Ben Stein contends that "[t]he staggering 2008 run up in [oil prices], which beggared hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, was caused by the sinister machinations of a few dozen oil traders and speculators in the commodity pits and lush offices of hedge funds and investment banks."

It's expensive, but Nate Hale has me convinced: the plane is "[a] revolutionary fighter that simply out-classes everything in the sky."

In mock combat exercises in Nevada, Alaska and elsewhere, the F-22 has racked up a kill ratio of at least 250:1. The ratio for existing, fourth-generation fighters (like the F-15 and F-16) is much, much lower. That is an obvious concern, considering that in some scenarios (say, defending the Taiwan Strait) our pilots would face an equal (if not greater) number of Chinese fighters with similar capabilities. It shapes up as a war of attrition that we simply can't afford to fight.

In response, opponents say that the odds of a war with China are low, and we can still dominate other adversaries (think North Korea, Iran and Syria) with a mix of F-22s, F-35s and older fighters. But that argument ignores a much more pressing threat, posed by advanced surface-to-air missiles.

As Air Force leaders have testified, the F-22 is the only aerial platform that can operate-- and survive--in a dense air defense environment populated by "double-digit" SAMs, like the Russian-made SA-20. But what about the JSF; it's a stealth platform, right? Well, some platforms are "stealthier" than others, and the F-22 has a much smaller radar cross section than the newer F-35. In other words, if you want an aircraft with precision attack capabilities--and one that can survive against state-of-the-art air defense systems, you want the Raptor. Did we mention that the SA-20 is being aggressively marketed around the globe, and will eventually show up in places like Tehran and Damascus?

Not to worry, Raptor critics respond; we can do it with UAVs. Or can we? Retired Air Force General Ron Keys, a former commander of Air Combat Command, told a defense audience a couple of years ago that China's ability to knock down our drones would be limited only "by the time required to reload their SA-20s." General Keys understands that combat UAVs--like the ones needed to target advanced SAMs--are still on the drawing board. Maybe we should ask the Russians to stop selling the SA-20 until we have enough stealth drones, or request that China delay any attack on Taiwan for at least another decade.

Unfortunately the Senate voted to strip funding for the F-22 from the defense funding bill, thereby (I'd say) placing short-term budgetary concerns above the welfare of our troops and the security of the nation. (Max Boot, whom I respect greatly, had reservations about the funding pre-vote.)

But (or "Thus"?) instructive: "Twelve questions for John Derbyshire."

Mark Steyn, from the print National Review (no link):

Whenever I cite some particularly lurid tale from the front lines of Euro-Canadian health care in National Review Online's "Corner," I get a flurry of e-mails from American readers offering horror stories from U.S. hospitals. And yes, it's true, bad things happen in American hospitals. But the Euro-Canadian stories are not really about the procedure, the operation, the emergency room, the doctor, the nurse. They're about impotence — not in the "Will Obama pay for my Viagra?" sense but in terms of civic dignity and individual liberty. I think of a young man called Gerald Augustin, of Rivière-des-Prairies, Quebec, who went to the St. André medical clinic complaining of stomach pain. He'd forgotten to bring his government medical card, so they turned him away. He was a Quebecker born and bred, and he was in their computer. But no card, no service: That's just the way it is. So he went back home to get it and collapsed of acute appendicitis, and by the time the ambulance arrived he was dead. He was 21 years old, and he didn't make it to 22 because he was forced to accept the right of a government bureaucrat to refuse him medical treatment for which he and his family have been confiscatorily taxed all their lives. "I don't see what we did wrong," said the administrator. "We just followed the rules." No big deal, M. Augustin wasn't anything special; no one in the clinic even remembered giving him the brush.

One can't reduce both poverty and income inequality. The best tool for reducing poverty, the free market, increases income inequality. The best tool for reducing income inequality, governmental confiscation and redistribution, increases poverty.

I vote for reducing poverty. I consider the passion for income equality a fetish. I don't care how many people are richer than I; I want it as easy as possible to raise or keep myself out of poverty.

Harrumph.

Charles Murray finds it in Las Vegas.

William Kristol and Jennifer Rubin on the president's remarks to prominent American Jews. (Rubin has criticism for Obama's audience as well: "This is what comes from obsequiousness.")

Mark Steyn, typically sharp.

Maybe, but I find it hard to believe.

Funny post (from 2004; mild profanity) by Shannon Love, of the mysterious-gender Loves. (Love now blogs at Chicago Boyz.)

Theodore Dalrymple:

I must be one of the few people in the western world who would not recognize a song by Michael Jackson. No doubt I have heard one or several of his songs, pumped inescapably into a public place like poison gas, but I have spent a number of decades reducing my exposure to this kind of thing to an absolute minimum.

The other people in the western world who would not recognize his songs are my friends.

