Morning Links

- MLB Hot Stove Report

- Color me very surprised on this move. Lieber was their most effective starter down the stretch and in the playoffs.

- Arlen Specter (whose name I always thought came straight from a Stephen King novel) violated one of Don Vito's cardinal rules - "Never tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking."

- I agree with the central point of this article at the Ayn Rand Institute but would argue about this:

Any element of self-sacrifice in war is a betrayal of our soldiers and the American freedom they fight for. Witness the ongoing debacle in Iraq, where the Bush Administration has forced American soldiers to fight with self-crippling restrictions, leading to hundreds of unnecessary American deaths and enabling a militarily puny insurgency to take over Iraqi cities--all in the name of saving Iraqi civilians and mosques.

Our heroic fighting men and women are not to blame for these disasters. It is the politicians who are responsible. It is they who believe that our soldiers are sacrificial fodder to fulfill the politicians' desire for "prestige-enhancing" adventures. They believe that our armed forces can be sent to aid Somalia--or Haiti or Bosnia--in order to be able to show the world how "humanitarian" the politicians are.

The United States does not ask its soldiers to die for it - it asks its soldiers to FIGHT for it. There is a big difference. Contrast the US military mindset that makes Senator John McCain a hero for preserving both his life and dignity during years of captivity vs. the Japanese who looked at surrender even under the worst circumstances as a matter of shame.

I would also strongly argue that Iraq is not a "debacle". We have enjoyed tremendous success in Iraq but it gets little fanfare. Judging the situation in Iraq on what has happened in Fallujah would be like judging the war on crime in the US on what is happening in Washington DC and Detroit.

Please also note how the author mentions Iraq in the first paragragh and then Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti in the second - was this lumping together conscious or unconscious on the part of the author? Iraq is no more like those other three than it is like Vietnam. One final observation - note that the author never mentions the US action in Afghanistan. Could that be because Afghanistan has been a precedent setting success and the author prefers to dwell on failures? I let you be the judge.