perfidy

Buckethead, I may be wrong, but your post on civilian casualties as a regrettable though expected side-effect of the spread of liberty reminds me of someone. Hmmm.... He was a lot like you... a Founding Father... Virginian... tall... striking... redheaded... just loved the French... into home renovations...

Quoting Buckethead:

One thing is obvious about the anti-war protestors, aside from lack of a keen fashion sense. It is that they are far more anti-American than they are anti-war (let alone pro-peace.) Many freely admit that Saddam is a butchering fascist - but that doesn't stop them from opposing our own Hitler, George W. Bush. This is a complete divorce from any kind of moral reasoning. No sane person can claim that Bush is worse than Hussein, or that the American government is as repressive as Saddam's

Mister Bucket, with all due respect, although there are some anti-war protesters out there who genuinely hate our country, there are others who love it deeply, and your post conflates the two. You called me a federalist a few weeks ago-- and thanks for that. As implied, my love for our country goes all the way back to the ideals of 1776 and 1787, and for that matter to the first European immigrants to the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts, filthy monarchists, Congregationalists, and venture capitalists they may have been. I am against the war in Iraq, but I wish for a speedy conclusion to it. These are not mutually exclusive, much less antithetical positions. In fact, they are perfectly reasonable, and moral. 

I am pro-American, but, like WCM still don't feel that the Iraq invasion was the liberty-sanctioned historical inevitability you believe it is. Is it an act of pure evil? No. Are slaughtering Iraqis left and right? From what I can see, just the opposite. But, the decisions underlying the Iraqi invasion stand outside what I believe to be "The American Way Of Doing Things." Period. Times are changing, and it is possible that history will prove me wrong, but this is they way I see it. I don't care for Bush, but I'm certainly not going to compare him to Hitler*, and for your information my fashion sense is impeccable. 

Your larger point is taken, but please take care to not paint people like me with the hippie-loving America-hating brush. It smells funny. 

[wik] Can "Hitler" be a verb, in English? "To Hittle?" In a sentence: "President Mugabe seems determined to Hittle his way into history." 
 

It seems that I have work to do. Is this why I have a job?! To WORK!?! Feh!

Bucketman, with all due respect, I feel it necessary to point out that the use of the term Mohammedan is archaic. More importantly, followers of Islam regard the use of the term as offensive. I do not seek to scold you for this. I recognize it is an oversight, and merely wish to indicate that the term Islamic, or better yet, Muslim, are the best ways to go. Perhaps it is silly, but your posts would indicate that the United States must enter this new terrain in Middle Eastern foreign policy in the spirit of cooperation with its people, especially Muslims. To that end, it's better to use the word Muslim as an adjective. 

Just who is next? And other tangents 

I believe that widening the war to Iran and Syria would be a tremendous mistake at this point. As someone whose maternal grandmother was Lebanese Maronite Christian, I have serious qualms about the rule of al Assad. His father occupied my grandmother's country, and to my knowledge, Syria maintains a military presence there. He has some nerve bragging about his campaigns in Lebanon. Al Assad is a bastard, like his dead father. Of course, the Israelis still have troops hanging around the south, and not long ago, seemed to think they could bomb Beirut whenever they felt like it. To be fair, within the Lebanese context, they both suck. 

But that's neither here nor there. I maintain that Hussein posed no significant threat to the United States, and that the war cannot be justified on those terms. The notion of liberating Iraq, the way I see it, only came after many people weren't buying the weapons and threat to the U.S. argument, so the administration changed its tune. It's an excuse, not a causal factor. Rumsfeld and Cheney had no problem with Hussein gassing Kurds before; I don't think they really have a problem with Hussein's treatment of his citizenry now. The administration has not really told the truth about why it is fighting this war. I don’t believe that it is about oil; it is political. But beyond that, the administration has not been forthcoming. 

