Month: October 2004

Saddam’s McGuffin of Power

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In Lord of Rings, the plot revolves around an attempt by all parties to control Sauron’s ring of power. The ring is an item unique in all the world. Whomever controls that one item rules the world.

This plot device of unique item is fairly common in literature and movies. Hitchcock called it a McGuffin. Every character has to be looking for that unique item.

It’s not just fantasy items like magic rings and swords that get that treatment. Technology does too. Most James Bond movies feature some piece of technology so unique that control of it will lead to world domination.

All this would just be of interest to students of fiction, except that for a large section of the population the gut feel for how technology actually works comes from works of fiction. Most people in the contemporary world have no direct experience with researching, creating or manufacturing actual technology. They may use it but they don’t understand how it comes to be. It is very easy for people to think of technological items like nuclear reactors or computers in the same way as they see them portrayed in the movies.

It’s very clear from reading the ongoing debate about the extent of Saddam’s WMDs that most people have absolutely no idea of the technological issues involved. Most people, even major politicians and media figures talk about WMDs as if they were McGuffins. They act as if we expected to find a giant throbbing orb in an underground base under Baghdad that had WMD written on it. They think that WMDs were discrete objects or things that could be located and controlled.

Technology doesn’t work like that.

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The Libertarian Gap

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(crossposted on Flit(TM))

The Gap, or more formally the Non-Integrating Gap, is a concept at the core of Dr. Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century. But what is the Gap? This question comes to me every time I read a libertarian critic of the concept.

Gap countries are, by definition disconnected from the global rulesets that manage the Core, those states where a disturbingly large proportion of the world wants to get into. I say disturbingly because, all things being equal, there is really no reason for people socially acculturated and biologically specialized to warm climes to make their way in large numbers to nordic nations, but they do. Something pretty special must be attracting them while simultaneously repelling them from their ancient homelands. That something is clear after a bit of investigation, huge waves of horrifying violence interspersed with a daily brutality of individual denigration and lack of the normal rights to live out their lives in control of their own destiny.

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Terrorists South of the Border

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Last month Time magazine did an article suddenly discovering that the U.S./Mexico border is a sieve that lets millions of people and tons of drugs pass across it every year. In an age of terrorism, this looks like a disaster waiting to happen. If migrant workers and drug runners can cross the border, then obviously terrorists can do so just as easily.

A look at the empirical evidence, however, suggests just the opposite. Comparing Mexico to our other border with Canada, we find that while several dozen suspected and actual terrorists have been caught crossing over from Canada none have been caught trying to cross over from Mexico. Moreover, none have been found in the U.S. after having passed through Mexico. If the Mexican border is such a security sieve why do the terrorists not flock there in droves?

The answer is easy. Mexico isn’t the place most Americans imagine it is.

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Another Vietnam Lesson

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During the Vietnam war, one of the most emotionally wrenching parts of military service was watching the vilification of service people by the anti-war movement back home. It really seemed to affect the service people of that era profoundly that some segments of the population back home questioned their collective and individual morality.

In looking at the postings and emails from service people in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don’t think this generation of service people gives a damn what the protesters or even anyone moderately associated with them think about the war and the people who fight. I think the Left burned any moral credibility it had with that segment of the U.S. population that volunteers for military service by its actions during Vietnam.

I think this is good, especially for the mental health of the service people. The psychic toll on the Vietnam-era service people seemed quite severe. People of that era expected moral support from the general populace, even from those who opposed the wisdom of the war. When they got condemnation instead it really had an impact.

I can’t help but worry though, that this represents a further divide in our culture. The military no longer cares about the opinions of a large section of the political spectrum. That can’t be healthy long-term but the Left has only itself to blame.