« January 7, 2007 - January 13, 2007 | Main | January 21, 2007 - January 27, 2007 »
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Gonzales, Leahy and Arar
20 Jan 2007 09:39 pm
It was a highlight of the Senate Judiciary Hearings on detainee policies last week. Senator Leahy rightly dragged the legal lickspittle Gonzales over the coals. The rage in Leahy's voice is completely justified: the idea that the U.S. sent a terror suspect to Syria for interrogation, and didn't expect him to be tortured, is preposterous. Gonzales, Bush and Ashcroft were comfortable with that because they are comfortable with torture. There's not a freedom Gonzales wouldn't undermine, not a right he wouldn't qualify, if his political patrons asked him to. Listen to the section of the hearings related to the rendition of Canadian Maher Arar, a man tortured by a vile regime at the behest of the United States. Listen and get angry again. Anger is necessary. Extreme anger is necessary. Don't get numb. Get mad.
What The Heck
20 Jan 2007 08:22 pm
I mentioned Kubrick's "Dawn of Man" in the post below. Here it is:
"Just Books" Ctd
20 Jan 2007 07:21 pm
"[The novel] is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with other lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative ... If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythical lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world," - Karen Armstrong, "A Short History of Myth."
My next reply to Sam Harris will appear tomorrow, on my Sabbath.
I Want My HDTV
20 Jan 2007 06:11 pm
I was a skeptic at first. We got the 46 inch LCD TV for Christmas but I was utterly indifferent to High Definition. It sounded like a snow-job to me. But Aaron insisted, so we got the new box and set up the new connection. Within seconds, I was hooked. Not since Gillette's Mach 3 and the iPod have I been as impressed with a new technology. You think it will look better - but not that much better. The best way I can express this is: It is as if they took the lens off the camera.
If you're into sports, it's a must (I'm not). My own guilty pleasure is the Discovery Channel, National Geographic television, and other nature shows. I loved them before HDTV; but now they're astonishing. The clarity that allows you to see nature as if you were there, in your own living room, is a window onto the entire world. I watched a broadcast from the Space Station, to take a simple example. I've seen plenty of TV from space before, but always as if through a blizzard or a fuzzy lens. The image always made space seem somewhere else entirely, a different dimension, unlike anything on earth. but HDTV changes all that. To see someone floating without gravity as if they were in front of you creates a whole new perspective on what space travel is actually like. It makes it real - for the first time in human history. If I were NASA, I'd do nothing but get HD images from space to the American public. It would reignite enthusiasm for space exploration.
But my favorite is a Discovery On Demand channel, which has a series called "Sunrise Earth." Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Put down the bong. But you need no bong to be entranced by the simplicity of the series. It takes the highest quality video cameras around the world and captures 50-minute scenes of the dawn in a variety of spots on this water-planet. There is no narration; no music; just natural sounds. Here's one review:
When seen in vivid, crystal-clear HDTV, the effect is hypnotic. Few viewers will fail to have an impulse to immediately book a flight to join the fun. After watching last night's program on the Cadillac Mountains at the Acadia National Park in Maine, I quickly checked my work schedule for vacation dates. When seen in high-def, the burnt orange skies lingering over the Maine mountains was enough to make me forget, well, nearly everything.
Again, like Kubrick's "Dawn of Man," Sunrise Earth lets the high-def pictures do the talking. There is no narrator getting in the way; only an occasional graphic reveals the location and the time of day. It's a powerful technique. By eliminating the human altogether, Sunrise Earth makes you feel like what you're seeing could be what you would have seen hundreds of years ago. It's nature unplugged.
I've become obsessed with three so far: the town square in a Cambodian village with a Buddhist temple, as the monks chant in a new day; an Icelandic waterfall; and the foothills of a Turkish mountain range, dotted with Roman ruins. However stressed your day, this devastatingly simple project soothes the soul. It's a video version of the Dish's Views From your Window, a reminder that however grim things look, the earth turns, the sun rises, and nature endures.
(Photo: David Conover, series director and photographer, on the River Li.)
How Serious Is Rudy?
20 Jan 2007 05:28 pm
Not so much. My bet: he knows things we don't yet know.
The View From Your Window
20 Jan 2007 04:42 pm
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 5 pm.
Certainty and Civilization
20 Jan 2007 04:19 pm
Words to live by:
"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'"
It's H. L. Mencken. My version:
"The defining characteristic of the conservative is that he knows what he doesn't know... The first thing to say is that this philosophy is not warmed-over relativism or nihilism. While the fundamentalist knows the truth, the nihilist believes it is an illusion, that nothing is true, and everything is valid. The conservative differs from both. While not denying that the truth exists, the conservative is content to say merely that his grasp on it is always provisional. He may be wrong. He begins with the assumption that the human mind is fallible, that it can delude itself, make mistakes, or see only so far ahead. And this, the conservative avers, is what it means to be human."
For a full treatment of the political and theological consequences of this, see "The Conservative Soul."
Buckley vs Chomsky
20 Jan 2007 03:04 pm
A debate from 1969, in two parts, with themes directly relevant to today. Below is the first. Here is the link to the second. There used to be television like this; and people used to watch it. Now, at least, it's online.
