India Recalls Envoy to Pakistan Over Attack on Parliament

Meanwhile, India is this close to invading Pakistan. Normally, I wouldn't be that upset, because Pakistan deserves it. General Musharraf has been an ally on the terrorism war, and he does seem to be doing his best to bring his country into the modern world. But he's allowed the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) to operate as a basically independent entity. They were responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament -- either they set it up, or at the least people they've trained and supported did it. ISI more than anyone was responsible for setting up the Taliban, and ISI leaders expressed sympathies for bin Laden after Sept. 11. Osama might be in Pakistan right now, and many of his people certainly are. Mullah Omar is probably there as well. And ISI is probably sheltering them.

I think Musharraf is hoping we'll give him cover. We've reached the stage where we don't need him anymore, but as long as American troops are in the area, we don't want any extracurricular activities. Not to mention that if Pakistan looks like they're losing -- and I'm pretty sure that without US or Chinese support they would lose -- they'll break out the nukes.

Yeah, that would be nice...

All Damian Penny wants for Christmas is to "see the lifeless, bloodied bodies of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar on [my] television screen."

Ken Layne declares war on Saudi Arabia

I'm pretty sure we aren't going to occupy Saudi Arabia, and while the "Arab Street" is overblown, one thing sure to set it off is infidels occupying Mecca. Anyway, I don't think we have to. The Saudis act the way they do because nobody ever tells them different. The US doesn't have to invade Arabia, it just has to stop protecting it. They'll come around real quick.

Powell Wary of Iraq Move
U.S. Eyes Somalia in Continuing Al Qaeda Hunt

Well, duh. Powell is the Administration's foremost Iraq dove; a large portion of Administration foreign policy debate even before September 11 centered on whether to intervene in Iraq, with the Secretary of State consistently against it. After all, the Gulf War is his legacy as much as it is the President's Daddy's, and it doesn't look good to admit that it was an unfinished job... even though everyone knows it was. I think he's fighting a rearguard action. We might go to Somalia next, or maybe somewhere else (Indonesia?), but eventually, Saddam will go down. Maybe they're saving Iraq for the big finish.

Paul Krugman: Argentina's Money Monomania"

Posted to Krugman's website, not to his NYT column... This makes a lot of points I made below, not too surprisingly since a lot of what I know of Argentina's fiscal policy I got from Krugman. I think he's probably too eager to write off the possibility of hyperinflation. Argentina has a $132 billion debt. The Peronistas are going to let the peso float and pay off the debt that way, with devalued Argentine currency. And it will be decades before anyone has faith in the Argentine economy again.

Will the Bush Administration do something to stem the tide? I hope so, but I doubt it. President Clinton bailed out Mexico, but he barely did (only by circumventing Congress), and he had Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers in the Treasury Department. President Bush has Paul "No, Not The Baseball Player" O'Neill, a marginalized figure at best. (So marginalized that the Senate Finance Committee called in Rubin to consult a few months ago.) Also, the Republicans are simply more laissez-faire than the Democrats, but you probably knew that.

Besieged President Resigns in Argentina:
Opposition Party Vows To End Market Policies That Sparked Rioting

Yep, the Peronistas are back in power. As the President's Daddy would put it, don't come crying to us, Argentina.

This has gotten very bad, very rapidly, and really the whole thing is on the heads of the IMF. As I said below, the IMF has erected an idol of "confidence", investor confidence, in Argentina, and wouldn't let the old government take measures to prop up the economy. Now, it's probably too late. The best we can hope for is that (a) the Argentine state and Argentine democracy survive, and (b) this thing doesn't spread to Brazil and the other Latin American countries. If Brazil goes, the collapse probably won't stop until it hits the Rio Grande. Venezuela is tottering, and low oil prices aren't helping there or in Mexico.

Explosion in Mazar-E-Sharif.

Oh, damn... Hasn't Afghanistan been through enough yet? The working assumption has to be Taliban and/or Al-Qaeda people in hiding coming out to wreak havoc. It's going to be a long time before they're all gone, I'm afraid.

Wow, an anti-semitic Frenchman.

What are the odds? As Steven den Beste has pointed out, this is a classic non-denial denial. "I don't recall saying that," not "I didn't say it." As in "That's the sort of thing I would say, though I don't know if I actually did at that time."

One of the biggest obstacles to peace in Canaan (I'm trying to find a word for it that will offend either nobody or everybody, that's the best I can do) is that the Europeans are enabling the Palestinians. Whatever happens, they always seem sure to find some way to condemn Israel for it. They were supportive after the bombings a few weeks ago, but I doubt that will last. Israel only has one real friend, and they know it.

