Hi! It's really neat that you like your own generation. You guys have done some totally awesome stuff! You inherited a world that the previous generation totally fucked up, you all banded together in that social movement thing, and Lord knows you've always done your best to do right by the world. And it hasn't been easy! The previous generation doesn't understand the problems they've left you with (and is way too damn self-absorbed to notice), and the next generation either doesn't or won't understand what you've had to go through (and is or will be way too damn self-absorbed to notice). Seems like you're the only folks who care about you. But that's all right, because you can speak your mind and tell truth to power like nobody else can.

You've also got a few generational problems. I can understand getting touchy about that, because nobody likes to be criticized along a major line of self-identification. Plus, there's a bit of ageist prejudice thrown in there too--who would just accept that others are prejudging them as having those faults on the basis of their birth-year? I wouldn't like that!

Also, when people mention those problems, it might uncomfortably remind you of arguments you've had with people of differing generations in your family. It might also threaten that sense of self-identification, and that's kind of a low blow. There's no need for that! (Well, there's been the need for that when you've needed to tell off other generations, but that's justified).

Anyway, I apologize for ever attacking your generation, want to let you know that I think you're really cool people who shouldn't be judged by a few lazy, bigoted dickheads among you, and that history's definitely going to think you made a positive mark on society.

Now please stop making threads about how awesome you are, or about how every other generation blows. Thanks!

I do not disagree with anyone who says his excuses as regards the photographs are bullshit, that it represents Obama choosing to side with the concerns of the military over the concerns of transparency, or that his decision to refuse to release is very disappointing.

I do not think it represents Bush-like malevolence either, nor is it an attack on liberalism, nor is it anything of the sort. It is, I believe, a simple decision taken from a purely political perspective. Consider the following, if you would. There are two sides at play here: internally, there is his intelligence and military structure, which strongly opposes releasing the photos partially to protect American soldiers abroad, partially to protect its image abroad, partially to protect morale in those agencies, and partially to protect themselves from public anger. Externally, there is the political left, which strongly supports releasing the photos, partially in the name of transparency, and partially to increase public anger over Bush-era abuses to increase pressure for prosecution. Obama, placed in that situation, has everything to gain by siding with the military and absolutely nothing to gain by siding with the left.

To explain this, let's discuss that last goal of the left: increasing pressure for prosecution. This is an interesting phenomenon. Prosecution of Bush officials is at its core a legal and not a political fight. While it is true that political pressure can sometimes spur Congress to action, all the political pressure in the world cannot be brought to bear on a courtroom. Courts are by design immune to such pressure. What matters for the success of a prosecution, once begun, is the weight of the evidence and nothing but. When it comes to torture, conviction of anyone in particular is by no means a sure thing. Think back to the Plame affair: it was obvious that the White House had leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media, but yet the Bushies were careful to ensure that all damning communications, paper trails, and orders were routed through Scooter Libby. Scooter lied and stonewalled, and the entire investigation fell apart, able to do nothing but convict him on obstruction of justice. There's no particular reason to believe that a conviction is a sure bet, and no amount of political pressure can change that fact.

That much is obvious, of course. You may be thinking that the purpose of pressure is to encourage the prosecution to be launched, with conviction beside the point entirely. Well, no, conviction is not beside the point at all. If Obama launches a high-profile public investigation of his political opponents, and if that investigation does not result in criminal charges, it will be difficult to defend the investigation as anything but an embarrassing waste of time and money. If Obama launches an attempt to throw his political opponents in jail, and if a judge then rejects Obama's arguments as to why a former President of the United States must be jailed, it will be impossible to defend against charges of an unprecedented political witch hunt. Going after Bush would be the highest-stakes game Obama could buy in to. Prosecution of a former President is unprecedented; the only thing that could justify it would be conviction.