Quote of the Day
20 Jan 2007 01:59 pm
"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it. We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" - Former FEMA head Michael Brown, alleging that even Katrina relief was filtered through Karl Rove's partisan calculus.
Of No Firewall Either
20 Jan 2007 12:50 am
Some readers have asked if the blog will be behind a firewall at the Atlantic.com. Are you kidding? The answer is: Nope; nuh-huh; never; not even close; why would I ever do that? The Dish will be free as always and accessible to all - more accessible, once we implement a whole bunch of changes to expand and deepen the blog. Stay tuned. And thanks for all the emails. I'm as excited as some of you are.
Friday, January 19, 2007
"Of No Party Or Clique"
19 Jan 2007 10:04 pm
After a wonderful year of growth and innovation at Time.com, the Dish is about to move to a new mother-ship, the Atlantic.com. We'll be moving in two weeks' time, when my current contract with Time.com expires. If it seems odd to leave a place that has been so good to me, and to the blog, that's because it is. Time's editors were wonderfully supportive and never touched a word. I'm immensely grateful to them. They helped me add video and photography and a higher level of professionalism to the blog than I would ever have achieved on my own. They understood that marrying the new media to the old would be difficult, but they made it look easy. I'd like to thank in particular Jim Kelly, Steve Koepp, Cathy Sharick, Josh Tyrangiel and Rick Stengel for their support and talent.
But every now and again, an offer comes your way that seems so right a decision makes itself. There is no better proprietor in America than David Bradley, whom I have known and respected for years. And I know of no editor I'd rather work for and with than my old friend, James Bennet, who is the new editor of the Atlantic. Their combination of talent and integrity is very, very rare, and I'm lucky to join them.
I went through some research with this decision and one thing really clinched it. It's the founding Declaration of Purpose of the Atlantic Monthly. The magazine's history is a deep and distinguished one. It was founded in 1857 by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell (who would become its first editor). When they came up with a statement of principle, it ran as follows:
"In politics, The Atlantic Monthly will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea. It will deal frankly with persons and with parties, endeavoring always to keep in view that moral element which transcends all persons and parties, and which alone makes the basis of a true and lasting prosperity. It will not rank itself with any sect of anties: but with that body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private."
That's what this blog, at its core and at its best, is about; it's what the readers of this blog care about; and it's what the Atlantic stands for. The prospect of being part of taking this deeply American institution into a new medium in a new century is, for me, an English immigrant, a real honor and privilege. The blog retains its complete editorial independence, of course. You have that guarantee. But it will, I hope, be part of something bigger as well: a voice in a new conversation, dedicated to the American idea, of no party or clique, in pursuit of freedom, national progress, and honor. Come along, will you?
No She Didn't
19 Jan 2007 07:50 pm
Did Oprah just wreck a child's life? Dan Savage thinks so.
Yglesias Award Nominee
19 Jan 2007 07:03 pm
"Bush administration = Lucy. Bush administration defenders = Charlie Brown," - Michelle Malkin. When they can't even keep Malkin in their corner, the Bushies are really losing it.
Is this the 2007 Yglesias Award winner? Don't Forget To Vote Here!
Debating Sam
19 Jan 2007 06:40 pm
Today has been somewhat swamped with mundane issues, and I haven't had time to compose a worthy response to Sam Harris yet. I promise to do so tomorrow, and we'll continue the blogalogue next week. Apologies for the brief lull.
Robbie Williams
19 Jan 2007 06:31 pm
My English roots are showing, I guess. But he's a great pop artist, with a sense of humor and irony, sadly lost on much of America. Here's the new video: "She's Madonna." Very post-straight.
Life In A Northern Town
19 Jan 2007 05:36 pm
The premise of this new English blog is simple:
Moving to Northumberland from London was not my idea. My husband was in fact the only one terribly keen on the move. When I asked my younger son what he thought, he confided: "Bears might eat me". "There are no bears," I told him as I looked into the darkness and the growling started.
(Photo: Richard Webb.)
A Redeployment Strategy
19 Jan 2007 04:21 pm
Charles Krauthammer has reached a position that is close to indistinguishable from where I now find myself:
We need to find a redeployment strategy that maintains as much latent American strength as possible, but with minimal exposure. We say to Maliki: Let us down, and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad and let you fend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province, where we are having success in our one-front war against al-Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. We will be around to pick up the pieces as best we can.
Sane and realistic. So let's drop the Plus Up fantasies, shall we?
From the Attorney General
19 Jan 2007 03:40 pm
From the "You Can't Make This Up Dept":
Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take [habeas corpus] away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?
Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.
Iraq and Algeria
19 Jan 2007 03:10 pm
There are parallels but there are major differences as well. Here's an engaging discussion of both by a reader of Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace".
