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Saturday, August 5, 2006
The View From Your Window
05 Aug 2006 10:49 pm
New Delhi, India, 4 pm. Yep, that's a peacock.
Hewitt and Caesarism
05 Aug 2006 09:26 pm
A reader writes on some interesting historical parallels to the faith-based leader-cult that best describes Hugh Hewitt's political-theological position:
It might not be far from the truth to see in Hugh and his ilk the same phenomenon that Donald Rumsfeld once characterized as dead-enders. But there's another aspect of his thinking that troubles me very deeply.
Back in the late 19th century there were a group of thinkers centered in Middle Europe who called themselves "Caesarists" - they held that the most promising social organization was a highly structured, authoritarian society led by a charismatic leader with at least a measure of religious attributes (by some formulations, this leader should be simultaneously a secular and a religious leader, which of course fit the Julian concept to a T). Western style democracy, they argued, was lazy and weak (actually they regularly used the German word "faul" which means either lazy or rotten, a carefully calculated ambiguity), and only the Caesarian variant could inspire men to fulfill their great potential.
Many intellectual historians see in the Caesarists the seeds of the fascist movements of the 1920's, and that's true, but one could just as easily link them to the Napoleon-worshippers in France, other authoritarian strains of conservatism, and even to Leninist notions of democratic centralism. They were defined by a contempt for liberal democracy, and consequently they provided amunition to all of liberalism's enemies.
The Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004 were different from prior election campaigns I have witnessed in that there was a carefully maintained aura of this "Caesarism" about them (always on the fringes, always deniable, but nevertheless there). And now that Bush's popular support collapses through floor after floor, we find his hardcore support, say a quarter of the voting population, heavily populated by this "faith" Caesarian contingent.
Liberal society can and should allow free space for such conceptualizations and movements, but it must also recognize the threat that they present to basic democratic concepts. We are living those threats right now. The mainstream media and our punditry have failed to engage these issues in a serious way. Your book, when it is out, will perhaps make an important start.
Hewitt's Confession of Faith
05 Aug 2006 03:51 pm
Here's Hugh Hewitt's creed:
"I do believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Gonzales and Ashcroft have run the global war on terror about as well as it could have been run, and their commitment to its prosecution has been unyielding. I admire their courage and their consistency. This presidency is already among the most significant of our nation's history, and like Reagan's, will be admired for generations long after the Bush haters have been forgotten."
He can see no flaws in the war strategy as run by this administration. The secretary of state may have confessed to "thousands of errors" - but not Hugh. Then he accuses yours truly of being an anti-Christian bigot and a Bush-hater. I am a Christian myself and find the notion that I am an anti-Christian bigot deeply offensive. Readers of this blog also know that while I am extraordinarily angry at the incompetent recklessness that has characterized this presidency, I find it impossible not to like the president personally. Except when his cruel streak emerges - laughing at women on death-row, endorsing torture, telling Islamists to "bring it on" against U.S. troops, for example - he seems like an amiable fellow, if completely out of his depth. This realization came too late for me. I once lionized the guy in the wake of 9/11, letting my fear and hope overcome my skepticism and better judgment. To equate me with haters like Michael Moore is preposterous. I gave this administration every single benefit of every doubt until it became impossible not to acknowledge their dangerous incompetence.
But Hewitt says something else about my use of the term "Christianist." He writes the following:
"Sullivan's "christianist" rhetoric, like a great deal of other similar rhetoric, is deeply offensive, and is in fact hate speech, designed not to describe but to incite, specifically to incite an emotional, irrational hatred of the person(s) to whom it is applied. Sullivan has never defined the term, but its accordian-like quality allows it to expand to take in Roman Catholic-turned-Presbyterian, Arlen Specter-supporting big tent Republican me." [my italics]
Hewitt is not telling the truth. I have defined the term very carefully and very often. My most thorough attempt was in a very widely-disseminated Time essay, which Hewitt read. You can read it here. Money quote:
Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.
I have also repeatedly and carefully defined it on my blog - here, here, and here, for a few recent examples. Hewitt needs to issue a factual correction. He won't, I'll wager (and I'll link if he does). Like most fanatics, if the truth contradicts him, he simply reasserts more forcefully his own dogma. Like George "we do not torture" Bush, Dick "last throes" Cheney and Don "stuff happens" Rumsfeld on Iraq. But saying something does not make it so, as any sane person must now concede. A lie is a lie is a lie.
I should add that Hewitt still refuses to acknowledge or account for his own role in credentializing, supporting and using for political purposes the work of fanatical anti-Semite Mel Gibson. Again, his inability to cop to even basic moral and intellectual responsibility is a feature of the very Christianism I have tried to sketch. He still insists that "The Passion" is not an anti-Semitic movie, but does not make an actual argument against the many Christian and Jewish scholars who see in it deep tropes of medieval Jew-hatred, perhaps invisible to a contemporary Christian. Hewitt backed the movie for political reasons. If abetting anti-Semitism (or homophobia, for that matter) can achieve the party's aims, then so be it. As he once used as the very slogan of his site "The Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed." It's the one coherent thread in everything he writes. It is his true faith.
