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Saturday, February 3, 2007
AEI's Solicitation Letter
03 Feb 2007 10:58 pm
The full text can be read here. I see nothing wrong with it.
The Muslim Civil War
03 Feb 2007 10:51 pm
It's now in America. Money quote:
"The Shiites were very happy that they killed Saddam, but the Sunnis were in tears," Aqeel Al-Tamimi, 34, an immigrant Iraqi truck driver and a Shiite, said as he ate roasted chicken and flatbread at Al-Akashi restaurant, one of the establishments damaged over the city line in Detroit. "These people look at us like we sold our country to America."
The response to this should not be to throw out hands up in despair but to figure out how we can exploit these rifts in the Middle East to protect and defend the interests of the West and of secular-minded Arabs.
Bye Bye
03 Feb 2007 10:05 pm
Stimson resigns.
Real Climate on IPCC
03 Feb 2007 09:43 pm
A helpful and sane analysis:
Contrarians will no doubt be disappointed here. The conclusions have been significantly strengthened relative to what was in the TAR, something that of course should have been expected given the numerous additional studies that have since been done that all point in the same direction. The conclusion that large-scale recent warmth likely exceeds the range seen in past centuries has been extended from the past 1000 years in the TAR, to the past 1300 years in the current report, and the confidence in this conclusion has been upped from "likely" in the TAR to "very likely" in the current report for the past half millennium. This is just one of the many independent lines of evidence now pointing towards a clear anthropogenic influence on climate, but given all of the others, the paleoclimate reconstructions are now even less the central pillar of evidence for the human influence on climate than they have been incorrectly portrayed to be.
The uncertainties in the science mainly involve the precise nature of the changes to be expected, particularly with respect to sea level rise, El Niño changes and regional hydrological change - drought frequency and snow pack melt, mid-latitude storms, and of course, hurricanes. It can be fun parsing the discussions on these topics (and we expect there will be substantial press comment on them), but that shouldn't distract from the main and far more solid conclusions above.
I've long been an advocate of empirically-based, market-friendly policies that ensure we do not damage the sacred inheritance of our planet. I wrote one of the first pamphlets arguing that conservatism and environmentalism are not just compatible but intertwined. It was for Margaret Thatcher in 1985 - and she promptly ignored all of it. I have long had an open mind on climate change, but an open mind now means, it seems to me, a clear, empirical conclusion. Climate change is happening, it is almost certainly man-made, although some doubt persists as to quite how deep and swift the change will be. I write this not as a statement of dogma but as a statement of the best inference from the data we now have. This is not - or should not be - a right-vs-left issue. It's a fact vs fantasy issue. Right now, the fantasists are those saying we have nothing to worry about. We do. The question is merely how best to adapt. A big increase in taxes on carbon is the obvious starting point. Once government sets incentives, the amazing ingenuity of the American marketplace will do the rest.
Christianists vs Romney
03 Feb 2007 08:29 pm
The latest spat. Has he been lying?
Equal Opportunity Tennis Slo-Mo
03 Feb 2007 07:27 pm
For my straight male and lesbian readers, a Fed-lech alternative:
Congrats, Theocons
03 Feb 2007 06:43 pm
In Michigan, the full impact of the state amendment barring any legal protections for gay couples is beginning to be felt. You may recall that the anti-gay marriage forces insisted that they only intended to ban marriage as such, and that domestic partnerships or civil unions would be unaffected. They lied - and they are still lying. In Michigan, where the theocons celebrated victory in 2004, the state court of appeals has just ruled that government employees or employees at public universities have no right to any domestic partnership benefits, including healthcare. Money quote:
"The marriage amendment's plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court said.
Remember this when you're told that the intent of identically worded amendments would leave domestic partnerships untouched. I wonder how many straight marriages now feel more secure knowing that some gay spouse has just lost healthcare benefits.
America Before Bush
03 Feb 2007 05:01 pm
A reader reads a revealing extract from my new colleague Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah." It's set in 1979:
Sheikh-ol-eslam also had one more session with Tom Ahern. The CIA station chief was led into a room where his old interrogator was seated alone behind a desk. Stretched across the desk was a long piece of cord.
...The best [Ahern] could figure, Sheik-ol-eslam was going to use [the cord] on him again. Instead, Sheik-ol-eslam started explaining that the beatings Ahern had received were really not indicative of his own values or those of Islam.
"As a token of my sincerity in this, I invite you to use this rope to do to me what I did to you."
Ahern looked at the rope and then at Sheik-ol-eslam.
"We don't do stuff like that," he said.
Those were the days.
The View From Your Window
03 Feb 2007 03:55 pm
Williamsburg, Virginia, 2.19 pm.
Federer The Great
03 Feb 2007 02:23 pm
A reader counters:
Your previous emailer who tried to minimize Federer's dominance is missing the point entirely. Quite the contrary to what he claims, Federer's amazing accomplishments are all the more amazing because of the fact that he doesn't have a real rival. And the reason he lacks a rival? Because Federer is so far superior to the rest of the current crop of players that none can emerge. How that complete dominance can be construed as a negative against him is utterly ridiculous. Should Federer purposely lose several majors to the same player, in order to provide himself with a rival, thus putting him in the same league as the other greats?