Therefore, the only criterion Obama will use to decide whether to launch a public investigation/prosecution will be the weight of the evidence available, for that is the only criterion that will determine whether prosecution would be the nation's final repudiation of Bushism under a triumphant Democrat, or would be the beginning of the nation's rejection of an overreaching, witch-hunting Democrat. Political pressure for prosecution is nothing but noise; it cannot affect the result and therefore it will not affect the decision. The only possible results of that pressure are frustration in the White House and anger among those pressuring who despair to see their calls have not been acknowledged.

So let us return to the choice between the military and the left. If he chooses the military, he loses nothing internally, he gains a small amount of respect in some circles, but he will temporarily increase anger among the left (for a few days, perhaps) with perhaps a negligible lasting impact. If he chooses the left, he will temporarily satisfy some, but will enrage many in his administration (people whose cooperation would be necessary in any investigation, I might add). However, in choosing the left, he will also increase the volume of calls for prosecution; the grisly new public evidence of Bush's abuses will of course horrify many. That would represent a long-term headache, as would the anger among the military and the intelligence services.

There's no net benefit to releasing the photographs. There's a strong benefit to holding them back. While I'm disappointed he won't be releasing them, I'm hardly surprised.

As I understand it, the torture component of waterboarding is mostly psychological. It is not torture because it is physically unpleasant (though it certainly is, and very much so) but rather because it convinces the victim that he is drowning, which leads to a natural panic reaction. It is not torture because of what it does to people's bodies per se, but instead because of what it does to people's minds. That is why military personnel who are at risk of capture, such as pilots, are waterboarded as part of their training, and have been for some time; my father was waterboarded twice as part of his Navy training (which took place shortly after the end of Vietnam). He was taught that the way to survive waterboarding was to focus on the knowledge that he was not drowning, that the perception of such was an illusion, that no harm could come to him, and that it would be over shortly. I am friends with a member of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, serving in Iraq, who told me his recent training was similar.

So here's my question: after, say, the dozenth or so waterboarding session, wouldn't Khalid Sheikh Mohammed begin to think, "hey, wait, I haven't drowned yet, maybe they're just fucking with me?" And after, say, the hundredth session, would there be any effectiveness left to the technique? It seems to me that waterboarding, which relies on the victim's belief that his life is in immediate danger, would quickly cease to be anything of an interrogation technique. And it seems to me that the CIA would realize that as well.

Please don't interpret this as a defense of torture; it certainly isn't. It seems to me like in the case of Mr. Mohammad, the schedule of waterboarding at some point apparently ceased to be torture, or even interrogation, and just became run-of-the-mill detainee abuse. That, I think, is somewhat more frightening.

It is frightening that Americans would torture a man 183 times in an attempt to extract information from him. There is, however, some tiny scrap of justification from a very skewed, immoral perspective: if it is torture it is done with the intent to extract information and therefore to protect Americans. It's a shitty defense and anyone who gives it a moment's credibility ought be shamed, to be sure. However, if it ceases to be torture (and thus ceases to be an effective interrogating technique by the arguments of those who defend its use), there is no compelling reason to use it by any justification. Even under the Dick Cheney "torture a thousand foreigners to save one American" model of morality, the majority of the waterboardings were unjustified, and yet they were administered. That, I think, makes the Cheney defense entirely unreasonable even under its own standards: if waterboardings number 20 through 183 were administered despite knowing there was no hope of gaining any information, then it is highly unlikely that waterboardings 1 through 19 were done to get information. Rather, it would seem likely that all 183 waterboardings occurred for one unifying reason. I would guess that they occurred for the same reason that prisoners are abused anywhere in the world: simple human malice, combined with a reckless and deliberate lack of oversight enabling that malice.

Dick Cheney, for all his faults, is not a stupid man. He must have known that the torture of detainees was not being done to preserve and protect American lives. He must have known that information-gathering and torture were two separate issues. So I am somewhat at a loss for motive, other than the obvious: he was expanding Executive power past the bounds of legality on principle. He is, after all, on record repeatedly bemoaning the loss of Presidential power after Nixon and Watergate. So was the entire system of deliberate acceptance of torture and prisoner abuse maintained by the Vice President simply because he wanted to prove that the President could torture if he wanted to? That's the only conclusion I can come to at the moment, and it seems kind of bizarre.

