“Magic Happens” is something software developers say a lot. Usually when we are working through the steps of a problem and need to get past a point we haven't figured out yet we'll say it. As in “First the webserver receives the proprietary data, and then magic happens, and the decoded information appears in the database.”

Or we'll say it when there is a piece of the problem we are not required to solve because somebody else has been assigned to solve it, as in “Okay, I get the customer object and an IP address from the database and call Gary's routine, magic happens, and he gives me back an open and authenticated IP connection to the customer's server.”

We employ the phrase so often in our work, that it has almost become accepted as concrete a term as any actual technical solution might be.  Most developers I know don't even bat an eyelash when someone says “and then, magic happens”. Witness this diagram on my whiteboard:

Over the last few weeks, easily a dozen people have filed in and out of my office and have seen this diagram and not one has expressed the slightest concern or amusement over it.

The only time “Magic Happens” becomes a problem is when nobody makes the magic happen. This is what the Bush administration experienced in Iraq, and what the majority of American people rewarded them for. “We invade Iraq, topple Saddam, and then magic happens, and a new stable democracy is born.” Or “we introduce democracy to the Middle East, magic happens, and other Middle Eastern nations will reform and establish democracies.”

I'm happy for the Iraqis that the elections went off with few deaths, and I am hopeful that good will come of our intervention there, but the costs were very high, and the tangible benefits to America are very hard to measure. One thing is clear, somebody still seems to believe that magic happens.

Seymour Hersh (wiki), Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, recently wrote an article in The New Yorker magazine in which he claimed the US was currently conducting covert operations in Iran as a prelude to military strikes against that country. Seymour Hersh has been right before but I hope he's not this time. Here's an excerpt:

…The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said…

Got that everybody? We pick off a few targets important to Iran's nuclear program, and then magic happens, and the people of Iran overthrow their leaders in response to our attacking their country.

In a recent interview with Amy Goodman (wiki), a transcript of which is available on Democracy Now!, Seymour Hersh described the chickenhawks' latest theory this way:

…the only problem with that thinking, of course, is that it's pretty much unique to those group of civilians in the Pentagon; because almost everybody else I talked to, in and out of the government, were scathing in their critique of this, saying it's absolutely hogwash, … the White House and the Pentagon is ignoring the nationalism that exists, the enormous feelings of togetherness inside Iran and love for country. And, essentially, the reason I think people talk to me — because it's very clear with this group that's now in the White House and in the Pentagon, you can’t get to the meetings unless you drink the Kool-Aid…

Welcome to the second term folks. I hope this is what you wanted.