The Wrong Army

It appears that we have the wrong army.

That's right, America has the wrong Army. I don't know how it happened, but it did. We have the wrong Army. It's too small; it's not deployed properly; it's inadequately trained, and it doesn't have the right sort of logistical support. It's a shambles. I have no idea how those guys even manage to fight.

An anonymous member of the Navy USN Chief Jeff Edwards explains why. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

UPDATED 25-Aug-05 with the author's name, and a link to the original column. Chief Edwards's columns have also been linked on the sidebar.

Run, Dick, Run!

I've long been a huge fan of Dick Cheney. There's no point in him running for the presidency, though, because aside from his own vote, those of his wife and daughters, and mine, well, I don't know where the other 50M or so he'd need would come from...

However, Helen Thomas has now promised that if Cheney does run for president, she will commit suicide.

Run, Dick, run!

UPDATE (1-Aug-05): Ms Thomas is upset that her pledge, which was intended for her interlocutor's ears only, were published:

"I'll never talk to a reporter again!" Thomas was overheard saying. "We were just talking -- I was ranting—and he wrote about it. That isn't right. We all say stuff we don't want printed"

Yes, we do, but when the speaker happened to be someone Thomas doesn't like, has she ever had any hestiation in printing it anyway? I highly doubt it. Goose, meet this bottle of gander sauce. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

Second Thoughts on London Shooting

Mark Steyn makes some interesting points in this column, some of which I find more convincing than others. So does Gary McGath. The initial picture I had of how the shooting went down was largely premised on de Menezes realising that the people waving guns at him, and shouting at him to stop, were in fact legitimate policemen, something that may not have been all that clear if they were in plain clothes and did not identify themselves. But it is one fact that Steyn supplies that gives me most cause to change my mind. One of the main reasons given for why the police suspected de Menezes is that he was wearing a bulky overcoat, in the heat of summer. In Israel, that has emerged as a major warning sign for someone carrying an explosive belt, and in fact every year when winter rolls around there is always concern that this makes it easier for suicide bombers to blend in.

But Steyn points out one thing that I had not seen elsewhere, and that, in retrospect, I should have at least suspected: the temperature in London that day was about 17°C /62°F and overcast. Now for London that may count as a hot summer day, and in that weather I go around in a T-shirt, with a jumper tied around my waist just in case it turns chilly. I certainly wouldn't be wearing a thick fleece jacket, as de Menezes, I gather, was. But, as Steyn points out, de Menezes was from Brazil, and back in Gonzaga, if the temperature ever drops that low, I imagine they do break out whatever passes for cold-weather gear, shiver around the campfire, and worry about global cooling and the coming Ice Age. So for him to be dressed like that might not have been that remarkable. There also seems to be some question over whether his jacket was in fact bulky enough to be useful in hiding an explosive belt (though I wouldn't put a whole lot of trust in this particular source).

Related links:
Wikipedia
Dafydd ab Hugh

UPDATE (21-Aug-05): As we now know, the story that emerged immediately after the shooting was complete bullshit. De Menezes was not wearing a bulky jacket, he did not run from anybody - identified police or not - he did not jump the barrier, and the only running he did was when he saw his train pull in, as I'm sure dozens of other people did too. The man who shot him should be prosecuted.

Mugged by Reality

neo-con-ser-va-tive (n) 1 : A liberal that has been mugged by reality.

While the above definition is reasonably humorous, but not at all perfect, it may aptly describe the newest collection of 'warmonger' converts that have come to see that their beloved multicultural pieties are nothing but empty illusions.

"Homicide Bombers"

Yeah, I'm a bit late to the party on this one. Two weeks ago, everyone was blogging about Fox's silly insistence on saying "homicide bomber". While the original sentiment behind the introduction of this phrase may be understandable, it has turned in Fox's hands into a sort of unthinking PC-speak, like those strange people who, obviously operating on PC-autopilot, speak of "African-American cats", or of the plight of "African-American Sudanese". Like many others, I came to this conclusion 2 or so years ago, when the President came up with this locution, and Fox adopted it with such enthusiasm. "Homicide bomber" sounds redundant and blurs a significant distinction; after all, every bomber aims to kill others, but it's important to distinguish between one who is also willing to kill himself, and one who is not.

