Anthropomorphic Stuffed Tigers, Bratty Kids and Western Philosophers

This is such an obvious topic, I'm surprised I didn't think to write about it sooner.  I'm talking about one of the best comic strips of all time, and its subtle symbolic representation of two prominent Western philosophers.

This is going to be a short entry, because there isn't a lot to say, honestly.  The gist is that Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes' creator, partially based both of them on the philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.  He used the philosophers as a basis for the characters' names, and incorporated bits & pieces of the philosophers' teachings into the characters' personalities and beliefs. Here's one example:

It's a brilliant allegory that I went years without noticing.  Calvin (the theologian) believed in predestination, while Hobbes (the theorist) did not - although Hobbes (if I'm reading this right) also rejected the concept of free will.

There are many other examples of the philosophers' teaching popping up throughout the comics.  I may have to revisit my Calvin & Hobbes collection soon, to see how many I can spot.

Hacking Pandora's Server

This is going to be a hot take (I think that's the term kids are using these days - okay, I'll stop trying to be cool now) about a news story I saw earlier.  BoingBoing reports that computer techie types meshed an NSA cyberweapon with an old ransomware strain, and used amalgamation in the Wannacry ransomware attack from May of this year.

Here's what I think is the most important part of the story: the US develops this revolutionary super-weapon, and some unscrupulous party gets their hands on it, leading to dire consequences.  This isn't the first time something like this has happened, by the way.  I'm beating the drum about nuclear weapons because they provide many examples of dire consequences, but there are other weapons and technologies we probably don't want falling into the wrong hands.  For example, UAVs (drones).  Right now, the United States has a substantial lead in drone technology over other countries, but it's naive to think that could never change.  Despite the justifiable criticisms of how America employs drones, it has shown some level of restraint (such as mostly refraining from conducting strikes over major urban areas - see the two images below).

The MQ-9 Reaper can carry several different munitions, including an air-to-ground antitank missile.  Imagine what one of those could do to a crowd of people in a major city.  Do you think it's impossible that someone might give the order to do so eventually?

Here's what I'm getting at.  The United States is pretty talented when it comes to creating new weapons, but it doesn't put a lot of thought into anything after that.  This lack of planning eventually comes back to haunt us, because other countries or groups figure out how to copy our tech or make their own versions.  It's arrogant to think that we're the only country smart enough to invent these things. 

So what's the answer?  Do we destroy these weapons once we realize the potential damage they could create, along with all the research behind them? That's a good thought.  Imagine if the people spearheading the Manhattan Project demolished all the machinery and burned their notes right after the Trinity Test, or Fritz Haber destroyed his work in 1914.  Wouldn't we all be better off? Not necessarily.  Like I said earlier, it's arrogant to assume that nobody else can develop something.  The US wasn't the only nation conducting atomic weapons research in the 1930s and 1940s; if it had unilaterally halted development on the A-bomb, what country would have been the first to develop one? Probably the Soviet Union.  How different does the Cold War look if the USSR is the only country with this weapon of unprecedented destructive capability? Even the stolen NSA techno-weapon worked so well because the agency smugly assumed nobody else would discover the vulnerability in Microsoft's SMB protocol that it found.  Oops.

The best solution I can come up with is to define what is or isn't permissible early on, when you're the only one in possession of this new weapon.  The way you use the weapon creates a norm for the rest of the world on what's acceptable.  At the same time, start crafting and implementing international laws and conventions to govern the use of this new weapon; so that there's a standard with a little more authority than an unofficial norm in place.  None of these things are perfect, and nations (or people) can violate norms, laws, or conventions at will; but it's better than nothing.  And getting ahead of the problem in this way is easier than rushing to play catch-up once the weapon is everywhere.

Finally, stop using the weapon the way a kid treats an expensive new toy on Christmas morning.  Looking at you, United States.

The Question of Equality

There was this short story Kurt Vonnegut published in 1961 called Harrison Bergeron. I first read when I was a freshman at Gonzaga University, back in 1998, and it kind of stuck with me since then.  It's short enough that you can read the whole thing in about five minutes (here's a link to the whole story), but a core element of the story is that it's set in a society where everybody has been made equal. Intelligent people wear earphones that broadcast distracting noises at regular intervals, attractive people wear ugly masks, strong people must constantly wear extra weights, and so on.  The reason for this was to discourage competition and make sure nobody had an advantage over anybody else.