Forever Ralph
19 Jan 2007 02:32 pm
Your moment of Wiggum:
Rauch on Plus Up
19 Jan 2007 01:59 pm
He says it's a bad idea but he's for it anyway:
Keane appears to be saying that the plan works at an acceptable cost only if the United States can pacify the Shiite militants without forcibly confronting them. To me, and possibly also to the Sadrists, this looks like what gamblers call a bluff. So why shouldn't the Democratic Congress block such an unpromising strategy?
He has three answers.
The View From Your Window
19 Jan 2007 01:04 pm
San Francisco, California, 7.40 am, from inside the Muni train.
Sad or Sadr?
19 Jan 2007 12:57 pm
Moqtada says his militias won't attack for a month; and his chief aide is arrested. What this means is unclear, like a lot of things in Iraq. But these seem like significant developments to me because either a) they reveal the sit-it-out policy of Iraq's Shia in response to "Plus Up," given a fig leaf by a symbolc arrest; or b) they represent real, if tiny, progress. Here's hoping it's the latter.
Torture and Evidence
19 Jan 2007 12:56 pm
Here are two sentences to make your head spin:
As required by law, the manual prohibits statements obtained by torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" as prohibited by the Constitution. However, the law does allow statements obtained through coercive interrogation techniques if obtained before Dec. 30, 2005, and deemed reliable by a judge.
So evidence procured by torture is unconstitutional, unless it isn't. George W. Bush really is president, isn't he?
Number-Crunching "Plus Up"
19 Jan 2007 11:15 am
Fred Kagan responds to the rather obvious point that his initial assertion that some 80,000 troops would be needed to secure Baghdad has not, er, been borne out by the actual plan. There's a big difference between 80,000 and 17,500. Or is there? Kagan argues that his 80,000 number was for the "entire Baghdad capital area." 50,000 would be needed for Baghdad proper. 30,000 would be necessary if we were to ignore Sadr City and just clear Baghdad of Sunni insurgents in phases (what Maliki wants). Got that? Still, Kagan has to concede that 17,500 for Baghdad is only around half the number he first proposed. How does he explain that? Here goes:
Brigade sizes range based on the type of unit, but average around 3,500 soldiers each. The administration's figures are based on that estimate. In reality, the U.S. Army does not simply deploy brigades into combat, but instead sends Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). A BCT includes a brigade as described above, but also additional support elements such as engineers, military police, additional logistics elements, and so on, which are necessary to the functioning of the brigade in combat.
In a counter-insurgency operation such as Iraq, these additional forces are fully as important to the overall success of the mission as the combat troops. Sizes of BCTs also vary, of course, but they average more like 5,000 soldiers. Since these are the formations that will actually be deployed to Iraq and used there, I have been estimating deployments on this basis: five brigade combat teams include around 25,000 soldiers; one Marine Regimental Combat Team (RCTs are somewhat smaller than Army brigades) includes perhaps 4,000. So the surge being briefed by the Bush administration now is much more likely to be around 29,000 troops than 22,000 - in other words, close to the number of combat troops the IPG recommended, and, when necessary support troops are added, close to the overall numbers I had estimated before the IPG met.
So the Bush plan is actually, according to Kagan, 29,000 troops, not 21,500. Somehow the president forgot to mention that. (For the full monty on this numerical pas de deux, check out this definitive post by Greg Djerejian.) And then we have this rather devastating sentence by Kagan:
It remains to be seen if the Bush administration will adhere to this plan, of course.
The "of course" is priceless. To recap: first Kagan wanted 80,000; then he settled for 50,000; then he was fine with 29,000; when confronted with the Plus Up number of 17,500 for Bahdad and 4,000 for Anbar, he argued that it is actually 29,000, except the president didn't say so, and except Kagan doesn't know for sure. So, under these cloudy circumstances, with so much at stake, is he for Plus Up? Here's the answer:
The new commander, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, has not yet taken up command, and it would be best to await his plan before commenting in detail on proposals that may or may not take concrete form.
The Bush message is now what it has always been: our very civilization is at stake. So let's wing it.
Qoutes for the Day
19 Jan 2007 03:00 am
"If you're an act, then what am I?" - Stephen Colbert to Bill O'Reilly, last night.
"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you," - Friedrich Nietzsche.
Rock Hudson and Paul Lynde
19 Jan 2007 02:10 am
Because you won't get it anywhere else:
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Just Books?
18 Jan 2007 10:57 pm
I'll respond tomorrow, but this reader couldn't wait:
Harris wrote:
So why not take these books less seriously still? Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves?
Religious books are not "just" books. Rather they are books that try to guide human beings, and their conduct, through the mystery that is human life. And when I say "mystery" I don't mean it in the sense of "Wow, that's cool!" I mean it in the sense that we don't know where we came from, or where we are going, or how, on the one hand, we can have a profound sense of self, but, then, on the other hand, must live with the unease that our entire sense of self - without religion - will somehow some day cease to exist.
Religion, and religious books are designed to help us with these problems of human existence. They are designed to show us - based on very old traditions - about the proper courses of conduct to lead one to the eventual pride in having lived to the full and to the good the one life that one was granted. They make us glad to be alive.
Other books do not help. Even philosophers are of little use for these areas of life, and most will gladly acknowledge it. Perhaps some people don't need religion. But most of us do, even if our religious devotions are tinged with more or less worldly skepticism.
