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Other stuff pending. Really.

-->  Who are we to be so self-righteous? The U.S. knew Iraq would invade Kuwait. We sanctioned it. And then we went in and attacked Iraq. No wonder Saddam hates us.
posted at 18:01

-->  In related news (though it's not new): The New York Review of Books: Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors.
posted at 14:39

-->  More drama, courtesy of imdb:

Says comedian and co-creator of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead, "You have to have a perspective. And at this point I can't think of a single person in the world who has perspective." (This story was compiled by IMDb staff)

I can. Namely, the millions of people who have had friends and family killed by American bombs over the last half century. Somewhere shortly after World War II, we lost our way. For 55 years, others have been paying the price. Now it's our turn.

posted at 13:25

-->  United States vs. Microsoft: Why the government gave up.
posted at 12:19

-->  Harry Browne, 2000 Libertarian Presidential candidate: When Will We Learn?
posted at 19:07

-->  I get the sense that people want to blow the crap out of Afghanistan because they like being on the winning team. Clearly, the beater-upper is the winning team. People like being bullies.
posted at 19:07

-->  More US hypocrisy, brought to you by the New York Times: Lawmakers See Need to Loosen Rules on C.I.A.

The militant attitude in Congress comes just weeks after some American leaders were sharply critical of Israel's use of assassinations of Palestinian leaders in response to a series of suicide bombings against Israeli targets. But after Tuesday some current and former officials said that American security services might need to adopt some elements of the Israeli approach.

It's different when it's us. This is the most important time for use to take the high road. We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of doing the right thing only when it is convenient.
posted at 16:44

-->  NY Times: Poll Finds Majority Back Use of Military. The majority can be dangerous. For example:

That sentiment declines at the prospect that thousands of innocent civilians abroad could be killed. Still, a majority of Americans support engagement by the military even under those circumstances.

And also:

Americans say they are ready to alter their lifestyles, and even sacrifice some of their own liberties, for safety considerations.

There's this curious bit:

The crisis has spurred the public to put aside its past reservations about the leadership of President Bush and instead to rally wholeheartedly behind the relatively new president and express confidence in his ability to guide the nation. His job approval rating has soared to 84 percent, compared with 50 percent just over a month ago.

Based on what? He hasn't done anything yet. Speeches don't count; his weren't anything special.

Then there's also this:

"I don't like the idea of American lives being lost in a war," said Virginia Harrison, 56, a housewife in Tallahassee, Fla., "but we can't just sit here and let them continue to do it because they will probably do it again. I don't believe innocent people should be killed if it's not necessary, but we had innocent people who were killed."

Um. That's so wrong. First of all, we've been killing innocents just as long as they have. Secondly, what separates us from them if we're willing to kill innocents to achieve our goals? Thirdly, she's just not very smart. What would that accomplish? Nothing. Another bit:

Describing herself as "angry and outraged," Joy Hess, 58, a library clerk in Medford, Ore., said: "I'm not talking about revenge, but justice. I have a son in the military and I know loss of life is a risk. But there is no other way to get across that we mean business. We wouldn't be where we are now in history if we hadn't fought for our freedom. Freedom means losses sometimes."

No, you're talking about revenge. If you wanted justice, you'd be paying attention to the long term consequences. "Kill them all!" is not a statement about justice.

How telling:

Those who lived through World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam were the least likely to back military engagement.

A light of encouragement:

Still, 74 percent of the respondents said they thought it would be necessary for Americans to give up some of their personal freedoms to make the country safe from terrorists. Eighty-six percent said they favored guards and metal detectors at public buildings and events. Sixty-nine percent said they would be willing to arrive three hours early for a domestic airline flight.

But the public is willing to go only so far. Only 39 percent said they would be willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mail messages of ordinary Americans.

Andrea Aguilar, 41, a housecleaner in Petaluma, Calif., said: "I'm prepared for a change of lifestyle and I would be patient with that if the added security would save lives. I wouldn't mind waiting in line to pass through security points. But I don't want the government to go into our personal lives."

