Syria: To Bomb or not to Bomb

Thus far, the congressional hearings indicate that the plan is to bomb just enough to punish Assad for using weapons but not enough to make him lose the civil war.  Why is that?  Well, we don't really want Al-Qaeda - which is allied with the rebels - to win.  But on the other hand, the President has been declaring for over two years that Assad must go.  So which is it?  Sad to say but Assad is probably the better option.  Do we want elements of Al-Qaeda to acquire chemical weapons in the aftermath of Assad's fall?  Secretary of State Kerry suggested that we might put boots on the ground to secure such stockpiles; I would agree that is in the national interest if Assad falls but I don't think most Americans are too keen on another Mideast adventure.

Setting aside the idea of seizing chemical weapons, what exactly is the US national interest here?  Assad allegedly gassed a thousand or so people and that must not go unpunished.  So, it was okay for him to machinegun and bomb the other 99 thousand?  We care about how they were killed, not that they were killed.

The only reason that we are going to intervene (I think Obama will probably get approval from Congress) is to make good on Obama's foot-in-mouth redline lest America lose prestige overseas.  Did the murder of our ambassador have no impact on our prestige?  What of abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic in the face of Russian complaints about missile defense?  Edward Snowden revelations?  No, none of that is hurting us overseas.  Weren't we supposed to have Smart Diplomacy now?

Rand Paul pointed out that there could be serious repercussions to an attack on Syria.  Syria has already promised to attack Israel in the event of US attacks.  Iran, which is already heavily supporting Syria, might be drawn in.  Russia has warships in port on the Syrian coast and is backing Assad.  Given Obama's track record in the Middle East (siding with Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, assassination of Libyan ambassador, abandoning Iraq, hopeless policy against pre-nuclear Iran, poor relations with Israel, etc.), I think it would be wisest to keep out.  Really, do we think he'll finally have a success in a no-win situation?

 

Now let's visit the fringe: Yossef Bodansky (http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-the-white-house-help-plan-the-syrian-chemical-attack/5347542) says that Assad is being 'framed' for the chemical attack.  In the days before the attack, the rebels had a huge influx of weapons for an upcoming campaign in the wake of America bombing of Assad.  How did they know a chemical attack was coming?  I am reminded of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.  The Maine was sunk by an explosion while the US and Spain were having very tense relations over the Cubans.  Spain was blamed for the sinking though some suggested that it might have been Cuban rebels seeking to pull the US into what became the Spanish-American War (1898).  Bodansky also suggests that US intelligence had foreknowledge of the attack.  Hmm.

 

Like Jimmy Carter, Obama seems to have it out for dictators even though the alternative is worse.  Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran and that has not gone well for us or the people of Iran.  Obama dumped Mubarak in Egypt and that isn't going too well either.  Is Assad next on the hit list?  Yes, this is crazy talk (I hope) but may be worth consideration a year hence.

I Have a Dream: 50 Years Later

50 years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke during the March on Washington.  He delivered his immortal 'I Have a Dream' speech, in which he hoped that his children would live in a country where they were judged by their character, not skin pigmentation.  It seems to me that his dream has not come to pass.  Certainly, the Jim Crow laws are gone and blacks have risen to great heights, including the presidency.  However, we can also see with such instances as Trayvon Martin that no one was concerned with Trayvon's character, only his skin color.

Is it not peculiar that neither Clarence Thomas (the only black justice on the Supreme Court) nor Tim Scott (the only black Senator) were invited to speak?  Reverend Al Sharpton got an invite.  Ben Jealous of the NAACP got an invite.  Black Republicans need not apply.  At least that is a judgment on character rather than skin color.  It seems that everyone has forgotten that a greater percentage of the Republicans in Congress voted for both the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) than did Democrats.  Jim Crow and Segregation were Democrat policies.  Bull Connor was a Democrat.  It was a Democratic governor (Orval Faubus) who sought to prevent a Republican President (Dwight Eisenhower) from integrating an Arkansas school.  And yet, somehow today there is this inexplicable belief that all of that was Republican.  How did that happen?

 

Race relations are a shambles today.  A big part of that is Barack Obama.  It is so easy for him or his allies to accuse his opponents of racism.  It isn't that Republicans oppose his policies, it is that they oppose him because he is black.  Charges of racism abound.  Chris Matthews declared that pointing out the national debt was racism, that mentioning Obama was from Chicago was racism, that talking about his frequent golf outings was racist, and so on.  Why debate opponents on the merits when you can just call them racists and thereby dismiss anything they say?  This may be an effective political move but it is disastrous for race relations and in stark contrast to what MLK said 50 years ago today.