It is absurd to claim that whoever - one or many - who wrote, among others, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or the Tao te Ching were just regular guys writing regular books. The only person who can say that is the person who has no sense to appreciate the ecstatic frame of mind that is a core element in the religious life, and which in turn presupposes a voice driving such authors that, in the poor words we humans use, is described a Holy Spirit. And, absolutely, the same applies to the New Testament, which of course was written by real people in real time.
But to say that the New Testament expresses the Holy Spirit is not to be understood either to mean that some kind of vapor descended from on high and penetrated the fingertips of Luke or St Paul. Rather it also means that these are texts that were written by Christians, for communities of Christian believers, and that these communities, over the course of now two millennia, consider them, and their companions, true reflections, in words, of the states of Christian belief and life.
Now, the issue has been phrased as a religious issue but it could also be phrased as an esthetic one. Artistic experiences, poetry, music, visual arts, will sometimes convey a kind of supernatural and ever-renewing power. For reasons we cannot put into words, we feel at times - after a Beethoven quartet or a Shakespeare play - that we have been touched by something so special, that it could not be the mere product of "just some guy." Artists themselves will not infrequently stand in amazement at their own creations. "How did I manage to create something so good?" Here, too, the suspicion arises that the artist is but a medium for something else, indefinable.
I am in sympathy with much of this, but perhaps for the sake of coherence, we shouldn't ask Sam to address all the readers' comments as well. I'll focus tomorrow. Today has been somewhat full.
(Painting: Rembrandt's "The Evangelist Matthew Inspired by an Angel.")
Tylenol and Marijuana
18 Jan 2007 09:23 pm
It turns out they alleviate pain by the same mechanism in the brain - except marijuana does less harm. But it's pleasurable, so it must be banned.
Obama and the War
18 Jan 2007 09:02 pm
A reader writes:
Pace your reader, Obama gave an anti-Iraq War speech in the fall of 2002 while still in the Illinois Senate. There's no way he's Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Also, my German's not too good, but I hope he doesn't exhibit his Weltanschauung. Isn't that what got Bill Clinton in trouble?
The Clive James Defense
18 Jan 2007 08:39 pm
Here's a tart defense of blurring the lines between fact and fiction in a memoir:
This is the second volume of my unreliable memoirs. For a palpable fantasy, the first volume was well enough received. It purported to be the true story of how the author grew from infancy through adolescence to early manhood, this sequence of amazing biological developments largely taking place in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney, NSW, Australia. And indeed it was a true story, in the sense that I wasn't brought up in a Tibetan monastery or a castle on the Danube. The central character was something like my real self. If the characters around him were composites, they were obviously so, and with some justification. The friend who helps you dig tunnels in your back yard is rarely the same friend who ruins your summer by flying a model aeroplane into your mother's prize trifle, but a book with everybody in it would last as long as life, and never live at all.
I still don't buy it, actually. It seems to me perfectly possible to write a memoir that does not use composite characters, or change people's names, without going on for ever. In my own memoir passages in my three books, I make nothing up, create no composite characters and tell the truth as far as I can recall. Yes, it's subjective - but it's not a fantasy. I'm somewhat befuddled why this was beyond the talents of the extremely gifted Senator from Illinois. But then I've never been angling for a political career.
Iraq, Algeria, Torture
18 Jan 2007 08:31 pm
Historian Alistair Horne talks here about the parallels between France's doomed counter-insurgency campaign in Algeria and our current morass in Iraq. The most obvious parallel is the way in which the U.S. has copied what Horne calls "the vile hand of torture." Horne's book on the Algeria debacle, "A Savage War," is currently being read by the president. Horne sent the book to former defense secretary Rumsfeld, with passages on torture underlined. Rumsfeld sent him a "fierce" note back, and then apparently relented and agreed with Horne. Horne's conclusion from Algeria:
"As far as torture is concerned, the answer must be never, never, never."
Too late, alas. Too late.
Quote for the Day
18 Jan 2007 07:39 pm
From Novak's column:
"Iraq is a black hole for the Republican Party," a prominent party strategist told me this week. What makes his comments so important is that he is not a maverick Republican in Congress but one of Bush's principal political advisers.
An Early Water-Boarding
18 Jan 2007 07:22 pm
Here is a fascinating if grim illustration of a punishment used in Auburn State Prison, New York, in 1858. The description reads:
"The convict, More, was a negro. He is certified to have been a man of naturally pleasant temper, but violent when crossed ... he was dragged by main force, and after many violent struggles, to the shower-bath; all the water that was in the tank -- amounting to from three to five barrels, the quantity is uncertain -- was showered upon him in spite of his piteous cries; a few minutes after his release from the bath he fell prostrate, was carried to his cell, and died in five minutes."
This page adds:
The use of the shower-bath as a means of coercing criminals into submission to the orders of prison authorities began to be general about the year 1845.
This is not torture, then, because it isn't used to extract information, just to crush a human spirit and body. But it is awful nonetheless.