You could easily say the same about Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. Both, at one point, became so completely dominant in their sport that they had (or have) no real rivalry. The gap between 1st and 2nd was so massive that neither ever gave another player an opportunity to become a rival, because a rivalry requires a measure of equality. Does that diminish Michael Jordan and mean he's not the greatest basketball player of all time, because he didn't have a Bird to his Magic or a Wilt to his Russell? Of course not. It was further proof of how great he was.
What your emailer is arguing is not about the greatness of individual players, but the greatness and entertainment value of eras. Of course you can argue that the Borg/McEnroe/Connors era was superior to the current one in terms of entertainment. Or that the Lendl/Becker/Edberg era or the Agassi/Sampras era were better for the game of tennis because of the rivalries. They were more exciting precisely because no single player dominated and there was always a good chance of one of the rivals beating the other. Seeing the same player win major after major in dominating fashion may not be exciting, but to claim that it diminishes that player's accomplishment or reputation is foolish.
Here's a YouTube of one of the greatest rallies of the modern era: 45 shots between Federer and Hewitt.
In Defense of AEI
03 Feb 2007 12:55 pm
Chris DeMuth has produced an internal email dealing with the Guardian's smear-job. Here's a pertinent extract:
AEI has published a large volume of books and papers on climate change issues over the past decade and has held numerous conferences on the subject. A wide range of views on the scientific and policy issues have been presented in these publications and conferences. All of them are posted on our website. Our latest book on the subject, Lee Lane's Strategic Options for Bush Administration Climate Policy, advocates a carbon tax, which I’m pretty sure ExxonMobil opposes (the book also dares to criticize some of the Bush administration's climate-change policies!).
Second, attempting to disentangle science from politics on the question of climate change causation, and to fashion policies that take account of the uncertainties concerning causation, are longstanding AEI interests. The new research project that Ken and Steve Hayward have been organizing is a continuation of these interests. I am attaching the two letters that Steve and Ken have sent out to climate change scientists and policy experts (the first one emphasizing the scientific and climate-modeling issues addressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the second, more recent one covering broader policy issues as well)—and invite you to read them and compare them with the characterization in the Guardian article. The first letter, sent last summer to Professor Steve Schroeder of Texas A&M (and also to his colleague Gerald North), is the one quoted by the Guardian. Ken and Steve canvassed scholars with a range of views on the scientific and policy issues, with an eye to the intrinsic quality and interest of their work rather than to whether partisans might characterize them as climate change 'skeptics' or 'advocates.' They certainly did not avoid those with a favorable view of the IPCC reports — such as Professor Schroeder himself.
Third, what the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI — and Brookings, Harvard, and the University of Manchester — to pay individuals at other research institutions for commissioned work, and to cover their travel expenses when they come to the sponsoring institution to present their papers. The levels of authors' honoraria vary from case to case, but a $10,000 fee for a research project involving the review of a large amount of dense scientific material, and the synthesis of that material into an original, footnoted and rigorous article is hardly exorbitant or unusual; many academics would call it modest.
Memo To Mary
03 Feb 2007 09:45 am
Dan Savage has a very well-expressed riposte to Mary Cheney's latest attempt to duck moral responsibility for her acquiescence to anti-gay bigotry among Republicans. Check it out.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Responding to Sam
02 Feb 2007 10:33 pm
Apologies for the delay. Moving to the Atlantic means mastering a whole new set of tools for blogging, let alone emails, administrative necessities, and the actual process of moving. I'll post the next epistle Monday - the first post at the Atlantic.com. It's been a hectic week. Meanwhile, the entire blogalogue can be read here.
Camille on Foucault
02 Feb 2007 10:13 pm
Foucault-worship is an example of what I call the Big Daddy syndrome: Secular humanists, who have drifted from their religious and ethnic roots, have created a new Jehovah out of string and wax. Again and again -- in memoirs, for example, by trendy but pedestrian uber-academics like Harvard's Stephen Greenblatt and Brown's Robert Scholes -- one sees the scenario of Melancholy, Bookish, Passive, Insecure Young Nebbish suddenly electrified and transfigured by the Grand Epiphany of Blindingly Brilliant Foucault. This sappy psychodrama would be comic except for the fact that American students forced to read Foucault have been defrauded of a genuine education in intellectual history and political analysis (a disciplined genre that starts with Thucydides and flows directly to the best of today's journalism on current events).
American students, forget Foucault! Reverently study the massive primary evidence of world history, and forge your own ideas and systems. Poststructuralism is a corpse. Let it stink in the Parisian trash pit where it belongs!
Angelou Again
02 Feb 2007 09:21 pm
Yes, I know what truculence means, thank you very much. What I don't understand is how it makes grammatical sense in the sentence Angelou wrote. I think she meant the walls' truculent refusal to fall down. But as written, the sentence is ungrammatical. I can forgive the Washington Post's editors allowing Angelou's pretentiousness, self-righteousness and lame, exhausted metaphors into their paper. (Joshua? Please.) But I draw the line at patently bad grammar.