But that is also beside the point. The war against Iraq has inflated the possibility of terrorist attacks. A war against Syria and Iran will inflate it further. I fail to understand how a war against Iraq, which created a greater possibility for further attacks, simultaneously lowered the likelihood of attacks. Oh, right, after Hussein was deposed, then the threat was lowered. But he didn't pose a threat in the first place. It's enough to give me motion sickness.

There are other ways to deal with Syria and Iran than war. Iran has a significant population of moderates. Why doesn't the United States attempt further dialogue with them? Why did our President just slap them with an axis of evil label, alienating moderates? Can't we work with those who would listen rather than calling them evil and shooting them? Steve, you indicate that the prospect of further war is dodgy, and that encouragement of democratization is possible. I couldn't agree more. But to make sure I'm clear, we can't make people be democratic or republican by holding a gun to their head, or shooting them. Dialogue and diplomacy with moderates and reformists is infinitely preferable to war. You also correctly point out that Saudi Arabia is probably the biggest problem. You bet it is. But the United States thus far has been committed to assisting the Saudi monarchy and helping to preserve a system that does everything you said it did, plus it stones women to death for adultery. The U.S. will have to withdraw its support for that monarchy? Is the administration willing to do that? I doubt it, but we'll see. 

Again with the Nazis?

Steve, Steve, Steve. First, Vichy administered Syria during World War II, not Germany. Vichy was a puppet state of Germany, but don’t you think if Germany ruled it directly the campaign in Egypt would have gone quite differently? Iraq was in the British sphere of influence during the war, not France. Any colonial administration of Iraq was performed by the British, not the French. 

The Ba'athist party thus did not stem from German influence during the war. It was an anti-colonial nationalist movement directed against British influence in Egypt, Iraq, and elsewhere. It was also an anti-colonial nationalist movement against French influence in Syria. If it was influenced by German nationalism, then it was also influenced by every other nationalist movement in history. 

Secondly, it was a pan-Arabist movement with the ultimate goal of uniting the Middle East under a single government. Egypt and Syria briefly played with that one, until they realized they couldn't get along. But how was that a product of German influence? I'll keep it short for now. Further discussion can be engaged at your discretion. 

Conclusion: on the left, Hussein's removal, and widening the war 

Steve, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you were engaging in generalizations of the European and American left for purposes of brevity. But I will nevertheless weigh in with some of my own views. As a teacher of history, I have never hesitated to be honest with my students about Stalin. I give them the numbers. I mention Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow, which argues that Stalin artificially engineered the Ukrainian famine. I do not excuse the mass slaughter of innocents under anyone just because they claimed to be Communist. I reiterate: it was only a claim because they never launched the global revolution of class war. Anything less was not Communism in the strict letter of Marxist/Engelsian prophecy. 

Some other people, who paint themselves as leftists, have excused Stalin, Mao, and others. I have argued with them, stating that there was no excuse. I can remember one jug-head at a conference a couple of years back who will remain nameless. He argued that the USSR could not be industrialized without mass slaughter. I asked, who gives a shit about industrialization if it has to be accomplished that way? The preservation of human life unfettered by oppressive government with a roof over every head, clothes on every back, and food on every plate are the goals, not lip service to bullshit, bastardized, half-baked, "I can't believe it's not Marxism" so-called falsely asserted Communism blown out the asses of functionally illiterate imbeciles like Stalin and Mao who looked at the pictures in the Classic Comics edition of The Communist Manifesto. But human life is the main thing for our purposes. 

To that end, is the removal of Saddam Hussein a good thing? Ultimately, probably, unless somebody worse comes along. But even with a more democratic government, how free will Iraqi citizens be with American tanks and troops occupying their country? Was it the place of the United States to remove him? You argue, yes, it is. I'm not so sure. Is the United States going to attack every oppressive regime? Will we fight Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, and Britain? The UK is still occupying the north of Ireland, and has engaged in human rights violations against Catholics there. Let's go to war with Britain. So what constitutes an oppressive regime? Who's going to decide that? Could we end up with a global witch hunt? We're on a slippery slope, and widening the war to Syria and Iran will only increase our velocity. Cheney and Rumsfeld and the other neo-Reaganites got their war. Enough.

