Inane Historical What-If
On the subject of teen political activism and late-80s flashbacks generally:

What kind of president would Jack Kemp have been? How would Panama have come out? Gulf War? My best guess is that he wouldn't have done as well as Bush.

Deterrence
This.

In hindsight I'm shocked that the Cold War did not result in a nuclear holocaust. You may say that, in the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction worked. I say we were pretty fortunate, and I'd rather not rely on that good fortune to continue.

I may have been more politically aware in my early teen years than I am now. One big issue for me then was (ironically) SDI. Reading Fail-Safe in 9th grade English contributed to this a lot. What exasperated me: Everybody else said the problem was with the nukes themselves, which -- while true -- wouldn't be all that useful in preventing a situation like that from happening. (Once nukes existed at all, eradicating them completely wouldn't happen so long as there existed countries that disliked/distrusted each other.)

Rather, if we can't make the nukes go away completely (and at this point we can't), isn't some form of protection against them imperative?

(As far as the more recent debates go: I'm aware that SDI would be very expensive and that the current technology is dubious. But I think people screw up the cost-benefit analysis by vastly underestimating the cost of not adopting something like this.)

Treatment of Iraqi women
In response to the Greg S. comment... some quick googling:

Human Rights Watch on Iraq. Not gender-specific, but the moral here is: Measure how women are treated by how they're treated, not just by how their treatment compares to that of men.

From the Tony Blair dossier story:
Attacking Mr. Hussein's human rights record, the dossier included claims that prisoners in Iraq are executed without trial or left in metal boxes to die if they do not confess, women held in prison are routinely raped by guards and people accused of slandering Mr. Hussein have their tongues removed.

I suppose that applies more to women in prison than women generally but once a regime goes past a certain point of tyranny (yes, I know this is begging the question) I wouldn't be confident in the ability of innocent people to stay out of jail.

As far as I know, Hussein's regime hasn't oppressed women any more or less than a typical Muslim theocracy. But as a general rule, the status of women is typically far better in a free country than a non-free one.

This is moving
Forgotten heroes here. I don't think I agree with the U.S. Army's decision on (lack of) decorations.

The Glenn Reynolds comment/juxtaposition seems a little snide to me but then again I think he's on target.

Obligatory Simpsons reference
Maybe this is uncalled-for.

Drudge on Streisand
This may or may not be true (as with all things Drudge, he's behind it 80%). I do have to say that Drudge should be more of a matinee idol, what with the sporty fedora and all. He's... not a hero as such, but one of those pop culture icons that I can't help but fawn over, not unlike how some people go all batty for Barbra.

Obviously I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek.

This parody is also, suddenly, timely again.

More on the Savage drug interview
The money quote, in my opinion (I'm an outspoken legalize-now zealot; it's unclear whether this would surprise you):

We need to tell kids the truth about pot. I was lied to about it, and later on when I took a hit off a joint and didn't turn into a raving lunatic, like I was told I would, I was like, "What else is a lie?" Kids will say, "They lied to me about this drug, pot. I wonder if what they told me about this drug heroin is a lie too?"

Thought for the day
Two short military conflicts with stated goals that have nothing to do with the plight of women will do more to advance women's rights worldwide than [the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women] has done or ever will do.
--from The Weekly Standard

Overcoming Snideness
Do there exist intelligent lefties who do more than call their opponents names?

(For example, Norah Vincent is "contemptible," with no explanation given. Is it that the choir doesn't need one?)

Speaking of the intellectually-challenged on-line
Brutal comments section here, wherein one person (strawman? sock-puppet?) posts an incredibly inane attack and gets piled on by people who ought to have better things to do.

The original post is pretty snazzy though.

Is everybody else just stupid?
I was going to comment on the Globe article (see post just below); that is, comment on the message board.

Then I read through the messages and despaired at just how dumb most of them were, even (especially!) from people who agree with me.

Is it just an on-line thing? Surely not: People who keep weblogs seem by and large to write intelligently.

(Then again, most people who keep weblogs that comment at length about war/terrorism/Iraq/etc., seem to take a position close to mine. All about the warblogging...)

What's wrong with this lede?
On September 11, passengers armed only with cell phones and courage succeeded where a multi-billion dollar military failed.
--The Boston Globe

So... they want the military... to prevent planes from being hijacked... HOW?! By shooting them down, one would imagine.

I went into a conniption when I saw the lede, fully expecting the piece it linked to to be nothing short of moronic. It actually starts out reasonably, but then we get this:

A third crucial explanation for the failure to protect the Pentagon is that the US military cannot shoot down a passenger plane by arrogating to itself the right to decide whether the lives on board can be sacrificed to avert the possibility of even more lives being lost on the ground. Yes, that is true - and yet for decades we have spoken about actions that directly imperil the full American citizenry without ever obtaining the American citizenry's consent to those actions.

Uh, hello? Yeah, as if every f*cking day, we take actions wherein the U.S. military aims guns at its own people.

Actually most of the article is pretty reasonable. The author illustrates a place where individual civilians succeeded, where by nature the military could not have. She suggests, pretty reasonably, that we give more individual power to people for self-defense rather than abrogating that power.

But why does she have to be so pissy about it? Or am I the one being pissy? Comment away.

My point is, since her whole idea is that there are certain things that a military just doesn't do, claiming that it "failed" in those cases is nothing short of bitchy.

Fire them all, let the private sector sort 'em out
On the surface this article is about reverse discrimation. But I can't even get to the merits of that without tripping over my big question: Why do HUD et al have so freakin' many employees and divisions in the first place? How much money does this all cost?