December 2002

When I studied ethics in college, one of the big issues was the question of whether motives or actions were of greater importance. If I remember correctly, Kant said “both.”

The impending war with Iraq demonstrates that Kant was right. It may be the case that making war on Iraq is the right thing to do, if done for the right reasons. I am convinced that the USA’s reasons for a war are not the right ones.

What would be a good reason for war? That Saddam is a threat to American interests and to his own people. Both of these are true.

Why is the USA so intent on war against Iraq? The reason given by the Bush administration is pretty much what I just wrote above. What are the real reasons?

My guess is that the Bush administration is using war on Iraq as a proxy or distraction for the war on terror (I’ve always objected to that term — it’s not a war any more than LBJ’s “war on poverty” or Nixon’s “war on cancer” were wars), which doesn’t seem to be offering any positive results. Indeed, success in a war on terror is defined by an absence of news: no structures blown up, no suicide bombers, etc. Hard to make the case that you’re doing a good job. Not as marketable as a good old-fashioned war.

Another analysis — which I don’t quite buy — is that it is being done at the behest of the Israel lobby. While I’m sure Israeli politicians will be delighted to see Iraq get a good smiting by the USA, I don’t get the impression that they had been agitating for it before the Bush administration made it a priority. And, although the Israel lobby probably does have disproportionate influence (especially given the unholy alliance between Israel and American fundamentalist Christians these days), I’m not convinced that it’s influential enough to push America into a war.

And there’s the old standby, oil. I’ve read reports that representatives of major oil interests from the USA, Britain, Russia, etc, have already met to decide on how they will carve up a postwar Iraq. This is plausible. And while a war will probably be hard on the economy overall, it will be great for certain sectors — obviously the military-industrial complex, but also oil, which will be much more expensive while the war is going on.

And I do believe that Saddam’s threat to American interests is on the list, but pretty low on it. It’s not a credible justification. He’s not significantly more of a threat now than he was before Bush started making all this noise about him.

So if we do go to war against Iraq, it will be mostly for the wrong reasons. This will lead to doing the wrong things, such as shortchanging higher priorities (like that war on terror) and prosecuting the war in a way that might not lead to the best outcome in terms of American security overall, but might be best in terms of oil interests. And almost inevitably, the rebuilding of postwar Iraq will be cursed by American short-termism and by American appeasement of Saudi Arabia. (Institute a real democracy? Don’t count on it.) And so on.

Well, now that he has apologized all over the place and lost his lofty perch, Trent Lott has essentially retracted his recent contrition for his veiled racist remarks, saying

There are people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time,” Lott said in the AP report. “When you’re from Mississippi and you’re a conservative and you’re a Christian, there are a lot of people that don’t like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame.

Saying, in effect, “Sure I’m sorry — I’m sorry I was naive enough to walk into the trap laid by those mean old unspecified people who have it in for conservative Christian Mississipians.” So, to review, he still doesn’t think he said anything wrong (or expressed any indefensible ideas), he just thinks the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy finally nailed him. The cluephone is going to ring for a long time before he picks it up.

As an American, but not a deeply, blindly conservative one, I find it difficult to avoid being cynical and resigned. Despite a Bush administration that makes Nixon’s look like a Boy Scout jamboree, the average citizen seems indifferent to what’s going on in Washington. So my schadenfreude at finding this story is mixed with a feeling of futility.

First, we had the rat with the robotic brain. Now we have the robot with the rat brain. No word yet what Ratbert thinks about all this.

Esquire magazine recently published a four page letter (long, but worth reading) by John DiIulio, former head of faith-based initiatives for the President, describing the way the Bush White House is completely driven by political calculations, not by policy. He has since apologized, saying his word were “poorly chosen.” This apology has all the plausibility of Claude Rains being shocked–shocked!–to discover gambling, since the letter was so well written. And indeed, DiIulio subsequently offered a “clarification” of the apology, saying that good manners required it. In any case, the episode does show that the Bushies don’t like dissent in the ranks, and presumably had some lever they could use to pry this retraction out of DiIulio. I wonder what.

Tim O’Reilly, publisher of fine technical books with animals on the covers, dropped a mind-bomb a couple days ago on the subject of piracy and file-sharing. Some very well thought-out counter-arguments to typical Hollywood positions.

He does say one thing that doesn’t quite ring true:

The music and film industries like to suggest that file sharing networks will destroy their industries.

Those who make this argument completely fail to understand the nature of publishing. Publishing is not a role that will be undone by any new technology, since its existence is mandated by mathematics. Millions of buyers and millions of sellers cannot find one another without one or more middlemen who, like a kind of step-down transformer, segment the market into more manageable pieces. In fact, there is usually a rich ecology of middlemen. Publishers aggregate authors for retailers. Retailers aggregate customers for publishers. Wholesalers aggregate small publishers for retailers and small retailers for publishers. Specialty distributors find ways into non-standard channels.

My favorite file-sharing site was Audio Galaxy. It has almost no files to share anymore, thanks to the MPAA, but it still does have the feature that made it better than, say, Napster: it apparently uses some kind of agent technology to present “other people who liked this also liked these” recommendations. This was great–I discovered some new music that way, music I simply wouldn’t have found otherwise. With a reasonably fast connection, it was like audible websurfing.

Audio Galaxy could be considered an aggregator, but I wouldn’t call it a publisher. In a world of unfettered P2P, people really could be self-publishers, and something like Audio Galaxy could thrive. And I wonder if some kind of completely decentralized “taste-sharing” mechanism could be worked out through something akin to FOAF (the “friend of a friend” vocabulary).

But unfettered P2P is a pipe dream. Hollywood wants complete control over the terms under which we enjoy their product (and you damn well better enjoy it if you know what’s good for you). Disney has copyright extended everytime the mouse is on the verge of entering the public domain, and a TV exec says that skipping commercials is theft (I wonder if simply watching a show where you are a member of the wrong demographic is also theft?). A bill has been introduced to Congress that would explicitly permit Hollywood to hack into your PC and poke around for pirated content (and indemnify them in case they, oh, accidentally trashed your hard drive in the process). And so on.

Hollywood also would probably like it if people like me, who are creating media outside the system, would stop competing with them (if you call this competition). But I can picture the bones of a science-fiction story along the the lines of Farenheit 451, where ownership of industry media has become so onerous that people create a complete samizdat network of old public-domain and homemade entertainments.

I’ve never been a major Stereolab fan, but it was sad to read this nonetheless. I can point to the exact spots of four fatal bike-vs-car accidents in my general neighborhood.