lloydtown 

Lileks and Star Trek

James Lileks has managed to acquire a CD of the actual soundtrack of an original Star Trek episode. The composer is not the guy who wrote the famous theme, but he works with that theme in different moods--melancholy when the bad guy seems to be gaining, dischordant during a crisis, etc.

This post by Lileks, complete with samples of the music, is truly outstanding. I e-mailed him for the first time to tell him so. Via Jonah Goldberg on the Corner.

Bill Kristol in Toronto

Bill Kristol spoke at the U. of Toronto on Thursday, just before my class. I didn't make it for his lecture, but I got a seat for the Qs and As. I obviously cannot do his remarks justice.

The general idea was that Bush is doing a pretty good on national security, and that is by far the most important thing. Both Afghanistan and Iraq could still turn out OK, and if they don't, it's hardly Bush's fault.

One questioner asked: aren't you and other Americans making too much of 9/11 as a pretext for a new, belligerent U.S. foreign policy?

Kristol spoke, I thought, very frankly. He and Bob Kaplan publicly advocated a more aggressive foreign policy before 9/11, and even before the 2000 election. They openly (I believe he confirmed) advocated the invasion of Iraq. He said: I doubt we could ever have persuaded Bush to do it had it not been for 9/11.

He thinks a whole series of presidents, certainly including Bush Senior, were too passive in the face of dangerous developments in the world. They encouraged the American public to think the world was basically safe, while the terrorists and others grew stronger. He mentioned the whole Milosevic adventure, and I believe Rwanda as well, as events in which the U.S. should have intervened earlier.

Kristol is charming and witty. He said it is clear Europe has no intention of intervening in other countries much at all, whether for morality or oil or whatever. And that's fine--they can be a big Switzerland. Kristol thinks this is not really adequate, and he hopes the U.S. continues to be aggressive--not only with military means, but with intelligence and diplomacy, soft power as well as hard, in many hotspots, but particularly the Middle East. He wants an expanded budget for all these areas: defence, intelligence, the State Department. (Also restructuring/re-thinking, perhaps especially for State).

Insofar as Kristol speaks for the neo-cons, it seems fair to say they miss the Cold War, they wish it could have ended with some shooting and glory, and they are morally comfortable with a never-ending war against an enemy who can be characterized as both powerful and evil.

Are there really a large number of foreign interventions that are a good idea? Does the U.S. really have the know-how to improve so much of the world? Kristol didn't really promise that the U.S. will spread democracy, but he said we have seen cases where the example of democracy makes a difference to an entire region--Latin America, Eastern Europe. Is Kristol promising, like Reagan and perhaps Pericles, glory without sacrifice? But Pericles at least tried (fruitlessly) to tell Athenians to stay at home--he didn't say that if you intervene all over the world, you wll have glory without sacrifice.

Surely part of the problem the neo-cons have is that it is awkward for them to fit in any major party on domestic issues. Is Kristol pro-life? Does he have a serious concern about partial-birth abortion, cloning, or stem cell research? Does he want a lot of Bible quotation in politics, and prayer in schools, or does that whole business give him the willies? I don't read the Weekly Standard enough to know, but I suspect that in many ways his hero is still D.P. Moynihan of a certain era--before Moynihan decided the neo-cons were a bit nuts on the subject of the Cold War. Kristol is just a bit too old-fashioned for today's Democrats--perhaps he is a gentleman, or a square. But is he really at home with Republicans--as Bill Schneider used to say, white shoes and all?

Someone should write a piece on "The Last--and Second Last--Refuge of the Scoundrel." One can say liberal and libertarian folks--except when they get war fever because of 9/11--still pin a lot of hope on sexual and other kinds of personal freedom. (Liberals may not like aspects of consumerism; libertarians generally embrace it). Both the man who used to be called a cad and the woman who used to be called something I shouldn't repeat become heros for asserting their sexual freedom--their freedom from long-term attachments to people, rules, or traditions. One might say this is the liberal refuge for scoundrels.