AEI's Gambit
02 Feb 2007 08:38 pm
A reader dissents:
You're being a little naive if you think that AEI's goal is truly to inspire a real debate about the veracity of claims about man-made climate change. This is right out of the theocon playbook on evolution. The goal is not to have a real debate, because a real debate is something you can (and in both cases, when talking about scientific evidence, will) lose. The goal is simply to muddy the waters, try and get the media to portray climate change as a 'he said, he said' kind of issue. The fact is, there are a lot of scientists. You will find contrarians to any position imaginable. For an ideologically-inspired organization to cherry-pick a few who are willing to say what they want to hear (especially for a fee!!) and publish those reports, instead of those scientists having to go through the peer-review process, reduces the scientific rigor of the debate.
Many people don't have the time or interest to sift through the actual evidence, so they'll see one story that says yes, and another that says no, and throw up their hands and say 'oh well, whatever, who can know?' That has real-life consequences. So work like this really has a disproportionate effect, in the sense that 5 scientists who say 'man doesn't cause climate change' and are funded by oil companies can counteract the effect of hundreds or thousands of scientists who say 'man does cause climate change', but operate through the usual, scientifically-accepted channels. That's why shenanigans like this have to be see the light of day, so at least everyone knows who's pushing the pieces around.
From Baghdad
02 Feb 2007 07:51 pm
Here's a quote worth reading:
"All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they'll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It'll be called the 'Day of Death' or something like that," said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "They say, 'Wait, and we will be victorious.' That's what they preach. And it will be their victory."
Now go read Victor Davis Hanson's latest partisan screed against the Democrats. If the Republicans had spent half the effort they have devoted to domestic partisanship to winning the war in Iraq, we may not be in the morass we are today.
Can Maya Angelou Write?
02 Feb 2007 07:34 pm
What on earth does this sentence mean:
The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed against valiantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to do so does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.
"Truculence" to do so? Does she mean reluctance? Or is there some other meaning to truculence that I'm unaware of?
Walking With Obama
02 Feb 2007 07:34 pm
Mike Allen reports:
"I introduced myself and said, 'Good evening, Senator, may I walk with you?' He replied, 'You can walk with me. That doesn't mean you can ask questions.' I chuckled, thinking he was kidding. 'But you can certainly walk with me,' he added. The Senator then underscored, 'I'm sorry. I'm not answering questions.' The encounter pointed to some of the unusual dynamics of the '08 ...
More here.
Hewitt's Conservatism of Doubt
02 Feb 2007 07:11 pm
He's been reading Ben Franklin about the vital importance of doubt:
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.
Next up: try some Hume, Hugh. Or even Burke. At some point in the future, you might even become a conservative.
Gays in the Military
02 Feb 2007 06:39 pm
The American public is much more mature about this than the Congress or the president.
Friday YouTube
02 Feb 2007 06:09 pm
In honor of Sarah Silverman:
(Hat tip: Michael.)
Angelou
02 Feb 2007 05:59 pm
Some of you have written to let me know the meaning of the word truculence. Thanks, but I am well aware of its meaning. I am also aware of basic grammar. Angelou's sentence makes no grammatical sense. Walls cannot have a "truculence to do" anything. If someone sent this sentence in unsolicited, the editors at the Washington Post would have sent it back, asking for it to be re-written in English. But it's Maya Angelou and so they printed it. Leave aside the self-righteous pretentiousness and the exhausted metaphor. The piece is laughably bad.
A Dissent On Federer
02 Feb 2007 05:35 pm
A reader writes:
Federer is a great player. But to put him up against the greatest of all time, or even our lifetimes (yours being somewhat longer than mine) means we have to put him above Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, Borg, Becker, McEnroe, Connors and Laver. Why does this not sit well with me? All of those men had real rivalries with other players. As Borg brought the game to new heights, McEnroe came along to challenge him. Agassi did the same for Sampras. With no one to challenge Federer it's irrelevant whether he's just better than the field or he's pushed the game too far too fast. In either case, with no one to challenge him, it's less meaningful when he wins every tournament. We don't even start on the abundance of hard court tournaments which have made his somewhat-less-impressive work on clay so much less of a liability.
The ones we should all be excited about are Gonzalez (whose played definitively better tennis than Federer before their Final match-up) and that scrawny, odd, brilliant young Scot, Andy Murray.
I'm all for scrawny, brilliant Scots. And I may be suffering from a syndrome known to straight guys as Kournikova-blinders. But Federer is mesmerizing.