...A: They both want a piece of your children! 

Haw! I thought of that one myself. I kill me, really. 

Please excuse me, I'm a little punchy. Here I am, knocking on the door of thirty years old, and Michael Jackson jokes, Weird Al Yankovic and Adam Sandler crack me up. My wife has a theory that my social development stopped very soon after my potty-training, and while I'm not one to argue with someone as smart and insightful as she, I would insist that I merely appreciate all kinds of humor. I mean, look at the Germans! Two hundred years and more of dour Prussian, Fascist, and European Collectivist rule, and their favorite humor is poopie jokes. Poopie! 

Really folks, mine is a dry wit. 

But enough of that. This morning, my pre-commute fatigue-haze was rudely interrupted by an item on the crawlbar of the New England Cable Network, enough that I flew without transition into a screeching hate-fit the likes of which I haven't had since I left my black rotten heart in New York and moved up here two years ago. 

I may not be a lawyer, or even know anything concrete about American law beyond that which I studied back in my halcyon graduate school days, but I do know a little about the music industry. The little item which so rudely interrupted the vague buzz of war news and Red Sox footage was this: 

RIAA arrest 4 college students for illegal file trading 

I don't know much about anything, but I know firsthand that the business of making music is about three things: money; big money; and covering your ass. The first two are self-evident. The industry is a high-risk business in which ninety-nine out of a hundred projects lose money and only that 1 percent succeed. But those wild successes ("hits" to you mortals) are enough to wipe out the failures and keep everyone's bright green eyes fixed on the shiny brass ring. The "covering your ass" is also pretty obvious. It comes down to the two major classes of music industry managers-- mercenaries, and accountants. The mercenaries are out to gain power and prestige, and also to get their hip ticket punched. The accountants are out to ensure that the quarterly balance sheets, which normally look like some horrifying EKG, smooth out into the reassuring always-ascending undulations that mean fat times and happy investors. Neither of these types give a tinker's cuss about the music or about the long-term health of the industry. The rare exceptions, like his majesty Clive Davis or that lovable bastid Jimmy Iovine, have merely managed to combine these two traits with a survivor instinct and an ear for hits. Others, like the heads of smaller independent labels, share these traits in greater or lesser measure, but sometimes they are even in it for the music! Nevertheless, the rarity of Clive Davises and the smallness of small labels make them the exceptions that prove the rule. 

Both industry types have in common an innate conservatism. The mercenaries are afraid to be the first ones to try anything new, as failure would spell both shame and the dimming of their careers. The accountants refuse to let anyone be the first to try anything new, because an unproven investment could spell financial disaster in the short-term. Therefore, as is well-documented, they try to kill or bury new things-- home taping, the walkman, DAT, cd's, DVD, cd burners, singer-songwriter music, and now file sharing. Predictably, this mindset also makes it very difficult for the industry as a whole to grasp the possibilities inherent in new technology. 

By now, it's clear to everyone that file-trading has utterly changed the way consumers value music. Unfortunately for the industry, apart from some desultory gestures such as BMG's purchasing Napster in order to kill it, the industry has thus far refused to adapt to this new reality The way they see it, file trading is the sole factor responsible for the dip in sales of recorded music (I disagree, but won't bore you with that here). There is no question that among the teenybopper and nu-metal teenage set, file sharing and cd burning has resulted in some loss of revenue for the major record labels. But, on the other side of the coin, there is a population of music fans who use file sharing and burning as ways to find new artists to support, by buying their records. I happen to be one of those. Is it worth alienating both groups, which between them comprise the entire avid music-buying public, just to crush the first? Um.....no. That's idiotic. 

