You can't win a bad war

I linked to Slacktivist a while back in a post where he pointed out the obvious: it isn't possible to win a war that is not in your interests. To put it more simply, well, read the title of this post.

I can't help but think of this when I read stuff like this:

First up was 21 year old junior enlisted man Tyler Johnson, whom Engel said was frustrated about war skepticism and thinks that critics "should come over and see what it's like firsthand before criticizing."

"You may support or say we support the troops, but, so you're not supporting what they do, what they're here sweating for, what we bleed for, what we die for. It just don't make sense to me," Johnson said.

Next up was Staff Sergeant Manuel Sahagun, who is on his second tour in Iraq. He complained that "one thing I don't like is when people back home say they support the troops, but they don't support the war. If they're going to support us, support us all the way."

These are soldiers in Iraq, and they've got a right to their grievances. But let's be frank: they're just wrong, on two levels. One, there's no evidence a close-up look at Iraq would be at all edifying. If I were embedded with the US Army, saw them paint a school, and went home, would that change the facts that the suicide bombers still rule Baghdad? No, no it wouldn't.

Secondly, and this is where the title comes in, these soldiers cannot win this war. It's possible they never could. So, the civilian criticism is not only right, but is going to save their lives if it's acted on fast enough.

These quotes come from William Arkin, who points out the obvious and is being savaged for it:

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

Sure, it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail. But even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We don't see very many "baby killer" epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

It's funny that such a mild rebuke (to my ears) should be getting Arkin raked over the coals. It seems that some people are so in love with the rhetoric of war that it causes them to lose their senses, and make profoundly undemocratic -- anti-republican, if you will -- arguments. To say that we can't criticize a war because it would risk hurting the soldiers' feelings is insane. Soldiers serve the public. We owe much to them -- most importantly, not to waste their lives on shitty unwinnable wars -- but at the end of the day, we call the shots.

The idea that those damn civilians should be pushed out of the way and the Army should be allowed to get its war on has an old pedigree, and not a particularly gentle one.

The perils of local experts

I occasionally get in to arguments with people about domestic things -- not domestic politics, domestic things, like "what's got more caffeine, tea or coffee?" or "what do they do to make chicken?" and someone will inevitably say, apropos of caffeine for example, "well, I work in a Starbucks/Tim Hortons/Whatnot and therefore I am the authoritative source on...."

One big problem with his tactic is that I have too worked in various positions where, theoretically, I "should" know something. And more often then not, I've given some half-assed answer to a customer because I'm too pressed for time to think hard about the topic. So I simply don't trust most people who work in their avowed jobs to know what the hell they're talking about -- and I apply that standard to myself somehow...

Anyway, this is all pertaining to this from Julia Olmstead at Gristmill:

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, do you have any grass-fed beef?
Butcher: Hmm, grass-fed? I don't think you can feed grass to cows.
Me: Well, they're ruminant animals, so I think that's what they're supposed to eat.
Butcher: [sympathetic-but-authoritative head shake] I don't think so. They need vitamins and minerals and stuff.
Me: Uh ...
Butcher: Now this [points down at large, marbled slab in meat case], this is corn-fed beef.
Me: Yeah, well, um, thanks anyway.

That's right everyone, we can all put away those textbooks which say cows have multiple stomachs for digesting grass cellulose because -- the butcher said! -- cows eat corn.

Bad moon rising

Robert Parry says the war plans against Iran are well-advanced. This part is particularly disturbing:

Another source with a pipeline into Israeli thinking said the Iran war plan has expanded over the past several weeks. Earlier thinking had been that Israeli warplanes would hit Iranian nuclear targets with U.S. forces in reserve in case of Iranian retaliation, but now the strategy anticipates a major U.S. military follow-up to an Israeli attack, the source said.

This is insane. As bad as a US attack on Iran would be, a US attack on Iran following an Israeli attack would be insane. Talk about a guaranteed way to light the whole Middle East on fire...

It's worth recalling, once again, that every time the Iranians have offered to negotiate with the US, they've been rebuffed. If the US attacks Iran, it will be aggressive war, nothing more or less.

So disorienting

Even Tom Friedman isn't on board the Iran War train.

Artificial diamonds making their way

This is interesting -- a few years ago, Wired ran a piece about how two firms were trying to create gem-quality artificial diamonds for cheap(er). Well, it's a few years later (as always happens) and now one of those two firms, Gemesis, is selling artificial yellow diamonds at a 75% discount over the mined kind.

