Salon excerpts the December 2003

Strategic Studies Institute report, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism by Jeffrey Record, a Vietnam veteran, author and professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security at the U.S. Air Force’s Air War College in Montgomery, Ala. Record says that conflating al-Qaida and Iraq, and setting the impossible goal of ending terrorism, ‘violates fundamental strategic principles’ — and could strain the U.S. military to the breaking point.

The author examines three features of the war on terrorism as currently defined and conducted: (1) the administration’s postulation of the terrorist threat, (2) the scope and feasibility of U.S. war aims, and (3) the war’s political, fiscal, and military sustainability. He believes that the war on terrorism–as opposed to the campaign against al-Qaeda–lacks strategic clarity, embraces unrealistic objectives, and may not be sustainable over the long haul. He calls for downsizing the scope of the war on terrorism to reflect concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American military power.

The full text (PDF) can be downloaded here.

“Now, you might expect a poetic epiphany out of me at this point. Or failing that, to get drunk and/or make a fool of myself with an absurdly young woman. Isn’t that what poets do? Not at all, at least not these days. Poets teach and drive Corollas with 150,000 miles on them and take their children to Suzuki violin lessons. If one of them succeeds in cornering you at a party, God forbid, he will probably tell you about his health plan and 401k. Even your accountant is more interesting, and presumably less neurotic and self-involved. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. Years and years ago the brilliant and iconoclastic old Bay Area poet and reprobate Kenneth Rexroth noted that ‘most poets are so square they have to walk around the block to turn over in bed.'” —August Kleinzahler, Slate

In a potentially important conversation, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg brings together Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, Jacob Weisberg, and Fareed Zakaria, proposing they reappraise their support for the invasion of Iraq in light of the bankruptcy of the WMD argument and the morass of the occupation. The conversation promises to continue, but here are some tidbits from the first installment.

Weisberg:

“This was elective surgery, and we had a pretty good idea what the surgeon’s limitations were. The choice wasn’t between an invasion led by George W. Bush and an invasion led by a president who would make an eloquent case to the world and build a credible global coalition. The alternatives were Bush’s flawed war or no war. So, the question I’m asking myself now is whether the marvelous accomplishment of deposing and capturing Saddam justifies costs that I really ought to have expected.”

Pollack:

“I think the events of the last 12 months have also indicated that containment was doing both better than we believed, and worse. On the one hand, the combination of inspections and the pain inflicted by the sanctions had forced Saddam to effectively shelve his WMD ambitions, probably since around 1995-96. On the other hand, the behavior of the French, Russians, Germans, and many other members of the United Nations Security Council in the run-up to the war was final proof that they were never going to do what would have been necessary to revise and support containment so that it might have lasted for more than another year or two.”

[I think Pollack is right here that containment was working better than we believed, but his argument about the intransigence of the rest of the world “to do what would have been necessary” founders on the fact that their noncooperation was largely in response to Bush’s arrogant disdain for them.]

Pollack continues:

“If I had to write The Threatening Storm over again I certainly would not have been so unequivocal that war was going to be a necessity. However, I still would have pointed out that there was a strong case for removing Saddam’s regime…”

[The strong case is of course based on the humanitarian rationale, and the pat assertion that the Iraqis are ‘better off now’ is the fallback position of every hawk and erstwhile hawk. There are two problems with this. First, it leaves unexamined the legitimate question of whether the Iraqis are really going to be better off with the American oppressors who lack the political will, the moral committment or the financial resources to embark on the necessary nation-building efforts. Secondly, there is the hypocrisy of the continuing policeman-and-liberator-of-the-world noblesse oblige stance being imposed on the rest of the world unwillingly and selectively, only when it jibes with US strategic interests and empire-building aspirations. You cannot argue for the moral necessity of removing Saddam to respond to the suffering of the Iraqi people without a cogent explanation of why you feel no similar obligation to remove every other despicable despot, especially when you did not start making that argument until the Bush regime mobilized for the invasion.]

Thomas Friedman:

“The real reason for this war — which was never stated — was to burst what I would call the “terrorism bubble,” which had built up during the 1990s.

This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as “martyrs,” and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something — to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it’s not very diplomatic — it’s not in the rule book — but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable.”

