War Commentary

Numerology

They couldn’t even wait for the next thousand on the odometer. Remember the big deal the press made about the 2000th death in Iraq? Now the magic (and utterly meaningless) number is 2500:

While there were no details on who it was or where the 2,500th death occurred, it underscored the continuing violence in Iraq just after an upbeat Bush returned from a surprise visit to Baghdad determined that the tide was beginning to turn.

In other words, we’ve now lost, over a period of over three years, almost as many as died in a couple hours on the beaches of Normandy (perhaps even the same number as were lost just in training for that event). Would the media have been so hung up on these kinds of numbers during that war? It seems unlikely, but if they had (or to be more precise, had today’s media been reporting then), the story would have been something like this.

Political Commentary

Words To Ponder

Jonah Goldberg says that we should have installed liberalism in Iraq, not democracy. There is a confusion between the two, and as he points out, introducing democracy in an illiberal society will not necessarily provide helpful results.

…many on the left see no problem singing the praises of leftwing regimes which put “equality” ahead of democracy. As Derb once put it, “Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” But regimes which put liberty and the rule of law ahead of democracy and the like are always immediately derided as dictatorial “strong-man” regimes. I’m not saying that such criticism isn’t sometimes accurate. After all, democracy is good and tends to innoculate against tyranny and without democracy enlightened regimes often go bad. But I would still have preferred to live under Pinochet than Castro or Lee Kuan Yew instead of Hugo Chavez (or, heh, the Hapsburgs than the Soviets).

As someone who still considers himself a classical liberal, that makes a lot of sense to me, given the often ugly choices of the real (as opposed to ivory-tower) world. It’s easy to overrate and overemphasize democracy. As Churchill once said, it’s the worst possible system, except for all the others.

Media Criticism

Dispatch From Planet Clueless

It had to be a slow newsday, with a reporter who hasn’t been paying much attention, to generate a thumbsucker like this: “Politics is clouding message of antiwar activist Sheehan.”

When Cindy Sheehan burst on the national scene, it was as an aggrieved mother whose son had died in Iraq. Plainspoken and unscripted, Sheehan delivered an easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority.

OK, so what is the “easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority”? Our intrepid reporter can’t be bothered to say. Just how does one derive “moral authority” from a dead son, anyway? Can someone explain this to me?

She deserved, and to the degree that she actually mourns her son (questionable, at this point–if there’s anyone of whom it could be said, in Ann Coulter’s much-criticized words, that they are “enjoying” a death, it is Mother Sheehan–she was obviously having the time of her life when she got arrested at the White House), continues to deserve our pity, but that doesn’t give her “moral authority,” absolute (to use Maureen Dowd’s silly adjective) or otherwise.

Since then, some have questioned whether Sheehan has strayed too far politically.

Gee, do ya think? What cave has this reporter been in?

And in not describing the “easily relatable story” (I guess we’re just supposed to infer it–“My son died in Iraq, you have to listen to my opinions about the war, and the war-mongering, lying terroristic Bush administration”), he can avoid telling the other side of the story. That is, she had already met with Bush once and was demanding a revisit with her Crawford histrionics, she couldn’t be bothered to put a stone on her son’s grave, her husband and son disowned her over her loony antics, etc. None of that can be found in this story. No, it’s just a noble woman who suffered a grievous loss, and who (in consorting with dictators and making common cause with the monsters who are actually responsible for killing her son) may have gone “a little too far.”

Sickening.

Science And Society

Everglades Python Problem

It’s bigger than many had hoped:

Scientists from several institutions, including the National Park Service, have joined Mazzotti’s team in hopes of controlling, if not eradicating, the python population. But that’s pretty hard when it’s uncertain how many are out there and where they hang out…

…Most pythons have been seen near roads or other manmade structures, so officials had hoped they had not ventured too deeply into the park. But that turned out not to be the case. They are everywhere.

“Burmese pythons are right in the heart of Everglades National Park,” Mazzotti says. And they are wreaking havoc on the system, eating everything from gray squirrels to bobcats and threatening efforts to restore native species to the park.

Unfortunately, it’s an ideal home for pythons. They are “habitat generalists,” meaning they like to live between wet and dry areas, and they like to climb trees, and they are good swimmers, and there’s lots of animals for them to eat. That’s also just the kind of environment that appeals to alligators.

“So here they are, hanging out in the same places, doing the same things,” Mazzotti says. “And on more than one occasion, several of which were witnessed by the public, they have gotten in fights.”

I haven’t seen any, but I don’t spend that much time there.

War Commentary

How Nations Die

Mark Steyn:

Melanie Phillips makes a point that applies to Britain, Canada and beyond: “With few exceptions, politicians, Whitehall officials, senior police and intelligence officers and academic experts have failed to grasp that the problem to be confronted is not just the assembly of bombs and poison factories but what is going on inside people’s heads that drives them to such acts.” These are not Pushtun yak herders straight off the boat blowing up trains and buses. They’re young men, most of whom were born and all of whom were bred in London, Toronto and other Western cities. And offered the nullity of a contemporary multicultural identity they looked elsewhere — and found the jihad. If we try to fight it as isolated outbreaks — a suicide attack here, a beheading there — we will never win. You have to take on the ideology and the networks that sustain it and throttle them. Does [Toronto mayor] David Miller sound like a man who’s up to that challenge? A reader in Quebec, John Gross, emailed me to distill the mayor’s approach as: “Don’t get mad, get even . . . wimpier.”

Despite the delusions of many Canadians, being “nice” will not save Canada.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!