Who's War Against Whom?

The new JSOC book gets a writeup at the Daily Beast, with the very strange title "Inside U.S. Commandos' War Against Iran." As becomes evident immediately, it's really that Iran's been waging war on us.

I Knew Blumenthal Would Be in the Clique

Last Saturday:

I've been reflecting on it more since we last talked about it, and I think maybe the most likely case is that the Hillary State Department -- or at least her clique of advisers and aides, as well as non-DOS personnel from her faction like Sidney Blumenthal -- were just completely careless about classification. It's less likely that they downloaded or wrote down information from the TS system to transfer onto the private email server than that they summarized what they'd read on the TS systems in unclassified emails. Quite possibly she and they believed this was perfectly safe to do, as they controlled the server and were only talking to other members of the trusted in-group.

Yep.

Hillary’s classified missives weren’t sent to just State Department personnel. She also disseminated highly classified information to private citizens who did not have security clearances. In this 2009 e-mail exchange, for example, Clinton sent confidential classified national security information to Sidney Blumenthal, a shady former Clinton White House operative who the Obama White House banned from federal employment... The bulk of Hillary Clinton’s message to Blumenthal was redacted, under codes 1.4(D) and 1.4(B) because classification authorities determined it contained classified information “which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security[.]”

An Unlikely Reading of Plato

A philosopher writes:

Imagine, for a moment, if, during the tense final hours of the recently concluded negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 world powers, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif decided to set aside their remaining differences regarding the inspections regime and stockpiles of enriched uranium and turn for a moment to the fundamental questions that divide the two nations. Not differences in policy but in first principles.

Imagine Secretary Kerry explaining to his Iranian counterpart the philosophical roots and anthropological assumptions of American liberalism. And imagine Foreign Minister Zarif similarly providing an account of the Islamic republic. Imagine this debate continuing, fueled by endless cups of tea, long into the night, as Kerry discusses, say, John Locke and James Madison and the American founding, and Zarif discourses on Mulla Sadra and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, as they argue about the nature of the human being, the purpose of the political community, the origin of law, and the meaning of justice.

And imagine that, as the morning sun finally rises over the city of Vienna, the two exhausted statesmen slump back to the negotiating table, now with a more sophisticated understanding of and respect for one another, and, over strong coffee, hammer out the final niggling details of the agreement in an amiable and conciliatory manner.

I can imagine everything except that last part. Fully understanding that you are negotiating with someone who has a vastly different idea about justice is not going to encourage you to negotiate in a "conciliatory manner." It's going to completely undermine your confidence that your partner is negotiating in a manner you would recognize as just. How can you take a huge risk like this on someone whose view of justice is so different from yours?

Plato gives us a picture of something quite like this in his Protagoras. Socrates shows up at a house where several other thinkers are gathered. He is accompanying a friend of his who wants to study with one of these thinkers, Protagoras. Socrates tests the quality of Protagoras' teaching by engaging him in a philosophical debate of just the kind the fellow here is proposing. It does not end in agreement, friendship, or anything good: in the end, they are exhausted with each other and firmly set in their disagreement. Both positions, though, have been proven untenable: Socrates argues that virtue is knowledge but that it can't be taught, whereas Protagoras argues that it isn't knowledge but that it is his business to teach it. Neither position even makes sense, yet they have both given their reasons and are committed to them. Socrates is the better man, the dialogue implies, because he is at least willing to admit that his position can't be true. The discussion, though, doesn't increase their friendship or mutual understanding. It only increases their desire to be rid of each other.

Eventually almost the whole of Athens felt that way about Socrates. It's why they killed him.

Should the Senate go nuclear on the Iran deal?

Interesting poll results on the public's view of the Iran deal.  If you're white, black, hispanic, young, old, male, or female, the chances are you think it will make the world less safe.  The only demographic that slips over the 50-yard line toward support is Democrats.

Jim Geraghty threw out the idea last week that the Senate should defeat the deal on a majority vote.  Allahpundit picks it up and runs with it:

The question is, what do you do once the filibuster’s been nuked? If the GOP decides to pass a resolution declaring the Iran deal a treaty that requires two-thirds of the Senate to approve it, Obama will veto that resolution. That shouldn’t matter — since when is Article II contingent upon the president’s assent? — but you’re looking at a court battle at least, and the public will be bewildered after weeks of “does Obama have the Senate votes to protect his Iran deal?” headlines suddenly switch to “GOP changes rules on voting to block Iran deal.” They should have pounded the table about the treaty requirements from the beginning. Since they didn’t, though, maybe Geraghty’s plan could operate as a compromise solution, one that wouldn’t stop the deal but might embarrass Obama. If they nuked the filibuster, they’d at least get their resolution of disapproval to Obama’s desk, something Democrats are nervous about right now because of the message of no confidence it would send internationally in Obama generally and the Iran deal specifically. Iran may lose confidence that the deal will survive and look to back out. At a bare minimum, forcing a veto would be a political humiliation and a way for Republicans to wash their hands publicly of the outcome of this charade once it’s implemented. It’s a way to lay the whole thing in Obama’s lap. Having squandered all of their leverage, it’s probably the best play Republicans have left.

