Category Archives: War Commentary

War Commentary

Pretty Robust

The next time someone tells you it’s a bad idea to allow firearms in an aircraft, because firing a bullet through the fuselage will bring it down (one of the many bogus arguments against allowing flight crew to be armed), point this out.

War Commentary

Shifting Alliances?

This seems like good news:

…some Iraqis are warming to a stronger relationship with Israel, in part because they are frightened of Iran’s influence.

“They are afraid of Iran’s extremist political system. If Iran were a democracy, they wouldn’t be afraid,” Alusi said. “We don’t have border problems with Israel. We don’t have historical problems with Israel,” just Iran.

At last a glimmer of common sense on the issue. Of course, it’s important to not let this grow into a civil war, with Israel and the Sunni Iraqis on one side, and the Shia and Iranians on the other.

War Commentary

Getting Real

I haven’t said much about the NSA spying “scandal,” or the whining about monitoring mosques for radiation, but Jay Manifold has useful posts on both. As he points out, much of the discussion in the press on both these subjects (related mostly by the fact that they’re both largely symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome) has been appallingly illiterate and innumerate, from a technical standpoint.

On the mosque thing, I’m having trouble working up much sympathy here. I suppose that the complaint is the usual one–that we’re “discriminating” and “profiling” by not looking for evidence of nuclear materials in churches, synagogues and covens. This is a charge to which I heartily plead guilty.

The word “discrimination” has gotten a bad rap, but in fact, people who don’t or won’t discriminate, won’t last long in this world. Of course, irrational discrimination is a bad thing, but when we have limited investigatory resources, and there’s a long history (and recent and current one, in Iraq and Israel and the territories) of mosques being used as weapons depots, it makes all the sense in the world to keep a close eye on them. When it comes to nuclear materials, it’s pretty hard to justify a “right to privacy.”

[Update at noon eastern]

Michael Barone has some common sense (something that seems to be in short supply in the MSM and, as he points out, the New York Times) on the wiretap issue:

Let’s put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America’s enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America’s enemies but not to wiretap — or, more likely these days, electronically intercept — their communications. Presidents have asserted and exercised this power repeatedly and consistently over the last quarter-century.