Good. It's reassuring to know that people haven't lost all sense.
posted at 12:46

-->  More perspective. So, if the average American has his/her way, the perpetrators of the attack in NYC and DC will be hunted down and killed. Now, let's consider this: about 16 hijackers walked into certain death. Furthermore, those behind this knew full well what the reaction would be. In effect, they have already committed suicide; they are just waiting to die. In their cost-benefit analysis of the situation, it is clear that the benefit of their action justified the cost. Their deaths are a price they are quite clearly willing to pay. So what does killing them accomplish? Nothing much beyond our own satisfaction. So what we make certain of is that we don't 1) achieve a negative with any action we take. Namely, if we attack some foreign country, we need to make sure our marginal accomplishment doesn't have a greater cost attached to it. 2) we need to deter future such attacks by reducing the benefit to them of what happens. What does that mean? Well.... that's a good question. Partly I believe it means giving in a little. If they deem nudging us further along the course isn't worth dying for, there's no need to even try to protect against them because they won't be making the attempt. Secondly it means that we ourselves shouldn't celebrate the magnitude of their accomplishment as we have been doing ever since Tuesday. We are honoring them when we proclaim what a good job they did in attacking us. Somehow I don't think that's the right thing to do.

It's quite possible that these terrorists already have planned their counterstrike to our retaliation; they're just waiting for us to do it so that they are excused.
posted at 18:50

-->  The Guardian: They can't see why they are hated: Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad.
posted at 12:11

-->  Now is also the time to donate money to the ACLU.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46852,00.html

On Thursday evening, two days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, the Senate approved the "Combating Terrorism Act of 2001," which enhances police wiretap powers and permits monitoring in more situations.
....
Its bipartisan sponsors argue that such laws are necessary to thwart terrorism. "It is essential that we give our law enforcement authorities every possible tool to search out and bring to justice those individuals who have brought such indiscriminate death into our backyard," Hatch said during the debate on the Senate floor.
....
Under the Combating Terrorism Act, prosecutors could authorize surveillance for 48-hour periods without a judge's approval.

We cannot allow "every possible tool" (just imagine). This is legislators using a terrible tragedy as legitimization for a pre-existing agenda limiting your freedom. There has not yet been one shred of evidence that this tragedy would have been preventable had this law or similar ones on the drawing board been in effect. We have a system of checks and balances in place to make sure government doesn't abuse its power. Now, more than ever, we must be vigilant to threats to freedom.

ACLU commentary. To join the ACLU.
posted at 12:07

-->  Bin Laden & Co. characterize the US as a terrorist state, and I can't say I blame them. Consider: you're a Sudanese man who works at an aspirin factory. You barely make enough to get by. There's a terrible war going on in your country, you're poor, you probably don't have the best nutrition... your life basically sucks by our standards. Then one day, in response to an attack on embassies a couple countries away that you had nothing to do with, a half dozen or so cruise missiles pop out of nowhere and blow the crap out of your aspirin factory, killing a bunch of your friends, maybe injuring you, and ruining your livelihood. You're a relative innocent, at least as much as the people in the WTC. Now repeat this in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq (because the vast majority of people there ARE relatively innocent, and we're only playing into Saddam's hands with our random bombings and inhumane sanctions), Somalia, Libya, and try to tell me what the difference is between them and us.

I sound like a bleeding heart here, but let's be pragmatic. Striking back doesn't do a lick of good; we should know that much from Israel (a nation that grows increasingly indistinguishable from the terrorists they are fighting; I grow increasingly uncomfortable with our blind support for them) in its problems with Palestinians, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt et al. back in the day... It's clear that those tactics simply do not work. We cannot stop terrorism with Fortress America (the inevitable authoritarian tactics of which scare me more than ever now), nor can we wipe it out through such tactics of retribution. The only reasonable solution I see is to try to stop pissing off these people so much. Given a choice between a Big Brother society (which still won't guarantee our safety and security in spite of the freedoms given up) and no longer being GloboCop, it's clear to me which way to go. I'm not advocating isolationism, but rather that we've got to stop being so selfish in our involvement abroad that we run roughshod over foreigners in their own nations.

