A Fanboy's Notes - Franklin Harris has been all over the "controversial" new take on Marvel Comics' moribund "Rawhide Kid," the Western character who will be portrayed as gay in a new six-issue miniseries. Lots of publicity for Marvel, lots of media attention. But Franklin notes that there's way less to this than the uninformed media imagine. There have been openly gay characters in "Big Two" superhero comics since the 1980s, and Franklin suggests that, if anything, the level of hackery expected on the Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather miniseries - no, really, that's what it's called - augurs a retrograde move.

Unqualified Offerings can actually pitch in a factoid Franklin didn't include. For a brief, ridiculous time in the mid-1980s, Marvel Comics officially held that there was no homosexuality in the entire Marvel Universe. That postponed a planned "coming out" for the mutant hero, Northstar for years.

Speaking of gays, revamping and superheroes, if you like any of that stuff, do not miss the fine comedic novel, What They Did to Princess Paragon, by Robert Rodi. The book is hard on comics fandom and comics publishing, but it's too full of accurate detail for Rodi to be anything but a fellow fanboy. Indeed, this publisher of a long-running Wonder Woman fanzine writes that Rodi was one of her big readers.

Black Hole - The Post reports that Treasure Planet is a monumental financial flop. Too bad. The entire Familia Offering loved it, as previously reported.

Meanwhile, James Bond is making a fortune after being almost left for financially dead three years ago. The adult members of la Familia Offering failed to see it tonight as the theater was sold out. So we went Christmas shopping - together - for the first time in dog years and hugely enjoyed ourselves.

Objectively Speaking - Almost forgot to note that Glenn Reynolds followed up his initial post on "objectively pro-Saddam with an amplification and partial response to his critics. (Like, um, me.) He's kindly calls my own argument "reasonable." But I can't agree that what he calls the "not-so-reasonable" argument (from Hesiod) is unreasonable at all:

Okay, that's the reasonable argument. Here are the not-so-reasonable ones. Hesiod emailed me that by supporting war on Iraq I was "objectively pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Arab," etc. This is just dumb. People who oppose war on Iraq want to cover themselves by setting up a false dichotomy: war on Al Qaeda or war on Iraq. But, since there's no reason that one conflicts with the other, that won't wash. Indeed, I think it's more likely that the two reinforce each other.

Whether it's a false dichotomy or not is very much TBD. The argument is certainly reasonable whether it turns out to be the case or not. It comprises causal assertions grounded in plausible psychology, politics and logistics. Start with the last. The country has only so many qualified intelligence analysts and translators. It has only so many trained elite troops of the kind who can usefully harry Al-Qaeda in its various lairs. Those that are shifted to Iraq are not available for duty in Afghanistan, Yemen or whichever parts of Pakistan we're secretly operating in. Bin Laden clearly desires a "clash of civilizations" between a militant Ummah and the "Jew-Crusaders." He has been making hay out of our Iraq policy for a decade already, and had what I think we have to call some definite recruiting success. It is, to say the least, reasonable to conclude that more US force will inflame more potential recruits and convince more and more Arabs and Muslims that they have a choice - these bastards who look and talk like me, or these bastards from way the hell and gone. That's good for Al-Qaeda. The purpose of political terrorism for a century and a half has been to provoke repressive countermeasures, so that more and more of "your" people will feel forced to choose you over your enemy.

None of the above is the provable outcome of what has yet to happen. But every bit of it is "reasonable." I rate it as for damn sure more reasonable than the fanciful notion that conquering Iraq will usefully humiliate the Arab world or Islamic culture or whatever into a calm acceptance of our wishes. I expect the Iraq war to be a recruiting bonanza for Al Qaeda, and to push us that much closer to the clash Bin Ladenism (and Weekly Standardism) so desires. I believe that a conquest of Iraq increases the chance that Al Qaeda gets its hands on Iraqi bioweapons or chemical arms from an unlikelihood to a near certainty in the chaos surrounding the war.

Those are reasonable if not certain objections. And from that perspective, the hawks are as "objectively pro-Osama" as the doves are, in the hawkish gestalt, "objectively pro-Saddam."

Glenn also references Micah Holmquist's objections about the incentives US policy gives to foreign leaders to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but has no real answer to them. What Micah has been doing for some time is looking at the dynamics of proliferation from the perspective of the potential antagonist of the US. Glenn writes, "That's the kind of thing I'm talking about," which seems to mean that he takes Micah's exercise in role-playing to mean he's on their side.

I've previously written that Micah expresses more sympathy with the country's antagonists than I'm comfortable with. But guess what? It doesn't matter. What matters is whether Micah's empathy gives him and us a clearer picture of how potential opponents will think these issues through. In fact, it does. If anything, what many would call Micah's "anti-Americanism" makes him especially useful to us pro-Americans - it makes him better able to imaginatively inhabit our actual and potential adversaries. The insight benefits us, because you can craft sounder policies when you know what your adversary actually thinks and wants.

(That's not to say you give them everything they want or agree with everything they think. It is to say that you're acting from knowledge rather than ignorance, or worse yet, prejudice.)

Fenian Mail from Some Flounders - Twin e-mails further the discussion of Iraq, Ireland, blowback, insurgency and terrorism foreign and domestic. More from Michael Croft, who has studied the subject in detail:

Tom Barry was not in favor of Sean Russell's bombing campaign of 1939. He favored what was known as the 'Barry Plan'. He wanted to send a heavily armed force across the border into the north, seize a town, and hold out as long as he could. Then, he'd flee back across the border with the Brits in hot persuit. They'd cross the border after him and he'd precipitate the resumption of the armed struggle, which the British would lose. That was the plan in the 1930s, anyway. Barry's tactics in 1920s-1930s were purely based on light infantry. Instead of this, the Army Council went with Russell, which had unfortunate consequences for the Irish Republic in WWII.

