Month: October 2002

While you’re waiting for me to get off my ursine butt and post something intelligent, check out The Agonist’s site, where he’s rather publicly declaring the reason for his — well, agony.
Seems the State Department in its finite wisdom is delaying his fianc

Rumors of my demise have been completely fabricated.
All is well; I’ve simply been swamped in the triple terrors of refinancing my mortgage, jobsearch, and rearchitecting my home LAN.
If you want more TTLB goodness a little faster, you could always encourage the process and buy some stuff, sign up to advertise on TTLB, or better yet, offer me a job.
And if anybody cares to offer me a good mortgage rate or a new PC, then that would be nice too.

Tom Friedman’s got the quote of the day from interview on today’s The Connection radio program from WBUR:
“Yes, the Internet can make you smarter faster than any technology we’ve seen in history. But it can also make you dumber faster…it is an open sewer of unfiltered, untreated information…”
There’s a new motto for the Blogosphere in there, I think…

This morning’s Google News Headlines:
Funniest Joke Revealed
Microsoft now serious about bugs, says Ballmer
Ahem.

Rosenberg points out a “hypothetical conversation” which blogger Bill Spotz has between himself and a hypothetical “right-winger” regarding Iraq (“Assuming there exists such a person who wouldn’t resort to personal attacks or outright lies”, as Spotz says).
It is not a bad piece, arguing the case against war reasonably coherently. But I found myself noticing that throughout the piece, Spotz throws out alleged facts left and right, without even once offering a single hyperlink or source to back them up.
I extracted a list of them, which I present below. Note that I don’t necessarily believe each of these are false (some I’m fairly sure are indeed correct), but I do think its worth pointing out when assertions are made without evidence. And this is an observation that applies just as readily to some pro-war arguments as the anti-war ones. (And an observation I’ll attempt to remember myself; I’m sure I’ve thrown out an assertion or two without evidence now and again).
I’d welcome followup from Bill; if he’d like to respond and flesh out these statements with evidence, I’d be happy to include that information here.
Update: Bill responds, and provides a few sources here.
Assertions in “A Hypothetical Conversation”:
1) Given the Gulf War, the weapons inspectors and the embargo, any weapons that Hussein might have are of little threat to us.
2) [North Korea or Iran’s] weapons of mass destruction capabilities are far advanced over Iraq
3) [Saddam Hussein] is not a threat to America. His missile range is limited to 400 miles.
4) All [Bush] has given us is out-of-date reports and satellite photographs that don’t demonstrate what he says they do.
5) Hussein hates al Qaida, and the feeling is mutual.
6) In Iraq, if you follow the particular brand of fundamentalist Islam that al Qaida follows, you can be put to death.
7) To the terrorists, Hussein is as evil an infidel as we are.
8) [B]etween 1991 and 1998, UN weapons inspectors destroyed 95% of his chemical and biological weapons stores, along with the infrastructure to manufacture more.
9) [I]f elections were held [in Iraq] today, the Shiites would win with about 60% of the vote.

