Big Government Ruined My Long Weekend - The weather didn't help either: two inches of snow on Deep Creek Lake and the surrounding mountains last night and flurries all day. But the big thing - Mrs. Offering forgot a prescription medication that she takes every day and expects to for the foreseeable future: doctor's orders. She called our GP to ask him to phone a tide-over quantity to a Western Maryland pharmacy. GP was on vacation. So she phoned her OB/GYN, who has her medical records on file and knows of the GP's prescription. The office took a message. Next morning, the office responded: No, her OB/GYN refused to prescribe four pills.

Between the War on Drugs and the liability climate, doctors are scared to death to make this kind of accomodation. The upshot: My wife was sick unto immobility with nausea and unable to even discuss food by Saturday morning. We cut our trip short by a day, and the most one could say is that at least she was well enough to sleep most of the trip home rather than whimper - that would not have been a fun drive.

So a doctor's decision led directly to my wife getting sick. But since it wasn't a decision to prescribe pills, it's okay with the FDA and the DEA and the licensing board.

Unqualified Offerings is tired now. Tomorrow: Postrelfest.

One From a Wall - This "daily affirmation" was on the wall of a pizza parlor in Oakland, Maryland yesterday:

Lord, Today I have not been jealous; I have not gossiped; I have not assumed the worst of my fellows, nor been sarcastic; mean-spirited nor selfish. I have not been negative; no unkind word has passed my lips; no unkind thought aimed itself toward anyone of my acquaintance.

But soon, Lord, I shall be getting out of bed, and...

And the Lion Shall Lie Down With Unqualified Offerings - Unqualified Offerings had to read the most recent Andrew Sullivan item several times to truly absorb its import. (Note: the supposed permalink doesn't seem to work. Look for a Friday April 5 item headlined "Bush's 'Reversal.' ")

Its clear and unmissable emphasis is the right one: that the prime responsibility for the violence in Israel and the West Bank in the last few months lies squarely with the terrorist, Yassir Arafat, and his accomplices. To say he has failed to live up to a single one of his promises to restrain violence is an under-statement. But it is equally true that re-occupation of the West Bank is not and should not be an option. Nor should maintenance of the settlements.

Andrew Sullivan calls for dismantling the settlements and, implicitly, for the establishment of a Palestinian state. I know it's hard for this site not to sound ironical but let me try: I am stunned. Stunned into something like hopefulness. Sullivan still manages to pack some things I disagree with into the very same item, but he completely (unconsciously, needless to say) bursts the tidy box to which I had consigned him.

Unqualified Offerings Solves Your Marketing Problems - Here's an idea for the next wave of Viagra ads: Bob Dole, in leotards, hands on hips, swiveling his torso, pelvis forward, chanting, "I must - I must - I must increase my lust!"

Remember, all Unqualified Offerings marketing campaigns are free to the user!

Signs and Portents - Around Garrett County, several roadside banners averring, "Allegheny Power: Financially Sound But Morally Bankrupt." I am not sure what the issues are, but the signs convince me that while I may consider investing in Allegheny Power, for the time being I will forebear to attend worship services on their premises. Another set of banners proclaims them to be "Anti-Worker, Anti-Union, Anti-Family and Anti-Consumer." Whether the company puts "profits before people" could not be determined at press time.

Boy does this keyboard suck.

While Waiting for more substantial Offerings, including a reply to Steven Postrel's e-mail, go read Perry de Havilland's essential essay on the stupidities and cruelties behind too much of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. I bet Perry that the item would be much-praised in e-mail but little linked in the blogosphere. This is my small attempt toward losing my own bet.

The Return - After Unqualified Offerings checked with its host yesterday morning, it learned that said host renewed the domain but didn't update the nameserver entries. Grr. But things seem to have propagated.

UO is currently at a library in Oakland, MD, in the extreme western end of the Free State, where this website, Mrs. Offering and Offerings, The Next Generation are trying to find an acceptable summer rental at Deep Creek Lake. That's not so easy this time of year, since most places are already rented. But it's a couple of days away from the office and a few days away with the family. It's cold here, with snow flurries much of the day, not unheard of for this time of year in the Alleghenies, but not normal either. This keyboard sucks, so there will be no substantive posts before Sunday. But know that UO braved the cold yesterday afternoon for an hour and was rewarded with a three-pound bass that grew overfond of a suspending Rapala.

Offerings Held Hostage - Day 3 - Supposedly, this domain is propagating through DNS again since yesterday morning. At least from my corner of the net, however, it doesn't exist. Nor does my "supplanter mail" address work yet. So this probably won't even successfully post yet. But we try.

Oh Crap - My beloved domain, my host's night support tells me, has expired. That's supposed to be something they maintain, according to service agreement when I signed up. Not that you can read this explanation, since every one of my sites is in limbo now. Grr.

Isolated Isolationist - Highclearing.com's mailserver was working at 6:30 when Unqualified Offerings left work, but hasn't been working since this site arrived back at Unqualified HQ. Hence any late e-mails on the middle east, where there is news lately, will not be taken into account in tonight's meanderings. Even if you wrote earlier today and I read it, I can't read it now because it's still on the server.