I'm trying to apply Cassandra's test to this approach: do we really want to sink to the level of some tactics just because we face them? Cassandra would make an excellent appellate judge, by the way: scrupulously fair, able to think through complicated ramifications, and determined to find rules that will serve equally well no matter whom they are applied to.  I don't want to see the filibuster undermined; on the other hand, it's been undermined, and I'll like to keep some balance in where it still applies.

Denali

"In your face, Republicans!"

Apparently this is yet another example of John Stewart driving the national agenda. If you don't watch television, you probably didn't know there was an issue with the name of a mountain in Alaska. You almost certainly didn't care about the issue you probably didn't know about. But now you're being mocked for losing a debate you didn't know we were having, about an issue you didn't care about. It's really important, the mockery.

That Kentucky Clerk

You have to admire the guts of a woman who tells the Supreme Court that it can go jump. Dad29 wonders if the US Marshals will be sent to forcibly remove her from her office, while pointing out that the Obama administration has ignored SCOTUS rulings on several points lately. Ed Morrissey takes the responsible conservative line and points out that the government must obey the rule of law, and that someone who works for the government ought therefore obey the law or else resign. Of course, that's true for the President and the EPA, too.

Agreement and dispute

From a C.S. Lewis essay, "On the Reading of Old Books," to which AVI drew our attention at Maggie's Farm:

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.

Bricks

Excellent clickbait site.  Most of the images have nothing to do with bricks, but these were two good ones:

Carbon-testing the Iranian side deal

Powerline's Scott Johnson summarizes the investigation into the secret side deal allowing Iran to control its own nuclear inspections, as reported by Fred Fleitz in IBD/NRO:

When the AP’s George Jahn first broke the story of the secret side deal with Iran on Parchin, the side deal was viewed as so absurd that it was attacked by the left-wing media as a forgery. In the spirit of President Obama, the forgery was imputed in some precincts to Israeli intelligence. The side deal, with its self-inspection provisions — text here — is indeed absurd but, unfortunately, it is the real deal.

Johnson concludes:

[I]t’s hard to see how anyone in Congress can vote for it in light of this deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to conceal from Congress its effort to drop a crucial benchmark needed to verify Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

Is it hard?  Do we really think the Senators who are planning to vote for it are struggling with their decision?

Volk und Land/Raza y Tierra

From Victor Davis Hansen, "How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public":

Sometime in the last five years, the public woke up and grasped that Latino elite activists were not so much interested in illegal immigration per se, but only to the degree that the issue affected other Latinos. Were 3,000 Chinese illegally entering California per day by ship on the Northern California coast, Latino activists and politicians would probably be the first to call for enforcement of federal immigration law.

Alright, Let's Tie This Together

The main theme there is "Scotland the Brave." 'Land of the flowing river / land of my high endeavor! Land of my heart forever, Scotland, the Brave.'

Steve 'N' Seagulls vs. the Finland Women's National Ice Hockey Team

I'm kind of off in the academic version of a cage match at the moment, but randomly ran into this and had to share. I think we've seen the Steve 'N' Seagulls before, so here the Finnish bluegrass metal cover band is again. The real fun starts about halfway in.

And "Itchy Fingers," because -- flaming bagpipes.

Let's Have a Song

It's September, after all.

Not a Professor

That was fast.

On Monday, West Point law professor William C. Bradford resigned after The Guardian reported that he had allegedly inflated his academic credentials. Bradford made headlines last week, when the editors of the National Security Law Journal denounced a controversial article by him in their own summer issue:

As the incoming Editorial Board, we want to address concerns regarding Mr. Bradford’s contention that some scholars in legal academia could be considered as constituting a fifth column in the war against terror; his interpretation is that those scholars could be targeted as unlawful combatants. The substance of Mr. Bradford’s article cannot fairly be considered apart from the egregious breach of professional decorum that it exhibits. We cannot “unpublish” it, of course, but we can and do acknowledge that the article was not presentable for publication when we published it, and that we therefore repudiate it with sincere apologies to our readers.

That's A Good Question

I assume someone fed her these questions, but they must have talked her through the concepts so that she could understand the answers. Well, had she gotten many answers!

The Hell You Say

Headline: "Green Berets have growing doubts of duties with skittish political leadership."

Why read?

In Commentary Magazine, Gary Saul Morson explains how he thinks many young students are chased away from studying literature.  The whole essay was good, but I particularly like this discursion into empathy.  It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis remarked about the insistently inward-looking habit of the ill.  It's also a good warning about the perils of victim status.  Not that I am often victimized, having a comfortable life, but on the rare occasions that it happens I recognize these same results in myself:

Chekhov’s story “Enemies” describes a doctor named Kirillov, whose son has just died, comforting his grieving wife as his face displays “that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow.” We empathize with him, not only for his grief over his son, but also because of his empathy for his wife. It’s a chain of empathy, and we are its last link.

