Optimism and Iraq

President Bush addressed the American Legion on February 24th, 2006. At one point he referred to past elections in Iraq:

"I'm optimistic, because the Iraqi people have spoken, and the Iraqi people made their intentions clear. In December, more than 11 million Iraqis sent a clear message to the world and to the terrorists, they want their freedom. They want their country to be a democracy…"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060224.html

First of all, If voting is to be a legitimate process of communication of desire, then there must be legitimate choices to select amongst. This is exactly why the elections in Haiti conducted by Duvalier were never taken seriously by the rest of the world. The people voting had no choice of candidates, the only choice was whether or not to vote. The situation in Iraq is similar: how can people going to the ballot box select anything other than democracy?? They didn't choose a form of government (Please check one: Theocracy, Freedom and Democracy, Theocracy, Democracy without Freedom, Republic, Theocracy), they chose to participate in the one imposed upon them…

Secondly, let's consider the Democratic process in Iraq. First and foremost, it isn't a democracy at all: the governmental process to which it aspires is a republic… (I might point out that the same holds true in the US. The form of government guaranteed by the US Constitution is a Republic, and that's exactly what it aspires to be. Government by elected representatives is a republic). Further, for the election process to be worth anything at all, the voters must be an informed group. Having noted that, the literacy rate in Iraq isn't even 41%. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
How are a mass of people supposed to compose an informed electorate when the vast majority can't even read and write?? Moreover, Iraq is a country of more than 26 million people. If 11 million of them turn up to paint their fingers purple on election day, you've got a 42% turnout. While that's about par for the course regarding turnout in any modern election process, it isn't a majority and it certainly isn't any kind of clear mandate about freedom and democracy or anything else.

As an aside, given the above statistics about the Iraqi population more people voted than are literate. That is, you definitely have illiterate people voting… These people aren't clear about what they voted for; they had to take someone else's word for it. I don't know how we can be clear about their intent if they're not even clear about they voted.

Finally, let's remember that 50% of any population is of below average intelligence.

I don't see any reason to share the President's optimistic appraisal of the situation given these facts...

Port Security Issues Simplified:

Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. positions it to take over significant operations at six American ports as a lessor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101112.html

Dubai Ports World (DPW)is UAE-owned. http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/13959063.htm
This is of interest because no one disputes the fact that the UAE has been an operational and financial base for terrorists (including hijackers who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001) in recent history.

Worse, our laws require that port operators be given the official assessments detailing the critical assets, threats, and weaknesses of our ports. (P.L. 107-295 sections 70101-70102); http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:B3vmJZ6TjhcJ:www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/MTSA.pdf+P.L.+107-295&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

Given that fact, it is clear that port operators have access to information with a high potential for abuse should it fall into the hands of persons or groups willing to harm US interests.

With that in mind it doesn't seem to be much of a stretch to imagine that maybe we want to reconsider the idea of directly giving such information to a company owned by a government that all educated persons agree has a recent history of being unwilling or unable to stop anti-American terror activities on their own soil including, but not limited to, recruiting of terrorists and funding of terrorists.

Letting Dubai Ports World take over operations in our ports puts critical security intelligence into the hands of a government that is at best a Johnny-come-lately to protecting American interests and at worst is a front for individuals who would actively seek to harm American interests. However you assess the UAE government, it is clear that transferring ownership from the British company to DPW creates some additional security risk because the capability of the UAE to protect US interests is unknown for lack of any significant test of time. That is, no matter how loudly proponents of this deal shout that UAE has been "Terrorist free since Tuesday", it just doesn't provide any real confidence. Letting this deal go forward invites trouble.

Death Penalty

The death penalty is a divisive topic. There are always lots of strong opinions voiced about it. Recently the attempted execution of Michael Morales has been repeatedly delayed… Several news sources (pick your favorite, they're everywhere) have been rife with reporting about the family of the victim.

Whenever some death row inmate is about to be executed, for some reason the media always trots out "family of the victim". While I understand that those closest to victims of violent crime are likely to have the strongest emotional response, I don't see why society at large should care how they feel. Social matters should be a function of social cost/benefit on a large scale, not how some mother and father in Podunk County feel about the matter.

Further, I fail to see how the Justice system and my tax dollars paying for police, district attorneys, judges, etc. serve to improve society as a whole if we focus on some poor family getting closure. Let me be crystal clear, our tax dollars are not and should not be spent toward making any particular person or family happy, safe, or vindicated. They are collected from us collectively and should be spent on us collectively. Crimes are established based on social cost, not personal cost. We as members of society can sympathize with the family of victims but everyone should understand that our justice system serves the whole society not any particular sub-group.

The difference here is Focus. If we focus on the victims, no, the death penalty is not worthwhile because we don't really want to pay millions of dollars to make one family feel better. Your daughter is dead. She'll be dead no matter how much we spend so it's hardly worth it to go to the effort to kill some convicted murder. Life goes on and you get a book deal. Go cry on someone else's shoulder. On the other hand, if we focus on the social cost/benefit we can try to use our penal system as a means to discourage future crime. Other daughters are alive. Their risk of being victimized is a function of how well we discourage crime. If we discourage crime well enough, then these other innocent people will never be harmed. Now that IS something worth killing a murderer for…