The Draft

Matthew Yglesias rather likes the idea of a draft, but hates the reasons that Charlie Rangel and James Inhofe have for supporting one. He apparently just likes the chance to get cheap labor for the military. Of all the reasons I can think of to support reestablshing the Draft, that's the only stupid one I've heard yet, and it comes from one of the smartest bloggers around.

A draft would be unlikely to save any money over an all-volunteer force, and what little it might save wouldn't be worth the human cost of forced conscrption (for much the same reason that saving money by limiting death penalty appeals isn't worth the human cost of possibly executing innocent people).

Draft related costs:

1) Direct expenditures on administering the Draft, Draft physicals, and the inevitable financial cost of imprisoning draft resisters

2) Vast increase in military expenditures for training, as the turnover would be much higher than in the current all-volunteer force. When I was in the Navy, the reenlistment bonus for my job was $35,000 just because of the expense of training and getting enough experience in the Fleet not to be a useless tool.

3) Indirect economic costs of redirecting millions of young men into the military. This would range from the lost economic output from delayed entry into college or a profession to the twisting of incentives towards any jobs or activities exempt from the Draft (Israel exempts rabbinical students from the Draft, and so has an absurd surplus of rabbis). This would also include lost output from any Americans who choose to emigrate or any immigrants who choose not to come here because of the Draft.

As I've said, the Draft would be unlikely to save much money if any. But there can still be a case made for the Draft [Full disclosure: I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm a veteran, and the 10" piece of steel holding my son's shattered left arm together is enough to keep him out of the military even if he volunteered].

Reason's to support the Draft:

1) Protecting your country is a duty shared by all citizens, and cannot be morally shuffled off on those who volunteer for it. Esentially, you can argue that it is immoral to benefit from a society that you aren't willing to defend (read Starship Troopers for a society that takes this to an extreme). This, or a hormonally aggressive adolescent version of it, was my main reason for joining the military as a teenager. My more mature view is that there are plenty of ways to serve your country that don't involve the military (teaching comes to mind, as does extensive volunteer work). I still, however, have a dim view of the huge number of Americans who never get past What's in it for me?.

2) Our leadership elites are more likely to drag us into war if their families won't be doing the fighting. This is Congressman Rangel's viewpoint, and it has a certain validity. We never got serious about getting out of Vietnam until we dumped draft exemptions for college kids, and the most gung-ho for war in Iraq seemed to be those who didn't have kids in the military. We should always be wary about life-and-death decisions by those who won't be sharing the burden of dying.

3) Military service can be good for kids, especially those who have little direction in life. This is Senator Inhofe's argument. It also has some validity. We can all think of people who find their way in life once they're subjected to real discipline. I just don't know how effective that would be for conscripts as opposed to those who choose the Service voluntarily.

4) Military service creates a bond between Americans who live increasingly isolated lives, exposing us to people we would've never met otherwise and giving us all a common rite of passage as we journey to adulthood. This is the reasoning of my old college professor Charles Moskos (Go Cats!), who sees the peacetime postwar draft as having served to forge our identity as Americans first and members of our various other subgroups last. I see college as having taken over the role of a common gateway into adulthood that the military once provided, and it's one that is coed to boot. As decent blue collar jobs continue to disappear, this trend will accelerate.

Though these are all reasonable arguments, I remain unconvinced.

My basic viewpoint is that we shouldn't apply coercion unless absolutely necessary. This especially holds true for something as potentially lifechanging and dangerous as the military. It may be desirable for more Americans to serve their country, that they come from a broader cross-section of society, and that they have a common experience as they enter adulthood; I just don't think it's worth using the threat of imprisonment to acheive those goals [btw: I find this same argument spectacularly unconvincing when used by pseudo-libertarians to argue against things such as pollution controls and mandatory seatbelts. The daily hassles of traffic laws and sales taxes may be backed by the threat of imprisonment, but they aren't anything close to the burden of even a short-term conscription.]

One of the things that made life at sea tolerable was the knowledge that we had freely chosen that path. It may have really sucked, but we'd done it to ourselves (NAVY = Never Again Volunteer Yourself). I don't know how I would've survived a 6 month Med Cruise away from my family if I'd been forced into it. I'm just not willing to force non-volunteers into such a situation outside of a true national emergency, nor am I willing to imprison those who refuse.

I do have one idea that would create a massive incentive for public service, but it would need to be married to a truly massive increase in our capacity to accept volunteers into the military, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps, regardless of their age or physical condition (even someone in a wheelchair could be an emergency dispatcher or a teacher):

Make all government benefits dependent on having completed public service

You want a free college education?
Sign up.