But. On further reflection, this isn't really true.
Historically, many (probably most) bombers with whom we in the West have had to deal in the past, have not been homicide bombers. That is, they did not wish or intend to kill anyone. The IRA, for instance, would generally call in warnings when it planted bombs, so that the area could be evacuated and, they hoped, nobody would be killed. And in the USA, both the Weathermen and the bombers of abortion mills tended to set off their bombs at night, with the aim of minimising or eliminating fatalities. These measures didn't always work, of course, and the bombers were often justly convicted of reckless disregard for human life, but nevertheless their intent was not killing. Homicide bombing, i.e. terrorist bombing with the intent of killing people, has been far from the norm for most of the 20th century.

So it is meaningful to speak of bombers who do intend to kill as "homicide bombers", to distinguish them from bombers for whom the death of any person, if it occurs, is merely an unintended result of their recklessness. And yet, it is still useful to subdivide the category of homicide bombers into those who intend to kill themselves as well, and those who don't; and "suicide bomber" captures this distiction — I don't think there are any bombers who intend to kill themselves but not others, so "suicide bomber" should be taken to imply "homicide bomber" within it, with no need to specify.

Presidential Straw Poll

Patrick Ruffini's having a Presidential straw poll, but the choice is fairly limited. Which of the following would you vote for: George Allen, Bill Frist, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney. Well, for me, both Guiliani and McCain are right out. In the unlikely event that either of them wins the Republican nomination, I will not vote for them in the general election, nor lift a finger to help them win. I'm not particularly impressed with Frist, and know practically nothing about Allen or Romney. Out of those five, I guess if I had to make a choice I'd go with Romney. At least he's had some governing experience, and I don't know that he's made a particular mess of it. I've seen how Guiliani governs, and the word that comes to mind is "authoritarian" (well, that's one word that comes to mind...). I know we have at least one regular reader who works in Massachusetts, and has been able to see Romney's governing style up close and personal, and to compare it to that of several previous MA governors; please comment with your thoughts. Or post to your blog, and put a link in the comments here.

John Roberts - An "Easy" confirmation Process?

The conventional wisdom seems to be that John Roberts will sail through the confirmation process, insomuch as that is possible. The logic tends to go something like: if Ann Coulter does not like him and Daily Kos hates him, he's fine for the 99 and 44/100% of us left in the middle.

Michael Barone, whose opinions are better informed than most pundits, agrees that mounting a serious "Bork"ing effort will probably fizzle before it gets going, as part of a good article on the efforts/failures to deligitmize the Bush presidency. Hell, even the editorial staff at the Washington comp-Post agree, saying that 'In general, Judge Roberts's work on the court has been elegantly crafted, legally precise and of very high quality' and that 'Judge Roberts's work as a judge is too brief to recommend him especially highly as a justice; his main qualification is his long and excellent career as a practitioner. But neither will mining it yield anything disparaging. His two years on the D.C. Circuit have been a credit to it'.

Their lone "criticism" of his record is one decision that is 'troubling because it suggests a too-narrow view of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce -- the constitutional backbone of the modern regulatory state [read: Nanny state]'. God forbid! A justice that may have reservations about further stretching a clause that his been comically/tragically over-applied by the SCOTUS for the better part of 150 years.

The kicker is I don't think that any of this will stop the Bidens and Kennedys from trying. Basically, a viable plan of attack would involve asking questions that, if Ginsberg were the nominee and a Republican was asking, would be totally out-of-bounds and then trashing the guy for being evasive. And we all know the NYT, WP, LAT, CBS, NBC, ABC, et al. will give them a huge PR assist. Its starting already! I really hope that I'm wrong and that the CW is right, but something tells me this is still going to get extremely bloody. The militant wing of the Democratic party (the wing that also coughs up all the dough) cannot let BusHilter get his nominee on the court without a battle to the death.

