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I can't keep up with the drone war in Pakistan.
This morning, I posted a piece on the evolution of the Pakistan border conflict into the world's first robot proxy war. There have been so many drone strikes along that border in the last four weeks that when I linked to the reports on all of them, it felt like-pardon the reverse metaphor-overkill.
Now it turns out I missed one. The machines' body count is now 20 higher, thanks to a strike last night. It's the 19th drone attack since August. According to an update this morning on the New York Times Web site, the strike occurred 20 miles inside Pakistan and took out two Taliban commanders who have launched raids on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
How good are the drones? According to the Times, one of the targeted commanders "was believed to have been visiting the compound ... to pay his respects to the families of those killed in an American drone strike on Friday" in a different location. The machines find and kill you, and then, when your boss shows up somewhere else to console your relatives, the machines are waiting for him there, too.
Down the road, we should all be scared of what this technology can do. But for now, I'm enjoying our ability to find and kill these guys without putting boots on the ground.
Now, about those other 18 casualties ...
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Sarah Palin spent her first days as John McCain's running mate being pounded over her daughter Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. In this predicament, critics saw Puritan hypocrisy, maternal neglect, and the predictable consequences of abstinence-only education.
There are many good grounds for criticizing Palin. This isn't one of them. The only reason we know about Bristol's pregnancy is that she's taking it to term. If she had aborted it, we'd never have known. Last month, I counted up the daughters of previous presidential and vice-presidential nominees going back to 1964. Of these, 37 were between the ages of 17 and 30 when their parents ran for national office. Based on unintended-pregnancy rates in this age group among higher-income families, I said it was almost inconceivable that "none of these young women got knocked up before their parents' nominations or elections." From the data, I inferred that at least one of them had probably had an abortion.
Readers and bloggers pounced on this inference, calling it unwarranted, perverted, and sexist. Call it whatever you want. It's now confirmed.
Actually, the evidence has been available for a while. It just didn't show up in Nexis, and the two best sources weren't searchable online. Fifteen years ago, Lee Edwards, who had worked on Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, interviewed Goldwater's daughter Joanne for a biography of the senator. Based on the interview, he reported that in 1955, when Joanne, "not yet twenty and still in school, became pregnant with the child of her intended husband and told her father that she did not want to have the child, Goldwater said, ‘I'll take care of it.' He arranged for Joanne to fly back to Washington and have a then-illegal abortion."
Two years ago, Zeitgeist Films released Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater, a documentary produced and narrated by C.C. Goldwater, the senator's granddaughter. In it, Joanne Goldwater tells the story:
I was getting engaged. ... It was actually in the Christmas of 1955. And in January, I—I found out that I was pregnant. And I had planned—I had planned this engagement party and a wedding. And—we had—we had planned to have children. We both were still in school. I was getting my degree. And I—I wasn't ready to have a child. And I got an abortion. ... And this was when it was just totally forbidden and very, very dangerous. And young girls were dying by trying it themselves. My father, being conservative, he felt that the government should not decide what women do with their bodies or anything else, you know. The government should stay out of all that. My mother started Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the '30s. And that's why I felt that it was easy to go to them and tell them. And they were very, very supportive.
Why didn't Joanne Goldwater get the Bristol Palin treatment in 1964? Because nobody knew she'd been pregnant. And the reason they didn't know is that she and her parents got rid of the problem.
The point isn't that abortion should be legal or illegal. The point is to exercise humility before accusing somebody else of bad parenting or a dysfunctional family. Was Joanne Goldwater's mom, a founder of Planned Parenthood of Arizona, a bad parent? Do you imagine that she taught her daughter abstinence-only? And how about Goldwater himself? If Palin can be judged by a daughter's pregnancy, why can't he? Shouldn't dads be held to the same standard? And shouldn't parents be held accountable for their sons, too?
You don't know how many of your friends or your friends' daughters have been pregnant. Unless they carry the baby to term or tell you about the abortion or the miscarriage, you just don't know. So before you open your mouth about the Palins, remember the Goldwaters.
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Tomorrow night, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin will meet in their only vice-presidential debate. Most of the discussion will be about economics and foreign policy. On the social issues, here are two questions moderator Gwen Ifill should ask.
1. Gov. Palin, you were asked this week whether it should be illegal for a girl to get an abortion in the case of rape or incest. Your answer was that the girl herself should not go to jail. What about the doctor? Should the doctor who performs that abortion face criminal penalties?
2. Sen. Biden, you said four weeks ago that you believe life begins at conception but that you can't impose your personal beliefs on other people. Yet you also voted for a law against gay marriage called the Defense of Marriage Act, and two years ago, you said this law expresses your view that "marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that." Why is it OK to impose your beliefs on gay marriage but not on abortion?
Here's all the background information Ifill will need when the candidates start fudging.
Palin's interview with Katie Couric, aired yesterday:
Couric: If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?
Palin: I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic about my position there on pro-life. And I understand good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion and when it should be allowed. So ... I respect people's opinion on this. ...
Couric: But, ideally, you think it should be illegal for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?
Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an ... abortion, absolutely not.
Biden on Meet the Press, Sept. 7, 2008:
Biden: I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. ...
Tom Brokaw: But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you've also voted for abortion rights.
Biden: No, what [I] voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's a moment of conception.
Biden's recorded vote for DOMA, Sept. 10, 1996.
Biden on Meet the Press, June 4, 2006:
We already have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act. We've all voted—not, where I've voted, and others have said, look, marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody's violated that law, there's been no challenge to that law.
Biden on CNN, June 5, 2006:
We have already passed a law saying that—and the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage between a man and a woman.
The Biden campaign's evasive response to a same-sex marriage question on the Human Rights Campaign's 2007 survey of presidential candidates:
Senator Biden supports letting states determine how to recognize civil unions and how to define marriage. He believes that legal recognition should not be denied to same-sex couples.
Bonus peg: Biden will speak at HRC's annual dinner Saturday night.
All yours, Gwen. Go for it.
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