This Will Not Stand - Thanks to Virginia Postrel for sending readers to see the Steven Postrel e-mail below. Come back tonight for the big "Why Steven Postrel Is Wrong" post. In the meantime, check out Tony Adragna's items and links on the same subject. (Link two items below.)

Swell the Chorus - Unqualified Offerings is trapped at work this evening and has other responsibilities when it gets home. But here is an op-ed by Gershom Gorenberg that appeared in today's Washington Post. It bears some relevance to recent items here...

Another Postrel Heard From - Steven Postrel, self-described "spouse of the famous Postrel," who writes the nicest "You are so totally wrong" e-mail conceivable, which he has granted permission to use on this site. I run it unedited because it is substantial, and a strong challenge to the option that Unqualified Offerings, Tony Adragna and the odd couple of Charles Krauthammer and Israeli Dove Ran HaCohen have all, with variations, suggested. When I'm not stuck at work, as I am tonight, I want to respond to the points Steven raises:

I want to respond to your well-written and provocative posts advocating passive policies by Israel.

Let me cut to the chase: You need to do a better job of backward induction, as we say in the game theory business. IF there is to be a Palestinian state, and that state is to be hostile, and that state is to be on the West Bank, and that state is to be allowed the sovereign right to build up its own defenses and get aid from wherever it wants, THEN the Israelis will have to fight that state from an incomparably worse position than the one they enjoy today, just to get back to a position where they have the SAME options that they have today. As a bonus, you can kiss the Hashemite rule of Jordan goodbye, because Arafat (or his successors) will collaborate with Syria and Iraq to destabilize and take over there too (>50% of the Jordanian population is Palestinian now). I'm not sure in which order those two things would be most likely to occur, but the "libertarian isolationist" policy you advocate looks like an avoidance of these hard realtiies to me. There is zero tolerance among the Arabs for Israel's presence, the Arabs see concessions as weakness, and once an independent Palestinian state is in place it will be time for "phase 2," as Arafat or one of his buddies put it.

Your suggestions about Israeli territorial concessions also seem flawed. From a tactical point of view, the hills on the Jordan river are critical to Israel in any military confrontation; even the lefty military types in Israel always contemplated hanging on to those for elementary security reasons. Giving up the high ground would simply be military malpractice.

If the Israelis think removing some of the settlements would help them compactify their lines of defense, fine. But any such move will be seen by the Arabs as another sign of weakness and will encourage immediate aggression (c.f. Barak's ingenious withdrawal from Lebanon, which legitimized Hezbollah, energized the Palestinian ultras, and now apparently has inflitrators regularly crossing into Israel over the security fence). Removal of settlements only makes sense in the context of a real occupation of Palestinian territory.

So far, the Israelis have not really tried a serious occupation (for which physical separation from Israel proper should be an adjunct, not a substitute). They screwed around a little bit under Begin, but never really bit the bullet. I mean a real occupation, with all the dirty and messy problems that entails--informers, arrests, reprisals against the families of
terrorists, control of the schools, provision of economic opportunity, setup of tame governing bodies which could be transitioned toward democracy, etc. Policies would start out in a draconian but predictable fashion and be gradually eased if progress is being made. You know the drill. They'll take casualties, but they'll be uniformed ones; they'll be reviled around the world, but I'm not sure they'd notice the difference at this point.

In the context of this kind of policy, the removal of settlements could also be used to show that Israel plans for there to be a Palestinian state at such time that that would not represent a mortal threat. This aspect is similar to Jonathan Rauch's idea, although he would probably hate the occupation plan.

Your idea of separating Israeli and American foreign policy goals is not completely doable either. If the US solves its urgent Iraqi problem and establishes a friendly and quasi-democratic regime there, the entire correlation of forces in the Middle East would change favorably for Israel. Similarly, if the Israelis show that they can't be pushed around, the US gains face because they are an ally. But the Iraq issue is too big a topic to tackle here (I'm afraid I don't agree with you there, either).

Anyway, keep up the good work of being the only intelligent critic of an aggressive war against Islamofascism. Or better yet, change your mind and help the rest of us figure out how to solve some of the thorny problems of implementation such a war entails--we can use the help!

--Steven Postrel

Perhaps the only greater pleasure than being called "the only intelligent critic" of anything is the chance to exhibit false modesty about it, but I think there is a much longer list than me. The biggest claim I might be able to make is to being the only critic of an aggressive war against Islamofascism that agrees that there is such a thing as Islamofascism.

Separation Anxiety - Honesty requires referencing two problems with the unilateral disgorgement option that Unqualified Offerings has been pushing as the least bad solution to the current terror war in the middle east:

1) According to an audio clip on MSNBC.com, the Matza restaurant bomber was an Israeli Arab, with citizenship papers, who would, obviously, not have been stopped by real borders between Israel and an independent Palestine.

2) There is a sense in which unilateral disgorgement could be said to be giving the Palestinians what they want, and Thomas Friedman today argues powerfully that, "if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide strategy defeated."

