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Peggy Noonan met Margaret Thatcher at Reagan's funeral, and Thatcher apparently said: "This is the thing, you see, you must stay militarily strong, with an undeniable strength. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated."
Ah yes: the Falklands war.
The 9/11 Commission says there was no joint planning of the 9/11 attack--and probably no joint planning of anything at all.
Pro-war Glenn Reynolds says the Commission's credibility can be questioned. Others say that even if what the Commission says is true, the Bush administration never lied about this.
Reynolds says we need a detailed comparison of the Commission report and Stephen Hayes' book, and I agree. Matthew Yglesias has made a start (here and here).
Yglesias says Hayes' own arguments are fairly modest. Officials in Saddam's regime no doubt met with Al Qaeda activists from time to time. It would be strange if they didn't. Hayes (and some of his neo-con supporters) confirm that according to DNA results, Iraqis were not behind the 2001 anthrax attacks. At a public gathering, Hayes has said "specifically refute[ed] Laurie Mylroie's theory that Saddam was in some sense a 'sponsor' of al-Qaeda or in any way enjoyed a command-and-control relationship with the group."
Hayes admits that he has evidence of connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but no proof of anything more substantial. He is hesitant to admit that this evidence has not grown any stronger over the last two years, and that the Bush administration, ahead of anyone on earth, would have trumpeted the proof if there were any.
Questioned, Hayes says the Bush administration was correct not to leave this to chance. But no one really thinks the U.S. can, will, or should invade any country with the level of Al Qaeda contacts that Saddam's Iraq actually presented. Bush and many people around him were determined to invade Iraq. Period. We'll learn more about why as time goes by.
From the Globe and Mail Friday: migraine headaches are probably under-reported because people don't recognize the symptoms--they can be mistaken for ordinary tension headaches, or for sinus headaches, and they are likely to be mistreated in either case.
"Migraine headaches are often referred to as an invisible epidemic. They are the leading cause of absenteeism in the workplace."
I would also guess that people, maybe especially men, are unwilling to admit at work that they suffer from frequent headaches.
It strikes me that this, even more than say mental illness, points to some problem in the adaptation of human beings to our environment. Why so many disabling headaches? Do other primates get them?
From the NYT June 7--just made it into the TO Star today:
"Take Genghis Khan's Y chromosome, which is now found in 16 million men in Central Asia. It started as a single copy from the man himself in the 12th century. What drove this? Well, when he conquered a territory, he killed the men and systematically inseminated the most attractive women....My guess is that the Y chromosome of every living man has spent at least one generation in the testes of a warlord."
-- human genetics professor Bryan Sykes.
It is almost unbelievable that science confirms something that Nietzsche might have said.
Fred Kaplan comes down, on the whole, on the side of Reagan's defenders when it comes to the end of the Cold War. Reagan made two radical--arguably insane--proposals to Gorbachev: 0 nuclear missiles, and SDI or "Star Wars." It is doubtful that any alternative would-be president from that time would have made either of these proposals, let alone both. Gorbachev, on his side, deserves credit for deciding, and stressing to his own people in Moscow, that the Soviet system needed radical change. But he could only proceed if had some security about U.S. intentions, and with Reagan, he did.
Reagan surprised or worried his own true believers, such as Richard Perle, so if they were in charge, they wouldn't have done what he did, either.
Reagan--and Reagan alone, not in any way as a puppet on a string--deserves substantial credit for the end of Communism in Europe, and of the Cold War.
Meanwhile, there is also some discussion about the fact that the War on Terror really began in the Reagan years. Michael Young argues that by pulling out of Lebanon when he did, Reagan not only plunged that country into chaos. He created the conditions that led to increasingly dangerous groups of terrorists--including those who kidnapped Americans, who were supposed to be part of the "arms for hostages" in Iran-Contra, and those who ultimately formed Hezbollah and added to Israel's insecurity. The whole sequence of events strengthened the regime in Syria, which became a major sponsor of terrorism.