I am not 100% certain it's fair to consider Barry as having any role in the post 1969 IRA, which is a northern resurgence of what was previously a southern phenomena which had all but died out when the British reinvigorated (AGAIN!) it with ham-handed policies and one-sided 'policing'.

Tom also had nothing to do with the London Dynamiting Campaign of 1883-1885 orchestrated by O'Donovan Rossa (and other United Irishmen), as he was not to be born for more than a decade when it concluded. Tom's memoirs aside, he really did fit into a historical continuum that had approximately one serious rising in every generation from the late fifteenth century.
"England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity,"

I'd recommend Tim Pat Coogan's "The IRA" or "The Troubles" for a good understanding of the IRA from the time Michael Collins formed it out of the IRB to the present.

In general, I would consider domestic terrorism to be terrorism instigated by members of a society to achieve goals that are related to a country's internal affairs, such as bombing an abortion clinic, church, or federal building. I would not consider terrorism instigated to achieve goals that are related to a country's dealings in another country to be domestic terrorism. I'd call that international terrorism. And I suppose to be complete, Foreign terrorism would be 'some other poor schlub's domestic terrorism'.

Of course terrorism is one of those three person words. I'm a freedom fighter, you're an insurgent, he's a terrorist...

Rebellion is only treason when it is in the third person, as in "their rebellion". Whenever rebellion is in the second person it is always justified, as in "our rebellion". "Ben Franklin to John Dickenson, 1776, the Musical...

And from Matthew Hogan, author of the article that started this thread:

If you ever get the time to check, I was careful to use "British Isles" to describe Barry's personal activity area. As my last name will indicate, I'm hip to your writer's concerns and viewpoints.:-)

The old IRA was much nicer than the later thugs and Collins and Barry were not lefties or righties. I actually like the two a bit. But they unleashed the dogs of war and are the direct inspiration for today's pinko nihilism {"saints preserve us", crossing self repeatedly :-)}.

And yes, the old IRA shot civilians and did do violence in England (burned stuff mostly) including London, though in the last case it was killing the British Empire's chief of staff. As always such thuggery is sanitized in retrospect but the Collins-Barry axis was much more restrained than today and probably did alot less than the excesses in the course of our own Independence Revolution.

The point though is that the next threat from a war may come from those you train and excite and corasen in the previous one particularly if it was an Empire expansion in Iraq, and who spot and get enraged by other abuses your side does. As noted Collins and Barry's people also fell out (though personal respect wasnt lost even after the grave). But it says something about the corasening that one of the incarcerated in the Irish civil war went on to help form Amnesty International. And that more Irishmen were summarily executed in Kilmainham Jail by an IRA-founded Irish government than by the British in trying to suppress the rebellion. Also the people Collins/Barry inspired... Mao, Shamir....hmmmm.

Two Out of Three - Cardinal Law...Henry Kissinger...and...Trent Lott apologizes again.

"I'm not about to resign for an accusation that I'm something I'm not," Lott, a 30-year veteran of the House and Senate, declared.

He talked about his own upbringing during the half-hour new conferences, describing himself as a sharecropper's son, who "along with the South" had learned from his mistakes.

"In the days and months to come, I will dedicate myself to undo the hurt I have caused and will do all that I can to contribute to a society where every American has an opportunity to succeed," Lott said.

Translation: I've got to save my phony-baloney job, gentlemen. I am willing to get rolled by the Democrats month in and month out on budget matters, racial preferences and judicial nominees for the sake of what passes for my political survival.

Blogwatch Auxiliary - Around and about...

John Quiggan, Australian liberal blogger guy, addresses Trent Lott, Orwell and Instapundit, productivity growth and the possible VX gas transfer UO wrote about last night. Start here and scroll down.

Cold Fury "objectively" sticks up for Glenn Reynolds. There is a great deal about the problems of "nonviolence." (Problems of violence are not addressed, but you can't fit everything into every single blog post.)

Population One finds kids learning the wrong lesson in civics class. (Or is it the wrong lesson?)

Micah Holmquist does not stick up for Glenn Reynolds.

Jesse Walker on suburban utopias (for real).

Virginia Postrel has decided that blogging means updating your website regularly. She has gavel-to-gavel Trent Lott coverage and an item on Clarence Thomas that points back to this classic Reason article by Edith Efron from 1992.

Timing - This Washington Post report may even be true:

The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al Qaeda took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or late in October, according to two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source. They said government analysts suspect that the transaction involved the nerve agent VX and that a courier managed to smuggle it overland through Turkey.

If the report proves true, the transaction marks two significant milestones. It would be the first known acquisition of a nonconventional weapon other than cyanide by al Qaeda or a member of its network. It also would be the most concrete evidence to support the charge, aired for months by President Bush and his advisers, that al Qaeda terrorists receive material assistance in Iraq.

If it is, remember the iron law of geopolitics: Being a hawk means never having to say your sorry. Sometime in the last month or two, the story suggests, while the Bush Administration was pressing for UN authorization to depose Saddam Hussein by force, moving thousands of troops into place and stepping up an already steady bombing campaign, Iraq may, if the report is true, have transferred chemical weapons to terrorists, maybe to use in an attack in the US or Europe.

This is supposed to prove that the hawks were right about Saddam all along. Of course, what war skeptics have said for months is that Saddam was unlikely to give "weapons of some destruction" to terrorists or to use them himself unless he became convinced that his ouster by the US was imminent. In other words, unless things began to look very much like the last couple of months.

Advantage: Central Intelligence Agency (if the report is true).

On the Other Hand the Baltimore City Council says they oppose war with Iraq.

Unqualified Offerings thinks they just want $25 billion too.