KQED public radio’s Forum program had a discussion on the infamous “School of the Americas” yesterday, which you can find archived online in RealAudio format from program page (the air date was 10/1/02). Listening to the discussion on this one tiny aspect of U.S. military and foreign relations, I was struck by the way it represented much of the debate surrounding America’s role in the world more broadly.
First, terminology. In 2000, the School of the Americas officially closed, and was soon replaced by a “new” school, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), which happens to be in the same location at Fort Benning, GA. Depending on who you ask, this was either a fundamental change in the mission of the facility, or a cosmetic filing-off of the serial numbers to confuse the clueless.
Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch and one of the guests on the program, would definitely suggest the latter. And did, repeatedly. On the other side of the argument were two U.S. Army officers, one from the Pentagon (Colonel Marc Morgan, Division Chief for the Regional Politico-Military Affairs Division of the U.S. Army) and the director of the school itself (Colonel Richard Downie).
The battle lines were simple, and stark. Father Bourgeois and his organization want the school, whatever it is called, closed. Period. He believes with all his heart that graduates of the school are some of the worst human rights abusers Latin America has ever seen, and are responsible for a significant part of the mayhem that region has been subjected to over the past few decades.
Without claiming to be an expert on Latin American history and the United States’ rather significant involvement in it during the Cold War, I’m inclined to believe him on this charge. We did some nasty things and supported some nasty characters during that period, and my limited knowledge suggests that the old SOA was indeed one of the spots where the deeds were done. (On this point, I’d have to say I found the Army representatives to be less than completely candid.)
But… does that justify closing the school now? Is it really still the same old awful source of thugs and murderers?
Father Bourgeois’ answer was simple: it doesn’t matter. Some places and institutions are simply too awful to redeem; they can only be closed.
And that’s where I veered wildly off the Father’s course.
The central argument for the school’s existence seems fairly clear to me. In a nutshell, there are military and police personnel significantly involved in keeping the peace and protecting the citizenry of Latin America. We have a choice: we can help train them to be competent professionals who respect civil rights, the rule of law and civilian oversight, or we can just ignore them and hope it all turns out ok.
But, again: Does the current WHINSEC do that? Or does it train killers in torture methods?
Impossible to know for sure what goes on in a military facility from the outside, of course. But WHINSEC certainly looks like its doing the right things. They’ve published their course list on their website, and a fairly innocuous sounding list it is. “Civil Military Operations Course” might be a euphemism for Advanced Thumbnail Removal, “Human Rights Instructor Course” might describe how to instruct human rights protestors that it would really be best if they not protest anymore, and “International Operational Law Course” might be about how to get around it.
But frankly, it seems unlikely. Given the massive attention the old SOA drew upon itself, and the scrutiny that the new school is under, it would be the height of foolishness to allow even the slightest civil-rights-abusing shenanigans to take place at WHINSEC. To take a very cynical view: it is entirely possible some part of our government and military is still training nasty people in how to do nasty things. But I suspect that Fort Benning, GA is the exact last place you should look to find them. And if you’re still not convinced, they invite you to visit in person — -an offer which Colonel Downie repeated to Father Bourgeois during the discussion yesterday, the frustration clear in his voice, and an offer which the Father refused outright (again).
But even if he accepted that the school had changed its ways, it seems Father Bourgeois would still want it shut down. It has done evil things, and cannot possibly be redeemed.
A rather un-Christian view to take, if you think about it. And one that to me, sums up all too well the attitude of many on the left who oppose military action in Iraq, or the way we are prosecuting the war against terrorism more generally.
For people like Father Bourgeois, the United States is a sinner. We’ve committed crimes against the world; there is blood on our hands. But their solution is not for the U.S. to recognize the errors it has made, and actively work in the world to both fix past wrongs and do better next time.
It is to withdraw; to shut down, to simply accept that our crimes are too great to ever permit us to try to act for the good ever again. So it must be with the School of the Americas; so it must be with America itself.
I try my best to not ignore the crimes that America has committed in the past. I’ve written of some of them on this weblog, and will continue to do so.
But for me, the crimes of the past should not be used as a convenient excuse for inaction in the present. The world is out there; history happens every instant of every day and the future we will live in is being created all across the planet at this very moment. As it is with training Latin American military officers, it is with engaging the world as a whole: we can either learn from our past mistakes and try to do better, or we can just ignore them and hope it all turns out ok.
I choose the active course. It is the one with the greatest chance of sinning again; but it is also the only one that truly offers a chance at redemption.

Well, I’ve been wrong before, I’ll be wrong again, and it looks like was wrong this time:
U.N., Iraq Agree on Inspection Terms
I still suspect that my rope-a-dope scenario might well play out, but over a slightly longer timeframe. But again, we’ll see…
Update 10/2: OK, since I screwed up my first prediction, I might as well go for broke.
Doesn’t it seem a bit kamikaze-like of the U.K. and U.S. to be demanding that the inspectors not return until a new resolution is in place?
Unless… they already have reason to believe they’re certain to get that new resolution through the Security Council….