The Global Search And Replace Test Of Bigotry

From the Beeb, one of the bigger stories making the rounds today:

An Arab man convicted in Israel of rape because he pretended he was a Jew when he had consensual sex with a Jewish woman has called the verdict racist.  [¶]  Sabbar Kashur, 30, was found guilty of "rape by deception" by the Israeli court and sentenced to 18 months in jail.  [¶] According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008 and had sex that day.  [¶] When she discovered he was not Jewish, but an Arab, she went to the police.  [¶] Kashur was arrested and charged with rape and indecent assault, but the charges were later replaced by a different charge of "rape by deception".

A story about a random hook-up leading to a one night stand (or, one day stand in this case) followed by post-encounter regret is very common.  Such a series of events culminating in an accusation of rape for what was actually a consensual act is disturbing, but common, enough as well.  Adding the explosive elements of race, religion, and international politics to the mix of sexual politics gives this story real legs.

Seduction is, when examined closely, a sometimes ugly business involving not only deception of one's quarry, but also the preying upon the target's psychological vulnerabilities, a deliberate compartmentalization of the emotional richness of sex from the physical pleasure of the act, and choosing to empower one's own narcissism and physical aggression over one's morality and empathy.  Despite all this, seduction is not (or rather, ought not to be) a criminal act.  My first impulse, then, is say to the woman here, "Your story isn't one of rape, it's one of seduction.  You consented.  I'm glad you didn't get physically hurt.  Don't believe everything some random dude says when you've only just met him for the first time."

On the other hand, it's also the case that we should allow individuals to make intimate decisions on whatever basis they choose, and that includes race and/or religion.  One should be free to choose dating, sexual, or marriage partners of a favored group and no explanation need be offered -- Caucasian guys who really dig Asian women do not need to justify themselves and are not committing a crime by refusing to date, for instance, Latina women.  You and I might not approve of someone else using an explicitly racial filter to screen potential partners out, but we're not talking about government or even employment decisions here.  And I'm not ready to say that having a racially-explicit dating preference is something that contains enough malice to conform to the common understanding of the term "racist."

Maybe she pursued him and he just went along for the ride.  Or maybe (which seems most likely to me) they met and had one of those youthful prolonged conversations-with-sudden-infatuations and when things started to get all kissy-kissy, he didn't bother to correct her assumptions about what side of the tracks he came from.  Or, maybe he went way over the top with a line like "Oh yeah, baby, I'm like, totally in the tribe; I was awarded the Medal of Valor after my stint in the Second Lebanon War, but now I'm a pediatric cardiologist in at Tel Aviv Children's Hospital," and she believed it.  Does it matter?  Even if she was lied to in order to further the seduction, that ought not to be a crime -- not that I condone using deception to get sex, but let's keep it in perspective.  And at the end of the day, my perspective is not about the woman accusing the man of rape -- it's about the court convicting him.

Consider, for a moment, the fact that some people of sub-Saharan African descent have light enough skin that, to use the terminology of a fortunately-bygone era here in the United States, they could and sometimes did "pass for white."  Bear that in mind as I substitute some words in the story and produce this result:

A n Arab Black man convicted in Israel New York of rape because he pretended he was a Jew Caucasian when he had consensual sex with a Jewish Caucasian woman has called the verdict racist.  [¶]  Sabbar Kashur, 30, was found guilty of "rape by deception" by the Israeli New York court and sentenced to 18 months in jail.  [¶]  According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem Greenwich Village street in 2008 and had sex that day.  [¶]  When she discovered he was not Jewish Caucasian, but an Arab African-American, she went to the police.  [¶]  Kashur was arrested and charged with rape and indecent assault, but the charges were later replaced by a different charge of "rape by deception".

...Which makes seeing the event, viewed as a whole, as an exercise in bigotry by the Israeli justice system that much easier, doesn't it?