So why am I talking about some fifty-year-old Vonnegut novella that I read about a long time ago? Well, because it's core theme of universal equality ties in to a bunch of centuries-old writings by some very smart and observant people. First, there was this French citizen named Alexis De Tocqueville.  Tocqueville spent some time in the United States a few decades after the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Constitution.  At the time of his journey, democracy was something of a new concept in the Western world, and France was one country still figuring out what it meant. Tocqueville found many things to praise about American democracy, but he also found some potential flaws.

One such problem was what Tocqueville called the "equality of conditions", a phenomenon which he felt could eventually lead to a lack of freedom.  His thinking was that the seeds of the problem were planted because democracies tend to grant significant authority to the citizens, giving them the impression that their opinions mattered just as much as anyone else's.  Tocqueville believed this could lead to the tyranny of the majority pretty quickly, as well as setting the stage for further problems.  First, he speculated that the fear of tyranny of the majority would cause some people to grow reluctant to voice their opinions, so they didn't land on the wrong side of the issue as the majority.  If you don't think that could happen, go read up on the Asch Experiments.

Tocqueville also worried that the fear of majority rule could lead to a backlash, where citizens developed a skewed version of individualism, one marked by increased materialism.  I don't fully understand Tocqueville's points here, but he seems to be saying that the materialism becomes a way for someone to reaffirm their individual significance: "Look at all the stuff I have! I matter!" This individualism would also lead to a breakdown in communal bonds (something Tocqueville considered important).  As people became more isolated, they turned to the government to provide goods and services which their communities once did.  Tocqueville called this condition of being overly reliant on the government "democratic despotism", which created a massive bureaucratic government that could easily enforce real despotism.  The Founders were really worried about that, remember?

(By the way, it's probably not a coincidence that Tocqueville is a fan of conservatives and libertarians, because of his remarks about "democratic despotism"; one site I visited while researching this piece tried to connect social safety programs to Tocqueville's despotism and socialism/communism.  Quite the slippery slope argument.)  

Tocqueville understood that there was an inverse relationship between equality and liberty, and so did the Founders.  This is pointed out in Federalist 10, one of the most well known Federalist writings, in a slightly roundabout way:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.  There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.  There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

I've been making a roundabout argument myself, but I'm referencing Vonnegut and Tocqueville to point out the parallels between Vonnegut's story and Tocqueville's observations.  Vonnegut was being somewhat satirical by taking the concept of equality to an absurd conclusion, but the dangers Tocqueville foresaw are real.  And to some degree, they have already happened: I think the 2016 election is a good example of what happens when a large number of people decide that their uninformed opinions are just as valid as the opinions of people who have done their research.  Tocqueville understood what Socrates taught several hundred years ago, regarding the dangers of democracy; and I think he'd also agree wholeheartedly with this awesome quote.

So am I against legislation like the Civil Rights Act, the ADA, the social safety net, a progressive income tax, and all the other programs that help make the playing field a little less uneven? Of course not.  I'm just pointing out the potential dangers of taking it too far.  There is also another type of equality I think is preferable: equality of opportunity.  I didn't get a chance to really look into it in-depth, but an easy analogy is a running race, where everybody takes off from the same starting line. This picture sums up what I think is an optimal solution to work toward.

 So, that is kind of a long one.  I guess I was making up for taking such a long break.  Anyway, enjoy.

Another Israeli/Hezbollah War Brewing?

Okay, so I've been lax about posting new entries the last eleven days.  Sorry about that - life happens sometimes.  Anyway, I wanted to fire off a quick post about a Tweet that caught my attention earlier today.  Kudos to Sulome Anderson, a freelance (?) combat journalist, for catching this. 

I posted a pic of the Tweet because it's easier to show it than paraphrase it, but Sulome suggests it might be related to an increase in aggression toward Hezbollah forces in Syria.  Her contacts have mentioned that the US has taken a more confrontational stance toward Hezbollah forces in Syria, and some of them (her contacts) believe it's a signal that a war with Israel (with America's backing) may be coming.

So could this be a sign that something's brewing? Maybe. On one hand, if the Tweet is connected to elevated hostilities toward Hezbollah, it meshes neatly with one of Trump's main reasons for not certifying the JCPOA: Iran's sponsorship of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations - which, although likely true, is not an issue the JCPOA covers, and thus not a valid reason for decertification.  Second, go read the official White House statement regarding the decertification; I just read it for the first time, and holy shit does it sound like Trump's making a case for war.  Third, the Israeli Defense Minister accused Hezbollah of deliberately firing rockets at the Golan Heights yesterday, but those accusations were later walked back. 