De Beers, one imagines, is not pleased. I mean, what's the fun in selling diamonds if you don't have to assassinate African heads of state to do it?

There's also the possibility of eventually making CPU cores out of diamond, is they can bring the price down enough. Diamond has such a high heat tolerance that much less cooling equipment would be necessary.

Less with the haw-haw

This is really sad: Molly Ivins, having lost her battle with breast cancer, has died.

If you haven't picked up Shrub or Bushwhacked, you really should. The introduction to Bushwhacked is priceless. Paraphrasing from memory: "Our first book, "Shrub", was all about how Dubya ruined Texas. We published it well before the 2000 election. Now all we can say is, if you'd listened to us the first time, we wouldn't be here again!"

Haw. And might I add, Haw!

via Battlepanda:

They may be unlikely competitors, but McDonald's is giving Starbucks a run for its money when it comes to coffee.

According to a report published in Consumer Reports magazine, McDonald's serves up a better cup of joe than the mega coffee chain.

Testers compared a medium cup of black coffee from McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. They found the best cup of java under the golden arches.

The magazine said McDonald's coffee was "decent and moderately strong" while the coffee from Starbucks "was strong, but burnt."

Take that, former employer of mine!

It was a bizarre experience, working there. I'm not partial to coffee in general, and I loathe Starbucks in particular, but I worked there for over a year. Huh.

Slow posting day

No good reason. But I have to say, this sloppy thinking bugs me every time, even when (via Olaf) it's by Rick Mercer:

You end by saying you personally cannot envision that peace can ever be paved with military offensives. May I suggest to you that in many instances in history peace has been achieved exactly that way.

The gates of Auschwitz were not opened with peace talks. Holland was not liberated by peacekeepers and fascism was not defeated with a deft pen. Time and time again men and women in uniform have laid down their lives in just causes and in an effort to free others from oppression.

Ah, the gates of Auschwitz. Opened by the Red Army, and thenceforth the people of Poland lived happily in freedom and liberty forever. Oh, wait, they didn't. They lived under foreign occupation for 50 years.

Pity when a little detail ruins an already-bad line of reasoning.

My post about the President being "Commander in Chief" was about semantic differences, this is another one. Military offensives can achieve victory, sometimes. (Sometimes they get defeat, too.) But the way we achieved lasting peace in Western Europe and Japan was not simply by destroying the Nazis -- it was by putting the pieces of Europe back together again, deliberately, and competently. That is to say, yes, Mr. Mercer, fascism was destroyed in Europe, and hasn't returned, because of many deft pens working over decades. It's not like we killed every German to wear a swastika on their arms. And yes, it's a good thing we didn't.

Nobody who's read this blog regularly will doubt that I take great pride in Canada's role in World War II, and Mercer is absolutely correct earlier in this piece -- the prof he's excoriating deserves Mercer's scorn.

The military force of the Allies did a great thing by destroying our enemies, I truly believe that. But to say that our soldiers didn't win the peace that followed is also perfectly correct. And Mercer should have the sense to look up some of the soldiers-turned-politicians who made a lasting peace possible. Start with men like Marshall and Eisenhower.

I wonder why it is we're so quick to laud the military for things it didn't do. Probably because we can't seem to fathom that politicians can do things right.

Ideological incoherence

Libertarians for forcible confiscation and redistribution of property. Who knew? Apparently, when the President excercises unconstitutional powers to seize people's property and engages in collective punishment, David Boaz of the CATO Institute is just peachy with it.

Seriously, to call the destruction of the slave trade (which, let's remember, took the world's largest and most destructive war until WWI) a "libertarian" triumph means that libertarianism is exactly what any serious person always thought it was -- a bad joke. "Liberal", maybe, but in no possible coherent fashion can the end of slavery be called "the most important libertarian accomplishment in history."

Just so we're clear, I'm totally cool with the unreasonable seizures and unconstitutional powers in the case of the Civil War. (See the Emancipation Proclamation.) But then I'm a dirty Commie.

Debate topic

Would Canadians be more concerned about climate change and global warming if they understood the likely results include much greater snowfall during the winter?

In other news, guess what I spent an hour doing today?

The end of an era

Floppy disks are finally going the way of the dodo.

After 36 years and billions of sales, the floppy disk is to join the video player, cassette deck and film camera on technology's scrapheap.

