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All material on this website is copyright (c) 2001-2002 by Alex Knapp unless otherwise indicated.
UPDATE: All done! Check out the nifty shiny new blogroll! Oh yeah, and if you think I miscategorized you, let me know. Also, I think I lost some blogs, so if you were on the blogroll and aren't there anymore, let me know and I'll put you back up!
The new imperial vision is all very admirable and well meaning, but the American occupation of Japan was centered on retaining its emperor, whose cult of personality rivaled that of Saddam. Retaining the supreme leader with god-like pretensions wouldn't work in Iraq. The homogeneity of the Japanese people was unique, with no parallel in the Middle East, nor were there Japanese-speaking, oil-rich neighbors in the region to bitterly resent, oppose, and sabotage MacArthur's triumphs. In short: Iraqis will never be Japanese in peace, and we better hope they won't be as tenacious as the Japanese were in war.I love how he only mentions Japan, conveniently forgetting that the Allies also successfully occupied West Germany and helped successfully guide it towards democracy. This despite the fact that Germany hadn't even been around for even a century, was composed of several ethnic groups, and faced fear and envy from its neighbors to the west, and was threatened to be overrun from the east.
Look, nobody is suggesting that a post-war occupation of Iraq would be easy. But it's not impossible, either. Iraq is, in fact, one of the best places to start because it is already largely secular, so one of the most important democratic principles, separation of church and state, will be easier to achieve. And while it's true that Iraq is essentially composed of three major regions--Kurdistan to the north, and the Shi'ites to the south with a Sunni majority in between, this problem already has a ready-made solution: federalism. And Iraq has another advantage--unlike post-World War II Japan and Germany, Iraq has exile groups who are already working together to try and develop a post-Hussein government. Granted, they're not working together well, but what political organization does?
Greenway's piece is already oversimplistic, but perhaps the most galling statement of all is this:
So let the sun bring democracy to the Middle East in its own good time. Betting on the wind is a good way to lose not only your money but the Middle East as well.This statement that we should just let democracy come "in its own good time," is one of the most historically ignorant statements I have ever heard in my life. Historically speaking, dictatorship is the norm of human existence. Democracy and freedom have always been fought for. Slavery was defeated in the west by war and international pressure, and still persists in many parts of the world. Autocrats still run the world's most populous country and most of the continents of Africa and Asia. Even the democracies of Europe routinely commit violations of civil liberties and human rights that stand in marked contrast to the expansion of civil liberties in the U.S. (Examples? Torture is legal against "suspected terrorists" in Britain, and private property can be searched without a warrant in France.)
Freedom does not come in its own time. It is fought for. As Robert Heinlein famously said, "You can have peace, or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once." Most of the democracies that exist in the world today would not exist if not for the intervention of other nations. Very, very few nations have been liberated solely from within, and even those that have have had to be protected from conquerors with the aid of its allies. Let the Greenways of the world balk at the prospect of the U.S. successfully bringing democracy to Iraq all they want. History tells us that it's probably the only way it will happen.
One of the reasons why blogging is so successful is because readers can sift through the major stories of the day in just a few minutes by viewing them through the filter of their favorite bloggers. A quick hop (call it 15-20 minutes) around your favorite sites on the blogosphere in a given day enables you to not only get different takes on the main stories of the day, but it also allows you to catch some of the more obscure stories that one or the other bloggers dig up. The several hours that a given blogger might spend a day reading the news is generally summed up in a couple thousand words that can be quickly scanned in a couple of minutes. Moreover, a lot of bloggers latch on to stories before mainstream media even notices that it's a big story (see the Trent Lott debacle.) This is what makes blogging such a powerful force for commentary (not journalism--let's not kid ourselves). Instant reactions to the stories of the day. Because there are many bloggers working at the same time, and because the internet allows quick access to news, this network of "instapundits" has a great advantage over big media.
But enter vlogging, and all of the advantages are in the pockets of Big Media. Honestly, why would a person watch a bunch of amateurs with sketchy production values and flighty internet connections give their take on the events of the day via internet video when I can just flip on the TV and get the same thing with better production values and a stabler medium? Why would I want to spend 3 minutes watching and listening to a vlog entry when I could have read the transcript in 15 seconds? Suddenly, the things that make blogs revolutionary--instant commentary and links to more obscure news--goes away. Now, instead of taking a minute or two to type in a blog entry, vloggers are making video, watching it, editing it, clearing it for mistakes, checking up on copyright issues, tweaking sound effects, and the next thing you know, it takes 20 minutes to do a blog entry. And five minutes to watch it instead of 30 seconds reading it. And because bloggers are so busy doing their video entries, they simply don't have the time to do as much news surfing as they normally would, and some obscure stories slip by the wayside. Pretty soon, a trip around the blogosphere that used to take 15 minutes now takes a couple hours. That is, if anybody's attention span even lasts that long.