If Not Arafat, Then Who?

And who cares? Decades of strife, thousands dead, the entire Arab world obsessed with Israel... and the one constant has been Arafat. Always, Arafat. I don't know if a solution can be found, but I've become convinced that it never can while Arafat lives. Any change at the top of the Palestinian movement almost has to be for the better.

I have a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians, really I do. But Israel has bent over backwards to accommodate them, and things just keep getting worse. It's become clear that the demands of Arafat and his followers for a Palestinian state were not their real goals. They will be satisfied only by the destruction of Israel.

My fear is that this is going to escalate into a general war -- a general war when American troops are in the area.

Golden Globe nominations are out.

I mention this only to say that I saw Fellowship of the Ring last night, and it was great, and it got four nominations including Best Picture. Of course, the Globes are a silly thing, but they do forecast the Oscars somewhat.

Mystery Meat


"Tyson paid for aliens", indeed... I'd like a little more immigration, personally, but I understand the concerns of those who don't. But right now, even with a slow economy, there are jobs Americans just won't do.

Oh, the war? Right... OK, the INS is understaffed, I don't think that comes as a surprise to anyone. It also concentrates its efforts along the southern border and coasts. Meanwhile, our good buddies up north are letting just about anyone in. And anyone can come in from Canada, because who's afraid of Canadians? It's those dastardly Mexicans we have to keep out.

State of Siege in Argentina: Economy Chief Quits Amid Riots

Meanwhile, in Latin America... Argentina is, or was, a darling of the Wall Street Journal crowd. A while back, they tied their currency to the dollar, one peso (I think it was a peso) to one dollar. It's not the gold standard, but it's close enough for those opposed to monetary policy. It stabilized the currency, and hyperinflation has always been a problem in Latin America, so that was good... but Argentina basically let go control of its economy, and when things started to go sour, the government couldn't fix it.

Now, rioting in the streets, Peronistas likely back in the government -- if not in control -- 20 percent unemployment... and the US and the IMF telling Argentina to cut government spending? Are they nuts? This is when the government has to take a hand in things to keep the economy afloat, not institute austerity measures. We've decided that "confidence" in the Argentine economy is more important than the living standards of the people of Argentina.

If I were a paranoid leftist of caricature, I would say that the only reason that we're calling for austerity measures is to protect the assets of US (and to a lesser degree, Japanese and European) investors, who would take a hit if the Argentine currency were allowed to float. But I'm not. I think that the US Government and the IMF really think that this is the best thing for Argentina. I think they're just mistaken, not evil.

I find it hard to believe that this is for the best: To pressure Argentina to stay in that direction, the International Monetary Fund earlier this month held back a $1.3 billion loan disbursement.

In response, Argentina took financial measures that spurred social unrest. It partially froze bank accounts and seized retirement funds to raise money to pay foreign creditors. Many Argentines found themselves unable to get at their money for Christmas shopping.

Florida university moves to fire professor with alleged ties to Middle Eastern terrorists

Okaaaaaay... This guy seems to be somewhat of a fringe element. But he's not a terrorist. He hasn't done anything illegal. Basically, he's being fired because of "community outrage and safety concerns". Oh, joy.

More on Johnny Michael Spann from Alabama newspapers.

I'd just like to take a moment here to defend Amnesty International. Not too much; they're clearly wrongheaded in their belief that "Good Cop/Bad Cop" is a form of torture. But yeah, they are going to focus more on the "abuses" of the USA and of the other industrialized democracies. There's an obvious reason, too -- those are the only countries that will pay attention to them. Criticizing the Taliban for human rights abuses wasn't really productive.

Mike Spann, the CIA agent killed in the prisoner uprising in Afghanistan, was from Alabama.

I've seen a lot of bloggers and columnists who took issue with the way that the national media went all Johnny-the-Rat crazy and ignored Spann. That didn't really happen here. Spann was front-page news here in Alabama through his funeral.

Now he's gotten dragged into -- what else -- a flag controversy. I'm not sure why there's a flag controversy. The Alabama state flag doesn't really look like the Confederate Battle Flag. I mean, it's got an X on it, but it's just the Cross of St. Andrew and doesn't have any of the Confederate accoutrements. I consider the Confederate flag a symbol of racism and think no state should fly it, but the Alabama flag looks harmless to me.

So much for military tribunals.

