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Saturday, August 12, 2006
"The Muslim Mind"
12 Aug 2006 08:00 pm
A reader remonstrates:
You are right, Islam has a problem right now and your description of it as "ressentiment, but with God re-attached" is perfect. However, I don't think it's helpful to dismiss a supportive Muslim who is concerned about his faith and culture being painted with a broad brush. The exchange has re-clarified (I keep reaching this conclusion and keep forgetting it) for me that this cancer is a problem that can only be excised by Islam itself - we can't win this struggle, but we can lose it. This conclusion, of course, leaves me with the question of our role in Islam's internal struggle. It reminded me of a parable that's attributed to Native Americans. (I'm not sure if this attribution is accurate.)
When asked about spirituality, a Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner:
"Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time."
When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed."
In terms of our actions, so little is clear in this struggle. However, I suspect that our most helpful role is to find ways to feed the good dog and starve the bad dog. I fear that your post, while making an important point, was written in a way that starves the good dog and may feed the bad dog. Not to say that we can't be critical of elements within Islam, but we can't get sucked into forgetting that worldwide, a tiny fraction of Muslims will actively support violence. The rest oppose it, are too scared to oppose it, or are on the fence. They are barraged with messages that we will never respect them, understand them or help them in any lasting and meaningful way. You and Tony Blair are correct - we have to win this by living our values, not using them as justification for imposing them world-wide and suspending them at home. This is why, even though I consider myself liberal, I oppose any redeployment out of Iraq that would widely be perceived as abandonment.
I hope my postings did not conflate all Muslims into the bad category. I am sorry if they unintentionally did. My intent was the opposite: to clarify the sickness that is there and encourage the healthy within the Muslim world to combat it. The problem is, in part, however, the touchiness of the healthy. They shouldn't immediately suspect every Western criticism of Islamism and Wahhabism of being criticism of Islam as a whole.
Quote for the Day II
12 Aug 2006 06:17 pm
"You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power," - Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit on domestic criticism of president George W. Bush Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Quote for the Day
12 Aug 2006 05:16 pm
"The outrage of so many outraged people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in Baghdad, killing 50 people or more, are checked off in reports under the heading of miscellaneous, while the bomb that took 28 lives in Qana is denounced as a crime against humanity. Only a few intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Lévy or Magdi Allam, chief editor of the Corriere della Sera, find this surprising. Why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200-times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don't count - whether in the eyes of Muslim authorities or viewed through the bad conscience of the west?" - Andre Glucksman, in an article first published in Le Figaro.
YouTube of the Day
12 Aug 2006 03:52 pm
You might call this prep-hop. Or Abercrombie and hos. But urban style just reached the Hamptons/Kennebunkport set.
Minorities and Prejudice
12 Aug 2006 02:41 pm
Here's a little insight into the atmosphere in parts of D.C. Being away for a month and a half, I have to say it's pleasant not to be assaulted intermittently by homophobic and racist slurs. Here's a classic recent D.C anecdote from Frank Ahrens in today's Washington Post:
Walking up Connecticut Avenue through Dupont Circle one night recently, I spotted a sidewalk saxophonist. Amid his free-form meanderings, I picked out some Brubeck. The busker was a black man, and looked about my age.
I was about to say something friendly to him about "Take Five" as I approached, but he beat me to the punch. He locked eyes with me, stopped playing and said, "After 42 years in this life, I learned one thing: White people suck!"
It's rare to be confronted with such unprovoked, in-your-face malice, at least for a white guy. I was stunned and kept walking. But I was so angered, so offended, that I shot back -- without really thinking -- "[Expletive] you!"
"You can't," he yelled after me, as I walked away, "you gay [expletive]!"
The punch-line, of course, is that Brubeck is white. In DC, as gentrification intensifies, my own inner-city neighborhood has become noticeably less friendly. I've lived on the same street corner as a major drug gang for fourteen years. They usually leave me alone, but in the last year or so, the mutterings of "faggot" as I walk my dogs each day have grown more common. Older African-American teens drag kids away from any interaction with me and the beagles. At a recent neighborhood meeating, one resident told the assembled throng (I heard this from someone who lives in my building) declared: "We don't want any more white people here." I was sitting on a bus a couple years' back and heard two black men talk about the problem with "faggots" in their neighborhood. "I can smell 'em," one said to the other, and cast a sideways look in my direction. Local black pastors have recently given sermons denouncing "faggots" in exactly that language, and remain in the mayor's good graces. I should add: I couldn't care less about the "faggot" remarks. Yes, they grate, and my other half finds them more distressing. As long as they don't touch me, they're welcome to their prejudice. It's their loss, not mine. It's just a shame that, once again, insecure male heterosexuals find the need to bolster their own fragile self-esteem by denigrating fags. One day, they'll grow up and be, well, men.
Bush and Camus??
12 Aug 2006 02:27 pm
My fears of imminent Armageddon just moved up a notch. Now imagine what Fox News would do to Kerry if they'd discovered that about him. Memo to Colbert: the threat is real. Even, er, existential. Memo to the president: a more appropriate Camus work for you right now might be: "The Myth of Sysiphus." Think Iraq.
The View From Your Window
12 Aug 2006 10:41 am
Plano, Texas, 3 pm.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Ending AIDS in Four Decades
11 Aug 2006 09:26 pm
It could be done. How? By massive use of anti-retrovirals. The key point about the anti-HIV drugs often missed by non-experts is that they drastically reduce the amount of virus in blood and semen and so make HIV-infected people much less infectious. If you get a critical mass of people with HIV with highly suppressed levels of the virus, you can reach a tipping point at which the virus cannot spread. This approach, using drugs we already have, is far more feasible than all the money wasted on the search for a vaccine that will never exist. And cost-effective too. Here's what I regard as a persuasive case by the president-elect of the International AIDS Society. Read it. It makes more sense than many other ideas.