Obama's Book
18 Jan 2007 06:51 pm
I touched a nerve:
That was a shitty, cheap shot. Obama writes in his intro that he uses composite characters, and then does. An "investigative journalist" investigates and finds a character actually lives up to his description. But others might not because she didn't investigate them? And readers may not investigate?
This is your "scandal"? This makes him like James Frey who had more holes than cheese? This is a hack job smear, and today you're a hack enabler.
I didn't use the word "scandal." When a candidate for the president gets serious, questions like this are raised. His autobiography is a non-non-fiction "memoir," based on his own recollections, not on empirical truth. This new genre of non-non-fiction that isn't fiction is a strange hybrid that deserves scrutiny, and the book is now likely to get that scrutiny. I understand why a writer cannot recall everything in his past. But I fail to understand why a writer has to change the name of an individual in his past from "Marty Kaufman" to "Gerald Kellman," especially when that person confirms the accounts of verbatim conversations. It suggests that the autobiography was written to create an image not to tell a true story. It's not fraudulent in the James Frey way. But it is odd. If Obama gets touchy about this, he's got a lot to learn. Not everyone is a fan either:
Why on earth do you like Obama? Not that there is much to hate about him, but do you truly like him as a presidential candidate? How is he even remotely qualified? Aside from his Monday-quarterback judgement of the war in Iraq (as he wasn't there to make the mistake of voting for it in the Senate in 2002), what can be said for him in exact terms? He's a powerful speaker? This is the problem we confronted with Robert Kennedy (or even his older brother - but to a lesser extent).
Has Obama said one word about global strategy that isn't in reaction to the beliefs of others? Like Kennedy he's quite skilled at pointing out what is wrong with the world, but that's only the first step towards solving it, and the rest are all uphill. All I know is what Obama does not like, what he doesn't believe in. I can't simply assume that the rest is what he does believe in. Not that I think Obama is another Bush, but let us for just once demand an intellectual showing from our presidential candidates. We have 300,000,000 people in this country. Surely there are men and women better suited for the position of president than the stooges we've been offered. Isn't it about time to change the presidential search paradigm a bit? Isn't it time that we ask Obama to step up and exhibit his Weltanschauung? The early allegiance I'm seeing for Obama, Edwards, Giuliani makes me worried that we haven't learned our lessons. None of them are actually qualified for the Oval Office, so we should really make them earn it!
Agreed. The sole reason I have for liking Obama is his multi-racial, multi-cultural heritage which I think is a great advantage in today's global climate; and his extremely impressive speeches, particularly on religion and politics. I need to know more. Much more. We all do.
The O'Reilly Treatment
18 Jan 2007 06:39 pm
A victim speaks.
D'Souza on Colbert
18 Jan 2007 06:12 pm
An instant classic.
The Stab-In-the Back Ploy
18 Jan 2007 05:36 pm
The Bush administration had everything it wanted for four years: both Houses of Congress, vast loans from Chinese bankers, the right to tear up habeas corpus, tap phones without court warrants, detain citizens without charges for years, authorize torture. It had hefty public support at the start and a superbly trained military ... but the failure in Iraq is still somehow the fault of the treacherous media. John Cole sees the meme spread and deepen.
The Responsibility Candidate
18 Jan 2007 04:35 pm
Here's a striking quote from Senator Clinton:
"I am cursed with the responsibility gene. I am. I admit to that. You've got to be very careful in how you proceed with any combat situation in which American lives are at stake."
An excuse for politicking? I wouldn't be so tough. I've followed Senator Clinton's positions on the war these past few years and since they've pretty closely tracked my own, I'm not going to attack her for caution and prudence. Wars are dynamic things; they can take unexpected turns, even for the better. This one keeps getting worse, but the stakes are still very high. I take the minority view therefore that Clinton's position on the war might in the end help her (even with primary voters). And her description of her stance as the product of a "responsibility gene" is a little piece of genius.
Americans often pick a president repairing the glaring flaw in the last one. The most powerful theme of Bush's presidency has been wanton irresponsibility: fiscal, military, diplomatic, political. The recklessness of the past has deeply alienated many small-c conservatives who regard politics as an exercize in secular caution not religious zeal and frat-boy carelessness. If Hillary frames herself as the school-marm disciplinarian, she'll find an opening. It's also an image more suited to her actual personality than anything resembling charisma.
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)
The Idiocy of Religious Moderation
18 Jan 2007 03:04 pm
Sam Harris's latest blog epistle to me can be read in full here. Money quote:
How does one "integrate doubt" into one's faith? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing it if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights—scientific ("You mean the world isn’t 6000 years old? Yikes.."), mathematical ("pi doesn't actually equal 3? All right, so what?"), and moral ("You mean, I shouldn't beat my slaves? I can’t even keep slaves? Hmm ..."). Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously. So why not take these books less seriously still? Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves? They were not, as your friend the pope would have it, "written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost." Needless to say, I believe you have given the Supreme Pontiff far too much credit as a champion of reason. The man believes that he is in possession of a magic book, entirely free from error...
