"Whatever floats yer sinkin' boat, to each his/her/its own....but make your sexual choices, tendencies, or preferences politics or civil rights issues, and you need to be bitch-slapped all the way to therapy.... "

You are making the assumptions that there is any kind of choice involved and that transgenderism is necessarily sexual. Both of which are very flawed in my opinion.

Speaking as a male to female transsexual currently in transition I can assure you that this was not a "sexual choice". A deep inadequacy as a boy and a huge need to be a girl, have been feelings that I have experienced since my earliest memories. I can remember attending the birthday of a little girl who went to my preschool when I was 4 or so, and feeling so incredibly jealous that she got to wear a party dress and get presents like Barbie dolls and I did not. Then, of course I would feel ashamed at having felt such things because boys are not supposed to feel that way, and yet I still did. Transsexualism is not a matter of choosing to live out some sexual fantasy, its something that affects you from day one and makes every day a struggle. Had I had any "choice" in this matter I would have chosen to make all of this magically go away, been born a girl and have that thing that every other person in the world takes for granted: a sense of self that matches your body. Failing that magical solution, I would have been equally willing to settle for simply being a "normal" boy, finding comfort rather than anguish in masculinity, and never having to deal with anything transsexual. Of course I had no choice, and instead I have to struggle to find some way to live with being genetically male but only truly able to be myself as a woman. I suppose the only real choice I have in this is between a life of utter despair and unhappiness, and a life where I might be a little less sad all the time. Not much of a choice is it?

"but she is also turning the wheel wrong"

That's the thing that was killing me. Assuming you actually know how to parallel park you'd only need an extra meter or so of space to get that car in there. It would be a tight fit but it would be possible with just a tiny bit more space. But with this idiot behind the wheel, no amount of space would be enough for a parallel parking job. She just did not seem to understand that once the rear corner of the parked car is in line with your passenger side door, you turn towards the street.

"Even 1 person dead is bad enough. Unfortunately people like you are the reason people actually get killed."

You're making an assumption that peace is the natural state of affairs among men. Such an assumption could only be born if having been raised in the affluence and security of the West. A cursory look at the natural world shows how far wrong that assumption is. Scarce resources has lead to conflict among and within animal species since the beginning of life on Earth. Obviously as human beings we are capable of rising above the state of nature, but that is not the point. The point is that conflict is the natural state of the world and it's only through tremendous effort that we are able to rise above such conflict and create peace. A study of history shows how frequently we are unable to keep that peace together.

One of the prime functions of civil society is to provide security, in other words peace. The maintenance of peace requires that decisions be made. Those decisions however are not always between right and wrong. Most often they are between wrong and wrong, and it is the job of a society's rulers to try to pick the least wrong decision. Often times war, and the sacrifices it entails is the only realistic option to maintain peace in the long term. This takes nothing away from the wrongness of war or the tragedy of the loss of human life (however a study of ancient Greek literature would suggest that it is human life itself that is tragedy, not the loss of it), however sometimes a tragic, wrong decision is the only one that will make a better tomorrow.

I meant an additional 100-150 thousand soldiers on top of what is already there for a total of 250-300 thousand. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

As for your second point, the same argumentation may have been used erroneously during the Vietnam War but of course we were dealing with very different circumstances. That nothing much bad happened as a result of South Vietnam falling to communism does not mean that nothing particularly bad will happen if Iraq becomes a failed state. Again, at the very, very least we will have a enormous humanitarian crisis, disruption of the global energy market, a PR victory for organizations like Al-Qaeda and a huge loss of face (which is vital for the conduct of international affairs). An escalation of the sectarian strife to all out genocide is highly likely. A regional war that could destabilize the regimes of our allies is also a serious possibility. The list goes on. I understand your point that in the past people have feared horrible consequences that never came to pass, but that does not mean however we can assume that our fears won't come to pass with regards to Iraq. In fact I would characterize that assumption as highly wishful thinking.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like nothing more than to be able to end involvement with this debacle. The invasion was clearly the biggest strategic blunder in American foreign policy in the last 100 years, if not the in our entire history. I'd even go so far as to say this was a completely pointless exercise in hubris. That said, we need to be thinking about how to minimize our losses and I am not convinced that withdrawal while there is still an opportunity to create a stable (although probably not free) state is the best way to cut our losses. On the contrary I think the costs of the consequences of such a withdrawal will far out weigh the price that would be paid now to finally provide a baseline of security in Baghdad.

"realpolitik is all shades of gray. "

Not really. Unless you mean that morality plays very little role but that doesn't seem to be what your suggesting. Realpolitik is the notion that states have interests and it is the job of statesmen to advance the interests of the state however possible. States that oppose your state's interests are an adversary, those that help to further your interests are an ally. Thus, realpolitik is very much a black and white affair.

