malaysia. Officials say he served as an airport greeter for al Qaeda in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, at a gathering for members who were to be involved in the attacks on the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Iraqi military documents, found last year, listed a similar name, Lt. Col. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, on a roster of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.

"By most reckoning that would be someone else" other than the airport greeter, said the administration official, who would speak only anonymously because of the matter's sensitivity. He added that the identification issue is still being studied but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts."

And who bollocksed this thing all up? You guessed right, one of the Office of Special Plans' lieutenants, Chris Carney. In the article I've linked here, Hayes concedes that the name "was spelled differently" on the roster of the Fedayeen. I don't know too much about Arabic (nor, I believe, does Hayes), but I know enough to know that different names generally are spelled differently. Back to the drawing board, Steve.