"They own Citgo. It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don't think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.

"So if the question, Dan, is, how does this play politically, I don't know. One of the benefits of my campaign and how I've been trying to operate as President is I don't worry about the politics -- I try to figure out what's right in terms of American interests, and on this one I think I'm right."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office...

Hello! My name is Occam Bandage, and I would first like to say that I greatly admire your passion for defending America from facism, scholiasm, and the incompence of presedent husein. I understand and apreciate that you have had enoungh of taxation with represention. I also appreciate--as I am sure you do--that even thogh in 1773 we through off the tyrinny of English taxes, we still hold grate respect for the English language. It is in that spirit I am providing for you a guide as to how it may be appropriately used, so you do not appear ignorent or, worse, moranic.

I. PREPARATION FOR USE.

1. Before commencing your use of the English language, ensure you have adequately checked it for safety. Perform a full walk-around, checking it for any leaks, rust, disconnected wires, or dangling participles.

2. Ensure your English language is up-to-date and is certified for usage in your current region. You may need to purchase a digital adapter.

3. Attach your English language to your input accessory of choice. This is most likely going to be a black marker or a computer-compatible computing device. You may wish to use high-performance wires for this purpose, but fishing line can be used if you are in a pinch. Ensure you have attached the red terminal to the red terminal, and the black to the black. WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A FRIEND HELPING YOU, DO NOT START USING ENGLISH WHILE THEY ARE HOLDING THE WIRES. INJURY OR DEATH MAY RESULT.

4. Be advised that your English is only valid for use within the United States and Canada. Attempts to smuggle your English for use in foreign nations is a Federal crime punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and no less than ninety days in prison.

II. USE

The following rules and guidelines should be observed at all times.

1. When you wish to write, speak carefully, clearly, and slowly as you do so. Mumbled or garbled speech can confuse your marker or computing device.

2. If you have a point you wish to emphasize, you should switch your English to capital-letters mode. Do not attempt to do so while your English is running. A "hot switch" may result in improperly capitalized letters, or in capitalization beginning or ending in the middle of a word. Shut off your English, wait five seconds, switch it, then start it again. (You do not need to perform a full safety check each time you start up your English in this manner.)

3. Do not end words with the letter 's' without following safety precautions. If you simply feed the letter 's' into your English as if it were any letter, the curve of the letter may cause your words to become hooked on the gears operating the feeding mechanism, resulting in a costly jam. Protect your words by applying an apostrophe immediately before the 's'. This will serve to protect the 's' from becoming caught.

DANGEROUS: DEMOCRATS ARE COMMUNIST
SAFE: DEMOCRAT'S ARE COMMUNIST
DANGEROUS: OBAMA WANT'S FASCISM (note that 'sc' has a lot of loops. You should remove the 's' here as well)
SAFE: OBAMA WANT'S FACISM.

4. Your computer may make use of a spell-checking service (or a spell-chequeing service in Canada). It is not advisable to use this service, in part because customs vary widely between services as regards tipping your spell-checker/chequer, and unscrupulous "checkies" often attempt to take advantage of unwary customers. Be warned that your computer may repeatedly attempt to offer such a service; this is considered harassment and is not lawful in most states. If you insist on using this or a similar service, be on the lookout for scammers. Demand to see a city-issued identification card, and agree on a fare beforehand. Write down the fare to ensure there is no misunderstanding.

5. Many people are confused as to when quotation marks may be used when operating their English. The rules are simple: you may use quotation marks when you are recounting something that someone has said, when introducing unfamiliar terminology, when you are using a word with reservations, when you are using words self-referentially, when you wish to emphasize a word or phrase, or whenever you believe your text has become bland and requires "spicing up." Quotation marks are very light and may be used in large numbers without damaging your document. Note that the word "Hussein" should always be in quotation marks. This is a safety regulation to protect nearby words from infection.

