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September 24, 2006 - September 30, 2006 Archives
It's Official
Not that it's a genuine surprise to anyone at this point, but it seems the official National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq has concluded that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." Naturally, it also turns out that "the classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document."
Consequently, for months and months the administration has reacted to the report not by trying to improve its policies, but rather by covering up the NIE. Same sorry old story, but it's an absolute disaster for the country. Meanwhile, much of our press continues to identify national security "toughness" with stubborn refusal to see what's lying right before everyone's eyes: The invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic, years-long rolling catastrophe for American security.
Footblogging
How about that Mark Brunell? His record-setting afternoon has got to have been one of the most fake-impressive sports performances I've ever seen. Dink and dunk through 22 passes and wind up with a good-looking average yardage thanks to a massive run after a shovel pass. Some guys have all the luck.
I'm So Surprised
Michael Scherer reports: "Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s." Guess what the inflammatory epithet was. . . .
Mmmm...Doughnut
As part of its awesome attempt to make large-scale public policy based on a mixture of cynicism and ignorance, the Republican Party in its wisdom created a presciption drug benefit for Medicare recipients featuring a "doughnut hole" in the coverage. They wanted the program to be universal, and therefore popular, so every senior with any drug expenses -- even if they're really cheap -- gets some coverage. They also wanted the program to save money. But they didn't want to save money through any methods that might imperil the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies or insurance firms. So they made the benefit actually phase out as your costs grow, which is the reverse of how an insurance program is supposed to work. Then if your costs get super-high, the benefits come back.
Lurking in the middle, though, is the doughnut hole and people aren't happy about it. This is going to be important politically. The GOP essentially sold its soul to pass this bill and win votes from seniors, but they're also the bought-and-paid-for stooges of the private health care industry. If they can manage to please both constituencies at once, they're in pretty good shape. If not, then not.
Abducting the Innocent
Really the craziest idea to strike America's governing class in the 21st century has been that we could improve intelligence by wildly lowering the evidentiary thresholds required for various sorts of action. No more need to demonstrate probable cause. Coercived interrogations now permitted. Hearsay's in, confronting your accusers is out. The idea of all this, I suppose, is that it will generate more information. Which, of course, it will. Much more. But it will also be much less accurate information. Which brings us back to the tragic tale of Maher Arar:
When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.
And guess what -- turns out they "had not been able to link him" to the terrorist group because he had nothing to do with terrorism. They kidnapped, deported, and tortured the guy all for nothing. And just imagine if he had "broken" under torture and "confessed" to his involvement in an al-Qaeda plot directed by the government of Iran. Just imagine how excited some folks in the OVP would be about that "information." And then off we go to war! To think you should run a country this way, you'd have to ladel an extraordinary level of stupidity atop the basic layer of crass imorality.
American Jews Into Israeli-Americans
I was unsure whether I should write about this, since it's kind of delicate, but the conclusion of Mark Kleiman's Rosh Hashanah post has inspired me:
Personally, I identify as Ashkenazi. The Zionist project has much to be said for it, but it's not especially my project. I don't regard visiting Jerusalem as an ascent, and in my opinion the Holy One (blessed be He), desiring that there be a national home for the Jews, in His infinite wisdom and mercy created Long Island.
A bit flip, to be sure, but something I fundamentally agree with. By contrast, my most recent visit to Temple Rodef Shalom with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Northern Virginia made me genuinely uncomfortable along a variety of dimensions, despite it being a totally standard Reform synagogue seemingly populated by the same none-too-observant Askenazi liberals as all the others I've attended. Let me count the ways . . . well, there were really only three.
Continue reading "American Jews Into Israeli-Americans" »
Lump of Terror
Cliff May really is a fool: "And had the US not toppled Saddam Hussein, these people now enlisting as terrorists would be doing what right now? Enrolling in law school, watching football games, and investing in 401K’s?"
