Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:
- Marc Schulman of American Future thinks “We Need Another Vandenbergâ€. He’s right.
- Of course, the big story of today is the explosions in the Bombay transit system. I don’t have much to contribute at this point. Glenn Reynolds has as good a round-up as anyone—don’t miss blog-friend Dan Berczik’s post about his daughter (who’s in Bombay) or Bill Roggio’s post. India Uncut is updating frequently.
- The controversy in the Mexican presidential election is still going on. Mark in Mexico lists the legal reasons for annulling an election. If Mark is right, it doesn’t appear that AMLO has legal grounds for the mulligan he seems to be looking for.
- Tigerhawk has an interesting post on China and the North Korean missile crisis.
- Zenpundit asks an interesting question: who was the greatest historian? I put my suggestion in his comments. Not one of the usual suspects.
That’s the lot.
If we don’t have another Vandenburg, it may be that there is not sufficient reason to have one.
For all the comparisons between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, it has become pretty clear, four and a half years later, that the “War on Terror” has practically nothing in common with WWII. The people who continue to make these comparisons – including several very smart people on Winds of Change – are simply in denial of this basic fact. Our society, as well as the whole of Europe and eastern Asia, was facing an imminent threat that just bears no resemblance to the problem of 21st century terrorism. The Cold War, as you have frequently said, is at least somewhat better as a comparison, but still off off the mark by a wide margin.
It seems to me that a better comparison might be global warming, of all things. Like terrorism in the post-Cold War age, it represents the possibility of enormous destruction, but to really prevent it, we’d have to remake our society to an enormous degree. It doesn’t surprise me that Americans are unwilling to do that at this time, with regard to global warming or towards terrorism. As long as that’s the case, our representatives in Congress will be bitterly divided over those subjects.
I don’t think your global warming comparison is completely offbase, Tom. The problem is that terrorist attacks can cost a lot more over a significantly shorter period. The single terrorist attack on 9/11 has cost us significantly more than $1 TRILLION. So far.
That’s why I’m on the “more urgency” side rather than the “less urgency” side. However, I think that invading Iraq was a misstep that we’ll be paying for probably for the rest of my life (since that’s how long I think we’ll have substantial numbers of troops there). I don’t think that the beneficial side effects that some were predicting can possibly materialize in less than a generation if ever.
I doubt that we have a generation.
Hmm. Do you know of a source that describes exactly how $1T figure breaks down? The first thing I’d want to know is how much of it actually represents the cost of rebuilding infrastructure, rather than pork projects or partisan wrestling.
I posted the links a long time ago and I’m sure the number is significantly higher now. $200 billion a year over 5 years. Don’t just include infrastructure costs: costs of prevention need to be factored in, too.
And then, of course, there’s the loss in equity which has been enormous and, basically, hasn’t been made up yet. But my $1 trillion didn’t include that.
I can’t find it on your site. If you ever get a chance to turn it up, let me know.
I will, Tom. I went to some effort to document this when I put it together the first time so I wouldn’t mind having it handy.