Heads I Win, Tails You Lose - The commander of the "Red" team in the just-completed Millennium Challenge 2002 wargames, widely taken to "validate new war-fighting concepts" that the US might, might use to invade one or more countries in the Persian Gulf region, says that the Pentagon...cheated.

Paul Van Riper, who headed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command when he retired in 1997 as a three-star general, said he became so frustrated with undue constraints on his command of "enemy" forces that he quit the role midway through Millennium Challenge 2002, which ended Aug. 15.

His complaints were reported Friday by the Army Times, a private newspaper that covers Army issues. The Times obtained a copy of an e-mail Van Riper sent to colleagues explaining why he had quit.

(From yesterday's Washington Post article, "Ex-General Says Wargames Were Rigged" by Robert Burns.) A spokesman for the Joint Forces Command said there is "no record" of Riper having quit. You'd think someone might remember one way or the other, but UO supposes it doesn't do to inquire too closely about these things.

Van Riper said exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against the Blue, or friendly, forces, and on several occasions the Red forces were directed not to use certain weapons against Blue.

Robert Oakley, a retired ambassador who played the role of civilian leader of the Red force, told the Times that Van Riper was outthinking the Blue force. He said, for example, that in the computer simulations, Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating the Blue forces' high-tech eavesdropping capabilities. When the Blue naval forces sailed into the Persian Gulf early in the experiment, Van Riper's forces surrounded the ships with small boats and planes.

Much of the Blue force's ships ended up at the bottom of the ocean. Oakley said Joint Forces Command officials had to stop the exercise and "refloat" the fleet in order to continue.

Not to worry, though:

Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, the deputy commander of Joint Forces Command, defended the exercise.

"I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked," Mayer told the Times. He said, however, that "certain things are scripted" in any large war game. "You have to execute in a certain way or you'll never be able to bring it all together," he said.

Mayer said that in some parts of the exercise Van Riper was constrained "in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment."

Mayer said that similar scripts would be sent to Saddam Hussein and Ali Khameni "to facilitate the conduct of the war."

They Said It - Also from Radley Balko, who thinks Steven J. Hatfill has been getting the shaft

This fall will mark one year since the first Anthrax letter was mailed. The FBI investigation would probably have yielded more results if it had been conducted by the Washington Metro Police Department's "Lost Intern Division."

And Julian Sanchez on the response of a New Yorker to Mayor Bloomfield's proposed smoking ban for bars ("I'd actually be all for it, which is odd since I am a smoker myself. I think it might make me smoke less."):

Of course, even though not everyone needs help smoking less, he might feel singled out if we just banned his smoking in bars. So he's "all for" limiting the freedom of every other smoker and bar owner in the city -- because otherwise Mr. Iron Will here might have to exercise some modicum of discipline in order to smoke at his desired level.

I'm reminded here of David Hume's claim that it's "not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Seems like lots of folks have taken that to heart: if a regulation makes things marginally more convenient for me, I can ignore the burden it places on others. So-- why is it libertarians who get tagged as selfish, again?

Gene Healy on Rumsfeld, McNamara and knowing better:

Iraq is not Vietnam, and Rumsfeld--a man for whom I have a great deal of respect (among other things he worked with Milton Friedman in the 70s to end the draft)--is assuredly not McNamara. But some of the Beltway hawks, in their casualness about war and their assumption that the world is their chessboard--evoke in me the same sort of contempt the Times editorialist felt for the former Defense Secretary.

Vexation About Representation - There's a lot of talk in the blogosphere now about the question of statehood for the District of Columbia. This Radley Balko response to a comment from a reader (there are those comment things again...) strikes Unqualified Offerings as superb. Balko, like UO, opposes statehood but believes that district residents should therefore be exempt from all federal taxes. Here's just a bit of his post:

I'm simply saying that if you're going to deny D.C.'s residents a voice in Congress (and I've written that on the whole I think that's a good idea), then you can't hit them up for taxes. This country was founded on the principle that unrepresentative taxation is a violation of our liberty. Why does that principle suddenly change simply because those without representation will vote for Democrats, are largely poor and black, and find themselves living in the District?

He has a lot more on other issues touching the question of statehood. Unqualified Offerings inserts only a single cavil: "Taxation Without Representation" is actually the District Government's ideal. For decades they've agitated Congress for the right to levy a "commuter tax" on Maryland and Virginia residents who work in DC. Needless to say, those commuters couldn't vote District politicians out of office, which is surely the appeal.

(Link via Eve Tushnet.)

The New Jerusalem - You can hear five tracks from Steve Earle's much-discussed forthcoming CD, Jerusalem, here, including - yes- "John Walker's Blues." (Note: Link will open a Flash 5 player and immediately commence the first song.) Unqualified Offerings doesn't want to, ahem, overemphasize the lyrics. It likes most of the tunes pretty well. "Ashes to Ashes" sounds like the Butthole Surfers playing campfire songs. "Conspiracy Theory" marries the bass line from "Oh Pretty Woman" and a shimmering girl-singer chorus to the Christic Institute Hymnbook scored for muted feedback and fat drums. Note: Unqualified Offerings means that in a good way!