On the other hand, Trump's Tweet could be entirely about him carrying out one of his duties as Commander in Chief by remembering 241 fallen American service-members; or trying to salvage his reputation with the troops, military families, and veterans after the recent fiasco.  I don't believe the former scenario is plausible based on Trump's past conduct, but the latter one makes a bit of sense.  Trump isn't known for thinking ahead, either - meaning, sometimes a Tweet is just a Tweet.  He's also known for pushing decision-making authority down to his subordinate commanders; so the obvious question is, who is behind the increasingly hostile posture toward Hezbollah? Trump and the White House, or the ranking ground commander? Either answer is bad, but for different reasons.  If Trump is authorizing the hostility, it may be another sign he's itching for a war, somewhere/somehow.  If it's the ground commander, it's possible Trump doesn't know this is happening.

A lot of the signs of impending war are conjecture, I'll admit.  It's a pretty flimsy case, and Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one - which is that this is another one of Trump's random Tweets.  I think it's a situation worth keeping an eye on, though.

The Times, They Are A'Changing. . .

I want to start this post with a simple thought experiment, but before I do that, I want to mention an article I read earlier that inspired this post. This morning, I stumbled across an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts Jr articulating the direction he thinks the Democratic Party should take in response to  Donald Trump and the modern GOP.  That direction, in Pitts' opinion, should be a hard left.  I would probably mangle Pitts' main point if I tried paraphrasing it, so I will just quote directly from the article:

"What if Democrats were as bold and definitive as he, but for universal healthcare, sane immigration reform, a living wage, fixing the broken justice system, jobs training and day care for families on public assistance, addressing climate change, and not blowing up the world in manhood-measuring contests with Asian dictators? What if they were pugnacious and uncompromising in the service of simple decency? Of inclusion and compassion? Of just treating people right?"

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article178599721.html#storylink=cpy

Sounds more than a bit Bernie Sanders-ish, doesn't it? I'll come back to the quote later; now, let's perform that thought experiment.  Ask yourself a question: what do you think the founding fathers would do if we were somehow able to bring them to the present and give them the task of redesigning the government they had built? Do you think the government they would come up with would resemble the one they originally created? If so, how? Assume that we were somehow able to bring them up to date on the important events and advances that had happened in the roughly 250 years since they had founded the United States: the Civil War, the moon landing, the Great Depression, both World Wars, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, 9/11, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, airplanes, the internet, radio and television, automobiles, antibiotics, the interstate highway system, and indoor plumbing. Those are the major ones I could remember off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many others.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so let me also illustrate my point visually.  Here is the USS Constellation. The one on the left was commissioned in 1855; it still exists as a tourist attraction in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  The one on the right was commissioned approximately 100 years later, and was retired in 2003.
 

Quite a difference a century (give or take a few years) makes, wouldn't you say? Circling back to my thought experiment, what do you think the founders would think if they saw this side-by-side comparison? This image is a microcosm of how the United States, and also a great part of the world, has changed since the day that the ink on the Constitution dried.

And that is the heart of the issue, right there. The founders championed the concept of small government, as one way of safeguarding individual liberty (another principle they championed quite heavily). Here are a couple quotes to reinforce that point.

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." – John Adams, 1765

The logic went that a small government would consist of fewer laws and regulations to stifle its citizens, and also lack the means to impose its will on them. There is certainly something to be said in support of that reasoning.  Let's use the National Security Agency as an example, because it's an obvious and important one. We all know from the Snowden documents that the NSA has been collecting and storing virtually all of our digital communications: phone calls, text messages, emails, social media posts - basically everything it could get its hands on. The NSA is "big government" in terms of its mission and capabilities, not really its size (it *probably* has fewer employees than the IRS, but more than the EPA), because its ability to access our digital communications is a very potent capability. Now, is the NSA a tool of oppression? As it stands now, not really. Five minutes ago, I Googled "How many employees does the NSA have?" so I could include a specific number in this blog post, before I decided I didn't need to. I'm not going to have some secret police agents show up at midnight because of that Google search, and to my knowledge no other American citizen has either. However, it's not difficult to imagine that it could happen some day (if you don't think it could, read up on Germany's history from 1920 to 1945), which is why the founders thought it was a good idea to remove the potential for such abuses of power, by keeping government small and also crafting a set of protections against oppressive government.