CAUTION: Do not attempt to handle "Hussein" outside quotation marks without gloves and an OSHA-certified facemask.

6. When you have finished using your English to write a string of words, you may wish to add a "punctuation mark." If you choose to use an "exclamation point," keep in mind they are social creatures and it is cruel to keep them in solitary conditions. The absolute minimum is two, but a flock of three to five is healthiest, and requires no more maintenance than one. Do not bother using a "period." These have become expensive in the recent economic downturn, and public usage of periods outside of official documents may come off as ostentatious or presumptuous. The wealthy among us occasionally wish to show off their status by appending three periods, known as an "ellipsis" (from Latin "ellippus," meaning "velvet") to each clause. This is often very elegant-looking, and draws positive attention, but can become expensive if done regularly. Commas may also be used, but they are better when combined into quotation marks. You really can never have too many quotation marks, especially on signs.

7. There is much confusion between "you're" and "your." Keep in mind that "you're" is a contraction, meaning it may only be used for topics involving pregnancy and the shortening of muscle fibers. In all other cases, you must use "your."

8. If you temporarily lose control of your English, do not be concerned. English can be very temperamental. It is not necessary to "go back to fix the problem," as many novice users believe. Simply scold your English gently (or, if you recognize you were at fault, apologize) and continue your writing. Returning to "problem moments" may result in reinforcing that type of behavior.

9. If you have any problems with your English, do not shout for assistance. Simply back away from your input device and raise your hand. Ensure you keep your hand raised until you have been helped.

III AFTER USE.

When you have completed your session:

1. Ensure you save your English to disk. Failure to do so may result in the loss of all data, meaning you may have to start over from Anglo-Saxon or even West Germanic.

2. Print out a hard copy of your English. This will allow you to retype it if necessary.

3. Do not turn off your English by releasing the clutch with your English still in gear. This can damage the engine. Follow the shutdown procedures in the user manual that came with your dialect.

Hopefully following these procedures will enable you to have many productive, enjoyable days writing signs and posting about teabagging on the internets. Have fun, and be safe!

It does not mean "someone who apologizes for someone else." Rather, it means "someone who makes formal arguments defending or justifying something else."

It does look an awful lot like the word "apologize." That is because the word "apologize" in English originally meant "to speak in defense of something" as it did in its original Greek and then Latin forms. Over the centuries, the word shifted to something like "to speak in self-defense," then "to make excuses for one's self," and then to its current meaning. On the other hand, "apologist" and "apologetics," being specific to academia and theology, were used less frequently, and so had less opportunity to shift, and so kept their original meaning of "defender" and "defense" respectively.

Anyway. When you use the word "apologist," you do not mean "someone who makes excuses for someone else," or "someone who accepts blame on behalf of someone else." You are saying, "someone who offers formal arguments in defense of someone or something else."

Please keep this in mind.

Thank you.

Did Elvis really exist? This is perhaps one of the most frequently asked (and deeply important) questions today. While most simply take it for granted that the sweet-singing King of Rock 'n' Roll really lived, is this any less a fantasy than a child's equally-firm belief in the reality of Santa? I think not, and I am prepared to defend my case.

I think it is obvious that what we call "Elvis," rather than being a real flesh-and-blood person, is actually an amalgamation of many other early country-rock myths. I am going to center my case around three aspects of the Elvis myth: the ubiquity of the "Elvis story" in 1950s America, the suspect nature of many of the supposed songs "written and performed by" Elvis, and the contradictory nature of contemporary depictions of Elvis.

