A Wider Range of Views at the WSJ:
A notable change in the Wall Street Journal editorial page since Paul Gigot took the helm has been the inclusion of more perspectives on the op-ed pages. The WSJ has run articles by prominent Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton, a drug decriminalization article by Ethan Nadelman. The latter, in particular, would never have graced the WSJ's pages under the late Bob Bartley. Today's page contains a fairly devastating take on the Bush presidency by the Claremont Institute's Mark Helprin. With a wider range of views than in times past, the WSJ is even more of an indispensible read, even when it's not publishing conspirators.
Considering the (justified) scorn with which the Volokh Conspirators usually greet legal commentary from reporters without legal training, I'm surprised that anyone thinks military commentary from someone without serious military training and experience is worth the ink. Isn't Helprin the guy who insisted that the doughty Serbs would surely defeat Clinton in Bosnia?
Oh irony, thy name is wm13!
You must be talking about a different Mark Helprin. The one who wrote the article served in two branches of the Israeli armed forces and was Bob Dole's defense policy adviser in 2000. He might be wrong on substance, but he's certainly not the unqualified hack that you seem to be thinking about.
I'm very disappointed in their recent coverage of the Madoff scandal. The Markopolos' 1995 letter to the SEC, provided more information than WSJ coverage, which at one point started to editorialize right in the middle of a news article by calling Markopolos "frothy." I guess the WSJ is on its way to becoming the Fox News of the financial press.
The Financial Times is also slipping too, but at least they have Martin Mayer.
While you are correct that "he's not a career military man," having shifted the goalposts, that does not mean that he is "someone without serious military training and experience," as your first post asserted. Helprin clearly has both, which was my point.
That statement is just plain wrong.
He ignores the budding aliance with India. Only the single most far reaching thing done under President Bush.
He also ignores the fact that Japan alone has a navy that could whip the Chinese.
The US/Japan/India/Australia combination is more than a match for China for the next 30 years at least.
That is just bizarre. I have no problem with withdrawing quickly from Iraq in 2003 but we would have had to invade Saudi Arabia for this "fleet in being" to have existed. We withdrew all our ground forces after the first Gulf War. The Saudis certianly would not have just let us withdraw our forces from Iraq and put them in their country.
Whatever his experience, this column does not lend itself to confidence in his abilities.
Look, Helprin has every right to pontificate about military strategy. Just like I have the right to insist that an extra division should be sent to Kabul right now. But I find articles or comments by people without relevant expertise boring and stupid. That's why I never comment here about, say, Fourth Amendment issues.
P.S. My grandfather was a "push on to Berlin" man. Roosevelt ignored the advice of a MP corporal, unfortunately.
That's why I'll never forgive Truman for not listening to MacArthur's advice about invading China.
That's why I find arguments in favor of torture much less persuasive than what actual interrogators think about it.
"The counterpart to Republican incompetence has been a Democratic opposition warped by sentiment. The deaths of thousands of Americans in attacks upon our embassies, warships, military barracks, civil aviation, capital, and largest city were not a criminal matter but an act of war made possible by governments and legions of enablers in the Arab world. Nothing short of war -- although not the war we have waged -- could have been sufficient in response. The opposition is embarrassed by patriotism and American self-interest, but above all it is blind to the gravity of the matter. Though scattered terrorists allied with militarily insignificant states are not, as some conservatives assert, closely analogous to Nazi Germany, the accessibility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons makes the destructive capacity of these antagonists unfortunately similar -- a fact, especially in regard to Iran, that is persistently whistled away by the Left."
Perhaps I'm concern trolling, but I'd not previously heard the above so aptly or succinctly put. In anticipation of the coming Obama administration, a useful object of reflection for our Kossack visitors.
Right. One interrogator must obviously know more about the torture issue than anyone else, and is clearly objective and has no axes to grind..
Since we are discussing the WSJ, maybe you should read this article from today's edition.
I'm surprised that anyone thinks military commentary from someone without serious military training and experience is worth the ink."
You must have loved the last eight years: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Jim Haynes, David Addington, et al.
That's an opinion piece, not an article. I can't even figure out who wrote it, which makes it a little hard to judge credibility.
These days, most newspaper articles on controversial subjects are opinion pieces. They just don't admit it.
Nevertheless, it provides useful information.
Indeed, if you think distortions and half-truths are "useful information." Here are a couple of examples. The article you cited said this:
Really? Is that what Holder said? An earlier page in WSJ, on 11/22/08, acknowledged that Holder was talking about "whether unlawful combatants captured in the war on terror are entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention." (Emphasis added.)
GC provides certain protections for all detainees, and certain extra protections for detainees who have POW status. Holder was not saying that "unlawful combatants captured in the war on terror" are entitled to no GC protection at all. He was just saying they are not entitled to POW status, which entails extra protections. So your "useful information" is a distortion of what Holder actually said.
The article you're touting also says that "sleep deprivation" is "light years away from actual torture." Really? Then why did the Bush State Dept classify that technique as "torture" when it was done by other countries? I guess it's torture only when other folks do it, but not when we do it.
IOW... the article was correct in its characterization of Holder.
As far as the Dept of State, context counts, which I will provide:
Folks can go round and round on the definition of torture. Should we include the uncomfortable chairs police often use in interrogation rooms ("stress positions")? How about abusive language? Where do we draw the line with, say, Mohammed Atta.
Until people started getting stupidly soft, torture was only something which caused severe pain or permanent psychological or physical damage.
Read the words that follow. He wasn’t talking about all GC protections. He was talking about the GC protections that apply to POWs. And WSJ understood that, and acknowledged that.
“context counts”
Reading comprehension counts. Sleep deprivation is on the list. That means the Bush State Dept considered it one of the “forms of torture.”
“Folks can go round and round on the definition of torture.”
You can “go round and round” if you want to. Or you can read the definitions in the various statutes. They’re not that hard to comprehend.
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