With This Rock - Turkey shares our ideals and aspirations for the suffering people of Iraq...if we can just come up with $25 billion. Dr. Evil works cheaper than that.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave - More on the geopolitical deathmatch level the designer undoubtedly calls Everybody Against Each Other - and the Kurds, from the Lebanon Daily Star. There's a lot of interesting and dismaying stuff in this piece, more than UO feels like quoting.

You've Got Mail - Mary Kay writes:

don't know Mr. Franklin's views on bbq [ed. note: they are - shudder - ketchup-oriented], but I have to wholeheartedly endorse Thorne. I have 2 of his books and would have more if I could find them. A pointer to his website is the highlight of this day! Thanks.

MKK--bbq should be cooked long and slow and then have a tomato based sauce, not sweet, added--pork and beef are best.

Oh, oops! Mary Kay's views on bbq are ketchup-oriented too. She is otherwise, UO avers, a very nice person from her e-mails. Mustard, people. It's even in the bible, mustard.

Of course, Mary Kay and Franklin would both surely agree that what counts with barbeque is the meat itself, and that sauce is too often an excuse to cook meat badly.

Mustard, of course, has its own dangers. Last night, UO attempted a homemade mustard vinagraitte, with red wine vinegar, Coleman's mustard powder, salt and pepper. Unqualified Offerings probably went wrong in using enough mustard to thicken the vinegar. How wrong? The bottom of UO's tongue was burning. How wrong? This website had also made "dry buffalo wings" with a rub of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and chili powder. It ate those to cool off from the salad dressing.

A reader writes that "Aziz Poonawalla has high-level support" for his views based on this fatwa, which says, among other things:

*The terrorists acts, from the perspective of Islamic law, constitute the crime of hirabah (waging war against society)." Sept. 27, 2001 fatwa, signed by:

Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Grand Islamic Scholar and Chairman of the Sunna and Sira Countil, Qatar)
Judge Tariq al-Bishri, First Deputy President of the Council d'etat, Egypt
Dr. Muhammad s. al-Awa, Professor of Islamic Law and Shari'a, Egypt
Dr. Haytham al-Khayyat, Islamic scholar, Syria
Fahmi Houaydi, Islamic scholar, Syria
Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani, Chairman, North America High Council

Advantage: Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi!

Michael Croft writes, as Unqualified Offerings kind of suspected he would, about Tom Barry:

First, a suggested clarification: Tom Barry was active in Cork, which is in Ireland. While it was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at the time, Ireland is not in Britain. While there was theoretical political union in the 1800s, Irish rebellion matches the model of colonial revolution more closely. See Michael Hechter's Internal Colonialism (The Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536-1966) for an overview of this theory.

Tom Barry was commander of a flying brigade (one of three such brigades, and the most successful, IIRC) in Cork, which was decidedly rural. Barry and ollins invented guerilla (terrorist) warfare as it is practiced in the 20th century, but if Barry spent a consecutive fortnight in Cork City, (much less Dublin), I'll be quite surprised.

GDiI describes his rural warfare experiences and is best read as either

A: a manual for rural insurgency or
B: a companion to an account of Collins' war in Dublin.

Three causes influencing the notable success of the IRB/IRA after WWI:

- Collins' ability to execute urban operations against British spies and agents.
- Barry's ability to execute rural operations against British troops.
- Dublin Castle's inability to stop either one of them. (sub cause) and the increasingly oppressive means they took to try to do so.

Three precipitatory factors leading to the Irish Civil War (1921-1922(ish))

- major differences in acceptable outcomes to urban and rural contingents
- De Valera's waffling between pragmatism and idealism. Also Gladstone.
- The loosely structured governance of the IRA which had allowed it to flourish did not provide it any means to reign in loose cannon.

In addition to the useful information and analysis, Michael seems, obliquely, to criticise UO's description of the Irish rising and what came after as constituting "decades of domestic terrorism" for Britain. (That's what led me to expect his letter, actually.) This website takes his point that Ireland itself does not constitute the "domestic" sphere for Britain. In the eyes of many, even Northern Ireland doesn't. However, UO used "domestic terrorism" advisedly, to mean terrorism in Britain's home territory. The IRA has committed many terrorist acts in England itself over the years, among other places.

Kevin Maroney points out that Josh Marshall points out that Slate points out that Treasury Secretary-designate Snow is...not that promising. Kevin writes, "The Republicans are not on your side. They never will be." which is true enough. Marshall has a decent formulation for the Snows of the world, and notes that it applies to most of the "businessmen" in the Bush cabinet:

I think you can take this a bit further though. Critics of this administration often hit it for being full of so-called Chicken-hawks, folks who are all gung-ho to get into wars but somehow never found time to put on a uniform themselves.

On the economic side of the equation, it's also filled with what I'm calling (in a piece I'm now working on) safety-net entrepreneurs. Those would be folks who talk a great game about markets and risk-taking and entrepreneurship and gumption and such but have actually made their cash in ventures which are almost immune from real risk and where their skill isn't entrepreneurship but the ability to work the bureaucracy and purse strings of -- yikes! -- big government. Safety-nets for the poor and middle-class damage character; for the businessmen, they work just fine.

Dick Cheney's career at Haliburton is almost the archetypal example; Snow's seems a decent runner-up.

The terrible thing about Marshall's accusation, from the perspective of the free market enthusiast, is its justice. Unqualified Offerings has long thought that the best part of the wildly uneven political work of Noam Chomsky is his analysis of what he calls "state capitalism." (Daniel Gross in Slate calls Snow an "access capitalist.) For an example of access capitalism often mistaken, even by some small government enthusiasts, for free markets, check out this excerpt Eve Tushnet has quoted from a book on the prison industry and prison culture.