You want a government subsidized house loan?
Sign up.

You want free healthcare?
Sign up.

I see a set of incentives so overwhelming that only the truly wealthy, the truly stupid, and the truly religiously/morally opposed would turn down the chance to serve their country.

This would only work if we had some way that anyone who wanted to serve could do so at any time they chose (with perhaps a longer term of service for those who wait past age 30 and shorter terms of service for jobs that carry physical risk).

This would provide Matthew's dreamed about cheap pool of labor, professor Moskos' joint rite of passage, and Congressman Rangel's nationally shared risk without the negative consequences of coercion and imprisonment for those who refused.

It could even provide one more argument for increased public services:After all, we earned it.

Boy, has Money magazine picked some seriously crappy places as it's Hottest Towns.

Really, Plano fucking Texas as #1 in the entire Western United States? Anaheim as #2? Have these no-talent ass-clowns ever been to Anaheim?

And why the hell are half the Hot Towns in the East suburbs of DC?

Interesting Stat

According to the April 2003 Atlantic Monthly: While 25% of the world's women live in places where abortion is illegal, 40% of all abortions are performed in those countries.

I'd love to be able to jump all over this and use the headline Outlawing Abortion Causes More Abortions, but that's just silly. It's a lot easier just to point out that outlawing abortion doesn't appear to mean fewer abortions.

I'd guess that the real cause-and-effect relationship is between the number of abortions and easy access to birth control, especially since places that outlaw abortion mostly take a dim view of contraception as a whole. Oddly enough, if women who don't want more kids have the chance to keep from getting pregnant, they take it. If they don't have that chance, they get abortions whether it's legal or not.

Never understood why people who claim to be "anti-abortion" also seem to be the ones against easy access to contraception. The Pill has prevented more abortions than religion and morality ever have.

Dances with Samurai

The Kill Bill fight scene in a snow covered garden in between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii does more to convey the mystique of the Eastern warrior than any amount of heavy-handed explication could have. But it does it without ever coming out and telling you what it's doing. You're expected to be smart enough to draw your own conclusions. The biggest problem with The Last Samurai is that it never assumes you're smart enough to draw your own conclusions.

A great deal of effort goes into romanticizing the Japanese warrior's code, Bushido. But the director apparently feels the need to spell out everything for the audience. There is no attempt to let us draw our own conclusions, or to let us figure stuff out on our own. If a warrior spends time trying to write a poem about Cherry blossoms and then sees them as he dies, he will mention them and what they mean. Apparently the possibility of some poor shlub paying his $8 and not getting the point was just too much for the film-makers to risk. As a result, a movie which would be best served by subtlety has none.

While some of the fight scenes were beautifully choreographed and filmed, the Samurai are not the Plains Indians (as the movie explicitly tries to convince us) and the non-fight scenes are a waste of our time. There was a good movie in here someplace, but it's buried under tired cinematic cliches and the need to accomodate Cruise's stardom.

The Samurai were, as the movie points out over and over, bound by honor in ways the modern man finds unfathomable. They were also, as the movie pointedly ignores, brutally cruel towards the commoners they considered inferior to themselves. A better film might've explored this nuance, that the Samurai were honorable and steadfast at the same time they were arrogant and cruel.

There is a scene in which the peasants making up the new Japanese army harass a young Samurai and cut off his topknot. This is played out simply as an unnecessary indignity heaped on an honorable man, but it could've been used for much more. It could've explored the fact that the soldiers were justified in ther hatred of the Samurai, that a military elite spending 1000 years ruling by the sword is going to provoke hatred and resentment.

The movie could've explore the fact modern industry and military power combined with the cruelty and arrogance of the Samurai could be some scary shit, or that the demands of efficiency in the modern market have their own cruelty and arrogance. Instead, we get handed the simple formula: Samurai good, modernity bad and are expected to swallow it whole. There was a good movie buried in here somplace, but this ain't it.

Merry Christmas

Hoping everyone is having a good holiday.

Especially want to say hello to all the folks in the Gulf. I know how hard it can be on deployment when you're apart from your families. Stay strong.

The posts from last week finally showed up online!
Only 3-4 days after being published!

More blogging later, now have flu.

WTF?

My four posts from yesterday all show up in Blogger as having been published, yet Blogspot doesn't show any of them.

I guess no further posting until I know Blogspot is updating properly (not that you'll be able to read this until it does).

That's Really Weird

I've posted 4 things today, but none of them show up on Blogspot.

They all show up, however, inside the Blogger window as having been posted.

