Posts tagged ‘politics’
Niall Ferguson is an idiot
February 6th, 2012 at 11:00 pm by Dr. Drang
There’s something very wrong about a world that considers Niall Ferguson brilliant. How is it that so many people get diverted by a few well-turned phrases and miss the shallowness and intellectual dishonesty of his writing? Today I read this piece by Ferguson in The Daily Beast/Newsweek in which he makes the case for supporting…
Afghanistan, January 2012
February 3rd, 2012 at 7:16 pm by Dr. Drang
With the war in Iraq officially over, from now on I’ll be graphing US and coalition military deaths in Afghanistan only. The source of my figures remains icasualties.org, which continues to present the Iraq casualty history as well as the ongoing casualties in Afghanistan. Before we let it go, though, I think it’s worth reflecting…
Iraq and Afghanistan, December 2011
January 7th, 2012 at 6:44 pm by Dr. Drang
So I guess we really are done in Iraq. Nearly 4,500 US military lives lost, over 300 more from our coalition partners. And to what end? We invaded a country that had not attacked us and deposed a leader who was no threat to us or our allies. We made ourselves look foolish, dishonest, and…
Afghanistan and Iraq, November 2011
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:19 pm by Dr. Drang
I’ve been derelict with these posts the past few months, and the news has generally been good. After a really bad August, the US and coalition military deaths in Afghanistan have gone down considerably. And Iraq is about where it’s been for the past year or two. We will, in theory, be out of Iraq…
Union busting
November 19th, 2011 at 10:37 pm by Dr. Drang
This evening I read what may be the stupidest anti-union statement I’ve ever run across. It showed up in my Twitter stream: How much police bad behavior is from power granted by strength of their unions?4:51 PM Sat Nov 19, 2011@ModeledBehavior Modeled Behavior Modeled Behavior is a blog run by three economists or quasi-economists. I…
Afghanistan and Iraq, August 2011
September 1st, 2011 at 10:29 pm by Dr. Drang
When I first saw the data, I assumed there was something wrong, a missing entry. But no, August was the first month to have no US or coalition military casualties in Iraq. Somehow this doesn’t balance the horrible August in Afghanistan. In a weird antisymmetry, August had the greatest number of US military casualties since…
Afghanistan and Iraq, July 2011
August 6th, 2011 at 8:53 pm by Dr. Drang
This morning’s bad news from Afghanistan isn’t included in this graph. The August graph will look substantially worse. There have now been more than 1700 US military deaths in Afghanistan, and it seems unlikely that troop withdrawals will go fast enough to keep the total under 2000. After a shocking jump up in June, Iraq…
Afghanistan and Iraq, June 2011
July 2nd, 2011 at 9:14 pm by Dr. Drang
Increases in military deaths last month in both Afghanistan, and Iraq. About half the deaths in Iraq came from two rocket attacks, one early in the month and one late. This is a worrying development. If you look back through that list of deaths in Iraq, you’ll see that many of the deaths before June…
Afghanistan and Iraq, May 2011
June 1st, 2011 at 1:45 pm by Dr. Drang
The good news is that military deaths in Iraq went back down after a curious and troubling jump in April. And the increasing trend in Afghanistan took a break in May, at least for US troops. The bad news is that coalition military deaths in Afghanistan have worked their way back up to where they…
Pictures that make me cry
May 4th, 2011 at 9:21 pm by Dr. Drang
You’ve no doubt seen this photo several times by now, either online, in a newspaper, or on TV. It’s from the official White House Flickr stream, and was taken by Pete Souza in the Situation Room as the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was being carried out. I first saw it by following a…
