Libya and Japan

Two countries on opposite ends of the world, but in the news of late, are Libya and Japan. I have thoughts on both.

Japan:

Via Rand Simberg, I give you XKCD's visual guide to radiation doses. It's a big graphic, but does a wonderful job in showing how much difference there is between "20 times normal" and "you're dead."

Libya:

I still don't like the idea of the US going to war against Libya. Having said that, the folks at Information Dissemination have done a detailed analysis of what the goal of US operations are. The analysis makes me less upset, because the goals seem to be:

1.Set Conditions for Coalition Operations
2.Support Coalition Operations With Unique US Capabilities
3.Support Coalition Nation Objectives

Or more basically, "open the door and hold the hat of the Europeans," thus letting them do the heavy lifting. The details are at the link, but we used 15 strike aircraft and 100+ missiles to take out Libyan air defenses. The actual no-fly zone and the bulk of the ground strikes are from European and Canadian aircraft. Our aircraft carrier in the region, USS Enterprise, is sitting this one out in the Red Sea.

In short, we're largely in the rear with the gear, and they're out front.