Update: This post isn't showing up either, so I guess it didn't have anything to do with Bill Clinton's Evil Member (or did it?).

Is Bill Clinton's Penis holding my blog hostage?

If so, what nefarious plot is afoot now from that mighty appendage?

Has it no shame, at long last, has it no shame!

HARD TARGET!

The FBI has revealed that it has recently foiled a plot by Islamic extremist terrorists to hijack Bill Clinton’s penis and crash it into the red light district of Los Angeles. Whilst details are, at present, sketchy, it appears that a group of terrorists, disguised as young female interns, penetrated security at Clinton’s Harlem offices and succeeded in stimulating his sex drive to dangerous levels. It is believed that their choice of a target on the opposite coast of the United States was deliberate. “By the time they’d got to it to LA their devilish foreplay would undoubtedly have got Bill’s ‘old man’ fully fuelled�, a Justice department spokesman has said. “Such a release of sexual energy would prove devastating, destroying entire city blocks and shaking LA to its foundations�. Indeed, it is believed that the terrorists’ ambitions were even greater, perhaps hoping that Clinton’s knob would open up the San Andreas fault, resulting in the whole of California falling into the Pacific. Warnings were issued to those citizens living under the flight path of the hijacked Presidential member - “Stay indoors and lock up your wives and daughters!� Control of the penis was finally wrested from the terrorists after a fierce gun battle with FBI agents, who had successfully boarded Clinton’s skin boat over Nevada.

Bush's Harken Mistakes Blamed on Clinton's Penis

(AP) In a move to fend off questions about the administration's ability to handle the corporate accounting scandals, the White House today placed responsibility for George W. Bush's own previous SEC troubles squarely on the shoulders of Bill Clinton's sexual escapades.

White House: Clinton's penis leaked CIA operative's identity:

Washington — The White House said it has reason to believe that an illegal leak which disclosed the identity of a CIA operative was made by former President Bill Clinton’s penis. The operative, wife of a former U.S. diplomat with expertise in African affairs, was apparently named by Clinton’s appendage in a series of encounters with several Washington journalists.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that Bill Clinton’s penis “has a clear track record of endangering the national security of the United States.�

Yay!!!

I'm really fucking happy to see Saddam Hussein in shackles, looking like a wino who's been sleeping in the park. I'm only sorry that his thug sons got killed a while back, so they won't have to rot alongside him until the end of time.

While this will by no means mean an end to violence in Iraq, nor even put a dent in the suicide bombing (I kinda doubt that Saddam inspired that kind of loyalty from anyone), it will mean several good things:

1) Eliminates residual fear that Saddam might come back into power, giving Iraqis one less reason not to side with us.

2) Makes the US look more powerful and capable of maintaining peace and fucking up our enemies, giving Iraqis one more reason to side with us.

3) Gives those who are fighting us reason to fear that they, too, will get caught, giving them reason to rethink their opposition.

4) Takes one murderous son-of-a-bitch off the streets, and that's always a good thing.

Baathists and Saddam loyalists, as I've said, are not the ones who've been conducting suicide attacks against American troops. That's just not their style. They have, however, almost certainly been providing money and help to those who have, as well as launching their own hit-and-run sniper/mortar/ambush attacks on Western soldiers and our Iraqi allies.

Now that Saddam is locked up, I'd expect the Baathists to slowly fade into the background. They have no one left to fight for, and they have as much to fear from an Islamic Republic of Iraq as anyone. If they have any brains, they'll swap sides and try to come out on top in the new Iraq (much as the former Communists in Eastern Europe suddenly embraced free enterprise and stole everything they could lay hands to, whether it was nailed down or not). I'm not saying we should let the lower level murderers off with a slap on the wrist or that we want the Baathists to get the economic upper hand (they've already got it, from a purely ready-cash standpoint), just that it's better they throw their lot in with us and get on with making a life for themselves than that they throw their lot in the with the people currently killing our soldiers.

Won't speak to the effect of this on American politics just yet, as I'm happy enough at the prospect of fewer American deaths and less general violence as to not really give a damn about the politics of it.

Libertarian vs libertarian

SayUncle, one of my favorite right wingers, has a good explanation of why he's a small l libertarian but not a big L one:

It should be noted that I am not a Libertarian but I do like some aspects of Libertarianism. However, Libertarianism can't work. Clayton Cramer opined that he watched the TV show Cops just to remind him of why Libertarianism cannot work. You will always have the lowest common denominator ruining it for everyone. Face it, not everyone is nice guy like me.

