I went through the points raised in the comments to the post on “Why Not Iraq” below, and boiled them down to the list of ones I feel were the strongest (i.e. the ones that I felt had to be addressed to maintain my position).

# The war is unwinnable, because the insurgency is too powerful politically and militarily to be defeated within the time material resources and political will allow for the U.S. presence.

# The war is unwinnable because the Administration has no coherent plan.

# The war was a distraction from the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the fight against terrorism.

# We are creating Islamist terrorists throughout the Middle East by occupying Iraq.

# The war used up money and manpower which could/should have been used to secure our borders, airports, and ports.

# The war has cost us allies in Europe and the Middle East, and damaged our standing and ability to lead in the world.

# Saddam was deterrable, and so controllable, unlike the Islamist fanatics likely to replace him.

# Containment was working, and so there was no need to invade.

# America’s image is not that of a country that launches preemptive wars.

# Going to war was a violation of the UN Charter, and the US conduct of the war has been a violation of the laws of war.

# The Administration’s case for the war was selective, inaccurate, and based more in supporting the Administration’s already-made decision than in guiding it.

# The pre-war planning ignored virtually all post-war issues, from the military to the political to the economic to the humanitarian.

I’ll plead bias, even though I did the best I could, and am open to ways that this list should be edited or changed. Take a look at them, and over the week, I’ll start responding to them one or two at a time, and a discussion will hopefully break out.

As a side note, let me register my amusement that The Washington Post has started a new online military affairs column…and the lead columnist is William Arkin.

I’d meant to blog about him when he was first starting out, and the L.A. Times was using him – and his email address was an igc.org one. Here’s the last paragraph and credits for a 2003 column of his in the L.A. Times:

The real revelation in the released document is that a preemptive war was justified on very weak evidence. The Bush administration decided Hussein had to go, but it hid behind flimsy intelligence to pretend that the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction was a justification for war.

Credit: William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail: warkin@ igc.org.

So let’s go to www.igc.org.
It’s “The Institute For Global Communication,” home to:

PeaceNet

WomensNet

EcoNet

AntiRacismNet

Hmmm.

Look, Arkin’s a pretty good writer, and a veteran. But if you look at his opus in Google, you find him on the anti-military side of almost every issue that’s come along since the 1980’s.

And to appoint him lead blogger on military affairs for arguable the leading newspaper in the country certainly looks a lot like appointing ‘Focus On The Family’s’ James Dobson as the lead rap music critic.

I’m not saying that the major media are liberal, or biased against the military or anything. But this sure makes a good case for it.

Harry’s Place has been hacked.

Norm Geras dropped me an email, and notes it – with amazing civility – on his site, along with a plea for better behavior, which I’ll echo.

“The guys there ask the hacker to reinstate their website immediately. They regard this as a disgraceful attack on freedom of expression in the blogosphere. To which I add my own voice. Please spread this message.”

I was trying to explain to someone the core difference between my model of Pajamas Media and the one being implemented, when I reached for a metaphor and found that it worked, so I want to write it out before I lose it.

Up until the rise of the blogs, the media was centralized in large masses; these masses grew, shrunk, evolved and changed, but the basic rule was that there was a sharp boundary between the ‘generator’ of information and the consumer of it. We might get a half page of letters to the editor, but otherwise, we’d read what had been printed for us.

Alternatives constantly grew – the alternative press, local content cable – but quickly topped out in audience or were abandoned by the forces of the market or the fatigue of those whose labor of love they so obviously were.

Then, the web, and blogs.At first, the web tried to be like Big Media (Slate, Salon, MSN, Yahoo), and to a large extent, it has succeeded. Centers of mass have been created on the Web that rival traditional media outlets in reach, and those traditional media outlets – network television and newspapers – have been fragmented in one case, and starved in the other.

Then blogging.

Blogging is, in a way, simply the maturation of the ‘personal web’ vision of Geocities and all those Dot-Bomb pioneers.

But, unlike Geocities, it has ignited, in authorship and readership. So now what?