Courts are supposed to serve not only as neutral arbiters of fact but also dispensaries of justice.  Laws are supposed to address real problems in society.  Prosecutors and judges and juries are not required to check their common sense at the door; they ought to think about what they are doing, particularly before sending someone to prison for a heinous crime.  Someone along the way should have looked at this and put a stop to it.  That did not happen for Mr. Kashur, and it is difficult indeed to imagine that the complex stew of race, religion, violence, history, and international politics -- all factors which had nothing to do with a peaceful, consensual seduction -- did not play a substantial role in what appears to be a miscarriage of justice.

Tee Hee

This is such a flippant, ironic suggestion that -- well, there's actually a bit of truth in it.  Because, of course, it's the last thing Turkey really wants to have happen.

Inaction Preferable To Action

I'm not so sure I enjoy seeing tension involving Israel -- particularly when it appears that the antagonists are trying to draw Turkey into a side adverse to Israel.  This would be an excellent time for a diplomatic effort to resolve the question of humanitarian aid going in to Gaza without disrupting the military blockade.  Which would be a job for, well, the United States.

Predictions for 2009: Mixed Report Card

A year ago, I made some predictions for what would happen in 2009.  How'd I do?

1. The United States Federal deficit for calendar year 2009 will exceed $1.5 trillion. Check.

2. A human being will be cloned. Not Yet (that we know of).

3. There will be serious attempts at coups in two of the following: Morocco, Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, or Pakistan. Fortunately, No.

4. GDP for the United States will decline for at least three of the four quarters in CY 2009. In fact, US GDP declined from 2008q4 to 2009q2, rose from 2009q2 to 2009q3, but 2009q4 data is not yet available.  Incomplete.

5. California will endure a shutdown of all non-essential state government functions, and then increase state taxes. As it turned out, taxes went up, but the state government didn’t shut down to only essential functions. Instead, we got furloughs.  So, this gets Half Credit.

6. Neither the United States nor Israel will participate in an overt military attack against Iran. As I predicted, this didn't happen.  Which is good.

7. Britney Spears will "find Jesus" and make a spectacle of displaying her newfound piety. I keep on waiting for this but no, Not Yet.

8. At least once in 2009, it will take two U.S. dollars to buy one Euro. Nope, I was too pessimistic here. It got up to $1.51 for a while but never quite reached $2.00.

9. "Watchmen will gross over $1 billion, including its timed-for-Christmas DVD release." Not even close.  "However, a movie called Public Enemies will get tons of hype but lose money in theatrical release, as its cast of hot young stars fails to excite audiences about crime in the 1930’s."  Public Enemies did indeed lose money in its theatrical release, although just barely.  Guess there aren’t as many geeky fanboys as I’d thought. Half Credit.

10. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will survive a no-confidence vote. He’s been in political hot water all year, including an inchoate challenge to his leadership from within his own party, but emerged from that with enough of the Labour Party rallied under his banner to avoid a realistic call for a no-confidence vote.  That's not enough for even half credit, so I'm grading myself "wrong" on this one.

11. The Detroit Lions will use their #1 overall draft pick to select Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford rather than the strong, fast DLB that they really need. They took Matt Stafford instead – a hot college QB, but not the exact one I predicted and certainly not the shore-up to their defensive unit that they needed (and still need) so badly. Half Credit.

12. General Motors will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Check.

13. The United States will abandon plans to re-invigorate its space program with supra-orbital manned missions. It wasn't portrayed this way, but that is the result.  Check.

14. Over vitriolic but ineffectual Republican opposition, Congress will pass a “carbon tax.” Congress got hamstrung on health care reform instead, so this gets a "not so much."  Give them another year.

15. Barack Obama will name at least one Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. Check.

16. The average U.S. price for a gallon of 87-octane unleaded gasoline in CY 2009 will be under $2.50 a gallon. This one’s right on the margin. For the first half of 2009, it was below $2.50, and for the second half of 2009, it was over $2.50.  Let's call it Half Credit.

So, that's more right than wrong.  Next -- predictions for 2010.