David French, who blogs at NRO's Phi Beta Cons:

When I went to war, I figured I’d meet at least a few other political junkies. However, what I found were line troops who - with few exceptions - would rather watch ESPN than Fox or CNN and were only vaguely attuned to the political debates raging in Washington. The things that really mattered were the next mission, the next fight, and the next call home.

My entire life, I firmly believed the pen was mightier than the sword and that great armies moved under the inspiration of great men. Now, I’m not so sure. In one year, my small unit — an armored cavalry squadron of less than 1,000 men — liberated hundreds of square miles of Diyala Province from the darkest evil. It was not stirring rhetoric that stopped AQI terrorists from torturing and beheading entire villages, or shooting children in the face to “send a message,” or imposing the worst forms of Sharia law while they spent their days high on drugs, raping women, and watching Turkish porn. It was not the pen that cleared mine-laden roads or brought the first signs of economic life to communities trapped in grinding poverty.

As long as Obama continues to draw the sword, I don’t care much what he says with his pen. It should humble our political classes to know that the important decisions— the actions that truly decide the fate of nations — are made by Americans who care more about the NBA playoffs than a speech on the floor of the Senate, who rarely watch a cable news broadcast, and for whom Facebook is the lifeline for all the news that truly matters . . . of first steps, birthday parties, and little league baseball games far, far away.

Roger Scruton:

At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. . . . Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art.

At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue.

From his conclusion:

In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration—amplified now by the Internet—drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.

One response is to look for beauty in its other and more everyday forms—the beauty of settled streets and cheerful faces, of natural objects and genial landscapes. It is possible to throw dirt on these things, too, and it is the mark of a second-rate artist to take such a path to our attention—the via negativa of desecration. But it is also possible to return to ordinary things in the spirit of Wallace Stevens and Samuel Barber—to show that we are at home with them and that they magnify and vindicate our life. Such is the overgrown path that the early modernists once cleared for us—the via positiva of beauty. There is no reason yet to think that we must abandon it.

That's Ralph Peters's view, and it makes sense:

MISCALCULATING blindly, al Qaeda suffered a catastrophic defeat in Iraq. Now our approach to Afghanistan bears an uncanny resemblance to the terrorists' failed strategy.

Certainly, there's a vast difference between our humane agenda and al Qaeda's monstrous appetite for blood. There's no moral equivalence.

Yet our ambition to convince local populations to change their culture to suit us turns us into al Qaeda's kindly twin. . . .

A more effective strategy would allow Afghans to be Afghans -- getting us out of the aid-as-bribery business -- while reducing troop numbers and concentrating on killing our enemies: al Qaeda terrorists and their protectors.

Instead, we're putting our weapons on safe to focus on development in a country that doesn't matter. . . .

In Afghanistan, we're asking people to change who they are. Al Qaeda made the same mistake in Iraq. But at least the terrorists knew why.

Daniel Pipes:

Washington's long delay has cost Americans heavily, starting with thousands dead and hundreds of billions of dollars, then going on to poisoning American politics. . . .

Worse, occupying Iraqi cities has a yet-incalculable but frightening long-term impact. More than any other factor, taking responsibility for Iraqi cities discredited George W. Bush and built the groundswell of support that swept the furthest left-wing politician ever to the presidency. . . . Americans for many decades will likely pay for mistakes made in Iraq.

I agree with Pipes (who recommended this move in 2003, long before I had an opinion) that the withdrawal is years overdue, for all the reasons he gives. But I'm not sure.

First, Iraq would've cost the GOP the presidency regardless of when our forces withdrew, because Iraq was and remains destined for carnage, and Bush would've been blamed whenever it occurred. Iraq is, as Pipes writes, "a historically violent country . . . replete with corruption, tension, hatred, and desire for revenge." (AP yesterday: "Bombs killed nearly 60 people in Iraq on Thursday in the worst violence since U.S. combat troops withdrew from urban areas last week[.]") A withdrawal in 2003 might have caused Iraq to collapse (or implode, or explode) before the 2004 elections, in which case Kerry would likely have won. Basically, the decision to invade rendered almost inevitable a Democrat victory.

(Still, we were right to invade.)

Second, as Ralph Peters noted last week, al-Qaeda chose to make their stand against us in Iraq, and we crushed them there. A frequently fierce critic of our conduct of the war, Peters nonetheless concludes, "That single development made Iraq worthwhile."

Third, and this may read as armchair-generalship at its worst (I've never served), we now have not just the world's most powerful military, but also the world's most skilled and experienced large military. I feel that more than 4,000 dead and (by this count) more than 30,000 wounded is too high a price for what we gained, but events could demonstrate otherwise.

Finally, and this is more speculation, did Iraq's example give Middle Eastern Muslims a taste for freedom? Christopher Hitchens hypothesizes a connection between "the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part," and "the astonishing events in Iran" recently. Was our troops' continued presence in Iraq's cities necessary for those elections to occur? Maybe, and maybe.