Well, there are two visions.

One is centripetal, gravitational. The other model is centrifugal, dispersive.

The gravitational model implies that the big will get bigger, congregate, consolidate. The ‘community’ of bigger sites will increasingly drive conversation between themselves – much as the Washington Post and New York Times did – and, in theory risk starving the smaller blogs of attention and traffic.

It’s a pretty traditional model, and it seems like a logical, somewhat safe bet is to assume that this is the direction that blogging should head. It becomes more like Big Media, as Big Media gets bloggier.

The dispersive model implies that the big will themselves begin to be starved for traffic as traffic is continually dispersed between large sets of smaller sites. Technology (my notion of a ‘follow me’ button on browsers, as well as some other things I cooked up) begins to make it possible for me to have sites suggested to me behaviorally, rather than as the result of my searching for specific concepts or ideas. I can find them by searching for like-minded people, and by looking to see what they are looking for and at.

This is much more of an emergent model; it imposes no order, deliberately selects no up-and-comers, it simply builds an infrastructure and turns people loose within it to act as people always do.

There was a story I recall hearing in grad school about a landscape architect who never laid down paths when first designing the landscape for campuses of buildings. He’d simply plant the whole thing with grass, and wait a year or so to see where people made the paths.

That always seemed like a good idea to me. So does the centrifugal model, and building tools to both facilitate and profit by that model.

I’d been working on a piece on planning and the war in Iraq; the short form is that the demand for a comprehensive Big Plan is, to me, a likely formula for disaster. The reality is that a collection of small plans, combined with a few basic principles is the likely path to success.

I’d been planning on hanging this on Berlin’s ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox.” No, I swear it, and I had no idea that there was just a book released on the subject (Tetlock’s ‘Expert Political Judgment‘), or that Dan Drezner and Kevin Drum would comment on it so intelligently.

Sigh.

I want to take a few days and assemble them (the core arguments against the war) in one place and then take a few more days and respond to them and see what kind of discussion ensues.

I think this is a critical and timely effort because – largely – I feel a sentiment solidifying in the discussions I overhear; I see it in the news media. It is the presumption of defeat, of surrender, of hopelessness.

I’ve argued for a long time that this negative view is in no small part a matter of intellectual fashion as much as that of political advantage. It’s not cool to believe in progress any more; all progress does is make the indigenous people suffer, destroy the environment, and so on ad nauseum. And more, because our political leaders fantasize that they are in separate boats – or better, are like Siamese twins who hate each other and believe that if only the other would die, all would be well – there can’t be a possibility of progress, because that would acknowledge some success by the other side.

But regardless of my own feelings, the sentiment is real, it is abroad, and – to be honest – it looks like it’s washing other sentiments away before it.Right now is, I believe, the critical window for our national attitude toward the war. We’re tired of it, horrified by it, subject to the endless litany of those who believe it to be a failure. And so we will decide – to push forward and (I believe) prevail, or go “Oops! My bad…” and pull back, amid hollow declarations of victory.

Can you tell which side I’m on?

But at the same time, it’s not enough for me or anyone else to simply stand on our self-perception of rightness. So let’s have a discussion.

First, what I’d like to do is simply list the core arguments against the war. Then I’d like to list my own response to each of them and let the fur fly.

So here goes. These are, in my own mind, the strongest, most central arguments against the war. Please add your own in the comments, and I’ll generate a final list. Note the rules, however:

# America has never before engaged in a pre-emptive war; this war was pre-emptive and thus morally outrageous.

# We entered the war because of the Administration’s lies.

# The war was illegal.

# The war was a distraction from the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the fight against terrorism.

# The war used up money and manpower which could/should have been used to secure our borders, airports, and ports.

# The war has cost us allies in Europe and the Middle East, and damaged our standing and ability to lead in the world.

# The pre-war planning ignored postwar humanitarian issues.

# The war is unwinnable, because the insurgency is too powerful politically and militarily.

# The war is unwinnable because the Administration has no coherent plan.

# The war is costing too many casualties, both in our own forces and Iraqi civilians.

There are certainly more, and I’d like to ask you to list them in the comments below. But – this is my house, and there are house rules.