Libertarianism needs to drop the opposition to all social programs (it’s not practical to oppose public education outright); Libertarians need to stop nominating people who get into shootouts with the police (strangely, they’re not on Cops) or nominating people who die themselves blue from taking magic potions designed to keep the orbital mind control lasers from penetrating their brains; and Libertarians need to adopt a moderate libertarian approach first to get their foot in the door on the political scene. As of now, the weirdos have done the Libertarians in.

It's nice to see people on either side of the political divide who are open to nuance and understand that extremist positions taken as far as they can go are usually pretty damned scary.

Petty, Spiteful, and Foolish

If there's a hallmark of the Bush administration dealing with people it has disagreed with in the past, it's the petty, spiteful, and foolish gesture.

I don't really have a major problem with limiting contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq to people who supported the invasion. I think it's wasteful, as cutting out potential bidders inevitably means higher bids. But this ranks low on the list of things the Bushies have done that are wasteful.

However, as a PR move just as you are asking these same countries to help pay for the reconstruction, this is a colossal blunder. It's petty, spiteful, and foolish.

What is the possible motive for sticking your thumb in someone's eye, then asking for their help with your next breath? Have they gotten so used to bullying their way past the Democrats in Congress that they've forgotten not everyone marches to their orders?

If you're going to make a public example of people who oppose you, make sure you don't need their help first. Cause you're not getting jack after you do it. How elementary is that?

Can the Bushies get any more petty, spiteful, and foolish?

Not the Lefty They Think He Is

The original Conventional Wisdom on Howard Dean was that he was this election's Bruce Babbitt, the smart former governor of a small state who has some good ideas, gets attention from the press, but fails to excite the voters.

Then, lo and behold, he started to excite the voters.

Partly for his outspokenness on invading Iraq, partly because he was the only Democrat who didn't preface every speech with 10 minutes of "supporting the President", Dean was adopted by the activist base of the Democratic Party (not the officeholders who make calculated choices, but the unpaid activists who get excited about somebody and then hound all their friends into supporting him). These are the people you want on your side in a Primary.

Unfortunately, the new Conventional Wisdom is that Dean is this year's George McGovern, someone too liberal to win a general election. Leaving aside whether we would've been better off with McGovern than with Nixon, and leaving aside the fact that every election is unique and the lazy idiots in the press really need to stop reaching for an analogy to past candidates, we have these two questions: Is Howard Dean the flaming liberal everyone is now saying he is, and does this doom him in a general election against George Bush?

My look at Dean's actual policies tells me that the answer to #1 is no, and my gut reaction tells me that #2 is no also (but with a caveat).

Dean can be seen as liberal on some issues. He signed a bill allowing gay Civil Unions. He pushed forward a progressive plan for state funded healthcare and increased funding for public schools.

Dean can also be seen as moderate/conservative on some issues. He doesn't favor any new Federal gun control laws, and has a good rating from the NRA to show for it. He balanced the state budget for 12 years, while actually lowering taxes. He sometimes angered the left wing of his own party while in office. He even talked the legislature into passing the gay Civil Unions bill as a compromise which headed off a gay Marriage bill.

What does all this add up to? Dean is a pragmatic centrist, but one who has been adopted by the left for his willingness to rail against George Bush. There's a very good chance that if more prominent Democrats hadn't spent the last two years sucking up to Bush, Dean would, in fact, be the Bruce Babbitt of this election. What has attracted most of Dean's supporters has been his energy and his willingness to be critical of Bush in a way that other candidates haven't been. If they hadn't dropped the ball, Dean's poll numbers would probably still be in low single digits.

You don't win elections by talking about how much you support your opponent, and Dean appears to be the only one who knew this all along.

In a general election, Dean could be a very strong candidate [note the could].

1) He has 12 years experience running a relatively poor state with a balanced budget, which makes him much more credible when he promises to tame the Federal deficit

2) He's a doctor, which helps both with healthcare issues and overall with voter trust

3) He appears to say exactly what he means; and ,as we learned with McCain's candidacy, people respond to candidates who speak from the gut rather than froma consultants talking points

4) He's neutral on guns, which diffuses a tremendous wedge issue. Without guns in play, Nevada, Arizona, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee are all within reach. Other than Clark, Dean is probably the only prominent Democrat who won't be hung with the He wants to take my guns away tag come election time.

As I said, Dean could be a very strong candidate. Whether he is depends a lot on his campaign and on Democrats as a whole. The guys running against him are trying to paint Dean as too left-wing to win a general election. In this they are being aided by right wingers both in politics and in the press. If the Dean campaign becomes captive to their most ardent supporters and never fights their way back to the middle, if other Democrats continue to portray Dean as another McGovern; Howard Dean will never have a chance to become that strong candidate.