Religious moderates—by refusing to question the legitimacy of raising children to believe that they are Christians, Muslims, and Jews—tacitly support the religious divisions in our world. They also perpetuate the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence in order to have an ethical and spiritual life. While religious moderates don’t fly planes into buildings, or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they refuse to deeply question the preposterous ideas of those who do. Moderates neither submit to the real demands of scripture nor draw fully honest inferences from the growing testimony of science. In attempting to find a middle ground between religious dogmatism and intellectual honesty, it seems to me that religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.
Read the rest here. Sufficiently provoked, even irritated, I'll reply tomorrow. He has raised several big questions and I need a little time to think (and pray) about them.
(Painting: Pietro Perugino (c. 1450-1524) Scenes from the Life of Christ: The Giving of the Keys to Saint Peter.)
Why Coleman Is Voting Nay
18 Jan 2007 02:33 pm
Just check this December 19 blog entry out:
A beautiful Baghdad morning. Bright morning sun, slight chill in the air. Standing by a palace pool, surrounded by palm trees. Talking to my daughter Sarah, back home in Minnesota, where it's just 10 pm on Monday night. The sound of mortar fire breaks the stillness of the morning air. Insurgent fire or Sadr City fire? Perhaps a gift from the Iranians to al-Sadr. I'm told the impact is close to the embassy grounds. One of the staff said it woke him up. Probably aimed at the area where workers gather to enter the Green Zone. In the far distance there is some smoke on the horizon. Car bomb I'm told by embassy staff.
Yesterday was a full day of meetings accompanied by Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL). Starting with the Iraqi National Security Advisor, Dr. Rubaie, and concluding with Deputy Prime Minister Bahram Salah. In speaking with Iraqis, the assessment we are given of the path we should take is heavily influenced by whether we are talking to Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds.
Maliki's National Security Advisor, Dr. Rubaie, maintains that the major challenge facing Iraq is not a sectarian conflict, but rather al-Qaeda and disgruntled Baathists seeking to regain power. Both Senator Nelson and I react with incredulity to that assessment. Rubaie cautions against more troops in Baghdad.
Coleman learned one thing in Baghdad. The Maliki government is lying through its teeth. Somehow president Bush never understood this, and still doesn't. But then he still believes Vladimir Putin is a man of God.
Obama's Autobiography
18 Jan 2007 02:09 pm
Does he have a James Frey problem? I like Obama, but you've got to worry when a campaign dismisses something as a "non-story." That almost always means it's a real one.
"Plus Up"
18 Jan 2007 01:42 pm
A military source tells me that the latest Public Affairs Guidance issued to the various branches of the military no longer refers to the surge as a "surge." It is now officially referred to in written and verbal communications as a "plus up." "Surge" is so early January.
The View From Your Window
18 Jan 2007 01:38 pm
Chardon, Ohio, 1 pm.
Are We Now In Peril?
18 Jan 2007 12:51 pm
The Bush administration claimed it could wiretap phones without a warrant because it was essential to national security. Now they think they can live with the FISA court. So are we now to believe that this seizure of executive power to spy on Americans without oversight was always optional? Are we now in grave danger? Or have we just learned - again! - not to trust a word these power-mongers say? More commentary here.
Britain's Big Brother
18 Jan 2007 12:24 pm
It's become a racial cause celebre. Clive Davis provides the Brit overview.
The Maliki Problem
18 Jan 2007 11:50 am
Listen to the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki. In the Times of London, he strongly expresses a clear desire: to be given weapons and more training in order to unleash Shiite state violence against Sunni insurgents. His view of the next six months seems pretty obvious to me: the U.S. can help weed out Sunni insurgents in Baghdad, and he is prepared to make a few gestures against the more egregious death squads on his side. But after six months, he wants to be able to get on with the job of killing Sunni insurgents himself in defense of a Shia majority state:
Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: "If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them." ...
Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, said that Mr al-Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, gave a warning that he was living on "borrowed time" and that American patience was running out.
Challenged on the point, Mr al-Maliki remarked acidly: "Certain officials are going through a crisis. Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the Government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi Government or American Administration. I don't think we are on borrowed time."
How exactly would Maliki "lose his job"? The administration's political strategy in Iraq is based on control it doesn't exercize. And its military policy is based on a national government that does not exist. Apart from that, the White House has it all figured out.
(Photo: Brooks Kraft for Time.)
Hewitt and D'Souza
18 Jan 2007 11:11 am
Together at last - as the Christianist-Islamist alliance deepens on the far right.
The Real Boneless Wonder
18 Jan 2007 10:15 am
A reader writes:
I'm strongly anti-war, but I still wish Petraeus true success, sincerely - because I presume that the key existential goal now is to "pacify" a spot of active, pure hell on earth that we are partially responsible for. That pacification may include using deadly force and would be morally justified on just war grounds. The situation now is one in which not to act at all is immoral - but, it may be just as moral and practical to withdraw and let them face each other (Shia, Sunni, others) and make their own existential decision without us as an excuse anymore.