When we think of Elvis, most of us think of the the familiar and supposedly unique "Elvis story," of poor birth, a surprising talent, a meteoric rise to unexpected success, a painful downfall, a measure of commercial redemption, and then a tragic and sudden death. Surely such a unique and compelling life story must be convincing evidence of the man's existence. But is it? History records many other figures with suspiciously similar figures, often concurrent with the timeframes Elvis "historians" usually claim. There is virtually no difference between the story of Elvis, and the story of figures like Johnny Cash, like Jimi Hendrix, and like James Dean. Indeed, there is a case to be made that Cash and Dean were the head figures of two competing followings, and Elvis represents nothing more than the fusion of the musicality, Memphis scene background, and rise-fall-rise story of Cash with the sexual power, acting career, and sudden death of Dean. And, of course, we must not forget that the "Resurrection" of Elvis, in which he has been reported in visions and other unverifiable appearances following his death, is most likely simply stolen directly from the earlier personality cult Christianity.

But surely, some say, we have evidence of the unique character of Elvis in the songs he supposedly gave the world. Surely such powerful, timeless messages to the world must be the product of a breathing man and not of a cheap amalgamation? Undoubtedly they were the works of flesh-and-blood men--and not of Elvis. Consider such a timeless "Elvis" song as Are You Lonesome Tonight. In fact, this is a word-for-word copy of the Carter Family song by the same name on their album In The Shadow of Clinch Mountain (observant readers will note another link to Johnny Cash!). Or consider the "Elvis" classic Blue Suede Shoes, which appears to have been lifted from a long-forgotten Carl Perkins album. Even songs for which a prior non-Elvis source has not been found, such as Heartbreak Hotel and Jailhouse Rock, bear textual clues in early copies indicating that they were written by professional writers-for-hire. If there is evidence of a historical Elvis, it is not in his works.

But what of all the supposedly contemporary depictions of Elvis? Well, what of them? I grow tired of seeing all the conflicting and internally inconsistent "Elvis pictures." So you show me a motion picture purporting to show Elvis. Are we really to believe that Elvis was a soldier, a race-car driver, a singer, a hillbilly, a prisoner, a beach bum, a spy, and any dozen other things? And are we really to believe that each of those different people with different professions, who are clearly seen answering to different names, are all actually Elvis? And what of the photographs? Well, was Elvis young and thin or old and fat? The portrayals seen in the various photographs supposedly of Elvis are so different they might as well by of several people. While it is possible that one of them might be a man named Elvis who did a few of the things attributed to him, they cannot all, or even mostly, be Elvis. Finally, what of all the paintings? I will say nothing but that if Elvis were actually to have sat for each of the millions of "paintings of Elvis" that exist, he would have had no time to actually do anything that might want to make someone paint him!

I understand why people want to believe in the historicity of Elvis: it is a pleasant story, and it is reassuring to think that such a man existed. But we should realize that a story can be pleasant and still be just a story. Perhaps, rather than believing blindly in an Elvis to save our music from itself, we should simply be thankful that humanity has the courage and the imagination to look inside our own hearts and dream of an Elvis. "Elvis" is a metaphor for what we all might wish to become. And that is Elvis enough for me.

GM, like the airlines before it, provides thousands upon thousands of workers with high-paying, desirable jobs. GM, like the airlines before it, is deeply unprofitable. Like the airlines before it, this unprofitability is a combination of factors including mismanagement and an sustained unfavorable shift in economic conditions. And like the airlines before it, a large part of the cost rests in the pay and benefits won by strong unions during prosperous times, which the current economic climate is unable to fully support.

Like the airlines before it, GM averted immediate bankruptcy by pleading to Congress for a bailout. Like the airlines before it, GM received about fifteen billion in taxpayer money. Like the airlines before it, this was really only a lifeline, since the problems in the industry are too deep-seated to be solved with a few months of tinkering. Like the airlines before it, GM quickly burned through that money, and found itself requiring more if it was to avoid collapse.

