Sebastian

Reagan and Alzheimer’s Disease

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Reagan has died. I am not going to try to do what others have already done better than I could, so if you are interested in reading an excellent discussion of his political life I strongly suggest that you visit Pejmanesque especially for his excellent discussion of the fact that Reagan was instrumental in the … Read more

Voting Patterns Among the Poor

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On Chicago Boyz there is a very interesting post about voting habits among the poor. An oft cited fact (search the Calpundit archives or Matthew Yglesias archives for examples) suggests that many poorer areas tend to have Republican voting patterns. The general explanation is that these people are voting against their own interests. They have … Read more

Police Your Own

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I believe one of the major failings in Western society is a failure to police your own. If KKK members weren’t protected by their towns this world would have been a better place. If pro-life groups policed their own we wouldn’t have abortion clinic bombings screwing up the debate. If Muslim groups policed their own … Read more

Cold War Lessons Part II

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This is a follow up to my previous post about lessons Kevin Drum of WashingtonMonthly thinks we should learn from the Cold War as applied to the War on Terrorism. This is not a stand alone post. The thrust of Kevin’s “Lessons from the Cold War” seems to be that containment works, so why not … Read more

What Osama Wants

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There is an idea floating around the blogosphere that I have ignored until now because I thought that it was restricted to left-wing nutcases. Unfortunately it seems to have captured Kevin Drum so I suspect it has gone mainstream: “And Osama bin Laden got exactly what he wanted too: a Western occupying force in the … Read more

Cold War Lessons

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Kevin Drum writes an interesting post about Cold War lessons as he (and apparently Wes Clark) think that they ought to be applied to the War on Terror. He draws the wrong conclusions, but he is dealing with the right issues: Clark’s point is a simple one: Neither Reagan nor any of the seven Cold … Read more

Spanish Retreat from the War on Terrorism

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I was willing to give the Spanish a little bit of wiggle room on Zapatero’s implementation of the Spanish withdrawal from Iraq. I really tried, here and here. First I thought Zapatero was just fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw troops from Iraq if there wasn’t a UN force there. I thought that he had … Read more

US Citizen Implicated in Spanish Bombing

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I highlight this article about US lawyer Brandon Mayfield’s possible involvement in the Spanish bombings despite its preliminary nature for a few reasons. First, it doesn’t seem to be getting much notice (at least as of this writing). Second, if he was involved, it highlights the international and ideological nature of the threat.

Excuse Me?!?

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Now I know that you can’t read the inflection in my voice when I say: “Excuse Me ?!?” So I’ll describe it for you. It is that inflection which suggests disbelief that you have been put in a particular situation, or shock that some person says something that you didn’t expect from them. I say … Read more

Abu Ghaib: Moral Disaster

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Before I comment on Abu Ghaib I want to provide my sources in case anyone is interested in looking into it further:

Amnesty International

Slate’s roundup of the story.

Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article.

Phil Carter.

You may also be interested in Sgt Stryker’s response. Or you may also be interested in what Lt. Smash has to say.

Abu Ghraib represents a number of disturbing things, all of which must be dealt with.

First, it is either a horrible breakdown of military discipline or a truly foolish tactic employed by some fool(s) in the military. I strongly suspect it is the former, because if you read the articles above you will see that the investigations of and the beginnings of court martials for these abuses were already underway before the news broke. I will not offer any excuses for these soldiers. The stress they are under in Iraq does not excuse them. Anger at seeing their friends killed in Iraq does not excuse them. The fact that such torture and worse is common in Arab countries does not excuse them. This kind of treatment is not what Americans are supposed to be doing. It is morally wrong and the military needs to crack down hard on those who think that it is ok.

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