"Emotionally Devastating"
11 Aug 2006 07:09 pm
A reader writes:
What the hell are you thinking Mr. Sullivan? Is it just me or did you just call every single Muslim sick, pathetic and miserable (amongst other things)? I am Muslim by birth and I assure you that I have never laid a hand on anyone in my entire life, never wished ill towards any human being and the mere sight of violence on TV makes me ill to my stomach. I rarely watch Rated R movies for that matter.
I am deeply hurt and offended by this knee jerk comment and would at the very least expect an explanation. For someone whose sexual orientation has lead to persecution, you obviously have little to no problem persecuting others, in fact billions, for the crimes of a few. What if someone had posted that blog but had removed Muslim and replaced it with Jew, Homosexual or Native American? You just ruined my Friday and broke my heart.
Coming from a family of loyalists with ties to the Shah of Iran, many of my family members were killed by the Mullahs for their political allegiance to the crown during the Iranian Revolution, some went into hiding in basements for years and for a lucky few, like my father and I, had to flee to a strange new world and start anew with nothing in our pockets but our dignity. To see you so haphazardly clump me in with the terrorist scum is emotionally devasting.
The sentence he is referring to is as follows:
"There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche's ressentiment, but with God re-attached."
I did not write that Islam was sick. I did not write that all Muslims were psychologically sick. I have often printed and published emails and articles from sane and devout Muslims. I have great respect for Islam at its best. But something is sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in time, and it is not Islamophobic to say so. The major source of the mass murder and threat of mass murder in the world right now is rooted in Islam. It is waged in the name of Islam; it is justified by reference to Islam; it is a fundamentally religious movement.
Does it represent everything Muslim? Of course not. Go to Turkey or Indonesia or Dearborn or Manchester and you will find a very different form of Islam. I could equally say that at this moment there is something sick in the Catholic mind - and, in my view, there is. The toleration of massive child-abuse, the stigmatization of minorities, the policing of free thought, the acquiescence in the spread of HIV, the conflation of religion and politics among the theocons: yes, there is something sick in the Catholic mind as well right now. Ditto the Christianist temptation among evangelicals. As a Christian, I am not "emotionally devastated" by these criticisms. I regard them as essential to the resuscitation of a healthier, stronger Christianity. To my Muslim reader, I am sorry to have hurt your feelings. But my job is not to make you or anyone feel better. It is to write the truth as best I can.
And the sad truth is: no religion in the world right now has as many internal problems as Islam. The Muslim faith is being used to sanction mass murder; Islam is engaged in a civil war in which some Muslims are blowing up other Muslims' mosques and holy places; Islamic regimes are hanging gays and enslaving women and putting diapers on goats, while holding the world hostage to their own desire to wreak havoc on civilizations that have surpassed Islam in power and democratic freedom. I'm sorry if the truth hurts. But I'm not interested in writing lies. If more Muslims were as "emotionally devastated" by the carnage wrought in their name as the words on a blog, Islam would have a much healthier future.
(Photo: Wisam Sami/AFP/Getty.)
A Dayton For the Middle East?
11 Aug 2006 06:45 pm
Some Kissingerians believe that now might be the time for a Grand Compromise on all the Middle East issues. I dissent. But former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd makes the case here.
Michael Moore's Biographer
11 Aug 2006 06:40 pm
An interesting Q and A with the writer of "Forgive Us Our Spins," a liberal take-down of the liar and charlatan, Michael Moore.
After London
11 Aug 2006 05:23 pm
One facet of the foiled London bombing is that the Brits succeeded. They succeeded through good intelligence - not dumb torture or invading countries. And this raises a broader question that deserves wider debate. A reader writes:
I generally agree with your post regarding the lack of a clear Democratic proposal to reform the Middle East. To take a step back, though, is it not a valid question to ask whether such reform is possible, at least in a broad sense and in a matter of years rather than decades? Your framing of the issue implies that any foreign policy agenda that does not include an ambitious reform effort is inherently defeatist – here you seem to follow the RNC line – and it is unclear, to me at least, what proportion of such an agenda you believe should rely on military force. Your comment emphasizes the need to use American soft power, but is the willingness to apply military force also a necessary ingredient?
Would you be satisfied by a Democratic agenda, or a Democratic candidate in 2008, supporting political and economic reform and extensive counter-terrorism measures but recognizing that the use of military force in the conventional sense is likely to have limited value and much more downside than up? Iran is a difficult issue here, to be sure, but even the Bush administration seems to recognize that the military options is an invitation to apocalypse. Such a policy would of course model Baker/Scowcroft ‘mainstream’ Republican thought pre-9/11, with a heightened sense of the need to support measures counteracting radical Islamic fundamentalism and jihadist groups. Is such a policy squishy and weak, or is it simply realistic?
My own view has adjusted over the last few years, though not changed dramatically. The Iraq fiasco has shown the enormous difficulty of using blunt force to create an organic democratic change in a few years. But the future is not written yet - and the Scowcroftian policies of propping up fast-failing dictatorships (a policy that gave us the first Islamist government in Iran) was clearly insufficient after 9/11. So call me a chastened neocon, if you must: appalled by the execution, humbled by the unintended consequences, but still unable to surrender the belief that more democracy and liberal institutions in the Middle East is the only long-term solution.
