meta-roj

(i want to apologize up-front for the mostly-quote nature of this post, but i do want to put this “on the record”).

recently, president bush gave his tenth press conference, and someone asked a very bad question… and it stuck with me, so i had to go find a source. the bold parts are my doing. i don’t have a banner to hang on this blog.

source – white house news release.

Q Mr. President, if I may take you back to May 1st when you stood on the USS Lincoln under a huge banner that said, “Mission Accomplished.” At that time you declared major combat operations were over, but since that time there have been over 1,000 wounded, many of them amputees who are recovering at Walter Reed, 217 killed in action since that date. Will you acknowledge now that you were premature in making those remarks?

THE PRESIDENT: Nora, I think you ought to look at my speech. I said, Iraq is a dangerous place and we’ve still got hard work to do, there’s still more to be done. And we had just come off a very successful military operation. I was there to thank the troops.

The “Mission Accomplished” sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren’t that ingenious, by the way. But my statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there was a lot of dangerous work. And it’s proved to be right, it is dangerous in Iraq. It’s dangerous in Iraq because there are people who can’t stand the thought of a free and peaceful Iraq. It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we’re soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suiciders — and suiciders who are willing to drive up to a Red Cross center, a center of international help and aid and comfort, and just kill.

the president’s answer continues, but you can read it from the whitehouse, since it’s not relevant to this comment.

well, that’s not what the story was back in may….

source – New York Times, May 16, 2003, Elisabeth Bumiller, “Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights”

Mr. Sforza and his aides had every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush’s right shoulder and the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call ‘magic hour light,’ which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.

(reading that article will cost you $2.95)

now, c’mon boss. scott sforza has worked really hard to make you look good. and i mean really, really hard. give the man some credit and stop beating him down in public. this is no way to keep your staff happy.

in what could/should be an important tool to make things better, the bbc has launched the beta version of ican

iCan is a new BBC service which aims to help people start doing something about issues in their life

i was doing some thinking (after hacking the constitution) on the problem of peace. it’s been stated often (and perhaps not sufficiently questioned), that democracies don’t go to war with democracies. i thought of a simple reason for this, and it comes down to the idea that war is a negative-sum game. even the most limited, most restrained wars involve the death of people, the destruction of property, and the expense of operating a war machine.

how is it that democracies avoid playing these negative-sum games? well, in general, they are constituted to involve a deliberative process somewhere along the path to war. if you have a deliberative process, where people actually look at the costs of war, in all its forms, it’s not easy to make the case. and if both sides of the potential war are having trouble making the case to go to war, (perhaps because they both have this deliberative process checking the machinery of war) then it’s really hard to get enthusiastic enough to actually engage in war.

i suppose that reasonable deliberation generally avoids negative-sum situations.

it seems, more and more often, we don’t have a functional deliberative process in america. we have the short-term economic and re-election interests of a small group of individuals. this, of course turns a negative-sum big picture into a positive-sum small picture in the only place it matters – congress.

in modern war (at least as far as the united states is concerned), the cost of running the kind of overwhelming war machine that ensures “minimal” loss of life (particularly on the part of the united states) and “minimal” destruction is amazing. perspective matters too – if you’re in the building that gets bombed, that “minimal” damage looks pretty “maximal.”

since running the war machine is “just dollars” it’s easier to spread the blame around enough that nobody actually has to take responsibility. it gets harder when you have to account for the deaths of constituents and destruction of their property. this time around, the costs and bodies are adding up faster than congress expected, and this little war is dragging on into a new election cycle. maybe they’ll wake up.

the message: war isn’t cheap or fast. ever. don’t write blank checks.

as usual, someone did it better than i. sadly, they did it 200 years ago. i’d like to [re-]introduce you to immanuel kant.

good luck.

i’ll keep a couch ready for any of you refugees.

in a proud tradition of refusing illegal and immoral orders, relying on their humanity and sense of justice as opposed to blindly following orders, a group of israeli pilots have issued a public letter condemning the actions of their own military against civilians.