This is just silly. Radicalization is a complicated process with multiple stages. No doubt there are lots of people, had the US not invaded Iraq, would have had more-or-less positive views of American foreign policy who are now sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States. And there are other people who, had we not invaded, would be sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States who are, instead, taking up arms against us. There are also bound to be some people who were already committed radicals who used to think the focus belonged on the "near enemy" -- Arab apostate dictatorships -- who now agree that there's a Zionist/Crusader alliance that's pulling the strings in the region and needs to be targeted.
You're talking about millions of people -- hundreds of millions, probably, if not billions -- all over the world who have each in their own way been pushed a notch or two in the direction of hostility to the United States of America. This should be obvious. Massively unpopular actions have consequences. In particular, the United States has unmatched military power. This is, potentially, something that people everywhere -- Muslims or not -- could find threatening. Insofar as we used that power in a way that others regarded as reasonable, though, nothing was likely to happen. Insofar as we've started using in ways that most people regard as utterly unreasonable and that many -- especially including Muslims in this instance -- regard as being hostile to their interests and those of their co-religionists, there's going to be a price to be paid. That includes more terrorists, more terrorist sympathizers, and fewer and fewer people interested in helping us fight the terrorists.
¡Chavismo!
Show me some Spine: "In any case, Herf's posting on why so many did not recognize or wish to acknowledge the peril Nazism posed to civilization is well worth reading. But his real point seems to me to be the virtual identity of this phenomenon in the thirties and the eagerness of many right now to deny or underplay the menace that Ahmadinejad and, for that matter, Hugo Chávez are to liberal society."
How Chavez has managed to go from continuing Venezuela's longstanding tradition of semi-authoritarian rule (yes, it may shock some to learn this, but the country wasn't a model liberal democracy even before el diablo himself came to power there) and implementing arguably unwise and unsustainable economic policies to being a menace to liberal society is a great mystery to me. Venezuela's a second-rate country, power politics-wise, by Latin American standards. It doesn't even rise to the order of being able to threaten Brazil or Argentina or Chile or Mexico, much less liberal society as such.
At any rate, you might have read my brilliant post on the "lessons of history" when I was guest-writing Talking Points Memo, but it's still true today. There surely are lessons to be learned from the history of Europe in the 1930s. But there's simply no reasonable basis for the belief that history supports the view that it's a good idea to take a maximally alarmist view of each and every thing that happens. After all, nobody looks back at the events of 1937-39 and says "if only the West's leaders had been more alarmist about the USSR."
Canny Carcetti
I was surprised by Steve James' interpretation of the scene in last night's Wire where Tom Carcetti declines to speak to reporters after dropping by the funeral of a murder victim who may have been killed for his role agreeing to be a witness in a drug case: "In the most moving moment, Carcetti visits the funeral home to witness firsthand the cost of the mean streets, and then refuses the photo op, out of respect." Alex Kotlowitz essentially concurs, "we've been growing increasingly cynical about the political process (though I suspect many of us were already there), and then, out of nowhere, his conscience gets him, even if just for a moment and even if it's tied up in the fact that he knows talking to reporters outside a funeral isn't the most politically savvy thing to do."
I agree with Kotlowitz that this is a both/and situation rather than an either/or, but I think the emphasis here really ought to be on Carcetti's political savvy rather than his conscience. The main upshot of the scene is to remind us that Carcetti is legitimately a very smart and very talented politician, whereas the sort of people likely to staff a longshot run at becoming mayor of Baltimore aren't the best and brightest political hacks out there. We're also seeing that for all the extent to which the system is rotten, it's still sometimes the case that the right thing to do is also the politically clever move. Similarly, with Rawls' efforts to get Detective Freamon to rejoin the homocide squad we're seeing (just as we saw when Freamon was assigned to homocide between seasons one and two) that the Police Department, for all its crapitude, does have some interest in having good police on staff to solve murders. The clearance rate is politically salient, and you need some good detectives to maintain a good clearance rate. The system is screwed up enough to keep Baltimore in the shitter, but not so screwed up that the system simply collapses.
