The 2000's: Shitty Decade or the Shittiest Decade?

A study by the Pew Research Group shows that a majority of Americans have a generally negative view of the 00's, and 53% view 9/11 as the decade's most important event. The Washington Post's most-influential-person bracket has George W. Bush edging out Osama bin Laden. The pictures for the decade in the 2009 World Almanac show 9/11, Bush's premature ejaculation (h/t) of mission accomplished, Hurricane Katrina, and the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. No doubt about it: this decade sucked. But let's take a look back and see how it compares.

8. The 2000's: We survive Y2K only to have to deal with a controversial election. The country unites after 9/11, then divides bitterly after having its fear exploited and being told that criticism is un-American (as if that's not the whole point of the 1st Amendment) to invade Iraq. The world does nothing about climate change, beginning with Bush's decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and ending with bold inaction at Copenhagen. Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans eight months after a tsunami strikes South Asia. The U.S. ends the decade in recession, but with its first female speaker, its first black president, and change it might still believe in.

7. The 1980's: The Age of Reagan. Trickle-down and Iran-Contra. AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz. The Challenger explodes. Chernobyl and Bhopal. The Iran-Iraq War, Russians in Afghanistan. But 1989 sees the Berlin Wall coming down, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Plus, I was born. Not all bad.

6. The 450's: Rome is sacked by the Vandals and avoids being sacked by the Huns by the intervention of Pope Leo I. The Council of Chalcedon leads to a schism in the Christian Church. Rome sees three emperors in as many years in a wave of assassination and counter-assassination. The Empire would be gone two decades later.

5. The 1790's: The French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the horror of the guillotine. Napoleon is in power by decade's end. The Panic of 1797 hits the U.S. and England. A two-party system emerges in the U.S. with the Federalists and Republicans battling over the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson and Madison draft the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in response, arguing that states can nullify federal laws and secede from the union.

4. The 1860's: The U.S. is at its most divided in the Civil War. About 625,000 die. Lincoln's assassination leads to feuds between radicals in the Senate and Andrew Johnson, culminating in his impeachment (but not his removal). Abroad, the French invade Mexico over Benito Juarez's suspension of debt payments, while Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay defeat Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance. But the Morrill and Homestead Acts allow for the establishment of land-grant colleges and the settlement of the West, and the Suez Canal and Transcontinental Railroad are completed in 1869.

3. The 1940's: World War II: The Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, the Blitz. Atomic weapons explode onto the world stage, setting up fifty years of cold war. FDR dies. On the plus side, the right side wins WWII and forms the United Nations.

2. The 1930's: Forget the recession, the world languishes through the Great Depression, with unemployment reaching 25% in the U.S. Hitler rises to power, unites Germany with Austria, is appeased by the Sudetenland, invades Czechoslovakia then Poland, starting World War II.

What could be worse than the Depression and the rise of Nazism?

1. The 1340's: The Black Death spreads across Europe, killing a good third of the continent's population. Jews are blamed and persecuted. French knights were mowed down by English longbowmen at Crecy. The Byzantine Empire is engulfed in civil war.

So the 2000's could have been worse. At least we didn't have the bubonic plague.

Dear Congressman Hoekstra

Your recent "Perspective" on the EPA's decision to designate carbon dioxide as a pollutant is worryingly disingenuous. First, you write that the "ruling makes it even more difficult for businesses seeking to grow and create jobs to predict what future energy costs will be, therefore discouraging growth." On the contrary, the designation indicates that the future price of fossil fuels will be higher, creating a market incentive to develop clean-energy technologies.

Second, three sentences taken out of context from thousands of private emails do not "cast doubt" on the science behind global warming. The much ballyhooed phrase "hide the decline" refers to the divergence problem: Tree ring data suggest that temperatures have been declining since the 1960's, even though we know from actual temperature readings that the planet has gotten warmer since then. Indeed, the last ten years were the warmest decade on record.

The science is clear: The planet is getting hotter, and human greenhouse-gas emissions are to blame. If you disagree with the Obama Administration's actions, please tell me what positive action you think we should take instead of misinforming your constituents.

Sincerely,

Wolverine

Reactions and Overreactions to Fort Hood

"[T]he more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security."

~Bryan Fischer, American Family Association

"Our diversity, not only in our Army but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse."

~Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., Army Chief of Staff

On November 5, Nidal Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood and opened fire, killing 13 and wounding dozens more. Hasan was a major, an Army psychiatrist, and yes, a Muslim.

On November 6, Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" at the American Family Association, posted on an AFA blog his idea to prevent future Fort Hoods: Forbid Muslims from serving in the U.S. military. Some excerpts:

Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels...

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve...

This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism...

While Christianity is a religion of peace, ...Islam is a religion of war and violence, founded by a man who routinely chopped the heads off his enemies, had sex with nine-year old [sic] girls, and made his wealth plundering merchant caravans.

(To give AFA some credit, there is another blog post--rated higher by AFA's readers--that argues that expelling Muslims would be un-Christian.)

"Islamo-realism," eh? This realism tells you that because one person--with their own, personal, psychological issues--goes on a rampage, we should draw conclusions about an entire group of people? There are over 3500 Muslims in the military: we should expel them based on one incident? This is not "Islamo-realism," this is bigotry, pure and simple.

