Yes, I COULD Be More Cynical - I could be Yglesias:

[I]n retrospect we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if, instead of giving trade credits and chemical weapons precursors to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s we'd just given that stuff to Iran instead, and let them install a SCIRI/Dawa government way back when. That strategy wouldn't have had all the muss-and-fuss of backing Saddam, then tilting toward neutrality, then fighting the Gulf War, then years of sanctions, then another war, then occupation and counterinsurgency, and then an election that's going to install a SCIRI/Dawa government that will ask our troops to leave and effectively deny us much influence over the course of events in our once-so-promising colony.

My only serious comment is that I suspect any Shiite government that ends up ruling Iraq will be much less reliable Iranian puppets than many here fear and doubless many in Iran hope. Simple [Professor James] Buchananism tells me that once Iragi Shiite poobahs get their hands on the levers of power, they're going to like using it for their own ends more than they'll enjoy continually asking Tehran "So, like, what do I do now? And now? Now? Now? Okay. Now?"

Democracy Sounds Much Better When You're Not on the Receiving End of It writes Lex Concord of The Libertarian Enterprise. His solution to the Red State-Blue State divide? More government.

[Anarcho-capitalists] either smile and say that Constitutional Government would be a good start, so let's go along with it, or they object and start rambling on about defense agencies or insurance companies providing the services that government currently provides.

But people don't like insurance companies (except of course, after someone hits their car or their house burns down), and they sure don't like the idea of giving insurance companies their own private armies. A claims adjuster with a briefcase and a calculator is scary enough—and you want to give him an Uzi?

There may be a few wrinkles to work out of his plan for solving this problem, but it's an interesting wrinkle on the idea of red/blue "secession."

Via Anton Sherwood.

Stupid is as Stupid Does - Atrios continues to track variants of the silly CBSNews blogging story that references him. It's almost unutterably stupid:

The affiliations and identities of bloggers are not always apparent. Take writer Duncan Black, who blogged under the name Atrios. His was a popular liberal blog. During part of the period he was blogging, Black was a senior fellow at a liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America. Critics in the blogosphere said this fact wasn't fairly disclosed.

“People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that it’s partisan,” Jamieson said. “The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan.”

The juxtaposition here makes me guffaw every time I reread it, in a bitter way, though. It's the order in which things are put. Does "pretends to hold neutrality" strike one as a relevant characterization to Eschaton at any point in its entire history? But sticking the Jamieson quote smack in between two paragraphs about Eschaton implies that Jamieson's comment somehow speaks to that particular blog. (The next paragraph mutters darkly of "ethics" and what Atrios did "eventually."

Also, is it just me, or does anyone else think "the good old days" were when the hot rumor was that Atrios was a gym teacher? "Liberal economist" is such a comedown. Further also, wasn't Atrios' eventual connection to Media Matters disclosed before he let slip his civilian name? Do I misremember here? Wasn't there a whole My present employment situation is coming to an end and I'd like to get some professional political work oh look I got some! period? That would make the CBS story even sillier.

Agitate and Irritate - I offer irrational sportsblogging exuberance in today's Agitator guest post.

That Word, Senor, the Continuing Series - John Cole calls Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council's organized campaign of papering the FCC with complaints "proto-fascism." James Joyner disagrees:

People have every right to organize and lobby their government about things that matter to them. (I believe the 1st Amendment mentions something about this.)

Yes, but. "Fascism" isn't just a system of totalitarian government. Before it is that, it is a political movement. It differs from traditional right-authoritarianism in its desire to energize a mass base. Fascism doesn't just want "the people" to shut up and do what you're told. Fascism wants "the people" to get into it, to "shut up and do what you're told" at the top of their lungs. Fascism is also about energizing the base against enemies, internal and/or external, and using the violence of the State to shut the labelled enemies the hell up. Fascism also has a fondness for disease metaphors, and heaven knows Bozellian critiques of "sick" (Blue State) culture partake of that.

Within the United States itself, so far, state violence is attenuated most of the time. That's probably one of the reasons John Cole said "proto-fascist" rather than just fascist.