Syria is a Lose-Lose Proposal

There are no good options with Syria.  The President foolishly painted himself into a corner with his red line talk and now his credibility is on the line.  If he attacks Syria, the US will be aiding the rebels who include large chunks of al-Qaeda-allied forces.  If he doesn't attack, US foreign policy will be hamstrung; the US will have demonstrated that it is all bark and no bite.

 

Theodore Roosevelt's most famous quote - "Speak softly and carry a big stick" - is apparently unknown by this administration.  There has been much talk - very often loud and emphatic - but no stick.  How many times has the administration demanded that Iran 'live up to its international obligations' with absolutely no effect?  There is no penalty for not living up to the obligations.  Back to TR, many accused him of being a warmonger but, oddly enough, the US didn't have any wars during his tenure.  In fact, he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his part in resolving the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.  The credible threat of force kept would-be aggressors quiescent.  There is no credible threat of force.  That isn't to say the administration is unwilling to use force (witness Libya or the surge in Afghanistan) but that it is hard to divine what might trigger that use of force.  By nature, people will probe to find out what they can get away with.  Assad is probing how serious Obama is, just as Iran has been pushing to see how he responds.  The results aren't good.  Word out of the administration is that any attacks on the Assad Regime will be punitive in nature and limited in time and scope.  Kind of like an international wrist slap.  That is unserious and it tells our opponents that we are unserious.

 

I am not in favor of a strike on Syria, any more than I was in favor of a strike on Libya.  Bad foreign policy has led us to this cul-de-sac and there is no good way out.  Keep this in mind when Hillary Clinton, who steered us down this dead end road as Secretary of State, runs for President in 2016.  Our foreign policy is a shambles and she deserves a good share of the blame.

Ender's Game (book)

Some years ago, a co-worker lent me a copy of Ender's Game.  I read it and wrote a review.  Now that the movie version is coming to a theater near you, it seems an ideal time to post that here.

Ender's Game

Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin is a genius, just like his older siblings, Peter and Valentine. Ender is an outcast because he is a third child, something that is generally illegal thanks to population controls. Ender lives in a future Earth where humanity is threatened by the Buggers, an alien race of insect-like creatures that might well have wiped out humanity but for Mazer Rackham. Humanity has built the fleet for a counterattack, has the weapons to fight, but lacks a battle commander to direct them against an overwhelming force. Ender will be that commander if only his training can be completed in time. His training begins when he is six and the epic battles come when he is twelve. The epilogue proceeds until he is into his twenties.

The book is quite readable and very engaging. The characters are good and easy to like. The setting is well made. I was surprised to find a book written in 1985 having such things as the internet (the Nets) and tablet computers (simply called desks). I was disappointed by the Buggers. We never actually saw a Bugger, getting only a vague description of them. The idea that a hive mind was some Earth-shaking news was dorky. If Orson Scott Card was the first to write a story with a hive mind, maybe, but the hive mind/insect alien was decades old by the time this book was written. People of the future should be less surprised by this development than a modern day fiction reader (that would be me).

Though enjoyable, the book is preposterous. Humanity is resting all its hopes on a 12 year-old boy; there is no contingency plan if this should fail. It is explained to the reader that should Ender fail, humanity will probably be wiped out (as it turns out, that was an incorrect conclusion on the part of the generally incompetent adults). As the enemy is light years away, the ships launched to attack them decades ago and only now are they arriving at the Bugger worlds. Thanks to a physics-ignoring radio (instant communication regardless of distance) those ships can receive commands from Earth in real time. So, with decades to prepare, humanity cuts it down to the wire and pins its fate on Ender and his classmates. Sounds reasonable.

Why did the fight become genocide? Sure, destroying the Bugger home world was a serious blow but if all the colony worlds had queens too, shouldn’t the Buggers still exist? Ender didn’t destroy any of those worlds so, unless the queens were on the destroyed ships (which would be stupid), those worlds should have intact populations though no fleet to protect them. When Ender arrives on one, it hasn’t been bombed – buildings still standing for human settlers. The Buggers saw the end coming and, rather than send a fleet with a queen to inhabit some new world and hide from humanity, they built a replica of Ender’s game world and left the seed of their rebirth in the hopes that their destroyer might plant it. Uh huh. Yeah, that’s how I would deal with imminent extinction.