Again, I think Pipes is right. We spent too much money, we fought among ourselves too bitterly, and, most important, too many troops lost their lives to justify our decision to retain control of Iraq after we'd removed Saddam. History may decide differently, though.

As Chris Horner writes, that admission by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson "is of inescapable importance" and deserves the widest possible publicity. Even if reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide is a worthy goal, Waxman-Markey would do nothing—nothing—to accomplish it. There's no justification for supporting cap-and-trade, and plenty of reason to oppose it.

It seems an absurd question to ask about an American president, but it's consistent with his behavior. (I just read this post by Michael Ledeen, which gave me the idea.) Obama seeks ever-greater power over the rest of us. Why wouldn't he be drawn to tyrants, and disdain those who want freedom?

Most are funny even to this non-coder.

(Via Craig Newmark.)

Senate Democrats and President Obama, trying to assuage fears about the cost of health reform, yesterday touted new estimates that put the price tag for one bill at $611 billion over the next decade. . . .

 

Under the new proposal, any business with more than 25 workers would be required to offer coverage or pay a $750 penalty per employee.

Michael Ledeen:

The real question is, how are we doing in the broad war (the one that stretches from Afghanistan into Europe, with active battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine and Lebanon)?

The answer must involve Syria and Iran–the two countries that are providing the bulk of the terrorists’ support–and Saudi Arabia, which funds the global indoctrination of would-be terrorists. If we’re going to win the war, we have to thwart Tehran and Damascus, and, at a minimum, get the Saudis to stop paying for pre-terrorism radicalization all over the world.

The answer, then is: we are doing very badly. Indeed, we’re not doing at all. Au contraire, we and our feckless Western allies are, for the most part, actively appeasing those whom we should be confronting.

Other than vastly increasing government's power over the rest of us:

China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions. . . . Japan failed to make a significant commitment to reduce emissions

and

India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Stephen F. Hayes and William Kristol on Obama's failure to support the protestors in Iran:

Obama had promised in Cairo, in his address to the Muslim world, a "new beginning" in U.S.-Muslim relations. He spoke of his belief in democracy and of his "unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose."

Those are not just American ideas, he said, but universal human rights. "And that is why we will support them everywhere."

Except not in Iran. And not when it matters.

Tim Blair on a murder by Pakistani Taliban.

Mark Steyn's Song of the Week is "Dance Me To The End Of Love," written by Leonard Cohen. (Steyn recommends this recording by Madeleine Peyroux.) As usual, Steyn's analysis is sharp, with fascinating tangents:

I'd heard [Cohen's song] but paid no particular attention to it until ten years ago when I was writing a Valentine's Day column on the language of love. It made the rather obvious point that the preoccupations of romantic songs are often restrained by the limited rhymes for the word "love". In French, amour rhymes with dozens of other useful words - toujours (always), jour (day), carrefour (crossroads), tambour (drum)... So, with nary a thought, you have a zillion potentially amorous scenarios. In Portuguese, it's different. Coracao (heart) rhymes with violao (guitar) and cancao (song), which is why there are a ton of sambas and bossas about giving you my heart while I play you a song on my guitar.

The constraints of language help define our notion of romance, and in English we're more constrained than most. There are just four and a half rhymes for "love," approximately three-quarters of which offer very meagre possibilities: "above," "dove," "glove," "shove," and (the half-rhyme) "of," pronounced "uv." The last is the reason why, in English songs, "love" is a thing you spend a lot of time "dreaming uv."

Enlightening, and a comfort to me in my English-only lyrical travails. And yet . . . Here are some lines Steyn praises:

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance Me To The End Of Love...

Steyn writes, "A 'homeward dove'. Isn't that better than all those turtle doves? And the olive branch sets up the image, so that, like the best song lyrics, it has a kind of inevitability." But the olive branch and the dove together are symbols of peace. What does peace have to do with the rest of the song? Nothing as far as I can tell. Steyn also likes this:

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance Me To The End Of Love...

Steyn writes, "'Limits of'. Very novel after decades of 'dreaming of'." Well, maybe (can something be "very novel"?), but among the meanings of "limit" is "end," so when I hear these lines or read them they seem self-contradictory. I have to pause until I've disentangled what Cohen meant and what he wrote.

It continues to puzzle (and often frustrate) me that people forgive in songs inadvertent or conflicting ambiguity they'd find unacceptable in their own work.

Lots of interesting stuff from StrategyPage, including this:

India is getting nervous about China's growing power (economic and military) in the Indian ocean. China has economic and military connections with Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and many African nations. For example, most of Pakistan's weapons are Chinese, and there are over 10,000 Chinese in Pakistan working on economic projects. There is $4 billion in Chinese investments in Pakistan, and that is expected to more than triple in the next year. China is doing the same thing in Africa, and trying to do it in Myanmar (run by a paranoid dictatorship) and Sri Lanka (which has long had tense relations with India.)

In honor of the Founders, and of this great nation one of whose citizens I'm fortunate and thankful to be:

(More information here.)