YouTube of the Day
05 Aug 2006 01:24 pm
Wikiality? Stephen Colbert discusses Wikipedia. Yes, it has a liberal bias.
Invest Now
05 Aug 2006 12:30 pm
Britain's top scientist urges emergency investment in non-carbon energy technology. I'm reluctant to see government take the major role in this. The model should be the HIV crisis. Governments should fund basic research, but should merely spur the private sector to invest in energy solutions. The on indispensable element of this is a gradual but serious increase in gas taxes in America.
Friday, August 4, 2006
How Big a Defeat?
04 Aug 2006 07:54 pm
That seems to be the only question left for Joe Lieberman.
Quote for the Day
04 Aug 2006 06:57 pm
"We have a good president. I pray for him. Sometimes I'd like to pull down his britches and switch him, but I still love him," - congressman Ralph Hall of Texas.
That Cheney YouTube
04 Aug 2006 06:47 pm
Some expert opinions on this:
I am not a ballistics expert but what was said on the video makes sense, even if you account for the differences in chokes, etc. The presenter's spin was that there was a "cover-up" for some nefarious reason. Most likely the reason was embarrassment rather than a cover-up, but he has a point that Cheney took advantage of his position to make sure that the least nasty report would come out. He shot Mr. Whittingon due to stupidity and lack of common sense, but that does not make him a felon. I have been the physician for the US Shooting team and am still a writer for Shotgun Sports Magazine so I do have some practical experience. The kind of penetration noted in the police and medical reports does indicate a closer shot.
Another hunter weighs in:
Anyone experienced shotgunner/hunter could see that the story was weird from the beginning. The original story said Whittington was hit by as many as 250 pellets. A 28 gauge only has 250 pellets (a 12 gauge has 450 by comparison). It is inconceivable that at thirty yards he could had been hit by more than a third or fourth of the pellets. Second, when I accidentally shot a hunting guide at about 12-15 yards, my victim only had deep skin penetration of the pellets, almost all removable by tweezers and scalpels. Whittington was shot at very close range to have the level of penetration that was reported.
Here's the one piece of data that might affect this assessment:
"One thing to remember: the only thing that is consistent about shotguns is that very few things are consistent. Identical guns with the same degree of choke and using the same shell may not pattern the same. The same load between various brands of shells can pattern differently. Patterns will change when changing from hard to soft shot. Patterns can change when anything in the shell changes such as different wads, powders or primers. What I am trying to get across is that when you change anything such as brands, shot size, or components you will need to check the pattern as it could have changed, sometimes by an extreme amount."
Another reader argues that we cannot know from the data we have:
I'm no fan of Cheney and I think the responsibility for what happened rests squarely on his shoulders, but I think it is reasonable to believe that he shot Whittington at 30 yards.
It is also reasonable to think that he shot him at half that range, too. But I don't think there is any way to establish this given the variables and the unknowns.
Just fleshing this out. I feel bad giving Jones any air now I know who he is. But I see no problem with hashing this out some more.
What Conservatism Now Means
04 Aug 2006 05:29 pm
Soaring debt, massive expansion of federal entitlements, and airbrushing hard, fiscal reality:
The federal government keeps two sets of books.
The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.
We should definitely include Medicare and Social Security in the numbers. The Bush administration isn't the only administration to have fiddled with fiscal numbers. But the crisis is growing; and their obliviousness is unnerving. This isn't conservatism. It's big government recklessness. It needs to be stopped.
The Moribund MSM
04 Aug 2006 05:05 pm
How was it that TMZ.com scooped the Los Angeles Times on the Gibson story? Bill Powers wants to know.
The Iran-Israel War
04 Aug 2006 04:46 pm
It's already started, and looks like it will escalate. Only by annihilating the Jews can the Shiite Islamists in Iran realize their dream. And so the war begins. It will end only in either the destruction of Israel and Iran's major populations, or in the demise of the Ahmadinejad-Khameini regime.
The View From Your Window
04 Aug 2006 03:23 pm
Baltimore, Maryland, 9.15 pm.
Bailing on Iraq
04 Aug 2006 03:20 pm
As pro-Hezbollah rallies overwhelm parts of Baghdad, two of the most influential centrist columnists in America just essentially gave up on Iraq. Tom Friedman (TimesDelete) wants one last chance for an Iraqi national conference, then withdrawal; David Broder thinks it's time to cut our losses. He makes this critical point:
If Hezbollah in Lebanon and the insurgents in Iraq really are deadly threats to Israel and the United States, respectively, then those nations should have used their full military might - which is overwhelming - to deal with the menace.
President Bush never took this war seriously enough. That is why we have all but lost it. We failed to find WMDs; we failed to stop the Sunni-Jihadist insurgency; we failed to stop a civil war. We may, however, have helped incite a broader Sunni-Shiite war in the entire region. What's needed now is a long-term strategy to exploit these sectarian divisions in order to weaken Islamism. In the short-term, redeployment of troops into Kurdish areas is one option. I'm afraid anything more ambitious would be irresponsible, given the gross incompetence of the political leadership (now on vacation).