A co-worker of mine said he heard someone say on NPR that the best way to help the situation now was to carpool. It sounds really goofy, but think about it... This attack came almost directly as a response to American policies (and the actions based on those policies, either by us directly or Israel), the two primary drivers for which are the Jewish-American lobby and petropolitics. If we reduce the importance of oil in our economy, we reduce the need for our political meddling in the Middle East. I'm sure even a cursory examination of these issues, tracing them all the way back to the source, will reveal similar deep causes. But I don't think anybody's going to pay any attention to any of that.
posted at 16:39

-->  Salon's voice of reason
posted at 13:33

-->  Disgusting: God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says. 4700 people were killed by civil liberties groups, feminists, homesexuals, and the pro-choice movement.

Is it really that hard to figure out why this happened? It's not as though the likely suspects haven't repeatedly told us the source of their anger at America; terrorism is useless if nobody knows why you did it. Very simply: we, as a nation, made some very dangerous people very mad. To elaborate: we bombed them (military and civilian), supported their enemies, and turned a blind eye to their suffering.
posted at 13:00

-->  What an idiot: Could flight simulator software have trained four pilots to kill? It's bad enough what happened. Don't make it worse by being stupid about it and pointing the fingers in the wrong direction. This guy needs to get fired, and fast.
posted at 10:15

-->  Found for me by Dean: Ann Coulter on Barbara Olson. Dean characterized it as a "scream for attention." Yup. Couldn't have said it better myself. And it's happening all over. Dean himself did it. As did the morning news. Many people around the web are engaging in a pissing contest to see who can come up with the most eloquent, original, pained expression of grief. I cannot respect that. If you have real pain, you lose your credibility when you bare it to the world. Pain isn't a way to get attention, and to use your pain or, even worse, to draft off the pain of others is a shameful and disgusting display and I wish people would stop.
posted at 16:34

-->  More thoughts... How will this change how terrorists hijack planes in the future? They'll take cell phones away, that much is clear. Maybe they'll expect passengers to try to resist more, believing it is a suicide run, which means they'll be more willing to use deadly force.

Editorials about retaliation are popping up all over the place. For, against, both, neither... In a broad sense, what to do now seems to parallel the discussion of what to do with Germany after WWI. In that case, the Allies punished Germany strongly enough to cause widespread hardship (fostering resentment, and setting the stage for Hitler and his minions), but not strongly enough to cripple them and prevent WWII. Similarly, in this situation, we have three varying degrees of response, and the one in the middle is not "just right."

• Small: we go after the individuals that we know to be responsible. There is minimal collateral damage in terms of other people and property. The best effort is made to get them alive so they can be put on trial, rather than simply killing them. This would probably be a special forces response, with support from the various branches of the military, but the focus would very much be on extracting people.


• Medium: A concerted effort is made to kill all those responsible, with little regard for collateral damage to those only slightly involved, but no special emphasis on inflicting that either. The attacks in 1998 after the African embassy bombings would fall in this category. Bombings, cruise missile attacks, and so forth.


• Large: The United States devotes an enormous effort to tracking down and killing everyone even peripherally involved in this attack, and destroying everything around them. Some combination of the above, with a greater emphasis on pure destruction. We will not use non-conventional weapons, but this effort would go on for days and weeks (and months and years?) as necessary. In the above two cases, it would likely be over before news organizations started reporting it. The idea would be to gather as much information on where the culprits are, and strike there. Assuming less-than-perfect success in this first strike, the emphasis would shift to chasing them down. That would probably be a long process, but I expect there would be a great deal of domestic support and cooperation from foreign governments. Think Israel going after Eichmann, or Stalin going after Trotsky. The message here would be that no place is safe to run (as in the first, "surgical" case), and that anywhere you do stop, even for a short time, will be utterly destroyed. The same fear that has now entered the consciousness of Americans and other people around the world will enter the minds of the friends and family of the culprits. What I'm thinking here is something like this: Joe Terrorist is out on the town when his camp is attacked and destroyed. He then hides in the house of his brother. US Intelligence tracks him there, and orders a strike on his brother's house. The terrorist escapes, but his brother's home is destroyed. Repeat this a couple times, and pretty quickly the terrorist is alone in the world with nowhere to run.