Nevertheless, it seems the die has been cast. The RIAA is going to use lawsuits to stem the tide of illegal files. This follows attempts over the last year by the RIAA to: reserve the right to hack anyone's computer with impunity to search for purportedly illegal sound files; gain unfettered access to the IP logs of ISP's; and argue that cd sales operate on a license basis like software, meaning that one does not own the cd one buys. This lawsuit gambit is a brand new low and a possibly fatal . 

Since I can see the future with perfect clarity, I predict that prosecuting college students, even those deserving penii who trade thousands of songs they don't own on cd, will have four consequences.

• It will lead to a widespread backlash against the music industry, which could further erode sales. Since the major labels are already in trouble, and no longer the happy cash cows their parent companies want them to be, this could lead to either further consolidation among the majors, or to a general crash of the system.
• If the lawsuits are carried through to trial or settlement, it will create a precedent by which even traditionally protected uses of recorded music may be further attacked.
• It will create an effect similar to the encryption community, where the bleeding edge of decryption is always just one step behind the bleeding edge of encryption. This will cost lots of money that the industry doesn't have, and could have fallout legislative effects that could also erode fair-use rights.
• It will seal the major labels' doom. Thus far they have totally failed to find a way to generate revenue out of the new realities of file trading. By attempting to hold back the tide, they will render themselves less and less relevant to consumers. Public opinion is foursquare against the industry, and major-label music isn't exactly the very staff of life.

Granted, some of these predictions are fever-dreams. But I think I'm right. Already, some of the biggest stars in music came up through alternative means of distribution and scouting that the labels had nothing to do with. Take 50 Cent, for example. He built his name via self-produced cd's before making the jump to a major label. The label simply provided a bankroll, a volume discount with a pressing plant, and a better rolodex. These services that are available in some form to anyone with the money to pay for them, and are becoming more available as companies that cater to this population are founded. Many local artists have chosen to forego the label system entirely, and let their success be limited only by how much time they can devote to administrating their own careers. Because of the ill-will I believe will be generated toward the RIAA by these lawsuits and similar efforts, I expect this route to become more common regardless of how the lawsuits turn out. 

By choosing to stand firm behind old-media ideas of copyright and music marketing, the RIAA and the labels it speaks for have chosen to go down with the ship. 

Hey... where the hell are my pants??

The record setting rapid progress of American forces in Iraq is disconcerting to two groups of people. One, those who feel that they might be next on the list; and two, the American and European left. The fear of the first group is natural, their regimes are on our list. But the supporters of the oppressed and downtrodden workers of the world have no excuse to attack the United States for acting to liberate the oppressed of a fascist regime like Saddam's. All of the Left's favorite victims are especial targets of Saddam's dictatorship. Yet America is attacked as an imperialist. Is it worse that America should exercise her might, or that Iraqis continue to die, be tortured, raped, and brutalized?

One thing is obvious about the anti-war protestors, aside from lack of a keen fashion sense. It is that they are far more anti-American than they are anti-war (let alone pro-peace.) Many freely admit that Saddam is a butchering fascist - but that doesn't stop them from opposing our own Hitler, George W. Bush. This is a complete divorce from any kind of moral reasoning. No sane person can claim that Bush is worse than Hussein, or that the American government is as repressive as Saddam's. The left in Europe and America petulantly insist that America keep jumping through an infinite series of hoops, in the vain hope that this policy will prevent the exercise of American military power, than which nothing could be more evil. The exercise of American military force has been so terrible over the years that millions once enslaved by communism are now free. And South Korea is not in (literal) darkness like North Korea. And Germany isn't killing Jews by the millions. And Japan isn't enslaving all of East Asia. So terrible, in fact, that the one time in the last century that we failed to exercise our military power in full, a million South Vietnamese civilians were slaughtered by our opponents, the peaceful agrarian reformers of the north.

