The Den Beste Era

Over the weekend, I cited former hawkish warblogger Steven Den Beste as clearly the most wingnutty blogger of all time and expressed some concern that people who are relatively new to blogging might be unfamiliar with the Seven Den Beste Experience. And, indeed, it seems that some folks are out there who were previously unfamiliar with his work. Unfortunately, following links from my blog won't let you read his posts so you'll have to copy-and-paste URLs into your browser (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/03/Itsthewaiting.shtml) if you want to avoid this fate:

At any rate, the main point I would make about SDB is that while he was never quite an MSM superstar on the order of Blog of the Year Powerline or something, SDB was taken rather seriously in conservative circles. He was writing opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal and upon his retirement from political blogging he was feted as one of the "great shining lights" of the genre by his fellow wingnuts.

And what's he been doing since his retirement? Well, he has a new blog where he sneers at people who watch TV or go to the movies, preferring to focus on more substantive cultural commentary like "If you're looking for a fan service romp, apparently this year's choice was Umisho. It's a sports show about a girls' swim team. How can you go wrong?" According to Wikipedia "fan service" seems to be a term of art for "soft-core cartoon porn." Just remember that "Before Den Beste, it was extremely difficult to find well written and thought out pieces anywhere on the web . . . Den Beste was a master synthesizer." At any rate, click over here (or, rather, copy and paste this link: http://denbeste.nu/bestof.shtml) to get the "best of" SDB. It's a not-to-be-missed experience.

Comments

How old is he?

Posted by P | November 5, 2007 1:26 PM

Apparently, he's so proud of that post, that he's deleted it altogether. I swear it worked earlier this week, but now I get a 404 error ....

Posted by Jeff | November 5, 2007 1:26 PM

Yea, when I type in the "it's the waiting" url I come up with a funny looking green alien that say's "there is nothing of interest in that sector."

Posted by Devin | November 5, 2007 1:29 PM

thanks for you ;)

Posted by Free download | November 5, 2007 1:30 PM

Wingnuttery flourishes throughout the web, so picking a favorite seems to boil down to exposure: that is, the willingness to exposure yourself to wignuttery in the first place. My favorite has to be this post from the glory days wingnuttery, the eve of the Iraq war. The argument of the long and rambling piece is that confidence--the same confidence a man summons to ask the stuck-up girl to dance--is what America needs to transform the world, starting with Iraq. I'm sure you have better things to do than read this nonsense, but the writing has this mesmerizing effect--I still reel just trying to understand how a mind like this works.

Posted by morte | November 5, 2007 1:33 PM

SBD has defined fan service himself:

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a term I had encountered while browsing the web. Fan service is a term used by fans of Japanese animation to refer to places where they toss in gratuitous T&A, or gratuitous views of women's panties, or other kinds of gratuitous peekaboos both male and female characters solely to satisfy the adolescent in all of us.

Umisho is this:

Kaname is a second year student at Umisho High, and he's a swim team manager. He refuses to submerge in water however, because when he was younger he had spotted a mermaid - and it was not the best experience. The mermaid was scary and caused him to drown. The Umisho swim team consists of 4 boys and 12 girls, that is, until the track team discovers a floating house by the beach. It appears that there are two people on the floating raft, and they're heading towards them. An energetic but wild girl introduces herself as Amuro. She sees that the people in front of her are on the swim team and she gives them a sample swim. Kaname and the vice-captain of the swim team, Momoko, are both stunned at her speed and ability to hold her breath underwater for a long period of time. Momoko's pride as a fast freestyler seemed to be challenged at that moment, so Momoko challenges Amuro to a race.

Posted by Jay-Z | November 5, 2007 1:49 PM

What IS it with the weird dichotomy between right-wing bloggers' macho beer-drinkin' rhetoric and their love of signifiers-of-maximal-nerdiness (Star Trek: TNG, anime, Latin quotes)?

On second thought, Never mind. Having actually asked the question, the answer is obvious.

Posted by James Gary | November 5, 2007 1:51 PM

SCDB is a frequent poster at Metafilter where he routinely posts incorrect answers and misleading comments, fouling many threads with his ignorance and disingenuous ideas.

I don't know why he hangs out there, he's always roundly shouted down for being a blowhard or just for being outright wrong about so many of the topics discussed.