What does this mean in practice? Redeployment within Iraq to regions where we truly can encourage democracy and prosperity, like Kurdistan. More "soft" support for democratic movements in the Muslim world - the kind of backing we gave Eastern European dissidents in the Cold War - is essential, if done subtly enough not to prompt backlash. Encouraging the entrepreneurial Gulf states to grow in wealth and influence cannot hurt; a serious non-carbon energy policy at home is part of the mix as well. The credible threat of military force is also vital - especially as far as Iran's regime is concerned. And a much more credible homeland defense policy. If the Democrats could present a multi-faceted, hard-nosed approach to winning the war, a lot of us in the middle would give them a second look. But so far, not so good. I'm waiting for a leading Democratic nominee to pill a Sistah Souljah on the anti-war left, to call them on their irresponsibility and narcissism. Gore could do it. The question is: when will he start talking like a future war-president rather than an angry dissident?
(Photo: Jon Super/AP.)
The Cheney-Lieberman Doctrine
11 Aug 2006 03:49 pm
Their mutual belief is that any criticism of a war-leader in the middle of combat helps the enemy and should be restrained. In Israel, they clearly don't buy such an argument, and they are in an existential battle for survival. Cheney and Lieberman are full of it.
YouTube of the Day
11 Aug 2006 03:33 pm
McCain sings Streisand. For years, she's been trying to do his job. Why not reverse the roles?
Quote for the Day
11 Aug 2006 02:51 pm
"He saw it as his duty to stand up for his community and that's what led him to know George Galloway. He has a lot of respect for him and has met him many times," - the sister of one of the alleged would-be airplane bombers.
We've known for a very long time that Galloway is a man who tolerates anti-Western violence - his long and passionate support for mass-murderer, Saddam Hussein, proves it. But what does it say about the state of Islam that one of its young believers believes that the best way of "standing up for his community" is not to make arguments, or proselytize, or campaign - but to murder innocent civilians he has never met. There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche's ressentiment, but with God re-attached. We should indeed fear these people for the hideous carnage they can wreak for the sake of their God. But we should never let our fear overwhelm our contempt for them - their sickness, their evil, their petty insecurities, their inability to live meaningful lives and their attempt to assuage this by murdering others in God's name. Yes, they evil. But they are also pathetic, miserable excuses for human beings.
(Photo: Michael Dwyer/AP.)
Christianists Vs West Point
11 Aug 2006 02:33 pm
A leading Christianist group, the "Center for Military Readiness," is furious that a West Point cadet got an award for writing a paper arguing against the ban on openly gay men and women serving their country. Christianist activist, Elaine Donnelly, is threatening some kind of investigation:
"I do intend to bring this to the attention of some of the people in the leadership roles at West Point. I think it ought to be questioned."
Several recent polls have found that 60 to 80 percent of Americans believe the military's ban on honest gay servicemembers should be lifted. 55 Arab linguists and 244 military medical personnel have been fired under the policy.
Jumping the Snark
11 Aug 2006 02:21 pm
My slightly snarky headline yesterday to a piece by David Brooks was a snark too far. Yes, I've been hyping a McCain-Lieberman combo in 2008 for a few months. But that's not where david got the idea. He was onto it as long ago as 2003. Brooks' money quote from the May 9 2003 NewsHour:
There seems to be a buddy system in the democratic race. Have you John Kerry and Howard Dean, both of whom have to win in New Hampshire. They're going after each other for the liberal side.
For the popular side you have Dick Gephardt and John Edwards going after each other. Gephardt has the lead in that because of his dramatic health care plan. Then what you would call the moderate side, Joe Lieberman and Bob Graham going after each other, running for the nomination of what you might call the centrist, McCain-Lieberman Party, a party that unfortunately doesn't exist.
My apologies to David. He may well belong to the same political party that Joe Klein and I recently founded over several drinks. Pity it doesn't exist.
The View From Your Window
11 Aug 2006 01:57 pm
Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 5.40 pm
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The War and the Democrats
10 Aug 2006 11:22 pm
A reader writes:
The first response to your complaint that liberal bloggers don't offer alternatives is to quote your hero Sir Winston: "The opposition is not responsible for proposing integrated and complicated measures of policy. Sometimes they do, but it is not their obligation."
Beyond that I'd say a perfectly responsible liberal take on the war is this: The best weapon we have against the Islamic extremists in the long haul is the soft power of modern culture - its comforts, its freedoms and, well, it's enlightenment. Modernization is appealing, and will win, if given half chance. But if by our clumsy, aggressive behavior we cause moderate, ordinary Muslims to confuse modernization with American aggression, with torture, with greed for oil, and with uncritical support for Greater Israel, then by that behavior we deprive ourselves of our greatest strategic advantage.
The right policy after 9/11 was to pursue the actual terrorists to the ends of the earth, but at the same time to have the nerve and maturity to do our best to avoid actions that would alienate the moderates and young people who would otherwise find modernity appealing. Bush of course did exactly the opposite.
To believe all this is not to believe the conflict is unimportant, as you charge, it is to believe that Bush's frat-boy bravado and general incompetence is everyday worsening our long-term prospects. And that winning control of at least one house of Congress in November is the necessary first step on the long road back to an adult foreign policy.
My only substantive quarrel with this is as follows: the proclaimed Bush policy was not mere deployment of brute force, torture, bombs and swagger as a response to the civil war within Islam. It was ostensibly to create a beach-head for modernity and democracy in Iraq. That, at least, was the rationale I signed onto. Now, maybe in retrospect, the idea of a beach-head for democracy was always just a cover for Rumsfeld and Cheney to try to terrify a bunch of "barbarians" with brute force. And in so far as the war was designed this way, the Bush administration's general incompetence and brutality has, of course, done the precise opposite. It's actually emboldened the enemy, made the West look weak, and lost us potential support in the vital center of Muslim opinion. Send too few troops into Iraq and of course the Islamists think we're unserious. That's why I couldn't support Bush again last time around; and why I hope the Democrats take back at least one chamber this fall - if only to put a break on the Queegs and Strangeloves in the Pentagon and the Veep's office.