Saving Foucault
02 Feb 2007 04:42 pm
Like a lot of serious thinkers - Sigmund Freud and Leo Strauss spring to mind - Michel Foucault has not been well-served by his acolytes in the American academy. I find him an alternately repellent and compelling writer, on those few occasions when I think I have properly understood him. But he is not, pace Stanley Kurtz, a simple pomo lefty. In the last years of his life, he began to appreciate the achievement of classical liberalism. In an email exchange yesterday, I asked a Foucault scholar if my impression was correct. He responded:
Absolutely. He was interested in a Classical Greek aesthetics of the self and a positive view of civil society and the market economy. "History of Sexuality" emphasizes the Hellenistic ethics in an account of sexuality which is both liberatory and questioning of
myths of repression and liberation. "Society Must be Defended" establishes a distinction between an absolutist modern state and a state which is limited by laws and civil society. Foucault was always critical of power, early on there was a Marxist element to that, but in the texts I mention above and others, he came to see Classical Liberal themes as the antidote to power. For example he emphasised the role French Physiocrats had as an antidote to mercantilist absolutism, and similarly the role of Odo group free market economists in Germany as a centre of intellectual resistance to Nazism.
His politics kept evolving even as his theory came closer to Classical Liberalism. A turning point seems to have been the Iranian revolution when he initially supported the revolution because Shia clerics he met convinced him their goals were spiritual rather than concerned with state power. He couldn't avoid noticing the extreme abuse of human rights though and from that point on did not seek an alternative to what we could call Classical Liberalism, though his understanding was a very specific mix of participation in and observation of resistance to power and discrimination (including gay rights), the study of Hellenistic individualism, and a detailed study of the different ways power has operated in the modern world.
And he spelled his first name Michel.
Bookmark Now
02 Feb 2007 03:58 pm
The blog is in the process of being moved. It happens gradually, although the "hard" switch-over will happen over the weekend. If you want to ensure you can find it, bookmark the URL www.andrewsullivan.com. That will automatically redirect you to the new site at the Atlantic. A brief thanks to Adam Embick at Time and all the tech staff at the Atlantic for their help. Monday morning, the new site will be up and running (knock on wood).
Krauthammer: Half-Right
02 Feb 2007 03:58 pm
I confidently predict that the following phrase will become the new neoconservative mantra on Iraq:
We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.
And the truth is: it isn't untrue. Blaming the U.S. entirely for the deep ethnic divides and profound sectarian hatreds in Iraq is preposterous. But speaking of the civil war in Iraq as if the Bush administration had nothing to do with it is equally preposterous. Even the most optimistic of pro-war thinkers were aware of the potential for sectarian warfare once Saddam had been deposed. I remember writing for a long time after the invasion that we should be happy that the most likely thing had not yet happened: a civil war. So we knew it was a risk; and we knew we had to act quickly to prevent it. We didn't. As the insurgency took shape, Dick Cheney was more interested in smearing Joe Wilson than in preventing an incipient civil war. Moreover, the invading army has a moral responsibility to maintain order. What Charles ignores is how complete anarchy is the oxygen necessary for civil war to spark into a conflagration. When there is no central authority, people immediately seek security from their family, tribe or faith-community. By refusing to send enough troops to maintain order, the Bush administration provided the timber, fuel and context for a sectarian fire. No, they didn't strike the match. But their negligence gave Zarqawi his opening. And he took advantage of it. Zarqawi won this war - because Bush was too clueless and arrogant to win it (and Bush didn't kill Zarqawi when he had a clear chance).
Recall also how patient the Shia in Iraq were for so long. Constantly goaded by Sunni terrorists and al Qaeda, they tolerated attacks for three years before snapping around a year ago, after the Samarra mosque bombing. So sorry, Charles. If you think you can get the Bush administration off the hook for the past four years and blame everything on Arab pathologies, you're dreaming.
Anti-Blog Hysteria
02 Feb 2007 03:26 pm
It's all the rage in state legislatures, apparently.
AEI's Crime?
02 Feb 2007 03:02 pm
Sorry but I don't get it. There is nothing inherently wrong with a think-tank using its corporate dollars to finance research projects whose results might benefit such companies. The key is transparency and accountability. I don't see any evidence that AEI sent out letters secretly seeking contrary studies to the IPCC report on climate change. So what's the scandal? Listen to this hysteric:
"It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.
He sounds like a member of the curia, not a scientist. There's something creepy about the notion that a scientific report must not be subject to scientific criticism, regardless of how it's funded. If the studies are flawed, attack the studies. It is as if climate change has become a doctrine to be defended rather than a hypothesis to be debated. I should add I find much of the evidence for man-made, carbon-based global warming to be extremely convincing. Maybe that's why I'm completely unfazed by the idea of studies being commissioned to question it. Let the studies be debated on their scientific merits. And if the skeptical papers don't persuade, why wouldn't the climate-change alarmists be pleased?
"Gaysted"
02 Feb 2007 02:32 pm
A word.
The View From Your Window
02 Feb 2007 02:11 pm
Belfast, Maine, 7 am.
Are the Aspens Turning?
02 Feb 2007 01:30 pm
I still feel this is among the more intriguing scribbles I have read in a long time:
More here. One recalls this other extract from a letter Libby wrote to Judy Miller:
"It is fall now ... Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."
We may soon find out how connected they actually are.
Project Memo
02 Feb 2007 12:15 pm
Tim Gunn makes it work.
Riedl vs Yglesias
02 Feb 2007 12:13 pm
The Economist weighs in on a debate I helped spawn.
Headline of the Day
02 Feb 2007 11:48 am
Here it is, in all its glory:
Gaza Strip cease-fire short-lived.