Two Month Update

At the end of December, I made sixteen predictions for 2009. Here's how I'm doing so far:

Prediction	Status
The United States Federal deficit for calendar year 2009 will exceed $1.5 trillion.	I may have been too modest in this prediction.
A human being will be cloned.	Not that I know of yet.
There will be serious attempts at coups in two of the following: Morocco, Boliva, Colombia, Ethiopia, or Pakistan.	Fortunately, I'm wrong so far on all of these.
GDP for the United States will decline for at least three of the four quarters in CY 2009.	On track. Not that I'm happy about being right.
California will endure a shutdown of all non-essential state government functions, and then increase state taxes.	Half right. Taxes increased substantially, but a shutdown of the state government was averted at the last minute.
Neither the United States nor Israel will participate in an overt military attack against Iran.	Fortunately, I'm right so far.
Britney Spears will "find Jesus" and make a spectacle of displaying her newfound piety.	Give it time.
At least once in 2009, it will take two U.S. dollars to buy one Euro.	The dollar is up to .78 Euro right now, but I'm not optimistic.
Watchmen will gross over $1 billion, including its timed-for-Christmas DVD release. Public Enemies will get tons of hype but lose money in theatrical release.	Neither movie has been released yet.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will survive a no-confidence vote.	Not yet; I'm now doubting this.
The Detroit Lions will use their #1 overall draft pick to select Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford.	The draft is in April.
General Motors will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.	Not yet but I'm confident I'll be right sooner rather than later.
The United States will abandon plans to re-invigorate its space program with supra-orbital manned missions.	So far, I'm losing; NASA got $400 million in the stimulus bill for "exploration."
Over vitriolic but ineffectual Republican opposition, Congress will pass a “carbon tax.”	Not yet. Give it time.
Barack Obama will name at least one Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States.	Justice Ginsburg gave us all a scare, but nothing yet.
The average U.S. price for a gallon of 87-octane unleaded gasoline in CY 2009 will be under $2.50 a gallon.	So far, I'm on track.

I said I'd consider myself reasonably prescient if half the predictions came true. I think I'm doing okay so far.

Parliamentary Confusion In Tel Aviv

Yesterday was election day in Israel. Israel is a multi-party democracy and no politician can reasonably hope to lead the government there with a majority of his or her own party members alone. So the trick is to find enough common ground between different parties to form an effective governing coalition. As analyzed in the Jerusalem Post, it appears that the Likud party, led by former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is in a better position to put together a coalition government than Tzipi Lvini of the Kadima party, despite the fact that it appears Kadima earned one more seat than Likud.

A Likud-led government in Israel can be expected to take a more aggressive line than one led by Kadima on issues like relations with the Palestinians and the Arab nations surrounding Israel, expanding Israeli settlements into majority-Palestinian areas, and flexing the IDF's muscle as a predicate to diplomacy. Given that a Kadima government got drawn in to a war in Gaza and didn't pull any punches when it did, that's saying something.

I'm sure that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton would much rather see Israel led by Kadima. But I wouldn't anticipate that. The recent wars and Kadima leaders' inability to bring them to decisive Israeli victories is a significant problem; about all that Lvini had going for her was war weariness. So we will have to deal with the allies we have rather than the allies we might have wanted to have had going forward.

Personally, I think a "peace throuigh strength" platform is one that fundamentally works -- while I'm not so dismissive of Palestinian politicians as to rely on the bromide that "all they understand is force," it's a simple fact that pretty words and conciliatory gestures on the part of any diplomatic actor anywhere are devoid of meaning unless there is also the possibility that those diplomatic acts could be substituted by military ones. We care about Russia's diplomacy not because of the moral gravitas of Russia's position in the world but rather because Russia has a hell of a big army and a hell of a big navy. Israel similarly gains diplomatic leverage not because people accept the right of the Jews to have their own state but rather because whether you accept that right or not, the IDF will kick your ass if you don't at least tacitly acknowledge their existence.

So, the pendulum swings back the other direction in Israel, and the world must react accordingly.

The Best Way To Protect Yourself From A Live Grenade

It's rare for me to make Big Brass Ones Awards in rapid succession. But after seeing this video, I've gotta hand it to these Israeli soldiers who found a very creative way to take a couple of the bad guys out with astonishing bravery.

