Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Thank you again, Chops. Great response. Easily my favorite conservative thinker on this board (I know, I should address the message, not the messenger ;)). I never have much to say to your articles because they are so well presented. Keep it up.

Comment deleted for duplicity - it was commented in the previous article virtually ver batim.

—WatchBlog Manager—

The PC Police need to keep their noses out of the incarcaration of ENEMY COMBATANTS.

The rest of this comment was deleted since this comment has nothing to do with the topic of the article. — WatchBlog Manager—

Kympa

I guess I watched too much television as a kid that shortened by attention span and I can’t read but a couple hundred words a minute.

Lincoln used on 244 words in the Gettysburg address. That is probably why most Americans remember the gist of what he said.

Now for a comment about the post.

Per capita or per GNP measures of promised official government aid are misleading besides they are generally mendacious, as you point out in your example about BAM, Iran.

We all like the bible story about the widow, but we are talking about personal salvation in that case and personal generosity. There is some question about whether a government CAN be generous, since the decision makers are deciding how to spend some else’s money, which they obtained through coercion (taxes). Generosity for the widow helps her enter the kingdom of heaven. I don’t know where good governments go.

This whole aid bidding war is a little distasteful. What matters is what is done with the money. Right now, there is more money than can be usefully deployed. What we need now is lift capacity and organizational ability.

It is also interesting that this tragedy gets so much play and aid, while million who died in Rwanda a couple of years ago, the millions dying in Congo right now, or the tens of thousands in Darfur go almost unnoticed. I don’t say this to accuse anyone, but it is puzzling that we are so quick to help to alleviate destruction caused by nature, but we pay very little attention to that caused by other humans.

I’m with Briggs, nicely done, Chops.

Seems like the right-hand side of this board has been doing some serious diversification since the election. Chops and Sebastian have posted several very thought-provoking articles, which I actually mostly agree with. Eric has argued, persuasively as always, that liberals are evil and deranged - I don’t agree, but I appreciate his consistency on these points. Even Jack’s been pointing out issues that I sympathisize with (right, slavery is bad).

But just when I was ready to go and register Republican, out of the woodwork come views that just plain creep me out.

Islam must be perceived and addressed no differently than the way the West perceives Nazism … We defeated Nazism by a twofold measure: first by military might and destroying the Third Reich, and then by rebuilding the country from the ground up, into a democracy that would no longer threaten the world, at least not for many decades to come. We are being called once again to confront those rogue nations that are bent on our destruction…

This is just plain war-mongering in its purest form. Islam - I guess all 1 billion of them - must be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up? and which rogue nations are we talking about here? 9/11 is 20 guys and $500k dollars, and we’ve stopped looking for them.

And now this post, which goes starts with murder, concludes from “internet research” that Islam is evil, and that it’s time to ditch all religion. I admit I didn’t read everything in between but - WTF?

And bugcrazy:

The PC Police need to keep their noses out of the incarcaration of ENEMY COMBATANTS. These ‘people’ are nothing but murdering psychos determined to take over the world by force and it makes me sick when someone starts screaming about how they should be afforded the same rights as the rest of us. The insurgents in Iraq that are not Iraqi citizens are NOT POW’s - they do not belong to an Army and they are not fighting for a country. They do not deserve the same rights give to soldiers by the Geneva Convention

Is this a partisan issue - Democrats are anti-torture, so Repubs have to go pro-torture? Are you aware that most of the victims in the Abu Ghraib shots were just petty criminals, having no connection to any insurgency? Can you guarantee that they’re all murdering thugs - not just random names thrown out by an informer, say? And the Geneva Convention aside, is it PC to object to waterboarding people, “disappearing” them from official records, and holding them forever without trial or legal council?

Would it bother you if a US citizen was held for years without any legal council, without being charged with any crime? Because that’s happening too, you realize. Jose Padillo.

I don’t think “murdering thugs” should get the same rights as “the rest of us” - but I do think that there needs to be some semblence of a legal process to determine guilt, and that’s precisely what isn’t happening for the “enemy combatants”.

Concern for civil rights is not being “PC”. It’s common decency, common sense, and in final analysis self-defense.

Maybe this is better for your attention span, Jack:

Comment deleted for being off topic. —WatchBlog Manager—

The reason people are critical of the Islamic nation’s donations are because the nations primarily affected by the tsunami have very large Islamic populations (actually a majority in Indonesia).