And "John Walker's Blues?" Imagine a Bill&Ted-era Keanu Reeves after a month on light rations and insufficient water, trying to explain what the hell he thought he was doing while REM plays in the background. Clearly meant to capture Walker's mindset during the shellshocked days of Mazar e Sharif, the song does not strike Unqualified Offerings as likely to inspire a generation of copycats. "Walker" comes across as half-crazed and clueless; the arabic chorus at the end sounds hallucinatory. Likely this was Earle's intent, though he may contradict UO when he appears on the Today show Monday (August 19).

"I Remember You" is the actual trademark alt-country track in the sample. You can tell because Emmylou Harris duets. This one could easily have appeared on El Corazan or I Feel Alright, though UO is, for the time being, inclined to class it a rung below "You're Still Standing There" (with Lucinda Williams) and the landmark "Love Is Never Equal" that Earle did with Jill Sobule (hear sample).

"Jerusalem" sounds like...well, it sounds like a Steve Earle song. Rather Byrds-like on the instruments, ragged but right on the vocals. Those fearing or hoping for a paean to suicide bombing will find their expectations thwarted. There's not much in the way of political content at all, really. It's basically a rewrite of "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding."

There are six tracks we can't hear. The most programmatically political appears to be "Amerika V. 6.0," but even it harks back, lyrically at least, to "Snake Oil" from the Copperhead Road album. There is what looks to be a damn good song from the perspective of a prisoner ("The Truth"), a song from the perspective of a minor drug smuggler that could go either way, depending on the music ("What's a Simple Man to Do"), and a few tunes that appear to be more existential than political.

We fall into the trap, sometimes, of figuring that controversial art has to go either onto the Masterpiece shelf or into the Failure bucket. But what if it's really just - pretty good?

(Link via Micah Holmquist.)

The Starmaker Machinery Behind the Popular Songs - Forbes Magazine reports that Forrester Research concludes "There is no denying that times are tough for the music business, but not because of downloading...

Based on surveys of 1,000 U.S. online consumers, Forrester said it sees no evidence of decreased CD buying among frequent digital music consumers and said the record labels could restore industry growth by making it easier for people to find, copy, and pay for music on their own terms.

See also the latest from Michael Croft of Ones and Zeros, comparing the music and book businesses. Unqualified Offerings was in the book business for a long time, and finds the comparison instructive. Michael also pronounces himself disturbed by the plausible "idea that the success of the music industry is an unsustainable bubble built on the baby boom and effectively over."

Note: UO is trying valiantly to be your unofficial substitute The Minor Fall, The Major Lift while TMFTML is on vacation, despite knowing way less about music these days.

We Report, You Decide - Someone tell Unqualified Offerings if this inconsistently-updated weblog is sincere, frothing jingoism or ham-handed parody. Right now UO is leaning toward the latter, but these comments on Micah Holmquist's Irregular Thoughts and Links could go either way.

All in the Family

Of all the dissenters, top Republicans in Congress see Scowcroft as the key. They say they believe his opinion reflects that of Bush's father, whom they suspect is also counseling caution when it comes to Iraq.

From Foxnews.com, "GOP Backing Out of Iraq Offensive?"

Poetry Friday - (In honor of Virginia Postrel's explosive return to active blogging, this poem about cars, liberty and, yes, the environment. "Zagajewski" is the Polish poet, Adam Zagajewski, whose poems often touch on the tyrannies and holocausts of twentieth century Europe, and whom I encountered first in a review by John Haines in The Hudson Review.)

Why Americans Love Our Cars

Think of poems by Zagajewski:
All those trains – we know the terminus,
The impulse to board
(utter the word) en masse.

A job-seeker told the President
I have the one thing nobody else
Brings to this job. What’s that?
The President asked. The man said,

"Fuck You money."
He came to need it. The rest of us buy cars
As soon as we can afford them,
Throw a few things in the back

And head to our own place,
Our first place.
The Earth, you say? The earth will see you buried
Or not even buried.

© 1998, 2002 by Jim Henley

Two Hearts Beat as One - Two of UO's favorite writers and thinkers have weighed in on Allan Bloom, rock and The Project - Jim of Objectionable Content and Eve of Tushnet, who got the whole thing started. Both have fascinating, thoughtful pieces and both take up for Bloom and rock both. Unqualified Offerings has things to say about both Jim's musing, "Everything is Free Now," and Eve's meditation, "DO YOU LIKE AMERICAN MUSIC?," but not tonight. Don't let that stop you from reading both essays though. They're terrific.