IDF Briefing

This is an English-language briefing -- yes, intended for a European and American audience -- from the IDF. You won't be seeing this on the Daily Kos.

There's Good Guys And There's Bad Guys

The guys who set up their rocket launching sites in the middle of civilian housing areas, surrounded by noncombatant women and children, and then fire their rockets indiscriminately across their borders into civilian-occupied areas of their neighbors, are the bad guys. Don't forget that.

And don't forget that when peace proposals are put on the table, ones that have a reasonable chance of ending the violence while preserving both sides' sovereignty, that we should look askance at a party who urges rejection of the proposal.

In no way do I suggest that there is a connection between Hamas and Iran -- there is little evidence of that. Iran is using the situation for its own political purposes but the last thing the Iranians really want is a viable Palestinian state. They need a whipping boy, a scapegoat, a common enemy around which to rally all Muslims so as to sublimate the racial and sectarian differences that separate Iran from its neighbors. Israel is a perfect foil for that. If they didn't have Israel, they'd have to invent one.

Meanwhile, innocent people are dying because Hamas won't lay down its arms after proving that it can't be trusted with them. Quoth Julius Caesar of his enemies, upon the launching of the Roman Civil War: "They would have it thus." From Caesar's perspective, he didn't start the war; he was left with no other option. That is what Hamas has done to Israel -- it finds open conflict with Israel politically more advantageous than attempting to actually govern its people. That way, there is an external third party to blame for whatever problems exist in Gaza and the West Bank.

Hat tip to Stephen Green at Vodkapundit and the Weblog of Tomorrow.

Pajamas TV Should Be Reconsidering Right About Now

Internet reporting, like TV news reporting, is all about attracting eyeballs. So Pajamas Media decided to try a stunt to do that -- it hired purportedly average-guy Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, AKA "Joe the Plumber," to be a war correspondent. They sent him to Gaza and this is what he decided:

I'll be honest with you. I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for 'em. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer, ah, down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you're gonna sit there and say, "Well look at this atrocity," well you don't know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

From the ever-quotable Winston Churchill: "The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter."

New Year's Predictions

We’ll revisit this post in a year. Here are some things that I will be looking for in 2009:

1. The United States Federal deficit for calendar year 2009 will exceed $1.5 trillion.
2. A human being will be cloned.
3. There will be serious attempts at coups in two of the following: Morocco, Boliva, Colombia, Ethiopia, or Pakistan.
4. GDP for the United States will decline for at least three of the four quarters in CY 2009.
5. California will endure a shutdown of all non-essential state government functions, and then increase state taxes.
6. Neither the United States nor Israel will participate in an overt military attack against Iran.
7. Britney Spears will "find Jesus" and make a spectacle of displaying her newfound piety.*
8. At least once in 2009, it will take two U.S. dollars to buy one Euro.
9. Watchmen will gross over $1 billion, including its timed-for-Christmas DVD release. However, a movie called Public Enemies will get tons of hype but lose money in theatrical release, as its cast of hot young stars fails to excite audiences about crime in the 1930’s.
10. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will survive a no-confidence vote.
11. The Detroit Lions will use their #1 overall draft pick to select Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford rather than the strong, fast DLB that they really need.
12. General Motors will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
13. The United States will abandon plans to re-invigorate its space program with supra-orbital manned missions.
14. Over vitriolic but ineffectual Republican opposition, Congress will pass a “carbon tax.”
15. Barack Obama will name at least one Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States.
16. The average U.S. price for a gallon of 87-octane unleaded gasoline in CY 2009 will be under $2.50 a gallon.

Your predictions are welcome also. Best batting average over 50% gets bragging rights for 2010.

* Yes, I remember that I predicted that this would happen in 2008 and it hasn't. But mark my words, it's going to happen and it'll happen soon.