And Another Thing I Hate About You - Unqualified Offerings was hugely entertained by this Andrea Harris denunciation of - Unqualified Offerings. It hopes you will be too. This website has thought for some time that Ms. Harris is the paradigmatic "bellicose woman" blogger, and recommends that people read her regularly if they like that sort of thing. However, Unqualified Offerings must, gingerly, "fisk" one particular passage. It is a matter of honor:

I don't know, maybe I'm just put off by his habit of referring to himself as "Unqualified Offerings" all the time and using the royal "we."

This slur can not be allowed to stand. Unqualified Offerings does not refer to itself as "we." It refers to itself as "it." It will thank people to remember that.

Not a Lott - Trent Lott says his "terrible words" were

"certainly not intended to endorse his segregationist policies that he might have been advocating, or was advocating, 54 years ago."

according to yesterday's New York Times.

Rather, Mr. Lott said, he meant to hail Mr. Thurmond's record on issues like national defense, balancing the budget and economic development rather than the views on race Mr. Thurmond held when he ran for president on a Dixiecrat platform opposing "social intermingling of the races."

Uh huh.

Here's the thing. In this context, it doesn't matter that Lott says he admires the Dixiecrat ticket's positions on economic issues and defense but not its racism. The Dixiecrat ticket wasn't offering you a list of options. It was offering you a package with racism as the main ingredient.

That means that the task before Lott is larger than he gives evidence of accepting so far. He has a couple of options:

1) Make a serious argument that asserted gains on the national security, and economic fronts would have been worth ardent support for Jim Crow at the White House level. For instance, Lott could argue that social trends are more important than political trends and that, therefore, even had the Dixiecrat ticket won power on a racist platform, the civil liberties situation of black Americans would have continued to improve at something like their historical pace. Extra credit for arguing they would have improved more rapidly. This one is a hard sell for Unqualified Offerings, because a country in which enough states went Dixiecrat to put Thurmond in the White House would have been a country in which the all-important liberalising racial culture didn't exist. So Lott could argue that, sorry, the improvements in the lives and liberties of black Americans were not worth the "budget and economic development" harms Lott believes the Dixiecrats would have prevented. He'd be very unlikely to sell Unqualified Offerings on this, let alone most white liberals, moderates or African-Americans, but the argument is there to be made, and made seriously if not convincingly. Every right-winger has a point in history where he or she looks at some proposed civil rights program and says, "Sorry, can't go for that," whether it's affirmative action, reparations for slavery, race-conscious redistricting or something else. UO thinks 1948 is obscenely early to draw that line, but anyone who disagrees should be free to make their case.

2) Shut up and take your damn lumps. Step aside.

Option one is surely closed to Lott. It would require an intellectual seriousness that few politicians possess. And there's never been any reason to think Trent Lott one of those few. As Bill Herbert puts it today

I don't believe Trent Lott is a racist. Being a racist would be proof that he had any strong convictions at all. What does the man stand for? Fiscal Conservatism? Whatever. No really, I believe you. No, I'm not being sarcastic at all. Lott's record shows that he has no principles at all, other than the Aggrandizement of Trent Lott.

The Thurmond remark was no gaffe. It was merely Lott shamelessly pandering to the audience of the moment.

The moment has changed since the weekend, as has the audience. All that Trent Lott has been doing since Monday is pandering to the different audience. We, the audience, should not be satisfied. Lott's apology doesn't matter, because the issue is not our feelings but his fitness. And his clarification doesn't clarify. His words and conduct alike remain "terrible."

Orwelliana - Reader/snowbird Mary LaCroix confirms the Orwell quote from the Winter 1945 Partisan Review:

That excerpt appears accurate. (If my scanner weren't on the blink right now, I could send you a copy of the relevant page).

It's from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 3: As I Please. (1943-1945). Item 83, pp. 335-341, published in the Partisan Review, 194*4*, not 1945, written in December 1944.

Regards,
Mary.

P.S. I will not nag you about not having your own copy of this collection, nor will I sing out "Advantage: Librarian!". Because that would be mean. And we have laws against that kind of thing up here.

Unqualified Offerings wishes Mary a Joyeux Christmas and a Merry Noel.

Doug Turnbull of Beauty of Grey doubts the issue is completely settled regardless. "The only other thing I'd add," he writes,

is that, while Orwell's later repudiation of his "objectively pro-Fascist" verbage might knock down the use of it as an argument from authority, it does not thereby actually refute the argument itself. And from what you've quoted and the essay you cited, none of Orwell's later retractions actually address his underlying concern. He admits that most anti-war demonstrators had good intentions, and not seeing and understanding this is a failure, but he does not go back on his previous assessment of what the result of those good intentions were. Is this an early case of a "non-denial denial?"

Unqualified Offerings thinks that, set in the context of Orwell's other writings, it is not. He makes a good point re "the argument itself." A couple of things to note: When the early-40s Orwell spoke of being "pro-Fascist," he didn't just mean "in favor of the governments of Germany and Italy." He was also referring to the social situation in Britain. (He felt the imperatives of war would require Britain to move significantly toward democratic socialism.) Speaking to only the war itself, Gene Callahan's recent essay praised in this space noted the difficulty of playing the "lessons of history" game even with so apparently settled an event as World War II.

Finally, Orwell's original accusation carried the qualifier, "In a war such as this." However much you think Saddam is like Hitler (and Unqualified Offerings has long since decided he's more like Stalin), 1942 Britain is simply not, by any stretch of the imagination, 2002 America. (Nor is 2002 America, by any stretch of the imagination, 1938 Britain, but Callahan has already dealt with that.)

