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Wednesday,
August 23, 2006 Tomorrow I have to go to Anaheim for the
World SF Convention. Posting here until next Monday will be sporadic, and
the Monday column may or may not be delayed a day.
Tim Loeb has described some ameliorative procedures
========
Anarcho-tyranny:
The government quietly drops its case.
http://nwitimes.com/articles/2006/08/23/business/
business/aa82aa35f9a31d92862571d200783568.txt
In fact it never had a case, but the government was scalp hunting. They
got Martha Stewart for denying (not under oath) that she had done something
that would not have been a crime had she done it. Quattrone was smarter, and
got off, but not before three years of hell; and even so the government
covers its arse by making conditions for dropping the charge. The
conditions? That he obey the law for a full year. Then they'll quietly
dismiss the charges. This way they don't quite have to admit that they
didn't have any business bringing the charges in the first place.
The first moral of the story comes from Martha Stewart's case: never,
ever, cooperate with Federal authorities on anything. This is sad, because
in a real republic one ought to encourage the citizens to assist in
enforcement of the laws. That, however, presumes that the purpose of law
enforcement agents is law enforcement, keeping the peace, and such like. The
Iron Law of Bureaucracy has taken hold there as well as everywhere else;
and the purpose of law enforcement agents now has little to do with law and
justice, and a great deal to do with making the bureaus look good. Martha
Stewart was no threat to the Republic or to public order, nor was her crime
-- denying (not under oath) doing something that itself was no crime -- the
kind of thing that threatens law and justice, nor did it merit prison time.
We all know this. The purpose of the prosecution was to hang a large scalp
on the wall and show that no one is safe. That is the lesson they wanted you
to learn.
Is it a good lesson? Is the Republic better for knowing that no one is
safe? And for the lesson that you simply should not talk to any
Federal official, because you might be prosecuted for saying the wrong
thing?
=========
You might enjoy
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/08/18/2267.aspx which is
based on a long telephone interview with Alan Boyle. I found him an
intelligent and fair interviewer, and it came out fairly well.
==========
Israel Loses the Lebanon War
As Joel Rosenberg recently said, sometimes it sucks to be right. This is
one of those cases. My definition of winning a war is that you are better
off at the end of it than you would have been had you not gone to war. Under
that definition, Israel has lost rather badly.
What was won was the elimination of a few hundred to a thousand Hizbollah
insurgents and their supporters. How many of those were expensive highly
trained fighters and how many were cannon fodder is not clear; but it is
clear that Hizbollah has not lost anything that can't be replaced.
What Israel has lost is far greater. First, they have lost the
opportunity to make alliances within Lebanon. For the first time since the
tenuous but astonishingly stable partition of power back in the Eisenhower
days, when a (bare) Christian majority shared power with Druze, Sunni, and
Shiite minorities, there is a consensus in Lebanon among the Christians (now
a decided minority due to emigration), Druze, Sunni, and Shiites: they
despise Israel, and have no incentive to make alliance with the Israelis
against their internal rivals. Druze, Sunni, and Christians all have good
reason to despise Shiite-dominated Iran-supported Hizbollah; but that's
subordinate now. All the pride of the Cedar Revolution is gone. Lebanon
hasn't even the faintest basis of order or claim to be an orderly state.
They have been humiliated, their infra-structure damaged or destroyed, and
far from being liberated from Hizbollah thugs they have no choice but to
turn to Hizbollah and Iran for help in rebuilding.
Sure. The West is going to come into Lebanon and undue the damage Israel
did. Real Soon Now, as the citizens realize just what they are being asked
to do, and why they must do it. I would not, were I a Lebanese Sunni, hold
my breath waiting for Western aid in rebuilding my small business or
repairing the roof of my house. I would not, were I a Lebanese Christian,
hold my breath while waiting for Western troops -- German? Somali? Irish?