To put it more bluntly: It is simply impossible to believe we can succeed even in pacifying parts of Iraq with Rumsfeld still managing the war. Senator Clinton got it perfectly right yesterday with this rhetorical question to the Pentagon's macher:
"Yes, we hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration’s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy. Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?"
Rumsfeld had no answer. I guess Bush has to wait for Tuesday's primary before plonking Lieberman in the hot seat. Senator McCain also had a priceless on-the-record exchange:
Senator McCain: "You said there's a possibility of the situation in Iraq evolving into civil war. Is that correct?'
General Pace: 'I did say that, yes, sir.'
Senator McCain: 'Did you anticipate this situation a year ago?'
General Pace: 'No, sir.'
Others did. And nothing was done.
(Photo: Kareem Raheem/Reuters.)
Sea Lion?
04 Aug 2006 02:55 pm
Did I get the little critter wrong? A reader writes:
I think what you have there is what we call a Phoca vitulina or harbor seal. All this reminds me, more or less unfortunately, of my old recordings of William Walton's Facade, settings of verse by Edith Sitwell:
He called across the battlements as she
Heard our voices thin and shrill
As the steely grasses' thrill,
Or the sound of the onycha
When the phoca has the pica
In the palace of the Queen Chinee!I apologize for any excessive sharing.
Apology accepted.
The Cheney Video
04 Aug 2006 02:41 pm
My YouTube video of the day has some dubious authorship, as a reader writes:
You do realize that Alex Jones is a conspiracy nut nut who thinks the Jews did 9/11 and not a ballistics expert, yes?
Er, no. Actually, I didn't. I just watched the video sent by a reader and found it persuasive. It's unfortunate that the guy is a crazed nut, but I'd still like to know why he's wrong in this case. One reader argued that different shotguns, even of identical manufacture, can have different dispersement, a fact that would undermine Jones' case. Maybe other readers can help debunk this theory - or not.
Global Warming
04 Aug 2006 02:34 pm
There are legitimate debates to be had about the relationship between carbon dioxide and global warming (although I think the debate is now overwhelmingly in favor of those arguing for a close and increasingly dangerous connection). But I know of no one who has any clue about the issue saying something like this:
Just as you shouldn't go grocery shopping when you're hungry, you probably shouldn’t discuss climate policy during a heatwave ... Because the thing about this global warming thing is that it's [sic] effects aren't global. The Southern hemisphere, for instance, is having a pretty frigid time right now, with snow in South Africa (as Kathryn pointed out yesterday) and some real 'brass monkeys' (as we'd say in the UK) in Argentina and New Zealand. And even in the US, a friend of a friend in Alaska on a fishing trip says it is so cold and stormy out there they can't get out on the water.
I would have thought that even a minimal understanding of global warming would grasp that indeed it will result in many parts of the earth getting much colder. No: increasing heat-waves in the US do not prove anything as such (they're just the latest in a mass of data pointing in one direction). But the idea that because there's a cold snap in South Africa, global warming is a hoax is, well, the kind of thing you now read at National Review.
The Death of Conservatism
04 Aug 2006 02:19 pm
Between them, Bush and Rove have managed to eviscerate what was left of conservative coherence. E.J. Dionne gets a whiff of the stench around the corpse.
The Aging Army
04 Aug 2006 02:14 pm
No community-theater linguists allowed - but you can now become a new recruit at the age of 42.
Feeling the Love
04 Aug 2006 02:12 pm
Bill Clinton is no fool. He knows who the real Democratic front-runner is, and it isn't his wife.
YouTube of the Day
04 Aug 2006 11:30 am
Was Dick Cheney's version of his shooting Harry Whittington a complete fabrication? Here's an on-site investigation. The persuasive claim of the video: Harry Whittington was shot at close range, between 15 and 18 feet, not the 90 claimed by Dick Cheney and the Secret Service. Make your own mind up.
Email of the Day
04 Aug 2006 10:46 am
A reader writes:
I am remiss at not writing long ago to thank you for continuing your "window" offerings.
I am a moderate democrat, and a grandmother whose only grandson, a Marine, will soon be on his way back to Iraq. I tend to agree with you on most issues, and I hope I will live long enough to see gay marriage a reality, and a significant decline in Christianist influence.
I read your blog daily, and consider you one of the voices of reason amid all the noise. I feel sad and anxious about the state of our world. When my grandson goes back to Iraq, I face another 7 months of holding my breath, and waiting for that dreaded knock on the door.
As I read your blog, every one of those window views that pops up gives me a brief moment of peace. Thank you.
Thank me? Thank the readers of this blog. In an insane world, small glimpses of normal life - the life the media rarely covers - can be curiously calming.
The View From My Window
04 Aug 2006 03:21 am
An unexpected guest dropped by yesterday afternoon. I live twenty yards away from this baby sea-lion who wandered onto the beach for what the animal control people described as a rest. He chilled for a while, and then plopped back into the bay.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
Black, White, Gray
03 Aug 2006 08:19 pm
A reader writes:
Today you wrote:
"It's amazing that a president who claims to see the world in black and white, and good and evil, sees the question of torture as one full of gray."
