They say the New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken. I am sure they are right. I am also sure they have no idea of what they are talking about. I could not stand reading the article, but I made myself finish it.

I guess I sound like I am some kind of wanna be Zen master. But I really don’t know how to express myself to people who have not seen what I have seen and don’t know what I know. And I know that few people want to consider this problem honestly and no one has the brains to figure out a good solution.

It is so easy to play the populist. I would probably play one myself if I didn’t know better.

Let’s play the populist game. Let’s play different parts of the article against each other.

First we have this….

The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years.

Then we have this….

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts.

What a contrast, eh? How can a system that spends a couple hundred grand per kid per year be sourly underresourced? I mean, how much more do we really want to pay to take care of young thugs?

Yet the system is sorely underresourced. But that does not change the fact that the state cannot afford to spend more money on its prison system.

To explain this sad state of affairs fully would take essay upon essay. But you can quickly grasp the nature of the problem by understanding that the only two “good” choices are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Choice number one: You can shoot every kid who has been convicted of anything that resembles a serious crime with no appeal allowed. This would be very cheap and it would dramatically cut the crime rate.

Choice number two: You can hire the best Drill Sargents that the military can produce and give them lots of discretion and money. This will produce the best chance of turning young criminals into productive citizens as long as you keep the Drill Sargent to youth offender ratio low and hold the Drill Sargents accountable for the results that they achieve.

The disadvantages of the first choice is obvious to the modern mind. The disadvantage of the second choice is that it is hideously expensive. People who have the skills to be good Drill Sargents have lots of career choices. And without significant monetary compensation, most of them are not going to put working with young thugs on their list of dream jobs.

The fundamental problem is that the closer you get to the middle ground between these two choices, the closer you will get to creating a system that is the worst of all possible worlds.

And the worst of all possible worlds is a bureaucracy were nobody has the authority to punish or reward. A bureaucracy where any kind of meaningful interaction with the wards of state is against the rules. A bureaucracy whose only goal is to carry the kids through their term safety so that they can come out more dangerous and hardened then when they went in.

And that is what New York State has now.

As the whole world knows (here is the report from China’s English News Agency) 14 people got shot in Binghamton, New York today. It is just the latest in a long string of such shootings. Undoubtedly we will hear a lot about how we need to improve security or improve gun laws or some such. But when are we going to talk about the proper moral reaction to such an attack by those who are living through it?

I mean, after 9/11 it was generally agreed that people should never allow a plane to be hijacked again. Whatever it took and whatever it cost, people swore that they would take back the plane. Yet in the wake of multiple mass shootings no such consensus towards mass-murdering gunmen seems to be emerging.

To be sure, the pro-gun lobby will argue that this shows why everyone should be packing heat. But I think such arguments miss what is really wrong in this country. It is not a matter of arms, but of courage.

I remember hearing about a mass killing in California where the gunman made everybody lie down and then he started shooting people at point blank range. Needless to say he killed few people before the police stormed in to stop him. I remember hearing about a woman who survived the killings talking about how she lay there, listening to the other people getting shot, and hoped that the gunmen would not shoot her. Talk about making it easy for the killer.

Now I don’t know what I would have done in that situation and I don’t know enough about what happened in Binghamton to give an opinion on what happened there. But I do know that people don’t have to act like sheep. A man came to where I work armed with a gun, a propane tank, and the intent to kill. He was jumped by a lady in her fifties and he never got chance to get off a shot (granted she was a lot tougher then your average lady, and a man later came to her aid, but still….).

But the prevailing trend in our culture is not to celebrate the ladies who jump gunmen armed with nothing but their bare hands. Rather, it is to celebrate the people who chose to act as passive victims as this post from the Belmont Club makes clear. Moreover, this attitude that celebrates those who value their own lives above all else has even permeated our law enforcement agencies as this article from Paul Howe makes clear (For those that don’t recognize the name, Paul Howe is a former Delta operator who played a key role in the events of Black Hawk Down. He currently teaches tactics to law enforcement officers.)

Something is up. It seems that people in the highest levels of the US and Pakistan governments have decided to tell the New York Times what everyone basically already knows. Pakistan is supporting the Taliban militants who are fighting US soldiers and they have no intention of ever stopping that support. A short quote from the article….

Details of the ISI’s continuing ties to militant groups were described by a half-dozen American, Pakistani and other security officials during recent interviews in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. All requested anonymity because they were discussing classified and sensitive intelligence information.

The American officials said proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. The Pakistani officials interviewed said that they had firsthand knowledge of the connections, though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency.

And later on in the article, American officials say what everyone knows….

Top American officials speak bluntly about how the situation has changed little since last summer, when evidence showed that ISI operatives helped plan the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an attack that killed 54 people.

“They have been very attached to many of these extremist organizations, and it’s my belief that in the long run, they have got to completely cut ties with those in order to really move in the right direction,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently on “The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS.

The Taliban has been able to finance a military campaign inside Afghanistan largely through proceeds from the illegal drug trade and wealthy individuals from the Persian Gulf. But American officials said that when fighters needed fuel or ammunition to sustain their attacks against American troops, they would often turn to the ISI.

When the groups needed to replenish their ranks, it would be operatives from the S Wing who often slipped into radical madrasas across Pakistan to drum up recruits, the officials said.

The whole article should really be read by everyone. The most interesting thing about the article is that is was high level Pakistan officials who talked to the New York Times reporters. I wonder what caused them to decide to talk? It seems like this article is designed to set the stage for something but I am not sure what.

Regardless, the article highlights the problem with America’s ruling class. They are so degenerate that they are propping up a regime that they know is complicit in ongoing attacks on American soldiers. They do this not because they want American solders to get killed but because they are afraid of what will happen if they stop the support.

They can’t make hard decisions. They don’t have the guts to do anything that might have real costs. And this can not be blamed solely on Obama. These problems were already clear when Bush was in charge. Nor is it solely a problem with the White House. Everyone who is informed in this country already pretty much knew everything in this article. But no “serious” pundit has been willing to lay out the true choices facing America.

The truth that nobody wants to admit is that we have only two choices. We can swallow our pride and leave Afghanistan with all the catastrophic implications that choice has. Or we can give Pakistan a true “us or them” ultimatum with all the catastrophic implications that such an ultimatum would necessarily entail.

What we are doing right now is not a sane choice no matter what your ideology is. We are sending Americans in who will die trying to create a stable Afghanistan when we know they can never succeed as long as ISI is supporting the other side. We are wasting blood and money simply because our political caste is composed of cowards who want to kick the can down the road until a solution magically appears. In the end, though, we are either going to have to leave or else fight Pakistan. All the money and blood that was spent to try to avoid that choice will have been wasted.

In a way, the New York Times article is almost a good sign. At least the political caste is starting to go on record as admitting to things that everyone already knows to be true. I don’t know what they are trying to set the stage for, but acknowledging the facts is a move in the right direction.