But, for all Cheney's and Rumsfeld's flaws, they are at least proposing something serious, however ineptly carried out. I have yet to hear anti-war voices on the left propose a positive strategy for defeating Islamist terror at its roots, or call for democratization of the Arab Muslim world. Indeed, I heard little but scorn or silence when Bush announced this vision in London. Do the Democrats stand for democracy in Iraq? Or in Iran? Do they favor Beinart-style containment of Islamism? Nuclear deterrence against Tehran? Certainly, the Kossites seem utterly uninterested in any of these subjects. That's their prerogative; and it's equally my prerogative not to take them seriously until they do.
The same goes for the Dems as a whole. Until the opposition party presents a progressive, democratic agenda to reform the Middle East - as Blair has done in Britain, for example - there's no reason to take them seriously on national security. Maybe their presidential candidate will articulate such a vision. So far, however: so not so much.
Yglesias Award Nominee
10 Aug 2006 07:37 pm
"And yet, much as I'm reluctant to agree with him, Weisberg has a point: aside from kvetching about Bush's policies, the liberal blogosphere has chosen to almost unanimously sit out any substantive discussion of the fight against radical jihadism and what to do about it. Emphasis counts, and this widespread silence makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that liberal bloggers just don't find the subject very engaging," - Kevin Drum today.
He's absolutely right. I've been a ferocious critic of Bush, but primarily because I believe this war is extremely important, and that he has been grotesquely inept and immoral in his conduct of it. The threat, as we were reminded this morning, is as grave as ever. Bush's incompetence has compounded it. When DailyKossers simply decide to ignore, say, the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in favor of domestic Democratic in-fighting, they are telling us something. They're telling us they still have no clue about the struggle we are in. (That goes for Mickey Kaus, as well, by the way: unable to muster anything but the odd, dyspeptic splutter about the great struggle of our time.) The Kossites are telling us that if they control the Democratic party, the Dems will not take the threat seriously enough. That's the Kos message on the war: we don't just refuse to fight Bush's war, but any war. Not all of them think that way, but a serious minority do. Maybe those who understand the threat on the left can now take on their comrades who put the "war on terror" in quote-marks. The corpses of 9/11 did not have quote-marks around them.
The War for Our Values
10 Aug 2006 06:18 pm
Here's testimony from a Lebanese Christian that is worth remembering today:
I was raised in Lebanon, where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.
When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.
It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Moslem's shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.
For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel, that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allah Akbar, God is great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.
Our strongest weapons in this war are our values. Yes, military force is important and necessary. But our values are what will win in the long run — because they reflect a deeper truth about human dignity than the poisonous doctrines of distorted religious certitude and bigotry. That's why we must never — never — tolerate torture of prisoners; that's why we should never sacrifice the rule of law; that's why we should never give civilian politicians a "get-out-of-jail-free" card for war crimes. And that's why we should support Israel now, more than ever. She is not perfect. But her enemies are in a different category of morality. The difference between collateral civilian casualties and civilian casualties as the entire purpose of war is the difference between an embattled civilization and barbarism. Yes, there are grays in the Middle East. But this isn't one of them.
War Crimes
10 Aug 2006 06:04 pm
The Bush Administration is trying to exempt itself from war crime prosecution. They need to be stopped.
You're Welcome
10 Aug 2006 05:11 pm
David Brooks (TimesDelete) recasts my thought-experiment of a McCain-Lieberman party in 2008 today. My previous musings from June and July can be read here and here.
HIV and MGM
10 Aug 2006 05:02 pm
As long-time readers know, I'm a big opponent of male genital mutilation, aka circumcision. But the data are clear on HIV infection, and under those circumstances, as I've said before, I'm prepared to make an exception.
The Anti-War Far Left and Mel Gibson
10 Aug 2006 04:52 pm
I knew the anti-Semites would join forces at some point or other.
Malkin Award Nominee
10 Aug 2006 03:42 pm
"Hang on, Dems. Here come the Pol Pots of your party. And if you were for national security, you are now emphatically not. Or else. Remember the mountain of skulls in Cambodia? It's the Democrats new reality now that the anti-war rabble has tasted blood by taking Lieberman down," - John Gibson, Fox News.
YouTube of the Day
10 Aug 2006 02:47 pm
About those 72 virgins awaiting Muslim mass murderers ... a comedian, B.J. Novak (now a star on the US version of "The Office"), has a useful comment.
Their iGod
10 Aug 2006 02:27 pm
"Liquids". That's, to me, the most interesting aspect of the foiled terror plot in London. Why liquids? What were these weapons? One possibility is hydrogen cyanide. Ron Suskind's book revealed the terrorist breakthrough in a device called a "mubtakkar" that can be easily concealed in a carry-on bag and once detonated, kills everyone in a confined space within minutes. It's a variant of the Zyklon B innovated by the Nazis. Money quote:
U.S. intelligence got its first inkling of the plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. It contained plans for a gas-dispersal system dubbed "the mubtakkar" (Arabic for inventive). Fearing that al-Qaeda's engineers had achieved the holy grail of terror R&D — a device to effectively distribute hydrogen-cyanide gas, which is deadly when inhaled — the CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured design, which comprised two separate chambers for sodium cyanide and a stable source of hydrogen, such as hydrochloric acid. A seal between the two could be broken by a remote trigger, producing the gas for dispersal. The prototype confirmed their worst fears: "In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot — and then kill everyone in the store."
The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney the following morning, prompting the President to order that alerts be sent through all levels of the U.S. government. Easily constructed and concealed, the device ensured that mass casualties would be inevitable if it could be triggered in any enclosed public space.
I wonder if this was the intended device for the U.S-U.K. airplanes. Think of them as having the smallness and ubiquity of an iPod, but with the impact of an instant gas-chamber. It's their iGod. Sending them to paradise and the rest of us to oblivion.