“We, for whom the Israel Defence Forces and the Israel Air Force are an inseparable part of us, refuse to continue to hurt innocent civilians.”

the pilots have been grounded, and disciplinary action is pending.

to me, the fact that refusing “to continue to hurt innocent civilians” is even an issue for a state military is simply repugnant.

in an amazing demonstration of political will, the house of representatives has voted 412-8, with about an hour of debate, to authorize the ftc to operate a do-not-call list within 24 hours of a judge’s decision to block implementation of the system.

debate: “does anyone here wanna piss off 51 million voters?” “well, not all of them are voters” “you wanna piss off HALF that many voters?” “good point. where do i vote?”

can we get 51 million email addresses on a do-not-spam list?

Afghanistan: 647, 500 sq km / 28.7 million residents / $19 billion GDP – $800 million new money requested.
Iraq: 432, 162 sq km / 24.7 million residents / $58 billion GDP – $20,000 million new money requested.

according to a white house fact sheet issued with the president’s statement on sunday, “The Administration will request $20 billion to help secure Iraq’s transition to self-government and create the conditions necessary for economic investment and investment.” and “The request will seek an additional $800 million to address some of the most critical remaining security and reconstruction needs.”

to be sure, we’ve already spent considerable money (the fact sheet suggests some $1.8 billion from american tax payers and $5 billion from other nations) fixing afghanistan.

does this make sense? isn’t afghanistan where the actual terrorist training camps were (are?) isn’t afghanistan a more “clear and present” threat? – especially since we haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction in iraq? doesn’t every dollar we spend in afghanistan have a greater net effect?

so, attorney general john ashcroft is still in the full swing of his “charm offensive” and pushing for the “victory act” (that’s the “Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003”) as a follow up to the usa patriot act (that’s the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001”).

[i’m saying this a lot lately…] i’m no lawyer. but i did dig this up , and it says:

18 U.S.C. §1913

“No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, to favor or oppose, by vote or otherwise, any legislation or appropriation by Congress, whether before or after the introduction of any bill or resolution proposing such legislation or appropriation; but this shall not prevent officers or employees of the United States or of its departments or agencies from communicating to Members of Congress on the request of any Member or to Congress, through the proper official channels, requests for legislation or appropriations which they deem necessary for the efficient conduct of the public business.

Whoever, being an officer or employee of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, violates or attempts to violate this section, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and after notice and hearing by the superior officer vested with the power of removing him, shall be removed from office or employment.

i read this this way:
if ashcroft is spending congressionally-appropriated money on his victory tour, like, for example, he’s still being paid and not on vacation leave without pay these three weeks – or if he’s using justice department stationary, we’ve met the first criterion. and if congress didn’t authorize this tour (and i’ve seen nothing to suggest that this is a congressionally-authorized trip, but i could be wrong), that’s #2. and finally, since he’s talking about specific legislation – that being the victory act – that would certainly meet the standard (in my mind, anyway), of intent to influence congress to favor legislation.

of course, my opinion isn’t worth much, since this is a violation of the criminal code of the united states, i think the attorney general would have to decide if this is a prosecutable offense. whoups.

this is questions, really. i don’t have the answers.

first, what is “critical”? who decides? is it the domain of the department of homeland security to designate something “critical”? once something is critical, who is in charge of running it? securing it?

it seems no one can “do right” by critical infrastructure. a quick informal survey:

the us mass transit infrastructure was pretty much destroyed by corporate interests
the us road infrastructure is in “disrepair” under the stewardship of government entities.
the electrical distribution system is quasi-private and falls apart in small spaces often, and in dramatic form recently
the email infrastructure isn’t really under anyone’s stewardship, and is becoming increasingly useless under the weight of spam.
the air transport infrastructure is an interesting mix of private carriers and quasi-public facilities and public security, and it’s barely viable.
the us rail infrastructure is also a mixed bag, but commercial passenger rail is an economic disaster.
the pipeline and fuel distribution infrastructure is mostly private, and it occasionally fails in dramatic form.

public? private? quasi-private? regulation? deregulation? reregulation? privatization? nationalization? it seems we’ve tried pretty much every combination in some form or another, and we can’t quite “get it right.” sure, these are complex systems. and we have complex tools to run them. but are they too complex?

the question the lawyers want to answer is “who is to blame?” but the question i want to answer is “have we exceeded our capacity to manage?”

i’m really curious about what a 150-ish-candidate debate would look like… and what kinds of rules they’d use for the televised version.

“…each candidate will have one syllable to respond.”