Posted by mpb | November 5, 2007 1:53 PM

Morte, it simply never occurred to me that a self-aggrandizing asshole such as the one you linked could blather on for 10 pages or so comparing W's catastrophic Middle Eastern policy to a sleazy, unoriginal pick-up line. And end it with an homage to Ronald Reagan, by god. Truly the mind does reel, and my lunch was threatening to Eject! Eject! Eject! through my pie-hole. Gee, thanks.

Posted by Betty Cracker | November 5, 2007 1:55 PM

I don't read metafilter, but I've read that den Beste's account was stolen by someone years ago.

Posted by David Weman | November 5, 2007 2:06 PM

Just wanted to note his curious last name, in Scandinavian tongues "Den Beste" means literally "The Best". It's trivial, and some may already have noted this, but "Steven The Best" does imply a sort of youthful arrogance.

Posted by Imrik Gimle | November 5, 2007 2:19 PM

BTW, the cut-and-paste option brings up a picture of a bald green person and some links, but not the article itself.

Posted by Gus | November 5, 2007 2:20 PM

Imrik, SDB explains on a blog post of his that it was not his youthful arrogance, but that of a Dutch ancestor who took more than full advantage of the opportunity when told he was required by law to choose a surname.

Posted by Tyro | November 5, 2007 2:25 PM

I highly recommend the SSDB series at dsquared's blog. My recollection is that the series ends with After School Special style, with dsquared (fairly) acknowledging that there's a decent mind there working towards misbegotten ends.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 5, 2007 2:35 PM

He's a sad case. He is the guy who is literally living in a trailer down by the river, wanking off to Sailor Moon.

That he was seen as a great straterjest by other whackos like Reynolds, the capons at "Winds of Change," etc., is a sad testament to Our Decadent Age.

Posted by iraq participant | November 5, 2007 2:36 PM

Far be it from Matt to actually engage any of Den Beste's arguments - better to just throw rocks, call him names, and rule him out of polite society.

If that's the way progressives operate, I'll take the so-called "Wingnuts" any time. Even swear word obsessed people like Atrios are better; at least he's not pretending to be a "serious analyst".

Posted by James Robertson | November 5, 2007 2:40 PM

I don't read metafilter, but I've read that den Beste's account was stolen by someone years ago.

Oh, it's almost certainly the real him of late. He even linked to himself on November 3rd.

However, I cannot fully agree with what mpd wrote: SDB is not so bad when he posts about or comments on things he is interested in outside of his politics. But man, does he ever wax incorrect when he tries to write about things military and foreign policy.

As for the link redirect thing, I just don't understand why folks like Den Beste or Johnson even bother to do it. It's a hack that, as Matt points out, is as easy to get around as cut-and-paste, and it just makes the redirector look petulant and foolish.

Posted by josephdietrich | November 5, 2007 2:45 PM

Apparently Den Beste is so proud of his writing that he actually deleted it from his site altogether when people started making fun of it. Now that's a brave public intellectual.

Matt, you can link to SDB's original posts (like his best-of page, here) by using a link into the Coral CDN instead.

Posted by neil | November 5, 2007 2:46 PM

So, anyone got a saved/cached version of the notoriously stupid SDB post? Or should we be grateful that the net sum of recorded stupidity had dropped by a nonzero amount?

Posted by Anderson | November 5, 2007 2:49 PM

What an odd mixture of rightwinger and anime-freak.

Posted by libarbarian | November 5, 2007 2:54 PM

Far be it from Matt to actually engage any of Den Beste's arguments...

arguments such as:
If 20 cargo jets take off from French territory and head towards the middle east, what will we do? If they ignore all attempts to prevent them from reaching Iraq, would we be willing to actually shoot one or more of them down?
?

yes, it rally is amazing that MY's declining to take SDB's batshit crazy arguments seriously.

Posted by cleek | November 5, 2007 2:55 PM

“Far be it from Matt to actually engage any of Den Beste's arguments...”

I engage with him and his arguments all the time over at MetaFilter and, given that experience, I can comfortably say that Matt is under no obligation to take Den Beste seriously. He comments often on scientific matters and routinely commits simple factual errors as well as exhibiting wide-ranging confusion.

