Glenn Greenwald revisits an old debate, arguing that “Our war-loving Foreign Policy Community hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Building off of Marc Lynch’s blog post yesterday pointing out that General McCrystal’s strategic review calling for more troops in Afghanistan was written by “a dozen smart (mostly) think-tankers,” Greenwald writes,”What would a group of people like that ever recommend other than continued and escalated war?  It’s what they do.  You wind them up and they spout theories to justify war.  That’s the function of America’s Foreign Policy Community.”  He elides the fact that Lynch’s point is not that this represented some grand think tank consensus but rather than the deck was stacked when McChystal chose people predisposed to a COIN-centric approach.

In my New Atlanticist essay, “Foreign Policy Community War-Mongers?” I explore the theme further, arguing that the real problem with the foreign policy Establishment is not its inherent hawkishness but the reluctance of most of its members to weigh in:

The nature of expertise is such that it’s easy to fall into this trap.  First, because our peers are all reading the same things, we do tend to come to a ready agreement on the basic facts, usually leading to a realization that the problem is much more difficult than it’s portrayed by the op-ed columnists and TV talking heads.  But this leads to a sense that “everybody knows this” and therefore a reluctance to be banal.   Second, because things are indeed more complicated than understood by the pundits, there’s a reluctance to weigh in before the facts are known.   But the nature of the debate is such that it has already moved on to another topic by the time all the evidence is in.  So, the handful of experts willing to jump right in without fear are going to dominate the discussion.   Typically, these are the ones employed by ideological think tanks who exist to advance a set agenda.

Much more at the link.

Live in Rome, 1980, with Adrian Belew on guitar:

Harlan Ellison’s rant “Pay the Writer” is getting some favorable linkage, notably from Max Boot and Michael Totten.

He vows that “I don’t take a piss without getting paid.”  Which, I suppose, is good work if you can get it.

Ellison is an all-time great and he’s been getting paid to write — and been famous — since before I was born.  So, his, um, output is worth more than most. But the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to do all kinds of writing without getting paid.   Most op-eds you see in the major papers are published free or for an insultingly nominal fee.   Most blogs don’t generate enough to pay for operating expenses.

Ditto TV talking heads.  Yes, show hosts get paid; some handsomely.  But the guests who appear seldom do.  It’s supply and demand: There are a bevy of attention whores out there who will, at a moment’s notice, drop whatever it is they’re doing and take three hours out of their day in order to get 7 minutes of air time on a cable news show no one is watching.

Good luck getting paid in that climate.

UPDATE:  Over at his other blog, Dave Schuler offers his thoughts on “The Perversity of the Publishing System” and draws commentary from Michael Reynolds of Sideways Mencken, a quite successful author of children’s books under various pseudonyms, notably Michael Grant.   Let’s just say that great literature and massive book royalties are not necessarily overlapping categories.

That’s true of the arts-pop culture nexus, generally.  There are some magnificent singers and actors who earn their living doing something else, practicing their crafts as hobbies or for their local church or community theaters.  And some mediocrities who have multiple mansions and a fleet of exotic automobilies.  As has oft been noted, life ain’t always fair.

In Saturday’s post “Talk Radio Killed Conservativism?” I observed parenthetically that “most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left” and promised to elaborate. It’s something that has struck me for quite some time (see, for example, February’s “Rational Conservative Blogs“) and that was brought to mind again with two links at Matt Yglesias’ place Thursday.

BRIGHT YOUNG BLOGGERS

First, an Economist piece on the role of public intellectuals exclaims that “a rising generation of bloggers is terrifyingly young and bright: expect to hear more from Ezra Klein, Megan McArdle, Will Wilkinson and Matthew Yglesias.”  I’ve met all of them and they’ve all been among my favorite reads for years.  With the possible exception of Will, they’re all well to my left.

While somewhat amused by Matt’s observation that, “I think it would be strange if the main qualification for becoming a high-profile public intellectual in the future is that you had to start a personal blog in 2002 or 2003,” he’s got a point.  Then again, a lot of us started blogs then and only a handful have reached the level where book deals, prestige magazine gigs, and regular invites to be talking heads on radio and television have ensued.