It's not amazing, it's human nature.
We've always seen the evil other people do in clear terms of black-and-white, and our own evil is always lost in a fog of gray. We grant ourselves vast swaths of nuance, while demanding clarity from others. Our enemies' motives are always clear and wrong, our own always justified and right.
It’'s a story as old as time. You'll find it told in the Illiad, in the Bible, in Shakespeare and Dickens, in Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis. Heck, you'll find it in "The Sopranos" and any sitcom.
To find this amazing you'd have to believe we are really different from our forebearers, that our own apple fell across the street from the tree. The human condition didn't change because we have better technology, technology just distracts us from ourselves more efficiently.
But it is also possible to make the effort to resist this inevitable distortion of human nature. What is amazing about the Christianists is not that they fail at this effort; but that they do not even try.
Who Used These Phrases?
03 Aug 2006 07:06 pm
It's from a major political campaign speech:
"America's armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay ... A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming ... I don't have enemies to fight. I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect ... We're learning to protect the natural world around us. We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back ... to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible. So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to ... uphold the laws of our land ... I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it ..."
Yep, you guessed right.
Holding Rumsfeld Accountable
03 Aug 2006 06:34 pm
So now the Pentagon confirms what most of us have known for a while: Iraq is in the middle of a sectarian, civil war, and it could get much much worse. Now, remind me: what did Rumsfeld tell the Congress only six months ago? Here's a useful reminder. Three words: Fire Rumsfeld Now.
YouTube of the Day
03 Aug 2006 05:58 pm
Plan B on "The View." Or "life begins at penetration". More here.
The Right and Gibson III
03 Aug 2006 04:58 pm
Hugh Hewitt, it appears, cannot take responsibility just like the man he idolizes, George W. Bush. Check out this piece of artless subject-changing. Hewitt vouched for the good intentions of Mel Gibson in making "The Passion of the Christ," denied its rank anti-Semitism, and is one of those trying to fuse the primal zeal of Christianist fundamentalism with the Republican party. And his ploy in writing about Gibson is to accuse others of losing perspective and not focusing on the evils of Hezbollah, or Castro, or a violent anti-Semite in Seattle. We all have our priorities, and Hewitt has every right to his. But you learn something about someone unable or unwilling to confess a serious error of judgment in the past. I'm not surprised. The man is a partisan fanatic. Like his beloved president, any admission of error sends his Manichean worldview careening. And so he changes the subject. He has to.
Among the theocons, Cal Thomas manages to turn the Gibson incident into a column decrying Hollywood's bigotry against ...
"Catholics and conservative Protestants, political conservatives, Republicans and pro-lifers."
Yes, that was what this was about, wasn't it? David Horowitz, a man who has sadly capitulated to the logic of "no enemies to the right" also sees the Gibson episode as revealing of bigotry towards ... conservatives:
"[A] lot of the people who are jumping all over Mel Gibson see him as some kind of a conservative or as a Christian. There's a lot of hatred of Christians in this country."
The fanatical attachment to ideology regardless of the facts at hand is something Horowitz once learned on the extreme left. It didn't take much for him to take it with him to the extreme right.
In Defense of Gibson
03 Aug 2006 03:53 pm
This piece of anti-Semitic drivel appears in today's Daily Telegraph of London. I presume it isn't parody:
"If we peel back the layers of the Gibson fiasco, we see something much darker and more troubling, not about him - he's just a fool - but about the society which needs to produce a scapegoat in him. Dangerously worded as it was, Gibson's drunken comment was, it could reasonably be argued, a statement against the arrogance of the Israeli military: "They started all the wars in the world." Isn't it that which is making America call for his head? ... There's a problem here. Jews, and by extension Israelis, are un-insultable in ethnic terms, though everybody else is. I know it's hard to tell a people who saw six million of their number murdered to turn the other cheek, but turn the other cheek they must, unless they want to present themselves as the great unimpeachable race apart."
Clinical. Bill Maher is onto something, isn't he? More evidence of the anti-Semitism pervading European responses to the war in the Middle East here.
An Exorcism!
03 Aug 2006 03:27 pm
On pay-per-view! Moving the Gibson story forward ...
The View From Your Window
03 Aug 2006 03:09 pm
New Haven, Connecticut, two days ago, as the rains came through at 6.30 pm.
Reuters and Iran
03 Aug 2006 02:19 pm
A somewhat typical headline:
Iran Leads Islamic Nations in Demanding End to Mideast War
The fourth paragraph of the story? Ahem:
"Although the main cure (to the situation) is the elimination of the Zionist regime, in this stage an immediate ceasefire should be implemented," Ahmadinejad, who previously has said Israel should be wiped off the map, told the closed door meeting.
"Iran Calls For Elimination of Israel" just wasn't news, I guess, was it? Best to focus on the real issue in the region: Israel's "aggression".