Add to this the fact that the allies of the U.S., and the victors in the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s, became the nucleus of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Did Reagan and the people around him completely ignore the threat of Islamic terrorism? (Fred Kaplan again) (As, presumably, did subsequent administrations)? Did Reagan even encourage Americans to think they didn't have to worry about such things--say, by his silence and his optimism?
UPDATE: And then there's good old Pakistan. See here and Galbraith's comment on Pakistan here.
Apparently, the Americans managed to get a new set of officials in place that is different from the people who would have been the first choice of Brahimi of the UN. Brahimi wanted to get away from the "old" IGC, and move to "technocrats" or people who weren't so identified with one narrow group. The U.S. instead has gone with the old IGC, minus Chalabi and Pachachi.
Chibli Mallat says in an interview:
"Brahimi tried to send most of the IGC home and get his man (Adnana Pachachi) in as president of Iraq. They resisted, and now we have a second-tier group, with even less legitimacy than the previous one, and without Pachachi. So everyone got severely mauled, and this is exactly what I wanted to prevent by preserving the IGC--which wasn't perfect, but hard to improve upon."
(Mallat still defends Chalabi, and has lots of interesting things to say. One can paraphrase that he is shocked at the terrible mistakes the U.S. has made, yet some pretty good outcomes are still possible. Via Hit and Run).
To their credit, the Americans also gave the mullahs less of a role than one might have expected.
Yet Sistani still seems to have a veto to a certain extent--for example, over the possibility of a built-in veto for the Kurds.
The announcement that many militias are going to be disbanded, or integrated into official governmental units, is good news--but it does not cover all the militias, and it has been announced before.
Should Sadr have been allowed to run for office?
Richard Gwyn raises a couple of interesting points in the Toronto Star:
1. Canada got a very good deal in the free trade agreement with the U.S. (signed by Reagan and Mulroney). Mulroney probably made himself unpopular in Canada by what was seen as sucking up to the president, but he got a good deal.
2. In the intervening years, with the movement of goods and people between the countries freer than ever (at least until 9/11), Canadians became more proudly Canadian, culturally insular, and almost anti-American. Freedom to trade is also the freedom to maintain diversity?
Matthew Yglesias has suggested that Canadians would benefit from joining the U.S.: they would mostly come down on the "blue state" or liberal side, and thus become part of the dominant majority of the only megapower.
This raises the question again: are there really noticeable cultural differences between Canada and the U.S.? Maybe we're moving a bit quicker on liberalization of pot and same sex marriage--but the latter is likely to be driven by the courts in both countries.
One big difference seems to be with war and defence spending. Maybe Harper will get elected, and spend a lot more on defence, but Canadians seem pretty happy with an armed force that can hardly do anything in a foreign country. Mulroney the pro-American made noises about new defence projects--first a submarine, then a helicopter (just as he attempted to pass legislation that would restrict abortion). But the Tories left office with little or nothing done, and the Liberals did not follow through.
Maybe Don Forbes needs to write a book about multiculturalism as Canada's distinct contribution to the world. Of course the U.S. is a very successful "melting pot," but there is still a tendency for people there to want to be one kind of American, with one creed, even a "way of life." The Pledge of Allegiance is still said in school, although the reference to "God" may be in trouble. Canada is perhaps more relaxed on what might be called "rituals of conformity," or unity; thus visible minorities can become comfortable more quickly, and remain comfortable even with visible differences.
You don't have to be a crazy conservative to think this may not work--there needs to be a somewhat irrational glue holding people together, more than a theory that "we're all the same underneath." (See Allan Bloom's essays on Othello and the Merchant of Venice; Merchant of V. also included here).
I don't know: is Sacramento as multicultural as Canada? San Antonio? New York?
Finally we get to see something like a debate between two major parties, each of which probably has a chance to form the government soon.