No one understood tactics and strategy until Ender arrived at battle school. It has been 80 years since Mazer Rackham defeated the Bugger invasion fleet (therefore zero-G combat has been around at least that long) and yet Ender develops a combat style that is unprecedented and no other student is capable of emulating it so that Ender doesn’t completely destroy them in battles. Never does Ender learn something in a lecture (if there are lectures at this school) and then apply it in the ‘Game.’ No, everything is new and from the mind of Ender. Napoleon was lucky he never had to face this prodigy on the battlefields of Europe. As described, Ender probably would have wiped out Napoleon’s Grand Army while only suffering 5 casualties.

Okay, one supra ultra mega genius kid is maybe okay. However, it turns out that his brother and sister are just as smart though they were rejected the post of Savior of Humanity on account of their emotional attributes. While Ender is busy learning – no, developing how – to defeat the Buggers, his brother and sister are busy influencing world opinion through internet commentary. How did such dull-witted parents produce this trio of incomparable brilliance? There was no talk of genetic manipulation or selective breeding. No, they are just supremely smart for no apparent reason.

For 120 pages, the story is told entirely from Ender’s perspective, except for a very brief dialogue at the beginning of each chapter where the adults in charge of his training comment on his progress or difficulties. Then, quite unexpectedly, we switch to his siblings. Peter has decided he wants to rule the world and convinces Val to join him in the endeavor by writing opinions. These two are SO brilliant that they quickly rise to rock star status (and not just some random rock star, we’re talking an Elvis) as commentators and being invited to join think tanks and presidential panels. And they achieve this level of success while remaining anonymous. See, no one else thought to say these things. As a constant reader of opinion columns, I can tell you that it’s an echo chamber out there with dozens of writers saying more or less the same thing though with this twist or that nuance. The idea of someone being SO unique as to coalesce a movement through anonymous writing is beyond belief. I suspect he was modeling this on the Federalist Papers written by Publius (who was by turns Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison). However, that was in an era where the written word was the only form of news. Even today, most people get news from radio or TV.

This is a book for tweens and teens. In many ways, it felt like I was reading a Charlie Brown comic since adults are virtual non-entities. We quickly learn that Ender’s parents are dim bulbs compared to their children. At one point, Val (age 11) is telling Peter (age 13) that they were just kids and can’t change the world but Peter showed her otherwise by launching himself on the world scene to become Hegemon of Earth. The moral is that young people can make a difference, maybe save humanity, maybe rule the world.

Again, I liked the book but by the end it was just too preposterous. Card tells his tale well but it is along the lines of Flight of the Navigator, ET, Goonies, or The Last Starfighter, only more so and by a factor of 1000. This is a book that Steven Spielberg might have turned into a movie in the 1980s: Children save the day and adults are generally clueless.

We'll have to see how the movie compares.  Doubtless a review will appear here at some point.

Elysium

The movie is one long, screeching attack on America.  Max (Matt Damon) is a former car thief who is now working at a robot manufacturing center.  He manages to get a lethal dose of radiation and has only 5 days to live.  Well, he has had this life long dream of getting to Elysium (read America), an Eden-like space station where all the rich people live and greedily keep the good healthcare for themselves.  Max knows Spider, a coyote-like criminal (he smuggles non-citizens onto Elysium) who could get him there so he can be cured.  Earlier in the movie, we saw the shuttles launched from the slums of Los Angeles, one of which landed on Elysium.  Spider has a hair-brained scheme to steal billions from an industrialist, who is evil-incarnate (see, he's a capitalist and rich, so he must be really evil and bad and icky).  Protecting Elysium from illegal immigrants is Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who runs Homeland Security.  Really?  Not Elysium Security?  No, it's Homeland Security, just in case you missed the hammer blows of a political message so far.