We should, if anything, be encouraging more Muslims to join the military: Linguistic and cultural knowledge would be useful in a counterinsurgency campaign. The Army can effectively "break down barriers [between] different ethnic groups." (The complaint that, as AFA's Fischer says, "[t]he military is not about social engineering" has been debunked here before.) Efforts to enforce current anti-discrimination standards should be redoubled, both to catalyze the barrier breakdown and to prevent an anti-Muslim backlash.

Diversity and tolerance are fundamentally American and are part of what makes us strong. Those who would discard these values so easily would be--and this is an analogy the AFA should appreciate--Delilahs brandishing scissors at Samson's hair.

Last word.

Bajoobahead #6: Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas apparently has a problem with gays serving in the military. Money quote:

The place to start is whether citizens of this country, through their elected representatives and the military leaders named by them, have a right to determine what type of service members best serve the interests, safety and security of the United States. I contend we do. The military should not be a test lab. Pressure is building to put female sailors on submarines, along with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, presumably. That many heterosexuals find homosexual behavior immoral and not conducive to unit cohesion is of no concern to the social wrecking crew.

Wow, how wrong is this? First of all, homosexuality does not hurt unit cohesion. A survey of military personnel, either currently active or recent veterans, shows that, of those who were certain they served with a gay or lesbian, 64% said it had no effect on unit morale. Of those who weren't, a plurality (49%) said it would have no impact on them personally. 73% said they were comfortable around gays and lesbians.

Even if a minority of heterosexual soldiers disapprove of gays serving, that doesn't mean that they could not do their jobs professionally serving with gays. That's also not a good reason to prevent homosexuals from serving openly. I'm sure several white soldiers would have disapproved of serving with blacks in 1948. I'm sure several compared Executive Order 9981 to treating the military as a "test lab," as it came six years before Brown v. Board and a full fifteen years before "I have a dream." I'm sure people argued that it would effect "our ability to fight and defend the country," but it didn't seem to impinge on our ability to drive the communists out of South Korea two years later.

Thomas does have one good point: We should be able to decide which people are best fit to serve in the military. But homosexuality should not be such a disqualification. Especially when 58 Arabic linguists, along with 11,000 other service members, have been discharged since Don't Ask Don't Tell came into effect. Especially when some estimate that DADT's repeal could spur up to 41,000 to enlist.

Don't Ask Don't Tell is not only morally wrong, it's a strategic blunder. And an op-ed that relies on hypotheticals that fly in the face of facts and history should not prevent us from repealing it.

Oops! Ahmadinejad's Done It Again.

Iranian "president" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is back in headlines after the recent protests contesting the legitimacy of his victory in the June 2009 presidential elections. This time, Ahmadinejad is once again touting his denial of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly this Wednesday and Iran, the United States, and other major powers are scheduled to begin negotiations in part addressing Iran's nuclear program. The United Nations will also be determining soon whether or not to enact stricter sanctions against Iran.

As quoted in the Associated Press, "the president's message during his U.N. visit will be 'peace and friendship for all nations, fighting suppression and interaction with all nations in the framework of justice and mutual respect," said a spokesman for Ahmadinejad's office, Mohammad Jafar Mohammadzadeh, according to IRNA.'" A little ironic given the elements of the government that supported Ahmadinejad and the crackdowns on protestors as recently as this past Friday, September 18, 2009...

In the words of Maz Jobrani:

Silver Lining

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is estimating that CO₂ emissions will fall 2% in 2009, the largest drop in 40 years. The IEA attributes 75% of the decrease to the global recession.

This shows that the best way to reduce emissions is simply to reduce consumption. For instance, reducing the number of pregnancies is "five times as cost-effective as deploying low-carbon technologies." I'm not saying that we should enforce draconian limits on childbirth, but providing condoms and birth control to developing nations would reduce everything from environmental damage to the spread of AIDS to fighting over limited resources. (It's no coincidence that Rwanda has the highest population density in mainland Africa.)

And on that note, Happy Peace Day.

Bad Arguments and No Arguments

Ten days ago in the Michigan Daily, Chris Koslowski politicized the death of Ted Kennedy. But not in a way you might think:

Obama has said again and again that a major factor behind the failure of the current health care system is the execution of needless or futile medical procedures. Among these procedures, Obama specifically mentioned surgeries for terminally ill patients. During a primetime ABC broadcast from the White House this summer, he said, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”...

Obama, and everyone who is in favor of public health insurance, needs to ask themselves... Would Kennedy, if he were a private citizen of average income under Obama’s public plan, have been able to pursue these life-extending procedures, given his age and condition?

Koslowski makes the point of all opponents of reform: "Obamacare is bad." But that doesn't fully address the relevant point: whether health-care reform will be better than what we have now. The fact that Koslowski doesn't ask whether his hypothetical, average-income Ted Kennedy would have been covered under a current, private plan (Answer: Probably not) shows that he hasn't done this cost-benefit analysis.

The problem is Democrats and proponents of health-care reform have not been making this argument effectively. Yes, whatever plan that comes out of Congress probably won't cover everything. But it will be better than what we have now.