The National Strategy on Iraq. Actually this looks as if it has been cut-and-pasted from a PowerPoint presentation, but otherwise presented without comment*. Here’s your chance to analyze it before hilzoy has done her usual thorough dissection. Don’t wait for the back of the book to show up, give it a shot.
Month: November 2005
Books And Blogging
by hilzoy
Naomi Baron has a rather silly op-ed in the LATimes. (Short version: now that students have Google, they don’t have to read books. This threatens their ability to understand sustained arguments. Short answer: Baron is a professor. She can assign papers that require students to construct sustained arguments, and she can require drafts, which would let her tell the students exactly where they’re falling short before the paper is due.)
What makes this interesting is that Kevin Drum and Jeanne d’Arc have similar responses to this piece. Kevin Drum:
“It’s not just that I spend less time reading books, it’s that I find my mind wandering when I do read. After a few paragraphs, or maybe a page or two, I’ll run into a sentence that suddenly reminds me of something — and then spend the next minute staring into space thinking of something entirely unrelated to the book at hand. Eventually I snap back, but obviously this behavior reduces both my reading rate and my reading comprehension.
Is this really because of blogging? I don’t know for sure, but it feels like it’s related to blogging, and it’s a real problem. As wonderful as blogs, magazines, and newspapers are, there’s simply no way to really learn about a subject except by reading a book — and the less I do that, the less I understand about the broader, deeper issues that go beyond merely the outrage of the day.”
“I find that the more I read online, the less I read off. I don’t think it’s even a matter of using up my reading time. It actually destroys brain cells or something, because if I’ve been doing too much online reading, I lose the patience for following a sustained or subtle argument, or reading a complex novel. One of my reasons for frequent blogging disappearances is recovery: I need to get away from the fast and facile and let my brain heal. It actually feels like recovering a bit of humanity that I forgot I had.”
My experience is exactly the opposite of theirs.
Cunningham Resigns. Good Riddance.
by hilzoy Today, Duke Cunningham pled guilty to accepting bribes, among other things, and resigned from Congress. From the WaPo: “Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, an eight-term congressman and hotshot Vietnam War fighter jock, pleaded guilty to graft and tearfully resigned Monday, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors to steer business their … Read more
Intellectual Integrity Watch
by hilzoy Joe Biden wrote an editorial calling for a timetable for Iraq yesterday, and today the White House not only endorsed Biden’s plan, but claimed that it was actually Bush’s: “The White House for the first time has claimed possession of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past … Read more
Alito And CAP
by hilzoy
The fact that Samuel Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and cited that fact on his 1985 job application, has been in the news recently; and it occurred to me that since I was a Princeton undergraduate (class of ’81) while CAP was active, I might be able to provide some useful background on this one.
Someone Is Watching You…
by hilzoy
From the WaPo:
“The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world. The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts — including protecting military facilities from attack — to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.
The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department’s push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public.
“We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview. (…)
Perhaps the prime illustration of the Pentagon’s intelligence growth is CIFA, which remains one of its least publicized intelligence agencies. Neither the size of its staff, said to be more than 1,000, nor its budget is public, said Conway, the Pentagon spokesman. The CIFA brochure says the agency’s mission is to “transform” the way counterintelligence is done “fully utilizing 21st century tools and resources.”
One CIFA activity, threat assessments, involves using “leading edge information technologies and data harvesting,” according to a February 2004 Pentagon budget document. This involves “exploiting commercial data” with the help of outside contractors including White Oak Technologies Inc. of Silver Spring, and MZM Inc., a Washington-based research organization, according to the Pentagon document. For CIFA, counterintelligence involves not just collecting data but also “conducting activities to protect DoD and the nation against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, assassinations, and terrorist activities,” its brochure states.
CIFA’s abilities would increase considerably under the proposal being reviewed by the White House, which was made by a presidential commission on intelligence chaired by retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). The commission urged that CIFA be given authority to carry out domestic criminal investigations and clandestine operations against potential threats inside the United States.”
This is serious.
Iraq and Vietnam: Similarities and Differences
by Charles
I know this has been ground well trod before, but former Nixon defense secretary Melvin Laird put together an informative piece, juxtaposing the history of our past involvement in Vietnam with our present involvement in Iraq. Several factors caused me to take a second look at Laird. One, he was a primary architect of Vietnamization, and then this entry stands out:
In spite of Vietnam and the unfolding Watergate affair, which threatened to discredit the entire Nixon administration, Laird retired with his reputation intact.
Such is the taint of Nixon that any of those who worked under him are viewed with hard skepticism. I knew little of Laird because I was in grade school at the time he was defense secretary, and in his own words, he has been below the radar for the last thirty years. But when someone with integrity and reasonably good judgment decides to speak up after three decades of relative silence, it’s worthy of notice:
I have kept silent for those 30 years because I never believed that the old guard should meddle in the business of new administrations, especially during a time of war. But the renewed vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has prompted me to speak out.
Iraq And Al Qaeda
by hilzoy A few days ago, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber made a good point: “Cheney asks “Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?” he asked. “Would be we safer or less … Read more
The Abramoff Case Widens…
by hilzoy From the WaPo: “The Justice Department’s wide-ranging investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has entered a highly active phase as prosecutors are beginning to move on evidence pointing to possible corruption in Congress and executive branch agencies, lawyers involved in the case said. Prosecutors have already told one lawmaker, Rep. Robert W. Ney … Read more
Dumbest. Column. Ever.
by hilzoy
Kevin Drum warned me not to click this link, but silly me had to go ahead and click it anyways. When I did, I found one of the stupidest columns of all time. In it, David Gelernter wonders why students now are so much more career-minded than when he was in college. He thinks he’s figured it out:
“Why the big change between now and then? Many reasons. But there’s one particular reason that students seem reluctant (some even scared) to talk or think about. In those long-ago days, more college women used to plan on staying home to rear children. Those women had other goals than careers in mind, by definition. They saw learning as worth having for its own sake; otherwise why bother with a college education, if you weren’t planning on a big-deal career? (…)
In the days when many college-trained women stayed home to rear children, the nation as a whole devoted a significant fraction of all its college-trained worker-hours to childrearing. This necessarily affected society’s attitude toward money and careers. A society that applauds a highly educated woman’s decision to rear children instead of making money obviously believes that, under some circumstances, childrearing is more important than moneymaking. No one thought women were incapable of earning money if they wanted or needed to: Childrearing versus moneymaking was a genuine choice. (…)
But all that changed with feminism’s decision to champion the powerful and successful working woman. Nowadays, feminists and many liberals are delighted when women make careers in large corporations, which are still the road to riches and power in this country. (…)
In many ways, life today is a lot easier than it was in 1960. But don’t kid yourselves. The age that rated childrearing higher than money-grubbing and intellectual exploration higher than career preparation had it exactly right. We might come to miss what we had then, but we are never going back; no nation has ever sacrificed wealth for intangible spiritual satisfactions.
In some important ways, this society has made a tragic but probably inevitable (and certainly irreversible) mistake. Crying about it is senseless. Denying it is cowardly.”
Despite the scary, scary nature of this topic, I’m going to brave my deepest innermost fears and discuss it. A veritable Profile in Courage, that’s me — at least until I get around to disagreeing with Gelernter, at which point I will magically transform myself into a coward. (I’ve been drinking Polyjuice Potion again.)