perfidy

Picked up from Matt Yglesias, this Post op-ed from two former Clinton officials recommending that we don't just shoot down the missile, but that we shoot down the launch site. Before we get into the meat of the story, I find it amusing that Matt had this qualifier for the raging warmongering suggested by mssrs. Carter and Perry:

And, of course, Carter and Perry are veterans of the Clinton administration so one shouldn't dismiss them out of hand as know-nothings.

I am much less partisan in my warmongering. I take it as a given that warmongerging is a viable solution, and work backwards from there.

But on to the op-ed. They suggest that waiting would be bad. First, even if we shoot it down successfully, the North Korean engineers will have already obtained much of the flight test data they need to make more of these. Second, and as we discussed in the previous post, the downside of a failed intercept is really, uh, down. A cruise missile strike on the launch facility would destroy the missile, and little else. It would guarantee that the missile launch doesn't happen - as our precision strike capability is not in the least an unknown quantity. And, it would send a message. A good one, I think.

The South Koreans would oppose any strike on the North, however limited in scope. Given their vulnerability, that is understandable. To do nothing would be imprudent, though, as we have been trying a carrot approach to the North, and that is only half a viable strategy. Hitting the missile after launch avoids the problem of striking the actual territory of a hostile nation, but at some risk to our future credibility of our deterrence. All in all, I think that hitting the launch site seems the most reasonable, in terms of probability of success, and lack of serious downside. Unless the North freaks out and invades. But that, I think, is unlikely no matter what the provocation. The Chinese won't allow it if for no other reason than that they aren't ready for a confrontation with the US.

The US Navy scored another direct hit in a missile defense test.

The mock warhead was launched over the Pacific atop a medium range missile and destroyed in a direct hit six minutes later with an SM-3 missile fired by the Aegis cruiser USS Shiloh, the agency said.

"The missile successfully intercepted the target warhead outside the earths atmosphere more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and 250 miles northwest of Kauai," the agency said in a statement.

"We are continuing to see great success with the very challenging technology of hit-to-kill, a technology that is used for all of our missile defense ground- and sea-based interceptor missiles," Lieutenant General Trey Obering, the agency chief, said in the statement.

That was the seventh successful test out of eight. Call me optimistic, but a .875 batting average is pretty damn good. Twice as good as Ted Williams. And that's good. Looks like we have something like an operational missile defense system. 'Cause remember, we don't have to launch just one.

Also of note, for the first time, allied military forces participated in the test. The Imperial Japanese Navy sent the Kongo Class Aegis Destroyer Kirishima to help with tracking and stuff. Japan is noticeably spooked by the most recent wackiness of the North Koreans, and has signed on for a bigger role in the larger US missile defense effort. There has been some talk about us shooting down, or at least trying to shoot down, the planned NK launch of a long range missile. The new missile, the Taepodong-2, has a suspected range of 9300 miles, which puts a goodly chunk of the United States in range. I'm of mixed mind about the idea.

If it worked, and we shot down their test, we'd have the warm happy feeling you get after administering an effective bitchslap. On the other hand, it would increase, rather than decrease tensions. On the gripping hand, that might be a good thing because the North Koreans seem to respond well to force, and not so much to the smooth insinuations of qualified diplomats. So, that's a wash, maybe, but leaning toward good. The downside of course is that if we miss, we look like jackasses. Pathetic, incompetant jackasses. "Hey look at all the technology and money spent, and they can't even hit one missile fired by perpetual loser North Korea." And that's the last thing we need. Still, if we have a 99% chance of hitting the damn thing, on balance I say go for it.

[wik] I wonder what the Brangelina thinks of a naval vessel sharing their spawn's name. But hey, its disarmament, one missile at a time.

[alsø wik] Here's a nifty page with tons of info on the North Korean launch site, and other goodies.

[alsø alsø wik] Looking at the map, it seems that with another 1000 miles or so on the range, they'd be able to hit just about anywhere in the world except for South America. All the important places, anyway.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] While looking at some stuff for this post, I ran across this wikipedia article about Batting Averages. Interesting.

[see the løveli lakes...] Geeklethal point out in the comments that I was not entirely clear about which naval vessel Brangelina's offspring was named for. The child is named Shiloh, after the USN ship that fired the missile that hit the other missile, and after the bloodiest battle in the Civil War. A rather decisive battle, as it led indirectly both to the Union successes in the Western theater, and to Sherman and Grant achieving high command in the Union Army.

There are currently 163 petabytes of collective iPod hard drive space available in the world, of which only 53 petabytes are being used. Of those, 4.7 Petabytes are used to store the song, "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band.

For your amusement, this photograph from my personal blackmail files:

This would be really cool if combined with this. The good people who invented the BumpTop prototype are really on to something here. We've got these nifty machines. They've got dedicated graphics cards capable of rendering vast combats in realtime blooderific three-d. Hell, graphics cards are themselves more powerful than whole computers of times past. But there they sit, idly running zeros and ones through their bored metaphorical fingers, waiting for you, the user, to fire up Halo again. Why not get some real value from your Radeon, and have it run your desktop?