This is where the comparison ends, for we don't know exactly what will happen to GM next. But consider what happened with the legacy airlines: Congress provided them with free money, but did not restructure them. Soon, Congress stopped writing them checks; no company is going to be able to persuade Congress to bail them out every six months forever. The airline industry underwent a slow collapse. Bankruptcies were declared left and right. With each bankruptcy came the complete and total destruction of unions. Workers found themselves with zero pensions, with 50% or greater pay cuts, and facing massive layoffs. Some unions dissolved. Others split. Still others went on quixotic strikes, resulting on nothing more than every single member of that union losing their job permanently. Entire airlines disappeared. It was a nightmare. I see no reason to believe that anything different will happen to the auto industry if the Obama administration treats it like the Bush administration did with the airline industry: free cash with no concessions, up until Congress gets sick of free cash and the whole thing collapses.

What Obama is proposing is painful, yes: it is a restructuring, and with restructuring will come concessions. Concessions will involve pay cuts and benefit cuts. But these will be accompanied by industry-wide reforms, and will be overseen by a forward-looking administration aimed at maximizing the long-term benefit for the entire automobile industry. As a former employee of Northwest Airlines, I know from personal experience that the "concessions" you give up when your industry collapses on its own are far, far worse than anything the White House will impose.

This is not a criticism. It is simply an observation: anger is what is driving the majority of the conversation here. It is not even anger directed at anything in particular: it is diffuse, it is pervasive, and it has been building for quite some time now. Anger is beginning to have a very real effect on the quality of conversation here, to an extent it is not elsewhere. In fact, it is almost as if this site were designed by a cosmic architect to cultivate a slow-boiling anger. I will now list several problems I find contributing to this factor:

Problem the first: a lot of bad shit happened over the last eight years. Bush basically fucked up everything he touched, and fucked 'em up badly. He more or less set the grand tapestry called America on fire. We recognize this, and have been angry about this.

Problem the second: Wall Street more or less fucked over the entire country as well. We recognize this, and are angry about this. We are especially angry about the fact that in order to prevent the nation from collapsing in on itself, we have to save Wall Street from itself. (This story is more or less a repeat from 1933).

Problem the third: Obama doesn't do anger. He never has. Obama is very bad at being a national conduit for emotion. To be sure, he did develop a skill at inducing people to project positive emotions onto him during the campaign, but that wasn't always the case; during the early stages of the primary, he was dry, uninspiring, cerebral and boring. He does not naturally attempt the use of public emotion.

This third problem is one I have long seen in him. Before Iowa, I did not support him for the Presidency, but rather supported Joe Biden; I thought Obama was too "cool" and "cerebral" to stoke the public fires. Thankfully he did much to prove me wrong during the campaign, but I feel he's back to his old ways, so to speak. He thinks, and acts pragmatically; he has little love for impatience or for revanchism. That is generally a good trait for a leader in a time of crisis, but it is an unpopular one. People want their leaders to express the same values and beliefs they do, after all.

And here we have the problem on this site at the moment: people here have a lot of anger, but there's no real way to do anything about it. Obama has made no effort to relieve our anger at Bush through legal punishment for Republican wrongdoings, but instead has governed pragmatically, deciding that every possible cent of political capital should be spent on the current crisis. Obama has made only halting and half-hearted efforts to relieve our anger at Wall Street; he is mostly content to work on his policy plans and occasionally say "yeah, gee, that is pretty bad."

But wait, you, say, your problem isn't with Obama's lack of anger, it's with his plans, I don't like his plans, just look at this Krugman article, et cetera, et cetera. I think you are most likely a bit confused. The greater part of the criticism here actually has very little to do with the substance of the plans Obama has announced. Krugman's complaint, and those of the economists with whom he is allied on this issue, is predominantly on the valuation of the toxic assets covered by the Geithner plan. To make it simple for purposes of conversation, Obama thinks these have some innate value and if he backs them he can save the financial industry at low risk and great reward, while Krugman thinks they have no value beyond what the market currently thinks they have and nobody will buy what he's selling. This is a fair and reasonable argument. I personally have no idea who's right. But yet this is not the argument that DU has against it. DU complains about "handouts," and "giveaways," and "banking buddies" and "criminals" and "Wall Street insiders" and many other things that have absolutely nothing to do with any serious economic analysis of the plan itself, but rather are purely directed at expressing anger at the fact that people on Wall Street did bad things and are not going to have their toys taken away from them. Anger drives just about every discussion here.