It seems that the only nation that isn't allowed to deal with the problem of Iraq is the one nation that can deal with the problem. The one nation that has proved that it uses force on the whole wisely - to oppose, for lack of a better word, evil. We should be proud that our nation is a natural wrecking ball for totalitarian regimes.

The tragic part of this is that innocents die in the process. Hundreds of thousands of innocent German civilians died in our bombing campaigns over Germany, and likewise in Japan. Very few people argue that this price was not worth paying. When we analyse the moral pros and cons, civilian deaths are most certainly a factor. Miraculously, our technology has advanced to the point where we can utterly destroy a building and leave its neighbors unharmed. This precision allows us to greatly limit the harm to innocents. Our military has, for the last couple weeks been operating under the most extreme rules of engagement ever conceived for an army at war. We may not fire at the enemy if he is behind civilians. We may not destroy buildings if we are not sure that civilians have been evacuated. And so on. Nevertheless, we have conducted a war of unparalleled lethality. My back of the envelope calculations (and supported by the wink and nod from my Marine Major next door neighbor, who works for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) indicate that we are incurring kill ratios against the Iraqi army of 1000:1. (It seems that the Special Republican Guard is "special" in the short bus sense.)

This amazing care that the military shows for the people of Iraq is absolutely not mirrored by the left. The callous disregard for the fates of the people of a nation with an honest to god fascist dictatorship is remarkable - or rather not remarkable, as the press never reports on this. The United States must be the evil party, because, well, the United States is evil. Therefore, we will gloss over any minor shortcomings of people like Saddam, Castro, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc. (The Baathist party grew from the influence of the Nazi party, from when Germany ruled Syria and Iraq during the Second World War, after the fall of France.) The ability of the left to fawn over any murderous (socialist) thug simply blows my mind.

As America works to liberate Iraq, a very small number of Iraqi citizens will die. That the war might make us safer is worth that cost. But the benefit to the Iraqis is far greater - they will be free.

The dictatorial leaders of Iran and Syria have both publically announced that they intend to do everything possible to prevent the emergence of a free and prosperous Iraq, and to attack the United States wherever their puny weapons can reach. Syria's Assad proclaimed that Lebanon would be the model for his nation's campaign against the coalition. Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei said that America's presence in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than Saddam, who waged a bloody decade long war against Iran. Iran has gathered terrorist and guerilla forces on its border, and Syria may already have sent terrorists across its border.

The threat of a free Iraq has led these two nations to move from rote propaganda condemnations of the "Great Satan" to the verge of actual hostilities. For those who are already uncomfortable with the fact that America is at war, this will be disturbing. But for a Jacksonian like myself, this is good news. America as a whole is slow to anger, and we have absorbed hundreds of small attacks with little or no reaction. (And, of course, this likely encouraged further attacks.) The attacks on the WTC and Pentagon finally woke people up to the fact that there is in fact a threat, and in fact a rather serious one.

Now that the war is started, I'd like to see it actually finished, not left festering like back in '91. And, as events unfold, "finished" might include Syria and Iran. Iran's population openly loaths the regime - it is likely that the mullahs will be toppled with only minimal effort on America's part. Syria, like Iraq a Baathist dictatorship, might require more effort. Once Iraq is settled, Syria is stuck between Iraq and US naval forces in the Med.

The prospect of further conflict in the Middle East is not something that should be approached recklessly or, god forbid, with glee. I do not relish the idea of more American casualties, or of more civilian casualties in Syria or Iran. Would we have stopped fighting Nazi Germany after liberating France? I think that a similar issue confronts us in the Middle East. The United States has reluctantly undertaken a War on Terror, not just against Al Quaida. We have declared that terrorism, of all kinds, is a target. Syria and Iran are the two largest state supporters of terrorism. When we consider the intersection of two things - direct threat to American citizens by way of Syrian and Iranian sponsored terrorism, and the plight of the citizens of these two repressive governments, I believe that we have an obligation to act, just as we did in Iraq.

