Karzai asks US to Stop the Planes

I'm watching 60 Minutes right now. It's a segment on bombings in Afghanistan: specifically, a bombing that killed nine civilians in a small village. Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, asks the United States to roll back its bombings. He believes that the bombings hurt more than they help.

The resurgence of Taliban forces in Afghanistan is usually overshadowed by the bigger problems in Iraq. But it should be troubling to us nonetheless. According to a Wall Street Journal article from October 14th, Tangling with the Taliban, there are still over 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, with many of them working to stop Taliban forces which number between five and twenty thousand - it's hard to tell.
NATO forces have to pick up a lot of slack when the Afghan government can't provide basics, often taking up police duties in troubled areas.


A New York Times article from August 12, How a 'Good War' In Afghanistan Went Bad, quoted a high-level American commander in Afghanistan who argued that the US has failed to provide the proper sorts of experts to help build the Afghani infrastructure. For example, the official says that there are only a handful of American agriculture experts helping in agriculture, which is 80% of the Afghan economy.

A former CIA official, Robert Grenier, contended that the CIA shifted its best counterterrorism agents to Iraq. It's hard to question the article's logic: if not for the war in Iraq, our most qualified people would all be in Afghanistan. But things looked pretty good in spring of 2005.

Except for one thing: the Taliban forces weren't defeated; they were in Pakistan. And they came back in spring of 2006.

It's not as bad as it could be; it's not as bad as Iraq. Still, just looking through the news reports, it's not hard to see that, if not for the war in Iraq, things could be much, much better. There were a few of us, at the time, who said that the United States should make sure it takes care of the one country it took over before it tries to take over another.

It's far too late for that now. As long as we're tied down in Iraq, we will have to rely on blunt measures like air strikes is because our troops and special forces are in Iraq. So here's another reason to create Kurdistan* and balance our forces. We still owe a lot to the people of Afghanistan.

*I know this isn't realistic at the moment.

Good Sentences from Esolen and Spengler

Wandering about on the Internet, I found some good sentences, both a bit polemical, enjoyable nonetheless.

The first is from Anthony Esolen on the Mere Comments blog over at Touchstone Magazine. Perhaps it's been said before, but it's probably worth saying again. He's talking about California's gender-identity-neutral textbook legislation (on which I will decline to comment):

But school administrators know best, yes they do. Why, they've taken a three-hour seminar on sex, and some of them, it is said, have actually engaged in the activity. They can't be counted on to perform the modest but necessary tasks for which they have been hired. Our graduates can't tell us anything about Alexander Hamilton, or read The Federalist, or understand what simultaneous linear equations are all about, or identify the passive voice. If condoms were commas, we'd be in big trouble, because I never meet a college freshman who knows where to put one.

Next, we have Spengler commenting on Turkey and the Armenian genocide (the article itself is well worth your time, although I have my reasons for disagreeing with its final analysis), employing what writers often refer to as "vivid imagery":

America is not responsible for chaos in the Middle East. The Middle East has known nothing but chaos for most of its history. The colonial policy of the European powers after World War I left inherently unstable structures in place that must, one day, meet their reckoning. But America’s obsession with the surgical implant of democracy in the region forces it into a murderous game of whack-a-mole with a welter of armed ethnicities.

Wish I could have found something on the other side of the aisle from Esolen for this post, but nothing jumped out at me. (Spengler, interesting as he may be, isn't on one side of the aisle as much as he's in the viewing gallery, or perhaps in another room altogether...)

Primaries: An American Comedy

The New York Times has a Candidate Appearance Guide that by itself shows the problem with primaries. I shudder to about think what the Founders would say if they could see how this. With all due respect to Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, which are probably wonderful states full of kind and gentle people, this part of the election cycle is rotten.

I wonder what it would be like to experience an election cycle as an Iowan. In North Carolina, we hardly ever had candidates eating in local diners or speaking at town-hall meetings. But I suppose I'm lucky; the attention lavished on South Carolina probably helps the candidates hear about at least some of our regional concerns. If I had grown up anywhere between Wisconsin and Washington State, I probably wouldn't have even had that luxury, as that geographical stretch appears to be a wasteland as far as primary campaigning is concerned.