I’d add that it really helps to have an Ivy League degree and work at a think tank or upscale opinion journal.   Only Will went to truly “normal” schools (Northern Iowa, Northern Illinois, and Maryland); Klein went non-Ivy, too, but UCLA is an elite institution.

SMART THINK TANKS

Second, at The Next Right, Jon Henke argues that the Right needs a counterpart to the Center for American Progress.

• They realized that information and ideas already existed, and action – the organization and application of information – was what the Left needed.  So they created a Marketing Tank.
• They realized that a think tank was two different organizations – policy (501c3) and communications (501c4) – and those two organizations required structural separation to be most effective.
• They realized the Permanent Campaign was reality, so they built infrastructure to construct the permanent campaign outside of actual campaigns – to ensure the permanent campaign would be both permanent and ideological (rather than merely partisan).

What’s particularly interesting here is that this is an area where the Right had a decades-long head start.  While liberals have dominated academic think tanks like Brookings for years, those places are genuinely non-ideological; they’re universities without students and, like those with students, they tend to lean left for a variety of reasons having to do with culture and selection.  But conservatives pioneered ideological think tanks like Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, which brought together extraordinarily talented people to formulate ideas and policies that would be passed on to Republican politicos, lobbying efforts, and so forth.

Yet, we long ago reached a point where those places became more known for carrying the water for their party or for a monolithic, unchanging ideology.   Heritage and AEI both still employ very smart people and still do excellent work but they’re seldom cited outside the circles of those already predisposed to agree.   Places like CAP and dozen counterparts whose names are less familiar are still treated as serious institutions by the press.

EVOLVING POLICY FOCUS

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election.  There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts.   If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office:  Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education!  Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn’t work as a blanket response to micro-level issues.  And defining conservatism solely by “What would Reagan do?” is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago.   It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman.   Time marches on.  Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company?    Perhaps the ever-moving James Poulus (now with a mixed bag of co-bloggers)?  Pejman Yousefzadeh, perhaps, but his writings are not handily consolidated.  All the others who come to mind are my age or older.

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace:

Given that this is the liberal New Yorker and that the magazine is aimed at liberal urbanites, it’s rather obvious that this is poking fun at conservatives, not the Obamas.  It’s provocative, sure, but how better to generate buzz and sell extra copies at the newstand?  Quick:  What was the last New Yorker cover that generated any discussion at all? No, I don’t remember, either.

That was essentially Kevin Drum’s initial reaction, too.  He quickly changed his mind:

Maybe it’s because this kind of satire just doesn’t work, no matter how well it’s done. But mostly it’s because a few minutes thought convinced me it was gutless. If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones, he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain’s mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama. But he didn’t. Because that would have been unfair. And McCain would have complained about it. And for some reason, the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame McCain is somehow seen as worse than the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame Obama.

HuffPo’s  Rachel Sklar is similarly thoughtful:

Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here’s your image.

As one might expect, some were less nuanced.  Duncan “Atrios” Black takes the cake with, “Shouting ‘n****r’ is ok as long as you mean it ironically.”  John Aravosis gets honorable mention with:

Okay, what do we do about this? I want suggestions. This is what we have to deal with in America, as Democrats. A liberal media that bends over so far backwards to be “fair” that it becomes just as bad as FOX News. A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it’s funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you’ll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall), and they’re even burning the American flag in the Oval Office (that’s supposed to be the White House, get it?). They put Osama bin Laden on the wall of the Oval Office. And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don’t realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife? I’m sure the New Yorker thinks they’re actually poking holes in the myth by making light of the stereotypes. Yeah, and tell us how this pokes fun at the stereotype? It reinforces it.

Taylor Marsh wonders, “Is the appreciation for political satire dead?”

The only way to combat a myth is to broaden it, hype it, make a satirical target out of it. The cover of The New Yorker does just that, but does it make the further statement? Does it go far enough, instead of simply repeating the smears in another form? Where’s the slap at the smear artists, which is obviously who the artist is mocking? The [Village Voice] Hillary image [featured and discussed in the post] has the same problem. It doesn’t depict the fighter rising from the battle. Is simply repeating wingnut talking points enough or does that provide more fuel for the smears instead of mocking them?