DeLay vs the Constitution
10 Aug 2006 02:14 pm
"You can always count on the judiciary to make stupid rulings. Not only stupid, but dangerous," - Tom DeLay, the kind of corrupt, power-hungry politician who despises courts, and the system of checks and balances the Founders intended. Notice that this remark came after a decision backed by Scalia. These Republicans are not just after "activist" judges; they're after any check on their power.
The Gloom of the Hawks
10 Aug 2006 01:22 pm
This excellent piece is by my long-time opponent on marriage issues, Stanley Kurtz. But I find myself in grim agreement with him on the war:
If you are willing to kill yourself — if you are willing even to impoverish, immiserate, and let die much of your country, you can accomplish a great deal. Hezbollah’s gains in its war with Israel stem from its ability to define success as mere survival, even as the country around it is destroyed. This is no mere clever public-relations spin, but the reflection of a profound reality: the growing independence of terrorist organizations from states, and the willingness of Islamist terrorists to sacrifice all in pursuit of fundamentally non-material goals. With military success (accurately) framed as the near-complete destruction of terrorist forces, decisive military victory is virtually defined out of existence.
Kurtz is way too soft on the Administration for making our problems much worse with their botched Iraq invasion. He cites "our inability to pacify Iraq." It was, in fact, a decision not to pacify Iraq, made by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush — overruling all good military advice. But that's the past. The future is grim. Until the Arab Muslim world lets go of its refusal to embrace modernity and its rigid, honor-bound defense of the most extreme version of Islam, we will have to fight a long grueling war, in which I fear some nuclear or WMD exchange is inevitable. We will lose many many more civilians. Kurtz goes on:
[T]he entire Western world now stands in a position roughly analogous to that of Israel: locked in an essentially permanent struggle with a foe it is impossible either to placate, or to entirely destroy — a foe who demands our own destruction, and whose problems are so deep they would not be solved even by victory.
We can leave Iraq, as the Israelis left Lebanon. But we'll likely be back, there or somewhere else, before long. Some say our army should wait among the Kurds, striking selectively in the rest of Iraq, only when al Qaeda returns. That's a plan. Yet its likely to end up where Israel is in Lebanon, especially if al Qaeda starts kidnapping American soldiers with cross-border raids into the "Kurdish entity."
Meanwhile, short of a preemptive war, Iran is bound to get the bomb.
And that's when it gets truly scary.
An Anthem For Green Conservatism
10 Aug 2006 11:59 am
A reader suggests:
Not only is the environment a conservative concern, it has its own anthem by (who else?) Lynyrd Skynyrd: "All I Can Do Is Write About It."
"Well this life that I've led has took me everywhere
There ain't no place I ain't never gone
But its kind of like the saying that you heard so many times
Well there just ain't no place like home
Did you ever see a she-gator protect her young
Or a fish in a river swimming free
Did you ever see the beauty of the hills of Carolina
Or the sweetness of the grass in Tennessee
And Lord I can't make any changes
All I can do is write 'em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin'
Lord take me and mine before that comesDo you like to see a mountain stream a-flowin'
Do you like to see a young 'un with his dog
Did you ever stop to think about, well, the air you're breathin'
Well you better listen to my song
And Lord I can't make any changes
All I can do is write 'em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin'
Lord take me and mine before that comesI'm not tryin' to put down no big cities
But the things they write about us is just a bore
Well you can take a boy out of ol' Dixieland
But you'll never take ol' Dixie from a boy
And Lord I can't make any changes
All I can do is write 'em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin'
Lord take me and mine before that comes
'Cause I can see the concrete slowly creepin'
Lord take me and mine before that comes"
Larkin's "Going, Going" is the English version:
... It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts —
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
The View From Your Window
10 Aug 2006 03:55 am
Mexico City, 6.12pm.
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Ricks and Rummy
09 Aug 2006 08:28 pm
A military reader writes:
From my sources, Ricks is leaving a lot of the internal Pentagon and US Army politics out of the picture. And if that internal politics is considered you get a bigger picture of what the criticism of Rummy and Bush are getting from Retired US Army Officers.
Many retired US Army Flag Grade Officers have truly been upset about a number of reforms that the Bush Administration have pursued, prior to and after 9-11. Mostly their complaints have been restructuring of the US Army from a force capable of fighting the Cold War scenario to a force capable of fighting an asymmetrical war (i.e. taking on terrorists and guerilla forces). The canceling of the Crusader Artillery system and other budget cuts really pissed those guys off at Rummy and Bush. Then on top of that Shinseki retires when they were hoping he’d get another two years at being Chief of Staff of the US Army (Shinseki was the point man with Congress to try and block some of these initiatives). That was just the first shoe to drop.
Number Two was the calling out of retirement of the current COS Gen. Peter Schoomaker to replace Shinseki. Schoomaker is a Special Forces type that was/and is ready to think in different ways to develop the US Army.
Number Three, Special Operations Command is upgraded to be on par with the other CINC’s (i.e. Southern, Central, etc.). The Armor, Artillery, Aviation, Paratroopers and Infantry communities (considered conventional commands) in the US Army now have another force to reckon with in getting promotions, coveted positions and such. That was a real knock down to those communities.
Number Four was Gen. James Jones, USMC (formerly Commandant of the Marine Corps and should have been retired) gets to be The Supreme Allied Commander Europe. "Whoa, a Marine as SACEUR, that’s our baby!" Another smack down to the conventional commands in the US Army.
Number Five, Gen. Peter Pace, USMC now becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In what should have been the US Army’s turn to hold that job.
Getting the picture? Times are a changing and the army ain’t adapting too well to it. Therefore all the criticism of Rummy early this year and last was mostly from retired US Army types (Zinni is the exception and well he may have a few of his own personal reasons). And of the ones I can recall speaking out certainly weren’t Special Forces types.