You may be thinking that anger at Wall Street and emotional dissatisfaction with Obama's ivory-tower response are hardly endemic to DU, and you are correct. But DU has one extra factor that is slowing turning it into a hellhole: this is Democratic Underground, and this is the Presidential forum. As members of the political base of Barack Obama, we naturally expect him to speak for our feelings on issues, and are angered when he does not. As members of a site that historically forbids non-constructive criticism of Democrats, many of us find such anger-driven criticism to be unhelpful, and that in turn breeds anger. Of course, outright expression of that anger results in a quick mod intervention, which is certainly for the best, but which of course cannot treat the problem.

Frankly, I don't have a fix in mind. I'm just a little bit disheartened. Here we have the first politically aggressive Democratic President since LBJ, and this site is preoccupied almost entirely with angry brick-throwing or with angry brick-throwing at the angry brick-throwers.

It seems the dude's deal is:

1. Look at the most bizarre news story on the front page.
2. Tie it somehow to the stimulus package.
3. Congratulate yourself on your cutting-edge humor.

This is not to say that the chimp cartoon does not stir up racial flames, because it clearly does. It is, rather, to say that the cartoonist is a pedestrian right-wing hack who's so engrossed with his one trick that he stumbled into a hornet's nest. I think he saw the chimp story, then decided to write the above cartoon without first thinking, hey, the stimulus bill was first proposed by a black guy, I wonder if maybe I shouldn't say that an ape wrote it. I don't agree with Rev. Sharpton that the cartoon is racist in intent, but it has unarguably (and sensibly) been received as racist, and for that the paper should apologize.

There is only one method of fighting a guerrilla war that has ever been proven to work, and that is a form of expanding benevolent territorial control. Simply put, you start with the most pro-you parts of the country near threatened areas, and you control that so well that you can implement humanitarian programs successfully. You then slowly expand your control, so that you are controlling areas encircling the loyal territory, leaving only what amounts to a police force behind. The insurgency is unable to ever launch any effective attacks against you, since you maintain overwhelming local force, and they eventually find themselves without any safe territory. Without safe territory, they cease to be a self-replenishing organization, and will wither and die. This strategy has worked in a number of UN missions in Africa, and a highly modified form of it worked very well in Iraq after most of Bush's idiosyncratic and inane strategies only resulted in predictable bloodbaths. This is, more or less, what Obama is planning on for Afghanistan, though of course it will be again adapted for the particular war.

What we are currently doing in Afghanistan is very different. What we are doing is a sort of defensive war, much as we we fought in Vietnam. We wait for the Taliban to do something, then if we think they'll be in one place for a while we run over and fight them, then they retreat across the Pakistan border, then we go back to Kabul and wait for them to do something else. This isn't very effective, since any insurgent activity below a critical level goes completely unopposed, and it does nothing about the root cause of the problem, being that the Taliban has a safe territory in the border region out of which they can operate freely (targeted airstrikes realistically do very little; people can be replaced easily).

Overhauling Afghanistan for a smarter strategy will require far more troops than we have, as we switch from a Vietnam responsive mentality to an active peacekeeping mentality. Unfortunately, one problem remains: Pakistan.

A few days ago, Pakistan effectively surrendered to the Taliban. Pakistan agreed to stop all military action against the Taliban, to impose Islamic law in the northwest, and did not even demand the Taliban disarm in return for these concessions. The Taliban is not only safe in Pakistan, they are legitimate there. We can control every square inch of Afghanistan, and have every Afghan citizen sing songs of praise to us all day, and yet we will still not have won the war, for the Taliban will still have its safe territory in northwest Pakistan, still launching raids and biding its time for when we finally leave.