Gaza Attacks

A depressingly-familiary story -- with the breaking of the southern cease-fire by the Gaza faction of Hamas, Israel has responded by shelling locations where the Hamas attackers have been shooting rockets over the border. Innocent civilians have died on both sides. This gives both international critics of Israel, and international critics of Palestine, platforms upon which to base their attacks. It also shores up Hamas' political base among Palestinian constituents and rallies the Israeli public around the Kadima party. Everybody wins except for the people whose homes are blown up or whose loved ones die.

It's not clear to me what the counter-attacks are going to do. Weapons technology has advanced to the point that some of the rockets Hamas is using can be made from spare parts and all that has to be smuggled in to Gaza are the warheads and the fuel. Precision targeting is not high on the attackers' list of priorities. So as a functional matter, Israel will never take away Hamas' ability to initiate these kinds of attacks.

But it's a good questions as to what else Israel can do about them. This is an act of war by one state actor on another. Doing nothing is not an option. Why? To move people and other targets out of range would be to effectively cede territory to the Palestinian Authority (Gaza Strip division), which would advance and place new rocket-launching loci further along their path of advance. So the attacks must be responded to in some way.

Israel's critics have pointed out that the counter-attacks have hurt lots of people who are not involved in the attacks. The reason for this is Hamas' insistence upon launching the attacks from the middle of crowded civilian population centers. And it is in the nature of war that innocent civilians suffer -- and indeed, they often suffer disproportionately to the warriors when the war is fought in their own neighborhoods. Military technology is not sufficiently advanced to allow for utlra-surgical remote strikes that could kill only the rocket launchers themselves and not the civilians in whose midst they have planted themselves.

Is all of this intended to be a moral pass to Israel? Yeah, it is. The difference is that Hamas fires indiscriminately into Israeli territory, not caring who they hit. Their intent is to provoke a reaction from Israel, and a civilian victim is every bit as effective as a military victim for that purpose. Israel's responsive strikes are at least targeting the Hamas attackers, who in turn lack the decency to fire from somewhere that military activities are isolated from civilians. Israel is not lily-white and totally without blame. But it's on the moral upside of this issue. May the violence end soon.

To Where Will Right Winger Deserters Flee?

"Oh, man, if Bush gets re-elected, I'm going to Canada."

"If McCain gets elected over Obama, man, the fix is in. I'm outta here, I'll go to the Netherlands."

I've heard more of that kind of crap from left-wing kool-aid drinkers over the years than I care to remember. I guess it hearkens back to the glory days of Vietnam War protesters dodging the draft by fleeing to Canada or Switzerland or somewhere like that. As if that were somehow glamorous or righteous.

But now, that worm has turned around completely. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House of Representatives with a commanding majority. The Democrats have tossed out Ted Stevens from the Senate, for Chrissake, and are a hairs' breath away from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. There is nothing -- nothing -- to stop the party that harbors and encourages the sort of policies that many on the right once dared call "treason" from having their way with us.

Of course, our children will all now be taught to be gay in second grade, ownership of a firearm will be an imprisonable offense, and we will all need to learn Spanish in order to vote. George Washington's birthday will no longer be a holiday and Cesar Chavez will replace him on the $1.00 bill. Or, rather, the $1.00 coin because the Democrats are going to take our money away.

So it's natural to think that right-wing kool-aid drinkers are going to feel an impulse to leave. For instance, check out comment #5 on this post about a blogbuddy returning to the United States after a sojourn abroad:

Italy will be better off without you.You’re just like all the folks who come here and expect US to accommodate all their needs,speak their language, adjust to their culture. Welcome home…enjoy your success and your new leader and maybe you’ll not get taxed out of existence. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Not my America any more. -- cas

Oh, really, cas? So where, exactly, do you intend on going? Where is this right-wing fantasyland where men can be men and own huge arsenals of big, deadly guns and the government will tolerate it? Maybe you're thinking Iraq? No problem owning lots of guns there. But somehow I doubt that an Arabic-speaking country dominated by Muslims and still susceptible to urban terrorism is going to be terribly appealing to cas and others like him who prefer the red kool-aid to the blue, even with the decidedly permissive de facto rules about owning weapons there.

