In this piece, George Will gets to the heart of today’s quagmire in Iraq: accountability:
The first axiom is: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate.
Leave aside the question of who or what failed before 9/11. But who lost his or her job because the president’s 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud — the story of Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging pre-emptive war — weapons of mass destruction — was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today’s insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable.
Indeed. And for Rumsfeld, Will summons up the bard….
One question is: Are the nation’s efforts in the deepening global war — the world is more menacing than it was a year ago — helped or hindered by Rumsfeld’s continuation as the appointed American most conspicuously identified with the conduct of the war? This is not a simple call. But being experienced, he will know how to make the call. Being honorable, he will so do.
He knows his Macbeth and will recognize the framing of the second question: Were he to resign, would discerning people say that nothing in his public life became him like the leaving of it?
I hate it when Pat Buchanan is right…
Don’t you just hate it when a blow-hard bigot like Buchanan [corrected – thanks Paul] is simply right – and eloquently so – as he is here on The meaning of Fallujah? Fortunately he is irrepressibly WRONG in many other ways elsewhere on his site, so my feelings of cognitive dissonance aren’t too severe….
So who reads these things anyway?
Two days ago Glynn Foster asked the question that is the subject of this thread. I’d like to respond in the first person singular, rather than attempting unsupported generalizations.
The main reason that I think about who reads my blog is that I’m interested in attracting readership from a wide variety of different groups. I find that this leads to opportunities for interesting and unexpected follow-on discussions, whether in blog comments or via email. It also gives me reasons to think about, and post about, a much wider range of subjects. Some topics may not interest you personally, but I hope that each one will amuse, or infuriate, or stimulate at least one of you.
Why? Well, I think about my own blog reading. I know the kind of blog that I tend to linger over, to bookmark, to return to, to link to from my blog. And I know the kind of blog that makes me shudder and hit BACK as quickly as possible. (Entries longer than a screenful tend to do it – sorry Manfreet.) I guess I’d like to make my blog a “go to” blog for others. It’s a modest enough ambition. As long as I don’t blow my bandwidth allocation, I’d like to increase my traffic – why not? I watch my site stats (my provider uses Webalizer) and trackbacks for any hotspots. But all of this requires that I think about who’s reading my blog – not just my family, and a few friends from Sun who see it scroll by on the PlanetSun aggregator, but the rest of them, out there in the blogosphere. Cthulu help me if they find it boring and tune me out!
Mine's a pint of ESB….
This whole sickening Iraqi prison situation, from someone who knows about such things
An e-friend from the Al Stewart mailing list, Terry Karney, has posted a couple of detailed articles on technical/legal issues arising from interrogations in the prison in Baghdad. He knows what he is talking about: he was over there, in military intelligence, until he was evacuated for medical reasons.
As he writes elsewhere:
…right now I am ashamed of my profession… I’m an interrogator, and while only MPs and officers… have been implicated, it was said to be in the interest of people in my line of work…. I feel dirty, unclean, with spotted hands.
The full piece is poetic, tragic. My heart goes out to him.
It's official
SOA book review at Amazon
As some of you will know, I’m professionally involved in service oriented architecture, distributed computing, web services, and stuff like that. So you shouldn’t be surprised that I posted a review of Thomas Erl’s Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services over at Amazon.com. Since all reviews become the property of Amazon, I’ll let you go and read it yourself. Or I can tell you that the title of my review was “A thoroughly misleading title; useful for a limited purpose”, and let you draw your own conclusions.
Goodbye to friends
A sad day here at Sun, as the previously-announced layoffs (involuntary severance, reductions in force, downsizings, pick your euphemism) started to take effect. On some previous occasions I have been a manager, and have therefore had some insight into how the process unfolds. This time I was just another individual contributor, and had no advance warning of any kind. The managers and HR department are (unfortunately) getting quite good at this kind of thing – it’s not a skill that I would wish them to cultivate.
I have no particular wish (nor, per Sun’s Policy on Public Discourse, would it be appropriate) to discuss the business issues surrounding the layoffs. Nor is it time to discuss the consequences of all of the project changes and cancellations that accompany a RIF, although some of my colleagues whose blogs are syndicated on PlanetSun have done so. Instead, this evening I find myself thinking about the friends and colleagues whom I will miss going forward. The familiar (if distorted) face at the other end of a video conference. The presence on the mailing list always ready with a sardonic quip or a helpful suggestion. The now-empty office that used to be a rendezvous when I travelled out to Menlo Park or Santa Clara. (But not empty for long – space consolidation will swallow up empty offices rapidly.)
Tonight I’d like to thank all of the people that I’ve worked with over the many years that I’ve been at Sun, particularly those who are no longer with the company and whose departure was involuntary. I wish you were still here. You know who you are.
On my next vacation
DisneyWorld is totally passé (whether in Florida, France, or Japan). I want to go to Suoi Tien Park! Or I do if it’s as much fun as it looks from the web site. I’m particularly interested in the Unicorn Palace with Hell Ten courts inside, a unique and magnificent way of education for people. I understand that this incorporates ten highly imaginative kinds of hell, designed for people guilty of different kinds of sin – shades of Dante. I’m not clear on how interactive the experience is….
Book chain
“The crew numbered nearly a hundred and served a dozen or so guests, who had come from Britain via Paris, where they had stayed at the Ritz.” From A Peace To End All Peace by David Fromkin.
Posted in accordance with Dave’s instructions:
- Grab the nearest book,
- open it to page 23,
- find the 5th sentence,
- post its text along with these instructions,
- point back to where you got the idea so that we can follow the threads.