Intonation Recommendation - While this site is on its music kick, it should note that it has really enjoyed that recently-discovered The Minor Fall, The Major Lift blog. What's so great about it? Actually, "they" explain that better than anyone:

Our posts may seem facile and obvious, but they work on many levels. Each post contains its own unique world, a world which only reveals itself after repeated and careful reading. (Except the ones about Adam Ant; they're just crap we tossed off to fill space).

If Unqualified Offerings gets around to redoing its links this weekend like it means to, you'll have permanent access to TMFTML from this page.

Speaking of Googling Ginger Stampley responded to what she took to be this site's argument in the matter of pseudonymous blogging. Ginger interpreted UO's statement that "people aren't going to bother to find my house" as meaning that nobody googles bloggers and others for information about them. Clearly people do. In fact, the very next day she encountered a fellow Ginger in "meatspace," who promptly ran her name through Google and sent an e-mail that can only be characterized as "faintly creepy."

Here's what Unqualified Offerings wonders, though. Why would you assume that Google found you the right person? This is actually a hard sell in the case of the proprietress of What She Really Thinks, who may be, on the evidence of Google, the only Ginger Stampley in the world. 11 pages into Google's "Ginger Stampley" hits, I still hadn't found one that wasn't clearly Our Ginger.

But enough about her. What about me? "Jim Henley" is not an especially common name - in my entire life I've come across one Henley who wasn't related to me. But if you Google me - and really, what else do you have to do with your time - you would be wrong to assume that I am

o the guy on the bulletin board of the official Train website
o the late Commander of the Order of the Knights Templar (they're just a front for my real cabal)
o a zoologist

It gets worse.

o I fish, but I'm not the guy who tied for fifth in this tournament.
o I sometimes write about SF and fantasy, but I'm not the SCA member referred to on this site. Nor have I been portrayed by Harry Hamlin, for all Mrs. Offering might wish otherwise.

But enough about me. What about Ted Barlow? If you google Ted Barlow, you sure get a lot of links to Ted Barlow the blogger, but they're all - other blogs. Not much dirt there.

Mind you, Unqualified Offerings wasn't arguing against pseudonymity in the first place. It was so firm in its assertion that "some bloggers may have very good reasons for trying to maintain their secret identity" that Istanblog felt obliged to write, on his own site, that

Anyway, I don't want to overplay the "dangers" which lead me to remain anonymous. Even if I used my real name and this blog came to the attention of the Wrong People, I doubt there'd be much in the way of repercussions.

But that's what they made him say.

Movin' on Up - I'm now the number five Henley on Google! Just two back of singer Don, and let's face it - he's a has-been, and I'm in the prime of my (blogging) career! Tremble Don, tremble.

And for the first time, I'm high enough up the ranking of Jims that I actually found my name before I got bored clicking through the pages. (That's Page 5.) Mind you, that bastard Jim Treacher is well up page two at Number 13 overall. But he cheated and put his first name in both his blogname and his URL.

As previously mentioned, I own the Jim Henley category.

But I'm still no Ken Goldstein.

But I LIKE It - So much response to the Allan Bloom's Greatest Hits project that, for one evening, Unqualified Offerings is going to trust its Loyal Readers to remember that prophylactic war is bad on their own. UO can trust you to do this, right, Loyal Readers? Good! Let's get started then.

Firstly, this project has received the endorsement of the prestigious music blog, The Minor Fall, the Major Lift. TMFTML offers its own suggestion, and it's not even a Leonard Cohen song! Specifically, they suggest "Fairy Tale of New York," by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. Note that they do not get the bonus points for suggesting "not-old-people's music," since Unqualified Offerings owns the record on which that song appeared. (You can get a 30-second sample, lyrics and chords from pogues.com. BYOB.)

Reader Mighty, Mighty Banjos says straight out that he won't be getting bonus points, suggesting

Sun era:

Johnny Cash – Folsum Prison Blues: Get Drunk, Shoot a man, go to prison for life.
Johnny Cash (among others) – Cocaine Blues: Use drugs, shoot a woman, run for it, get caught, get executed.
Johnny Cash – The Wall: Live rough, go to prison, go insane, try to escape, get shot, die.
(On reflection, the entire Johnny Cash collection probably qualifies.)
Chuck Berry – Downbound Train: live hard, have a vivid nightmare of damnation, repent
Jan and Dean – Dead Man’s Curve: Live hard, Drive fast, Die Young

MMB notes that "from day one (or near day one), rockers have been moralists," and continues

You’ll note from the short list, that my background leans a lot more towards white trash than urbane, introspective. This will not however prevent me from making a totally off the cuff psychological guess. In Mr. Bloom’s list of ‘endeavors’, the virtue is religious devotion; it sounds like Mr. Bloom comes from the Calvinist side of the aisle. For those of us from the more expressive religious traditions, the virtue could be written as ‘religious ecstasy’, the surrender of self to the greater. If it is understood that rock and roll derives from this ecstatic tradition of Gospel, admittedly as well as the white trash, it is easy to see why Mr. Bloom has no frame of reference to comprehend.