As the one writer said of the unjust war: we were not willing to fight to pacify, to occupy, to take control. We set this up for disaster and watched it. It will be written in history books: When Moqtata al-Sadr emerged early on, why was he not arrested soon (under rules of martial law; but handled humanely) by the new occupying force, detained as a potential terrorist and inciter to violence against other Iraqis? People often compare Japan to Iraq. Would MacArthur have tolerated someone like al-Sadr at large to pursue his course during the occupation?
Why did we not prosecute our victory and power? Why were we so cowardly or unwise or both to let him (and others like him) stand us down? These guys think GHW Bush failed to follow through. But the first Bush saw what follow-through would entail and did not start down that path. These guys did so and then surrendered the position.
In my view, history will show that this president never seriously prosecuted this war, never took his responsibility seriously, never provided sufficient resources, never even gave it his full attention. That became clear to me in 2003. I didn't get it beforehand because I just assumed that any American president would understand the gravity of the decisions he was taking and would ensure that he took all means to guarantee victory. But this president didn't. He ran this war like a distracted frat boy, irritated by the distractions it required, and outsourced its execution to two unhinged aides. In other words: he wimped out. Bill Kristol has the gall to call critics of the surge "boneless wonders.' But there is only one truly boneless wonder these past four years, and he is still sitting in the White House.
(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)
Debating Sam
18 Jan 2007 10:00 am
Another reader comments:
After reading your opening exchange with Sam Harris, I bumped into this Chesterton quote I thought you'd enjoy:
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The View From Your Window
17 Jan 2007 10:19 pm
Rochester Hills, Michigan, today.
Yglesias Award Nominee
17 Jan 2007 08:46 pm
"Bush too has tried to straddle the liberal-conservative divide, but he has wound up doing for the image of conservatism roughly what the movie 'Deliverance' did for the image of Southern hospitality. (I just watched the film again and kept thinking, 'This is a real Red state!')" - far right commentator, Joe Sobran.
Point And Laugh
17 Jan 2007 08:21 pm
Just in case this blog isn't gay enough, a friend emails me the following pearls of wisdom from Hollywood Squares' Paul Lynde. Hey, there's a war on, and it helps to laugh now and again:
Q. Do female frogs croak?
A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.Q. Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps.
One is politics, what is the other?
A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures.Q. When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?
A. Paul Lynde: Make him bark?Q. If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
A. Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?
A. Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.Q. Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
A. Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh.
The Bush Implosion
17 Jan 2007 07:59 pm
A welcome nod to constitutional democratic principles by the Bush administration today. The Schmittian conservatives are, naturally, appalled.
Exposed
17 Jan 2007 07:32 pm
The bigotry and hatred being perpetrated by some Saudi-funded radical Muslims in Britain is slowly being exposed by the British media. Here's a first installment of a documentary from UK's Channel 4. It's enlightening and terrifying. These people are religious fascists; and they form a clear and present danger to our freedoms. You can watch the other installments here.
One of the chief mullahs defends himself here.
Debating Sam
17 Jan 2007 07:27 pm
A reader butts in:
I agree with you that the views in Sam Harris's book(s) are important because they are on people's minds and must be said without bullshit, but we also must ask whether his extreme views of the world's major religions are truly representative of those religions before we can argue with him about why faith isn't null. If all he wants to say is that religion is unnecessary because we have science, and that religion cannot co-exist with science (which is an odd claim considering that many of the great scientists of the West were passionately religious) then please proceed with the discussion, I'm interested in the debate.
If he wants to argue that religion is dangerous because religions like Islam are inherently violent and isolating, well then he'd have to at least answer to the facts that the Quran makes clear that one must not be the aggressor, but rather one must only fight those who attack or oppress one; and that Islam accepts Jews and Christians as people of the book - that the Quran is said not to be the one true word of God, but the Final Revelation from God to mankind - including Jewish texts, Christian texts, and their Prophets, as earlier Revelations from God.
On my current reading list are Vali Nasr's "The Shia Revival," and Reza Aslan's "No god but God." I am convinced there is a future for a humble Christianity; but in all truth, I do not know enough to make a serious, similar argument about Islam. Hence my attempt to understand more.
The Right In Europe
17 Jan 2007 06:39 pm
They're reaching out to Jews. Are the gays next?
From Iraq
17 Jan 2007 06:36 pm
Michelle Malkin writes:
Modern war in the Middle East is no longer as cut-and-dried as shooting all the bad guys and going home. We are fighting a "war of the fleas" - not just Sunni terrorists and Shiite death squads, but multiple home-grown and foreign operators, street gangs, organized crime and freelance jihadis conducting ambushes, extrajudicial killings, sectarian attacks, vehicle bombings and sabotage against American, coalition and Iraqi forces. Cell phones, satellites and the Internet have allowed the fleas to magnify their importance, disseminate insurgent propaganda instantly and weaken political will.
I came to Iraq a darkening pessimist about the war, due in large part to my doubts about the compatibility of Islam and Western-style democracy, but also as a result of the steady, sensational diet of "grim milestone" and "daily IED count" media coverage that aids the insurgency.
I left Iraq with unexpected hope and resolve.