Why isn't what we're doing now working? The strategy applied up until now, the light footprint approach, clearly has not worked. The idea behind such an approach was that we limit our presence so as to minimize the appearance of an occupation, and therefore limit violence against the occupying forces. Simultaneously we train up Iraqi security forces and build up an Iraqi government so that they can take over control of the country and we can stand down. Meanwhile reconstruction money is funneled in to rebuild the economy. The problem with that strategy is that we were never able to establish a baseline of security to allow political and economic developments to occur. With out a relatively stable political authority, newly trained security forces will not serve the Iraqi state but will instead serve their sectarian interests, which is exactly what has happened. Without economic development, angry young men have no jobs and the only opportunity they have is to fight. As violence escalates, retaliations occur and a feedback loop of increasing violence and political disintegration occurs. If we allow this feedback loop to operate much longer the situation will spin completely out of anyone's control and even worse disaster will be the only result.

Are their any potential alternatives? The only sane policy that I can see is an escalation of American forces on the order of 100,000-150,000. If we do so we can finally have enough soldiers on the ground to establish security in the key neighborhoods of Baghdad and other important cities. If their is a rifle squad patrolling the same few block of the same neighborhood everyday, you can bet that insurgent and sectarian activity in those few blocks will decrease markedly. It is only once we establish that level of security that any sort of political or economic development can occur, and only political and economic development will stabilize Iraq and the region. To arrest the feedback loop of violence and political disintegration, we need to establish security, and we can only establish security with a major increase in the troop level in country. In other words, we need a classic counterinsurgency policy.

Such a drastic raise in troop levels sparks the question as to how we will sustain such levels for the 18 months to 2 years that would be necessary. Obviously we will need to expand the size of the military and to do so we will need to raise taxes and cut social spending. In other words we need to start acting as if we are at war and make the necessary sacrifices. Sacrifices suck, but not only are the consequences of Iraq disintegrating worth stopping, it is also the honorable thing to do because we are after all the cause for this current mess.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that this is probably the only sane policy. I say probably because it is based off the assumption that there are still enough people in Iraq who want a stable Iraqi state. If however the man on the street can only think of killing the people that killed his brother, then we have probably crossed the point of no return and it's best to just cut our losses, get out and then hope for the best with the shitstorm that will result. If my assumption is correct then I think we can still make this work, if in fact the Iraqi people have reached a point where revenge is their only motivation than we are too late.

Yes, sending more troops is probably the only sane policy. I'll get back to the probably a little later.

Why? Because the Middle East is the most strategic region in the world today; in other words it's not South East Asia. We have so many vested interests and long standing allies in the region, that even if the entire United States rallied around the idea of ending US involvement in the Middle East, it would still be several decades before our interests could be disentangled. The point is that if Iraq completely flys apart we will still have to deal with the consequences of a failed state; it is not as if we can just pull out and forget about the disaster that is Iraq. What happens there will continue to affect us even after we leave.

What could be potential consequences of a withdrawal? The Iraqi National Government has basically no authority outside of the green zone of Baghdad. What authority it has there is very tenuous. The reason the government hasn't completely collapsed is because of the support of two groups: the Americans, and the Shiite militias. American support of the government is able to keep the influence of the Shiite militias to a controlled level (although the Saddam execution video would suggest that we are increasingly no longer able to keep such influence controlled). If we withdraw all support of the government however, so that "the Iraqi's can do what they ought to be doing for themselves", we will leave behind a power vacuum that will almost certainly be filled by organizations like Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. If the Shiite Militias are able to get control of the government we can almost be assured of "ethnic cleansing" of the minority Sunni, and possibly Kurd, population by the majority Shiites. Even if we are so anxious to end involvement in Iraq that we are willing to accept such a humanitarian disaster as an outcome, we have to consider the repercussions of leaving what will likely amount to genocide in our wake. Namely, Iraq's Sunni neighbors (like Egypt) will unlikely be willing to watch fellow Sunnis be slaughtered. An intervention by Sunni states will almost certainly provoke a response by Shiite Iran to protect Shiite interests in Iraq. As you can probably see, a regional war is a very distinct possible outcome of Iraq completely coming apart. That would cause a huge humanitarian crisis in the region and would provoke economic disruption around the world (given that the global economy needs Middle Eastern oil to run). Such a war would serve no one's interests, and it is in fact in everyone's interest to try to prevent it.

Absolutely ridiculous.

One thing a college education should be able to do is instruct a person in how to skillfully, and persuasively argue a position. Presenting a counter argument that effectively defeats the contentions of your opponent does far more damage to his position than shouting lame slogans at him ever will. Had this group been mature and/or intelligent they would have done just that in the Q&A session that always follows a talk like that. If there was no opportunity for that then they should have written an opinion piece for the student newspaper.