Now let's look at a more mundane category of big government: arbitrary and excessive regulations.  I've linked to a couple examples here, here, here, here, and here.  There are probably hundreds more out there.  Everybody has a story or a hundred about some frustrating and ridiculous government regulation in our everyday lives.  Want to start your own business? You'll probably need to get a few permits.  Want to build a garage on your property? You'll need permits for that too.  They rob us of hard-earned money and time, and the implication is often that we're not competent enough to run our own lives.  And more than that, they inhibit economic growth in a variety of ways.  Big government is also a self-reinforcing problem, since government agencies constantly look for ways to maintain and expand their mandates, so they can get bigger budgets year after year. And then, there's taxes, which are another source of irritation for a lot of people. (That's nothing new, remember the Boston Tea Party?)

So yes, a big, bloated government gets a lot of flack - which it deserves.  But here's the other side of it. Remember that picture of the two ships? Small governments don't build ships like that aircraft carrier. Small governments don't build cross-country interstates, air traffic control networks, university networks, or other things that help a country flourish. The concept of small government as it existed 200-some years ago is obsolete. No country that tried to operate that way would do well - there have been far too many significant technological changes.

In addition to technology, there's another key factor: population.  See the graph right above this? There are now approximately 320 million people in the United States. What do we do with them all? Those people need certain necessities to live: food & water, shelter, medicine, clothing. Forget everything else: cars, TVs, higher education (in fact, I'd like to see fewer people go to college; but that's another post in itself). People need the absolute basics so that they're not dying in the streets.  It's not just "unicorns and rainbows" generosity, either.  When enough people start having to go without, especially when they can remember better economic times, social unrest is just around the corner. There's a saying I've heard a few times that captures the concept pretty well: "Any society is only three meals away from revolution." So at minimum, the population needs to have safety nets in place to catch people who hit on hard times; and that falls on the government, since absolutely no other part of society has the resources or the responsibility to perform this task.  And if a country wants to do more than just get by, it needs to make investments in its citizens: quality education, health & disease prevention programs, environmental safety, and so on.

Of course, there are legitimate questions about limited resources and long-term costs. If the population keeps growing like it has, eventually it will break the bank or use up all the resources. It has to hit a peak sometime, because nothing can continue indefinitely. Then we're really in a bad spot. Certainly, we'll have to make some hard decisions in the future (maybe even the near future.)  But right now, I've got good reason to be skeptical of politicians raising those questions, because nearly all of them are not being honest about it.  The ACA, for example, was attacked because of its massive cost (among other reasons), but so far, efforts to dismantle or undo it have been shown to cost more than leaving it alone would have.  Also, recent proposed legislation included provisions that would have slashed tax revenue or tacked on billions in additional spending.  I have also heard very little about halting production on the F-35 program. These inconvenient facts make me question the urgency of "starving the beast." Maybe they're right, though. But I have trouble believing them when their priorities are so warped.

To circle back to my thought experiment from the beginning, I don't presume to know what the founding fathers would have done, because I could point to many primary sources that support my claim just as someone else could point to ones that refute it.  There are a lot of areas where big government has grown out of control, in potentially dangerous ways like the NSA's mass surveillance program, and in irritating ways like overzealous regulators and nonsensical rules.  But despite these drawbacks, Americans are still free in more ways than they are not, and the benefits we receive outweigh the costs.  Leonard Pitts' vision for the Democrats seems like a good one, one that will help America flourish.

Thoughts on North Korea

So. . .some recent news stories prompted me to write a military news-themed post - one of the main areas I had originally planned to focus on, before this blog went slightly off the rails.  But that's water under the bridge.  Now, before I dive into this post, I want to make a disclaimer.  My Army service gives me some insight into the military's planning and warfighting processes, but I'm hardly the Second Coming of General Patton.  Truth is, I only scratched a little bit below the surface when it comes to knowledge of those areas.  This is only a collection of somewhat educated guesses, so take them with a grain of salt.  Moving on to the main topic. . .

There have been a handful of news stories over the past two or three days reporting that North Korean hackers acquired a huge chunk of classified data from a South Korean government database, in the neighborhood of 235 gigabytes, last September.  South Korean officials aren't sure what North Korea acquired, but the stolen information reportedly includes joint American-South Korean war plans and proposals for decapitation strikes meant to assassinate Kim Jong Un. To me, that's incredibly important, since tensions remain high and President Trump seems hell-bent on locking the US into a war with North Korea.

I can't emphasize how much of an advantage this gives the North Korean military.  Let's use football as an analogy. When a team is trying to move the ball into the end zone, it generally has two options available: passing or running. Now, the team can develop any number of plays to run or pass the ball, but it essentially has two main options.  It might pull a trick play from time to time, but it won't base its entire offense on wacky strategies like (to take this idea to the absolute extreme) playing two quarterbacks simultaneously or using the kicker to move the ball downfield.