Mr. Bloom and his readers don’t receive my anger, they receive my pity. They will never know that surrender of self to the greater, neither in church nor in the pews facing Joe Ely on a good night.

Jay Sulzmann writes

But why not just send Allan Bloom a collection of CDs from the Boss? Virtually Springsteen's entire career is a refutation of Bloom's argument.

Because then Unqualified Offerings would have to explain "Mary Queen of Arkansas," is why. But it will admit it listed no Springsteen songs simply because it had a hard time narrowing the possibilities down. (Perhaps Unqualified Offerings is not the only one inclined to put the early "For You" on the short list?) Eve Tushnet suggests "Atlantic City," but Eve gets her own post - if not several posts.

What Are the Odds - In the growing genre of "Has Stephen J. Hatfill Been Railroaded" (by the FBI, the media, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Unqualified Offerings, among others), The Talking Dog does some investigating. His conclusion: Way too much is made of the famous "Greendale School" connection. Also: There's no evidence placing Hatfill anywhere near the New Jersey mailbox from which at least one letter seems to have been mailed.

Hawks Unclear on the Concept - Today's George Will column includes this stunningly opaque passage:

President Bush would rather rely on regime change than screwdrivers to protect America. So he is unsheathing a doctrine -- "anticipatory self-defense" via preemptive war -- that might become a dangerous sword in other hands.

The mind boggles. Does Will not recall that the US system provides for regular, mandated changes of leadership, or is he privy to Administration plans that they haven't shared with us? More seriously: Even if you believe that what Will mislabels "preemptive" war is a doctrine safe in the hands of Bush the Younger, the man who, when all is said and done, is responsible for John Ashcroft and Norman Mineta, among other things, it is an absolute guarantee that the doctrine will outlast the administration, passing into the hands of other Presidents - even (gasp!) Democrats.

Leave aside the hotshots in other countries who will decide that "anticipatory self-defense" is good for them too. On second thought, don't.

Sources and Methods - Bill Torpy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was kind enough to reply to UO's e-mail about his article on Cynthia McKinney's famous list of 9/11 donors, which did not credit Scott Koenig of Indepundit for kicking off the story. Mr. Torpy explains that he stumbled upon the donor anomaly himself "around July 25th" and spent the intervening time trying to figure out any connection to the date. That is, Torpy worked the story independently from start to finish. His verdict: probably just a coincidence.

You can draw conclusions that cut both ways on what became the McKinney Controversy. You could make the case that, unlike Scott Koenig and, um, Unqualified Offerings, a real reporter actually worked days on the story before publishing, and what he finally published downplayed the inflammatory happenstance of the date. You could make the case that, nevertheless, it wasn't just troglodyte righties who found the thing worth looking into.

UPDATE: Does Unqualified Offerings believe Torpy's claim? Sure. He picked up a fair amount of information about the donors, which bespeaks more than a half-day's research. Further update: UO e-mailed Torpy back to apologize for jumping to the conclusion that he was living off the fat of the blogosphere.

Allan Bloom's Greatest Hits - Both Eve Tushnet and Patrick Nielsen Hayden had kind things to say about UO's consideration of the new Springsteen song, "Mary's Place," which make this site proud and pleased. Eve also says

Wish Allan Bloom had read this.

Which is interesting, because a minor hobby of Unqualified Offerings is thinking up songs that, all by themselves, refute Bloom's attack on rock music in The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom argued that

Rock music provides premature ecstasy and, in this respect, is like the drugs with which it is allied. It artificially induces the exaltation naturally attached to the completion of the greatest endeavors--victory in a just war, consummated love, artistic creation, religious devotion and discovery of the truth. Without effort, without talent, without virtue, without exercise of the faculties, anyone and everyone is accorded the equal right to the enjoyment of their fruits.

(From The New Traditionalism Project.)

So. Name some songs that demonstrate Bloom is all wet, preferably a CD's worth. Unqualified Offerings will get the ball rolling. It invites reader suggestions to fill out the disk. We'll rip the thing and send to Allan...wherever.

1. "Acadian Driftwood," The Band - You don't really need another song, but CDs hold 70+ minutes worth of music. This moving number reprises that standard rock&roll topic, the dispossession of much of Maritime Canada's Acadian population, their migration to the Mississippi Delta, and the love of their true home that abides.

Try to raise a family
End up an enemy
Over what went down on the plains
Of Abraham

Shake, rattle and roll, enfant!

2. "Copperhead Road," Steve Earle - The secret history of the United States in three generations.

Volunteered for the army on my birthday
They draft the white trash first round here anyway

Warning: Somewhat skeptical of authority. Premature ecstasy danger: The instrumentation on this song kicks total ass.

3. "Up the Junction," Squeeze. A machine to break your heart in three minutes. Ordinary bloke meets a waitress, falls in love, gets married, has a baby. It's all so playful for two thirds of the way, then boom:

And now she's two years older
Her mother's with a soldier
She left me with my drinkin'
Became a proper stinkin'

Improving, literary-critical exercise Bloom would surely approve of: "Up the Junction" has no chorus. It is just a rapid cascade of verses, possibly contributing to the sense of inevitability of the singer's doom. Discuss.