Surprise! Observing the chaotic, barbaric and shambolic politics of the Palestinians is perhaps a useful lesson when considering Iraq. Over the years, I have been persuaded by many neoconservative arguments about the futility of Israel trying to negotiate with the Palestinians. The notion that the Palestinian leadership would ever agree to a compromise with Israel, let alone live up to any agreement, was disproved again and again and again. There is not even a pretense any more of any Arab entity desiring to actually govern the Palestinian territories, when they could be fought over, which is where the energy always seems to lie. If you didn't believe this gloomy analysis in the past, the fate of the Oslo Accords surely proved it. If Clinton couldn't get Arafat to sign off on a completely reasonable and viable deal, then I concluded it wasn't worth trying.
But here's the thing: the same neocons who persuaded me that Arab culture was simply impossible when it came to the Palestinians were the same ones who reassured me that Iraq would become a democracy easily, that sectarian divisions were not that deep, that not all Arab societies are politically dysfunctional, and so on. So which is it? Are the Arabs just desperate for democracy? Or are they doomed never to experience or even want it? I wish they'd make up their minds.
The Boston Hoax
02 Feb 2007 10:20 am
A triumph of capitalism? Professor Bainbridge thinks so. Money quote:
These two yahoos look exactly like the sort of neo-hippie/anarchists that trashed Seattle back in 1999 and still engage in various forms of counter-culture street theater to this day. Yet, these guys do so not to advance a cause, but to make money advertising a stupid cartoon show on behalf of a major media corporation. The message these two thus are sending to all their counter-culture buddies on behalf of capitalist corporations is: "resistance is futile." As such, in an odd way, these guys validate my life's work: They confirm that corporations rule the world and are therefore a worthy subject of study.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
The Beauty of Federer
01 Feb 2007 11:58 pm
Is this the greatest tennis player of our lifetimes? Here he is - in balletic slow-mo:
The Genius of Altman
01 Feb 2007 09:30 pm
Succinctly explained:
Is no one going to say that Robert Altman was a great pothead? Let me, then. Robert Altman was a great pothead. In the war on drugs, he won. To look at his work without thinking about marijuana’s specific gifts and poisons ... umm ... specific ... What was I saying? Oh. Right. Altman. Robert Altman. I met him, did I tell you that already?
South Dakota's New, Improved Abortion Ban
01 Feb 2007 08:31 pm
They lost the vote the first time for a blanket ban and so they've mellowed out a little on the rape and incest issues:
The "Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act" would allow rape victims to have abortions if they report the crime to police within 50 days. Doctors would be required to confirm the report with authorities.
In cases of incest, a doctor would need to obtain the woman's consent to report the crime - along with the identity of the alleged perpetrator - before an abortion could be performed. The physician would also have to inform the mother that counseling is available and give her the address of the nearest Social Services office.
Not-So-Amateur
01 Feb 2007 07:52 pm
The point holds about amateur YouTubes' capacity to impact this election cycle. But the clip I cited was by a solid professional, Robert Greenwald. I suspect that many professionals might want to get in on the act - but a proliferation of cheap and easy attack ads online might cut into some political consultants' fat checks. Here's hoping anyway.
Women and the Hispanic Caucus
01 Feb 2007 07:25 pm
Loretta Sanchez isn't the only one to notice sexism.
Michele Foucault?
01 Feb 2007 07:10 pm
One misspelling would mean a typo. But Stanley Kurtz twice refers to Foucault as Michele. Is Stanley unconsciously projecting a feminine gender onto a gay man? Has he read Foucault? Let's hope it's just a typo. I've had a few myself lately.
Pork Watch
01 Feb 2007 07:03 pm
Another monstrosity - from John Thune.
We're Training The Enemy
01 Feb 2007 06:29 pm
Another sign of the increasingly chaotic context of the war in Iraq: the instigators of one of the bloodiest and most daring attacks on American troops may hold senior positions in the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Army:
At least one of the Iraqi generals under suspicion for involvement or having advance word of the attack is said to be an intelligence officer, according to U.S. officials. If that's proven to be the case, the involvement of Iraqi generals in an attack on American forces raises questions about the loyalty and trustworthiness of Iraqi military officers at the highest levels.
I fear we are both training and arming one side in a civil war, while also attempting to police it. It's complete insanity as a strategy.
Keynes on Burke
01 Feb 2007 06:18 pm
"Burke ever held, and held rightly that it can seldom be right … to sacrifice a present benefit for a 
doubtful advantage in the future ... It is not wise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal. It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very weary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appear…
We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking…
There is this further consideration that is often in need of emphasis: it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition," - John Maynard Keynes, Burke's Timidity on Embarking on War (unpublished manuscript, ca. 1906) quoted in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed (vol. 1).
(Thanks to a reader.)
Neocons and Gays
01 Feb 2007 05:49 pm
Neoconservatives have often failed to disguise their disdain for gay people. Think of the last time an openly gay person wrote for the Weekly Standard. I wasn't aware of this quote from Irving Kristol, from twenty years ago, arguing that mere advocacy of gay rights need not be subject to First Amendment protections:
"I don't think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does."
