Ciceronian Review

Nothing Succeeds

Between Crooked Timber and Volokh Conspiracy, one would suppose the meaning of the US winning in Iraq is clear.  Can't see it.  With respect to the various justificatory accounts for the invasion offered by the Bush Administration (who, after all, directed the process and so should rightly be treated as at least first claim on such accounts), the US has already won.  Hussein is out of power and the (mythical) WMDs are not available to the Iraqi government.  If so, there is no sane person who could wish the US not succeed or that it fail -- the relevant events are past and so the most one might do is regret the success.  I do not think that is what is meant, however, despite the fact that it is what the phrase would be expected to mean.  I suppose instead, US success might mean an end to the insurgency.  That seems off too as the US would succeed on that account even if it suffered a military defeat -- or the insurgents through some other means took control of government and the Coalition left.  Which suggests that the phrase is intended to mean something like 'wishes the US suffers unacceptably high losses.'  (One wonders why not just say that -- it is pretty easy and far clearer.)  I don't know if there are lots of such folks -- or even what lots would entail given that the relevant populations are counted in the hundreds of millions.  That is a side issue.  There is another possibility, which is that the phrase is supposed to mean that the (soon to be settled, one may hope) Iraqi government is independent of the US, or is Islamist in some important sense.  Those would be perfectly good interpretations.  I wonder which is intended by Volokh?  And whichever interpretation one picks, how would it connect to the murder of a journalist?  It is extraordinarily unlikely that any amount of journalist killing will affect US conduct in Iraq, or Coalition conduct.  There does not seem to be reason to suppose that whoever it is that hopes the US fails in Iraq is so inutterably thick as to think that the murder of some journalist has an identifiable effect of any kind, even cumulative, on the likelihood of US success. 

The puzzles multiply when one looks at such posturing -- condemning whoever it is that holds some vague set of views: hopes for US defeat in Iraq.  What exactly would success be?  Why would a religious state constitute a defeat?  If ethnic and cultural purity are so awful, what is to be made of the developments in the Kurd dominated north?  If it is violent enforcement, one has the same concerns.  Admittedly, it is just a matter of consistency.  And suppose one thinks the invasion illegal -- should one then ignore that fact and simply support order?  Haven't we had enough of such things in the PRC or RSA?  What exactly is the salient difference justifying use of force by foreigners and prohibiting resistance by locals? 

The point is not that EV or someone else is supposed to be able to answer everything in advance before they speak.  It is instead that once again we have a political debate that makes no sense.

EV's Off

Yesterday, Volokh at his own conspiracy posted a snippet regarding the murder of Mr. Vincent.  It was apparently offered as criticism of those who in the US who support the Iraqi insurgents.  Today, EV asks for help identifying his targets.  No part of this is intellectually defensible and no part of this is other than shameful.  Mr. Volokh ought to delete the post and apologize for error.
His first post retails unfounded rumors about Mr. Vincent which may be expected to offend his surviving wife at the least.  The rumors are offered as basis for attacking entirely unnamed and unidentified individuals.  We know the latter not merely from the fact that none are named, but that Volokh's second post is an admission that he had no idea who was being described in the first post.  The word for such conduct is pusillanimous.  Others may be more measured,  but I find this conduct despicable, and for more reasons than set out above or in the two other links.

The misuse of America's history of racist violence for the limited and cheap political theater at work in Volokh's post are too much.  Till was not murdered for sex with a white woman.  He was murdered -- after being tortured -- for speaking to her.  If Volokh can't tell the difference, then his child is adopted.  Till's murder was effectively public and protected by the legal authorities, and there was no war of any kind in the US at the time.  There is no history of Anglo-Americans enslaved in Iraq, and no history of widespread use of violence by and with the connivance of state agencies to suppress Anglo-American participation in civil affairs in Iraq, and so on.  As someone who recently spent considerable time deploring and explaining the inappropriateness of analogies with Hitler and Stalin, this week's performance by Volokh is inexplicable. 

Scouting Kills, Again

God seems to really dislike Scouting.  More proof, scouting kills.

Two Flowers Are Plenty

The FCC issued a couple of policy decisions Friday.  There is a policy on access to broadband.   Four principles are announced, although none are incorporated to any actual ruling or decision of the FCC.  The policy says that consumers are entitled to access to lawful content of their choice, connect up devices that do not harm the system, run application of their own choice (consistent with law enforcement), and  are entitled to competition among network providers.  The last is particularly interesting considered in light of Friday's other announcement from the FCC.

The Federal Communications Commission today adopted policies that will bring more and better broadband services to consumers by eliminating facilities sharing requirements on facilities-based wireline broadband Internet access service providers.

That's right, you, the great and well-loved consumer will get more and better broadband services as a result of a reduction in the number and kinds of providers.  Telephone companies used to be required to  provide access to their wires for DSL and other ISP providers at a rate discounted from the telephone company's retail price for such services.  No more.  Starting in a year, your telephone company can charge what it wants to independent ISPs for access to the telephone lines.  There is no doubt that prices will rise as a result, and there is no doubt that the number of providers will decrease.  So, at the start, we know that competition will decrease.  Absent technological innovation providing some other source, the likelihood is for the formation of duopolies -- you can get broadband from your telephone company or from your TV cable company.  Every other source will have to absorb price increases for access to the lines.  The FCC claims that the reduction in providers will spur innovation and ultimately provide consumers access to more services at lower prices.  For example, broadband through electric services.  (Oh!  We have competition among three!)  The difficulty is that such services will come on anyway unless, yes, right, the new policy leads to sufficient price increases to justify introduction of services which would not have been profitable under the prior regime.  So maybe it is the famous 'long run' in which there is more competition.

The releases from the various Commissioners talk about the variety and intensity of competition.  But much of it is colored by ideology.  For example, fiber optics is not much of an option for consumers other than large businesses.  Moreover, many of the entities competing now depend on access that is in the hands of two entities -- the telephone company and cable company. 

Of course, it is possible that the various beneficiaries of the new policy will perform as the new release predicts -- your telephone company will offer new and cheaper services, along with the cable company.  I doubt it.

Alight

No doubt about it, Scouting kills.

Hilary Whacked

The NY Times Book Review for this week is a little gem.  In addition to Posner's discussion of media, there is a wonderfully funny review by Joe Queenan of the latest book on Hilary Clinton.  A taste:

But to return to our central thesis -- that Klein has written a very bad book, but not anywhere near as bad a book as some of us would have liked -- what could the author have done to ensure his enshrinement in the pantheon of the despicable? Personally, I would have preferred fewer footnotes like ''interview with a member of the Clintons' personal White House staff, who wished to remain anonymous'' and more citations reading, ''Interview with friend who wished to remain anonymous for fear that Hillary Clinton's lesbian friends would hire commie gangsters associated with mobbed-up trade unions to whack her.''

Read the whole thing -- it is very funny.  I do not understand the obsession with Ms. Clinton.  I also never got the obsession with Kennedy (who, on balance, was not among the better presidents) either.  Clinton has some good ideas and some bad, but nothing all that interesting. 

Posner's essay is also interesting, both for what it says and for the ways in which his politics come through: 

The public's interest in factual accuracy is less an interest in truth than a delight in the unmasking of the opposition's errors. Conservatives were unembarrassed by the errors of the Swift Boat veterans, while taking gleeful satisfaction in the exposure of the forgeries on which Dan Rather had apparently relied, and in his resulting fall from grace.

The Swift Boat ads did not involve "errors," they involved lies.  Nevertheless, the essay is thoughtful.