While I don't expect the example to sit well with either of the authors under discussion, the Dixie Chick brouhaha is a useful example. The Dixie Chicks were not "censored." They were not arrested, denied work or killed by the government. But the freelance demonization campaign against them was nevertheless a fascist impulse in action.

So What's the Overarching Critique Anyway? - I'm glad you asked. Rumsfeld tells the troops, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." Append to this a silent when you decide to go to war. I've been hard on the blinkered nature of the criticism of those liberals who restrict themselves to complaining that the Administration didn't "plan." But for bad faith, said critics can't hold a candle to the Bush Administration itself. We went to war with the army we had when we went to war because it was the only way to have the war in the first place. We used the number of forces we used because a bigger call-up would have alerted the American public that this was going to be a big freaking deal. The Administration's political strategy was to intone "hard days ahead" while taking pains to give the opposite impression with the pre-war show. The Administration said we had to invade in March 2003 because "time was running out." Among other things, we couldn't wait until summer. You may have noticed that we've been in Iraq for two summers since then, not infrequently conducting combat operations. No, we had to go to war in March 2003 because, had the UN inspections continued much longer, it would have been impossible to ignore what rubbish the Administration's WMD case was. Sliming the competence of Hans Blix and co. had a shelf life.

The Administration sold the war to the American people as something akin to an emergency raid against a conquerer with an arsenal of doomsday devices primed to take out Chicago, a raid that would end with the bulk of our troops driving back out of town by the holidays, wreathed in the flowers of a grateful people busy paying for their own reconstruction entirely out of oil revenues. That's why we used "the army [we] have" when we used it - it was the sales pitch the hawks could close. "We" did not plan for the real occupation because doing so would have been political suicide. Wars take on their own momentum, and the tendency of a citizenry is to rally round the flag once you're in it. So naked political calculation says, if you're a hawk, you can afford not to "plan." You can't afford the reverse.

Shooting the Gnat on the Elephant - Andrew Olmsted offers a defense of the Rumsfeld press conference yesterday, based on a reading of the entire transcript. I would agree with him to the extent that, when it comes to stop loss and single parents in the reserves and suchlike, once you've decided to go to war, you're inevitably going to make decisions that inconvenience somebody. Too many of the Administration's Democratic critics - including the Party's most recent presidential candidate - are unable or disinclined to tie the pain caused by those decisions back to an overarching critique of the decision to go to war itself. This is particularly true of the so-called "liberal hawks" and erstwhile liberal hawks.

Our troops don't have enough armor on their vehicles! is the ideal in pusillanimous criticism. It allows the critic to be: against the administration; "on the side of our soldiers" in a thuddingly obvious way; safely removed from having to offer any strategic opinion at variance with administration policy, which oh by the way was at least popular enough to get the President reelected with an increased share of the popular and electoral vote. There is at least the possibility that the criticism is, synechdotally, spectacularly wrong. It may be that our emphasis on force protection has done our official aims in Iraq far more harm than good. Our policy is to max protect the lives of American soldiers and marines, which means body armor, hair triggers at checkpoints, hell-bent for leather convoys no local driver dare risk finding himself mixed up in on the highways, no-knock raids and plenty of softening up of targets with artillery and airpower before the ground troops go in. These policies have been pretty successful at minimizing American fatalities, and pretty unsuccessful at unifying post-invasion Iraq in democratic solidarity with the Topplers of Saddam. To be bloody-minded, it's at least possible that a posture that cost ten times as many deaths in combat would have been more strategically effective - minimal body armor; rules of engagement appropriate to police work rather than garrison duty; much, much more vulnerability to irregular warfare but much, much less offense to Iraq's persuadables and neutrals. Many more American soldiers would die, at least at first. Many fewer Iraqis, though, would have reason to hate American soldiers, and that much less reason for fellow-feeling with the killers of American soldiers.

No politician would dare propose this. Just as damned few of them have the guts, yet, to say we should have avoided war in the first place and should seek to wind up our business in Iraq as quickly as possible. Far, far safer to loudly complain that the Administration needs to do a souped-up job of what it's already doing, or to complain about its ministers' attitudes.