Maybe to that mecca of free-market capitalism, Japan. If he can somehow persuade the government of that famously xenophobic nation into giving a gaijin like him a residency visa. He may have to promise to shower four times a day. And forget about owning any land, even if he could afford it. So, I guess that's out.

Now, you can have some weapons in Russia -- hey, сказать привет моему другу мало! And, for the time being, the Russians are overtly capitalists. But you've pretty much got to have tons of dough if you want to live anywhere decent, like Moscow or Petersburg. And Putin is pretty much turning into the Enemy again, so cas probably isn't thinking real seriously about Russia.

Now, I'm going to hazard a guess here and suggest that cas and his fellow right-wingers are probably not super-fluent in non-English languages and can't be bothered to learn them. It's very likely that cas is an English-is-the-official-language sort of guy. That might be a stretch. But I don't feel like it's a big one. So that limits the choices to only a few options, countries where English is the primary language. Maybe he can go to India or Pakistan and teach English to successive generations of tech support specialists and learn to love ghat and curry.

Canada, of course, is not an option; they're a bunch of peacenik socialists and gun-grabbers, and they have the most open immigration policy of any nation on Earth so the whole place is a gigantic security risk. Of the remaining English-speaking countries, you need to be ultra-loaded to emigrate to the UK, and you can't have a gun there. Or in Ireland. Or in the urban parts of Australia or anywhere in New Zealand. Or (now) Hong Kong -- the PRC is in charge there now, not Her Majesty's Government, and they don't like people they don't know having weapons.

South Africa? English is a secondary language there -- so maybe cas could use his English to get started while he brushes up on his Afrikaans and Swahili. Of course, you've got racial tensions, a seriously declining economy, and restrictions on firearms again, but that's not so different from here, really. And the climate is a lot like Southern California, just upside-down.

Maybe cas is Jewish and can exercise Aliyah. Then, he could go to Israel. There is gun control, but he could have a military-grade weapon in his kibbutz as long as he was part of the IDF Reserves, which I bet cas would think was cool. English isn't the primary language there, but it would be enough to get him started, and if cas is Jewish he may know some Hebrew. Yeah, they're pretty much socialists there but there is private enterprise. So, if you're in the Tribe, cas, massel tov. But if you're not Jewish, I think you're pretty much looking at Jo-burg.

Feeling Oats In Iran

Now, this isn’t at all inflammatory. Iran test-firing twenty or so ballistic missiles with 2,000 mile ranges simultaneously is nothing at all to get excited about. After all, Iran only mounts conventional warheads on them!

The point in Israel farthest away from Iran is a village just south of the Gaza Strip called Nir Itzhaq. If you include the Gaza strip, there is a small town about six miles away for Nir Itzhaq, called Rafa, which is on the Egypt-Gaza border. The point in Iran farthest away from Israel is a little corner of Baluchistan, near a small village called Askan a mile or so from the border of Pakistan.

As the Great Prophet III missile flies, it is 1,764.38 miles from Askan, Iran to Nir Itzhaq, Israel, as this detail from a Google Earth screen capture shows. While you've kind of got to hand it to the Iranians, in that "Great Prophet III" is a pretty cool-sounding name for a multi-stage ballistic missile, it's not hard to see why some guys in uniform in Tel Aviv are maybe a little bit more nervous than usual today.

Abdication

The President has found his war czar. Should When things don’t go very well as Iraq’s parliament retires for a two-month recess and eventually reconvenes for its rigorous schedule of meeting for two hours a day three days a week, and surprises the world by failing to achieve any kind of political unity in the country, General Lute will be looking at a new career as a scapegoat. So I presume he has negotiated his compensation for this service in advance. What bugs me is that this is the President’s own job – coordinating multiple fronts of military activity, economic developments, and variations in international political stability is the role that the President plays in foreign policy. Having people to help and advise him, and make policy on his behalf, is one thing; it’s something else to just punt all of these duties to an active-duty general and focus on the fun parts of the job.