But then, as Dr. Johnson's old line reminds us, there is patriotism. Bill Kristol is not a scoundrel, but war-loving patriotism can certainly cover over a multitude of problems.

Here I go protesting again: I actually admire "conservative" politicians who use war as a kind of trick to keep domestic political forces in line--Palmerston, Disraeli and (perhaps) Salisbury in Victorian Britain; and maybe good old Nixon. For that matter, Reagan. But somehow Kristol is a true believer. Somehow it would be better if he were a hypocrite.

UPDATE: Kristol said India is a natural ally of the U.S. these days, since it is familiar with the experience of dealing with a powerful enemy, right next door. Er ... as opposed to the U.S.? Surely, even counting 9/11, American civilians have had a remarkably peaceful life for a long time--at least as long as India has been at war with Pakistan.

Chamberlain made the mistake of misinterpreting the actions of a militaristic and ideological dictatorship, which really was on the way to conquering the known world; Chamberlain kept insisting that crises such as the Rhineland and the Sudetenland were flare-ups of local issues. Isn't Kristol in danger of making the opposite mistake--yoking together as many different local issues as possible in order to suggest that there is one big war going on, and Americans are in danger?

This struck me watching Law and Order last night (delayed running of the "Abu Ghraib" episode from Wednesday). The DA, played by Fred Thompson, gives the speech about how terrorist attacks either by Al Qaeda or linked to Al Qaeda are breaking out all over--he even mentions Bali. Isn't there at least a good question as to whether these incidents are all linked (whether, for example, Arabs join Chechens to help out with a centuries-old feud, not as part of an international conspiracy), and whether many or most of them threaten the U.S.? Above all, perhaps: what any or all of them have to do with Iraq?

I do like one Fred Thompson line: the U.S. has become the poster child for schadenfreude. (Referring to the fact that "we're blamed" for not interfering, such as in Rwanda, and for interfering, such as in Iraq). Not something you're going to hear every day on TV.

This is a problem for Canadian intellectuals. The U.S. is our best friend and ally, and biggest trading partner. There should never be anything pleasant for us in U.S. failure. Yet when they go in all boastful, and a few months later are asking for UN help, it is sometimes difficult not to smile.

UPDATE: I guess I should have just said what I told my class: this is one of those times when it's a relief not to be an American--or maybe specifically to be a Canadian. There is this odd feeling that we get to be spectators, stretching in fairly comfortable seats, maybe even having a snack, while the Americans are forced to actually make decisisions, and play out a potentially terrible drama. This can't be quite the way it is though.

What's Wrong with Canada?

For various reasons, I find myself protesting again: I really don't agree with the National Post that Canada sucks.

But today's topic is: the relentless hypocritical campaign against anyone actually making a profit while offering health-care services.

Hypocritical because there are obviously services that have never been covered by Canadian Medicare: prescription drugs other than those administered in hospital; many long-term rehabilitation services; home-care; long-term care. Companies make profits in these areas of the system every day.

But: a mobile unit from the U.S. that provides certain MRI scans for cash in Ontario has to be shut down.

I can understand the argument that the same doctor can't have a mixture of OHIP or medicare patients and "cash" or private insurance patients. That's what used to happen in the 50s, and the "public" or "welfare" patients were treated like second-class citizens. (There may be a way, nevertheless, of combining two kinds of patients--I believe that's what other countries do).

In any case, that's not what this van was doing. It was cash only; it provided a service quickly that Canadian Medicare only provides after months of waiting. It helps patients identify what further services they need, so they can talk to their own doctor intelligently. What is the problem?

The bigger, almost collossally boring topic, is the new health care "deal" between Ottawa and the provinces. The only suspense for most people seems to have been: would the feds, whose fiscal situation is better, come up with enough cash to impress the provinces, or not? Apparently they did.

There is some debate which is at least somewhat interesting. Did the feds give up too much policy control over health to the provinces? Has Martin betrayed his predecessors Chretien and Trudeau by not sticking up for the federal presence? (More here). Is he in fact, as we are all beginning to think, a weakling who is in over his head, who was told all his life he was the Dauphin, he was entitled to be PM, etc.?

