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Feb. 22nd, 2006
But better late than never. From CBSNews.com: Blog
This Sunday, "60 Minutes" aired a piece on global warming. The piece, which featured correspondent Scott Pelley, largely took the existence of global warming as a given. But there are those who claim that global warming – and, specifically, the notion that human's are responsible for it – is a myth. I asked Pelley why the voices of the skeptics were not heard in the piece.
"There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about global warming," he says. "The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive. We talked to the chairman of the National Academy of Scientists, Ralph Cicerone. Jim Hansen at NASA, who's considered the world's leading expert in climate change. The people in the story, who are well respected in the field. There's just no longer any credible evidence that suggests that, a, the earth is not warming or, b, that greenhouse gasses are not the cause. What you do see in the data again and again and again is this almost lockstep increase between the levels of CO2 and the rise of temperature in the atmosphere. And the climate models that predicted these things happening 15 years ago have proven to be accurate."
"It would be irresponsible of us to go find some scientist somewhere who is not thought of as being eminent in the field and put him on television with these other guys to cast doubt on what they're saying," he continues. "It would be difficult to find a scientist worth his salt in this subject who would suggest this wasn't happening. It would probably be someone whose grant has been funded by someone who finds reducing fossil fuel emissions detrimental to their own interests."
We are not at war.
Feb. 22nd, 2006 10:29 pmWe are engaged in two major conflicts; neither of which can rightly be called a war.
The conflict generating the most casualties and headlines is in Iraq. There we are an occupying colonial power. Yes, our government says (and probably really means) that it would like to relinquish this colony once a suitably compliant and self-sufficient client state can be set up. But in the mean time, we are a colonial power. And like most colonial empires, we must deal with ongoing restlessness on the part of the natives. That restlessness will keep on going for as long as our occupation keeps on going. It may get worse and better in turns, but it will not stop until we stop.
But that restlessness includes no armies ready to take the field against us, no unifying command structure, no one with the authority to issue a general surrender, no one to reach a peace agreement with. It's more akin to an ongoing riot than to what the framers or anyone else in world history meant by a war.
The second conflict is against al-Qaida. A bunch of vagabond zealots who, again, have no army, are no longer centralized enough to surrender, and will in one form or another be around for generations. Regardless of whether you think a traditional anti-terrorist law enforcement strategy is the best way to combat them, they are criminals rather than an entity that it is possible to go to war against. We're very good at wars. If it was possible to annihilate them in one, we would have already done so. We already beat them in a war, depriving them of a secure base in Afghanistan, but that's as far as war can take us.
Why does it matter whether we call these conflicts wars? Because we make both constitutional and customary exceptions to the limits of government power in times of war. But those exceptions are meant to be just that: exceptions. And our current state is not exceptional unless our government chooses to make it so. Since terrorism will never go away, the war against terror may be proclaimed and renounced at will, any time the government wants to ignore the checks and balances that keep us a free society. Similarly, the conflict in Iraq may last for 30 years. It just depends on how long our government wants to maintain the colony. That is not what is meant by "in times of war."
The conflict generating the most casualties and headlines is in Iraq. There we are an occupying colonial power. Yes, our government says (and probably really means) that it would like to relinquish this colony once a suitably compliant and self-sufficient client state can be set up. But in the mean time, we are a colonial power. And like most colonial empires, we must deal with ongoing restlessness on the part of the natives. That restlessness will keep on going for as long as our occupation keeps on going. It may get worse and better in turns, but it will not stop until we stop.
But that restlessness includes no armies ready to take the field against us, no unifying command structure, no one with the authority to issue a general surrender, no one to reach a peace agreement with. It's more akin to an ongoing riot than to what the framers or anyone else in world history meant by a war.
The second conflict is against al-Qaida. A bunch of vagabond zealots who, again, have no army, are no longer centralized enough to surrender, and will in one form or another be around for generations. Regardless of whether you think a traditional anti-terrorist law enforcement strategy is the best way to combat them, they are criminals rather than an entity that it is possible to go to war against. We're very good at wars. If it was possible to annihilate them in one, we would have already done so. We already beat them in a war, depriving them of a secure base in Afghanistan, but that's as far as war can take us.
Why does it matter whether we call these conflicts wars? Because we make both constitutional and customary exceptions to the limits of government power in times of war. But those exceptions are meant to be just that: exceptions. And our current state is not exceptional unless our government chooses to make it so. Since terrorism will never go away, the war against terror may be proclaimed and renounced at will, any time the government wants to ignore the checks and balances that keep us a free society. Similarly, the conflict in Iraq may last for 30 years. It just depends on how long our government wants to maintain the colony. That is not what is meant by "in times of war."