I have no doubt that advances in technology and falling prices of bandwidth, cameras, etc. will enable more content-rich blogs. But I agree with Justin Katz--that's about as far as it will go. The simply fact of the matter is that there just aren't enough hours in the day for vlogging to catch on, and amateur video news commentators are just not going to be able to compete with big media.
Sept. 11, 2001, shattered Americans' illusion of invulnerability -- or so we tell ourselves. Taking seriously our vulnerability at home to biological attacks by Hussein or al Qaeda should not counsel cowardice or inaction. It should, however, remind us of the wisdom of the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.It looks to me like, at the moment, we're as prepared as we possibly can be. But we can't sit on our hands until we're ready for every contingency, because it's not possible to be prepared for every contingency. If we try to do so, we'll never start the war, and our armies will be as useless as McClellan's Army of the Potomac.The urgent question about smallpox is: Are we prepared? Absent an imminent threat of an attack by Hussein on us or our troops and allies in the region, President Bush should postpone a military attack until he can assure Americans the U.S. government is prepared to defend our homeland against smallpox or other bioterrorist counterattacks his intelligence analysts judge likely.
In its religious/historical aspect, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of one man: Jesus Christ.
Believer or not, it's undeniable that Christ lived a life worth celebrating. His philosophy was powerful, influential, and ultimately changed the world. It was Christ who gave birth to the teachings that would lead to Western Civilizations cultivation of its inherent principles, from the separation of church and state, the belief in free will, and, perhaps most imporantly, the belief that all people were equal and that every human life is important. It is undeniable that these are the teachings that have led to the triumph of Western Civilization. Even if they have been fleshed out in the rational language of Greek philosophy, their root was in this itinerant rabbi who challenged both an entrenched empire and entrenched religion, and sought to reach people, not in a mass movement, but on an individual level. The debt we owe to him is great.
To all of my readers, fellow bloggers, and anybody who just happens to chance across this page as the result of a rogue Google search, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and I hope that the coming year is a good one.
We who believe in Christ can make the holiday as religious as we want to. Those who couldn't care less about religion can still have a wonderful time with their families on a national occasion of visiting, gift-giving, and sending cards to keep in touch.Yeah, me too.Will someone please explain to me why people have to get grumpy about the fact that we aren't all forced to celebrate the same way, or even celebrate the same thing?
And I think it speaks well of our nation that half our retail economy is absolutely dependent upon the fact that for a couple of months every year the whole country goes insane giving gifts to each other.
It isn't the stores, with their early Christmas displays, that "commercialize" Christmas. They're merely recognizing the fact that most of us are going to be out buying gifts anyway; the decorations are there to encourage us to give each particular store a chance to show us just the right present.
The commerce comes from the buyers -- from us. If we stopped buying gifts, they'd stop putting up the early decorations.
Instead, we'd see a lot of "Going Out of Business" signs on January 1st.
I'll take the Christmas decorations any day.
True, Clinton did appoint blacks to several high administration positions, and increased funding for AIDS prevention, minority business, education, and African relief. But Bush's appointees, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Rod Paige, hold more important administration posts with far greater policy making power and influence over domestic and foreign policy than Clinton's appointees had. And Bush has also touted minority business, education reform, increased AIDS funding, and African aid.Granted, some of these issues are liberal, rather than race issues, but I find it interesting to read praise of Bush on race in a left-wing article.In the 2000 presidential contest, Democratic contender, Al Gore, took the cue from Clinton's Southern Strategy. He spent most of his campaign avoiding appearances in black communities, and was stone silent on issues such as urban investment, health care for the uninsured, fixing lousy inner-city public schools, racial profiling, affirmative action, and the gaping disparities in the Clinton administration's racially-marred drug policy.
Several outside experts — and a few Bush administration officials speaking on background this evening — said North Korea might now be able to create a small nuclear arsenal in the coming year, assuming it has the technical ability to engineer a working nuclear weapon.So what are we going to do about this? What's the plan, here? Some indication that the Administration cared about this issue would be nice.The removal of surveillance cameras and seals from a pond where spent nuclear fuel rods are stored essentially puts Mr. Bush in the same position where President Bill Clinton was in 1994, when North Korea threatened to turn its plutonium into additional weaponry. By that time, the Central Intelligence Agency already believed that North Korea had separated enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons.
Look, I know that we used to supply weapons to Iraq. But please bear in mind that this was during the Iran-Iraq war, which took place shortly after Iran essentially declared war on the United States by storming our embassy and taking American citizens hostage. And if, in helping him, we've contributed to the current crisis, then that just makes us more responsible for cleaning it up.