Was too much conceded to Quebec, in particular? (An old story). Is Martin actually a Joe Clark/Bob Stanfield Tory? (See Chantal Hebert in the Toronto Star here).

Getting back to the beginning of this post: why is there no real debate about reforming the system, rather than simply pumping in more cash? (See Rick Anderson, formerly of the Reform Party, writing in the Star here).

Should Canadians be concerned that these multi-billion dollar deals are cut among a dozen or so people in secret, rather than in a parliamentary debate? Another old story.

(Tom Walkom's attack from the left, also in the Star, here).

During the six years I didn't live in Canada, Mulroney came close to securing a constitutional deal called Meech Lake. He needed the agreement of premiers, who in turn could presumably deliver the votes of their respective provincial legislatures. Late in the day, with the deal in flames, Mulroney persuaded the premiers to come to Ottawa just for a few hours. Many of them took this literally, and didn't pack for overnight. He then somehow persuaded them to stay longer ("the future of Canada," and all that). Staffers were sent foraging around downtown Ottawa for shirts, toothbrushes, pajamas and underwear.

Then they had one of the legendary First Ministers meetings in the legendary Conference Centre (a former train station). These things had been televised before, especially under Trudeau, and people were kind of used to them. This Mulroney session got the highest ratings of any comparable session. Only....the premiers insisted on meeting in secret. Wall to wall reporters, many trying to think of something to say live in TV land--with nothing to cover. Whenever premiers went for a pee or a coke, they would be scrummed desperately. "What's going on?" "I'm not at liberty to say."

Honestly, Monty Python wouldn't have the guts to air this stuff--it's too implausible. Only it actually happened.

Iraq in September

16 or so substantial parts of Iraq are not under the control of either the U.S. and its allies, or the Allawi government. On the other hand, the fighting we see on TV is confined to pretty specific areas. As Mark Steyn says, in August: "In 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces, not a single US soldier died." (Via The Corner).

What's the worst case scenario now? A civil war that escalates, and lasts a long time? Perhaps with major U.S. military bases still in place, but U.S. soldiers pretty much staying out of the fighting? Is this consistent with the oil pretty much flowing? Is there at least a chance, as Steyn says, that Iraq will end up with a thug who is at least a bit better than Saddam? (I can't resist adding: about like Saddam was back when he was considered a staunch ally of the U.S.?)

Ali Sistani still seems to be the major player. As far as I know, no one in our media mentioned him, at least as the key spokesperson for the Shiites, before the shooting started. Apparently he thinks Sadr can still be brought into the process of holding elections and building a constitution, if he is given a position of some seniority. Allawi, on the other hand, wants Sadr to be treated simply as an enemy or a criminal.

Sistani succeeded in scuttling a constitution that would have given the Kurds and Sunni Arabs a veto over major changes. Does Sistani want some kind of raw majority rule that will be unacceptable to minorities?

I guess I agree with Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reynolds: the sooner elections can be held on a significant scale, the better. This should demonstrate the good intentions of the U.S., and isolate those insurgents who claim to speak for the people but have no intention of holding elections.

Michael Young, who has favoured the U.S. effort in Iraq, and has generally been optimistic, now worries about recent developments, and points to some particular mistakes in the past. He complains, surely with reason, that the analogies to Vietnam are much too limiting.

Matthew Yglesias suggests on Tapped that the religious Shiites are key. The U.S. had better hope these folks do well in any elections that are held, or the insurrection will grow. The bigger picture: as Yglesias has said before, the U.S. regards elections in the Middle East the way the Saudis do. Elections are only a good thing if they don't strengthen the wrong people.

Rather's memos

I won't say "Rather-gate," even with a change in font, because I think the "-gate" business has gone completely crazy.

I don't really have anything to contribute about the CBS memos, except to say that the whole episode ends up being a real tribute to the bloggers, and absolutely hilarious.

I guess it's a bit like engineers watching the fires in the WTC on 9/11, and not thinking about the buildings collapsing until it actually happens. Once someone made the observation that the famous memos looked they were word processed by a computer and software that did not exist in the 70s, it seemed blindingly obvious to a lot of people.

