The Wikipedia has a nice entry on this famous Robert Browning poem:

It is not a biography of Abraham ibn Ezra; like all of Browning’s historical poems, it is a free interpretation of the idea that Ezra’s life and work suggests to Browning, but the poem is Robert Browning using Ezra as a mouthpiece, not the other way around. At the center of the poem is a theistic paradox, that good might lie in the inevitability of its absence:

For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

Reminds me of the saying that the best security is the stuff that is rarely or never seen.

Amazing how good Wikipedia can be sometimes.

From September 23, 1999:

Bush proposed restoring trust by increasing military pay and benefits and by clarifying the mission of U.S. forces to “deter…and win wars,” not to undertake “vague, aimless, and endless deployments.” [emphasis added] Candidate Bush gave few specifics on his second promise but indicated that as president he would make substantial new investments in anti-terrorism efforts and “deploy anti-ballistic missile defenses, both theater and national,” at the earliest possible date.

Anti-ballistic missle defenses? How about anti-small arms (e.g. kaytusha rockets and stinger missles) defenses (not to mention anti-IED) for Americans stuck in vague, aimless and endless deployments? I guess I could have left it at that, but then I started to wonder whether the President ever reflected back on his campaign promises. Sure enough, not too long after…

From December 11, 2001:

I have come to talk about the future security of our country, in a place where I took up this subject two years ago when I was candidate for President. In September 1999, I said here at the Citadel that America was entering a period of consequences that would be defined by the threat of terror, and that we faced a challenge of military transformation. That threat has now revealed itself, and that challenge is now the military and moral necessity of our time.

[…]

The first priority is to speed the transformation of our military.

When the Cold War ended, some predicted that the era of direct threats to our nation was over. Some thought our military would be used overseas — not to win wars, but mainly to police and pacify, to control crowds and contain ethnic conflict. They were wrong. [emphasis added]

Who now says American forces must be maintained overseas mainly to police and pacify, to control crowds and contain ethnic conflict? Uh huh. Anything else “some” people might have been wrong about?

America’s next priority to prevent mass terror is to protect against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. I wish I could report to the American people that this threat does not exist — that our enemy is content with car bombs and box cutters — but I cannot.

[…]

And almost every state that actively sponsors terror is known to be seeking weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them at longer and longer ranges.

I see the logic. Pull troops back from those expensive overseas peace-keeping and diplomatic efforts in order to free up the budget for defense industry spending on technology (e.g. the military-industrial-congress complex Eisenhower warned the US not to pursue); this prepares America for the almost non-existant threat of long-range missles laden with weapons of mass destruction. Strange how things turned out, given these plans. Anything else “some” people might have been wrong about?

Our third and final priority in the fight against mass terror is to strengthen the advantage that good intelligence gives our country.

[…]

There have been times here in America when our intelligence services were held in suspicion, and even contempt. Now, when we face this new war, we know how much we need them.

Wait, I thought we had good intelligence before 9/11 but the real problem identified by the Commission was mis-management of that information. How does that get translated into someone saying we don’t “need” intelligence services? President Bush used a false dilemma fallacy, it seems to me, to say you either know how much we need intelligence services or you are suspicious of them. Have you ever needed something but remained suspicious of it?

Historians will have a good deal of material, I think, to display the dark contradictions and logical fallacies of this administration.

My earlier blog entry about the length of the Iraq War left open a number of questions about time versus fatalities. I managed to find a site that is actively compiling and graphing the number of official US fatalities in Iraq:

I am now curious about a graph of all American wars together. Many people seem to bring up rough references in text and discussion anyway, so it just seems a handy graphic might help clarify.

Another analysis is available here, but it is only trying to identify terrorist-related incidents rather than fatalities.

Here is an interesting case in the Utah Supreme Court, reported by the Denver Post:

“The only thing that comes close to this is dueling,” said Associate Chief Justice Michael Wilkins, noting that two people who take 20 paces and then shoot could each be considered both victim and offender.

And Chief Justice Christine Durham wondered if the state Legislature had intended the “peculiar consequence” that a child would have the simultaneous status of a protected person and an alleged perpetrator under the law.

The comments came in oral arguments on a motion asking the high court to overturn the finding of delinquency – the legal term in juvenile court for a conviction – against Z.C., who became pregnant after she and her boyfriend [13 and 12, respectively] engaged in sex in October 2003.

Ah, yes, that old system of “judicial combat” where two people consent to put each other in grave danger and let “chance/God” sort out the risks. For what it’s worth, I thought I should point out that American dueling did not end because of legislation or legal action:

Anti-dueling ordinances also failed to stop the flow of blood. Duelists ignored or evaded such laws. […] By the time of the Civil War, dueling had begun an irreversible decline, even in the South. Not surprisingly, public opinion, not legislation, caused the change. What once had been a formal process designed to avoid violence and amend grievances had deteriorated into cold-blooded murder. People at last were shocked by it, and they showed their disdain. It may have been too late to save Alexander Hamilton. But if American was to become a truly civilized nation, the publicly sanctioned bloodshed would have to end.

Maybe this is a silly question but do Americans consider it more “civilized” to prevent people from having consentual sex, even at an early age, or to allow them to engage and take their chances? Seems like recent evidence suggests tackling the economic considerations (building opportunities, as well as providing education about risks and mitigation) is a more successful route to address this issue rather than trying to craft complex laws with strict enforcement of abstinence through sex criminalization.