Gonzales vs McCain
03 Aug 2006 02:09 pm
The differences between the administration and the Senate were most pronounced when Mr. McCain asked Mr. Gonzales whether statements obtained through "illegal and inhumane treatment" should be admissible. Mr. Gonzales paused for almost a minute before responding.
"The concern that I would have about such a prohibition is, what does it mean?" he said. "How do you define it? I think if we could all reach agreement about the definition of cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, then perhaps I could give you an answer."
Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, said that using illegal and inhumane interrogation tactics and allowing the evidence to be introduced would be "a radical departure" from longstanding United States policy.
We've been living through an illegal, immoral and radical departure from long-standing U.S. policy - and values - for almost five years now.
Bill on Mel
03 Aug 2006 02:06 pm
Bill Maher sure is right about this:
As I watch so much of the world ask Israel for restraint in a way no other country would (Can you imagine what Bush would do if a terrorist organization took over Canada and was lobbing missiles into Montana, Maine and Illinois?) - and, by the way, does anyone ever ask Hezbollah for restraint. you know, like, please stop firing your rockets aimed PURPOSEFULLY at civilians? - it strikes me that the world IS Mel Gibson.
Most of the time, the anti-semitism is under control, but that demon lives inside and when the moon is full, or there's been enough alcohol consumed, or Israel is forced to kill people in its own defense, then it comes out.
Bill is still wrong, I think, to link this to religion. Gibson's kind of rigid bigotry is more a function of the fundamentalist temptation within all religion - not religion itself, and certainly not all of Christianity. The biggest lie of our time is that fundamentalism is the only authentic expression of religious faith. In my view, it is often the least authentic.
You Want Drunk?
03 Aug 2006 01:12 pm
This is drunk:
He was taken to a hospital, where his blood-alcohol level, according to state records, was reported at 0.72 - nine times the legal limit for driving, and almost double the level that is considered potentially fatal for many adults.
For some reason no rants about the Jews. What gives?
Email of the Day
03 Aug 2006 12:49 pm
A reader writes:
In June, I attended the World Cup in Germany. While there, I visited Dachau. This experience inspired me to send a postcard from the torture museum to my senators. My message was simple: Do not allow the torture of human beings in the name of the United States.
Today I received a letter from Senator Orrin Hatch, who writes that "the Bush Administration acted in good faith on this issue." Regarding the McCain Amendment, Sen. Hatch states that he supported Vice President Cheney's efforts to gut the amendment because Hatch had "some reservations" even though the amendment would only prohibit the American government from exposing any human being in the custody of the United States to "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment."
Senator Hatch agrees that our military should be bound by the Geneva Convention and should not use interrogations techniques other than those in the Army Field Manual. But Sen. Hatch draws a distinction between our military and our "intelligence agencies."
Sen. Hatch explains that his reservations emerged from his belief that our intelligence agencies "require more flexibility." Sen Hatch hastens to add that this "flexibility" extends only so far as "[the] techniques [used by intelligence interrogators] do not include torture." This can only mean that Sen. Hatch does not define torture as "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment." As a result, the ranking majority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee would seem to be on record as supporting "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment" of human beings so long as the treatment does not fall within his undefined concept of torture.
I have an uncle who serves in the Navy, and my brother serves in the Army and will probably be sent to Iraq within a year. If either were to fall into enemy hands, I would hope and pray for (but probably not expect) humane treatment. I cannot in good conscience expect our nation to fall short of how I would hope my family would be treated.
Senator Hatch suggests that this is "a tremendously complicated" matter. It is not. Torture is wrong.
It's amazing that a president who claims to see the world in black and white, and good and evil, sees the question of torture as one full of gray. It speaks volumes. And it behooves us to remember that this was a man who once made jokes about a woman whom his signature had already sentenced to death.
AWOL
03 Aug 2006 12:35 pm
Rumsfeld refuses to attend a Senate public hearing on the war he has mismanaged so spectacularly. He says he's too busy and the hearings are political theater. Sure they are. And he's a politician who has managed the worst-run war since Vietnam. Answer to the public? He answers only to the king. (Update: He's reversed his decision.)
Cape Dawn
03 Aug 2006 10:23 am
"Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
Nothing seems to us changed.
Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same weairsome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain," - Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
The Media and Israel
03 Aug 2006 09:09 am
The bias endures.
"Liberal" Hollywood
03 Aug 2006 12:32 am
I'm always surprised when people describe Hollywood as "liberal." Hollywood is about money, period. Even if it means sucking up to a pathological anti-Semite for years, in full awareness of his bigotry. Ever wondered why there are so few openly gay leading men in Hollywood? The same cowardice. Go Army:
"[T]o those who had been reading my column all these years, you learned Mel's feelings beyond question. So much so that two years ago, Mel's longtime agent Ed Limato politely disinvited me from his annual Oscar party fearing my presence might embarrass his guest and client, Mel Gibson."
And just for the record: these remarks can only be made by someone who is a Holocaust denier. What we just found out for sure was always hiding in plain sight.
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Blair's Lebanon Problem
02 Aug 2006 08:23 pm
It's called his party.