I wonder if he feels the same way today. And if he doesn't, I wonder why he has changed his mind.
On Gitmo's Walls
01 Feb 2007 05:38 pm
According to an Australian detained at Gitmo, the intimidation did not end in the interrogation cells:
Hicks was said to be stunned to see the large photographic display on a wall facing the exercise cells. He asked another detainee to translate the Arabic message on the posters and was told it said: "Because Saddam chose not to co-operate and not tell the truth, because he thought by lying he would get released, for that reason he was executed."
Subtle, huh?
Black Velvet Republicans
01 Feb 2007 05:04 pm
A movement finds its artform. (The artist is Jorge Terrones.)
(Yes, I know Zell Miller is not a Republican. He's a Dixiecrat with a passion for shooting things and a blind eye for torture. Which, in 2006, means he's a Republican.)
Catholics and Adoption
01 Feb 2007 04:33 pm
A reader writes:
I think you're still missing the point on the regulation of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK.
The question isn't, "Where do they get their funding?" - it's "Where did they get the babies?" Presumably the stork didn't drop them off at the convent. (And if that's what the nuns are claiming, then the matter needs to be investigated further.) None of these kids was born under the legal guardianship of the Church or its agencies. That guardianship is presumably assigned by British law on the theory that Catholic charities (among others) will do a good job of looking after the children's best interests. But if the charities turn down potential adoptive parents on spurious grounds, they aren't doing that.
The issue is how spurious the grounds are. They are spurious by any objective measure of parenting skills; but the Church has a right to uphold bigotry as part of its theology. In fact, it's almost obsessed with doing so - at the expense of its deeper, moral obligations. The state can and should withdraw support for such bigotry, but the Church still has a right, in my view, to maintain its stance of stigmatization and discrimination against homosexuals.
Sadr's Gambit
01 Feb 2007 04:07 pm
The Mahdi Army is not surrendering in terror, as Instapundit ludicrously implies. They're calculating and waiting. From the Washington Post today:
Sadr's followers say publicly that they embrace the new Baghdad security plan and are willing to support the Iraqi government's efforts to impose the rule of law in this chaotic city. But some Iraqi and U.S. officials said they are concerned that the stance is a pose and that Shiite militias intend to lie low only until U.S. forces withdraw.
"There's absolutely no reason to believe that these groups have changed their tune in any significant way" since the 2004 battles, said a U.S. official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity. "You could make an argument that there's just a level of exhaustion that's set in, but I find that not believable."
A more likely scenario is that the militia leaders believe they can "win the whole thing" if they are not too damaged by the time the United States withdraws, the official said ...
Maliki is aware of concerns that the militias may be biding their time rather than sincerely taking peaceful steps, his aide said. "This is a classic insurgency tactic, to hide when the troops are around and then reappear when the troops are gone," the aide said. "This is very much understood by the government and by the prime minister, and measures are being taken to make it a failure."
Those measures are not, however, specified. Hmmm.
Zbig Lowers The Boom
01 Feb 2007 03:00 pm
Here is the text delivered by Zbigniew Brzezinski to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning:
It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:
1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.
2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
What's Happened To Bush
01 Feb 2007 02:23 pm
A reader says it's really simple:
He is just an ordinary man of average, intelligence, not there's anything wrong with that. He doesn't have a lot of interests. He's not very deep. He doesn't worry or ponder too much about life. He is sort of a simple guy, not that there's anything wrong with that. Now, he is at the center of high pressure, high stakes, power politics. He controls trillions of dollars; he is waging a complicated war that is not going well, which was planned and orchestrated on lies, which he must justify and explain. Now, it is all coming undone. The spotlight is on him. He must speak. He must think. He must lead. It is very difficult for him. Sometimes, I feel pangs of hate for him, for what he is doing for our country. Other times, I think, "poor guy." That's what's wrong with him.
The View From Your Window
01 Feb 2007 01:32 pm
Mexico City, Mexico, 6.10 pm.
Another Bush
01 Feb 2007 01:13 pm
The contrast between his linguistic bumbling today and his verbal facility and acumen ten years' ago is somewhat mystifying. I don't buy the "pre-senile dementia" theory. Is he exhausted? Have five years of war worn him down? Or has he decided that obfuscation is a better strategy than clarity? Anyway, here are some clips. They contrast the earlier best with the current worst. But the contrast is a little too great to be dismissed as a function of clever editing.
Contextual Libertarianism
01 Feb 2007 10:55 am
Some readers have objected to my post yesterday. They argue that the Catholic adoption agencies in Britain receive government money, and if they do, it is not a denial of religious liberty for the government to attach conditions to that money. I'm not completely clear on the precise financing of Catholic adoption charities in Britain, but if that's the case, it does indeed change the dynamic. It's the same issue as the Boy Scouts. I'm all for their right as a private association to discriminate against gays, but not if they are the recipient of government aid and privilege. The always-insightful Arthur Silber had a very good treatment of this issue on his blog a couple of years back which a reader pointed me toward. Enjoy.