4. "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who. Really, what needs to be said? Union work rule violation danger: A proper consideration of this song may allow one to dispense with The Closing of the American Mind altogether.

5. "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea," Elvis Costello. Because the best work of a fellow sexual moralist may make Bloom feel less lonely.

In come two men dressed in white coats
Shake her very gently by the throat
One's named Gus, One's named Alfie
I don't want to go to Chelsea

Note: Emphasis added. Further note: Anecdotal evidence suggests that in actual practice, Costello hasn't been any more successful at keeping it in the pants than Bloom was. It's the thought that counts.

6. "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Iggy Pop. Kidding!

Take it away, Loyal Readers! Extra points for suggesting not-old-people songs.

Why Else I Don't Have a Comments Section - Some of them cause websites to take forever to load. For instance, the spiffy, redesigned weblog of Steven Chapman (nee Daddy Warblogs) takes dog years to load. The sites that use Enetations seem particularly vulnerable to slow load times.

Why I Ought to Have a Comments Section - That funny comment thread on Greenhouse Effect that Unqualified Offerings directed you to? It got really good after you folks started going there. A personal meditation by your Talking Dog on being too close to the horror for good lawyering. (Ya ya ya, contradiction in terms, ya ya ya.) Fellow lawyer Mark from Strike Team Charon on conflict-of-interest standards. ("Otherwise good lawyers get disciplined for this sort of thing [Theodore Olson's work on terror law] on a regular basis.") And Alkali, who apparently doesn't have a website, arguing plausibly that, since Olson's interests are aligned with his client, the Bush Administration, there is no conflict. (UO's more quaint readers may feel that Mr. Olson's - and the Justice Department's - client is the people of the United States of America, but since there could be no meaningful distinction between the interests of the Bush Administration and the interests of the citizenry, the difference is not important.)

A thought-provoking collection of messages and well worth your time.

Why I Don't Have a Comments Section - Cynthia McKinney's successor in the House of Representatives, blogger Greg Greene, picked up UO's Theodore Olson item below. Greg has comments. What happened next is...suggestive.

Remember, Unqualified Offerings loves e-mail! It owes some of you responses, including Kurt Hemr for his excellent response to the last Springsteen item, but e-mail is good! Comments? Not so good.

Advantage: What She Really Thinks! - Unqualified Offerings finished the item below only to discover that Ginger Stampley had made most of the same arguments (without the high-flown rhetoric) two hours before it.

Doc Searls describes this Andrew Sullivan piece as "the best summary of the warblog case I've heard so far. If this is the best argument the war camp has to offer, Bush should give it up now, because it amounts to "I'm scared of Saddam".

Unqualified Offerings swears it did not look on Ginger's paper.

The Million Mom War - Rich Lowry writes on NRO that

One of the more other-wordly aspects of the Iraq debate is that everyone is weighing very seriously whether we should trample Iraq’s sovereignty by invading and changing the government. But we trample Iraq’s sovereignty every day! Literally every day we fly war-planes over Iraq patrolling the no-fly zones. And we’ve already half-dismembered the country. All those Bush critics who worry about getting bogged down in Iraq should wake up—we’re already bogged down in Iraq! So should all those critics who fear that we may pull the country apart (what is the thriving Kurdish north but a function of an essentially “pulled apart” Iraq?). Bush critics should at least be consistent and come out against the no-fly zones, which by their line of reasoning have bogged down the U.S. military for a decade, dangerously threatened the territorial integrity of Iraq, and are a daily provocation to Arab opinion (shouldn’t Arab opinion--again by the critics’ line of argument--be outraged by infidel war-planes flying over Iraq every day?).

I agree. I have previously said that I do not argue for maintaining the status quo rather than war. In some ways the status quo is worse than going to war. It is (one more time) like poking a trapped animal with a sharp stick.

1. End the sanctions.

2. End the no-fly zones.

3. End the inspections.

4. Rescind the "regime change" finding.

Make it clear, as we did in 1991, that we will annhilate Saddam, his family, his government and his army if he attacks us with nukes, chemicals or biological weapons or provides such weapons to people who attack us. And oh by the way, tell Saddam that just as it's none of our business if he acquires weapons-of-some-destruction (as opposed to using them on us), it's also none of our business what Israel does to Iraq if he uses WSDs on them.

Lowry is right: The no-fly zones and the sanctions inflame arab opinion. If you really think this didn't make it easier for al Qaeda to recruit the people who carried out the September massacres, you are not just not an "anti-idiotarian," you are an idiot. Same with the troops we keep out there to "defend" (say it with me now) Our Good Friends, The Saudis.

