War Commentary

Israel Without Apology

An oldie (from 2003–Edward Said has died since) but a goodie, but one I’d never noticed or linked to before; a long but fascinating read from a former Berkeley leftist, and why he turned his back on his once comrades, over Israel:

On my last day, I was able to drive across the entire Golan Heights, past the partly destroyed Israeli post at Kfar Nafakh and then on to the farthest point of the Israeli counterattack. I passed the charred wrecks of dozens of Syrian and Israeli tanks, and the smell of burning flesh still hung in the air. I only came to a stop at an Israeli military police roadblock at the western edge of the Golan Heights. There was a tourist observation deck nearby, outfitted with telescopes. Peering through one, I could see Damascus clearly on the horizon.

After the initial Syrian successes of the battle

Media Criticism

A Tale Of Two Security Violations

Joel Mowbray talks about the apparent double standard at play, in the Justice Department and the media, about Sandy Berger:

The mainstream media’s palpable disinterest in the Berger case is hardly justified. Many questions remain unanswered. Of the few explanations Berger and his defenders have actually provided, none passes the laugh test.

Berger claimed in court last year that smuggling classified documents out of the National Archives was about “personal convenience,” but the inspector general report states that he walked out of the building and down the street, found a construction site, looked to see if the coast was clear, then slid behind a fence and hid the documents under a trailer.

Which part of that elaborate procedure was “convenient”?

According to the New York Times story last April following Berger’s guilty plea, “Associates attributed the episode to fatigue and poor judgment.” While lying to authorities is poor judgment, it is also illegal. And how exactly did fatigue drive Berger to use his scissors to shred three versions of the top-secret document?

I think we know how this would have been covered if it had been a former Republican National Security Advisor. One of many reasons to not allow the Democrats near the White House at war time.

Economics

Bad Economic News

For people looking for…you know…actual bad economic news. Oil prices are at their lowest level in a year and a half:

U.S. crude fell $1.63 to $54.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after tumbling more than $2 earlier in the session. Brent crude traded down $1.28 at $54.32.

Both international benchmarks were at their lowest since June 2005.

“$55 was very strong support that has been broken and below that is not much,” said Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix. “If we close below $55, the next big support level isn’t until $50.”

Weather forecaster DTN Meteorologist predicted above normal temperatures for the rest of the week in the U.S. Northeast, extending an extraordinary streak of mild winter weather in the world’s largest heating oil market.

U.S. heating oil demand will run about a third below normal this week, the National Weather Service said Monday.

The steep price drop has rung alarm bells in OPEC producers and the group’s president, the United Arab Emirates, is discussing further action with member states. But traders remained doubtful that OPEC could turn the tide.

I blame George Bush.

No, really. I mean, it’s caused by global warming, right? And isn’t that his fault?

Seriously, this does point out that GW, even if it’s occurring, is not an all-bad thing. We generally use fossil fuels for heat, whereas air conditioning is generated by electricity, which can be produced with nuclear and other means. It’s a complicated world we live in.

War Commentary

No Al Qaeda In Somalia?

In response to Karl Hallowell’s question in this post, what does he think this means?

Ethiopia’s prime minister said on Tuesday that many international terrorists had been killed, injured or captured in the fighting in Somalia.

Meles Zenawi was quoted by the French newspaper Le Monde as saying that suspected terrorists from Britain were among them.

“Many international terrorists are dead in Somalia,” Meles was quoted as saying.

“Photographs have been taken and passports from different countries have been collected. The Kenyans are holding Eritrean and Canadian passport holders. We have injured people coming from Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan, the United Kingdom.”

Let’s keep it coming.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an analysis of the situation, with a description of the role of US Special Forces. Those are the kind of boots on the ground we need, with a lot more boots on the ground from regional allies. This was the key to overthrowing the Taliban as well. Unfortunately, it’s not clear who our regional allies in overthrowing the mullahs would be.