In terms of practical value, the first and the third will be the most effective. The first one ("surgical") shows us to be a judicious but deadly enemy. Since we attack only those who can be proven to have participated, and do our best to bring them to "fair trial," resentment among their sympathizers will (hopefully) be minimized. A clever PR move would be to get a couple of patsies, individuals only peripherally involved. These individuals would be acquitted of the terrorism charges against them, and at worst, given minor sentences for whatever minor offenses they committed, unwitting of their greater significance (which would also be made clear). This way the trials would have a response to the inevitable accusations of being a setup, etc. This method would be effective because it would punish those responsible, but would not be an example of an arrogant and malicious nation, which would only serve inflame the emotions of sympathizers and allow these terrorist groups to find ready recruits.

The third option (a.k.a., "total annihilation") would be effective (I'm guessing) because it would be so total in its response that nobody would ever consider doing this again.

Being a pansy, I favor the first one. Practically, I also believe that it would show the United States to be reasonable and deliberate in prosecuting those who wound us. It is important to take the high road against terrorists. Furthermore, I believe it would be a good break from the heavy-handed manner in which we have treated foreign nations for years. Finally, it would avoid the death of relative innocents, which is something I would very much want to avoid, if possible. Somehow, I expect American anger would result in a response more like the "total annihilation" scenario outlined above. Which is ironic, considering the way the government and media have been telling us to not let the recent events change our lives, to not let them affect us, as that way the terrorists "win." If we react rashly and excessively, we become like them and a lightning rod for opposition; we cannot fight terror by becoming terrorists ourselves (as one other nation will hopefully learn as soon as possible). While I think the third way would work for a while, it is probably not a long-term strategy for success. You cannot stop terror by squashing it; eventually it will pop up somewhere else. We need to work against the "demand" side rather than trying to stop the "supply." Hopefully we've learned that much from the drug war.

What we must definitely avoid is the second option, a.k.a., the half-assed response. It would get enough of the terrorists to satisfy American anger, but it wouldn't be done "cleanly" (trials, etc.) and would have so much collateral damage as to backfire on us as anti-American terrorists of any stripe find a flood of ready recruits prepared to stop our angry misdeeds. In the first case above, the acts of terrorism don't have the intended effect, as the response is muted. Terrorists are like children; they demand attention. If the attention they demand isn't given, they failed in their mission, and have a severe price to pay. In the third case, the price paid is so high that no mission has enough benefit to their cause to pay off. But with the second case, whether to follow through on the mission becomes a calculated risk. We cannot allow the reasonable possibility of attacking the United States (or any other nation) like this to enter terrorists' minds. If, after whatever the government does in response to this attack (both in terms of short-term retaliation and longer-term avoidance/prevention strategies), a sufficient number of individuals still think their goals can be accomplished this way at acceptable cost, we will have failed.
posted at 11:57

-->  Pictures from the ISS of NYC.
posted at 18:10

-->  This disaster is being characterized as "Not just an attack on America, but an attack on the civilized world." Well.... that is true. New York is an international city. And that it can happen in the US indicates it could happen in just about any nation (though we never paid attention when the converse was true). But it's still characteristic of the hyperbole that has surrounded and will continue to surround this catastrophe. Because it happened to us for the first time does not mean it happened for the first time for everyone. It is an attack on civilization, true, but it is not the first, and it will surely not be the last. The media needs to stop behaving that way, because it minimizes the tragedy of previous incidents. Indeed, it minimizes the tragedy of this incident, because it will turn off more and more people.

There seems to be a great emphasis in the government and media on symbolism. The symbolism of the President returning to the White House, of the Pentagon being open on the day after, of demonstrating that life will go on, etc. It seems like they are trying to reassure the population as well as themselves. I don't see how that would reassure those directly involved, and those indirectly involved probably don't care much for the symbolism. There is also a great deal of "Life goes on," "We will not bow down to terror," etc. Showing no fear seems to have a certain appeal to many people right now, as they feel it would detract from the attackers' celebration. I agree with that to an extent. But only to an extent. It seems more productive to convey the message, "Yes, we are afraid, but it won't stop us," rather than, "We are not afraid, and will not stop." If you aren't scared by terror, then terrorists will be inspired to attempt even more terrible acts to reach the goal of terror that they so desire. If we acknowledge that we can be frightened, but demonstrate that we can conquer this fear, I think it would be a more powerful message. You can always do more to inspire fear, but if your targets show that they can overcome fear, you will never be able to truly shake them.