The same thing holds true for warfighting plans.  Any contingency plans the US military develops will share the same basic similarities, because that is just the reality of war.  For example, the military's options at the start of the conflict would be to charge across the DMZ or secure a foothold somewhere else in North Korea.  A frontal charge across the DMZ would incur a lot of casualties, because North Korea expects that and has rolled out countermeasures for it. We could - maybe - create an opening by conducting a massive aerial bombardment/artillery barrage, but I don't know how effective that would be.  It does have the option of letting the military assemble troops and supplies in a safer environment, though.  The other option would be securing a foothold somewhere in North Korea.  That option carries risks of its own.  But assuming it works, once the first wave of troops secures a foothold, it will need a way to deliver supplies, vehicles, additional troops, and other important items.  That means airstrips and/or deep-water ports are prime pieces of real estate, because ships and cargo aircraft are the best ways of transporting supplies in huge quantities.  Those are basically the military's only two options, and they both have pluses and minuses.  Then, if you start thinking about what the military needs in order to fight and win the war, while keeping the supply pipeline flowing, and it becomes clear how few options are really available.

There are also other limitations, such as the number of troops and quantities of supplies available (assembling an invasion force would mean pulling some troops out of somewhere else, such as western Europe or Afghanistan), and equipment capabilities and limitations (our tanks and aircraft are far superior than Korean War era ones; but those are evolutionary, not revolutionary, changes). Additionally, North Korea can correctly anticipate how the US and South Korea will fight based on joint exercises and how the US has fought in the past.  Whatever the US did at the start, a massive bombardment and/or artillery barrage would probably precede any ground assault.  That's just my prediction, but the US is kind of predictable.  There's also the fog of war: things tend to go wrong in unpredictable ways and at unpredictable times.

Long story short, the US is boxed in here.  Any new war plans it develops will be constrained by logistical, technological, and tactical limitations, to the point that they look a lot like the old war plans.  Creating wholly new war plans is unlikely, in my opinion, because there's a lot of painstaking, time-consuming, and possibly dangerous work involved.  And given Trump's unhelpful rhetoric, time might be in short supply.

Again, though, I'm hardly an expert military tactician; but this is just my $.02.

Criminal Justice Misconceptions in the United States

Everyone's probably heard that old saying about "Do the crime, do the time", right? If you could go back in time to ancient Rome, there were probably people saying it back then, in Latin or whatever they spoke back then.  And why not, right? The saying makes a lot of sense.  If you commit a criminal offense, be prepared to accept the punishment if you get caught.  I bought into it for a long time, approximately into my early 20s; and while I still stick by it to some degree, I figured out that it oversimplifies a complex equation.  Doing some independent learning and interacting with people from other walks of life helped me realize that it's it's not the simple cause-and-effect relationship I had believed it was.  Not everyone agrees, though - especially the "law and order" types - some of whom have a lot of misplaced faith in the system.  So I thought I'd dedicate this post to dispelling a few misconceptions.

The criminal justice process for a suspected criminal, from start to finish, has a lot of fragile points where things can go off the rails.  Maybe the police arrest the wrong person.  Maybe the jury doesn't know what it's doing.  Maybe the assigned public defender was overworked.  Maybe there was another problem that research shows doesn't work.  The point is that the process was created by people, is maintained by people, and relies on people to function.  Imperfect people, who get bored, stressed, petty, overconfident, nervous, forgetful, and so on.

Those are just the possible points of failure when steering an individual through the process, from investigation and arrest to trial to sentencing (if they're convicted) to incarceration.  Once you widen your gaze to look at the justice system as a whole, you start seeing a lot of other ways in which the "do the crime..." slogan gets muddled.  Let's start with this one: asking whether the crime in question should even be a crime.  Like consuming drugs.  Assuming someone doesn't do something reckless or harmful while under the influence, why should taking any drug be a crime? (Notice I said taking, not manufacturing or distribution; those are separate issues.)  A person who takes a mind-altering substance under safe conditions in the privacy of his or her own home should not face any repercussions.