Odd Claim of the Day
I have very fond recollections of The Pity of War and even find myself recommending it to people now and again. It seems to me, though, that every time I hear what Niall Ferguson has to say about, well, just about anything these days I start to feel like the book must have been terrible. After all, this is a guy who says, "radical Islamism is good at recruiting within our society, within western society generally. In western Europe, to an extent people underestimate here, the appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities."
Like Dan Drezner, I'm left wondering what empirical support Ferguson thinks he has for this claim. Or, to put it another way, "is good at recruiting" compared to what. Just earlier, he was making an explicit analogy with Marxism. But Communism had a huge following in the West, millions of people (mostly, but not exclusively, in France and Italy) voted for parties adhering to the Moscow-dictated line, and then there was another giant bloc of anti-Stalin Marxists. Indeed, I'm fairly sure that to this day you're going to find substantially more followers of Marx than of bin Laden or Qutb living in the West.
Stating the Obvious
George Allen says Salon's wrong and he never used the n-word. Larry Sabato says he's lying. And of course he's lying. I mean, here you have a fairly hard-core racist (pardon, California-born enthusiast for Southern heritage) living in Virginia in the early 1970s. Why wouldn't he use the word? I hardly even think it's worth Allen's while to lie about this business -- why not 'fess up, apologize, and say he's changed.
Declassify
Robert Kagan says declassify the NIE on Iraq. He does so in the course of making an absurd argument, but still, it should be done. Apparently Pat Roberts is on board as well.
Heritage
Lionel Robinson in comments complains:
Your equating of southern heritage with racism does a great disservice to southerners like Leroy Collins and Ralph McGill. But as long as you think racism is something that happens only in the south, you don't have to admit that it's a national problem not restricted to one region and should be rejected wherever you find it. I heard the N-word more in Milwaukee than I have in the south, and I live now in an area where people put rouge on their necks and buff it every morning.
I plead innocent to all charges. There's obviously more to southern culture and heritage than racism, as you can see from the simple fact that African-American southerners are distinctly southern, as well as African-American. Nor do I think it's fair to dismiss claims made by white southerners -- especially those of a certain age or simply of limited horizons in life -- who say that the Confederate Flag, to them, represents all that other stuff and not just, or even primarily, white supremacy. Symbols mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. The damning thing about George Allen's lifelong fascination with the Stars and Bars is that Allen's not from the South. To northerners, that flag means white supremacy. There's no conceivable a white person living in California would adopt the symbol in the 1960s other than to affiliate himself with the resistance to the civil rights movement.
Similarly, it's true of course that there's racism all over the place and that an undue focus on the South can distract from that. On the other hand, George Allen is actually running for re-election this year. And he's doing so in Virginia. And the evidence suggests he's a pretty serious racist. And his affection for the Confederate flag is an important part of that evidence. It would be silly to ignore all that. But, obviously, that racism exists outside the South is at the core of the case -- Allen isn't a Southerner, he just moved there.
Hey...Look...A Second Party
Since the people who run the congress refuse to engage in oversight, the Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing yesterday on the Iraq War. Naturally, the press more-or-less entirely ignored this event, since people only report on the Democrats to mock them for being in "disarray" (exception: The San Francisco Chronicle did an article), but a variety of interesting things were said. Retired General John Batiste observed:
I believe that Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq. Rumsfeld failed to address the full range of requirements for this effort and the result is one percent of the population shouldering the burdens, continued hemorrhaging of our national treasure in terms of blood and dollars, an Army and Marine Corps which will require tens of billions of dollars to reset after we withdraw from Iraq, the majority of our National Guard brigades no longer combat ready, a Veterans Administration which is under funded by over $3 billion, and America arguably less safe now than it was on 9/11. If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action which would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.
This seems correct to me. See also Fred Kaplan on how the Army's crumbling as a result of the intersection of war.
UPDATE: Yikes, this is wrong. As per SCJ's comment there was a bunch of MSM coverage this morning. I ran a Google News Search for "Democratic Policy Committee" that revealed little in terms of major outlet coverage (as opposed to progressive media outlets or specialty DC publications) but I obviously chose my search terms badly. Apologies. Interesting hearings nonetheless!