The Saladdin Soviets Continued - Constant monitoring of infrastructure outputs is so May Day Parade somehow, but it's worth noting that Dan at Rhumb Line, who has his sources, writes today about the water situation:

Well, the water project isn't fairing any better. Only %40 percent of people have potable drinking water, and %4 percent have a workable sewer system. The reconstruction efforts budget was slashed from $4.2B to $2.3B – that now only supports a fraction of the original 170 or so projects the Ministries initially wanted complete.

Things You Learn When the TV by the Rowing Machine Always Has CNN and close-captioning: Lou Dobbs says "in point of fact" a lot. Rarely, though, is he pointing out a fact when doing so.

Now That's Service! - Lunchtime, and when I come up from drowsing off my train is pulling in by White Flint Mall in Kensington. Shit shit shit! I follow the crowd toward the gates and the realization sinks in: I have no farecard. I mention this and the guy behind me laughs. "Shut up," I tell him.

I get the attention of the gate attendant in the folding chair. He's a young white kid with a smirk I don't much like.

"Let me through," I tell him. "I have no farecard."

"You can't exit the system without a farecard unless you pay the maximum," he says, snottily.

"Dude, this is an obvious dream. That means you're just an aspect of me. So do what I tell you."

"Okay."

Once Again - I've made this point before, but "prewar levels" of any Iraqi infrastructure output do not represent some Golden Age. Iraq's prewar infrastructure was degraded by deliberate strategic bombing during the 1991 phase of the war and after, and hampered by cash shortages during the sanctions era and typical third-world kleptocracy during the period of the oil-for-food program. When and if we manage to haul Iraq back up to prewar levels of production in all infrastructure sectors we will have turned a festering sinkhole back into a dump.

(End Note: We know from the infant mortality figures that, even with the graft associated with oil-for-food, infant mortality improved under that program. It would be very interesting to compile figures for electricity, fuels, employment and other key metrics for the 1999-2002 period and see what's what.)

Dept. of Labor-Saving Devices - Mrs. Offering sent me a link to the "Dude" study as possible blog fodder, but Gene Healy already took care of it.

His conclusion:

Do you realize what a fabulously wealthy society we are?

Rock on, scholars and bloggers!

Seems Like Old Times - Yglesias and Drum are doing some tracking of Iraq's electricity production. Time was we did a little of that here. And Matt points me to yet another resource (PDF) for Iraqi production metrics. (Since the CPA changed its name and stopped putting out the good stuff - the daily electricity production spreadsheet - I've stuck with the Saban Center's Iraq Index.)

Couple things: 1. You know that passage from Garet Garrett about crossing the boundary between Republic and Empire and there being "no painted sign to say" when you are "entering Imperium?" Guys sitting around their homes in Washington, Maryland and California looking at electricity production data for a rathole 8,000 miles away is a sign. 2. We've now been in Iraq long enough to be able to compare annualized electricity production numbers. This too is a sign. Unfortunately the graph provided by the Dept. of State report Matt and Kevin are working from doesn't go back far enough to compare season over season. For that one needs to go to page 24 of the Saban Center report, which lacks a graph but offers a table.

Avg. Daily Megawatt hours (thousands)

2003		2004
Aug	72	110
Sep	75	107
Oct	79	99
Nov	70	77

The stated goal was 120K. No date is provided for meeting it, but the peak output production goals had dates in mid-2004 for the country as a whole and late 2003 for Baghdad. The numbers suggest that summer 2004 represented a substantial improvement in production, with regression throughout the fall toward 2003 levels. Peak output for the country as a whole shows a similar regression toward 2003 performance. It has only exceeded estimated pre-war levels (4400MW) for three months since the the US began tracking. Peak output for Baghdad, home to 20% of the population, can't be annualized because the Saban Center doesn't have figures for Oct-Nov 2003. But it has never gotten closer than 60% of prewar levels. Daily MW Hours for Baghdad are not tracked.

Saban Center began tracking Average hours of "electricity/day nationwide" recently enough that it can't be annualized, but here are the numbers, Feb-Nov04:

13, 16, 15, 11, 10, 10, 13, 13, 13, 13

The string of 13s make me suspicious that, as so often when dealing with Iraqi statistics, we just haven't got data for all the months.

