The Scope Of The Mission In Syria

When I want to know what to think about some conflict in the Middle East that America might be getting into, I turn to Juan Cole. I found these speculations about what America might do in Syria particularly interesting:

It is not clear what an American intervention would achieve. It is likely that Washington will conduct a limited punitive operation, perhaps hitting regime buildings with Tomahawk missiles. The latter would avoid the regime’s sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, which might be able to fell an F-18 fighter jet. 

It should be obvious, however, that any such strike would be a form of retaliation for President al-Assad’s flouting of international law. It would not actually protect Syrians from their government, and it would be unlikely to alter the course of the civil war.

Fred Kaplan's excellent article in Slate suggests something similar, though it also considers the possibility that Obama is considering a larger mission to destabilize the Syrian regime. Kaplan emphasizes that Obama wants to defend one of the few international norms that there seems to be a real consensus around: don't use chemical weapons. I don't know if there's a good reason for having that particular norm. (Gas is a horrific weapon in many ways, but is it really worse to be killed with nerve gas than to be shot by a helicopter gunship or a drone? Gas is probably not as bad as land mines, which stick around to kill noncombatants long afterwards.) But I am a believer in a rule-governed international framework that curtails violence, and defending such a framework requires punishing violators. Doing just enough to make Assad regret using chemical weapons may be the goal here.

In any event, what we should think of war with Syria depends a whole lot on the scope of the mission. What we're looking at here is modeled off of Libya and Kosovo a lot more than Iraq, as it doesn't seem that we're sending in ground troops to occupy the country. That's no guarantee that it'll have results like Libya and Kosovo, which I mostly see as successes of American military policy. But if it doesn't, that'll be because of logistic and tactical differences that involve the specifics of the situation in Libya, Kosovo, and Syria, rather than broad and general considerations about the nature of the war. I don't have an opinion yet on what should be done in Syria, because I don't have a good handle on the specifics of the situation.

Of course, the point that we'd do a lot better to devote money to buying insecticide-treated bednets to protect people from malaria than bomb Syrian government installations in the name of humanitarianism is exactly right. That's an argument for defunding American war-fighting capacity in general in favor of giving more money to humanitarian causes, which I think is exactly the right thing to do. I don't know how to bring that fact to bear on the situation at hand, though. It's not like America is going to buy the bednets with the money if we don't go to war.

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Bradley Manning 2016

Policy over the last several years has given civil libertarians a lot to be unhappy about. I don't know how many of them are willing to trust presidential candidates' promises at this point, but it looks like there's going to be a lot of support in the Democratic primary for anyone who can make credible promises to them on these issues. (What makes someone credible here? I guess if they've meaningfully contributed to better outcomes on these issues, or if they've been speaking out on them for a long time.) I could see some candidate pledging to pardon Bradley Manning. While I don't understand the dynamics over there quite as well, it's also possible that you'd see some kind of similar action on the Republican side too, perhaps from Rand Paul or someone trying to absorb the Ron Paul constituency. I don't see it taking a Bradley Manning-related shape, though, since Rand doesn't seem to like him very much.

Richard Arenberg's Confused And Pessimistic Defense Of The Filibuster

Yglesias is right about how Richard Arenberg's Politico article defending the filibuster is thoroughly confused. The minority rights worth protecting are the rights of minorities among the people. Nobody should care about defending the rights of a minority of Senators to determine policy. Assuming that democracy is operating properly in their elections, there's a very good reason why those Senators are in the minority -- most people opposed their ideas. As happened in the Civil Rights era, a minority of Senators may keep filibustering legislation that would support equal rights for a minority of the people. Then we should support the minority among the people (who likely have backing from a majority of people, which is why they have majority backing in the Senate (setting aside issues about Senate overrepresentation of unpopulated states, which Arenberg isn't interested in fixing)) and against the Senators. 

Here I think Arenberg is even more wrong than Yglesias suggests. One great thing about America that should give us optimism is our history of overturning race, class, gender, and sexual orientation-related prejudices. It's not just true of America, but of societies around the world over the last few centuries. Things were worse long ago than they are now, and I'm willing to extrapolate towards their getting even better. If you think this is what's going to happen, you want it to be easier to change the status quo. If you think things are going to get worse for minority rights, so we'd better defend the status quo against change, you might support the filibuster. But I think the last few centuries of history support more optimistic bets. 

Gay Sex With Eye Contact For Congresswoman Jiménez Ortiz

Mexican congresswoman Ana María Jiménez Ortiz has come up with a novel reason for restricting marriage only to heterosexuals. On her view, "marriage should only be considered in those relationships in which the members have sex while facing each other." As she explains, "A marriage should only be considered amongst people that can look at each other in the eye while having sexual intercourse... Something that does not happen in homosexual couples."

We can debate the merits of restricting marriage based on whether face-to-face sexual positions are possible. But we can also debate whether gay people can have sex facing each other. My impression, confirmed by online research, is that a variety of sexual positions permit them to do this. Even if we can't convince Jiménez Ortiz that her proposed restriction was mistaken, we might be able to convince her that homosexuals can satisfy her restriction, with the help of enough photographic evidence. Mailing her enough proof of this might be a helpful way to align public policy with the empirical data.