Now I hope that this gives you a little more insight into what has been going on. If Ricks was a little more forthcoming in his descriptions of the politics ... which I can’t believe he is unaware of ... then maybe we could make a more measured opinion of the criticism being lashed out at Rummy and Bush.
Disclosure time: I am a former Marine, member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a believer in the GWOT since 1983. Lebanon and Hezbollah … bring back any memories?
I'm glad to have this perspective as well. But the overwhelming weight of the military criticism of Rumsfeld — and the private criticism is far more voluminous and vituperative than the public stuff — is simply that this war has been run incompetently, with contempt for military expertise and without any rational relationship between paltry means and grandiose ends. We also have the evidence in Iraq on the ground: "fiasco' is the only term that sums it up. Yes, there are other agendas here: the army against Rumsfeld, the CIA against Cheney, and so on. But there are also the results. They speak for themselves.
YouTube of the Day II
09 Aug 2006 07:29 pm
Mel Gibson's "Signs (of Anti-Semitism)". It's not like he didn't warn us ...
Hillary's Bust
09 Aug 2006 06:09 pm
The sculptor says: "I didn't want to give her a face-lift or change her age." I take him at his word. But that boob job is quite spectacular. I'm not sure if the photo is Reuters, though, so you never know.
Ending the Ban
09 Aug 2006 06:02 pm
The next generation of soldiers will not tolerate the bigotry and unfairness and stupidity of the ban on openly gay soldiers. Firing 55 Arab linguists because of the gender of the people they fall in love with is a way to lose a war, not win it. Here's another sign of the times: an award-winning essay at West Point by a cadet who opposes the policy. Money quote:
"I love the Army and I think that this is hurting the Army," said Raggio, 24, in an interview this week from his new military post at Fort Riley, Kan. "I see it as my obligation to say 'I don't agree with what you're doing.' I'm not being insubordinate — I just think we're making a mistake here."
And so they are. And one day, when bigots don't run the GOP, the mistake will be rectified.
Another Democrat on Lieberman
09 Aug 2006 05:22 pm
A Connecticut reader writes:
I disagreed with Lieberman on Iraq, I disagreed with him on the bankruptcy bill and on social security (I give some slack for cloture on Alito) and most especially when he scolded any Democrats who would criticize Bush's prosecution of the war in Iraq. That last really set my skin on edge, when a pol sets himself up as the arbiter of what is or is not acceptable in political speech it seems to me they arrogate a bit too much power to themselves.
But the day I knew that I would vote for Lamont was the day that Lieberman started to criticize the voters for daring to vote against him, setting the primary up in effect as a litmus test as to whether [his alleged] deviation from Democratic orthodoxy would be permitted, whether the Democrats were still tolerant of free-thinkers. First, it was an obvious lie — many Democrats supported the war in Iraq and some still do. But second, it was Lieberman attempting to tell us, the voters, the basis on which we should vote. Setting himself up as indispensable (someone should remind him of De Gaulle's line about the cemeteries being full of irreplaceable men) and stating the terms on which his defeat would have to be evaluated.
The sheer preening self-righteousness and arrogance of this was staggering. Is this really how the man thinks? This is the guy whose great asset is "character?" And then to see the Washington Democratic Party rally around him and this argument. What do they think they are, the Central Committee of some authoritarian party that determines the list of candidates for whom voters are allowed to cast a rubber stamp ballot?
And listening to Lieberman's speech last night — "carry on for the good of the country" — was to hear a man who has so conflated his career with public policy that I thank God that someone so mendaciously delusional was never a heartbeat away from the presidency.
I voted for Lieberman in the past. He has become a walking testimony to the need for term limits.
The MSM and Hezbollah
09 Aug 2006 04:49 pm
More photographic embarrassment?
Quote for the Day
09 Aug 2006 04:38 pm
"[T]he fact is that Lieberman is one of the most, perhaps the most, pro-Bush Democrats in Washington, in one of the most liberal states, and he only lost by a whisker. I don't think other Democrats are going to look at Lieberman and say "there but for the grace of God go I." —Jon Chait, TNR.
Can Lieberman Win in November?
09 Aug 2006 04:30 pm
Jason Zengerle reads the tea-leaves. Juicy exit poll data here.
Leaving Over Lieberman
09 Aug 2006 03:05 pm
For one Democratic reader, this primary was the last straw:
You ask if anyone is crying over Lieberman's defeat. I am not crying, but I am leaving the Democratic Party. Here's why:
1) Unlike your intimation, he has been critical of the war's implementation. Has he been brashly partisan? No. Has he suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome? No. The Dems now think he is no longer qualified to be in the party that he almost brought to 2000 presidential victory.
2) He is for Dems like me socially tolerant and liberal while actively pro-defense. Now the Dems are going to retreat into a repeat of Vietnam — pull the troops out, let a massacre happen in Iraq, and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. The party no longer speaks for Dems like me who want a strong defense abroad with a dose of libertarianism in social issues at home.
3) The Dems chose (again) to run a wealthy scion who can self-finance. I thought the Republicans were the party of privilege, wealth, and exclusion. Apparently, running a wealthy WASP heir against a working-class Jewish guy is OK as long it is in the Dems primary. Pathetic.
4) Lieberman did NOT say criticism of the president was unpatriotic. He meant that the constant partisan bickering, smears, etc. were eroding the president's standing and that is dangerous. It started under Clinton by the Republicans, but the Dems have gotten pretty good at it, too.
The Dems as a party have chosen to reject someone who works across the aisle. Lieberman is not perfect; no one is. But this was a vote by Dems and the party for more partisan rancor.