Then the wealthy Abogin arrives to beg the doctor to visit his dying wife, and the doctor, with extreme reluctance, at last recognizes he has no choice. When they finally arrive, it turns out Abogin’s wife has only feigned illness to get rid of her husband long enough to escape with her lover. As Abogin cries and opens his heart to the doctor “with perfect sincerity,” Kirillov notices the luxurious surroundings, the violoncello case that bespeaks higher cultural status, and reacts wrathfully. He shouts that he is the victim who deserves sympathy because the sacred moment of his own mourning has been ruined for nothing.

Nothing makes us less capable of empathy than consciousness of victimhood. Self-conscious victimhood leads to cruelty that calls itself righteousness and thereby generates more victims. Students who encounter this idea experience a thrill of recognition. Kirillov experiences “that profound and somewhat cynical, ugly contempt only to be found in the eyes of sorrow and indigence” when confronted with “well-nourished comfort,” and he surrenders to righteous rage.

In this story, each man feels, justly, that he has been wronged by the other. And so neither receives the understanding he deserves. We empathize with both but also feel that they could have chosen instead to empathize with each other. But, as the author explains: “The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart.” That is still more the case when unhappiness makes us feel morally superior.

This was good, too:

Many years ago, when Northwestern student course evaluations appeared in book form, I came across a response to a course on Dickens: “Don’t take this course unless you want to read a lot of Dickens!”

And this:

Students will acquire the skill to inhabit the author’s world. Her perspective becomes one with which they are intimate, and which, when their own way of thinking leads them to a dead end, they can temporarily adopt to see if it might help. Novelistic empathy gives them a diversity of ways of thinking and feeling. They can escape from the prison house of self.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

Planning ahead

James's comment below reminded me that I hadn't frequented Dr. Boli's blog in ever so long.  Among this week's offerings is a link to a website displaying gravestones, which they prefer to call monuments.  And very monumental they are!  Prepare to stretch your eyes.

I have explained to my husband that it's of no importance what's done with my body--give it to science, cremate it, whatever--but I would appreciate his keeping any funeral tackiness to a minimum.  Of the monuments pictured on the linked site, perhaps only the winged lion would suit me.  Or just skip the monument.  In any case, if the word "Celebration" or any canned music is included in my exequies, I will haunt him to his own unlovely grave.  Bagpipes would be appropriate.

Update:  the NPH tells me he recently saw a site illustrating innovative funeral-home viewings, like laying the deceased out in a lawn chair or--and I know this will be as popular a theme here as on Dr. Boli's not-to-be-missed comment thread--on a motorcycle.

Searching for that link also yielded this one, which is pinky-swear not a spoof despite the employment of the word "awesome" in the title.  It's the Martha-Stewartization of memorial services, and I guess it was only a matter of time before this sort of thing spilled over from what we see at weddings already.  My favorite touch:

Also, you know the iconic half-buried Cadillacs? I'd like Airstreams.  Something awesome.

Comma love

I'm a nerd, the first to admit it, so I'll admit enjoyment of columns about heated controversies over grammar.  I'll even declare my true colors right up front:  I like and use the Oxford comma.  Lawyers mostly don't, so I've never been in the habit of quarreling over it when riding herd on vast swarms of lawyers all collaborating on the drafting of documents that can go into the thousands of pages.  All that ever was particularly important to me was that we pick a rule, any rule, and then try to stick to it throughout the document.  Which comma rule?  I decline to argue the point, or the choice between "data is" and "data are."  Actually, the Nate Silver piece adopts the view that surely makes the most sense:  take a poll.

Now, who would have thought that the Oxford comma would win the linked poll?  General reading suggests that it's almost dropped out of common use, something of interest--per the  article--only to people passionate enough about grammar that they're willing to describe themselves as "expert."

You might describe me as a language atavist.  I rarely split an infinitive in writing, or even dangle a participle, and I still make the distinction between "may" and "might" that has almost completely disappeared from modern English.  I haven't yet taken up the craze for "zhir" or "zhwangi" or whatever it is, and I'm really grumpy about the kids on my lawn, or I would be if I had a lawn and there were any kids within a mile or so.

Carbon Dating the Oldest Koran

Biblical scholars worry sometimes that we don't have very early Christian documents -- you are probably all familiar with the debate over dismantling mummy masks in the hope that the writing on the inside will prove to be of historic interest. Nobody thinks, however, that any Christian document predates Jesus.

Scientists now think the Koran predates Muhammad, though, which will be very interesting if it proves true. Muhammad is supposed to have recited the Koran, bringing it into the world directly from the Archangel Gabriel.