Rasputin Falls

In 2001, the explicit warnings of Colin Powell that we were being fed a line about invading Iraq were ignored, and the President put his faith in Donald Rumsfeld's assurances that Iraq could be converted into a steadfast ally formed the basis of the central feature of George W. Bush's presidency -- overshadowing even 9/11.

Then, a graphic demonstration that Ahmed Chalabi's honeyed predictions about a glorious post-war Iraq, poured into the Administration's ear via Donald Rumsfeld, was not true, was not enough to shatter the President's steadfast faith in his Secretary of Defense.

After that, widespread criticism that not enough boots were on the ground to complete the mission of pacifying Iraq was not nearly enough to break Bush's loyalty to Rumsfeld.

The President has never once deviated from the cognitive dissonance of the Secretary of State's insistence that great resources are being placed into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, while also insisting that finding him is really not all that important. It obviously can't be both -- either it's worth it to invest a lot of resources in finding and killing the guy, or it's not.

Subsequently, the apparent impotence of the United States to respond to military challenges from North Korea and the proxies of Syria and Iran were not a demonstration to the man in charge that something was amiss in the Pentagon.

Neither was the call by an assortment of Congressional leaders from both parties and recently-retired generals, and the apparent behind-the-scenes critiques of serving general officers, for the resignation of the civilian leader of the military. Instead, we heard a drumbeat of praise and support from the White House, the equivalent of "You're doing a great job, Rummy."

The unprecedented editorial of the military newspapers calling for Rumsfeld's removal from power also failed to convince the President that one of his principal advisers was letting him down. As recently as Sunday night, George Bush insisted that Donald Rumsfeld was going to serve as Secretary of Defense until Bush's successor took office.

But let it not be said that George W. Bush is completely dense. The American public throwing the GOP's majority in Congress out on its ear was a sufficiently clear message to the President for it to dawn on him that, indeed, something has gone terribly wrong. And so this morning, Rumsfeld was resigned from the Administration, to be replaced by another old Bush friend from Texas, a man with an intelligence and administrative background who seems qualified for the job.

What I wonder now is whether Bush thinks that sacrificing Rumsfeld will be enough to placate the public. Obviously, it won't; the American people want to see something different being done and made that desire well-understood. Voting out Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who voted against the war, in favor of Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat who voted for it, is as clear a sign as I can think of that the American people are resentful of being misled about the WMD's, displeased with the continuing violence in Iraq, and nervous about the overextension of our military caused by the ongoing misadventure in the cradle of civilization. What alternative it is the people want to see is unclear -- but what is clear is that we want something different with regards to the war, because what Rumsfeld has been having the military do for the past six years is simply not working.

Here's hoping that the incoming Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is able to put together a better plan, one with a credible exit strategy and an endgame that is at least marginally acceptable to our economic, diplomatic, and security interests.

Role of Parties

For better or for worse, America has a two-party system. As one commentator pointed out recently, this is not likely to change for the foreseeable future. Assuming that the Democrats re-take control of Congress, about all we're promised is a bunch of TV fluff and a hike in the minimum wage.

But what the New York Times wrote about today is really kind of old news. Particularly in the West, but really kind of everywhere, people are more and more saying that they "vote for the person, not the party." One wonders whether this is really a good voting strategy, or even any kind of strategy at all -- and it certainly doesn't do anything to send a message to the recently-elected leaders about what it is that the voters want out of their government other than appealing personalities.

We can whine all we like about how things would be better if there were five or six parties -- a moral-values party, a labor party, a libertarian party, an environmental party, and so on. But from there it's a short step to ethnic and religious parties, and all of a sudden we start being Israel. And that's not the vision of political stability that our Founders had in mind for us -- an Italian-style government paralyzed by having to continually remake itself with ever-shifting coalitions is even less efficient than we would otherwise tolerate.

But the big problem with a two-party system is polarization and oversimplification. Too often we have to distinguish between "libertarian Republicans" and "religious Republicans" and "establishment Republicans" and "tax hawks" on the one hand and any of about twenty flavors of Democrat on the other hand (although the "Dixiecrat" of yesteryear is definitely a dying breed).

