Yesterday, a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed 4 people and injured 15.

( Where this fits into the larger political gameCollapse )
( And now, the controversial partCollapse )

This is probably one of the most important stories that has shown up in the news in the past year or so. It's important for two reasons: (1) It's systematically documented, and I'd be willing to give 90% or better odds that the underlying claims are factually true; and (2) the victim in this case was a German citizen. (Why is this important? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, most of America doesn't really care if this is done to an Afghan or a Pakistani. Doing it to a West European citizen is important because it means that the people responsible feel that they can do this somewhere where it will be noticed, and without punishment or compunction. The significance - apart from the usual issues of torture, kidnapping, holding of people incommunicado, and complete suspension of any pretense of legal legitimacy - is that it was brazen.)

In other news, Mahmoud Abbas has claimed a fairly sound victory in the Palestinian elections. This is good in that he seems like (along with more or less everyone living in that area outside of Hamas and their moral kin) he is genuinely interested in solving the problems of the area and building peace. The one issue is that voter turnout was low in areas, indicating that the Hamas boycott had an impact and they'll be able to claim that Abbas has a weak mandate, and thus continue to kill people in the streets. But hopefully he'll be able to assert control fairly quickly, and hopefully (and I'm sincerely hopeful on this!) Sharon will realize that there's the chance for a real negotiating partner here.

Finallly, this one was pointed out by johnnybrainwash: The Pentagon is considering a strategy which it calls the Salvador option for dealing with insurgency in Iraq. It's good to know that things are going so well that we can safely copy a strategy which has already failed disastrously elsewhere. Much less important than the other students, but I foresee this leading to no end of trouble in coming years...

An interesting op-ed piece by Peter Bergen raises a good question: For all that the various Arab leagues spend time decrying the way in which the West oppresses Muslims and so on, why are they - both as a community and as individual countries - so conspicuously absent when it comes time to help fellow Muslims? The recent disaster in Asia is just an example - even though the hardest-hit area is one of the most predominantly Muslim parts of Indonesia, the Muslim country that gave the most - Saudi Arabia - gave only $30 million, as much as the Netherlands, and the other countries gave even less. But this is hardly a unique incident; these countries are always the loudest when it's time to claim victimization, and the quietest when it comes time to doing anything about it, especially if it may have a cost to them.

In the past two years, I've heard several soldiers say that they dislike civilians questioning the course of the war, since if the soldiers aren't allowed to do so, why should someone who isn't even involved?

This is part of a broader question: Can civilians legitimately question the war? Or is it just armchair generalling, and somewhat hypocritical?

This is a very important question, and it's worth answering. My short answer is, that's the civilians' job.

The long answer is:

In our military, we have a rather unusual division between the officers and the enlisted. (Most other militaries - those that didn't derive from England - do this differently) The officers' responsibility is to keep the "big picture" in mind, and among other things to question orders and refuse them if they're not legitimate or moral. The enlisted soldiers' responsibility is to follow these orders to the best of their ability. However, we are living in an age of small-group operations rather than giant infantry movements across the countryside. In most cases in the field, an E6 may be far and away the most senior person present - since we insist on commissioning people right out of college. An NCO in a position like this can't rely solely on the judgement of a junior officer; he or she needs training in how to interpret orders and decide when to refuse them at least as thorough as an O1 or an O2.

So my answer to the original question is, the soldiers do and should question the course of the war, especially on the scales for which they are responsible. An officer or an NCO is responsible for the moral conduct of himself (or herself - I'm just going to use one pronoun, bear with me. You know what I mean.) and everyone under his command. And what is a civilian's job? Well, a civilian needs to keep well-informed about the course of the war as a whole, and offer counsel to the President when something is wrong. And yes, sometimes this can mean saying that something is a bad idea and we should stop doing it - not as an allegation of incompetence (although those are fair game too! Someone has got to watch for it.) but as a simple question of policy.

That's a basic point in our system of government: A citizen's responsibility isn't just to vote for someone and then not pay attention to what they do, but rather to stay part of the process, to keep informed of the progress of everything - especially a war! - and apply pressure to make sure that the people they elected stay on track, and know what the public wants.

So if the public shows serious opposition to a war, it's the President's responsibility (and every other elected official's) to take a good, hard look at why the public is so opposed. If the President really believes that, despite opposition, the war is still a good idea, it's his responsibility to communicate to the public why he thinks so and convince them that he's right. If the President can't convince the public, then something is seriously wrong. At this point, it's the people's responsibility to make sure the President pays attention - and that's not necessarily something that can wait until the next election.

(And if all this isn't enough, consider that the average president has less experience doing his job than the average junior officer - at least the JO's went through officers' training. Would you like a random midshipman to run the country for a while without supervision? Or maybe a 2nd lieutenant, all bright-eyed and excited about Making a Difference?)