Barack Obama wasted no time in fanning the flames out outrage — and Team McCain joined in:

The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

Whether the image is “offensive” is a matter of opinion, I suppose.  Certainly, it’s far less so than any number of editorial cartoons that come out every day.  (Consider the work of Ted Rall, for example.)  But, yeah, it’s probabably “tasteless.” The cover of the New Yorker is simply different than a political cartoon inside a paper.

I do, however, think it will achieve its desired effects.  First and foremost, it’s already generating more buzz than any issue in the magazine’s recent history.  More importantly, though, it will lead to a round of discussion of the “Obama is a Muslim” nonsense on the various talking heads shows.  This, in turn, will force Republican operatives to state, over and over, that they don’t think Obama is a Muslim, a terrorist, an America hater, and so forth.  That’s probably the only way this silly meme goes away.

Memeorandum has tons more reactions: QandO, Top of the Ticket, HorsesAss.Org, Pajamas Media, American Power, Ketchup and Caviar, Taylor Marsh, BLACKFIVE, Blue Girl, Red State, Polimom Says, Macsmind, Gateway Pundit, Riehl World View, The Plank, The Page, Roger L. Simon, Althouse, JammieWearingFool, Doug Ross, The Strata-Sphere, The Volokh Conspiracy, Moonbattery, The Daily Dish, Blog of the Moderate Left, AMERICAblog News, Feministe, Wake up America, Pensito Review, The Raw Story, Michelle Obama Watch, Buck Naked Politics, Newshoggers.com, Ben Smith’s Blogs, The Corner, NO QUARTER, Scripting News, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Flopping Aces, TalkLeft, The Confluence, FOX Embeds, Eunomia, The Sundries Shack, Sister Toldjah, TBogg, Pandagon, Macsmind and Viking Pundit

Publius thinks it’s time to ban the phrase “Sister Souljah” moment, not just because it’s hackneyed but because it has been misused.

The more benign interpretation is that a Sister Souljah moment occurs when a candidate criticizes some group or idea nominally aligned with that candidate. In short, it’s criticizing your own coalition – or some idea valued by your coalition – to show independence and courage, etc.

The less benign interpretation is that “Sister Souljah” means distancing oneself from black people. When used in this sense, the Sister Souljah label masks an uglier, racial dimension lurking below the conceptual surface.

Let’s have a little straight talk – Clinton’s original Sister Souljah moment falls squarely within the latter sense. His statement got publicity not because he was speaking out against some interest group or idea, but because he spoke out against a black rapper.

John Cole, independently, agrees.  He goes much further, though, listing 21 shopworn phrases he’d like to see banned from punditry and “challenge[s] anyone out there to find ten minutes of any of the various shows with the idiot talking heads without multiple infractions from the list.”  Among his pet peeves are “flip-flop,” “Middle America,” “rock star,” and the “-gate” suffix.

Many of these are indeed verbal ticks.   Still, they’re intellectual shorthand, which serve a useful function of condensing complex ideas into instantly understood phrases.   Conversely, they can also hide a lack of insight or candor, as empty rhetoric that sounds, at first blush, like substantive analysis. Recall this classic scene from Bull Durham:

Crash Davis: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play… it’s pretty boring.

Crash Davis: ‘Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.

Distinguishing legitimate shorthand from obfuscation can be tricky.

Ari Melber cites statistics showing the major paper editorial and op-ed pages, the prestige talking heads shows, and other high profile outlets for punditry remain overwhelmingly male dominated. Matt Yglesias, a male who blogs for the male-dominated Atlantic.com (eight “voices,” seven of whom are male and an eighth who is unusually tall and therefore, despite obvious femininity, often mistaken for a male) suggests a solution:

But all it would take to dramatically increase the number of women having op-eds published in The Washington Post would be to email some women who write about politics and say “want to write something for The Washington Post?” I’m sure someone would say yes.

Oddly, despite being male and having written about politics for many years, I have hardly ever been contacted by a newspaper and asked to write an op-ed; none of the biggies have done so. Are politically minded women blinded by their gender to the existence of The Washington Post? Too shy to pitch and submit like the rest of us?