London Letters - Nick Sweeney e-mails that Orwell's adversion to "the lunatic atmosphere of war" appeared in his "London Letter" to the Partisan Review of Winter 1945. This text does not appear to exist in unabridged form in an authoritative online archive. Someone did type out the relevant paragraphs (2-4) in a Google newsgroup. Unqualified Offerings invites anyone with a copy of the essay to substantiate or refute the reprinting:

For instance, I particularly regret having said in one letter that Julian Symons ``writes in a vaguely Fascist strain''---a quite unjustified statement based on a single article which I probably misunderstood. But this kind of thing results largely from the lunatic atmosphere of war, the fog of lies and misinformation in which one has to work and the endless sordid controversies in which a political
journalist is involved. By the low standards now prevailing I think I have been fairly accurate about facts. Where I have gone wrong is in assessing the relative importance of different *trends*. And most of my mistakes spring from a political analysis which I had made in the desperate period of 1940 and continued to cling to long after it should have been clear that it was untenable.

It should be obvious that Unqualified Offerings thinks many of our most vocal hawks are clinging to desperate analyses made in late 2001 long after it should be clear those analyses are untenable.

Doug Turnbull of Beauty of Grey e-mails that

Interesting piece responding to the Glenn Reynolds/Orwell quote. Your point that anti-war activists are, in their opinion, on the US's side is well taken. But I think you (and Glenn also, perhaps) are falling into the trap of trying to fit everything onto a single scale, and assuming that all good things are compatible.

I think that, in the current situation, the anti-war activists clearly are acting in Saddam's interests, objectively speaking. They are opposing a war that will with near certainty oust him from power and probably result in his capture or execution. Opposing a US war with Iraq is, it seems to me, obviously in Saddam's interests. I really don't see how this is a debatable point. You might object to someone claiming you're on Saddam's side, but in this case, opposing a war certainly is his side.

But the discussion doesn't start and stop there. It is possible for something to be both in Saddam's interest and in the US's interest. Getting rid of him would be a good thing, but not all good things are compatible, and it might be that getting rid of him would, as you've argued, result in a greater number of bad things happening, so that in the net it wouldn't be in the US's interests.

It's a bit of a turnaround from the usual left-right/hawk-dove arguments. Normally it's the left and doves that ignore extenuating circumstances and denounce any US action that involves compromise with a brutal dictator, or the extending of his reign. While the right and the hawks plead realpolitik and necessary evil as justification for cooperating with such unsavory characters, or looking the other way.

So I'd say you're right to object to being tarred with the pro-Saddam brush, since that's a misrepresentation of your position and your justification for it. And Glenn is wrong to imply that being pro-Saddam is, in this case, the self-evidently wrong side of the argument. But I think you're wrong when you reject the conclusion that opposition to a war with Iraq is, whatever its other merits, a position that directly benefits Saddam.

But I never said I reject the conclusion that opposition to a war with Iraq benefits Saddam. Of course it benefits Saddam to stay in power rather than to be deposed by force. I said that any benefit to Saddam Hussein is, in the considered judgment of me and the doves I call allies, immaterial. The hawks' inability to disentangle Saddam's bad fortune from our good fortune is precisely what leads people like Glenn Reynolds astray in the first place.

To the extent that the coalition frays and this prevents war, I consider the US to have been saved by circumstance from a calamity. Better my country be saved from calamity by the prudence of its rulers (though that is a doubtful possibility) but what saves my country from calamity is to be welcomed regardless. Against that, the fate of some tinpot tyrant on the other side of the globe counts for nothing.

Revise and Extend - Home under the ice, Unqualified Offerings decided to follow up Orwell's repudiation of his accusation that "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist." Orwell did, in fact, repudiate this 1942 statement in a 1944 "As I Please" column. However, the specific phrase, "the lunatic atmosphere of war" does not appear. It may be that the phrase is an internet legend. It may be that Orwell used it in some work that is not on the web. Pity. However, Orwell does express the sentiment behind the phrase in his renunciation:

In my opinion a few pacifists are inwardly pro-Nazi, and extremist left-wing parties will inevitably contain Fascist spies. The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult. The atmosphere of hatred in which controversy is conducted blinds people to considerations of this kind. To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like.

The "atmosphere of hatred" is the inevitable wartime atmosphere. Here is an excerpt of Orwell's from the last "As I Please" of that same month. He is discussing a Dwight MacDonald report on a US Army hand-to-hand fighting course:

Mr Macdonald comments: ‘There is one rather interesting problem in operating the course. Although the writer never states so directly, it would seem there is danger that the student’s inhibitions will be broken down so thoroughly that he will shoot or stab the coach who accompanies him . . . . The coach is advised to keep himself in a position to grab the student’s gun arm "at any instant"; after the three dummies along the course have been stabbed, "the knife is taken away from the student to prevent accidents"; and finally: "There is no place on the course where total darkness prevails while instructor is near student." ’

I believe the similar battle-courses in the British army have now been discontinued or toned down, but it is worth remembering that something like this is inevitable if one wants military efficiency. No ideology, no consciousness of having ‘something to fight for’, is fully a substitute for it. This deliberate brutalizing of millions of human beings is part of the price of society in its present form. The Japanese, incidentally, have been experts at this kind of thing for hundreds of years. In the old days the sons of aristocrats used to be taken at a very early age to witness executions, and if any boy showed the slightest sign of nausea he was promptly made to swallow large quantities of rice stained the colour of blood.

From the same column, writing about protests against Britain's use of Indian troops in the Greek civil war that fall:

Our crime in Greece is to have interfered in Greek internal affairs at all: the colour of the troops who carry out the orders is irrelevant.
...
Our correspondent might have made the point that in an affair of this kind it is particularly mean to make use of politically ignorant colonial troops who don’t understand in what a dirty job they’re being mixed up. But at least don’t let us insult the Indians by suggesting that their presence in Athens is somehow more offensive than that of the British.

UPDATE: There is this, from 1984, too:

The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world.

and this, from Homage to Catalonia:

Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war.

The Catalonia usage bears little relation to the 1964 usage, though.

UPDATE: Here is the (Danish) index of the site reprinting Orwell's "As I Please" columns.