"Deterrence," making damn sure that Iraq or any other country knows that we will retaliate with overwhelming force if we are attacked with WSDs, is perfectly workable. "Containment," meaning measures short of war to prevent Iraq from acquiring WSDs, is indeed a losing proposition. It is the geopolitical equivalent of gun control. As Perry de Havilland remarked last winter, we're talking about 1940s technology here. Nonproliferation, even the militarized nonproliferation of the so-called Bush Doctrine, is a lost cause. The incentives for states to acquire WSDs are too great. We are going to have to learn to live in a world of proliferation.

The expansive version of the War on Terror is driven by the same impulse toward perfect safety that gave us the Million Mom March. If Saddam acquires or keeps WSDs, he could threaten us. If Saddam himself is too rational to do so, his successor might be unhinged. The hawks call us to eliminate not just the (prospective) risks of today, but the speculative risks of tomorrow. The mightiest nation in the history of the world cringes before not just this year's tinpot tyrant, but the gleam in the eye of the mother of next year's pipsqueak.

There are cynics who say that the Administration's Axis of Evil/WMD/War on Terror rhetoric is just cover for score-settling by the family and friends of the first Bush Administration with Saddam personally. I call those people optimists. Because once we go to war on the basis of the expansive rhetoric, we've legitimized it for future generations of interventionists, whether the present crowd believes it or not. Best assume they mean what they say, because if they don't, their successors will.

In A Nation of Cowards, Jeffrey R. Snyder wrote

Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only official action is legitimate and that the state is the source of our earthly salvation. Both liberal and conservative prescriptions for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job description" school of thought regarding the responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation of the ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings.

In the aftermath of the September massacres, libertarians and conservatives suggested that the spirit of UAL 93 was a sign that we were getting beyond "the culture of passivity...at least for the moment" Hawks would probably argue that the movement to attack Iraq (and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and Syria...) is an example of precisely that spirit of self-defense. I think they're very wrong.

"There is no such thing as society," Margaret Thatcher famously said. The extent to which that provocative remark is correct is exactly the extent to which a handful of brave men in the face of immediate attack, who did not begin their day looking for trouble with anyone, voluntarily banding together to die with honor for the sake of their fellow citizens, is nothing whatsoever like demanding that the State go abroad to snuff out hypothetical harms on our behalf, or like the leader of the State yoking the nation to that project. On that plane, the best republican and democratic virtues. In the organs calling for an expanded war: bluster, ambition and fearmongering. There is nothing of courage driving the Million Mom War; there is only anxiety. There will be courage in the soldiers tasked to do the work, but it doesn't confer on their bosses or, alas, on us.

People ask whether you are "pro-war" or "anti-war." I've been and continue to be pro one war and anti another. The war I am for, I call the "Don't Tread on Me War." This is the war against al Qaeda, who attacked us on our own soil. This was the war to topple the Taliban, who knew that al Qaeda wished to do just that sort of thing, yet gave the organization shelter. This was a war to establish an essential, genuinely conservative, small-r republican, small-d democratic principle: "Don't fuck with me, Jack."

You now know the name of the war I oppose.

Unqualified Offerings Is So Sorry for linking to this Counterspin anecdote. Do not click the link. Repeat: Do not click the link!

Bossism - The Minor Fall, the Major Lift is missing a bet by staying "Springsteen free."Unqualified Offerings is getting the idea that it could be the most popular blog on earth if it wrote about nothing but Springsteen, based on the sizes of recent referrals from Instapundit and Eve Tushnet. So give the people what they want, UO says! Here's David Segal's WashPost review of Saturday's show at MCI Center, a show this website did not, alas, attend. He liked the show better than he liked the new album. UO can't help finding something to be snippy about:

The chorus of "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" seems as thin as a nursery rhyme in your living room ("I'm waitin', waitin' on a sunny day / Gonna chase the clouds away"), but bulked into a singalong by fans, the point of its simplicity seems suddenly clear.

Actually, David, the point of its very Motown-like simplicity was clear enough in this living room.

But really, just how wordsmithy were passages like

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart

or

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
through the middle of my soul

anyway?

But even that's not the real question. The real question relates to this famous line from Thunder Road:

You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright

The question is for the ladies: Girls, does that approach really work?

The Right Man for the Job? - In an Newsweek story about the extent to which the Jose Padilla case was blown out of proportion by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Michael Isikoff writes

Padilla’s case promises to be a flash point in a high-stakes constitutional showdown over the legal basis for much of the administration’s war on terrorism. Acting under the direction of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, administration lawyers have staked out increasingly bold positions: under his wartime powers as commander in chief, they argue, President Bush has wide-ranging powers to secretly round up suspected terrorists and detain them indefinitely, including U.S. citizens like Padilla.

There is no nice way to bring this up. Theodore Olson's wife, Barbara, was among the murdered when her plane was smashed into the Pentagon on September 11th of last year. Is Solicitor General really the best position for her justifiably aggrieved husband under the circumstances? Are there arguments about civil liberties, constitutional strictures and limitations on the war power that don't get made in White House and Justice Department strategy sessions he attends, out of understandable respect for his loss? When judges see Olson before them arguing a war powers case, what inhibitions do they feel, knowing his history?