[Paul Berman as well, whom I will not dignify by including a tidbit, spouts his usual venom about radical Islam being the newest face of the 20th-century problem of ‘mass totalitarian movements’, which justifies the WoT® in terms little more cogent than Dubya’s own in arguing that we must fight them because they ‘hate freedom.’ Berman concedes that, in this installment of the conversation, he has not tied that argument to the necesssity of the Iraqi invasion. Let us hope his argument is less fatuous as they continue…]

George Packer:

“Before the war, no one could know what kind of political psychology we would find once the seal of Saddam’s tyranny was broken. It turns out that Iraqis are a lot less grateful, a lot more suspicious and even conspiratorial, than the advocates of liberation predicted. The moral self-congratulation we saw in this country in early 2003 went a long way toward damaging the prospects of a decent postwar. Totalitarianism didn’t make Iraqis better people or readier to govern themselves democratically — exactly the opposite. The margin for error was almost zero: The American occupation had about two weeks to get things right after the fall of Baghdad in order to set in motion a process that had any near-term chance of success, and it got everything wrong.”

“The sometimes uneasy relationship between African-Americans and the Democratic Party flashed into the open on Sunday, when Sharpton attacked front-runner Howard Dean at an Iowa debate for his failure to hire any blacks to a cabinet-level position during his 10 years as governor of Vermont. It was the campaign’s other African-American candidate, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who came to Dean’s defense, scolding Sharpton for instigating a ‘racial screaming match.’

In some regards, the Sharpton-Dean-Braun exchange captured the divided and unpredictable mood of African-American voters as the primary season heads toward its first votes. Thus far, little attention has been focused on African-American support, given the intense focus by the candidates and the media on the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with negligible black populations.” —Salon

Sharpton’s playing the race card is business as usual for him; he has always been a petty demagogue seeking otherwise unwarranted credibility and respect on an affirmative action basis. I would venture to say that Dean’s lack of cabinet-level black appointments in Vermont reflects nothing more than the fact that the state is lily-white, without significant African Americans in politics at all. Correct me if I am wrong…

“A virus found in the common cold may be a new weapon in the fight against deadly melanomas, Australian researchers say.

The extraordinary development came after Australian scientists found skin cancer cells died when injected with coxsackie A21 – a common air-borne virus associated with the common cold.

Researchers said the discovery could be used as a stand-alone therapy or incorporated into conventional radiation and chemo-therapeutic strategies as an effective “three-pronged attack” on melanoma. ” —News.com.au

New software has `no boundaries or rules’: “A few hundred thousand lines of computer code could revolutionize the way people interact with computers, say its unlikely inventor and his backers.” Can anyone make heads or tails of this description? I can’t for the life of me envision how this would work or whether it would be the big deal this puff piece says it is:

The software, called “No Boundaries Or Rules,” or NBOR, includes an intuitive user interface for writing, drawing, compiling multimedia presentations and other PC tasks. It allows real-time collaboration and sends large files over the Internet at lightning speed.

The cornerstone of NBOR is “Blackspace,” software for word processing, desktop publishing, slideshow presentation, graphics, drawing, animations, audio, photo cropping, instant messaging and real-time conferencing.

Opening Blackspace results in a blank canvas where users arrange text or create sophisticated visual displays with only a few clicks and drags of a mouse — without ever using the pull-down menus, icons, margins, tabs and fonts of Microsoft Word and other current word processing systems.

Canvases can be saved as common document titles — such as schoolreport.doc — or as a symbol, such as a star, logo, photo or dot. Instead of sending all the data over the Internet, the creator can send the symbol alone.

If the recipient has NBOR, he need only click on the symbol and the complete file will rebuild itself in the recipient’s Blackspace, thanks to 500,000 lines of complicated code that Jaeger and eight developers abroad spent two years writing. —SF Chronicle

“Preservative chemicals found in samples of breast tumours probably came from underarm deodorants, UK scientists have claimed.