We have liberated Afghanistan. Iraq is not far behind. If we can encourage the hundreds of thousands of democracy activists in Iran (brave, brave people - they protest in a nation where protests can get you killed.) to overthrow the mullahs, and depose Assad's facsist government, and encourage reform in Pakistan - we will have helped to create a stretch of free Islamic nations from the Europe to the Indus river. Coincidently, this is roughly the extent of Alexander's Empire. But unlike Alexander, the United States clearly has no imperial aims. We do not plan to incorporate these nations into a new American empire. The US has been taken up the mountain, but we have refused to be tempted. Now some might argue that these new regimes will be part of America's global hegemony - but no more so than France or Germany, who are world famous for toeing the American foriegn policy line. American (and British and Australian) companies will win contracts from the new governments. But is the fact that an American company can make some money dealing with a freely elected representative of the Iraqi people worse than the shady deals that TotalElFina made with Saddam with the collusion of bribed French officials?

If these experiments in liberty amongst the Mohammedans are as successful as Turkey, or South Korea, American national security will be enhanced. We will have helped make hundreds of millions of people citizens of responsible governments - similar to the effect on Eastern Europe after we won the cold war. (Sadly, Russia does not seem to be going far in that direction - perhaps that extra thirty years of communism was too much.) If they could be as successful as Japan, the example that these nations will set might set off reforms in other Islamic nations.

The most crucial of these will be Saudi Arabia. With the largest reserves of oil in the world, Saudi Arabia has a influence on the world economy all out of proportion to the skill or education of its people, its industry or economy, or its contribution to world civilization. Saudi Arabia is a primitive tribal culture sitting on top of a gold mine. It is a perverse welfare state for the rich. Despite the vast amounts of money that oil brought, the Saudis have made no effort to develop an economy. Since the Saudis don't work, over 70% of all jobs in the country are held by foriegners. That percentage jumps to 90% when private sector jobs are examined. And Saudi Arabia undergoing a demographic explosion - half of the population is under 18, and the nation has the highest birth rate of any country outside Africa.

This nation also supplies vast amounts of money to fundamentalist Islamic groups in Saudi Arabia and around the world. We all know that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. Most of the detainees at Guantanamo are Saudi. These young Saudis, well educated, entering their twenties and entering an economy specifically designed to not provide jobs for them, are perfect targets for the Wahabbis. Somehow, this must be fixed. Hopefully, it can be fixed without further American intervention. But we won't really be safe from Islamic terrorism until the last sources of funding have been cut off. And that means Saudi Arabia.

More space stuff. Liberty and other family values. War Aims, or why good people sometimes need to be blown up. Fascism, Norwegians and communism, three things that I hate.

WEMU-FM host Terry Hughes was fired from Eastern Michigan Public Radio for repeatedly expressing his support for the War, President Bush and American soldiers. He also denigrated NPR news coverage, saying, "We know if you want a current assessment of what's going on, you're sure not listening to us... You'll be over at Fox TV where they're not bending the news. ... It ain't happening on NPR."

The station manager Art Timko said, "He was fired basically over philosophical differences," Timko said. "We have a policy that eliminates or restricts the expression of personal opinion on issues of controversy, and he didn't believe that applied to him."

Hughes plans to continue taping his vintage R&B and Soul program at home for syndication. "It wasn't my intention to mess with the station manager," he said. "It's only been my intent to do crazy cool radio in America."

The quote from the station manager seems to indicate that public radio has serious problems with traditional American values like free speech.

It is rumored around D.C. that the authoritarian Wet Dream of the " Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003", AKA Patriot II, is defunct for this year. Good news!!

However, celebrating its demise is less important than watching to make sure that little bits of it don't end up in other, more innocuous bills. The "RAVE Act" was apparently acceptable to many Congressmen, and its provisions are hardly less outrageous than those of Patriot II. I promise, dear reader (yes, you, the only reader), my sharp steely gaze is fixed firmly on this... ooh! Is Trading Spaces on?