Stephen Harper wants a free vote on same sex marriage, and he wants to re-open the "hate crimes" law to ensure that religious people can quote and paraphrase what their traditions teach, i.e. that homosexuality is a sin, without being prosecuted for a crime.
On abortion and capital punishment he has no policy to do anything at all. He has said private members in his party will be able to introduce their own bills, which is obviously true. Harper would not be likely to support them, so the bills would die without being passed or even (probably) debated in any detail.
More generally, Harper wants to ensure that elected officials, not courts, have the final say on at least some social issues. His critics say this amounts to letting the majority determine the rights of minorities, and gutting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Paul Martin is actually not far from Harper on any of these specific issues, but he says he stands with the Charter and the courts. Martin used to say he wanted to empower back-benchers. Er, I guess not. It's the old joke again. It's a democracy, but a liberal democracy. Individuals should be free to practice or not practice a variety of sex acts, religion, divorce--free, in fact, to do almost anything except deliberate on public policy. We'll leave that to the courts.
Harper has certainly contributed to a lively debate, and it does not seem to be political suicide to say the things he is saying. He seems to agree there are more votes in tax cuts than in restricting abortion. His promise to increase defence spending and support the U.S. in (most of) its wars has also generated some controversy--mostly, it seems, because he is now promising to spend more than the treasury can sustain, especially with his proposed tax cuts. Reagan indeed.
Chalabi's files on Oil for Food? The ones that were going to prove the guilt of a lot of Saddam-lovers, if Chalabi ever chose to hand them over or share them? The ones that have already been the basis of a number of accusations of corruption in the international media?
Apparently, they're gone.
Somehow, with the highly-publicized raid on Chalabi's offices, the files were destroyed--not only a hard drive, but a back up.
As Josh Marshall says, this is "the dog ate my homework." Kevin Drum simply remarks that the whole sequence of events, beginning with Chalabi having exclusive control over these important documents, is "peculiar indeed."
An article in Discover (mostly not on-line) builds on what I've seen before. Domestic dogs are genetically almos identical to wolves, and their behaviour is generally that of immature wolves, or pups. Yet their appearance is generally very different, and the variety of types or breeds is amazing.
The article by Cynthia Mills refers to the same Russian experiment with foxes that the Nova show did. It seems that intensively selecting for "more docile" behaviour, such as would make it more acceptable to live with dogs, puts a hold on many kinds of development--animals remain immature. Remarkably, certain physical changes occur, whether in dogs, cattle or pigs--smaller size, pug-type faces, splotches on coats (including stars on foreheads in horses). For many thousands of years all that would have been "planned" by humans would be: let's feed the more docile ones.
"More docile" may mean slightly deficient in adrenaline and dopamine. It may be an immature, more docile dog that is especially eager to learn, to adapt--and remaining immature, as domestic dogs do, may be a sound way to remain adaptable.
If this view is right, it's not that a different set of genes is available, nor is it a matter of the position of genes on chromosomes. Instead, "the genome takes on an almost advisory role. It doesn't direct development; it just sets the process in motion and stabilizes it...It's not the [genetic] information that is altered; it's the way it is used."
The article ends with a brief mention of the genetic similarly between humans and chimpanzees. Rather than say the differences between us are somehow contained in the mere 2% of our genes that are different, it might be better to say we use the 98% of our common genes differently. For one thing, we may simply remain immature--curious, a bit crazy--compared to wild chimps.
There is a discussion of the work of Temple Grandin--famous from the title article in Oliver Sachs' "An Anthropologist on Mars." She works with animals headed to the slaughterhouse--and for both humane and commercial reasons, it is better to work with animals who take the last march fairly calmly. She has noticed that certain swirls of hair go with a greater tendency to anger and panic; "there are links between temperament and body type." The emphasis on leaner meat--which would be another "intense selection" pressure--has produced animals which are slender and longer-legged, but also flightier or more nervous.
All of this makes me want to read more.
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