Our war effort in Afghanistan, then, will be something of a leap of faith, in which we spend money and lives rebuilding a country knowing full well that it will all be for nothing unless the political situation in a neighboring country improves drastically.

(On edit: yeah, like anyone's going to bother reading this)

I will say this plain and simple: we cannot win the war in Afghanistan so long as the Taliban has a safe base in Pakistan. What the Pakistani government has done amounts to a surrender: they will be withdrawing their troops, ending hostilities, and allowing the Taliban to impose Islamic law, all without requiring the Taliban to disarm itself.

So long as Pakistan cannot control its own territory, and so long they do not allow us to control that territory in their name, Afghanistan is lost. It is only a matter of how long we wish to delay that.

risks being more like Vietnam than Iraq did, though I do not expect the toll of blood or of treasure in Central Asia to remotely approach either of the other two. Iraq was (and to a lesser extent still is) a complex mix of terrorism, insurgency, and civil war, each different problems with different solutions. However, Iraq was and is "fixable," as Saddam Hussein demonstrated so aptly. That is not to say that America should have spent the money and the lives that it did, nor is it to say that Iraq is better now than it was when we invaded, but the situation was/is not a hopeless one. It was/is simply one that costs far more to solve than it is worth, and as such one that any sane person would have left alone.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, is like South Vietnam: a relatively simple problem, being an asymmetric war fought purely on the defensive, in which we are attempting to outlast a guerrilla army striking from across borders that geopolitical reality prevent us from crossing. It is simple to describe, and it is equally simple in its solution: there is none. Vietnam could not have been won short of enormous manpower and full territorial control of Southeast Asia, which was absolutely impossible for a multitude of reasons. Winning Afghanistan, similarly, would require full territorial control of the Afghan-Pakistani border region, which geopolitical reality prevents us from doing.

I believe Afghanistan was quite winnable two years ago, somewhat winnable two months ago, and has been absolutely, utterly, point-of-no-return not winnable as of two days ago, barring any sort of diplomatic miracle.

The Taliban are among the worst people on Earth. I endorse any attempt by Obama to fulfill our promise to reconstruct Afghanistan for the Afghan people. However, we cannot help Afghanistan so long as the Taliban marauds the countryside destroying schools and equipment, and the Taliban will continue to exist and exist in strength so long as they are protected like this by the Pakistani government. It is much like Vietnam: we can extend the war and the reconstruction effort eternally, we can launch bombing raids at targets of opportunity across the border, but we can never win, for we are fighting an eternally defensive (in the strategic sense) guerrilla war against an enemy that will never, ever give up of its own volition. Guerrilla wars can only be won through full, multi-spectrum, benevolent, and expanding control of the territory in which the enemy makes its base; so long as a North Vietnam or a Pakistan exists relatively unmolested, the war in South Vietnam or Afghanistan cannot be won.

Just as Bush's foreign policy was judged primarily by his war in Iraq, I think Obama's will be judged in large part by how he handles the inherited problem of Afghanistan. As much as I am in favor of winning the Afghan war, if Pakistan continues to refuse to govern its border regions (or, worse, continues to legitimize Taliban presence in those regions), the war is nothing more than an expensive attempt to delay the inevitable, and I cannot support such an action.

Pros
1. Fully vetted.
2. Adept at asset valuation.
3. Would be fucking golden.
4. Clearly an expert on mental-health issues.
5. Willingness to play ball.
6. Possesses "testicular virility."
7. Expert on hospital funding issues.

Cons
1. Rod is a Cubs fan, and Barack is a Sox fan. There could be tension there.
2. Big Conditioner links might undo Universal Hair Care proposals.
3. Ethical problems. After all, we don't want too many Illinoisans in the White House.