Should I be confused by the fact that every TV news organization is calling this "Attack on America?" I didn't get that memo...
posted at 15:52

-->  Terrorists are made, not born. Salon on blowback.
posted at 14:37

--> 

So, apparently there's this chain email going around (from yesterday):

The flights that were Highjacked were from United and AA, they were numbered as follows: 11, 93, 175, and 77

11 = Today's Date
9 + 3 = 12 = Tomorrow
1 + 7 + 5 = 13 = Thursday
7 + 7 = 14 = Friday

Hopefully this is a coincidence and the terrorists can't add. but if this is correct there will either be acts of terrorism every day for the next few days or a grand event the last day.

You've got to be kidding. How dumb can you be to believe that? Compared the enormous symbolism of ...

1. Destroying the World Trade Center


2. Damaging the Pentagon


3. This being the rough 23rd anniversary of the Camp David Accords

... with stupid number games.
posted at 13:00

-->  The hyperbole about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks (and the PA crash/attempted attack) is now getting to unbearable proportions. Everyone is talking about how terrible this is, and how horrible events like this will bring people together, blah blah blah. Maybe it will, for a time. But people will forget. And one thing won't change about America: we're the most self-centered nation in the world. Consider: in NYC and DC, the wildest estimates calculate 50,000 dead. Just about all of these people died in a 3 hour period due directly to the crashes or indirectly due to the building collapses. The masterminds behind this will most likely number in the single digits, though the number of participants will certainly be much greater. Now consider Rwanda. Estimates of the number of dead are in the million mark. These people died over a period of weeks and months, and were killed on a very individual basis, with clubs, machetes, and whatever else was handy in a systematic genocide carried out by many thousands of murderers. And nobody in the West cared. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care and be deeply affected by the tragedy yesterday. What I'm saying is that we should question the self-centeredness that allows us to be blasé about Rwanda, or the continuing war in Central Africa, or the Sudanese civil war, or the Indonesian oppression in Irian Jaya in the 1990s, and so forth. When a tragedy hits America, we cannot acknowledge that, though this event was a terrible one, there have been much worse tragedies that happened to others, and we demand that the rest of the world acknowledge and validate our suffering as being somehow different from the suffering of others that we have ignored for practically our entire existence as a nation. This is what it feels like to be the brown people in that tiny country you cannot find on a globe, whose story you might find on the fifteenth page of the New York Times, about whom you might hear on CNN sandwiched between the drop in housing starts and rumors about Cruise-Cruz. We aret no special. What we are suffering now (and only a small number of us are truly suffering) is something that some people live with daily. We turned a blind eye before. Remember that.
posted at 12:50

-->  Ok, so the Bush administration claims we haven't attacked Afghanistan. Now I'm watching President Bush return the White House. I wish they'd show the roofs of the surrounding buildings to show all the snipers.

President Bush doesn't know how to salute...
posted at 18:01

-->  Great. We're attacking Afghanistan 9 1/2 hours after we got attacked. That's counter-productive. First off, we don't know that it was the Taliban. Secondly, it takes a pressure off the government, which means that any succeeding strike will be significantly scaled back in its scope and intensity. Far better, I feel, to quickly establish the threat of attack, without actually attacking, to show that our military infrastructure is intact, and then to wait and make them sweat. Make them wait, and dread the consequences. Plan carefully, and methodically, so we look dispassionate rather than enraged. We cannot be a crazed giant striking wildly.
posted at 17:30

-->  IMDB link: The Siege
posted at 11:47

-->  On the one hand, it's highly unlikely that this was done without the cooperation of a foreign government. On the other hand, what foreign government would open itself to this? It's basically committing suicide if you're a foreign leader. Maybe the executive order banning assassination will be lifted so we can go after the individuals responsible without dealing with messy things like courts.
posted at 11:42

-->  More against missile defense. Amir points out that all it would take to shut down this whole country is to blow up a Greyhound bus in every state.
posted at 11:39

-->  Holy God.