Homeland Security - Unqualified Offerings has to admit that the latest security measure that President Bush proposed and Congress approved shortly before the White House formally submitted the bill has a certain logic to it. Per this report:

WASHINGTON - Acting on President Bush's declaration that "America must support its allies in the war on terror," Congress today passed legislation that will enable American citizens to aid the logistics of the international effort against Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. The Resolution Enhancing Domestic Co-Operation Against Terrorism specifically aims to help the politically important but financially strapped army of the United Kingdom meet the commitments Prime Minister Tony Blair has made toward the US effort in Iraq.

"Obviously the British military faces genuine fiscal constraints," said White House Middle Eastern Affairs honcho Elliott Abrams, "and the American people have an opportunity to bridge that gap."

Under the innovative provisions of REDCOAT, British troops will live with American families in American homes until they are called to Iraq or "other possible duties," said Abrams. Abrams and other White House officials dismissed complaints that participation in the program was involuntary.

"Families will be carefully selected by each state's Governor-General, on the basis of a thorough data evaluation," said Information Awareness Office Director John Poindexter, "and I do mean thorough."

Questioned outside Buckingham Palace, where President Bush has been visiting, White House spokesman Karl Rove stressed that families who objected to quartering British troops in their homes would have the right to appeal to the Governor-General's office "for an independent review of their case" by the Governor-General's office.

Required Reading

1. A superb essay on Stand Down by Matthew Hogan. The military conquest of Iraq has already contributed to decades of domestic terrorism - in Britain. Read "Who Was Tom Barry?" to find out how.

2. Gene Healy puts two and two together and gets...much less than four. In "What If There Isn't Another Shoe?", he wonders something that Unqualified Offerings swears occurred to it too. Excerpt:

Consider Malvo and Muhammed. Two none-too-bright jokers with a $300 rifle and no formal training repeatedly shut down the Beltway and terrorized Greater Washington for almost a month. If America really is riddled with sleeper cells, why not activate another 20 guys? Ten two-man-shooter teams, two or three different cities, months before they're all caught—the disruption and terror it would sow would be enormous. As on September 11, America would be full of fear from its north to its south to its west to its east. If I can figure this out, so can they. So what gives?

Maybe (shhhhh)—maybe there aren’t that many of them. Maybe they’re not nearly as rich in suicidal maniacs as Hamas and the Al-Asqa brigades. Maybe we’ve killed a good portion of them, and put a good bit more on the run. Maybe—just maybe—we’ve won.

Note to Gene: The rifle was worth $1600. But it was either stolen or sold under the counter for a lot less than that.

Gene's substantial piece may be wrong; his thesis is tentative; but it's carefully thought through and precisely the kind of thing you're not likely to find in dead-tree media. It's the blogosphere at its best.

Spot the Fallacy - Skip lightly over the offensiveness of this Glenn Reynolds statement today, which is much closer to the sub-basement wherein Andrew Sullivan's discourse has dwelled for much of the last year than one likes to see him coming:

I think that this "pressure of public opinion" language is a recognition by Saddam that the "anti-war" movement is objectively on his side, and not neutral.

Instead let's just ask, What's wrong with this statement? Answer: The usual. It assumes what Reynolds wants to prove, that conquering Iraq is good for the US and not conquering it is bad. If you don't believe, and many smart people don't, that conquering Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein by force offers a net security gain for the US, then Saddam's rhetoric is incidental. The real issue is the good of our country, not his, and certainly not the good of Saddam himself. Most of us who oppose this war are not only not on Saddam's side, we're not "neutral" either. We're on our side, properly conceived.

Reynolds borrows the word "objectively" from a famous jibe of Orwell's. I won't argue whether Orwell was wrong in his own usage. I don't need to, as Orwell did it himself. To quote from my Stand Down colleague, Zizka:

Unfortunately for Kelly, Orwell's phrase "objectively pro-Fascist"—standard-issue Stalinist polemic, though Orwell was never a Stalinist—was later rejected by Orwell. In 1944 he confessed that he had been driven to use language he regretted by "the lunatic atmosphere of war," and later that year specifically rejected the use of the phrase "objectively pro-Fascist" to smear people who are not fascists at all, but who do things which others believe are helpful to fascism.

Currently, when it comes to war on Iraq (and Iran, and Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, and...) there is no objective - factual in the way the mass of the earth is factual, neutral in the way of one's opinion of the mass of the earth - view. That goes for my own view, for all that I am, of course, correct. Mine is a considered opinion. At least some hawks have considered opinions. But there is "objectively" bupkus, pro- or anti-. That includes Glenn and like-minded hawks' belief that between Saddam's job security and US interests, properly conceived, there is a zero-sum relationship.

Mail Call - Reader Leslie Hale wanted Charles Schwab for Treasury, though he didn't get it:

Would be brilliant public relations coup.

Wall Street despises Chuck, but investing public loves him after the "Let's put lipstick on this pig" commercial.

But doubt if Bush has the balls.

Needless to say, Leslie's thesis has not been disproved.

Reader/Attorney Rita Smith was concerned about the Virginia Court's handling of 17-year-old sniper suspect Lee Malvo's guardian, writing

I'm not familar with that state's juvenile code, but it doesn't strike me as unusual that Malvo would have both an attorney and a guardian ad litem. I practice in Oklahoma, and have worn both hats. In my experience, a juvenile is only appointed both when the judge wants to make very sure his rights and best
interests are being protected. Which would make sense in this case to me.

What does surprise & bother me is that the ad litem was denied access to the criminal investigative records. Ad litems normally have access to EVERYTHING, even things that no one else can see. Very strange.

I'm wondering why Malvo hasn't been charged as an adult.

Charles Kuffner notes that he has an account of the very first Terlingua chili cookoff on his own site. Beans are mentioned. The surprise ending will rock you! (Especially if your name is Michael Croft.)