The 9cm piece of plastic will no longer be available from Britain's biggest computer retailer.

PC World announced last night it would stop selling the disks when stocks ran out.

The thing that finally killed them, I'd wager, is portable cheap flash drives. A CD-ROM is a ridiculous container for a Word document, but a flashdrive works just fine.

What's this?

I don't know, it seems kind of weird for Congress to be asking the Attorney General what powers the President believes Congress has when it comes to making war. Also, rough to type and re-read.

On the other hand, this is a nice antidote to the Unitary Executive Theory favoured by Cheney:

Of course, the Constitution reserves to the Congress the power to “declare war” in Article I, section 8. In addition to the so-called power of the purse, the Constitution provides a number of specific powers to Congress. In particular, the Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power to “provide for the common Defence,” “to define and punish . . . Offenses against the Law of Nations,” “to make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,” “to raise and support Armies,” “to provide and maintain a Navy,” “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union . . . and repel Invasions,” “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States,” and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Contrast these extensive provisions and powers with that of the President, who is designated the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

On a related note, it's worth pointing out that, per the Constitution, the United States has no "Commander in Chief." Look at it right there -- the President is Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. Hell, an ultra-literal reading of the Constitution would imply an Air Force officer has no CinC. (Somebody call Scalia!)

A semantic difference, but an important one. An American citizen -- one not wearing the uniform of the armed services -- has no commander. That's why we call them citizens, after all.

This kills me:

Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order.

You read that right: Eisenhower, aka "Supreme Allied Commander, European Theatre" refused to return salutes as a civilian leader. And rightly so.

Bremer on the stand

Paul Bremer will testify before Congress. Woot. After 'em, boys.

One question though. Why is he being invited instead of subpoenaed? And another question: will he be forced to testify under oath?

It shouldn't matter -- lying to Congress is illegal, under oath or not -- but we'll see.

What will Jack get?

CTV is reporting that:

The Conservatives appear ready to agree to short-term targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a cap on emissions from industrial polluters, tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and possibly cuts in subsidies for the oil industry.

Layton has asked for changes in those areas of the bill, in exchange for the support of his party's 29-member caucus.

If the NDP can really bring a bill that contains substantial progress on those fronts, then not only should the NDP be supporting it on its merits alone, the Liberals and the BQ should be too.

I have to see the final product before I come down on this issue one way or another, but if the Cons are ready to agree to a hard cap on industrial emissions and tougher fuel-efficiency standards, that alone would be worth supporting.

Cantarell down 25%

Jeebus. Earlier this year, the Mexican government announced it's largest oil field, Cantarell, had peaked and was in decline. The worse news is that it's happening faster than expected, and may even accelerate:

The virtual collapse at Cantarell — the world's second-biggest oil field in terms of output at the start of last year — is unfolding much faster than projections from Mexico's state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. Cantarell's daily output fell to 1.5 million barrels in December compared to 1.99 million barrels in January, according to figures from the Mexican Energy Ministry.

Cantarell's problems are not Cantarell's alone. The entire global oil industry is facing this problem: new technology is so good at extracting oil at high speed that the collapse comes quickly, and without warning. (The North Sea is another good example, or Burgan in Kuwait.) It's data like this that makes me pessimistic about Peak Oil -- I'm betting, like Ken Deffeyes, that we'll never see our May, 2005 production levels again.

A temporary seasonal decline in oil prices really shouldn't blind us to the problems we face.

Two scoops of Murder!!! -- part of a balanced breakfast

Well, killing at least.

You see, we have mice. And not the pet kind. And while we bought the humane traps, I'm left with a dilemma. The mouse can be released to the wild, thereby learning that he can get a meal left out for him at our place. Or he can be killed, which will if nothing else mean one less vermin in our house.

Better yet, the collective effect of killing mice is hoped to have a deterrent effect -- with luck, the mouse community will see our house as a kind of black hole, or maybe Guantanamo.

(Yes, I'm endorsing an argument about mice that I don't endorse about humans. Your point?)

So to me, the choice would be clear even if I didn't detest mice. Which I do. If you sell me a humane trap, you're selling me a bug, not a feature. I want these bastards dead.

Me: The Dick Cheney to the Global War on Mice.

Fun with the Internets

Some people are finding this blog by Googling the phrases "pissing" or "tentacle rape."

Which, when you consider the competition...

(Explanations here and here, I think.)

Please, please, please let my mother not be reading this.