Evading the War Crimes Act
02 Aug 2006 07:14 pm
Will Bush and Gonzales get away with it? Michael Scherer analyzes their attempt to avoid responsibility - and to provide cover for the war criminals they authorized.
Self-Parody Alert
02 Aug 2006 06:37 pm
Through the far-right looking glass with NRO's Mark Levin.
Blair's Call To Arms
02 Aug 2006 05:55 pm
Listen up, Mr president:
"We will continue to do all we can to halt the hostilities. But once that has happened, we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world...
Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.
What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future.
It is in part a struggle between what I will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. But its implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values...
We only win people to [our] positions if our policy is not just about interests but about values, not just about what is necessary but about what is right.
Which brings me to my final reflection about US policy. My advice is: always be in the lead, always at the forefront, always engaged in building alliances, in reaching out, in showing that whereas unilateral action can never be ruled out, it is not the preference.
How we get a sensible, balanced but effective framework to tackle climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 should be an American priority. America wants a low-carbon economy; it is investing heavily in clean technology; it needs China and India to grow substantially. The world is ready for a new start here. Lead it. The same is true for the WTO talks, now precariously in the balance; or for Africa, whose poverty is shameful. If we are championing the cause of development in Africa, it is right in itself but it is also sending the message of moral purpose, that reinforces our value system as credible in all other aspects of policy.
It serves one other objective. There is a risk that the world, after the Cold War, goes back to a global policy based on spheres of influence. Think ahead. Think China, within 20 or 30 years, surely the world's other super-power. Think Russia and its precious energy reserves. Think India. I believe all of these great emerging powers want a benign relationship with the West. But I also believe that the stronger and more appealing our world-view is, the more it is seen as based not just on power but on justice, the easier it will be for us to shape the future in which Europe and the US will no longer, economically or politically, be transcendant. Long before then, we want Moderate, Mainstream Islam to triumph over Reactionary Islam.
That is why I say this struggle is one about values. Our values are worth struggling for. They represent humanity's progress throughout the ages and at each point we have had to fight for them and defend them. As a new age beckons, it is time to fight for them again."
Blair is calling for a "complete renaissance" of our war on Islamist terror. He fuses the best insights of the right and left in a strategy that makes sense for the West as a whole. We must be unrelenting in hunting down the enemy - but we must never abandon our ideals and values in the process. We must aggressively move toward a low-carbon economy. We must redouble our efforts for an Israel-Palestine settlement, however daunting the prospects. We have to be confident in our own way of life, and refuse to engage in the masochism of the far left. This may be the Fulton, Missouri, speech of our day. I sure hope it is. All we need now is a Truman.
(Photo: Luke MacGregor/AP.)
Lapin, Gibson, Abramoff
02 Aug 2006 05:18 pm
So it turns out that Rabbi Daniel Lapin - one of many GOP Jewish activists who defended Mel Gibson from charges of anit-Semitism - was partly funded by Mel Gibson and, according to TPM, had close ties to Jack Abramoff. Lapin, in fact, allegedly introduced Tom DeLay to Jack Abramoff. It's a perfect Rove GOP trifecta: religious fundamentalism, bigotry disguised as art, and corruption.
King George Watch
02 Aug 2006 04:11 pm
The Onion joins the throng.
Ad For the Day
02 Aug 2006 03:29 pm
Quote for the Day
02 Aug 2006 02:56 pm
"Mr. Bush has neglected the critical task - carried out by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich - of advancing a public argument that connects his otherwise disparate policy decisions to a broader philosophical framework. He has failed to articulate the philosophical argument for limited government that once defined the Republican Party. At the same time he has failed to win broad acceptance for his alternative, so-called compassionate conservatism. To a large extent, he has abandoned the systematic promotion of public philosophy altogether," - Andrew Busch, rephrasing Bill Buckley's critique.
An attempt at reformulating conservatism as a philosophy of limited government is the core of my forthcoming book, "The Conservative Soul," which can now be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
The Lieberman Question
02 Aug 2006 02:03 pm
If I were a Democrat, I'd support Joe Lieberman next week. I don't believe the agenda of Ned Lamont will help either the U.S. or the Democrats. But, then, I'm not a Democrat. At this point, I'd best be described as a conservative independent. And compared to this conservative independent, Lieberman has been ridiculously obsequious to a Republican president who has made an appalling hash of a vital war. The notion, advanced by Lieberman, that criticism of the president's war leadership is somehow inappropriate when the country is in danger gets it exactly the wrong way round, I think. It is precisely because the danger is still so great that criticism is so necessary. That's democracy's strength. You could understand, if not forgive, this abdication of leadership if Lieberman were bound by partisan loyalty to Bush. But he isn't. And even those who are - like Chuck Hagel and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Warner - have had more astringent criticisms of the the conduct of the war than Lieberman. My guess is that he's still lobbying hard to replace Rumsfeld later this year and, by all accounts, probably will. Any replacement for Rumsfeld can only help us win this war, and Lieberman's ethical compass, unlike Rumsfeld's, would perhaps mitigate some of the depravity enabled by Captain Queeg. But I can understand those Democrats who do not think it is their role next week to give Bush their party's cover for his war-mismanagement. I'd still back him myself; but it's silly to believe it's nuts for Dems to choose the other guy.