There's also the issue of whether the punishment is proportional in relation to the crime.  Using drug-related crime again may be me being too lazy to think of a better example, but it is what it is.  The federal penalty for any amount of marijuana is up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine - for the first offense.  The penalties go up for repeat offenses.  Again, I ask "why?" For the simple act of possession? I understand that deterrence plays a part, as in making the punishment hurt enough so a person's not tempted to commit a crime again, and I agree to some extent.  But we should be making sure first, that we're not punishing people for a victimless crime, and second, that the punishment doesn't go too far in the name of deterrence. The death penalty is a good example of excessive punishment as intended deterrence.  Its effectiveness as deterrence is still being debated, but I think I would still oppose it even if it was effective, simply because of its finality.  What happens if you execute an innocent person? That has happened alarmingly often, and even if the person being executed is not innocent, all of the current methods of execution are horrific and easily (in my opinion) qualify as "cruel and unusual punishment," which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.  I'm not saying this out of sympathy or pity for a confirmed murderer, by the way.  When someone who willingly and remorselessly took another person's life leaves this world, I don't feel too badly about it.  I'm more worried about what it says about our society that we allow gruesome and excruciatingly painful punishments on someone, even one whose guilt is indisputable and would likely kill again - even someone as vile as Jeffery Dahmer, for example.  Potassium chloride - the "lethal" component of a lethal injection - has been compared to being burned from the inside out, and it's sad that some states would rather switch to an untested mix of drugs than put a halt to executions.  What does that do to the person who has to carry out the execution? And what does that say about a government that sanctions it?

Another important thing to remember is that, depending on the crime, a punishment should be meted out with the possibility of reintegrating the criminal into society.  Obviously, some classes of criminals should be jailed indefinitely, or at least until they don't present a threat any longer.  Violent criminals come to mind.  But the rest should be treated in a way that doesn't transform them into hardened, lifelong criminals themselves.  Teach them skills, give them access to educational opportunities, let them keep one foot in civilization through things like video games, books, and other recreational aids.  That sounds like one of those "country club" prisons that catch so much flack, but it's really not.  It's for the benefit of several parties: the inmates, the guards, and society in general.

There's a lot more I could probably say on the subject of the criminal justice system, but I think I'll wrap it up here.  The bottom line is that the "eye for an eye, plus an extra measure" mentality is outdated, counterproductive, and needlessly cruel.  Unfortunately, as long as we have extreme "law and order" advocates occupying some of the highest posts in the country, nothing is likely to change.

The Podcast list

I cranked this out as a "filler" post, while I keep working on a few posts I have in queue.  I thought it might be fun and interesting to see what podcasts I listen to regularly, for news/current events and analysis.  I don't listen to every episode - that would be way too time-consuming - but these are the ones I listen to most often.  So, in no particular order, here they are.

• Deep State Radio is a twice-a-week roundtable discussion of significant political events.  The show's four regulars consist of two journalists (one from the Washington Post and the other from the New York Times), and a pair of academics.  There's also a steady series of guest commentators popping in and out.  Bonus points for the clever show name, too.
• Congressional Dish is a one-woman weekly podcast.  Jen Briney, the host, puts a lot of research into every episode.  I agree with 80-90% of what she says, depending on the episode, and I really commend her for producing a podcast that delivers a lot of useful information about Congressional bills that may affect all of us.
• Common Sense is a unique animal.  The host, (Dan Carlin, someone I've mentioned on the blog before)  is a self-described "political martian", but while his ideas are outside the mainstream, they're not really that farfetched.  Dan likes to take the long view, as in envisioning what things will look like if current trends continue for years or decades; and he's also a big history buff, so he's usually quick to say "Hey, we've done something like this before, and it didn't really work out well." He's a bit slow in getting out new episodes because his audio engineer is always sick (inside joke for people who remember the early episodes), but the wait is worth it.  EDIT (10/14): I just wanted to add a short postscript to this bullet point.  Since I published this post, I've learned that Dan Carlin will probably be discontinuing Common Sense - almost certainly for the short-term, and maybe even indefinitely.  This means we could be losing a popular political commentator with a unique perspective, and that's a huge loss.
• Ken Rudin's Political Junkie also comes out weekly, and is filled with arcane and obscure bits of trivia.  It usually compares current events to analogous historical events.  I think it's a bit dry and too technical even for political wonks like me, but it's good for looking at current events under a microscope.
• Left, Right, and Center is another weekly podcast, and it uses the roundtable discussion format as well.  You probably guessed from the title, but this podcast features discussions from people representing opposite ends of the political spectrum, as well as a centrist thrown in to keep things interesting.  It seems to have gotten livelier over the past few years, and maybe a bit more contentious or polarized (I thought a shouting match was going to break out two weeks ago), but the participants still manage to have thought-provoking debates. 
• FiveThirtyEight is another excellent podcast.  Nate Silver and his crew have lost a step since correctly predicting the 2012 election, but they're still very well-informed and insightful.  I only started listening to this one over the summer, but have been listening more often in the last month or so.