I'm also mindful of my experiences living in two states. In Tennessee, party identification is a combination of a person's heredity, views on abortion, and zealousness about guns. In California, economics, race, and a vision of the proper role of government are bigger issues. Where Democrats in Tennessee were reasonably palatable to me, there are very few Democrats in California who I would even flirt with the idea of lending even a vote to. For instance, Phil Bredesen seemed to be doing a reasonable job as Governor and the collapse of TennCare cannot be laid at his feet (although his failure to rescue it can). I've no idea if I would have considered voting for Harold Ford or not; Bob Corker doesn't seem to be a particularly attractive figure to me.

Moreover, the relative parity between the parties seems to keep the balance of power such that the will of the voters gets enacted most of the time. The result is actually one of the more libertarian states in the East despite significant power-holders from both parties anxious to impose their vision of the world, through government power, on the rest of the state. (Query, however, whether the state's libertarian skew in government policy is the result of actual voter preference or the necessity of a government starved for money by the absence of an income tax.)

Here, though, I find my feelings are different -- in no small part because I know very well what happens up in Sacramento when you elect Democrats into power. Taxes go up, quality and quantity of public services decrease through the mechanism of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, and individual freedoms decrease through increased regulations and enhanced gerrymandering. California confronts some significant problems and there is a role for the government; no one else is going to protect the environment, for instance. But the fact of the matter is that Californians are not under-taxed, they are not under-regulated, and they are not able to cast meaningful votes because there are almost no competitive districts at any level in the state.

So as I recently contemplated when looking at my absentee ballot, it doesn't matter much that I've grown disenchanted with the Republicans. Here in California, there just isn't any real alternative for me. The Democrat running for Assembly here, for instance, has said a lot of things in the local media that appeal to me. But it doesn't matter and I know it. This is a safe, secure Republican district because it was drawn that way. The Democrat just doesn't have a chance -- and even if he did, he and his apparently moderate points of view would be absolutely swallowed by the far-left wingnuts and any pretense of reasonability will vanish -- unless there is a Republican governor to exercise meaningful veto power.

If you are in the United States this November, you've got two realistic choices. (Even in Connecticut, where your choices are Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont; the Republican in that race is a nonentity who might as well be a Libertarian or a Green.) Certainly you should pay attention to the personality of the person in question. Obviously you should consider the issues that matter most to you. But don't ignore the "D" or "R" after the person's name. It matters.

Bite Me, Ahmadinejad

It's easy for me to appreciate the daunting challenges faced by diplomats and world leaders. Trying to find some kind of common ground with guys like the President of Iran must be a huge challenge. He complained to the United Nations today that there was no outcry of human rights violations levied against Israel during its recent war with Hezbollah, claiming that there was "blanketed and unwarranted support" for Israel during that conflict.

Dude, I know good and well that you can get CNN in Tehran. I know that the BBC is available there, too. And I know good and damn well that you can watch Al-Jazeera all day long in Iran. And I know that there were lots of talking heads, lots of Palestinian, Syrian, and Iranian mouthpieces, proxies, PR flacks, and spinmeisters hitting the airwaves every damn day. I remember lots of images on TV of ruined Lebanese villages, piles of rubble where apartment buildings used to be and pictures of Lebanese people, rendered homeless, grieving over their lost loved ones. That there were also similar pictures coming from Israel only proves that 1) the Israelis took their lumps, too, and 2) Israel, unlike Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, permits a free press.

So I don't want to hear about how the Western media and the people of the West uniformly gave blanket support to Israel. Because we didn't. A lot of us, myself included, had to go out of our way to remind others in the West that yes, there were good guys and bad guys in that war and that Hezbollah is not an organization of good guys.

To suggest that Westerners gave their uncritical and unflinching support to Israel is revisionism at its finest. To make that suggestion before the gathered heads of state of the entire world is revisionism writ upon the largest of all possible canvases. Would that we had actually done as Ahmadinejad suggests we did. Perhaps we would have been able to wipe those bastards off the planet entirely. And then we could credibly tell this dude that we mean it when we say we want his mullahs to stop enriching uranium.