Most of us—and this certainly includes me—who offer commentary on the Internet, especially in the blogosphere, find it far too easy to exceed our competency as we engage willy-nilly in any topic that captures our interest. A sad minority, however, do so almost constantly. Yet Den Beste makes even those exemplary incompetents look good by comparison. He is a High Priest of Intellectual Incompetency, a Jedi Master of Wrongness.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 5, 2007 2:56 PM

Hm. Apparently, conservatives have just *all* figured out to keep people from linking to their web sites:

GOP Congressman Blocking Links from Blogs

This is fine, I suppose, for some jerk-off with a blog, but someone employed by taxpayers probably ought to take some shit for being such a transparently fearful douchebag...

Posted by Chris | November 5, 2007 3:00 PM

“SDB is not so bad when he posts about or comments on things he is interested in outside of his politics.”

I disagree. As I said above, he frequently comments on science topics. Many people aren't that knowledgeable on these topics and perhaps are suckered in by his authoritative writing style. Nevertheless, on topics where I have some training and expertise, he's been consistently unreliable. One only has to look through his history of answers he's written to AskMetafilter questions to see that—unusually, almost laughably often—other users will correct his mistaken answers.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 5, 2007 3:02 PM

One of the best bloggers around today, the hilarious, pseudonymous Udolpho, although himself a conservative and at one time a supporter of the Iraq War (and most decidedly not a fan of Matt Yglesias either, whom he has accused of resembling a female hobbit), has nonetheless written a couple of hilarious takedowns of Den Beste and his anime fetish:

http://www.udolpho.com/weblog/?id=00646&title=The-Maudlin-Pseudo-Pundit

http://www.udolpho.com/weblog/?id=01047&title=Creepy-as-he-ever-was

Posted by James Kabala | November 5, 2007 3:13 PM

Keith M Ellis, you're right about the science topic, and I should have included it in the list along with military and political matters. Now that you mention it, I think I've gone at it with him over some science topic (either Astronomy or Psychology; although I know I have over a military topic).

I guess mostly I was thinking about his comments on the nerdy stuff like computer games and anime, which tend to be okay.

Posted by josephdietrich | November 5, 2007 3:31 PM

Never trust anyone whose surname can be translated as "the best."

Posted by Scott Lemieux | November 5, 2007 3:39 PM

But.. but.. but..

Posted by neil | November 5, 2007 3:58 PM

That asshole Charles Johnson who runs the Nazi site "Little Green Footballs" also redirects referrals from anti-Nazi websites to a cartoony "piss off!" page. Christ, imagine being such a complete limp-wristed loser that you feel obliged to misdirect links to your own website. God forbid that anyone not already fully initiated into their creepy little race-hate cult should read the filthy sick rubbish they publish in their websites.

Note that this clown, evidently peeing his pantaloonies at the terrifying thought of us fearsome lieberals perusing his moronic bloviations (and laughing, and laughing, and laughing), is one of those guys who accuses you and me of cowardice in the face of "Islamofascism." What the Hell, I'm afraid of this and that, but in my weakest paranoid moment I couldn't imagine feeling threatened by a hostile mouse click.

Posted by W. Kiernan | November 5, 2007 4:06 PM

Here's an example of how den Beste misbehaves at Metafilter. "it's strange how so often when you declaim on a subject that someone who is actually expert in it comes along to debunk you," writes a regular participant there.

It's too bad, because he seems like a decent guy, but completely unaware of his own limitations.

Posted by mehfight | November 5, 2007 4:27 PM

He hates France so much that he claimed on MetaFilter that "Holland is the only country whose navy ever defeated the Royal Navy in major battle," when the United States probably wouldn't exist if the French hadn't defeated the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown and essentially decided the American Revolution.

Posted by kirkaracha | November 5, 2007 4:34 PM

Jeezus, the more I look at sad wrecks like SDB, the more I think that Matt is piling on. Let this guy be, he's a sad sad man who clearly leads an empty miserable little life. If Republicans once chose to elevate a mentally-ill person such as SDB to "pundit" status, that should be their cross to bear.

Posted by vanya | November 5, 2007 4:45 PM

That's kind of a weird one to pick, kirkaracha. Here's another discussion of "The Best" gone bad.