We already have Islamofascists touting the tsunami as either being the wrath of God, or else a secret attack by the Zionist forces from the US base at Diego Garcia. If you think I am kidding, go check out www.memri.org. They have the transcripts.

Israel offered a field medical hospital to Sri Lanka, but was rejected because the populace did not want Zionist military forces near them.

The UN is more worried about getting 24 hour room service to their hotel base in Indonesia than getting food to the hungry homeless surrounding the hotel.

In the meantime, let’s look to the future about 30 years or so. By then, the ‘big one’ may well have hit San Francisco…if it follows the same pattern as in early in the century, it will.

How many of these countries, which people are touting as being so much better donors than the United States, will actually be there for San Fran/Oakland?

Jack - Thanks for the comment. I agree that this is an example of “pop charity” gotten out of hand. I agree that charity, strictly speaking, is not the place of government.

(And, since you asked, governments - good and bad - go to hell when they die. Hell just wouldn’t be Hell without ‘em)

There is, nonetheless, a good reason for governments to invest in relief. The areas destroyed represent a significant portion of world producers and world markets. That partially explain’s Australia’s $1 bn pledge: they hope to get good return on the investment by having healthy economies nearby.

World response to Rwanda (which I visited last year) and Congo has been downright reprehensible. However, I doubt that $4 bn in pledges could have stopped either conflict. What Rwanda needed was effective military intervention. Congo is an even bigger, more complicated morass. Governments see in the tsunami a clear-cut, uncontroversial way to do good internationally. It’s a low-risk, high-return investment, and makes good business sense.

The point of this post was not to make a statement about the nature or size of the relief effort; rather to refute the unfounded claim in the previous post that Muslims are more stingy than other parts of the world.

Right on, Chops. What purposes do governments have for giving aid? Their own self-interest is the only one they need. Governments don’t get a nice tingly feeling for helping people out. They see the low-risk, high-return and whip out the checkbooks. And I think this is the way it really ought to be. I’m not big on governments being charitable, as its really MY money they’re doing it with. If I want to be charitable, I will, and I’ll make my own decisions on who and how much, thanks. But, if its good business sense, then by all means, but don’t pretend it’s charity.

Posted by: ciaran at January 7, 2005 04:27 PM

A comparable quote for each of those points can likely be found in the Christian Bible, as well.

Am I the only one who caught the typo in his punch line? $25 million, er… I think you mean $250 million. While you’re at it you may want to check the facts on what the US actually gave towards this effort. In addition to troop support through an air craft carrier, ships, etc… we collectively gave over $600 million in both government and private donations. Yes, we may be one of the richest nations due to our relatively low tax on capitalistic democracy but we respond on an individual basis accordingly. Privately we donate more than the continent of Europe. When the world calls 911 we’re the ones who answer in both military and financial means.

As a true government employee Chops, you have excelled at completely missing the point.

My comparisonsweren’t based on what other nations were giving but mainly on what Saudi Arabia gave before to the suicide bombers, which had been 5 times the amount they pledged towards the tsunami victims.

And yes the figure was 30 million,(see here), so I didn’t pull them out of the fourth dimension thank you very much.

If you really wanted to be honest I would say compare the numerical figures of tsunami aid to the budget Arab nations allocate towards suicide bombers, genocide, and good old fashioned global terrorism. You might find a slight discrepancy. :-)

Mr. T

There is the military aspect. The U.S. has committed 17 ships, scores of planes and 13000 soldiers and sailors on the ground and another 12000 on ships. The cost of the assets is 200 billion. The cost per day of the current opertation is $6 million a day and growing.

And you know, I could have had a run for having the mosts comments ever for a Watchblog post, but nooooooo, you just HAD to ruin that by preempting my post with your own. Now I have to think up another hyper-controversial post that will get everyone’s garter belts in a twist for another try at the record. :-P

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.

Mr. T - It is $25 million. Maybe you missed the fact that it is per GDP. Qatar, although fairly well off, is not as rich as, say, Norway, and not nearly as large as Australia or Saudi Arabia.

Maximus - One of your points was that they’ve given more to suicide bombers’ families; I did not refute that. However, you made a blanket statement about a religious and ethnic group that simply wasn’t supported by the facts. Even at the lower $30 million figure, Saudi Arabia is still giving three times as much per GDP as the U.S.A. Misguided, sometimes. Stingy, no.

