Author Archives: Michael Griffiths

Jews Need ‘Perfecting’

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Er.

How do you talk to people like this?

Anne Coulter: Jews Need ‘Perfecting’

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners –

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued — when you say something absurd like that, there’s no –

COULTER: What’s absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I’m going to go off and try to perfect myself –

COULTER: Well, that’s what the New Testament says.

This is what scares me about neo-conservatives.

And, naturally, religious people. I’m sure Anne Coulter didn’t consider that statement at all inflammatory – after all, it’s well known that Christianity is Judaism + Jesus with a few modifications. Of course, if you look at it that way, then I supposes you could equally speciously argue that all Christians need to be ‘perfected’ into Muslims – after all, Islam is Christianity + Mohammed, with a few modifications.

Iraq Suffers More Death

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I am not certain how America, as a nation, can ignore the Iraq when things like this occur:

Iraq bomb in toy cart hits children in playground

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A bomb hidden in a cart of toys killed two children and wounded 17 others in a playground in northern Iraq on Friday, the first day of a national holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attack came the day after U.S. forces killed nine children and six women in an air strike northwest of Baghdad targeting suspected al Qaeda leaders. The U.N. mission in Iraq urged U.S. forces to conduct a “vigorous” probe into the strike

I have read numerous arguments about why America should leave Iraq. They all very eloquently point to the evidence that America is failing to ‘win’ against the Insurgency, or how Americans are needlessly dying, and so on. Democrats oppose the war because Bush initiated it – and the reasons we went to war were terrible – while Republicans are hardly eager to extend the war a decade.

Unfortunately, I haven’t much examining the moral consequences of American’s actions in Iraq, and the ‘War on Terrorism’ in general. I would not want to live in a place where my child could be killed or seriously injured by an indiscriminate bomb in a school. And how, precisely, do we rationalize an estimated one million Iraqis dying post-US invasion? Can we realistically argue that Iraqis are better off without Saddam if this is the result? How do we justify torture, and imprisonment without charges, trial, or recourse to the legal system?

When did the threat of terrorism acquire the power to silence all moral, ethical, legal, and political criticism? And why is our response to the threat war, torture, assassination, and spying?

And: what do we do now? If we leave Iraq, what will happen? We cannot simply dismiss the issue as “not our problem:” it became our problem when we invaded, dismantled the Iraqi government, and killed 3% of their population. We bear responsibility for their situation, and so we bear responsibility for what becomes of it. Leaving may very well allow Iraq to settle down, but it’s not the key question.

I believe the best question is ask is: how do we ensure Iraq’s success, as a nation, in the years to come? How do we restore the damage we’ve inflicted on their infrastructure and their people, and help them become a modern, healthy country?

We don’t exist in a vacuum, and it’s a mistake to think that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Mercenary Armies are Scary

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Newsweek reports:

Blackwater is Soaked

Oct. 15, 2007 issue – The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone….

I find the fact that the US government is using private companies to wage war – mercenary armies validated by US law – terrifying. The Pentagon outsources roughly half its budget, and it’s still trending upwards.

It seems like little more than a flimsy excuse to sidestep judicial oversight and public accountability. The government has certain duties to the people, and other nations; private companies do not. I suppose it’s simply an advance on the concept of “plausible deniability.” Perhaps more concerning – it’s the “military-industrial complex” brought to life. When you spend a few hundred billion a year, companies spring up to happily take some of it. They then have money to finance a lobbying organization to expand or maintain the amount spent on their industry.

Given some of the accusations leveled at Blackwater – a for-profit organization that seems to ignore both the spirit and the letter of the law when they think they can get away with it, not to mention general incompetence – I’m not comfortable letting Blackwater and similar organizations run amock.

I would prefer to live in a country where I can trust the government. Or, at the very least, where the government is intrinsically harmless.

Right now, neo-conservatives seem to be obsessed with making a minority of hangers-on and yes-men rich, at the expense of America. We are establishing organizations with a direct incentive to reduce American liberties, commit moral atrocities, lie, and steal from the public. As anyone whose taken Microeconomics – or psychology – knows, people respond to incentives.

That’s not pleasant to consider.