It's also typical of Den Beste's behavior on MeFi. A large portion of his answers and assertions here are bullshit. Very often someone comes along within six or so comments of his and debunks whatever crap he's posted, but it doesn't make much difference. He's basically Cliff Clavin from Cheers.

That's not too far off base. Given that he's stopped blogging about politics, it seems almost mean to dig up his crazy wrong stuff and discuss it anew. I guess we can learn about the pathologies of the wingnutosphere, but it's not really worth calling him out just for the sake of calling him out.

Posted by mehfight | November 5, 2007 4:49 PM

Can I pimp my own blog here? Back in the heyday of "Shorter SDB", I decided that what we really needed was "Even More Turgid SDB", in which I took a long post of his and used Babelfish to translate it into Japanese and then back into English. And on a former iteration of his blog, someone named Yglesias actually linked to it....

Posted by Jaquandor | November 5, 2007 4:59 PM

Don't know what's so special about this one guy, most of the Internets is Loco. Caveat Emptor.

It's interesting how he admits he was silent for a month after 9-11. Seems many on the left have a tin ear about 9-11 and see it as no big deal - much worse events in history and other parts of the globe - but it was a big deal for many of our fellow citizens.

Posted by Peter K. | November 5, 2007 5:03 PM

Don't know what's so special about this one guy, most of the Internets is Loco

That was precisely the point of Matt's post-- that an otherwise unremarkable crazyman could, because he was a conserative crazyman, become a well-regarded, popular pundit within conservative circles.

This ties in to a conversation I was having with someone yesterday about how the demand for "experts" far outstrips the supply, and as a consequence, many people, even professional academics, end up making themselves generally familiar with a field and then marketing themselves as an "expert" on an issue in order to fulfill the demand. In think tanks and consulting companies, this becomes even more acute, when the go-to person on educational policy issues for newspapers becomes a 24-year-old think tank fellow. And in the world of conservative punditry, as MattY mentioned on Saturday, they'll simply go find any lunatic willing to write 4000 words about whatever axe he happens to be grinding at the moment.

Posted by Tyro | November 5, 2007 5:11 PM

Seems many on the left have a tin ear about 9-11 and see it as no big deal - much worse events in history and other parts of the globe - but it was a big deal for many of our fellow citizens.

Really? I'm sure you could dig up a few examples of people on the left who see it as no big deal (like you said, the internets are loco), but from my recollection, that's hardly a typical response.

Posted by Betty Cracker | November 5, 2007 5:16 PM

Anybody have a link to his famous stripper posts?

Posted by mq | November 5, 2007 6:24 PM

Just looking for it myself, mq. A few months ago on this very blog, the subject of strip clubs came up (in the comments) and I'm sorry to say I assumed a strident and judgmental attitude against such places. Fortunately, I was later to come across den Beste's moving first-person account, and so, through the eyes of a typical patron, I saw such establishments anew.

Inexplicably, his original version of the essay seems to be no longer available, but you can still see excerpts at Martin Wisse's site.

Posted by kth | November 5, 2007 6:54 PM

1. Den Beste was unusual in 2002-2004 in that he was a wingnut who was not an asshole (see Reynolds, Whittle, etc). As the stripper post showed, he was just sad. It wasn't his fault that he was made into the second coming of George Kennan by the crazy-sphere. He deserved mockery in 2003, but it just seems mean to bug him now.

2. Why did so many American go crazy in 2002-2004? I can accept that blogs were crazy -- the medium was new, any half-assed bar-room-philosophizer could make himself out to be a foreiogn policy expert. Hel -- people thaught Megan McArdle, a female Den Beste, was some sort of economics experts! (so, whatever happened to her anyway?...)

But crazy wasn't restricted to blogs -- all sorts of Real People went crazy too. Worse things have happened to America than 9/11 -- why did that event cause people to take leave of their senses?

3. The US does have a fotreign policy expert trade deficit. Foreigners like Max Boot, Mark Steyn, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Chris Htichens etc are imported to give advice to empire. A lot of these guys don't really understand America (Sullivan can't even drive!), and give bad advice. Why can't a country of 300 million people produce enought foreign policy experts?

Posted by Ikram | November 5, 2007 7:33 PM

It's hardly porn. Mostly it's panty and bra stuff with the naughty bits either covered up or obscured by various things (soap bubbles etc.).