This is an especially cheeky cavil to have in light of the post below, defending pseudonymous punditry and decrying ad hominems. I would argue that the difference is that the pundit has only his words going for him, while Theodore Olson has real power, however circumscribed by his Administration, and the dignity of his office.

I'm not sure I buy my own distinction. Bad as the Administration has been on civil liberties, the libertarian in me would better ascribe that to structure than to personality: the State reacts to opportunities to expand its power by - expanding its power. No crusading widowers required. Still, I worry.

No Man Is Killing Me! - Steven den Beste and Megan McArdle averred today that pseudonymous bloggers incur a credibility deficit because they "hide" behind a pseudonym. Pseudonymous blogger Demosthenes has a lengthy reply, with an interesting recap of internet history, but he might as easily have said "What a crock."

Any pundit's arguments stand or fall on their merits. Anything else is pathologizing one's opponent or...whatever an antonym for pathologizing would be for one's ideological soulmate. The fact that you could find my house without too much trouble doesn't make me any smarter than Istanblog. It doesn't even make me more trustworthy. Here's a particularly bad argument of Den Beste's:

The idea of hoping to have "the reputation of Demosthenes grow and exist apart from my credentials in real life" is, sad to say, a bit unrealistic. Demosthenes is one voice amongst hundreds of thousands, and life just doesn't act that way. And in any case, anonymity actually impedes any progress in that direction. The nameless human behind the blog hopes that the synthetic avatar Demosthenes will take on a life of its own. It's a disturbing ambition.

It's actually not disturbing at all, but that's not my point. My point is that here is another way that life just doesn't act: people aren't going to bother to find my house, precisely because I am one voice out of hundreds of thousands. To paraphrase a commenter on Megan's blog, "Steven Den Beste" and "Jim Henley" and "Megan McArdle" are, for all practical purposes, as pseudonymous as "Demosthenes" or "Samisdata Illuminatus." (Pictures from blogfests reveal that Megan is a total hottie, but that doesn't make her any smarter or dumber either.)

Charles Dodgson - NOT his real name - of Through the Looking Glass notes that pseudonymity has a bit of "history cred" going for it.

A note to my fellow bloggers who use their real names: I ain't necessarily believing what you guys tell me either!

Obviously, some bloggers may have very good reasons for trying to maintain their secret identity. The Istanblogger, for example, wants to be free to criticise the Turkish government, and the Turkish government has any number of ways to make things hard on his Turkish family, if not on him. (He's an American.)

Some might say, That's different. He tells you why he needs a pseudonym. Which is true enough, but how do I know he's telling the truth? Demosthenes or Hesiod or Eric A. Blair could offer some reason that necessitates discretion - e.g. fear of reprisals at work - but it wouldn't make Blair a better writer or Hesiod's arguments on Iraq any easier to answer.

This Ground We Cannot Hallow - Ben Domenech too has now been to Shanksville to visit the temporary Flight 93 memorial. His account is here. My sister's family and my mom stopped there this weekend too. It sounds like there's a much bigger crowd on the weekend than during the week (when La Familia Offering visited the place). We saw about fifty people. My sister said there were about fifty cars this past Sunday.

Interestingly, Ben also makes a Gettysburg connection.

(via Kevin Holtsberry.)

Dishonor Roll - Wendy McElroy is not okay with the new Florida law that "requires mothers who don't know who fathered their children to detail their sexual past in newspaper notices before they can put the children up for adoption."

Watchpundit - Ginger Stampley lists some terms that she thinks have passed their sell-by date. (Not, apparently, "blog-years.") She manages a kind word for Dick Armey too.

Anthraxblog: Fame:Dr. Steven Hatfill says he is not, NOT the anthrax killer. He granted an interview to the Washington Post that ran in today's paper, and gave a press conference - really a prepared statement with no questions taken from reporters that is available from MSNBC.com. His lawyer, Victor M. Glasberg, likens his client to Richard Jewell. Hatfill says the FBI and the media have deliberately destroyed his life through a campaign of leaks.

Hatfill hasn't been charged. But even so, Glasberg said, "Steve's life has been devastated by a drumbeat of innuendo, implication and speculation. We have a frightening public attack on an individual who, guilty or not, should not be exposed to this type of public opprobrium based on speculation."

Glasberg did not mention Unqualified Offerings by name!

Hatfill's case is simple: He says he's a virologist, anthrax is a bacteria, he's never worked with it and he never had access to it at Fort Detrick.

At Fort Detrick, "there's bacteriology research and there's virology research," Glasberg said. "They each have their separate labs. They each have separate decontamination chambers. The lab Steve had access to dealt with viral diseases. . . . The two were separate and didn't mix. . . . He never worked with anthrax at Fort Detrick. He's a viral guy. That [anthrax] is a bacteria."