I can predict the news six months from today. It will include a lot of recriminations about how international aid after the tsunami was wasted or stolen. It is like trying to run thousands of liters of water through a narrow corroded pipe meant to handle much less. There will a lot of leaks and maybe even a burst pipe. Consider what is happening. The bulk of the aid is going to one of the most corrupt provinces in one of the most corrupt nations in all the world. This is also a province that is fighting an insurrection against the central government. The UN, the same organization that lost $21 billion in the oil for food program, will administer much of the aid. Many of the countries and NGOs that are currently falling over each other to pledge donations will renege on those promises.

The world has been amazingly generous, but already you can detect a nasty edge to the whole affair. Countries, firms and individuals are competing to appear most generous. No matter how generous someone is, the implication is that it doesn’t matter unless you are in the top five givers and that everyone agrees that you are generous enough compared to others and compared to your means.

We always need to remember the purpose of our actions. Our purpose is to relieve the suffering of the people hit by this disaster and to help them rebuild their lives. The goal is not to make us feel good, or better than others. The amount of the aid means less than its effectiveness.

The fact is that it is possible to send more aid than a particular society can absorb at a particular time. If that happens, additional aid can actually cause harm by over taxing infrastructures and corrupting local societies.

So I am playing the role of the skunk at the garden party.

Jack-
If people aren’t going to show up when it comes time to actually give the aid, I’d rather have Greater numbers involved and obligated than fewer. If you don’t hope for the best sometimes, you’ll never plan for it.

To me, there is no loss in understanding things are being done better now. If things get worse later, we can take care of it when it actually does go wrong. Otherwise we shouldn’t let the imperfections of governments and governing bodies in general force us to fall short on what matters most.

Jack, you have accurately captured my concern about aid without accountability. It is a kind of catch 22 in the initial stages, life sustaining aid must move quickly, but, pledging sums for rebuilding, before the infrastructure for assessing the costs and competitive bidding for the rebuilding has is in place, is an open invitation to every black marketeer, corrupt bureaucrat, and embezzling employee, and otherwise, to get in on the ground floor of a lucrative proposition.

Stephen, the kind of “if things go wrong later” that you are talking about will be unremediable. How often is stolen money recovered after being stolen? Once stolen, it gets spent or laundered making recovery very difficult if not impossible.

There are two stages in the relief effort. Emergency aid, and rebuilding. I stand with you on the Emergency aid, the crisis and impending loss of life will not permit first establishing accounting infrastructure for the money flowing to recipients the way we would like.

That is not true however, regarding the rebuilding of the infrastructure to sustain life after emergency needs are met. There is a bit more time, weeks and months, in fact depending on the need. In this stage, accountability and transparency and competitive bidding should be built into the management of the relief funds.

David-
My sensibility is name and shame. You want to mess this up? Then be prepared to have your name live in imfamy. Of course, it’s best to review the reliability of such folks before hand, but it’s impossible to prevent such things from happening. Corruption will occur where money and power converge. One can only minimize it, not prevent it altogether.

I believe people will always be at odds with the rest of the world, whether by choice or by the simple limits of human nature and understanding. You can only perfect things so far, and then the nature of the world, our place in it, and the illusions that inevitably gather between them get in the way. At that point, plans and precautions can become useless, and we must use our understanding to correct our course. The better our understanding, the better our corrections. We do these things until the opportunity to do things right and well has come and gone. If we are lucky and skillful, we will come to an acceptable conclusion.

I am not an opponent of planning or preparation, but the fact is we can only prepare so much, and for so long. We must be able to play things by ear, with a beginner’s persective and hope for things. The Republicans are too confident in what they believe they know, and too willing to shed the support and aid of allies and even their own fellow citizens when disagreements arise. They see only supporters and rivals. Because no supporter can always support, the paranoid/isolationist impulse ends up overpowering the impulse to trust and to associate with others.

As the rest of the world advances and we find ourselves dealing with equals, near-equals, or even greater countries than our own, that will become an even more unacceptable direction to take. We must find ways to punish misbehavior from allies and opponents that gives us more options. Options are the key. We need actual choices instead of inevitable courses of action.

Chops,

Are these figures based on governmental pledges or overall public and private donations?

I’ll rescind my assertion that Arab nations were one of the stingiest, but I’ll reiterate that we have seen much more enthusiasm in financially supporting terrorism than for victims of natural disasters.

You know, it would be the height of irony if much the money the US pledged to help the residents of Bam, Iran somehow mysteriously found its way into Hezbollah’s bank account. I wonder what terrorist groups the world will inadvertently be funding now as a result of the tsunami. :-X

Israel stingy! Oh come on ! next you will tell me the earth is round!