Really, I expected you to exhibit a better basic knowledge of anime.

Posted by MNPundit | November 5, 2007 7:35 PM

Most of the Internets is Loco

yes. we should make t-shirts that say that.

Posted by southpaw | November 5, 2007 7:42 PM

For me, one of the great SDB moments is when he praised the writers of the Federalist Papers, and then in the very next post called pseudonymous bloggers cowards. I pointed out the, er, inconsistency of his views in an email; he replied that the two things were completely different.

Well, I certainly couldn't argue with that logic.

Posted by FS | November 5, 2007 8:06 PM

"Holland is the only country whose navy ever defeated the Royal Navy in major battle," when the United States probably wouldn't exist if the French hadn't defeated the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake

To which we could add--Germany (Coronel, Denmark Strait), Japan(Sinking of Prince of Wales & Repulse), and United States (Lake Erie, Plattsburg), not to mention several more examples of French victories (Beachy Head, Suffren's Battles off Ceylon, Grand Port)

Posted by rea | November 5, 2007 9:39 PM

As the stripper post showed, he was just sad. It wasn't his fault that he was made into the second coming of George Kennan by the crazy-sphere. He deserved mockery in 2003, but it just seems mean to bug him now.

Yeah, it really does.

Posted by Erika Froh | November 5, 2007 10:24 PM

As the stripper post showed, he was just sad. It wasn't his fault that he was made into the second coming of George Kennan by the crazy-sphere. He deserved mockery in 2003, but it just seems mean to bug him now.

Yeah, it really does.

Posted by Erika Froh | November 5, 2007 10:25 PM

That's kind of a weird one to pick, kirkaracha

I dunno, I thought it was exactly on point. He made a broad, definitive, inaccurate claim, I called him on it, and he never responded.

Posted by kirkaracha | November 5, 2007 11:34 PM

There's a certain air of conservative confidence in one's mastery of the subject that den Beste has to a T. I remember when his long, long pieces on telcom policy and technology (basically, everything his employer Qualcomm was up to was vastly superior to everything from decadent Europe) got taken apart piece by piece by informed commenters. It became clear that he had many numbers wrong and simply either didn't know or was choosing not to report what alternative wireless technologies were then doing.

Posted by Bruce Baugh | November 5, 2007 11:51 PM

I like the anime characters.

Posted by stm177 | November 6, 2007 12:30 AM

" he was never quite an MSM superstar on the order of Blog of the Year Powerline or something"

That was only because Den Beste was active before Republican activists had discovered blogs and made them part of their propaganda machine. Den Beste was one of the warblogging superstars, together with Glenn Reynolds and Charlie Johnson. He was the designated intellectual of the early rightwing sphere because of his tendency to write short posts that took several hundred pagedowns to scroll through and turgid prose style. That however made it possible to write things that would not sound so good otherwise, seen here where he calls for a cultural genocide of Islam.

Posted by Martin Wisse | November 6, 2007 12:42 AM

Apparently, negative feedback and a medical condition are why den Beste gave up his political logorrhoea. Always looking for the better nature in people, I had hoped he had stopped because he realized that he had been wrong and decided to shut up. Oh well.

Posted by josephdietrich | November 6, 2007 4:30 AM

Imrik, SDB explains on a blog post of his that it was not his youthful arrogance, but that of a Dutch ancestor who took more than full advantage of the opportunity when told he was required by law to choose a surname.

That's precisely the kind of stupid childish thing he'd do.

Seems to be something in the institutional culture at Qualcomm; when I was a telecoms journalist, the most obnoxious green-ink merchants were always either working there or had been working there in the past. I never actually got a Den Beste flame in professional life, but we got constant screeds about our BIAS to INFERIOR EUROWEENIE TECH (that somehow managed to command 70 per cent of the world market) from e-mail addresses there.

Posted by Alex | November 6, 2007 6:10 AM

GOP Congressman Blocking Links from Blogs

According to an update to the post, the problem is actually with the Congressman's hosting service, which hosts many Congresspeople from across the political spectrum.

Den Beste was one of the warblogging superstars, together with Glenn Reynolds and Charlie Johnson. He was the designated intellectual of the early rightwing sphere because of his tendency to write short posts that took several hundred pagedowns to scroll through and turgid prose style. That however made it possible to write things that would not sound so good otherwise, seen here where he calls for a cultural genocide of Islam.