Chuck Dasey, a spokesman for Fort Detrick, confirmed Hatfill's work history. "It's true he didn't work on anthrax and was never issued vials of anthrax," Dasey said. He said Hatfill was assigned to the virology division as a research associate.

Darkness on the Edge of Town - So Jim, you ask, is there a song on The Rising that, all by itself, refutes WashPost critic David Segal's contention that it was a mistake for Springsteen to make a rock&roll record about the September massacres (instead of "Nebraska III"), while simultaneously demonstrating that the (major) media really does suck?

Yes, there is: "Mary's Place." Let's talk about this one.

Edna Gunderson of USA Today writes of this song that "Mary's Place, a transparent throwback to Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), is an apparent concession to Boss diehards stubbornly stalled in the '70s," presenting the critic with a difficult problem: Where to start?

How about with the fact that musically, "Mary's Place" (hear sample) is actually a throwback to "Sherry Darling," from The River, which came out in 1980, and not to "Rosalita" at all, and that "Sherry Darling" was itself a throwback to the "frat rock" of the 1960s?

You can actually trace the lineage back further, to "Meet Me at Mary's Place," by Sam Cooke. (Hear the whole thing via The Sam Cooke Collection.) Heck, the backing vocals on the Cooke song even sound like Clarence Clemons.

Affinities? Plenty. Here's Cooke:

He said in fact: Meet me (meet me at Mary's place)
We're gonna have (we're gonna have us a ball today)
Why don't you (meet me at Mary's place)
Why don't you meet me (meet me at Mary's place)
We're gonna have (we're gonna have us a ball today)
Why don't you (meet me at Mary's place, ho)

Here's Springsteen:

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party
Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party
Tell me how do we get this thing started
Meet me at Mary's place

So what's different about Springsteen's song? Only this: The persona in Springsteen's song is singing to a dead woman.

Familiar faces around me
Laughter fills the air
Your loving grace surrounds me
Everybody's here
Furniture's out on the front porch
Music's up loud
I dream of you in my arms
I lose myself in the crowd

He's describing the scene to his wife's ghost. It's his first attempt to go out since her death in the attacks. He's trying to reconnect with normal life by sheer force of will. How bad does it hurt? He'll try anything:

I got seven pictures of Buddha
The prophet's on my tongue
Eleven angels of mercy
Sighin' over that black hole in the sun
My heart's dark but it's risin'
I'm pullin' all the faith I can see
From that black hole on the horizon

So that stock party phrase, "Tell me how do we get this thing started," means a lot more than we are used to it meaning. In the next chorus it becomes even plainer:

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party
Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party
Tell me how do you live broken-hearted

The music of "Mary's Place" is the music the singer's wife loved, and exists to both evoke and honor her:

Seven days, seven candles
In my window lighting your way
Your favorite record's on the turntable
I drop the needle and pray (Turn it up)
Band's countin' out midnight (Turn it up)
Floor's rumblin' loud (Turn it up)
Singer's callin' up daylight (Turn it up)
And waitin' for that shout from the crowd (Turn it up)

(Lyrics to the entire song here.)

This song breaks my goddamn heart. Not just for the sadness either, and not just for the widower's heroism and faithfulness. It breaks my heart because the chorus is infectious, because the music really does transmute the pain (and the love that abides) into something like joy, however tinged. Rock&roll inherited not just its ability but its mission to transmute pain from the blues. And that's why you make a rock&roll record about the September massacres, if you've got the guts and the talent.

I look forward to the day I won't be too choked up to sing along.

Just Asking - Blogcritics.com will kick off with a group interview of Recording Industry Association of America President Carey Sherman. Michael Croft of Ones and Zeros has his questions ready. You'll believe a weasel can squirm!

You don't want to miss Michael's list.

Hip Hip! - Liberal bloggers show some love for Dick Armey. Or at least some like. Or something:

Michael Croft of Ones and Zeros e-mails to say, "I commend to you my July 22 posts on Dick Armey. As a certified member of the Houston Heights Axis of Liberal Bloggers, I wonder if I am considered part of the left-wing blogiverse or if I merely am unread."

Actually, Unqualified Offerings reads Michael Croft constantly, and simply failed to acknowledge Michael's items at the time.

Avedon Carol says liberals like Armey's recent stands, but would be happier if Armey had always believed everything liberals believe. She also says liberals wish all our leaders believed and said liberal things. Which is surely true.

The Talking Dog asks "Does this mean that I have to start liking Tom de Lay and Trent Lott too? 'Cause I don't think I can do that... "

And Atrios actually launched a preemptive strike!

In the last few weeks, I believe Dick Armey has come out against the Cuban Trade Embargo, against TIPS, and in support of the notion that Congress needs to approve any military action against Iraq.

Wonder what's gotten into him, other than retirement.

Update: Just Noticed Jim Henley wonders why liberals aren't giving Dick credit for just these things. Well, just did!

More returns as they come in...