Turkish? Central African? Nigerian? Italian? French? -- to come in and
restore order while Hizbollah militia patrol the street in front of my
house. I might join a Christian Militia in the hopes that my militiamen
would be able to replace Hizbollah on my block or in my street. On the other
hand, my Christian militia weren't able to protect me from Israeli bombs and
shells. Hizbollah drove Israel out of Lebanon. I may have some skepticism
about this claim, but I won't say that openly, and after all, Israel did
leave, Israeli shells are no longer falling in my village, I can bury my
dead and try to scrape up the bits and pieces of my life, and Hizbollah is
still here, still planting missiles in the middle of the village.
And Hizbollah now has new recruiting grounds. People who used to be
neutral are now pro-Hizbollah. People who used to be Israeli allies are now
either neutral, or gone, or very hard to find.
Paranoids generally turn out to be right: after a while everyone really
is against them. Israel treated every Lebanese as an enemy. They now
have no choice but to regard every man, woman, and child in Lebanon as
hostile.
When Hizbollah deliberately provoked Israel by killing eight IDF soldiers
and kidnapping two, the Israelis had choices:
- respond proportionately, which is to say move in locally and take
twenty, or forty, or a hundred hostages.
- respond disproportionately but locally: make the grave of a hundred
heads, but punish those who, perhaps not willingly, cooperated with
Hizbollah or at least live in the areas entirely controlled by Hizbollah
- respond disproportionably but over the whole of Lebanon, coupled
with military invasion, going in for the long haul with the goal of
clearing many areas of Lebanon of Hizbollah influence; make it clear
that the war is against Hizbollah, not against Lebanon; make it clear
that the war aim is to destroy Hizbollah, and when we are done Lebanon
will be free of Hizbollah
- respond disproportionately but over the whole of Lebanon, punish
everyone in Lebanon for allowing Hizbollah to exist, but when the going
gets hard, withdraw, leaving Hizbollah in control of more areas than
ever before.
The first three of those alternatives were supportable. The third might
have been the best of the lot. Alas, they chose the fourth. I understand
why, given the exigencies of Israeli politics, they started with purpose #3
and drifted into #4; but understanding is not approval.
And Lebanon will continue to deteriorate.
============
Syria Now?
Incredibly, given the course of the Iraqi War, there are those in the
Administration who counsel the invasion of Syria.
The Army is deteriorating. Veterans are not reenlisting. Reservists are
being sent in for extra tours of duty. The National Guard is being sent in.
And the neoconservatives want us to expand our commitments.
Syria is an ally of Hizbollah on the "enemy of my enemy" principal, but
Bashir Assad and Syria don't have to be our enemies at all. They have no
stake in a Hizbollah victory. All we have to do is make it clear that we are
not going to invade and change the regime. Syria, like Lebanon, is a
mishmash of cultures and factions, held together at the moment by a
non-religious dictatorship.
We have made a deal with Qaddafi in Libya. He doesn't have to like us. He
doesn't have to love Israel. All he has to do is stop making trouble. Go
neutral and stay that way, and all will be well. He got the message. Bashir
is smarter than Qaddafi.
America has interests in the Middle East, but protecting those interests
does not require that we invade and transform all regimes there. We have an
interest in preventing the spread of chiliastic Islam, of fostering secular
regimes like Turkey -- and Syria. Syria is not pleasantly governed, and is
certainly no democracy -- and so what? Bashir does not seek to expand his
rule, nor to support subversion outside his borders. Bashir actually would
profit from stability in Iraq. Syria has long had what it considers a
legitimate claim to Lebanon, and is not likely to give that up. Syrian
agents will probably continue to operate in Lebanon.
We have accomplished diplomats. We have mutual interests with Syria. One
would think that enough.
========
Joel Rosenberg responds in mail.
I have copied the above essays, and Rosenberg's response,
into the Reports Page that
records the original exchange of views on Lebanon given in the early
days of the war.
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