The Dean people and Democrats in general need to fight the attempts of outsiders to define who our candidates really are. It's important that we look at each person for who they really are, not for who some layabout on televsiion tells us they are. Just as John Kerry isn't a taller Michael Dukakis and John Edwards isn't a Democratic Dan Quayle, Howard Dean isn't a latter day George McGovern.

Give the Dude a Break

Not surprisingly, the same people who've been quick to jump on Al Gore's case every time he does anything at all have jumped on him for his endorsement of Howard Dean. They've criticized him for making the endorsement now, well before the primaries have started. They've criticized him for not telling Joe Lieberman and the other candidates first (Russert phrased it like he had an obligation to let them talk him out of it). I'm sure some no-talent ass clown has critisized Gore's clothes and hair on the day in question.

Unfortunately, Gore seems to have gotten used to the role of punching bag (my biggest problem with his campaign in 2000), so I'll have a make a few points he should make himself.

1) Oddly enough, an endorsement means a hell of a lot more before the election than after it. If Gore truly believes that Dean is the best man for the job, then why the hell shouldn't he try to help him out? It takes more guts to do that than to hang back and endorse the winner after the smoke clears.

2) Lieberman has done little else but distance himself from Gore for the last 3 years. Did he really expect Al to stand aside and let himslef be used as a whipping boy? [He probably did, given the way Gore has bent over for his critics in years past]

My guess is that Gore looks at Dean and sees the candidate he could have been, the candidate he wishes he'd been. One who isn't afraid of saying things that get people riled up, who doesn't let the consultants tone him down and warp his message to the point of incomprehensibility. It's the candidate I wish that Gore had been also.

I'm not sure if Dean is the guy I want, but I'm glad he's not gonna take shit from anybody. That's a quality that both Gore and I seem to admire in a candidate.

More Electoral Politics

In 2000, Al Gore won the majority of the popular vote, probably the true Florida vote, and the West Coast, the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, and the Mid Atlantic states.

In order to win this election, a Democrat needs to carry all the Gore states plus either one more big one or a couple little ones (as the electoral vote totals have changed with the 2000 census).

My nominees for the big one:
1) Florida
2) Ohio

My nominees for the little ones:
1) New Hampshire
2) Missouri
3) Arkansas
4) West Virginia
5) Nevada
6) Arizona

The broken Bush promise on nuclear waste is gonna hurt him in Nevada, probably cost him the state to a decent opponent.

I'm really not sure how many Florida Gore voters in 2000 are gonna turn around and vote for the guy who they think robbed them of their choice. That won't be known until election day. Look for a big anti-theft backlash if Katherine Harris, the Cruella deVille of the 2000 recount, runs for Bob Graham's Senate seat.

The three key questions for Democrats should be

1) Who can hold all the Gore states

2) Who can pick up a few Bush states

3) Who would make a good President (unfortunately this isn't the only relevant question, as you can only become a good President if you first win an election)*.

The answers are out there, and there's more than one good one.

*Note to quibblers: While Bush did indeed become President without first winning an election, I speficially said that you needed to win one to become a good President.

Weird Trivia

1) Three direct descendants of former Presidents have become President themselves.

2) All three took office despite losing the popular vote.

3) The previous two lost their reelection tries to the men who'd won the popular vote the first time

More Also Rans

Of the prominent contenders for the nomination (I'm leaving out defeated Illinois Senators, Cleveland Mayors, and loudmouth New York gadflies from my calculations), there are some really good candidates. The only ones I had serious doubts about were Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt.

Despite his resemblance to the Keebler Elf. Lieberman strikes me as both too close to the big money skybox politics of such luminaries as Gray Davis and Tony Coehlo and too tied to his smarmy goody-two shoes image. I can't say enough bad things about someone who wants to get tough on Hollywood but not on Wall Street.

Plus, Lieberman would likely be a bad candidate. His policies would be the least distinct from Bush's on a host of issues (the environment aside), and this ain't the way to win. He showed the instincts of a streetfighter in winning his first Senatorial campaign, but in 2000 was obviously afraid to do anything that people might dislike. In a general election, he'd make Dukakis look tough.

Gephardt just gives me the willies, always has. No man with a complete lack of eyebrows will ever be voted President. Sorry, but it's true. He also has the same inside the Beltway persona that almost always loses the Big One.

Policywise, I doubt that Gephardt would've made a bad President. I just don't see anything that would make me think he'd make a particulary good one.

Well, never mind. They'll both be gone soon. Lieberman can't lay claim to consistent support anywhere, and Gephardt is a non-entity outside the Midwest.