Well, I assume other people might get the tribunal treatment, but not Zacarias Moussaoui. I'm thoroughly against the whole tribunal idea, and I'm sure that the only reason it was conceived was that the Administration has no faith in the justice system. The whole "Johnny Cochran defends the terrorists" concept is absurd, though. There's not a jury in this country that would let Moussaoui -- much less Osama -- off. Johnny the Rat, maybe, but he's an American citizen and he'd get a real trial, even if he doesn't get a lawyer as yet.

If I were Moussaoui, I might rather face military officers. They might be more likely to listen than a civilian jury.

I don't think that "An Al Gore Liberal supports the war on terrorism" should be such a surprise. Most people who voted for Gore do. But I couldn't come up with a better description.

Anyway, the leftward half of the American political spectrum, and the Democratic Party, haven't exactly been a group of raging doves over the years. FDR and JFK were hardly pacifists. After Vietnam, somehow people decided that the natural impulse for liberals was pacifism, or the nearest thing to it. But that hasn't been the tradition, not really. For most of American history, it's been the conservatives who wanted to ignore the world while liberals wanted to interfere and to export American values. After Communism stopped being a danger, some conservatives wanted to retreat again from the world, but the Republican Party seems to have them under control now.

Meanwhile, there remain leftist and liberal elements that are horrified by the idea of the United States standing up for itself. They're isolated, though. They don't represent most left-of-center Americans. My guess is most of them voted for Nader anyway.

This is sort of an experiment.

I've been publishing on the web for -- oh my god, it'll be four years this April. I normally write about baseball, the Atlanta Braves in particular. Early on, I adopted a journal format for my site, not unlike a weblog. There was no intent behind that, it just sort of happened and I was kind of surprised by it.

I have a terrible time sticking to projects -- as a half dozen six-page-long novels on my hard drive will attest to -- but I stuck with that. I haven't had the impulse to do much of anything else on the web since. And then came September 11, and the war. Over the last few weeks, I've been spending a lot of time reading various war-related blogs, and I've seen a lot of good thinking and good writing from all along the political spectrum. A lot of them are people I disagree with on a lot of things, but they're all worth reading -- more worth reading than 90% of the drivel that comes out of the "professional" press. I can only hope I'm one tenth as good as someone like
Glenn Reynolds.

Me, I'm that rarest of animals, a white southern male liberal. I voted for Al Gore -- who won -- in the last election. He got beat by over 200,000 votes in my state. The various profiles I've come across on the web say that I'm mildly liberal economically and very libertarian socially; that's a bit simplistic but it'll do.

I believe that there are some things that only the government can do, or only the government will do. National defense is the most obvious of these, but isn't alone.

I believe that when it comes to things that the government doesn't have to do, it should mind its own business.

I believe in the Invisible Hand, but I also believe that every so often the hand needs a little guidance, and on occasion a ruler across the knuckles. It's finding the balance there that's tricky.

I believe in protecting the environment, but that simply passing regulations isn't necessarily the way to do that, and that some of the people on the fringe of the environmental movement are really scary.

I believe in progressive taxation, welfare reform, and abolition of the sales tax on food. (A few years ago, you would pay as much as ten percent on a loaf of bread in Alabama, but nothing on computer software. Explain how that makes sense. It's still ten percent on the bread but now it's ten percent on the software too.)

I believe that the United States Military is the greatest force for good in the world today.

This war, ill-defined as it is, is just and necessary. The world has been too willing to just sit and take the abuse from terrorists for far too long. Maybe it's because foreign terrorism had never struck the US hard before September 11. There had been some events, notably the first attack on the WTC, but America's mostly been sheltered. The Europeans, who have suffered more often, seem congenitally unable to believe in Just War anymore, and nobody else has the capability to do anything far outside their borders. Afghanistan is no longer going to be a terrorist base, it appears, but there are many states left which harbor these monsters. President Bush and his team -- who whatever my doubts about them, have handled this situation magnificently -- have made it clear. This is not a war against Afghanistan, or Islam, or the Taliban, or even against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. This is a war against terrorism.

I think we're probably going to move on to Iraq now. If this were a war against Al Qaeda, that would probably be unjustified; it doesn't look like there are any serious links between Saddam and Osama. But in a war against terrorism, Iraq is a justified target. There's no doubt in my mind that Saddam harbors and encourages terrorists. And yes, we have some unfinished business there. Maybe the administration is mostly interested in the President's Daddy's Legacy, but that doesn't mean Saddam shouldn't be taken down. Heck, the President's Daddy was mostly interested in protecting the oil supply but the Gulf War was still justified.