# No snark. If you have to ask, don’t post it. We’re looking for honest, direct expressions of the best arguments against the war. If, like me, you’re pro-war, you’ll have a chance to counter later on. If you’re anti-war, you’ll have a chance to defend later on.

# No moonbattery. Yes, there were Jews in the WTC, and no, the Pentagon wasn’t hit by a missile. If you post this kind of stuff, I reserve the right to mock you within your own comment, and others certainly will in the comments that follow.

That’s about it. Let’s see what develops…

I’ve been pissed off for a while at the general level of corruption in national politics, and have spent much of my energy bashing my fellow Democrats for not cleaning up their act, because that would leave the GOP so damn vulnerable.

But for all my disgust at John “MBNA” Moran (D-VA and several large banks), there’s something especially sordid about Duke Cunningham’s betrayal of his fellow members of the military.

Because there’s just no other word for systematically subverting the military procurement process for cash.

Do you really believe that the soldiers who depend on whatever the hell it is that MZM and ADCS make got the best that could be bought?

And don’t you think there’s a special place in hell for an ex-military hero who sold out today’s soldiers for a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe?

[Update: Added link.]

In the long and storied tradition of newspaper arts writers who decide to let their true flag fly, the L.A. Times Calendar section today leads with a snide review of an Army recruiting film:

Camouflage cool

* Army’s filled with the spirit of giving: watches, saxophones, stints in Iraq….

By Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

The review opens with:

How awesome is the Army? You really have no idea until you send away for the “Stand Ready: Being a Soldier in the Army Reserve” DVD, as advertised on MTV. Because “learning more” is usually not enough incentive to get the kids on the phone — especially the kinds of kids who sit around watching MTV all the time — the Army was throwing in a free camo hat, the way Sports Illustrated might offer a free sneaker phone with your subscription, to sweeten the deal, if you call now.

I called then. Actually, I went to the Go Army! website and filled out an online form. Three e-mail requests; a brief but terrifying phone conversation with a recruiter; and six to eight weeks of anticipation, then patience, then the total loss of hope later, the DVD arrived. There was no hat in the package — the gift had been upgraded to a sports watch. Does that sound weird? Well, watch the DVD and learn — the Army is all about giving.

and continues with:

Produced by Leo Burnett USA, whose Army contracts totaled about $350 million this year, and directed by Hank Vincent of Avalon Films, “Stand Ready: Be a Soldier in the Army Reserve” opens on a video loop of super-macho, sepia-toned, high-contrast images of modern soldiering. A square-jawed soldier glistens in profile, a chopper flies low overhead, a soldier in a helmet raises a flag. It’s very retro, very now. And that’s just the menu screen.

“We are the men and women of the Army Reserve,” a deep voice intones, as a series of Rockwellian tableaux vivants flashes in front of your eyes to some extremely heartfelt John Mellencamp-ish acoustic strumming. “We live in big cities and small towns. We are regular people who have taken an oath.” The soldiers stand proudly amid the kind of real estate beloved by the makers of breakfast-cereal commercials. The burnished, bucolic beauty — so clean, calm, old-fashioned, benign — is almost unbearable. Ain’t that America?

and then closes with:

The brief, almost incidental allusions to Iraq come later, in the segment on world travel and learning about other cultures.

“When you get deployed, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be in the Middle East or Iraq. There are opportunities to make a difference wherever you go.” Be it in Thailand building a schoolhouse, Alaska building a road, the Army lets you “see the sights” and “enjoy the culture” of places as diverse as Australia, Germany, Spain, China, Japan, Malaysia and Amsterdam!

“Tell them about Germany,” the saxophonist says. “Germany was the best time I’ve ever spent in my life.”

Germany, of course, is the home of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which has treated nearly 10,000 soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. And it would seem like a great time, after all that difference-making.