Melber’s statistics would be much more interesting in context. What percentage of aspiring pundits are female? What percentage of the career paths usually followed by successful pundits are populated by females? My hunch is that the answer to these will roughly correspond to the number of under-50 females represented in the places Melber would like to see more women. (I say “under-50″ because, obviously, said doors were all but closed to women until, say, the early 1970s.)

Taking one anecdotal example, take a look at the masthead of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. Editor: Dude. Chairman: Dude. Managing editor: Dude. CEO: Dude. President: Dude. Publisher: Chick. Literary and National Editor: Dude. President, Consumer Media: Dude. Deputy Managing Editors: 8 dudes, 4 chicks. National Correspondents: 4 dudes. Associate Editors: 3 dudes, 1 chick. Research and Staff Editors: 5 dudes, 3 chicks.

My strong guess is that Atlantic Monthly is not consciously discriminating against men but rather finds a disproportionate number of them among qualified applicants for positions.

A young Fox News staffer was fired for telling John McCain she’d voted for him, Chris Ariens reports.

Insiders tell us the assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, “I voted for you in the primary, you’re going to win.” McCain was overheard saying to her, “You’re not supposed to reveal that.” Locke apparently continued to explain that she is the daughter of a Vietnam veteran.

Insiders who were at the event were surprised and shocked to hear the disclosure, which was recorded on videotape. A Fox News insider called it “journalistically unacceptable.” An FNC spokesperson would not comment on the personnel matter but did confirm Locke is no longer with the company, where she’d worked for a couple of years.

Some wonder whether there’s a double standard in place. Bob Owens wonders,

So when is MSNBC going to step up to those same standards and dismiss Chris Matthews for his on-air announcement that Barack Obama caused a”thrill” up his leg? Is telling a candidate that you voted for him unacceptable, but blurting out a homo-erotic reaction to a candidate’s speech not a level of disclosure that is forbidden, even if that disclosure is merely hyperbole making the journalist’s personal attraction to the candidate equally strong?

Ken Shepherd observes, “Of course that is journalistically unacceptable, as much if not more so than the Obamania that ostensibly objective journalists at other networks have expressed.”

Paddy thinks “kick[ing] some kid to the curb over a little hero worship is just freaking wrong,” especially when “Fox talking heads that day after day do the cable version of prostitution for anyone with an R after their name.”

Most of the cases cited are analysts, who are there to give their opinions. But, as Shepherd notes, straight reporters not infrequently reveal their biases. One would think even a 24-year-old would know not to do this sort of thing, especially after two years on the job. Still, firing seems rather harsh. It’s not as if she’s on-air talent. Then again, we don’t know her history she might have been warned on previous occasions.

There is a lot of chatter going on about the “facts” as regards to Hillary Clinton’s bid to come from behind to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign’s The Fact Hub blog contends that “More People Have Voted For Hillary Than Any Other Candidate.” They arrive at this conclusion, which goes contrary to the expert consensus, by including the non-elections in Michigan and Florida.

Meanwhile, Clinton surrogate Lanny Davis weighs in with “The Top Ten List of Undisputed Facts Showing Barack Obama’s Weakness in the General Election Against John McCain,” almost all of which are in fact disputed and few of which say much about the general election.

Finally, MediaBloodhound Brad Jacobson contends that the idea that Clinton can still win this thing is a fiction created by the media, especially the television networks, because they’re desperate to keep the public interest in order to sell more soap.

Let’s take the last one first. Yes, the media have an interest in keeping a horse race going but, no, they’re not engaged in an elaborate plot. So long as Barack Obama hasn’t wrapped up the nomination and Hillary Clinton continues to not only remain in the race but win key contests, they have little choice but to portray this as an active race. Otherwise, they would rightly be accused of taking sides. At the same time, however, almost all of the talking heads agree that Obama is the clear favorite to win.

The popular vote argument has long struck me as silly, frankly, but the Clinton campaign has a reason to want to count Florida and Michigan. Real people in fact showed up to win and more of them voted for her than Obama. That said, including Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot, is absurd on its face.