Those are the Big 6.  I'd also like to give honorable mentions to Arms Control Wonk, NPR Politics, Vox's The Weeds, and Power, Politics, and Preventive Action.  I listen to the first three sporadically, and the last one is kind of a weird podcast.  It released twenty episodes on July 20th & 21st, and hasn't released a new episode since.  It's content is dated, but still worth a listen.

All these podcasts are on iTunes, by the way.  Okay, that's a quick and easy post until my next one comes out (hopefully in a day or two.)

Lessons (not) learned from Vietnam

The recent PBS series on the Vietnam War and the recent debate over the national anthem got me thinking about the parallels between then and now, and I'm putting my thoughts into this stream-of-consciousness post about how little has changed since the end of the war.  Specifically, how little we (as a country) have learned since then.  Let's look at the lessons we thought we learned, but then discarded.

First, the US government (the White House and the Pentagon) fell back into the habit of sending troops to fight wars for flimsy justifications, vaguely-defined objectives, and inadequate equipment and resources.  This hasn't happened all the time, but more often than not, the troops went in without what they needed for victory: a coherent plan, resources that matched the objective, and a valid reason to fight.  When it comes to smaller, shorter conflicts, the score is about even.  Grenada and Panama didn't become quagmires, but Somalia and Lebanon did.  In regard to large-scale conflicts, the tally is pretty one-sided.  The 1990-91 Gulf War had a clear mission and sufficient resources, if a rationale that was more about economics than security; but on the other side of the ledger, we have Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Iraq Part II.

There was supposed to be a deep discussion about America's use of military power in the wake of Vietnam, but it never really got off the ground.  Not enough to lead to any meaningful changes, anyway.  The senior officers who hoped to avoid a repeat of the Vietnam quagmire succeeded for a few years, and during that time they managed to implement meaningful reforms.  For example, when Colin Powell served in the White House as a military assistant to Secretary Weinberger, he helped craft the "Weinberger Doctrine", which acted as a litmus test for when to commit US troops.  The war hawks eventually outmaneuvered those senior officers, though, and critics who charged that the Doctrine was so narrow that it practically guaranteed US troops would never be deployed anywhere.  Vaguely-defined missions began to come back into favor in the 1990s, and became standard procedure after 9/11.

Washington also ably deflected any deep discussion by transitioning from a draftee military to an all-volunteer force.  Richard Nixon wisely calculated that halting the draft would deflate anti-war protests, and he was right.  Once the overall population stopped having a stake in America's wars, they stopped worrying that they might someday get dragged into a quagmire conflict.  This weakened the bond between the military and the general population, and gave military leadership much more license to send the military anywhere they wanted.  Somewhere along the way, Congress (which holds the power to declare war) stopped holding the president accountable in any meaningful way.  How it got there is a story about a lot of boring political maneuvering, but the moral of the story is that "accountability" was a sham.  Political appointees and mid-level staffers took the fall for military failures, partisan bickering replaced debate, and nobody asked the questions that should have been asked after Vietnam.  Which brings us to the present, where history is repeating itself.

I'm almost done here, but I'd like to make one more point.  To me, this isn't an academic debate.  I served in the Army for four years and spent five years after that as a defense contractor.  During that time, I made several trips to combat zones and deployed locations.  My experiences have made me very skeptical of how the government employs the military, to the point where I oppose a military intervention by default unless I see a very good reason for it.  I'm probably not evaluating a military intervention impartially, but I don't really care if I'm being fair or not.  I think being extremely skeptical is preferable to not being skeptical enough.  Every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine is someone's child/parent/sibling/friend, and if the president and the senior generals put them in harm's way, they need to be absolutely certain that the sacrifice is worth it.  Anything less is morally repugnant in my opinion.

More War on Terror allegory - Marvel's Civil War and The Ultimates 2: Grand Theft America

This is a sort-of continuation to my August 30th post, because it's about how the War on Terror was portrayed in a few other works of fiction.  I guess the War on Terror inspired a lot of creative works, both nonfiction and fiction.  Anyway, there are two works I'm zeroing in on; coincidentally, both were produced by Marvel Comics.