It's good to see a voice on the far right actually acknowledging that this war cannot be won by sheer force alone. Malkin's admiration for the troops is clear and shared by all of us. She does not engage in shilling or posturing in this column. She's actually concerned that we succeed. But when you read her piece, and weigh the evidence of potential success and the evidence of grotesque failure that she provides, you may not come away with as much hope and resolve as she did. I sure didn't.
An Unjust War III
17 Jan 2007 04:21 pm
The Catholic magazine Commonweal ran a long and scholarly article on the justness of the Iraq war here.
Stimson Apologizes
17 Jan 2007 03:38 pm
What he said on the radio doesn't reflect his "core beliefs".
An Unjust War II
17 Jan 2007 03:03 pm
One moral aspect of the Iraq war that seems to me to have been under-estimated is the ultimate, moral responsibility of the United States for the thousands of civilian Iraqis murdered under U.S. occupation. Yes, obviously, the vast majority of these deaths were not at the hands of U.S. forces. Yes, obviously, Iraqis - Sunni and Shia - bear responsibility to some extent. But the laws of warfare - the moral guidelines for just warfare - insist that an invading and occupying army is responsible for the basic security of the population under its care. We broke it; we own it. The violence that has taken so many did not happen immediately. It grew slowly, with forewarning. It took off after the bombing of the Samarra mosque last February. All of it was foretold; and many urged passionately for more troops to maintain order from 2003 onward. The president and his war-criminal of a defense secretary heeded not a word. They sent no more troops. They allowed one of the most brutal civil wars in modern history to gather pace under America's watch. The blood of 34,000 Iraqi civilians last year therefore finds its way onto the hands of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. By refusing to fight a serious war, to commit enough troops for security, and to adjust as circumstances shifted, they let these innocent people die by the thousands, and they have abandoned those who risked their lives for us to scenes from Hieronymus Bosch.
The damage the conduct of this war has done to America strategically is profound. But to my mind, by far the deepest damage has been to the idea of America, to the decency of America, and its reputation for responsibility in world affairs. From authorizing torture to the acquiescence in mass murder, this president has stained the honor of this country and the West. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said days after the invasion, as the chaos first emerged. Wrong. In a country with a serious government or occupying power, stuff doesn't happen. And it is a total abdication of morality and responsibility to say it does.
(Photo: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.)
Debating Sam I Am
17 Jan 2007 02:36 pm
Today, I'm responding to the first post in a blogalogue with Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith" and, most recently, "Letter To A Christian Nation." You can read his opening joust here. Money quote:
Given my view of faith, I think that religious "moderation" is basically an elaborate exercise in self-deception, while you seem to think it is a legitimate and intellectually defensible alternative to fundamentalism.
Read the rest here. My response:
Dear Sam,
First off, same back at you. I found your book, "The End of Faith" to be an intellectual tonic, even when I strongly disagreed with it. It said things that needed to be said - not least because many people were already thinking them - and it said them without cant or bullshit. I was and am grateful for that. And I wrote the religious passages of my own book, "The Conservative Soul," with some of your arguments in mind.
We agree that Islamic fundamentalism is by far the gravest threat in this respect (because of its confort with violence); and that the core feature of what occurred on 9/11 was not cultural, political, or economic - but religious. We agree that a large part of the murder and mayhem in today's Iraq is also rooted in religious difference, specifically the ancient rift between Sunni and Shia. We also agree, I think, that the degeneration of American Christianity into the crudest forms of Biblical inerrantism, emotional hysteria and cultural paranoia is a lamentable development. But we differ, I think, on why we find these developments discouraging.
The reason I find fundamentalism so troubling - whether it is Christian, Jewish or Muslim - is not just its willingness to use violence (in the Islamist manifestation). It is its inability to integrate doubt into faith, its resistance to human reason, its tendency to pride and exclusion, and its inability to accept mystery as the core reality of any religious life. You find it troubling, I think, purely because it upholds truths that cannot be proved empirically or even, in some respects, logically. In that sense, of course, I think you have no reason to dislike or oppose it any more than you would oppose my kind of faith. Your argument allows for no solid distinctions within faiths; my argument depends on such distinctions.
I'm struck, in other words, by the difference between Christianity as it can be and Christianity as it is expressed by fundamentalists. You are struck by the similarity between my doubt-filled, sacramental, faith-in-forgiveness and fundamentalism. We Christians are all as nutty as one another, I think you'd say. And my prettifying up religion as something not-so-crazy or unreasonable therefore may be more irritating to you than even the profundities of Rick Warren or Monsignor Escriva. At least, that's where I predict you will aim your next rhetorical fire. I'm braced.
Here's the nub, I think. You write:
I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not.
Agreed. As the Pope said last year, I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth. So I am perfectly happy to believe in evolution, for example, as the most powerful theory yet devised explaining human history and pre-history. I have no fear of what science will tell us about the universe - since God is definitionally the Creator of such a universe; and the meaning of the universe cannot be in conflict with its Creator. I do not, in other words, see reason as somehow in conflict with faith - since both are reconciled by a Truth that may yet be beyond our understanding.
But just because that Truth may be beyond our human understanding does not mean it is therefore in a