This sleight of hand led Davis’ list, which gives a good indication of its overall strength. The next two “undisputed facts” include several about the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, in which John McCain was not a participant. We’re then treated to these gems:

4. Most of his ads were personal negative attack ads against Senator Clinton, meaning attacks on her character and integrity.

5. There were no personal attack ads run by Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.

Please. There were tons of attacks ads against Obama, they were just run by the American Leadership Project, a 527 organization that supports Clinton.

6. Barack Obama hasn’t won a single major industrial state that historically constitute the key “battleground” states for both parties, i.e., the states in the last three or four presidential elections have switched back and forth between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

7. The reason that he lost can be found in the demographic data: He lost — and Senator Clinton won — by substantial margins blue collar and middle class white voters earning under $50,000 a year, senior citizens, rural voters, Hispanic voters, and women voters — all core constituencies in the Democratic base that must be won if a Democrat is to win the White House. For example, yesterday in Pennsylvania she won Roman Catholics by 32 percent (66034), union households by 18 percent (59-41), and those most concerned about the economy by 16 points (58-42). Only 60 percent of Democratic Catholic voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama in a general election.

8. Barack Obama has lost these same demographic groups in Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, California and New Jersey and other major states that Senator Clinton won. There is a factual pattern of his weakness among these demographic groups in virtually every primary state that cannot be disputed.

This line of argument is quite fair and is at the heart of Clinton’s case to the superdelegates. Under the rules that govern the general election, winner-take-all at the state level, Clinton would have wrapped this thing up long ago. But those aren’t the rules here.

Further, the fact that blue collar Democrats prefer Clinton to Obama does not at all mean that these voters would prefer John McCain, a Republican, to Obama. Indeed, McCain himself is facing the same problem: self-identified conservatives preferred some other candidate to him in every meaningful race. For the most part, the base will rally in November.

The wild card, really, is how many blue collar Democrats and independents who would sit out the race or vote for McCain rather than vote for a black man. While my guess is that number will be small, Dave Schuler’s right that it could be decisive at the margins. But that would be a terrible reason for the superdelegates to deny him the nomination.

Davis closes with two points that are really one: McCain is slightly ahead of Obama in the national polls whereas Clinton is slightly ahead of or tied with McCain. But that’s a snapshot in time; Obama was ahead until quite recently. And Clinton’s negatives are much, much higher than his. Not to mention the fact that we don’t elect presidents in a national popular vote but rather on a state-by-state basis.

The bottom line:

1. Obama will almost certainly be the nominee. He’ll be ahead in both the delegate count and the (meaningless but still cited) popular vote at the convention. Barring some major scandal, it will be virtually impossible for the superdelegates to buck those facts and hand the nomination to Clinton, especially given that Obama would be the first major party presidential nominee of color.

2. Obama probably should be the nominee. He’s a much more attractive candidate than Clinton in almost every conceivable way. Despite probably being at least slightly to Clinton’s left on most key issues, even a lot of conservatives seem to like him. Clinton has firm negatives that approach 50 percent and the race has made her less, not more, attractive.

3. Clinton has every right to keep fighting. While she can’t win it before the convention, neither can Obama. And, as Dave Schuler is fond of noting, this is her last shot at the brass ring.

4. The Democratic nominating electorate has not expressed a clear preference. While she made a major tactical error in not contesting several caucus states, handing Obama artificially large victories there, she’s won every key state except Obama’s home of Illinois and would almost certainly have won Florida and Michigan in legitimate contests.

UPDATE: Steven Taylor and Josh Marshall argue, correctly, that “it is simply a fallacy to claim that winning a state’s Democratic primary means you’re more likely to win that state in the general election or that your opponent can’t win it.” It is, however, presumably an indication that you’re more likely to win said state than your opponent, given that you start with the support of the base.

The counter-argument, I suppose, is that perhaps you’ve won because you’re more extremist than your opponent and thus appeal to the rabid ideologues that vote in primaries but not to the more moderate voters needed in the general. But that’s unlikely to be the case here as Clinton is, if anything, more pragmatic than Obama.