Plame, Rove, Cooper, and all that.

Yeah, I know, if you're reading this you're proabably also reading Tom Maguire, the Captain, and a bunch of other sites, and know more than you ever wanted to about this story. You probably made up your mind about it 1.5 years ago, when it first broke, and nothing that's happened this week has been real news. So I wasn't going to say anything. But I just wrote a whole long screed as a comment on a friend's LiveJournal, and it took me a while to write, so dammit, I might as well copy it here. Better still, I'll just post a link, and let you read it there. If you feel called on to comment, please be nice — these are my friends, even if they are Bush-hating bigots. Mostly, we just don't talk politics.

One Man's Terrorist...

...is another man's terrorist.

What he said.

Violence

Over at Eugene's place, the commenters have been discussing the common but obviously false idea that "violence never solved anything", and a commenter asked:

Is there any way of calculating, on the whole, whether violence has been good or bad for society.

On the whole, the effect of violence has to be negative. Violence never achieves anything good. It doesn't even repair the damage caused by other people's violence. All it does is prevent other people's violence from doing further damage.

Yes, violence stopped Saddam Hussein, and that was a good thing. But the world is still far worse off than it would be had Hussein never engaged in violence in the first place. Even preemptive violence can only cancel out the effects of predicted future violence; it still can't actually make things better than they would be without any violence at all.

The same goes, by the way, for passive defense, such as burglar alarms, locks, insurance, etc. These are huge industries that produce nothing at all; all they do is prevent loss that would otherwise occur. If there were no burglars, nobody would need to spend money on locks and alarms, or insure against theft. If there were no arsonists, the need for fire insurance would be less, and more people would choose to do without it and do something productive with the money. Unfortunately we don't live in a universe where this is possible.

It seems appropriate

Doing Nicely, Thank You (In answer to several kind inquiries from the country and overseas)
E. V. Knox (1940)

Troy fell. It is not very probable time will renew it,
But London remains full of helmeted women and men,
Long tutored in what to do, why, and which way to go to it
And hoping by some means to get to the office by ten.

A city not proud in its heart of heroic performance,
But slightly bewildered to find that the era of glass
Introduced (I am told) in the days of the conquering Normans
Is now in the night-time of Hitler most likely to pass.

A city that covers with curtains the windowless casement
And laughs but obeys when the word has come down from the wise
Not to crouch—as they once were enjoined—under beds in the basement
But to leap to the roofs of the buildings and stare at the skies.

A city unbroken, unbowed by the threats of the Axis
And saving a trifle and banting and doing its best
To spare a few coins for the urgent Collector of Taxes
Who hides with his staff in a funk-hole way down in the West.

A city deprived of a part of her principal glories
Yet still with some monuments standing and some of her spires,
And (who shall gainsay me?) how fond of all perilous stories!
How thrilled by the labours of firemen, the watching of fires!

A city of painstaking pupils and earnest instructors
(And everyone's crater the largest of all in the land),
A lemonless, onionless city with female conductors
On Manchester buses half lost in the wilds of the Strand.

A city if peopled by souls not as stubborn as Cato's,
Yet facing the bomb-fall (and crowding to look at the proofs),
Full-bearded (from shortage of razors), and eating potatoes,
and standing all night with a sand-bucket up on the roofs.

Can anyone spot a resemblance?

Our thoughts and prayers are with the British people following the tragic events of today. Just please remember the consequences of the man the right and, accordingly, throw the man on the left into the sea.

I think I speak for most New Yorkers

...when I say, "thank you, IOC, for giving the Games to someone else".

The Economics of Kelo

I don't usually post links to blog posts that I assume anyone reading this has already read, unless I have a comment to add. Because I assume you've already read it. But there's been tons of stuff posted about Kelo, and I'm just wading my way through it, skipping 90% of it because it's just so big. And this is just a thorough and basic explanation of the economics behind the whole eminent domain issue, and what was at stake in the Kelo case. So here's Todd Zywicki explaining it in easy words. I actually will have something to say about the issue later, but please read this first, if you haven't already done so.