The setting, though well done, can't possibly exist.  Spider has a seemingly endless supply of shuttles that can fly into space but lives in a slum.  You know, those things can't be cheap.  He has an impressive computer array with pristine monitors in the middle of a rundown slum.  You know, that isn't cheap either.  He couldn't spend a bit on some paint, maybe some nicer furniture.  One of his lieutenants does brain surgery on Max and also goes on the mission as a gunman.  If this thug can do brain surgery, how is there such a healthcare problem?  At one point, several shuttles are headed toward Elysium, filled with illegal immigrants.  The ONLY method for stopping them is to destroy the shuttles.  Really?  It's either let them land or kill them all.  Wow, let's not make the choice too stark there.  Of course, our Homeland Security Leader blows them up and is disappointed one got through.  Evil-incarnate, don't you know.  Max gets onto the station and, thanks to the effects of his brain surgery, is able to reprogram the computer system ("What are you doing, Dave?") to view every single person on Earth as a citizen of Elysium.  Suddenly, all those robot soldiers/police that seemed nowhere to be found while Max was penetrating to the central computer system are bullying the snooty Elysium citizens and providing free healthcare to the people back on Earth.

The message that is pounded again and again is that the United States should have open borders that offer immediate citizenship and free, universal healthcare.  Oh, and capitalism is bad and mean and yucky.

Going on a tangent, Matt Damon is a resident of "Elysium" who - though crying from the rooftops that public schools are the best and should be supported with more tax dollars - is sending his kids to private school.  His actions seem to be in opposition to his words.

Is it Better to Lie or Tell the Truth?

There have been comparisons of late between Anthony Weiner and Bill Clinton on account of the handling of sex scandals and the actions of their respective wives.  How is it that Bill Clinton had real affairs and is now a beloved (by Democrats) former president while Weiner swapped dirty pictures online and is provoking disgust from those same Democrats?  Weiner kept doing it after he got caught but so did Clinton.  Hillary stood by her husband - Tammy Wynette-like - and Huma has done the same for Weiner.  Why should voters who want stand-by-your-philanderer Hillary as their next presidential nominee at the same time have a problem with stand-by-your-pornographer Huma?  Isn't sex something just between the married couple?  I seem to recall it was not really lying if you lied about sex.

There are two points.  One, Bill Clinton has charisma while Weiner doesn't.  Two, Bill Clinton never admitted it while Weiner did.  This is interesting because Weiner, after repeated and ever more embarrassing denials finally told the truth.  To this day, Bill Clinton has not changed his story about not having sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.  Everyone knows it's a lie but as long as he denied the truth, partisans could defend him and claim the Republicans or Ken Star or a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy were on a witch hunt.  Once Weiner came clean, he could not be defended.

Politically, Bill Clinton did the right thing.  He lied and stonewalled until everyone got tired of the story.  It is an interesting lesson.  Lying saved Clinton while telling the truth is likely to sink Weiner.  Of course, there was photographic evidence against Weiner, so he could not realistically take Clinton's route to success.

The Political Tower of Babel

I was listening to EconTalk and the guest was Arnold Kling (PhD Economics).  Kling has recently written a book - more of a long essay since it is only 53 pages - titled The Three Languages of Politics.  He posits that Progressives/Liberals view the world as Oppressed vs. Oppressor, the Civil Rights movement being a classic example.  Conservatives see the world from a Civilization vs. Barbarism perspective, the War on Terror being a prime example.  Lastly, Libertarians look at the world based on Freedom vs. Coercion; government is coercion and should thus be used sparingly.

This three axis idea is surprisingly enlightening.  I've often found myself at odds with Conservatives on what seemed obvious questions.  I look at the Drug War as a needless exercise of government force whereas Conservatives look at drug use as a failure of civilization.  Liberals often look at the Drug War as oppressive against minorities.  What about immigration?  I am of two minds on the subject though Libertarian orthodoxy would argue against government using force to keep people within certain boundaries.  Conservatives look at uncontrolled immigration and see a forthcoming collapse of civilization - note how often tales of violent illegal immigrants are told.  Liberals see rich whites trying to keep poor people of color in squalor.  I've heard the arguments from each perspective hundreds of times and usually rejected those that didn't address Freedom vs. Coercion.

Kling proposes that one should try to argue on the axis of those you wish to convince.  Thus, if a Libertarian wants to debate a Conservative on the drug laws, he should frame his argument on the Civilization/Barbarism axis.  I can see how it would be difficult to argue that drug use is civilizing rather than a decent into barbarism.

 

Here is a link to the episode of EconTalk where Kling discusses this:

 

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/kling_on_the_th.html

 

And here is the link to Kling's book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Three-Languages-Politics-ebook/dp/B00CCGF81Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375062531&sr=8-1&keywords=kling