The memos' defenders fought back--a lot of the controversial features, if not all, could be produced on a specific IBM typewriter of the day. But only with a lot of hard work; and the machine was rare, heavy, and expensive (not your standard Selectric); and there is no evidence that such a machine was available to Killian. To date, apparently, no one has succeeded in generating a document that looks like the questionable memos using an old machine; hundreds or thousands of people have done so using Microsoft Word and default settings.

Now the Washington Post presents a detailed comparison of the (pretty clearly fake) memos, and actual memos produced in the office that allegedly produced the fake ones. (Via Instapundit; also viewable on Drudge). The office in question used an ordinary typewriter, not a rare and expensive one; there are mistakes in the fake memos in formatting, in some of the facts of Bush's career, and in military lingo.

I watched McLaughlin today for the first time in months, and I'm pretty sure there was more shouting about this than anything else.

"Fake, but Accurate"? The only allegation these memos ever promised to add to the story of Bush's National Guard service was that he violated a direct order in not going for his physical. Now Killian's secretary says the memos, while they were not produced in their present form by her, or in Killian's office in her time, accurately convey Killian's thoughts. She's in her 80's, and she was a secretary. Is she sure that Bush violated a direct order in not going for his physical?

In any case, imagine how Rather would want to run with this if someone else had been caught cheating: someone has deliberately fabricated memos, purporting to be official memos from the National Guard concerning Bush, in a deliberate attempt to contribute to the sense that Bush's service was dishonourable. Surely the biggest question is: who is/are the person or people behind the memos?

Is Rather even computer literate? Does he do his own e-mails? I gather that Clinton, for example, does not.

The whole thing has a tit-for-tit quality: we have recently gone through Kerry's Vietnam record in more detail than ever before; now it's Bush's turn. With Kerry's record we are wonderiing: was there enemy fire or not, did Kerry actually try to avoid danger to himself; did he work hard to get the citations he needed to get out of combat. With Bush we are talking about proportional fonts.

Bush did exactly what he signed up to do, including a lot of hours flying fighters, for about 4 years out of a 6 year commitment. From then on he clearly had "other priorities," to borrow from Dick Cheney. For whatever reason, there is no official record that makes him look particularly bad on this. Kerry was surely foolish to suggest that anything other than serving in combat, including serving in the National Guard, was tantamount to desertion.

Destruction of Embryos

Via Drudge: About 400,000 frozen human embryos are stored by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics in the U.S. alone. When a patient or couple has the child or children they were hoping for, there are often unwanted embryos left behind.

A new study shows, to the surprise of many, that clinics are often quite respectful in their actions. Some have a ceremony when embryos are destroyed--sometimes including a prayer; others insist that parents be involved, or simply that the parents take the embryos (knowing that the parents intend to destroy them). Some store embryos indefinitely until they can be used by an infertile couple. One clinic pursues an approach to IVF which minimizes the number of embryos that are implanted, and thus (I guess) the number that eventually die or have to be stored or destroyed.

Michael Kinsley has been known to say that pro-lifers including Bush are hypocrites in that they say so little about this. It seems pretty obvious that parents, often couples, who pursue IVF are the salt of the earth, and they intend to take very good care of any children they are able to conceive. They may even be Republican voters, so it may not be wise to antagonize them.

It has also been pointed out that "the right to choose" has one consequence when infertile couples are told that heaven and earth will be moved to give them the child they seek, and that child is treated as an especially precious patient as it grows in the womb; it has a different consequence when pregnant women are told they can dispose of the growing life within them as and when they choose.

The article I have linked to points out that the Catholic Church has been quite consistent: warning against IVF, partly because it will inevitably bring about the dilemmas caused by implanting several embryos in the hope that only one or two will grow and survive; and then either storing or destroying unwanted embryos. The article doesn't say how many are destroyed, but I have seen estimates of 100,000 per year or higher.