War Commentary

The Problems With Kagan-Keane

Joe Katzman has some useful thoughts on “the surge.” He’s skeptical, as am I, for many of the reasons he states.

He makes an interesting point that I hadn’t previously considered:

Iran is arming and supporting both Sunni and Shi’ite groups, using a script I explained long ago in “Iran’s Great Game.” What does your strategy presume to do about this? The Saudis have also been sending people over to help the Sunnis for some time now, and run martyr’s profiles in the Saudi press – and now they are publicly threatening to step up their support of Iraq’s Sunnis. How does the proposed strategy plan to deal with this ongoing activity, as well as the threat of more open involvement?

So what we really have going on (among other things) is a war by proxie between SA and Iran. From our standpoint, it’s similar to the situation that we faced in the eighties, when the war between Arab and Persian was more direct, and we aided Iraq not because we wanted it to win, but because we wanted both sides to lose. That’s the case here as well.

But it also points out that Israel is in an interesting situation, in which alliances are shifting in the sands of the Middle East, with clandestine meetings between Jerusalem, and Riyadh, Amman and Cairo, to figure out how to deal with the Shia menace in Iran. I suspect that Omert’s government has been given a wink a nod by those governments against what is now recognized to be a common enemy in Tehran. And of course, it also shows that the war we’re in is really a larger Middle East cold war that they managed to export to our shores five years ago.

Oh, also over at Winds of Change–are we being probed for an attack?

[Update about 10:30 AM EST]

Here’s another interesting thought on probes and “false alarms.”

Popular Culture

Half-Time Advice For The Buckeyes

If you want to win this football game, you’re going to have to score a lot more points in the second half, and not let the other team score so much.

[Update at the start of the fourth quarter, after Smith is sacked, almost a safety]

They’re not following my advice, at least not the first part of it. Off to bed.

[OK, one more]

A wag over at Free Republic:

Being that it is Florida and Ohio, I can expect to see calls for a recount, no?

[Morning thoughts]

I’m asked in comments if I’ll now “give Florida the credit it deserves.” I’m not sure what that means. Florida was unquestionably, by far, the best football team on that field last night. Does that mean they’re the best team in the country?

Who knows?

This just once again points out the absurdity of attempting to discern who is the “best team in the country” or picking a “national champion” in college football. We had two big bowl games in which the teams that were heavily favored got beaten soundly, to most peoples’ amazement (perhaps even many of the fans of the winning teams). That should tell us that there’s something fundamentally wrong with how we judge these things and our ability to predict them.

Let’s go back to the old transitive paradox. Florida beat tOSU. Auburn beat Florida. Why isn’t Auburn the “best team in the country”?

Oh, that was then, and this is now. Well, OK. So would Florida have creamed the Buckeyes back in November, before they had a seven-week layoff? Or did the Buckeyes go from being the “best team in the country” to someone lucky to stay in the top ten in the first few minutes of the game, after they lost Ginn?

Who knows?

Were the losses of tOSU and Michigan in the post season an indication that they weren’t as good as people thought, or that the Big Televen conference is overrated against the SEC and Pac-10, or is it a consequence of the fact that both teams had a couple weeks longer break than their opponents, due to vagaries of the scheduling?

Who knows?

If you want to have a playoff, could there be a better lead up to it than the last two games we’ve seen in this stadium? After their performance in the Fiesta Bowl, shouldn’t unbeaten Boise State have a shot at the Gators now?

Who knows?

Folks, there are too many teams, and too few games played to determine a college football champion at any point in time (and it’s a dynamic situation), or even sensibly rank them. Live with it, and accept the old dictum that college football is the only sport in which the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars, and doomed to remain that way. And I’d be saying that even if Michigan had played last night, and won.

[One more, after looking at the overnight AP poll results]

OK, why did the Buckeyes drop only to number two? After that performance last night, they should have plummeted to the second half of the top ten. Once again, the irrationality and intrinsic paradoxes of the process is displayed.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!