The first one was Marvel's Civil War storyline, which ran from July 2006 to January 2007 and affected pretty much every character in the Marvel universe.  (It doesn't have much in common with the 2016 Captain America movie, besides a mega-battle between two groups of superheroes, though.) At least two Marvel employees have stated that it was largely inspired by the War on Terror.  Axel Alonso, Marvel's editor-in-chief, said "Much of the public debate around that time was, 'How much of your civil liberties are you willing to give up for your security? Many of us were riding on trains having our bags inspected by soldiers. We were in constant 'orange alert' in New York. That discussion was the seed for what became Civil War." Mark Millar, who gets most of the credit for creating the storyline, made similar statements.  The War on Terror's influence is easy to spot throughout the series: for example, the extra-dimensional prison symbolizes Guantanamo and the "Superhuman Registration Act" represents the PATRIOT Act.  Like every other comic book, Civil War is mostly a punch-up between people with superpowers and gaudy spandex outfits; but in between battles, it manages to slip in a handful of moral conundrums specifically pertaining to the War on Terror.  Questions such as these:

• Do you still support the government when it's doing something morally questionable? What if the government's actions are outright illegal? Are people obligated to follow a clearly unjust or immoral law? Who are the "bad guys" in these scenarios - the people who break unjust laws or the people who enforce those same laws?
•  Are there any situations where it's justified to deny individuals legal rights and inflict harsh, possibly cruel, punishments? Civil War stretches the comparison to the War on Terror a bit, because the individuals in question have superpowers, but it's easy to make a connection between the hi-tech gulag-like conditions depicted in the comic and "enhanced interrogation" measures (torture) and denying due process to Gitmo detainees.
• How far is "too far" when it comes to protecting the country? Are detestable acts suddenly permissible? What if those acts betray the country's values?

I wish I had images of the comic panels where these issues are brought up, because that would be a better way to highlight them than me trying to describe them.  I couldn't find any good images, though.  Anyway, Civil War was a slightly above-average comic storyline, but it did touch on some major events in a thought-provoking way.  

The other comic in question was part of Marvel's Ultimate line of comics, which was a retelling of the entire Marvel franchise in an "edgier" way.  This particular storyline, called Grand Theft America, came out in December of 2004 (and took until May 2007 to finish, for some reason.) The comic's plot goes like this: the Ultimates (this comic's version of the Avengers) operates like a superpowered SEAL Team 6 when they're not saving the world.  As the comic opens, they're on a mission to destroy some hostile nation's nuclear facility.  Fast forward a few months, and several nations that have grudges against the United States launch a coordinated attack against America using their own superpowered team, each of whom has abilities comparable to one of the Ultimates' members.  Naturally, the Ultimates counterattack and save the day.  It's basically a standard punch-fest, kind of like Civil War; but the preemptive raid at the comic's beginning is analogous to the Bush Doctrine, as well as the low-visibility counterterrorist raids which elite units like SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force conducted around the globe.  

This comic also does raise several important moral/legal questions (although not as obviously as Civil War.) regarding the raid on the nuclear site at the beginning.  Is a raid that violates a nation's sovereignty permissible if that nation possesses both nuclear weapons and a hostile or unstable government? Or any nation with nuclear weapons? Are covert raids (in general) acceptable under just war doctrine? How is that raid's benefit weighed against the costs of any blowback or retaliation?

Some of these questions have been heavily debated, and not just by comic book readers.  The Cold War and the invention of nuclear weapons led to a lot of discussion among scholars and military thinkers about how those two things changed the rules of the game.  I'm going to present two viewpoints on the issue.  First, just war advocates set a pretty high bar when it comes to what is considered a just war; to meet their standard, the war must be for a morally justifiable reason, be the last resort, be ordered by a legitimate authority, and the initiator must have a reasonable chance of victory.  These advocates might acknowledge that the Ultimates' raid was justifiable under the circumstances, but they would likely require convincing proof that the target nation posed a threat - meaning that it absolutely possessed nuclear weapons and that its leadership showed intent to use them.  On the other hand, Eisenhower-era hawks showed much more willingness to use force.  A 1954 presidential panel concluded that the United States needed to employ covert action liberally to combat the Soviet Union.  Here is a quote from that panel's chairman concerning the importance of covert action:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever costs. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the US is to survive, longstanding American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated means than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

These questions are still significant many decades later.  It's not too hard to apply the debate to North Korea or Pakistan, or even the United States (Trump's not the most rational head of state, folks). This comic was first published in 2004, so 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom undoubtedly influenced the writers.  Especially since Mark Millar (remember him?) was one of those writers.  By the way, there's a special term for this dilemma.  It's called the "Dirty Hands" question, and I think you can guess what it means in context.

That's all I have to say, but I'm posting a few additional links below if you'd like to get other perspectives on various aspects of the just war debate.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/1291-dipert-preventive-war
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547264.pdf
http://www.iar-gwu.org/node/213