Now, I dig new technological gimcrackery as much as the next guy. I dig it whether it has any actual utility, or if like a butterfly it makes the world a more beautiful place just by being in it. But this, I think, has real use. The basic idea of the desktop gui has changed not at all really since the eggheads at Xerox PARC first dreamed it up over a quarter century ago. You've got a desk. And icons. And a mouse pointer. Oh, sure, we can add wallpaper. And we can change the icons. But no real change. BumpTop would really improve the utility of the desktop. I want one, and I want one badly. And as I mentioned right at the beginning, this interface would be perfectly suited to the multi-touch display - combine the two, and you'd have a nearly ideal visual interface for your 'puter.

On this day in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, thus ensuring the survival of western civilization in a bloodbath of red-on-red totalitarian fratricide.

For more details on this happy day, visit your friendly neighborhood wikipedia.

But here's the basic idea:

Alabama, where stars fall if you believe their license plates, is known to some as the Yellowhammer State. There have been, however, some suggestions for alternative state mottoes:

• The Redneck State
• Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement
• Like the Third World, but Closer.
• Because SC is a Little Too Progressive for Some of Us
• Now, with electricity!
• At Least We're Not Mississippi
• Not as Racist as we used to be
• First, alphabetically if in no other sense
• You may have heard that song by Leonyrd Skynard

[wik] Bonus slogans

• Not Jew Free - Yet!
• Two Beers Short of a Sixpack - A Million Fags Short of Massachusetts
• Stars and Bars: Not Just a Flag, But What You See When We Beat You
• Home of the Bar-B-Q Possum
• Ya gotta go through us to get to Tennessee

A major naval battle was occasioned when allied commanders misinterpreted the remains of a rolled up centipede in a relief map of the Pacific theater.

In today's OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today, James Taranto makes a point well worth repeating, about the two soldiers tortured and mutilated by the brave freedom fighters disaffected dead-enders in Iraq.

To most of us, this is a reminder of the depravity of our enemies. But blogress Jeralyn Merritt sees it as a reminder of America's sins:

"Violence begets violence. Inhumanity and cruelty bring more of the same. The whole world is watching and we don't have the right to claim the moral high ground so long as those responsible for the abuses at Guantanamo and detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan go unpunished, the policies stand uncorrected and the Pentagon continues to prevent the media from learning the facts first-hand."

The always excitable Andrew Sullivan similarly laments "the cycle of depravity and defeat."

This rhetoric about "cycles" appears to reflect a theory of moral equivalence, but in fact it is something else. After all, if the two sides were morally equivalent, one could apply this reasoning in reverse--excusing, for example, the alleged massacre at Haditha on the ground that it was "provoked" by a bombing that killed a U.S. serviceman--and hey, violence begets violence.

But America's critics never make this argument, and its defenders seldom do. That is because it is understood that America knows better. If it is true that U.S. Marines murdered civilians in cold blood at Haditha, the other side's brutality does not excuse it. Only the enemy's evil acts are thought to be explained away by ours.

Implicit in the "cycle" theory, then, is the premise that the enemy is innocent--not in the sense of having done nothing wrong, but in the sense of not knowing any better. The enemy lacks the knowledge of good and evil--or, to put it in theological terms, he is free of original sin.

America ought to hold itself to a high moral standard, of course, but blaming the other side's depraved acts on our own (real and imagined) moral imperfections is a dangerous form of vanity.

{emphasis mine}

I find myself barely able to muster anything but contempt for those, such as Merritt and Sullivan, who can't seem to get their heads around the fact that these two fine soldiers' deaths are the fault of Islamic misfits, rather than due to the failings of the United States. And while Sullivan and Merritt will decry it when it occurs, I think it will be quite appropriate when the US Military effects justice on the perpetrators.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled penis blogging, already in progress.

I think a conversation between the national intelligence leadership and the President over this article might be fun to overhear.

I think it would boil down to something like:

"Mr. President, Pennsylvania officials have intercepted an attempt to smuggle graphite."

"Graphite? How do you smuggle graphite? I mean, wha...wha...you got your spray paint, you got your wall, you paint your name or whatever..."

"That's graffiti, Mr. President. g-r-a-f-f-i-t-i. This plot revolves around graphite, g-r-a-p-h-i-t-e. It's a material with broad uses in industry, including the atomic industry."

"Ah huh, atomic industry. G-r-a-p-h-i-t-e. I see...."

"Ahh, yes, sir...well. To get to the point, some in the intelligence community believe this plot involved smuggling graphite in order to further nuclear programs in developing cou...ahhh...in evil countries, sir."

"Ah huh, evil. Graphite. Nukular. I see..."

"Intelligence estimates are inconclusive at this time, Mr. President, but ..."

"Ah huh, but. Wait. But? But what?"

"Other national agencies sir are unwilling to commit, at this time, to my analysis. They, ah, are leaning toward another interpretation."

"Ah huh, terpuhtations."

"Yes sir, they feel that graphite, on its own, does not indicate imminent nuclear attack by a rogue madman."

"Ah huh..."

"They feel it could be...pencils."

"Pencils?"

"At this point, Mr President, the intelligence community is divided. Could indicate a desire to jumpstart a villainous nuclear program. Could indicate a desire to manufacture pencils. Tough to call at this point, sir."