The estimable Dr. Weevil outdoes himself: The Shropshire Challenge provides the definitive answer to the "ChickenHawk" calumny. Eliot Cohen may have written a more authoritative takedown, but Doc is funnier.

My only reservation (as I note in Doc's comment section) is that the real location where the anti-war "human shields" should be sent is the site of the next terrorist attack within the US; that's where the consequences of preserving the status quo will hit hardest. Unfortunately, we don't know where that is. That's kind of the problem; the anti-war idiotarians can point to innocent people in Baghdad and say "Do you want these people to die?"; the proper response would be to point to the terrorists' next victims -- wherever they are -- and say, "Would you rather they die instead?"

Damn that Lileks! He keeps making me think; not in the "Things that make you go 'hmmmm'" sense, but in the critical self-examination sense.

As James points out (see the section beginning with "I had to rebuild"), writers develop their voice by just writing, and writing, and writing some more, whether they had come up with anything monumental to say or not. This truth applies doubly, squared, cubed, tesseracted (hah!) on the web, where the ease and immediacy of communication can create an intimacy between writer and reader that is flatly impossible in print. And when I list my three favorite bloggers over at the right -- InstaPundit, Lileks, and Clueless -- it's worth noting that they are also the three most prolific bloggers I know of.

Quantity isn't quality, as McDonald's proves anew each day; but when one learns by doing, quantity becomes quality.

And while we're looking over at the right, I notice that the little mini-calendar shows that a third of the way into the month, I've posted exactly once. This is not so good.

Resolved: I shall post more frequently; at least once a day. As long as I have enough net access to read other people's blogs, there's no excuse not to post to my own.

Given my record for sticking with past resolutions, New Year's or otherwise ... well, we'll see how long I stick to it. There's a reason why I chose the name for this site that I did, after all.

You don't even have to ask what it is they were looking at, do you?

A lot of people are going to spend this day looking back on the events of a year ago. It is good and right that they do so; loving remembrance is the least we can do for those who died that day. But I'd like to take a moment to look forward instead.

I believe that, when ten years have elapsed, rather than just one, we will be able to look back on our work with more than a little pride. I believe that, by September 11, 2011, the Middle East and Central Asia will be home to half a dozen or more newly-minted, growing and thriving liberal democracies. Millions of Arabs and other Muslims will be liberated from tyranny and fear, and will have realistic hope for a better future for themselves and their progeny.

I believe that this change, like the democratization of Germany and Japan before it, will be brought about by the force of arms; true tyrants cannot be swayed by any language other than force.

Too many lives have been lost, and more will be lost before we are done. But I believe that this revolutionary change will be what gives meaning to those losses. Not the downfall and humiliation of evil (though that is still a goal worth achieving), but the triumph of all those who yearn to breathe free in all the nations of the world.

Some day, an Arab head of state -- having just unseated her incumbent opponent in a free and fair election -- will stridently criticize the United States, calling us reckless, dangerous cowboys who are endangering world peace. And we will smile and shake our heads, as if amused by some private joke. We will know the truth: that when the world really was at the brink of the abyss, it was a clear eye, a steady hand, and a true heart -- the cowboy virtues -- that saw us all through.

Gratitude is always fleeting. And fighting for the sake of glory is just as bad as fighting for revenge; it makes you crazy and stupid. Just do the right thing. If we manage to make the world a better place, that's all the reward we need.

That sunset looks mighty inviting. Let's ride.

And don't forget to leave a silver bullet.

You might wonder why why the Recording Industry Association of America is going after Verizon, rather than the specific Verizon user who (they claim) is infringing their copyrights.

The RIAA isn't interested in playing whack-a-mole against users one at a time; they realize that that will have no effect whatsoever. They want Verizon and other ISPs to act on their behalf to cut off file sharing throughout their networks, all at once. They're looking to create a precedent to enable that.

The RIAA is also pushing for the authority to issue subpoenas to suspected copyright violators without having to go through all that tedious burden-of-proof, probable-cause, presumption-of-innocence nonsense.

I've never used Napster or Kazaa or any other file-swapping service; all my MP3s are legal. I'm not going to defend copyright infringement. But the RIAA is seriously overreaching, and I think it will cause both customers and artists to rebel against them.