Kevin Drum, while a staunch pro-choicer, has suggested that there should be a way to treat abortion as more than a surgical procedure affecting only a pregnant women, especially late in pregnancy, while ensuring that it remains readily availabe, especially early in pregnancy.

What do pro-lifers in general think about IVF? Is the destruction of embryos mass murder? Should the law be changed so that everyone who takes part can be charged with murder?

Halpern is angry

Mark Halpern, the Republican novelist who did some speechwriting for Bob Dole in 1996, is angry at both parties, and their leaders, in this election. (Via Hit and Run).

There are lots of choice passages--Kerry understands his words but doesn't believe them; Bush believes but doesn't understand. Bush could have pursued a strategy of lightning strikes, as needed, in different countries, to persuade regimes to get rid of terrorists; instead he has become bogged down in Iraq.

Halpern is convinced there really is a clash of civilizations under way, and the U.S. needs more military spending, and more homeland defence, to wage this war. On the whole he probably has even more contempt for Kerry than for Bush.

Three years on, that is where we stand: our strategy shiftless, reactive, irrelevantly grandiose; our war aims undefined; our preparations insufficient; our civil defense neglected; our polity divided into support for either a hapless and incompetent administration that in a parliamentary system would have been turned out long ago, or an opposition so used to appeasement of America's rivals, critics, and enemies that they cannot even do a credible job of pretending to be resolute.

Bush and Pitt the Younger

Vanity Fair has a piece by Niall Ferguson comparing Bush to King Henry V. As recounted or embellished by Shakespeare, the young Prince Hal was dissolute, a party animal. He sobered up dramatically about the time he became king, launched an attack on France that was pretty well completely unprovoked, and enjoyed military success for a while, most famously at Agincourt. Alas, all this military success was reversed within a few years after Henry V's death--partly because his son was a weak king. Joan of Arc kicked the butts of the Brits a couple of times, too.

This is ridiculous, an obvious smear. Ferguson is shopping around for analogies to support the idea that Bush is reckless and lacking in judgment, that the war in Iraq has no real justification, and it will lead to disaster.

How about Pitt the Younger? From a book I borrowed from the library (by Derek Jarrett): England had succeeded in building a navy and an empire, fighting France in the 1750s and 60s, without imposing much martial discipline or inconvenience on its own population. Pitt's father, who became Lord Chatham, had not really lived up to his promise to make glorious war without asking much sacrifice, but "the splendid dream of Patriot war and colonial conquest, the glory of the Pitt family, retained much of its appeal."

War with France heated up again even before the French Revolution, but the Revolution forced everyone to re-interpret the war. Some cool heads saw that France was always France--even at the height of the Terror, when arguably there was no real government in France, or the nominal government truly wished for violent anarchy, in foreign policy it was arguably the old business of becoming dominant in Europe so as to build an empire that rivalled Britain's around the world. Once Napolean took over, he obviously had great ambition for himself and France, but he was in many ways the coolest of the cool customers.

Some in Britain welcomed the French Revolution as a part, even if a messy part, of a new age of enlightenment--especially benefitting the common man. At the opposite extreme were reactionaries who thought everything the Revolution attacked--the power of the old monarchies, the landed gentry, the churches--had to be relentlessly defended. For them dealing with France could never be the same old, same old--this new France had to be stopped, and indeed its influence was like a disease that had to be prevented from spreading in Britain and Ireland.

Pitt was inconsistent--partly because he was caught between a somewhat reactionary king (George III) and his own somewhat more enlightened views. (Jarrett insists Pitt wanted to make things better, more rational and enlightened, primarily for the landed gentry--he had little sympathy for the rising middle class, much less the poor). For years Britain paid levies and gave loans to Continental powers to encourage them to fight France, while largely confining her own efforts to naval battles. Pitt had at least some interest in negotiating with France, but often the King would not hear of it.

Pitt was at his most reactionary at home. In 1794 he suspended the right of habeas corpus (as Lincoln did during the Civil War). In 1795 he censored the press and prohibited meetings of more than fifty people unless they were licensed by the magistrates. There were so many government spies and agents provocateurs around, it was a constant problem trying to distinguish true radical plots from the fantasies of government agents.