Draft Armitage!
02 Aug 2006 01:49 pm
YouTube for the Day
02 Aug 2006 01:03 pm
Clinton gets angry. I don't know why this made me nostalgic for the old rogue, but it did.
After Washington State
02 Aug 2006 12:46 pm
Whither marriage rights for gay couples? Evan Wolfson comments here. An interesting historical perspective on the lash and backlash of previous civil right struggles here.
Nanny State Watch
02 Aug 2006 12:44 pm
Jake Weisberg laments the idiocy of the attempt to ban online gambling. Free Carruthers!
War-Torn Dems
02 Aug 2006 11:44 am
Peter Berkowitz reviews Peter Beinart and Will Marshall.
"An Electoral Rout"
02 Aug 2006 10:42 am
That's Charlie Cook's assessment of the current state of play with respect to the upcoming Congressional elections. He thinks the GOP is teetering on the brink of losing both houses. They sure deserve it.
The View From Your Window
02 Aug 2006 09:57 am
Washington, DC, 2 pm.
Email of the Day
02 Aug 2006 12:27 am
A reader writes:
One good thing about this business. My wife used to tell me that Mel was the only man she'd leave me for. No longer ...
Tomorrow will be Mel-free. Promise. Kinda.
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Rabbi Lapin
01 Aug 2006 10:17 pm
Daniel Lapin was one of the most prominent defenders of Mel Gibson from the charge of anti-Semitism during the Kulturkampf moment of the "Passion of the Christ". Check this page out for endless colloquies of support. In an email today from his organization, "Toward Tradition," (I subscribe to lots of lists to see what the right and left are saying among themselves), Lapin told me something I didn't know:
It is all too easy to join the circling hyenas and denounce Gibson while he is down. On the other hand, though he has provided some financial support to Toward Tradition, I don't feel obliged to leap to his defense. That is not the purpose behind my writing this column. The purpose of my writing this account is to respond to the question of how recent events have impacted my views of the man and his work. It is also to place a gentle restraining hand upon the shoulder of those in the Jewish community making yet another mistake.
Gibson financed a Jewish organization devoted to defending him? Lapin goes on to attack several Jewish leaders who have dared criticize the anti-Semitism of Gibson and his movie:
Let us address his apology. I have no way of knowing what is in Mel Gibson's heart but I do know that he has no need to act obsequiously towards Jews or curry favor with us. If Gibson never makes another film he will still be able to buy gas for his Lexus. He is not a politician trying to win an election after an imprudent remark, like Georgia State Rep. Billy McKinney, who blamed "J-E-W-S" after his daughter, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, was defeated in a congressional primary in 2002.
By the way there was virtually no Jewish criticism of that remark for which there was little apology and which was not made while Billy was drunk. More cynical observers than I suggest it might have something to do with the McKinneys being Democrats.
The premature lurch toward attacking the real enemy - the Democrats - is too obvious and depressing to register. But here you have a rabbi paid by Gibson to spin for him, and even he has to concede, in an almost beautiful understatement:
As for the remarks Gibson made while intoxicated, ancient Jewish wisdom informs us that one way we can know what a person is really like is by how he behaves when he is drunk. From this we can safely assume that Mel Gibson doesn't think much of Jews.
Poignant almost.
Not All Were Fooled II
01 Aug 2006 08:28 pm
Paula Fredriksen's TNR review of "The Passion of the Christ" and her account of the politicking ahead of it bears re-reading. Leon Wieseltier also called it like it was:
In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about Gibson's Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic images.
In my forthcoming book, I pondered whether to include Gibson as an exemplar of what's gone wrong with religious fundamentalism in America. i kept it in. It was a critical moment in the political corruption of Christianity in this country.
Not All Were Fooled I
01 Aug 2006 08:15 pm
A reminder that some of the sharpest reviewers saw Gibson's agenda in "The Passion of the Christ" even as others saw it as a political opportunity for the Christianist wing of the Republican party:
We soon see the human agents of his distress in a cutaway shot of Judas meeting with the Sanhedrin, the rabbis and Pharisees who oversee the Jerusalem temple and convey in their every act and utterance the sort of unfeeling villainy you would see in a Punch and Judy landlord. They also, not incidentally, lock firmly into the caricature of Jewish venality and cunning for which Passion plays have been infamous ever since the Middle Ages. The most subtle anti-Semitic trope in the portrayal of the Sanhedrin is also the most telling: the high priest, Caiaphas, is almost never pictured alone. The entire Sanhedrin, in fact, moves continually in a pack - you imagine that they have to navigate through doors sideways - and this casual thronging instinct, together with their boxy period headwear and white prayer shawls, gives the impression that they are ancient Hebrew forerunners of the imperial Storm Troopers in Star Wars. As in George Lucas's cinematic spiritual fables, the effect here is to depict a grouped set of evil impulses rather than identifiable individuals.