The Death Throes of Conservatism
01 Feb 2007 09:25 am
Glenn Greenwald has written a lengthy review of my book. I'm grateful for it and share his amazement that Rich Lowry can actually say the following with a straight face:
In recent years, we have watched a Republican Congress disgrace itself with its association with scandal, with its willful lack of fiscal discipline, and with its utter disinterest [sic] in the reforms that America needs. And at the same time, we watched a Republican President abet or passively accept the excesses of his Congressional party and, more importantly, fail to take the steps - until perhaps now - fail to take the steps to win a major foreign war ...
So we need to figure out a way how to make conservative policy and principles appealing and relevant again to the American public, and we need to do it together.
What you mean "we"? Doubtless, Lowry will be able to scour his own writings and magazine to find some evidence of his 
own token opposition to Bush's attack on conservatism and mismanagement of a vital war over the past four years. But the record is also clear that Lowry never faltered in backing this president and the current Republican party whenever it mattered - long after the grotesque abuse of conservatism had became obvious, and long after the shambolic war-management was exposed.
Greenwald also wants to argue, however, that my own version of "conservatism" has never existed in America, and has no relationship to the conservative movement in reality. Money quote:
Sullivan's principal argument that the Bush presidency never adhered to conservative principles is true enough, but the same can be said of the entire American conservative political movement. That is why they bred and elevated George Bush for six years, and suddenly "realized" that he was "not a conservative" only once political expediency required it.
Greenwald points to Reagan's deficit spending, his courting of the Christianist right, the law-breaking of Iran-Contra as fore-runners of Bush "conservatism." Money quote:
The pornography-obsessed Ed Meese and the utter lawlessness of the Iran-contra scandal were merely the Reagan precursors to the Bush excesses which Sullivan finds so "anti-conservative." The Bush presidency is an extension, an outgrowth, of the roots of political conservatism in this country, not a betrayal of them.
Greenwald has a point, but it is by no means a slam-dunk. His strongest arguments are on Iran-Contra and the deficit. I remember Iran-Contra well, because I was a young geek at TNR and witnessed the fervent debates in the magazine at the time. My view was that the Iran-Contra deal was wrong, illegal 
and stupid (and wrote editorials on those lines). I was pro-contra, but not in favor of illegal executive shenanigans to fund them. Yes, some conservatives were far too comfortable with executive law-breaking back then. But many weren't. And to reduce Reagan's Cold War coup de grace to the Iran-Contra affair is to miss the point. The defeat and peaceful implosion of the Soviet union remains an achievement - fusing the passion of Reagan with the prudence of the first Bush - that conservatives remain rightly proud of.
On Reagan's deficits, the bulk of it was due to ramped up defense spending - spending that, after the suddent defeat of the Soviets, helped pay for itself in the 1990s. Still, I differed even then, and was more of a Thatcherite, believing in fiscal rectitude as the mark of responsible government. There were many conservatives in that position. The first Bush did a great deal to shore up that legacy, and Gingrich-Clinton helped it along in the mid-1990s. None of this compares to the staggering increase in both defense-related and non-defense discretionary spending under Bush and the Congress in Bush's presidency. Reagan opposed Medicare, period. Bush put it on steroids. Can you imagine Reagan saying, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move?" Can you imagine him federalizing education policy and increasing education spending by over 100 percent in four years? Can you imagine him signing a transportation bill with over 6,000 earmarks in it? Inconceivable.
Reagan did play to the religious right. But it was a minor variation in a larger piece of music. The man won 49 states, red, blue and everything in between. California was in his column twice. He never abandoned the libertarian aspects of the conservative coalition; and his appeal to evangelicals was largely about resisting the tide of judicial over-reach, and reassuring them that they too would be "left alone." The notion of constructing a Republican party on the foundation of Dixie and appealing on explicitly religious grounds as a "born-again" president was not Reagan's cup of tea. It was more Carter than Reagan, in fact - which is why it is unsurprising that a key Bush intellectual, Michael Gerson, was once a fervent Carter supporter.
It may be that my idealized form of conservatism - small government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, strong defense - is not to be found in pristine condition in
history. I concede that upfront in the book. It may be that my Thatcherite lineage and English origins made me miss some important and darker aspects of American conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s. But it may also be that conservatism was a victim of its own success - and subsequently went on an avoidable over-reach that many conservatives are only now regretting.
Conservatism, in other words, could have gone in many directions in the new century. That it embraced bigger and bigger government, massive entitlement growth, indefinite infringement of habeas corpus, legalization of torture, massive long-term debt, federal trampling of states' rights, pork-barrel corruption and half-assed, half-baked war-making was not inevitable, and not indistinguishable from other, far more coherent paths in the conservative past.
Bush and his allies made a choice to betray conservatism. And they have come to regret it sooner than they might have thought.
(Photos: Getty Agency.)
Chirac Off The Sauce
01 Feb 2007 03:43 am
The truly bizarre story in the NYT today about Jacques Chirac's interview do-over prompts a couple of responses. One is that, once again, the French are wimping out on deterrence in the Middle East. But the other is that Chirac, like any self-respecting Parisian, is always more lucid after a decent bottle of wine:
The president had a different demeanor during the two encounters.