This is all true. Back in '03 Max Sawicky called Sullivan, [Charles] Johnson, Reynolds, and den Beste the four horsemen of the conservative blogosphere.

Posted by Matt Weiner | November 6, 2007 7:35 AM

Here's the cache from the page as listed by Microsoft's Live (ugh) service:

http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=72323323207376&mkt=en-US&lang=en-US&w=8aa075ae&FORM=CVRE

Posted by Michael | November 6, 2007 7:50 AM

So what is the point of this exercise? A Two Minute Hate for lefty bloggers and their sympathizers?

Seriously, it is certainly possible to make actual arguments against SDB's positions. Why the need to jeer at him?

On another note, Matthew, I promise to refrain from redirecting your undoubtedly misbegotten readers if you link to me.

Posted by Cheerful Iconoclast | November 6, 2007 8:02 AM

And here it is, although without the hyperlinks:

Stardate 20030310.1726

(Captain's log): It's the waiting that wears.

There's really no point any longer in arguing whether we should attack Iraq. It's going to happen now, so the point is moot. I am glad that it turned out this way, for I fear what would happen if we did not attack. Still, what I've been advocating is that my nation do something terrible, something which will involve deliberately inflicting death and destruction on a lot of people. A lot of Iraqis will die in the war, and some Americans and Brits and Australians will, too.

I've been advocating war, but I doubt that this web site had any significant influence on decision making in the Whitehouse. While I do know that some government workers read it, I seriously doubt anyone in a position of authority even knows I exist. Nonetheless, I do feel a degree of responsibility; since we're going to embark on a war I've been advocating, I can't disclaim any negative results from the war once it starts. There's never any way of knowing before you begin how it will go; you do the best you can in terms of preparing, but then you roll the dice. And sometimes the result is not what you expected.

I want it to be over. I want it in the past, a fait accompli. As I sit, waiting, I feel dread and foreboding. My imagination is working overtime, summoning scenarios which could lead to disaster for us, either before combat begins, or during the period when our troops are in action.

For instance, I worry about the possibility of poison-gas boobytraps. They have chemical weapons but are very short of effective delivery systems. But they might have rigged certain areas so that when our troops enter them, pre-placed canisters of chemical weapons would open. That would take months to set up, but they've had months. (It's too late for them to do it starting now.)

I'm deeply concerned about the French. In January I wrote about my concern that their opposition seemed to go well beyond anything which made sense in terms of any kind of motivation I could identify, and speculated that maybe there was some far more deep and critical explanation for it which was much more sinister. Since then their resistance has made less and less sense, and what I worry about now is that if they think the stakes are so high, no matter why that might be, that they're clearly willing to sacrifice the UN and NATO and even the process of formation of the EU itself just to oppose the war despite having only negligible chance of actually preventing it, then maybe they might be willing to go to even greater lengths against us, extending beyond the diplomatic. De facto they're allied with Saddam even if there's no publicly-declared treaty or agreement; so will they be willing to intervene militarily? Will they smuggle some sort of weaponry in? Or ship it in openly?

If 20 cargo jets take off from French territory and head towards the middle east, what will we do? If they ignore all attempts to prevent them from reaching Iraq, would we be willing to actually shoot one or more of them down?

Just how far are they willing to take their opposition to us? They've reached the point where it seems as if they're willing to make any sacrifice. Do they see the stakes as being high enough so that they might actually threaten to nuke us?

I'm worried about the unassimilated and angry Muslim masses of Europe. The ones in France have been stockpiling weapons, and there are other populations in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Will they rise in armed revolt, and plunge most of Europe into civil war? I remember the Watts riots in 1965. There was a period of several days in which a section of Los Angeles became a lawless anarchy. Will there be many large urban areas in Europe where order breaks down? How will the governments respond? How many people will die? Might the resulting disturbance seriously damage the already-weak economies of Europe?

Another fear is that despite the inspections, that Iraq continues to work on attempting to produce, or to purchase, a nuke. If they're close, and if we wait too long and they get it, the result could be an unimaginable tragedy.

