All posts by Rand Simberg

Political Commentary

What If?

I don’t know if people have speculated about this previously, but as an alternate history, what if Reagan had beaten Ford for the nomination in 1976? Would he have beaten Carter then, or did we have to live with him for four years to realize what a lousy president he was?

It’s not clear to what extent Ford lost because of general backlash over Watergate, or because of the Nixon pardon, or because of the debate gaffe, in which he said that Poland wasn’t under the thumb of the Soviets. Reagan would have likely suffered only from the first factor. If he did lose to Carter, would he have gotten the nomination again in 1980 and beaten him then (I suppose the answer to that depends partially on how close the race was in ’76)?

And if he’d won, would the Cold War have ended that much sooner as well? Would we have avoided the stagflation, the sky-high interest rates? Would we have avoided the Iran hostage crisis, which was arguably our first of many acts of irresolution toward Islamic aggression, which ultimately led to September 11?

One more thought–one wonders how much different things might have gone if he hadn’t been shot. That was what gave him the political momentum to get much of his agenda passed in his first term. Ironically, while Reagan didn’t fire a single shot to win the Cold War, perhaps John Hinckley’s single shot was responsible…

Political Commentary

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper

Has the anti-globo looniness run its course?

…the demonstrations have been nothing short of a dud, and the 20 or so protesters who quietly rallied yesterday were unable to hide their disappointment at the meager turnout.

“I think we overestimated ourselves,” Sandra Kwak, 22, said with a laugh in a light drizzle in expansive Forsyth Park. “But even if the few people who are here learn something, it’s not a total loss.”

Denied access to Sea Island for security reasons, two groups of around 150 people each gathered in the cities of Savannah and Brunswick on Tuesday to kick off three days of planned protests. But by the second day of the summit, only a fraction remained out in force.

“It’s a victory just to have this event,” protest organizer Kellie Gaznik said Tuesday. “If we didn’t have a place for people to do their art and make their statements, they would just walk around and maybe break things, which doesn’t accomplish anything.”

No, Kellie. No it doesn’t.

Space

Why June 21st?

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this previously. I’ve been thinking it, but may have been too busy to post.

Here’s my theory on why they picked the solstice. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s the solstice. I think that it’s because thirty days later is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first moon landing. Burt (and perhaps Paul Allen) seem to be big on anniversaries.

[Update at 3:30 PM PDT]

Andrew Gray has an even better theory in comments:

Unless I’m miscounting, thirty days *less one*; isn’t Apollo 11 generally taken as being July 20th? (which is also the anniversary, I note, of the eventual recovery of Liberty Bell 7…)

But on that note, July 21, 1961 – Liberty Bell 7’s flight, being the second suborbital flight, might be considered not inappropriate as a date?

That aside, this does beg the question… what is in the two weeks after that, if he’s so keen on anniversaries? It’d be unusual to not have one for the second flight, if this is his plan as you suggest…

He’s right on the arithmetic–I forgot about the old “thirty days has September, April, June, and November.” And it would be an appropriate anniversary.

But as for the fourteen-day one, they would be foolish to wait fourteen days for the second attempt. They’ll do it as quickly as they can, so they have some margin in case they have weather or other problems. The first time you have the luxury of choosing an anniversary date, but the second one has to be driven solely by winning the prize.

War Commentary

The Need To Keep Score

Wretchard has (as usual) some very good points in this piece.

Offering up the objective of more United Nations legitimacy or adopting an “exit strategy” in Iraq, as the Democrats have done, does not amount to a strategy. But neither does the open-ended formula of bringing freedom to the Middle East constitute an actionable agenda. It may be a guide to action, but what is needed is a set of intermediate goalposts against which progress can be measured. Some of these might be:

1. The desired end state in Saudi Arabia: whether or not this includes the survival of the House of Saud or its total overthrow;
2. The fate of the regime in Damascus;
3. Whether or not the United States is committed to overthrowing the Mullahs in Iran and the question of what is to replace them;
4. How far America will tolerate inaction by Iraq security forces before acting unilaterally;
5. The future of the America’s alliance with France and Germany;
6. The American commitment to the United Nations.

Each of these hard questions must be weighed according to its contribution to the final goal of breaking the back of international terrorism. Somewhere in that maze, if it exists, is a ladder to victory. Leading the horse to drink presumes that we know what purpose watering them serves; what paths we will travel. Answering these questions will be a heuristic process, one that moves towards progressively better solutions. Finding ourselves in the place we first began is equivalent to defeat. Whether we are further along in Saudi Arabia in May 2004 than on November 2003 is one of the indicators of whether we are winning or losing. But someone has to keep score.

This would also make it easier to sell to the American people, because it would show that we have a plan, and that we are making progress in it. The problem, of course, is that it’s a plan of which much of the world (particularly the dictatorphilic part of it, including some of our “allies” in Europe) won’t approve.

General

Public Service Announcement

Apparently about eighty percent of spam is being generated by zombie machines (i.e., home computers that have been taken over by trojans, and are sending out massive emails without the owner even being aware).

Folks, if you don’t have at least a software firewall, like Zone Alarm (there is a free version), you are part of the problem. As cheap as hardware firewalls are these days, there is no excuse to have an unsecured machine with a permanent internet connection.