I see also that a friend of Gibson is claiming that Gibson could not remember his anti-semitic tirades because of an "alcoholic blackout". At 0.12?
Medved's Response
01 Aug 2006 07:03 pm
Thanks for alerting me to it. Make your own mind up. Money quote:
Rather than driving this tormented, self-destructive, deeply disturbed but vastly talented artist into the arms of active Jew-haters (like his father), wouldn't it make more sense to try to reach out to him at a moment of vulnerability and disgrace? The Jewish community need not approach the tarnished star with a message of "poor baby, all is forgiven" but it makes sense to offer at least some ladder to help him crawl out of the dank pit he has dug for himself. At a time when Israel finds herself isolated as never before, imagine the impact of Gibson announcing a supportive trip to Jerusalem in the company of selected Jewish leaders - with a reverent, remorseful stop at Auschwitz on the way.
How about asking him to renounce the views of his father on the Holocaust first?
Coulter and Gibson
01 Aug 2006 06:50 pm
Who's worse? They both deploy bigotry. Coulter has condemned all Muslims and all gays in ways that pander to the basest prejudices against them. She used the term "fag" on cable television recently. She has publicly argued for killing Muslims in the Middle East indiscriminately. She does all this stone-cold sober and means not a word of it. Gibson, on the other hand, clearly deep down believes that the Jews are evil, that they are responsible for all the wars in the world, and his hatred for gay men is well-documented. Both Coulter and Gibson have made a fortune catering to bigotry. But one is sincere; and one is completely cynical. In some ways, perhaps, an argument could be made that Gibson is preferable. So why is Coulter still on television? And where is her apology?
Medved and Hewitt Bleg
01 Aug 2006 06:06 pm
Can someone direct me to any comments made by two of the most fervent promoters of Mel Gibson, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved? They owe an explanation for their defense of the media mogul from charges of anti-Semitism. All I've seen is Hewitt's terse defense of Gibson's apology, but no accounting of Hewitt's own past role in exonerating Gibson from the charge of anti-Semitism. I haven't been able to find anything from Medved either. Medved was front and center in vouching for Gibson's lack of anti-Semitic animus. Have I missed anything?
A Defining Moment for Hollywood
01 Aug 2006 05:48 pm
Arianna nails it:
In the same way that ordinary Muslims need to separate themselves from the blood-drenched ideology of Hezbollah, Hollywood needs to separate itself from the odious racism of Gibson. And I don't make that connection lightly. Remember, during his DUI tirade, Gibson claimed, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." That kind of thinking makes him psychological soul mates with Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who has said, "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew."
Gibson's no-longer-deniable brand of bigotry has led to the extermination of millions - and continues to fuel much of the strife and suffering in the world today. Which is why Hollywood cannot sit this one out and wait for the reviews to come in.
It is also a defining moment for American Christianism. Christianists protected, promoted, lionized and harbored this Jew-hater. And they need to be held account for it in a terribly dangerous time.
Castro
01 Aug 2006 04:32 pm
He won but he lost. It's so fitting that one of the last communist tyrannies should end with an attempt at a pseudo-monarchy, with power being handed over to his brother. Orwell was right, wasn't he? We forget now but for so long so many denied it.
Gibson's Statement
01 Aug 2006 03:31 pm
He plays the "recovery" card. If Gibson had merely had a DUI and needed help, this would be a non-issue. It would be a non-story. I'm not interested in hounding human beings for their personal demons. We all have them. We have all behaved in ways we regret at times. I sure have. People with addictions struggle every day for sobriety in ways everyone should support. Similarly, as someone with intimate understanding of bi-polar disorder (my mother has endured this affliction for decades), I can only say that anyone suffering from that awful disease merits our love, support and medical help. This applies to Gibson as much as anyone. But that is not the issue here. The issue is his anti-Semitism, his marketing of a profoundly anti-Semitic movie, and, above all, his refusal to disavow his father's own Holocaust denial. Jewish leaders should refuse to meet with him until he publicly acknowledges the historical fact of the Shoah. He need not disown his father. He need simply state that he disagrees with him in every respect about the Holocaust. Simple, really. So why can Gibson still not say the only words that would matter?
(Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty.)
Gibson Is No Christianist Republican
01 Aug 2006 03:03 pm
A reader writes:
I have to say I'm disappointed in your attempt to connect Mel Gibson's recent anti-Semitic DUI episode with Christians who happened to enjoy The Passion. By no means is Mel Gibson your run of the mill Conservative Republican. In fact, he was very critical of Bush, WMD claims, and the war in Iraq. If you remember during all the media controversy over the release of The Passion, there was some side story about how he was going to team up with Michael Moore on some project. I have no idea whatever became of that. In short, he’s not a conservative, neocon, or Republican. Mel is Mel. He’s an odd character that would be more at home with some Catholic Fascist party in the Europe of old.
As you know, most American Christian conservatives are the most philo-Semitic people on the planet. All of the evangelicals I know, my parents included, were sickened by his DUI and the anti-Semitic remarks. Christians liked the movie because it displayed all the agony that Ch