Major Andrew Olmsted, a longtime blogger and Army Reservist, was killed in action yesterday when his unit was ambushed.

His Obsidian Wings colleague Hilzoy had the sad honor of posting his final blog missive. Her lead-in:

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can fill. I’m glad Andy — generous as always — wrote something for me to publish now, since I have no words at all. Beyond: Andy, I will miss you.

My thoughts are with his wife, his parents, and his brother and sister.

As are mine and those of others he touched through his writing.

I never met Andy in person, although we corresponded a bit through emails and cross-blog exchanges. Indeed, I offered and he accepted a position as an OTB associate blogger last February, shortly before deployment, but he was ordered to stop all blogging not approved by Army brass almost immediately thereafter.

He did ultimately get the opportunity to blog at the Rocky Mountain News. In his last missive for them, he wrote about spending Christmas handing out toys to Iraqi children. And a little about the nature of the enemy:

Handing out gifts is great fun, but in Iraq you always have to be alert for the possibility that the enemy will take advantage of the opportunity to turn such an event to their advantage. Iraqi soldiers handing how clothing is good for building relationships between the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi people. A suicide bomb in a crowd of children seeking gifts could destroy that in a heartbeat, however, so while we enjoyed the scene of the Iraqi soldiers handing out clothes, toys, candy, and more to the hordes of Iraqi children, we were pleased to see that they also remained alert to potential threats, and they handed out a lot of great gifts that, we hope, will provide just a little help to families down on their luck.

He expressed these wishes in his post-mortem message:

What I don’t want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I’m dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I’ve enjoyed in my life. So if you’re up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw ‘Freedom Isn’t Free’ from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can’t laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I’m dead, but if you’re reading this, you’re not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.

Here’s one of many versions of the song via YouTube:

While this shouldn’t need saying, it probably does:

I do ask (not that I’m in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn’t a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don’t drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don’t cite my name as an example of someone’s life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I’m not around to expound on them I’d prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn’t support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I’d prefer that you did so.

Matt Burden, Soccer Dad, the Protein Wisdom gang, Bob Owens, John Cole, Mike Hendrix, and other bloggers express their sentiments. More will follow as word spreads.

The Rocky Mountain News has published a moving obituary.

He was the first casualty for 2008 in Iraq. And a small part of Maj. Andrew Olmsted likely would’ve chuckled at that fact. It would be droll and play into his sense of self-deprecation.

But for everyone else, the news would be devastating.

Quite right.

As expected, many, many more bloggers have added their tributes: Phil Carter, John Donovan, TigerHawk, Michael Totten, Noah Shachtman, Bruce McQuain, Joe Katzman, Kate McMillan, Matt Yglesias, Virginia Postrel, BitchPhD, Brad DeLong, Kevin Hayden, and many, many, more.

Tim Blair cranks up the ’80s music: “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads.

Jim Henley, following Andy’s injunction to remember him as he was, quips, “Dude, check it out! Your last post is getting linked everywhere!” He follows it with a more maudlin post, describing their friendship-by-correspondence.

Henry Farrell recounts an interesting discussion he had on bloggingheads with Dan Drezner, about the longstanding norm wherein regular op-ed columnists “seem to be discouraged from mentioning each other by name when they disagree/attack each other.” They note that the norm seems to be breaking down as the op-eds “become a bit bloggier” and, indeed, many of the columnists actually start blogs.

In general, this is all to the good. I can see the justification for the previous policy, I think – that you don’t want your op-ed pages to break down into bickering between a small group of elites, and that you want to preserve the ideal of the op-ed writer as a disinterested and magisterial figure taking the pulse of the American polity, etc, etc, etc. But this also allows op-ed writers to get away with a lot of self-serving bullshit while never being called on it. A more vigorous back-and-forth of the kind we’ve being seeing is a highly imperfect corrective to that problem – but it’s certainly better than the current system where regular op-ed writers are simultaneously put on a pedestal and never subjected to the processes of fact-checking that restrain traditional journalists.

Of course, bloggers have made a mantra of “fact-checking their asses” for years but, in reality, far more people are reading the leading columnists than the average blog. So, yes, less oblique discussion of controversial topics is desirable.