The Conservative Civil War
09 Aug 2006 02:52 pm
Here's a broadside against the current National Review, from the perspective of one who remembers the old days of Buckley conservatism — a place where conversation was as common as lecturing, where questions were as welcome as answers, where idiosyncrasy and intellectual curiosity were treasures, not threats to some smelly series of orthodoxies. Money quote:
[F]or all his gifts of insight and expression, not to mention his hierarchical dominance, Bill [Buckley] was always factually hungry and intellectually humble. He rarely imposed his view at the outset of discussion, preferring to hear from others before refining and declaring his own position. In the dialectic of the magazine, he rarely advanced thesis or counterposed antithesis. His natural mode was synthesis. That is, while he may have been uncomfortable watching James Burnham and Frank Meyer batter each other — and their showdowns in my own staff days could turn into draining Borg-McEnroe five-setters — he was happy to learn from them.
As the dinners evolved, then, they were rarely the occasion for issuing encyclicals in matters of conservative faith and almost always a convocation of the likeminded in pursuit of fresh doctrine. [My italics]
The author — a longtime NR alum and board member — opposed the Iraq war on the grounds of insufficient evidence of WMDs. I didn't. I was part of the groupthink problem back then and too susceptible, in the wake of 9/11, to putting skepticism aside. Which brings to mind another sentence in the piece:
From time to time I have reminded NR editors that conservatism means that it's never too late to say you're sorry.
Sorry again. But the war against Islamist terror is real. And saying sorry for past misjudgments doesn't mean denying the real danger that still exists, or being excused from coming up with new ideas and strategies for victory.
(My own contribution to the debate about the meaning of conservatism can be pre-ordered here.)
Tackling Iraq
09 Aug 2006 02:30 pm
Give Max Boot points for persisting in coming up with new strategies and ideas. Heaven knows we need some kind of drastically less ambitious but not disastrous damage control.
He's Doomed
09 Aug 2006 02:20 pm
No, I don't have a crystal ball, but Dick Morris just predicted a Lieberman renaissance. That can't be good. All we need is a Johnny Apple profile, and Joe's burnt toast. I do agree with Morris, though, that Gore's chances of the nomination just increased - because his spineless former veep candidate just lost. The ironies deepen.
Joe-No
09 Aug 2006 12:01 pm
It will be tempting to believe that Joe Lieberman's defeat in the Connecticut primary means something profound about the future of the war or the future of the Democrats. It may indeed mark a turning point in the public's patience with the president's war-management, but we'll have to wait till November to confirm that more generally. The primary defeat wasn't a rout, after all. And Lieberman, even among Democrats, was a special case. Hawkish Democrats, like Clinton, have managed to maintain support for the war against Islamist terror, while criticizing the president's staggering ineptness. Lieberman seemed unable to do this. He appeared more interested in becoming Rumsfeld's successor than in getting re-elected in blue-state Connecticut. And it's worth recalling: many Republicans have been more critical of the Bush administration's war decisions than Lieberman. Lieberman is to George Will's and Bill Buckley's and Chuck Hagel's and Bill Kristol's right on this. His position that any criticism of a president is inappropriate in wartime is also simply Hewittian in its proneness. At least that's my instant response to his political demise as a Democrat. I'm not crying any tears. Do you know anyone who is?
(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)
YouTube of the Day
09 Aug 2006 11:44 am
Ann Coulter calls Al Gore "a total fag" on MSNBC. What do you think the impact would be if she called a public figure a "nigger" or a "kike"? So why the double standard?
Quote for the Day
09 Aug 2006 09:18 am
"Saint Mel. That's what he is in the eyes of millions of Americans. But for some, he’s Satan. Leon Wieseltier, the big fan of the Catholic-bashing writer Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, labels the movie a 'sacred snuff film.' Ex-Catholics like Maureen Dowd not only mistake the sacred for the profane, they think the film engenders intolerance when, in fact, the intolerance has come almost exclusively from the movie’s most vociferous critics.
But this is good — the pus has come to the surface. Now we can get on with the real debate: should the culture continue its celebration of self-indulgence or repair to a culture of restraint? If the latter is to be achieved, believing Christians, Jews and Muslims will have to join together to defeat those whose concept of liberty is pure libertinism.
Already, left-wing censors in Hollywood are out to get Mel. They think they can stop him. But it's too late for the blacklisters to win. Nothing can stop the public from rallying around Saint Mel," Catholic League president, Bill Donahue, February 26, 2004. Saint Mel.
The View From Your Window
09 Aug 2006 07:37 am
Issaqua, Washington, 6.05 pm.
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
Minimalist Blogging
08 Aug 2006 09:16 pm
A reader writes:
Your post reminded me of this:
Perhaps the shortest telegram exchange involved author Oscar Wilde when he was in Paris. He sent this wire to his publisher in England to see how Wilde's new book was selling:
?
The reply was equally succinct:
!
Update: another source attributes this to Victor Hugo.
Fall Preview
08 Aug 2006 08:28 pm
I just got wind of Michel Gondry's next movie, "The Science of Sleep." If you don't know of Gondry's work, you really should. His music videos are astonishingly inventive, complex, playful and visually original. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was superb. His single video for the Rolling Stones is one of my all-time faves. He did Kylie proud too. I subject most friends to them at some point or other. The movie's out September 22.
"Just a Catholic"
08 Aug 2006 07:08 pm
A reader responds to the Washington post testimonial I linked to yesterday:
I agree Andrew, that letter does speak to many American Catholics and I think that's unfortunate. It is frustrating. It, the tribalism it reveals, is dangerous. There is only one reason that I remain a Catholic and it ain't for the lively sermons. I believe what the Church claims to be, that it is THE Church founded by Christ, that the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, that we - Catholics - are united as family because we share this blood. What the Church claims is radical, but after much research, thought, and discussion I am left with no alternative. I am not a conservative Catholic or a liberal Catholic ... just a Catholic.