Even better: Some are finding this blog with the phrase "bizarre headlines". There's some meta-bizarreness going on here.

When has an Asian textbook ever been controversial, after all?

Way to go, Taiwan. Japan had that whole "uselessly inflammatory school texts" market cornered, and you've managed to move in.

Taiwan has revised its high-school history textbooks to show that Taiwan is an independent country and not part of China, media reports said Monday.

The China Times said that on the education ministry's order, the title of the national history textbook for high-school - to be used after the winter vacation - has been changed from 'National History' to 'China History'.

In this textbook, terms like 'our country,' 'this country' and 'the mainland' have been changed to 'China' to indicate that Taiwan is not part of China, the daily said.

Now the difference between Japan and Taiwan I suppose is that while Japan's troublesome texts are basically apologist screeds for Japanese imperialism, there's an obvious and clear case to make that Taiwan is, de facto, a different country from China.

Still, inflammatory and unhelpful.

God help us

So Gen. Jack Keane had already abandoned the "surge" idea, and now Fred Kagan -- co-author of this plan -- is saying this:

This is not our plan. The White House is not briefing our plan.

Thus begins the Incompetence Dodge, pt. II: Because the surge wasn't executed in every detail that it's proponents demanded, they are therefore blameless.

Well, no. The Iron Law of the Bush Administration: any idea they touch turns to shit. If the idea is already a shitty one, well, it gets worse from here...

Anybody, anywhere, at any time who suggests a course of action for the Bush administration needs to take this in to account. If you don't, you're at fault as much as the Bush people are. Can we at least all agree on this in 2007, for the love of God?

ATMs, Continued

Olaf read my post about the whole ATM-surcharge dealy and cruelly pointed out that I didn't actually, y'know, say whether I supported the NDP proposal. Nice of Olaf to give me the benefit of the doubt and not assume I'm a monkey on a string. (I will, however, perform a dance for bananas.) The short version is, yes, I do.

First things first. Either you think what's happening now is a problem or you don't. People are being forced, for a lack of options in their area, to use third-party ATMs that charge additional fees on top of their own banks charges. Like I said, either you think this is a problem or you don't. A reasonable argument could be made that nobody's putting a gun to people's heads and forcing them to use these things, but an equally reasonable argument is that people can't always plan ahead and when you need cash, you need it. I come down on the "yes, this is a problem", and more than that I believe this problem (unlike sundry others) is actually worth the Feds stepping in on.

The biggest reason is that this is a problem the feds created, in part. The wave of bank mergers during the 1990s allowed the consolidation of the industry and the shutting of now-redundant branches. Even in Toronto, the distance I had to travel between my "home branch" went from being 10 minutes to almost an hour (both by foot, for reference sake) because my branch got shut down during this period. This consolidation was a result of the mergers the Feds encouraged, not just allowed. When I was living in Ottawa, there was simply no convenient access to my own banks' ATMs on campus. By fourth year, the ATM I was using regularly near home had also been switched to a third-party ATM.

Now, my situation was hardly dire, but I was also living in the two biggest cities in Ontario. I can only imagine what the process has been like across the country. People are being forced to pay more than they had before because of a policy the Federal government actively pursued. It may seem minor, but once again anything that's an annoyance to me is probably a cause of serious anxiety for someone closer to poverty's edge.

In the comments thread below, I mentioned that Bell (a government protected-monopoly) is forced to allow the non-discriminatory use of its lines to third parties, without charging their customers extra fees. Given that banks these days are more networks than vaults (if you get my meaning) that may be a useful analogy. But there's one that I think is better: cable television.

In Canada, and across the US, it's common practice for governments to demand certain performance guarantees from cable television companies. For example, you might allow a company to build a new network, but only on condition that they build in the middle- and lower-class areas of a city, not just the richest. Does this raise the overall cost of the service? Marginally. But it makes sure that companies cannot abandon the low-profit parts of the market.

(I frequently use Communications Policy analogies because it's what I know best.)

Could a similar principle work with banks? I think it certainly could. ATMs, after all, are dramatically less expensive than operating in-person bank branches. Insisting that banks spend a small portion of their Crown-chartered profits to maintain decent service networks for the working class is hardly unreasonable, especially since they were all making plenty of money before the mergers that caused this whole problem.

Another possibility would be to make debit transactions zero-cost for the consumer and the business owner, thus eliminating the need for ATMs in large part. Either way, the government has some leeway for solving this problem.