Maybe I’m oversensitive after reading so much about the “vigils” Code Pink is holding to tell out wounded soldiers that they have been injured for nothing, or lies, or oil, and so over-reacting to their use as an antimilitary punch line.

Maybe I’ve just gotten fed up with an entertainment industry that is reflexively anti-American interests (in the spirit of cosmopolitanism, of course) and that belittles “red state values” reflexively while having none of its own.

Or maybe it’s just fatigue at seeing the Times slowly wash away the respect that I held for it for much of my life.

There are all kinds of discussions and debates to have about Iraq and the war, our policies, terrorism, our military and how it recruits, treats its soldiers, and treats its opponents.

what I think I’m mostly tired of is people who won’t have a stand-up debate or argument about those issues and aren’t adult enough to avoid self-satisfied efforts to slide conclusions onto the table while claiming they aren’t.

After all, they’re just reviewing a video.

I’ll be writing a letter, which I’ll post here. You may wish to write your own.

carina.chocano@latimes.com wrote the article.

alice.short@latimes edits the daily Calendar section.

[As a public service, bumped this forward from last year…Happy Thanksgiving!! A.L.]

OK, Joe wants to know what to do with all the leftover turkey. Variants on this recipe (hey, I’m not giving away all my secrets) have won three (out of four entered) chili cookoffs over the last ten years.
12 cups turkey chunks (leftovers, stripped off the carcass; leave off membrane/tendon where possible)
2 large yellow onions
3 heads of garlic
2 packages Carroll Shelby chili mix
2 27oz cans of red kidney beans
1 27 oz can pinto beans
1/2 cup canola oil
3 8oz bottles of beer (I use Henry Weinhardt, but any sub-premium beer would do)
1/4 cup tequila
4 oz Mexican chocolate
4 tbsp Chinese chili-garlic paste
approx 1/4 cup masa harina
1/4 lb turkey (or real) bacon
salt to taste

Strip the carcass, pile the chunks on a cutting board, chop them into 1″ cubes and put them aside.

Coarsely chop the onion and garlic.

Chop turkey (or real) bacon into 1/2″ strips. Saute in a large stockpot until partially cooked.

Add about 1/8 cup of oil, add onions and garlic, cook until soft – but not translucent.

Add turkey, stir and cook for approx 10 minutes over very low heat (just above simmer).

Add remainder of oil, add chili mix (reserve masa in mix as well as salt). Stir and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

Add chili-garlic sauce to taste.

Add enough beer to cover meat. Lower temp to simmer and let cook for 2 hours.

Remove from heat, let it cool, and refrigerate overnight.

Put pot back on stove at simmer, heat until simmering. It’s helpful here to have a diffuser (metal plate that goes under the pot) if you have a gas range.

Add drained beans (drain liquid in can before adding them to the mix).

Add mexican chocolate and tequila. Stir until chocolate is melted.

Add salt to taste.

Cook for 2 – 3 hours, until the liquid is almost cooked off and what remains is thick.

Add masa harina. Cook for 2 hours.

Season to taste, using cayenne for heat, brown sugar and masa harina to temper the heat if too hot.

Somehow the two-stage cooking process is key to making this work. Somehow the flavors meld much better in the fridge.

Make some cornbread and enjoy!

Today is a day for family and friends; I’m about to start helping cook for my family (we’re eating at my brother’s house), and since many of my friends are here at this site (some of whom agree with me and some of whom knock me on the head regularly), I thought I’d take a moment and wish you all a wonderful day, close to those you love, and with a spirit of gratitude for all that we share.

To those here in town who can’t be home on Thanksgiving – from those who save lives to those who check groceries – each of us ought to send our appreciation.

And finally, to those who can’t be home for Thanksgiving because you are wearing uniforms and walking through dangerous places with funny names, please know that I’m deeply thankful for you and for your service.

I’ll be offline until Sunday night – we’re headed to the mountains with some friends tomorrow early – but will find my recipe for turkey chili and get it posted today, if I can.

Best wishes to all, and I’m very grateful to be part of the push and pull that takes place here and elsewhere in the blogs.

Time to turn off the computer!