Kagan says that the threat of al Qaeda establishing a Islamic state in Iraq has been ended. But in my inexpert estimation the chance of that ever happening was very little, much less, e.g., than Ron Paul becoming the Republican nominee, for instance. I don't know about declaring victory over something that was not going to happen anyway.

Really what has been accomplished is the reduction of a threat that the US itself opened the door for in Iraq. While definitely a good thing to have accomplished, it merely brings us back to where we were before Saddam was ousted. The opportunity cost, of course, has been Afghanistan.

The alternatives are so horrible that one finds oneself waking in the morning and hoping that what Kagan says is true. Maybe Shia/Sunni/Kurd have come to a peaceful understanding; maybe all that is left is to clear out criminal gangs, and even in the face of reality one wants to believe.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/al-hayat-reports-in-arabic-that-iraqi.html

In two lines - provincial elections need to be held to bring in Sunnis into the government; but sideeffect - Sadr will likely beat the Iraqi govt. coalition in these. Sadr wants US to withdraw; the Iraqi govt. wants the US to stay, therefore the solution is to destroy the Sadrists.

D.M. touched on a point that bothers me too. It is not as though Bush had to scrounge through the rubbish heap to find Gonzalez, Yoo, Mukasey, etc. Such people are all around us, in positions of influence and power, one appointment away from being able to ding the Constitution or the rule of law some more. These people have their students, proteges, write textbooks and other publications and are busy making more people who think like themselves.

How on earth do we turn back the tide?

Iokannan, we've been pushed over the precipice; as we splatter at the bottom, the times of the people who tipped us over will seem good. Don't look even to history to redress the injustice.

Suppose we take it as given for argument's sake, that the consolidated newspaper, magazine, television and cable empires are doing what they should be doing, the world is no longer that of the Founding Fathers, etc., etc.

Who/what should take over the role accorded to the press in our system? Is there a viable medium, economic model, etc, for these new entities?

While McArdle writes for a major magazine, she focuses almost exclusively on economics; asking her to focus on torture is like asking Greenwald (a legal scholar) to focus on most economically efficient way of solving the so-called mortgage crisis.

Why did she respond to GG's article if it is not in her area of expertise? If she doesn't know whether Yoo's memorandum is good or bad, then how can she know whether GG's criticism of lack of coverage of it is good or bad?

Mukasey became Attorney-General only recently. Prior to that his knowledge of 9/11 would have been no more than the 9/11 Commission, I presume.

Is it not strange that among the early briefings he has after becoming AG, is about this 9/11-related call, which has been so exercising the DOJ that they didn't try to change FISA till lately?

Mukasey is lying about the call, lying about FISA and using word games to try to scare people into granting the government even more unchecked surveillance capabilities.

I noticed two things - I have no clue who Jamie Lynn Spears is.

Second, McArdle says - It is because readers buy more papers with headlines about Jamie Lynn Spears than they do with headlines about Alphonso Jackson or John Yoo.

Nothing precludes having coverage of both. Last I saw, newspapers and magazines had several pages, and not all the stories feature on the front page.

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I also dispute that journalists are qualified to know why journalists tend to cover certain stories. That knowledge is not automatic, they have to do an investigation. Without that, it is hearsay. Just like representing what the American people think without reference to a single poll.

Mmmm . . . I am in no way unhappy with the outcome of Nuremberg, but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I'm not sure they're a great example to use.

Maybe the reason that McArdle, Drezner, et. al., don't criticize the conduct of affairs in our Republic is because they are following the custom that one does not speak ill of the dead.

A war is never good, it can only be the least bad of available alternatives. A war should be fought only when the alternatives are worse.

In the case of the Iraq war, it was quite unnecessary, and never reached the level of the best of a set of only bad choices.

No, there is no such thing as a just war. There are wars which we have no alternative but to fight; and these are just in the sense that we have not committed wrong in fighting them.

In response to some earlier discussion on this thread : Whatever Osama bin Laden's point of view or Bush's point of view of the justness of their respective causes, they cannot demonstrate the necessity of what they did, and therefore the "collateral damage is a part of a just war" is not an argument that either of them can make.

The Iraqi insurgency is not a war of necessity; after all, Gandhian methods have not been tried and cannot be judged a failure against the US occupation. The US may still be a country whose (collective) conscience can be appealed to.

In contrast, one of Mahatma Gandhi's mistakes of judgement was to believe that his satyagraha could work with Hitler.