Their analysis of 20 breast tumours found high concentrations of para-hydroxybenzoic acids (parabens) in 18 samples. Parabens can mimic the hormone estrogen, which is known to play a role in the development of breast cancers. The preservatives are used in many cosmetics and some foods to increase their shelf-life.” —New Scientist

“Madonna’s love for Wes Clark prompts a short history of celeb campaign endorsements — featuring gratuitous sex and drug references and the use of ‘dialogue’ as a verb!” —Salon

Britain’s ‘Dr. Death’ Serial Killer Found Hanged. Harold Shipman, the infamous British family doctor who spent twenty years of quiet family practice coldly and systematically killing at least 215 of his patients (and was only found out because one of his victims had been so grateful for his care that she had left her wealth to him in her will, which was challenged by her daughter) was found hanged in his cell in an English prison. Shipman refused to confess to the murders or reveal his motives, and reaction from the families of some of his victims is to feel profoundly cheated that he “took the easy way out” without talking about his crimes. —New York Times

To Avoid Fuel Limits, Subaru Is Turning a Sedan Into a Truck: “Subaru’s strategy highlights what environmentalists, consumer groups and some politicians say is a loophole in the fuel economy regulations that has undermined the government’s ability to actually cut gas consumption. The average fuel economy for new vehicles is lower now than it was two decades ago, despite advances in fuel-saving technology.” —New York Times

“A new effort appears to be developing to expand the use of sleeping pills, which because of their potential for abuse have long had a reputation as being in some ways more dangerous than the insomnia they are meant to treat…

But part of the new push is driven by drug company marketing. Two new sleeping pills are expected to be available by the end of next year and their manufacturers hope to have them approved for broader and longer-term use than recommended for previous pills. And the companies are expected to advertise their products, and the problem of insomnia, heavily.” —New York Times

“For some women, especially those with a history of significant depression, the risks of abandoning antidepressants during pregnancy may be far greater to the mother and the fetus than taking the drugs themselves.

Those who abruptly stop taking their medications, often on the advice of their obstetricians, put themselves in danger of a relapse. Others who switch to lower dosages may still suffer depressive symptoms.” —New York Times

Washington’s Park Police bombed on a terrorism test on the second anniversary of 9-11 when the Office of Inspector General planted a mock dirty bomb at the Washington Monument. After it went undetected, they even moved it from the rear of the obelisk to be closer to a security checkpoint where tourists line up to enter the attraction. —Washington Post . I also heard a radio report about Immigration and Nationalization batting a perfect .000 recently in detecting a significant number of mock infiltrators from the OIG presenting at various ports of U.S. entry with clumsy home-PC forged identity documents. [Oh, but it must have been before they instituted the fantastic and much-heralded fingerprinting-and-photographing regimen!] But, predictably, reaction will lean in the direction of finger-pointing at the culprits in INS, the National Park Service, or whatever agency du jour has been embarrassed, rather than examining the essential futility of our paranoiac approach to ‘homeland security’.

“We get the conspiracies we deserve.” —Independent.UK

“French law enforcement authorities have made Vice President Dick Cheney the target of a criminal investigation for his role in a massive bribery scandal during his time as CEO of Halliburton. Le Figaro, one of France’s biggest (and most conservative) newspapers, reports ‘an investigative judge is looking into allegations of corruption during construction of a natural gas complex in Nigeria by Halliburton and a French oil company.'” Yet this story is virtually ignored in the American press, the author writes. —AlterNet. “The investigation is the first of its kind in France under laws introduced as part of an international convention on cross-border corruption signed in 1997 by some 35 countries, including the US.” —Guardian.UK

People are saying terrible things about George W. Bush. ”

With Paul O’Neill joining the ranks, the credentials of the Bush critics just keep getting better.”

I was one of the few commentators who didn’t celebrate Paul O’Neill’s appointment as Treasury secretary. And I couldn’t understand why, if Mr. O’Neill was the principled man his friends described, he didn’t resign early from an administration that was clearly anything but honest.

But now he’s showing the courage I missed back then, by giving us an invaluable, scathing insider’s picture of the Bush administration. —Paul Krugman, New York Times op-ed

A reader sent me this story from a Florida news outlet about a candidate for the Darwin Awards who, allegedly guided by voices, climbed into a lion’s cage in a Buenos Aires zoo and tried to ‘bullfight’ with a lion [thanks, Adam]. Mucking around at the site, I got to this slideshow format which has twenty-seven ‘news’ items. Clicking from one to the next, you cannot believe you go to ever more twisted, absurd and shameful displays of folly and perfidy. I do not know if it should be taken as more of a comment on human depravity or the sorry state of what passes for news on your average local station.