Not to minimize the tragedy, but I will call it now:

• This massive terrorist attack will not be the last. Everyone knows that. As a result, there will be a massive push to increase legislation allowing government greater and greater intrusiveness into the lives of its citizens. In a shameful display, the more authoritarian-leaning elements of the US government (*cough* FBI *cough*) will use this disaster to justify measures like Carnivore, the email snooping device, and to silence any critics. It will be the New McCarthyism, except with anti-American terrorism as the bogeyman, not communism. The cure will be worse than the disease. Nobody right now is saying anything about what longer term actions are going to happen. The authoritarian elements will take advantage of people's shock to push
  


• There will be a flood of movements and activities to make people feel better. Some, like blood drives, will actually help. Others, like the inevitable massive military response, will do nothing, and might even make things worse (like the massive military response). Remember the yellow ribbons with Desert Storm? Just like that.
  


• From the media will come a flood of hyperbole. Yes, this is an enormous disaster. But they are talking about how this is the worst imaginable, how NYC is like a war zone... It can be far worse. There was no nuclear weapon. There were no chemical or biological attacks, which are quite reasonably possible. This can be worse. It's not unlikely that this kicks off a series of terrible attacks intent on turning the United States into Israel. It is not a war zone right now. Sarajevo was a war zone. This is just a disaster area (to a war zone as a tropical storm is to a hurricane)


• There will be a significant increase in the defense budget. Maybe that'll kick us out of the recession...
  


• Vigilante attacks. I fear for Arabs living in the United States. They will become targets.


• What will not happen: the United States will not become a better global citizen. We will not reduce our support of an Israeli state whose tactics are increasingly indistinguishable from the terrorists they are fighting. We will not act to curtail the exploitative behavior of American MegaCorps, nor to change our petro-politics in the Middle East. At least two reasons for that. 1) That would be giving in. Of course, just because these people used (use?) horrific tactics doesn't mean that their point is invalid. 2) The US government will inevitably take the position that they can stop attacks. It will be like the drug war, trying to stop supply rather than eliminate demand. Instead of trying to reduce the desire of people around the world to slay the Great Satan, we will instead try to build a wall around and within the country to keep these subversive elements away.
  

Wait a minute... they're talking to Tom Clancy on CNN? How pointless is that? Pause. Ok, it's not pointless. He's speaking sense. Talking about how the vast majority of Muslims are not like this, how religious freedom is one of the most important freedoms we have, and this is the time for us to be most committed to it.

The same way "Wag The Dog" became enormously popular during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, "The Siege" will become enormously popular now. Or not, seeing as its message is not the one that people want to here ("Kill them all!").

They want to bring Bush back to the White House. That just doesn't sound smart. The Secret Service is trying to be quiet about it, but CNN is broadcasting it. I'm all for the First Amendment, but SHUT UP. He's not the best President, but making him vulnerable will help nothing. And if they have a nuclear weapon, it would be a brilliant ploy. They would wait until people think things have died down and Bush returns to the White House.

I hear the CIA has mounted anti-aircraft guns on the roof of at least one of their buildings.

I think it would do the country a great service if the government announced that they will do what they can to retaliate without making life for us unlivable (restrictions on basic freedoms).

Amir points out that the hijackers may have been pilots themselves, as any airline pilot, facing death, would crash into the harbor, not the city. These are people trained to minimize loss of life. They would either get shot themselves or crash into empty space.

Also: this is roughly the 23rd anniversary of the Camp David Accords.

Further: we want a missile defense system to protect against rogue states? Hopefully this will demonstrate that such a thing is totally useless against the way these people operate. More likely, though, it will be used as further justification.

My friend goes on to point out: Every government in the world that could reasonably be under suspicion is probably screaming their innocence. We will be more ruthless than Israel was in tracking down Eichmann. This is like Pearl Harbor. Osama bin Laden may have awakened a giant here. We will see.
posted at 11:31