In the first interview, which took place in the late morning, he appeared distracted at times, grasping for names and dates and relying on advisers to fill in the blanks. His hands shook slightly. When he spoke about climate change, he read from prepared talking points printed in large letters and highlighted in yellow and pink.
By contrast, in the second interview, which came just after lunch, he appeared both confident and comfortable with the subject matter.
It must have come from one of the better cellars.
YouTube Politics
01 Feb 2007 03:37 am
Here's another slice-and-dice amateur YouTube - a genre that will, I predict, be among the most powerful forms of media in the coming presidential election. Paid ads will be less significant than viral video, disseminated by the blogosphere and hitting MSM shortly thereafter. We'll get used to it, but its first victims won't see it coming. This time the target is McCain. And it's brutal.
Document of the Day
01 Feb 2007 01:39 am
Cheney's notes, subpoenaed by Fitzgerald, reproduced here. There's some debate about what the crossed out words 'the Pres" means. No idea myself.
A reader writes:
Isn't it pretty obvious what this could mean?
"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy the president ... asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder..." Just complete the thought.
Cheney realized what he was about to write, he's no dummy, and decided to go for the vaguer, "that was asked." That was asked "by whom?" is the question. By Cheney or the President? Seems like the latter was the one on the Veep's lips or tip of the pen.
Hmmm. So Cheney was reflecting a presidential decision as to who was expendable and who wasn't? Bush wanted to save Rove by designating Libby the fall-guy. He asked Libby to be the fall guy for Rove. (Cheney may not have been thrilled that he had to lose his right-hand man to save the president's.) Pure speculation, of course. But it makes sense. And if true, it's a fascinating glimpse into the mafia-like code of loyalty that exists in Bush world.
American Royalism
01 Feb 2007 01:16 am
Anglophile politico Michael Barone spots a trend.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Anselm and Atheism
31 Jan 2007 11:41 pm
Is the new atheism really very old? Pete Rollins has some thoughts.
Quote for the Day
31 Jan 2007 09:36 pm
"I'm not going to be a part of the [Congressional Hispanic Caucus] as long as Mr. Baca illegally holds the chair … I told them no. There's a big rift here. You treat the women like shit. I have no use for him," - congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. Sanchez claims Baca called her a "whore."
Insta-Link
31 Jan 2007 09:31 pm
One way of deciphering the opinions of Glenn Reynolds - it's hard work, but someone's got to do it - is to examine his links. He is non-committal on "Plus Up": he says he's for it, but only if it's conducted the right way (quite what the right way would be is left vague). But he gleefully links to anyone who argues that criticism of the surge is a function solely of a) siding with al Qaeda; b) partisan advantage; c) political cowardice; or d) media bias. Here's his latest link: "JULES CRITTENDEN: SURGE!" Is he for it? Is he against it? Does he agree? Does he disagree? No idea. Then you read the link, and find this:
The signs of success [for the surge] are showing up fast. The mere suggestion of a serious crackdown has prompted its targets to run for cover. Moqtada al-Sadr is angling to get back into the political process. His Shiite militias men have hidden their weapons and are trying to act normal. Sunni insurgents are reportedly hightailing it to Diyala. Iran has signalled it wants positive engagement and negotiations, and is trying to look like a friendly neighbor to Iraq.
Those are only preliminary and temporary developments. But they represent a vote of confidence in the Bush plan from its target. The enemy has shown fear. The enemy does not want us to attack.
Er, there is another, obvious explanation for these developments, as a cursory read of the newspapers (liberal media bias!!) will reveal. The "surge" is so anemic it is only designed to calm sections of Baghdad outside the power-base of the Shiite militias (Sadr City). Since these militias control the Maliki government, their current quietness is explicable primarily in terms of simply waiting until the Americans have gone. We know this surge won't last more than a few months. Why fight when you can wait? Why fight when the bulk of the surge will be dealing with Sunni extremists in Anbar and Sunni districts in Baghdad? Why wouldn't the Shiite militias be quite pleased by the U.S. doing their work for them? Does he think they're actually scared?
Crittenden also argues that because 63 percent of Americans want the surge to succeed, it will. Heck, I'm amazed that anyone would not want the surge to succeed. Of course, we'd all love it to succeed. I sure would. I'd also like al Qaeda to surrender, Ahmadinejad to be deposed, and al-Sadr to order his militias to disarm. But I'm not delusional. And I see little reason to encourage others to be so.
Cassius and Liberace
31 Jan 2007 08:45 pm
A television classic. Wouldn't you have wanted to hang in that green room afterwards?
Obama Forever Young
31 Jan 2007 07:52 pm
Jason Zengerle uncovers a 1995 piece on Obama that reveals his long-term consistency. Mark Steyn finds in Romney's flip-flops on social issues a reason to like him more: "If he’s just being opportunist, then even that is modestly encouraging." I look forward to Steyn finding others' changes of mind "modestly encouraging." Funny but I don't recall him being so charitable toward Kerry.
God and the Blogosphere
31 Jan 2007 07:26 pm