My Bloggingheads.tv debut, opposite Ezra Klein, is up. After some snafus, we recorded it Friday afternoon. We discuss the hubbub around General David Petraeus, President Bush’s speech calling for more time in Iraq, the Fred Thompson campaign, and the difficulty of some presidential candidates with impressive resumes to get any traction in this campaign.

My longstanding skepticism about bloggers branching out to do amateur videocasts remains intact. Big Media Ezra, veteran of “Hardball” and other venues, is better at this than I am but we’re both likely better writers than talking heads. Still, it was an enjoyable conversation. Whether you’d like to spend 47 minutes or so watching it is entirely up to you.

Dan Drezner and Megan McArdle appear on BloggingHeadsTV discussing why Megan gets such strong reactions in the blogosphere, fashion trends in academe, the netroots vs. Foreign Policy Establishment debate, Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy, and some other topics. The pairing is somewhat against type, in that both are libertarian centrists rather than one lefty and one righty.

It’s an interesting discussion and both do well enough on camera so as not to distract from their dialog. An hour of talking heads is just about more than I can sit through these days, having grown so accustomed to being able to skim text for the bits and pieces that interest me.

Despite my skepticism of the format, I’ve agreed to participate in one of these next months with Ezra Klein. More details as they’re finalized.

Matthew and Nick Yglesias discuss the virtues of vlogging. In a painfully awkward video, Nick describes why most bloggers are “painfully awkward” on video and that vlogging has few of the advantages of text blogging (aka, “blogging”).

He’s right. Indeed, I seldom watch professional quality newscasts and talking heads shows anymore precisely because the time and concentration commitment required to get much out of television can be used so much more efficiently online. Amateur television has all of the disadvantages of professional television without the advantages of professionalism.

A report by David Cloud in today’s NYT on the deployment of Reserve Component soldiers to Iraq sheds some light on a couple of issues that may come as a surprise to those who don’t study this sort of thing for a living.

Cloud notes that the Pentagon’s announcement that it may send “more than 14,000 National Guard troops” back to Iraq as part of the new surge “highlights the political risks of the White House’s Iraq strategy. Sending large numbers of reservists to Iraq in the middle of next year’s election campaign could drive up casualties among part-time soldiers in communities where support for the administration’s approach in Iraq is already tenuous, according to opinion polls.”

This is precisely why SECDEF Melvin Laird and Army Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams pushed the modern force structure when inaugurating the all-volunteer force in 1973. They feared politicians being able to make use of a large standing army to fight wars that would not ultimately command popular support. By putting vital assets into the Reserves, they guaranteed that any significant conflict–even something on the order of Desert Storm–would require mobilization of citizen soldiers.

As I’ve written numerous times, I believe it’s time to rethink that notion. The nature of modern operations (the so-called 4th Generation Warfare) requires large numbers of civil affairs, military police, and other assets that reside almost wholly in the reserve. It simply doesn’t make sense to require the disruption of the reservists’ daily lives for routine, non-emergency operations. Reservists expect to be called up for WWIII, not everyday missions. (National Guardsmen, because of their dual role as state militias, also expect short call-ups for disaster recovery and other civil missions.)

Then there’s this quote, which is causing quite a stir despite being buried several paragraphs into the story:

“We’re behind the power curve, and we can’t piddle around,” Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.”

Hilzoy, Steve Benen, and many others are quite upset with this situation, which is understandable. Ideally, we could magically outfit every single soldier with the latest and greatest state-of-the-art gadgetry.

In reality, we never have. As any logistician can attest, military equipment doesn’t manifest itself through the excretory process.

Many American soldiers in Vietnam never held an M16, instead fighting with the older M14. (A fact for which some are quite grateful, given the lukewarm reception the made-by-Mattel M-16 recieved.) In Desert Storm, most of us wore our green woodland camouflage uniforms from Germany throughout the war because there weren’t enough “chocolate chip” desert cammies to go around. GPS? We had two for our entire artillery battery. That’s life during wartime. (Which, as the Talking Heads explained, ain’t no party, ain’t no disco, ain’t no fooling around.)