Could we come up with something more rational? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could come up with some sort of rotation system? Every four years, a different group of states could get some time in the spotlight. That would better represent the spirit of our republic over time.

Unfortunately, that's not a workable solution. As Americans, it seems like we prefer an irrational grassroots system to a bureaucratically designed solution. After all, who could possibly come up with an impartial selection? New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina may be an arbitrary handful of states, but they assumed their importance by jostling ahead of the other states. Now that other states are pushing their primaries further forward, it's starting to get ridiculous, but at least it's a uniquely federal form of silliness which gives the states some individual importance.

It's a weird system, and I can't say that I like it, but I'll go with it for now.

What's Up With Ayn Rand

I found Ayn Rand disturbing from the moment I first read one of her novels. A post on the First Things blog does a pretty good job of explaining the feeling:

Rand’s Ideal Man could never be a schoolteacher, say, or a physical therapist, or a claims clerk in the Social Security Administration. He must not be short-winded or fat. He must be perfection in action—gifted and brave, uniquely talented, and utterly free of irrationality and fear. He must, like Roark, defend the premise that no man should ever compromise his individual will or submit to pathetic notions of “sacrifice”; he must recognize that men of genius like himself will forever fight the lazy, inferior parasites who seek to take what superior minds have made. He must, in short, look like Gary Cooper and think exactly like Ayn Rand.

. . .

What made Rand’s works controversial, then and now, was their unashamed elitism and atheism—their contept for the values and attitudes held by most human beings who must make their way through the real world with the usual sets of weaknesses and strengths.

Rand hated religion as much as she hated communism; for her Christianity was, of course, the religion of fools and slaves. Rand’s “marginalia,” culled from the books in her library and published in 1998, are particularly revealing: . . . [C.S.] Lewis, Rand averred, was a “driveling non-entity,” a “mediocrity,” and “scum.”. . .

The book’s big event—a national strike involving disgruntled industrialists and tycoons—might have made a good Preston Sturges comedy. But Rand turns it into an earnest melodrama touched up with nobody-can-stop-me arias, paperback sex scenes, and attacks on jack-booted Washington bureaucrats: It’s Tony Robbins meets Harold Robbins meets the Cato Institute.

Dr. Dobson's Threat

It's old news by now, but forgive me for playing catch-up. I've been busy.

On September 30th, the New York Times reported on a secret meeting of Christian conservatives that produced a resolution to support a third-party candidate if Rudy Giuliani gains the Republican presidential nomination. The group included Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, whose opinions are perhaps the most influential in conservative Christian circles. Dr. Dobson published some comments on the resolution in a New York Times op-ed on October 4th.

Dr. Dobson's threat is a big one. As we learned in 1992 and 2000, neither of the major parties can afford to have a large segment of its core voters defect to a third party. The mostly anonymous religious conservatives are serious here. Dobson argues that there are certain things on which Christians just can't compromise:

I firmly believe that the selection of a president should begin with a recommitment to traditional moral values and beliefs. Those include the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles. Only after that determination is made can the acceptability of a nominee be assessed.

Social conservative disappointment with the GOP has been brewing for some time now. The pro-life movement expected some real action under the Bush administration. I remember the sense of excitement during the end of the Clinton administration: they really believed that the Republican Party would respond to their concerns. Socially conservative Christians responded to Karl Rove's famous (or perhaps infamous) mobilization strategy, but they wanted something in return.

They haven't gotten it. President Bush spent all his political capital on the war effort, leaving him no room to enact any pro-life policies on the level that social conservatives desired. Yes, he got the votes he needed, but he had to make promises he couldn't keep. Of course, there are always excuses, and I suppose that the voters who would be most likely to be upset about a lack of pro-life progress will also be the ones who will be most forgiving of what I will generously call slow progress in Iraq.

But even if they are letting Bush off the hook, they still expect the GOP to follow through on its pro-life commitments, and they know Giuliani is not the man to fix the problem.

As for the Christian Right, now would be a good time to do some soul-searching. The GOP has gotten the votes and support it needed and generally gone about its business. What has the Christian right gotten in return? Money, power, scandal. . .

Dobson's move makes a great deal of sense from the social conservative perspective. If the GOP is not willing to recommit to the promises its made, the social conservatives will be right to bolt.