And Steve Cook writes

Since Unqualified Offerings has appearantly morphed from a sniperblog to a chiliblog, let me point you to John "Simple Cooking" Thorne's website. Thorne is the author of "Serious Pig" and "Pot on the Fire", among others, and is (for my money) the best living food writer in America. His discussion of the historical origins of chili may be found here.

Sounds like a site worth checking out. Hopefully, Thorne can straighten out some very unsound thinking on the matter of barbecue by Mr. Franklin "I Also Praise Space:1999" Harris.

Not a Lott - Virginia Postrel and Glenn Reynolds have all kinds of good coverage on the remarks made over the weekend by prominent Iraq hawk Trent Lott in praise of the 1948 Dixiecrat ticket. (Note: snarky war aside a small return on all the Pat Buchanan cracks made by interventionists.)

UO hasn't got a lot to add. Having seen media crucifixions before, it wanted to find the full version of Lott's remarks to see if they were being taken out of context. What has been quoted is

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

Was it possible that Lott had made some statement about federalism or reining in the New Deal that was being suppressed? The answer turns out to be: No. C-Span has the streaming video of Daschle's remarks at the bottom of this page. (Skip ahead to minute 32. The link may move further in the archive. Thanks to Justin Katz for finding the video.) Lott's remarks come without prior context, nor with any amplification and nuance immediately following. Toward the end of Lott's speech he praises Thurmond for, among other things, "changing with the times." But that's it.

This is not a matter of "political correctness," that now-useless catch phrase. This is the top Republican in the Senate issuing an unqualified retroactive endorsement of an avowedly segregationist candidacy. For UO's fellow fans of freedom of association, let this website remind you that Jim Crow was a government program (many state governments). It wasn't just about this establishment or that deciding not to serve blacks. It was about establishments being forbidden to serve blacks. It was about the differential application of the police power and official winking at what we might call para-police power. It was about how state moneys were distributed in education, public health and other programs. Among the noble principles that desegregation sullied by using them as "philosophical shields" were federalism, private property, freedom of association and limited government. The Jim Crow State actually flouted most of these virtues rather than following them, but it didn't matter. Who wants to be seen in company like that?

Lott has shown few virtues as a Senate leader anyway. And he's a perfect poster boy for why not just libertarians but all sorts of people remain uncomfortable with the Republican Party. As Virginia Postrel put it today:

Black voters aren't the only ones turned off by Jim Crow nostalgia. The best way to position Republicans as intolerant barbarians is to keep Lott around as Senate leader. Plus he's smarmy.

She also says that the New York Times has been unusually quiet so far. Of course. The best thing for the Democratic Party isn't Lott resigning in disgrace. It's Lott hanging on so that Democrats can hammer the Republicans over Lott from now through 2004 through - whenever Lott finally retires.

Then they'll wait to see what some dumbass says at the Trent Lott tribute.

No, the only Party that stands to gain from knocking Lott off the podium is the Republican Party.

Hello There - A personal thanks to Jesse Walker and an institutional thanks to the new Reason blog, Hit and Run, for the mention. Judging by the uptick in UO's traffic, Hit and Run is already a major success.

Cf. The Entrance to Delphi - In the course of getting his rhetorical ass handed to him by the invincible Julian Sanchez regarding gay marriage, NRO scold Stanley Kurtz writes

The point of my earlier writings on gay marriage (of which Sanchez appears to be ignorant)...

Imagine being ignorant of the earlier writings of Stanley Kurtz! And now we see another benefit of blogging. As a blogger, Unqualified Offerings is well aware that it is an obscure, bad-tempered scribbler. That self-knowledge seems to elude your NRO Contributing Editors.

Fashionably Late - Reason Online starts its group blog today.

Ah Hell - Unqualified Offerings learns from Letter from Gotham that Salam Pax of Baghdad has taken Where Is Raed down. Apparently this is because his blog got mentioned by Reuters and he got scared by the visibility.

Totalitarianism sucks.

I don't think Salam read this site regularly, but my best wishes go out to him. It seems unlikely that "Goodbye/Hello Peace" was his real name, so one hopes he can stay out of the clutches of the Mukhbharat. And maybe he'll come back. A lot of retired bloggers do.

Iran-Contra Reunion Newsletter Item - You may be wondering if everybody involved in the Iran-Contra scandal is working for the Bush Administration's national security team. The answer is No. Oliver North is making so much radio money that he can't afford to give that job up. Despite a promising early sighting, Robert "Bud" McFarlane hasn't been heard from in over a year. And Adnan Khashoggi is distracted by - and stop Unqualified Offerings if you've heard this before - legal trouble.

But Elliott Abrams is back! Abrams pleaded guilty to a couple of misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress, but was pardoned by Bush 41 on his way out the door. CliffsNotes: Abrams knew everything there was to know, but didn't tell the relevant Senate Committees. Here is a list of those who could be trusted with every detail of the whole arms-for-hostages/money-for-contras folly:

The geniuses in charge of Reagan Administration security policy;
The government of the Republic of Iran;
The government of Israel;
The contras themselves;
Richard Fucking Secord;
Soviet Intelligence (North testified during the hearings that the administration knew that the Soviets were able to monitor their conversations with the Iranians, who, as we've already mentioned, knew everything).

Here is a list of those who could not be trusted with this precious information:

The relevant House and Senate committees;
The American people.