North Korea seems to be doing everything it possibly can to try to gain our attention, even to the point of attempting to intercept one of our spyplanes in international space and to force it to return to North Korean territory where its crew would become prisoners, i.e. hostages, to force us to negotiate with them. They've just made a symbolic (but otherwise useless) gesture by firing an anti-ship missile out into the ocean. In their apparently desperate attempts to force negotiations with the US, will they go too far and end up doing something we'll all come to regret?

Some have speculated that there may well be an informal alliance between NK and Saddam, and that NK is doing what it is in order to deflect us from attacking Iraq. Even if that's not true, it seems in part to be the case that they hope that if they can force negotiations while we're busy with Iraq that they may be able to get a better deal than if we were not busy elsewhere. Just how far will they go?

Will any of our pilots or special forces people get captured by the Iraqis? If so, what will be done to them? How much will they suffer before they're finally killed?

Once the troops roll, and come into contact with Iraqi military formations, it's expected that many and perhaps even most of them will surrender at the first opportunity. Everyday soldiers are badly treated and have no love for Saddam, and certainly have no great urge to die for him. What most of them seem to want is to live through the war.

But how many will actually fight? Will we lose soldiers as a result of fake surrenders? If they resist militarily, how many will we have to slaughter, and how many of our people will have to die or be wounded in the resulting combat?

What if they do use chemical weapons against us? Our forces are equipped and trained to fight their way through such things, but they've never actually faced them in war, and it is an extremely unforgiving situation. Small mistakes can lead to death or maiming.

Will the Kurds rise up once war starts, and try to declare independence, while resisting entry of any armed force including ours? Will Syria or Iran or Turkey militarily intervene? How many enemies will we actually end up fighting?

Has Saddam decided to go out in a blaze of glory? Has he decided to directly kill masses of Iraqis, and destroy vital infrastructure, as part of a scorched-earth doomsday scenario? Can we be sure that we can kill him before he can issue such orders? Or at least cut his communications before he can issue them? If he does issue those orders, how many of those set to carry them out will be fanatics who will actually do it?

It's like sitting and waiting for the results to some critical medical test. My fear is that the longer we wait, the more time we give our enemies to plan and carry out operations which will make the outcome worse for us.

I'm certain that we will go to war in Iraq. I'm certain that we'll win. But I'm not certain of anything else, and until it happens all I can do is to sit and sweat it out, and hope for the best.

Update: Another thing I'm worried about is that the First Circuit may issue a court order throwing sand in the gears. I'm apalled they even agreed to hear the case. I believe that this lawsuit has no merit whatever, but one can never be certain what the courts will do. The only blessing is that it isn't the Ninth Circuit; if it were, we'd be in deep shit.

Update: Russell Wardlow comments on the possibility of a EuroMuslim uprising.

Update 20030311: Michele is worried, too.

Update: Ted Barlow and Kieran Healy and Tom Bogg comment. (Bottom line: I'm a raving paranoid. The French are really our best friends; they're actually better friends than the Brits.) Atrios, too. And Kevin Drum.

Porphyrogenitus has his own fears.

James Taranto comments.

Update: This column by Larry Miller also expresses fear.

Update: Amiland has a report on Germany's "high growth industry".

Posted by sdb sux | November 6, 2007 9:38 AM

"Betty Cracker"

Really? I'm sure you could dig up a few examples of people on the left who see it as no big deal (like you said, the internets are loco), but from my recollection, that's hardly a typical response.

Bill Maher, Susan Sontag, Doris Lessing. etc. And I like them and I kind of agree, but at least I recognize how 9-11 effected people like this rightwing libertarian blogger and I recognize the how the left and right reacted differently to 9-11 while you seem strangely oblivious or in denial.

Like I said, this blogger being trashed said he was silent for a month after 9-11. I know a retired airlines pilot who dug a huge hole in his back yard after 9-11, cause he imagined those pilots' throats getting cut.

Posted by Peter K. | November 6, 2007 3:13 PM

I see that Den Beste has posted something to MetaFilter about how terrible it is that people are mean on the internet.

http://www.metafilter.com/66465/A-terrible-waste

The story he posted is sad, but since I think he is talking about himself: ha ha ha!

Posted by Bryan | November 12, 2007 8:58 PM

SdB may be a right-wing moron, but Umisho sounds awesome. I have to check it out.

Posted by Ugly Jerkface | November 13, 2007 3:09 AM