These are important (albeit unconscious) objections to the arguments in items lower on this page. I would say the following in response:

1) There are surely other Hamas recruits among Israel's Arab citizens. But separation will make it harder for Hamas to gain more. Disgorgement will not provide perfect security. It still looks better than the other options. Once again, they are extermination, ethnic cleansing, disgorgement, a lot more of what we have now and Fantasy Jordan.

2) The Friedman Problem, seeming to reward terror, is one Unqualified Offerings has dealt with before. On September 10, I could argue for an immediate pullout from Saudi Arabia and an end to sanctions against Iraq. On September 12, I could not. Because what I considered wise policy in a vacuum would look like capitulation in the face of the atrocities of September 11.

But again, what are the options? They are still extermination; ethnic cleansing; disgorgement; a lot more of what we have now; and Fantasy Jordan.

It is absurd to think that "isolating Arafat" or killing him will make the terror stop. The Palestinians have other leaders and the leadership dynamic will favor the most anti-Israeli. How much infrastructure do you think you need to help some misanthropes blow themselves up? Not damn much. Israel is losing now. It has to stop the bleeding. The current program of visiting daily humiliations on the Palestinians while continuing to bus them into Israel proper for cheap labor is not actually delivering much security. Disgorgement is a strategic retreat to a more defensible position.

Besides, there remains a persuasive case that a critical mass of the Palestinian people and their leadership want not just a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza but the destruction of Israel. To the extent that that is true, disgorgement isn't even giving the Palestinians what they want. The whole purpose of disgorgement is to prevent the destruction of Israel.

Hanging's Too Good For 'Em - Scott Shuger attempts to find a fitting punishment for convicted terrorists up to and including bin Laden, since "If Osama Bin Laden were caught and convicted of masterminding the 3,000 or so 9/11 deaths, he could still only be executed once, and not by being flung from a burning building."

His suggestion makes an intriguing alternative to the longtime Unqualified Offerings favorite, Gantlet Across America (motto: Like "Hands Across America" but without the embarrassing gaps.")

When They Came for the Special Interests I Said Nothing Because I Was Not a Special Interest - The rare palatable George Will column today about the asinine Campaign Finance Reform that George "Split-Screen Republicanism" Bush signed on his way out of town last week.

The day after Congress passed it, The Post's lead editorial celebrated the bill, which includes restrictions on political advocacy by such organizations as the National Rifle Association, which has 4.2 million members. Indeed, a number of senators and members of Congress cited the NRA as an organization whose advocacy they sought to inhibit.

Below the editorial celebrating passage of the bill, The Post ran an editorial urging Virginia's governor to support a gun control measure opposed by the NRA. So The Post editorial page that day illustrated the system toward which the bill that Bush cavalierly signed moves us. It will be a system in which the media exercise an unabridged freedom of political speech while championing successive weakenings of the constitutional protection of rival voices.

CFR has been a much-blogged subject. What's striking is a naive lack of explicit self-interest on the part of those blogging.

Here is the question: Is your weblog safe? Are you quite sure some item you post won't fall afoul of the "60-day window?" Think a thin-skinned politician or other complainant might not report an "offending" weblog to the FEC? Do you have a tip jar? Does the phrase "disclosure form" resonate with you? Oh it will, it will. Before you brush these questions off, read, if you haven't, Patrick Nielsen Hayden's recent indispensible item about "responsible blogging" and "officially-certified reporters," and extend the shape of his arguments into the dimensions of McCain-Feingold.

Keep your powder dry and your budgeted contribution to the Ginger Stampley Legal Defense Fund in escrow.

Eerie Prescience No Longer "Pre" - Via the redesigned and better-looking Airstrip One, this Daily Telegraph story about infighting among America's local "allies" in Khost:

For the Americans, the intricacies of tribal allegiances and enmities are apparently baffling.

Unable to separate truth from lies, they have put all the commanders on the payroll, subscribing to the theory that, if they hand out dollars to everybody, perhaps someone will help them to find Osama bin Laden and his associates.

But the policy has only made the belligerents more angry. Two weeks ago, gun-battles broke out in town after Kamal Khan said assassins tried to kill him. Five died.

Unqualified Offerings, November 16, 2001:

the Northern Alliance (soon to change their name to The Northern Opponents)

Other noteworthy claim in the Telegraph article:

"There are 7,000 al-Qa'eda and their Afghan allies in the mountains around here," said Kamal Khan Zadran, Khost's military commander.

"They all came here after the fall of Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda. Now they are fighting a guerrilla war and it is very difficult to defeat them."

Two weeks ago suspected al-Qa'eda fighters launched a midnight attack against the American special forces base near Khost. In a battle that lasted several hours, one American was wounded and two of their Afghan allies killed.

Let's assume Khan's numbers, like everyone else's numbers in the Afghan war, are about an order of magnitude high. That's 700 guerillas and terrorists loose in the mountains. In one spot we know about. Good thing we've wrapped up the war against our attackers and have time to fix the rest of the middle east now.