Oliver North told the Joint Committee, "This country has enemies, Senator." Going by the lists of who were and were not to be trusted with the details of the Iran-Contra group's genius, it ought to be pretty clear who he meant. And never forget this example of the mindset of that once and future crowd of geostrategists:

MSG FROM: NSRCM --CPUA TO: NSOLN --CPUA 02/27/86 16:02:23
To: NSOLN --CPUA

*** Reply to note of 02/27/86 08:54

-- SECRET --

NOTE FROM: ROBERT MCFARLANE
Subject: How are things?
Roger Ollie. Well done--if the world only knew how many times you have kept a semblance of integrity and gumption to US policy, they would make you Secretary of State. But they can't know and would complain if they did--such is the state of democracy in the late 20th century.

McFarlane's regard for his subjects was not unusual for his circle; we just happen to have caught him in an unguarded moment. Given the present Bush Administration's propensity for giving these people jobs, why would you believe even a word of what it has to tell you about National Security?

Another Triumph for Non-Intervention as reformist protests in Iran get bigger and broader too.

More than 10,000 Iranians rallied in the streets around Tehran University Saturday in a show of solidarity with the increasingly vocal student movement. Hundreds of riot police and plain-clothes members of the Basij, an Islamic paramilitary organization linked with hardliners in the Iranian government, clashed with protesters in late afternoon, beating them back with batons and fists.

It's that old open society stuff the protesters are after:

This was just the latest in a series of protests on Tehran university campuses during the past few weeks to denounce the death sentence given to reformist university professor Hashem Aghajari on Nov. 7. During a university lecture in the city of Hamedan last June, Aghajari, a veteran who lost a leg during the war with Iraq in the ’80s, claimed that Muslims should not follow their religious leaders “blindly.” Many of the protests have now become open forums to criticize the ruling clergy, including President Mohammed Khatami and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Unqualified Offerings reminds its readers that all this is possible because:

We're not in Iran.

Hm. "Leave Until They Miss Us, America." Has a ring to it.

Ripeness is All - The Associated Press reports that more and more Palestinian leaders are saying the whole terror war thing is, you know, bad. They're not making a moral case so much as a practical one:

In an interview with the Qatari newspaper Al-Rayah on Sunday, Abbas repeated that armed attacks have destroyed all gains since Israel and the PLO signed accords that set up the Palestinian Authority as a government-in-waiting.

It would be obtuse to deny that Ariel Sharon's fierce counterterror campaign has not been the main inspiration of all this rethinking. What we have been through, though few actually called it that, was the first Israel-Palestine War, and you want to win wars if you can. (For the purposes of this item, UO is giving him the benefit of the doubt on the extent to which he helped start the war in the first place, with the armed march to Temple Mount before the election and the shelving of the Taba agreement after.) It would be a mistake, though, to think Sharonism in perpetuity will meet Israel's needs. Palestinian thinking can and will change again if Israel tries to turn its success at punishing the war of the bombers into unending control of the West Bank. Plus, Israel can't afford it. Unqualified Offerings is talking in terms of money here, not moral capital. As AP notes

Rajoub's forecast has proven chillingly accurate: 26 months later, nearly 2,000 Palestinians and nearly 700 Israelis are dead, the Palestinian economy is crushed, Israel has reoccupied the West Bank and Israeli travel bans have turned many Palestinian towns into virtual prison camps.

Israel will soon either have to let large numbers of unemployed, housebound people starve (with great publicity) or commence the biggest Meals-on-Wheels campaign the world has ever seen - forever.

Sharon belongs to that faction of the Israeli electorate that want the West Bank and Gaza forever. So any war he wages is not just to punish terror attacks but to secure possession of Greater Israel. (The best formulation I've seen of Sharon's plans for the West Bank is that he hopes to turn islands of Israeli settlements in a sea of Palestinians into islands of Palestinian settlements in a sea of Israelis.) There are all kinds of reasons why Greater Israel is not just wrong, but a bad idea for Israel itself, and we won't be rehearsing them here.

The AP article contains this fascinating opinion poll data:

A November poll shows Palestinian opinion shifting. Although 90 percent of Palestinians support attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza, 56 percent now support arresting militants to stop attacks inside Israel. As recently as May, 86 percent opposed a crackdown on militias.

This is fascinating and even hopeful, and you don't see much of that in the Middle East. It demonstrates something that hard core Likudniks in both Israel and the United States deny: a distinction in Palestinian minds between the "Occupied Territories" and "Israel proper." According to the data, almost every Palestinian believes fighting the Israelis in the Territories, and one doubts they are too finicky about the methods. But a majority of Palestinians want to prevent attacks inside Israel's pre-1967 boundaries. Which is to say: It is about the Occupation.

There is a way out, people. Is Arik Sharon the one to take it? No. He is the tribune of those Israelis who abhor taking it. Israel needs a government that has the wit to accept a sustainable victory.

Oh by the Way - The next time someone says Glenn Reynolds never cites anyone who refutes one of his enthusiasms, show them this.

Chalk One Up for the Angry White Male Vet Theory - Gonna be hard to find a jihad angle in this one:

They were among the elite of the Kremlin's special forces. The cream of the Russian equivalent of the US Navy Seals, they were trained to parachute into water from 13,000 feet, to reach land in safety and to kill with stealth.
Now they face a life behind bars, after a motiveless killing spree that terrified Russia and exposed the crisis at the heart of the former Soviet Union's penniless but highly skilled army.

Artiom Sobkovich, 22, and Alexei Spilnik, 23, have admitted committing 13 brutal murders across Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic surrounded by Poland and Lithuania. Last week a third alleged accomplice, paratrooper Pavel Borisenko was arrested amid growing concerns in Russia that the bloodbath was the result of the armed forces training young males to believe they were 'supermen', then cutting them loose without support or control.

Are there some striking parallels? We report, you decide:

The Kaliningrad murders seem motiveless - the targets were security guards, young mothers, or soldiers on patrol. Sometimes Sobkovich and Spilnik stole money from their victims, but more often they seemed to have killed for fun, each murder being executed with military precision.

Hm. Victims were all Russian. Must mean they hate Russia.