Anyway, let me forthrightly acknowledge that whoever makes the power grid go was able to ramp up summer time (busy season) output, though not to goal levels. That's good. What has been happening since appears to be less good.

Read All About It - The full text of the Rumsfeld-Troops colloquy. (Via IRAQ'd.)

Do the Math - Forget my Venezuela scenario from last night. A bigger threat looms. (Or is that "gathers?")

The Blogosphere Wishes to Welcome Professor Gary Becker to the year 2002. How did we ever hash all this stuff out without you?

Meanwhile, Becker's co-blogger Richard Posner approaches the issue mathematically. As I understand it, if I think there's a 1 in a 1,000 chance that pinko Chavez in Venezuela will acquire and launch smallpox against the US, potentially causing 10 million casualties, I face an expected cost (in lives) of 10,000 by not going to war with Venezuela. Our armed forces are pretty bitching, so I think I could conquer Venezuela with only 5,000 American dead, and conquering it would reduce the chances of Venezuela germing the US to one in a million (expected cost reduced to 10), I should do it. I'm leaving the monetary costs of both war and a successful smallpox attack by Perfidious Caracas aside; the first would be considerable, but the second would be far, far greater. Can we afford to take that chance? It looks like the numbers say No.

Mister Jones and Me - Your Agitator guest-post item of the day is on the Generation Jones meme. I did think the song was about his dick, by the way, but apparently Adam Duritz has specifically denied this.

Smoking Crack: A How To Guide for Teens and other successful and unsuccessful attempts to get blog titles past MSN Spaces' vocabulary censor, at boingboing. (Via the not-entirely worksafe Daze Reader.)

Not Abandoning Libertarianism - Yesterday afternoon I stopped by our local CVS to fill a prescription for Offering Boy. They were out. So I asked the pharmacist where the closest 24-hour CVS pharmacy was. She told me. So I asked her if she could call to see if they had any of his prescription in stock.

No, she couldn't. It's a Schedule 2 drug, she explained. It would be against the law for them to tell her.

When You're in a Hole . . . Stop digging. This is advice Matthew Barganier, on his fourth "Max Borders Affair" update, would do well to heed. For those of you joining us late, the other day Matt did something he doesn't often do, which is declare a self-identified libertarian beyond the doctrinal pale. He also invited readers to let the target's employer know what they thought of his supposedly libertarian opinions. The target was Max "We put the terrible in enfant terrible" Borders; his employer the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies. Reaction was fierce, as can be seen in Micha Ghertner's item on the matter.

It's fair to say I like Matt Barganier a lot better than I like Max Borders. (I haven't met or exchanged personal communication with Max Borders. I am not, based on his writing, rushing to correct this.) I think Matt was in the wrong, though, and not a little wrong. Micha Ghertner calls Matt's attempt to get people to complain to IHS "one of the most vile ad hominem attacks [he has] ever seen." Just sticking to the blogosphere, I would rank Roger L. Simon's jihad against Gregg Easterbrook and Donald Luskin's threatened libel suit against Atrios as worse. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that Borders is a professional libertarian and works for a libertarian organization and what he believes presumably speaks to his qualifications, as Matt points out in one of his followups, it was pretty bad. The reason: Matt deciding on his own to write a complaining e-mail to IHS constitutes informing Borders' employers. Inviting his readers to do the same is Release the hounds! "Release the hounds" gets my back up. I think it happens way too often in the blogosphere. And I think that, used against fellow bloggers, it's a kind of cheating.

I think Matt owes Borders an apology. (This is not news to Matt that I think this.) But at least stop digging. I think Matt's locked in combat mode here and could do with a pause.

(This site's policy is to add unfairly attacked bloggers to the next blogroll update. I'm a victim too!)

That Word, Senor - A quote from the Defense Science Board's much-discussed report, as reported by Neil Mackay of the Sunday Herald:

“American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies.”

Paradox? Where's the "paradox?" It's what anyone not besotted with boundless faith in our power would expect.

Something tells me the DSB was trying to let its audience down easy.