Yelling, screaming and storming a stage are the tools of those who cannot articulate themselves. All these students have done is show how little they belong in an intellectual environment.

Also the host violated my biggest pet peeve in the world: talking about myth but calling it mythology. The difference between myth and mythology is identical to the difference between history and historiography. Myths are the stories themselves, mythology is reflection on myth. One would not say they enjoy historiography when what they read is a narrative of the past rather than a reflection on methods and uses of history.

Mithras was a Persian god, not Roman. Although his mystery cult was very, very popular among the Roman Legions. Wherever we have evidence of a Legion presence, we also find evidence of Mithras cult. As I recall Mithras was Ahura Mazda's (the infinitely good god of the Zoroastrian faith) general in his crusade against the devil Ahriman. Darius the Great's conquests were largely motivated out of missionary zeal to spread the Zoroastrian religion.

I'll be glad when Blizzard starts making real games again.

I played cello in 4th and 5th grades (got to middle school and the horrible teacher turned me off of playing music for the rest of my life) and I remember always liking Pachelbell's Canon quite a bit. That it was repetitive didn't really bother me because pretty much all beginning cello parts are obscenely repetitive.

"Everyone knows the next great RTS will be Supreme Commander by Chris Taylor, of the Total Annihilation series."

Despite only mediocre beta tester impressions? I'd add my own comments but the game browser that GPG has implemented is just about unusable, I've been in the beta for two weeks and I have never successfully joined a game. I still hold out hope for the game but so far the buzz from people who have actually played isn't that positive.

Don't have time to watch all of it but looked relatively interesting, if not particularly original. The convergence of the world's economic, political, military and communication systems has certainly had a huge effect on the nature of news, especially in the United States. It's for that reason that I try to get most of my news from the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, as it has remained disentangled from the politics and money, and the politics of money, that has destroyed the creditability of network and particularly cable news. When CNN devotes it's 5:00-8:00PM timeslots to Nancy Grace and Entertainment news, it's pretty clear where their priorities are.

The real reason I decided not to watch all of this video however is that it did not appear that it was going to investigate the most important question associated with it's subject matter. The guy already seems to have decided what ethical war reporting is, and is devoting his movie to showing how war reporting of the Iraq War is unethical. I am already aware that reporting of the Iraq War, especially in it's run up, was hardly critical; I don't need an hour and a half long video to tell me that. What I would like to see examined is to what extent media manipulation during wartime is permissible in a democracy. I raise this question because the United States' most glaring military weakness is it's dependence upon popular support for any war it chooses to undertake. The Media war therefore becomes nearly as important as the ground war, yet two entirely different sets of rules and outlooks apply to the two wars.

An ethical war is the most desperate action a state can take, it is the least worst of bad options undertaken to acheive a greater good that exists in the long term. For a population accustomed to instant gratification, sacrifice and struggle for an uncertain positive outcome in the distant future is anathema. That's why leaders of states exist: to have the broader perspective of what is in a state's, and hopefully the international community at large as well, best interest. In democracies however, those leader's power is dependent upon the support of a general populace that is incapable of looking at the long term. To what extent then, is a leader ethical in taking undemocratic action to serve the best interests of the people? During wartime this becomes a question of what price victory. It's easy to dismiss this as an absurd question, that of course we shouldn't allow undemocratic action by our leaders because that would be undemocratic, but to do so would be to say that if the majority has decided it wants to march off a cliff then those in a position to redirect them should stand aside and let them march to their doom. Not all wars, and not all policies are such life and death issues, but even in less desperate situations I think it's an appropriate question to ask.

I bring all of this up because it seems fairly clear that the American public has decided that the sooner American involvement in Iraq ends, the better. The problem with that line of thinking is that Iraq is located in the Middle East, not South East Asia. Even if tomorrow the entire nation rallied behind a plan to end dependence on foreign oil and to cut all ties with our allies in the region, it would still take us several decades to completely disentangle ourselves from the middle east. My point here is that even if we wanted to, we cannot immediately end involvement with the most strategic region in the world. The outcome in Iraq is one that we are going to have to live with for a long time to come, we cannot simply wash our hands of what happens there. So the idea that rapid withdrawal is in America's best interest is in my opinion pure fantasy. It may be nice in the short term to stop having to read reports of American casualties, but in the long term we will have to deal with the consequences of a failed state smack dab in the Middle East. Victory is critical in my opinion, but the American people no longer have the will to win. The politically expedient move is to withdraw but such a move would be to the long run detriment of the nation. The rational decision for our leaders is irrational. This is perhaps the greatest danger of democracy, to what extent should we try to correct it?

Hah, I saw him do his act last spring. Absolutely hysterical. As I recall he closed out the show with this song.