If you're worried about radiation from that cellphone in your pocket, has Levi Strauss got a deal for you. A new line of pants for the paranoid, manufactured under Levi's Dockers brand, provides radiation-resistant pockets for your cellphone or other bad-juju-emitting devices.

It may surprise you to know that I approve of this sort of thing. Oh, I don't plan on spending any of my own money on this nonsense; if I ever had any lingering doubts about the health effects of cellphones, Steven den Beste put them to rest some time ago.

No, you see, I like this for the same reason I like state lotteries (and gambling in general), Nigerian con-game spam, and other means of separating fools from their money. I like the idea of taxing stupidity, for the same reason many people like "sin taxes": what you tax, you discourage. If you make stupidity expensive, smart people will be more prosperous in comparison. As Larry Niven would say, think of it as evolution in action.

The fine folks at Samizdata.net are compiling a Blog Glossary to help people get up to speed on some of the slang and verbal shorthand used on blogs, especially "warblogs".

I actually contributed a few definitions by email: both definitions of "permalink", and the second and third definitions of "warblog". I also sent in a definition of one of Glenn Reynolds' favorite expressions, "Rope-a-dope" ("noun. A strategy of pretending incompetence in order to tempt one's adversaries into ill-considered action") but they didn't use it.

I love stuff like this. For more -- arguably 'way too much more -- see the Jargon file maintained by Eric S. Raymond.

I just noticed something, as I was bookmarking another blog, The Bloviator, from a link by InstaPundit.

You notice how the anti-warblogger types seem to use very serious, literary, and/or pretentious names -- Atrios at Eschaton, Demosthenes at Shadow of the Hegemon, Hesiod Theogeny, and of course, he-who-shall-go-unlinked, "Eric A. Blair" of WarbloggerWatch? (For those who don't know, that's the real name of George Orwell, against which standard Eric the Half-a-Wit falls woefully short.)

But the "warblogger" crowd -- what kind of names do they use? VodkaPundit. Happy Fun Pundit. A little Groucho Marx here, a little Peter Sellers there, some Firesign Theatre for flavor. We are, by our own declaration, clueless, inappropriate, unqualified, insolvent, and without qualities of any kind, and, oh yeah, lazy, too. Some of us don't even qualify as human, but are bears, coyotes, rabbits, and even inanimate objects. At best, we will admit that we're better than nothing.

From all that, you can't honestly tell who's right and who's wrong. But I think you can tell who's taking themselves too seriously, and who's having more fun.

What's worse than losing lots of money on a con game? Losing lots of your employer's money on a scam, that's what. Money your employer didn't know you were using.

I like Ken Layne's response better. (Don't read it while drinking a soda, unless you are prepared to wipe down your monitor and keyboard afterwards.)

Below, I posted a link to the Samizdata Blogger glossary, in hopes that some people new to weblogs might have a clue as to what all these people are talking about.

In the same vein, Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has collected (and mirrored) five articles about foreign affairs that he deems essential reading. The page linked above includes capsule summaries of each of the articles.

It's all good stuff, and reading this will get you up to speed quickly on a lot of the debates going on now abong political bloggers. (The articles tend to favor one side of that debate, of course.)

Michael Barone writes that Germany may be in the doghouse for as much as a generation because of the recent Bush-is-like-Hitler contretemps:

But so long as Gerhard Schröder is chancellor and George W. Bush is president, the United States will not consider Germany a reliable ally or even a reliable interlocutor. Schröder would do well not to sit around waiting for a telephone call from George W. Bush. And Germany's goal of getting a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council will have to wait another generation.

The offense was real, and the diplomatic snit being thrown in response may be sincere; but it seems to me that it could be to the Bush administration's advantage to remain offended for as long as possible.

If the German government believes that the alliance is seriously in jeopardy -- and again, it may very well be -- they are all the more likely to cooperate more enthusiastically in other aspects of the war on terrorism, in an attempt to repair the breach. It may also serve as a pretext for relocating the US central command in Europe from Germany to Poland or the Czech Republic, which may be a good idea in itself.

And if France and the other nations of Europe value America's role in keeping Germany from getting ambitious again, they may intervene with Germany on the US's behalf.

Look for some real hardball negotiations in the future over military bases, intelligence sharing, and participation in peacekeeping operations for the foreseeable future.

(Link courtesy of InstaPundit.)