As Jarrett says, it is easy to say in hindsight that Britain was actually enjoying fairly quiet years--with no sign of the spread of something like the French Revolution. Critics speak of Pitt's "reign of terror."

Yet there is a certain amount of injustice and even perversity in the charges made against Pitt. By definition, his strong measures were bound to seem unnecessary once they had been successful: it is easy to believe that what did not happen could never have happened.

There had been dozens of arrests which in England and Scotland had had the effect of preventing any outbreak that might have been planned, but in Ireland it was clear that there was worse to come.

Remembering 9/11

I will never forget the appalling shock of 9/11. I was at work, and a colleague who was late getting in said he heard on the radio that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. It might be deliberate. He turned on a radio at his desk, and of course the news followed. At noon I went to a diner across the street to see CNN. Lots of repeat footage, including Giuliani, as cool as a cucumber.

The war-bloggers seem to judge people as to whether they primarily felt grief, or anger; a sense of tragedy or an awareness of a criminal attack requiring retribution. One of my first remarks was "if the Palestinians think they're going to gain statehood--or anything else--from this, they're probably mistaken." Later that same colleague, possibly repeating CBC Radio, pointed out that Bin Laden had been involved in the attack on World Trade in 1993--perhaps he had never given up on destroying these buildings.

Eventually my son complained that my wife and I were obsessed with details of the attack--the exact sequence of events, what people inside did, and so on.

Of course there are people who literally refuse to believe that these huge buildings collapsed so suddenly because of these attacks. There must have been some kind of detonation--hence a conspiracy. How could they have collapsed so quickly--almost as fast as free fall, with no obstruction at all? How could so much concrete and other solid stuff be reduced to huge clouds of dust--in tiny particles--even before the buildings collapsed?

Engineers can apparently explain--although one thing that interests me is that very few engineers, watching on TV, expected the towers to collapse as fast as they did.

I still have a somewhat gruesome interest in what exactly was in that dust. Graydon Carter has an "Editor's Letter" in the September Vanity Fair on this (not on line). Some details: asbestos, PCBs from generator fuel and fluid from electrical transformers, glass particles, mercury from computers and fluorescent lights, concrete particles, dioxin.

In many ways the lack of preparation was amazing. In one tower, it was possible for people above the point of attack to walk all the way to the ground by stairs--but no one apparently knew that. Many people had the idea they could evacuate by going to the roof, where they would be picked up by helicopters. That had actually happened in 1993, but it had not been part of the official evacuation plan for years--and helicopters couldn't have landed that day. People who went up found a locked door leading to the roof. Some people walked all the way to the ground once, then went all the way back up to the office again. At one point a voice on the intercom actually urged people to stay in their offices. Many firefighters and other first responders died very bravely; but one account raised the question: if the firefighters made it up to a high floor with their back packs, what were they going to do? If the evacuation had been more rushed, those heavily laden firefighters might have prevented people from climbing down double-file.

In the film by the French brothers, it looks like there had never been an incident that attracted so many fire units before--and there was no protocol to establish who got priority on the radios.

The 9/11 Commission:

Despite weaknesses in preparations for disas-ter, failure to achieve unified incident command, and inadequate communi-cations among responding agencies, all but approximately one hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked below the impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders.

Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated them. What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U. S. govern-ment from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, pol-icy, capabilities, and management.

Imagination The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe lead-ers understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 pres-idential campaign.

Al Qaeda's new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U. S. governmen-tal institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the govern-ment had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: "Is al Qida a big deal?"

Birds at the Feeder

My wife has installed a bird feeder on the back deck or porch, with ramp extension. We get a great view of the birds from our kitchen. The best time may be the morning. This morning I was up with the dogs about 7:30, and there were maybe half a dozen doves out there. Mourning doves, like this? Later there were a pair of blue jays--stereotypically big and beautiful, but then they started fighting and making that horrible noise. We get a lot of grackles, and there seems to be one pair of cardinals around. Robins, of course, and some smaller ones I can't identify.

Here's a photo of a blue jay.