I understand, on one level anyway, what that letter writer means. I have met many people like her. There are throngs. Catholicism is very sensual. You hear the prayers of consecration, you smell the incense, you feel the holy water, you see the advent wreath, you hold the palms on Passion Sunday. It, the faith, becomes part of you. However, I could not raise my children - and I have five - in any denomination that taught things about which I had grave reservations.
Well, of course, it depends on the nature of the reservations. Humans being humans, we have thoughts and doubts and questions and consciences. many Catholics may conscientiously differ from the Church hierarchy on less fundamental matters and still remain within the Church, as far as I'm concerned. My basic rule is the creed we recite at the Mass. If you can say that with no reservations, and seek a good conscience on all the rest, you're a Catholic as far as I'm concerned.
YouTube of the Day
08 Aug 2006 07:04 pm
A musical interlude - by Joel Guzman (not the baseball player), in an inspired improvization on the accordion.
Polling Connecticut
08 Aug 2006 06:50 pm
Mystery Pollster crunches the Lieberman-Lamont numbers. Mid-summer primary polls have been way off in the past.
Anthony Kennedy's Conservatism
08 Aug 2006 06:01 pm
Dahlia Lithwick homes in on why Justice Anthony Kennedy is such an important figure for the future of conservatism:
[I]n spite of the lofty intellectualism and the big words, this speech captures my imagination and that of the assembled crowd for its two quintessential Kennedy traits. The first is the vast sprawl of his imaginative world. He travels the planet and reads widely and he attends lectures on water purification. Then he applies all that knowledge to his conception of the law. And whether you like that expansive scope, listening to him is still a tonic to the smallness and smug certainty that has characterized our political leadership in this country for the past six years. It offers a welcome break from the hermetically sealed constitutional worldview of some of his detractors. Kennedy is a legendary agonizer. But his comments here reveal the extent to which that agony is not an end in itself. His sense of justice and equality is a work in progress, informed by what he learns from people all over the planet who know more than he does. There's something reassuring in his sense that the world is a fluid place.
That sense - of the fluidity and inconstancy of everything - is the mark of a particular kind of conservative, an Oakeshottian attempt to find balance in doubt, and freedom in the minimal constraints of a rule of law that is as neutral between varying claims as possible. It is so different from the theological certainty that now passes for conservative doctrine. But "conservative doctrine" is an oxymoron. The point of political conservatism as I understand it is that it offers no doctrine, just the wisdom of a tradition resting, provisionally, on doubt.
King Kos?
08 Aug 2006 05:29 pm
Today's the day. Full recrimination coverage later.
Quote for the Day II
08 Aug 2006 04:56 pm
It's revealing of so much:
Tom Ricks, author of "Fiasco": I asked one officer why are you talking to me about these things, and he looked down at his hands, and he said because I have the blood of American troops on my hands. And I said what do you mean? And he said because when I said to Rumsfeld we need that division, and Rumsfeld said no, I gave up. I compromised. And he said U.S. troops died because of that. And he said that's why I'm talking to you.
Hugh Hewitt: And you can't name him, though?
TR: No.
HH: Well, you'll pardon me, Tom, Mr. Ricks.
TR: And he was practically crying as he spoke to me about this.
HH: Yeah, I'm just not going to buy that.
So Hewitt accuses Ricks of lying. Because if the truth about Rumsfeld's criminal incompetence has to compete with Hewitt's "no-mistakes-were-made" Caeasarism, then the facts be damned and the reporter's a liar. Ricks or Hewitt? Reality or ideology? I link. You choose. A reader notes another quote from Hewitt, which is just as revealing. He seems to believe that all the criticism of this botched war is due to some sort of conspiracy:
The "money quote," as you say, is this from Hewitt:
"A cadre of Clinton-era senior brass, who did not see it coming, it being the Islamist world war, got bitter and angry at having been passed over and pushed aside by the 9/11, post-9/11 Pentagon, and they have spent the next five years doing their best to undermine this administration, using reporters like you who are good, to carry out that story, and amplify every mistake, and there are many, and to downgrade every success, and there are many, in a continued war against the people who tossed them out, and perhaps against their own conscience for not having seen it coming. Your response?"
Throughout the interview, Hewitt deals with the overwhelming evidence that he is wrong by, first, using a quibble about some fraction of the evidence (here, that some of the sources are anonymous) to cast doubt on all of it; and second, by accusing everyone of pursuing the same kind of partisan agenda that he himself is. There are no facts, to him. There is just a fight, and if you say something that supports the other side, you're on it.
Here's Ricks' response:
"It is not partisan, it is not a bunch of burn-out generals. It is the military trying to do the best it can in an extremely difficult situation. And to disregard it and slap it aside, if you'll excuse me, I think is aiding and abetting the enemy."
Finally Ricks is giving Hewitt the medicine he so regularly dishes out to others. I think of Hewitt as an American version of Baghdad Bob - you remember, the guy who insisted that U.S. forces were defeated even as U.S. shells were pounding in Baghdad behind him. No, I don't mean the analogy literally - just in so far as it reflects the Christianist inability to deviate from received dogma, even when confronted with empirical reality. Hewitt is a very smart, completely partisan propagandist. Once you understand that, the rest fits into place.
The View From Your Window
08 Aug 2006 03:50 pm
Chicago, Illinois, 7 pm.
Arab Inconsistency
08 Aug 2006 03:46 pm
First they were for a cease-fire; now they're against it.
Islamists and Sex
08 Aug 2006 03:15 pm
Yes, we knew they were screwed up. But some Shiite Islamists in Iraq are allegedly killing shepherds because they have not put modesty "diapers" on their goats! The goats are too tempting for Muslim males, it appears. Well, compared with the walking black tents they force their women into, goats are indeed quite fetching. The logic of religious fundamentalism is nothing if not relen