Mmm...Socialism
I take the view that "competitiveness" is a bogus concept (ask Paul Krugman) along with an ugly, ugly neologism. But we seem stuck with it. Thus, via Kevin Drum, the World Economic Forum's "competitiveness" rankings, wherein they gloss the concept as a measure of "how conducive their business climates are to sustaining economic growth." Sustaining economic growth is a real concept -- and we're number six. But look who's ahead of us -- Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Singapore.
That's an awful lot of Scandinavian social democracies which, in turn, leads to a point worth making and remaking -- one shouldn't allow the existence of macroeconomic problems in France and Germany to support the conclusion that the European welfare state is simply a failed model. All of those countries differ from each other quite a bit, and the best evidence suggests that the problems in France and Germany relate primarily to aspects of the policy environment there other than the basic transatlantic disagreement about inequality and social welfare.
Who Gets The Blame?
Dan Drezner literally wrote the book on economic sanctions, so I don't dismiss his opinion lightly, but his optimism about the prospect that a gasoline embargo on Iran will produce the desired results strikes me as off-base:
That said, rejecting the gasoline embargo strikes me as a huge mistake. Iran is also not like North Korea in that there's actually a middle class in Tehran and environs that like their cheap gasoline very much, thank you. I concede that the possibility of a nationalist backlash is there -- but just because Ahmadinejad is painting the conflict as a civilizational one does not mean that Iranians are buying it. There's a decent possibility that of a lot of Iranians taking out their economic frustrations against Ahmadinejad's government -- especially after Iran's government spends so much on Hezbollah.
I mean, I dunno, let's think about it. You're sitting in Teheran, and all of a sudden western nations -- nations that have nuclear weapons -- impose a gasoline embargo and your financial situation goes to shit. These nuclear-armed western powers say the embargo will be lifted as soon as your government disavows uranium enrichment. Your government says they'll disavow uranium enrichment in the context of a regional nuclear-free zone -- i.e., Israel gives up its nuclear weapons. Israel, of course, won't do that and the nuclear-armed gasoline-embargoing western powers won't lean on Israel to do it. Do you blame Teheran, or do you blame Washington, London, and Paris? In principle, it could go either way, but I think that you only need to have very mild anti-Israel sentiments for this to look like the West imposing an unfair double-standard on the nation and people of Iran. Obviously, it's not going to look like that to Americans, but I have a hard time imagining that the "blame Iran first" interpretation of the situation is going to gain a lot of Iranian adherents.
To Punt, Or Not To Punt?
My college roommate and I have long held, without rigorous empirical evidence, that NFL coaches punt way too often. This week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback makes that case and even backs it with some non-trivial evidence derived from a 2005 David Romer paper. This is by no means an airtight argument, but it's sound enough -- i.e., certainly worthy of more than 3 percent credence -- that really someone or other ought to think outside the box and give it a try.
Let me also say that Easterbrook doesn't even throw on to the pile one of the considerations in favor of a much more aggressive fourth down strategy -- it would make defending third down situations harder. One major structural advantage the offense has is, of course, that the defense doesn't know what play the offense is going to run. In certain circumstances, though, you can get a pretty good guess. Third down situations, in particular, get fairly predictable. If you need short yardage, you're goign to run; if you need long yardage, you're going to pass. If, however, you plan on going for it on fourth down and the other team knows you're going to go for it then everything gets much harder to predict.
If We Win, We Win (also: ponies)
Today's moronic rightwing talking point is that we should ignore the overwhelming majority of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that the White House was so eager to cover up (see declassified excerpts here) as a partisan plot undertaken by the notorious left-wingers at the CIA, while simultaneously citing the NIE's conclusion that "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight" as a decisive refutation of Democratic views on Iraq.
Seriously, people, think before you open your mouths and crack open your laptops.
Does anyone -- anyone -- on the right genuinely believe that those of us who favor withdrawal from Iraq do so because we don't think it would be a good idea to turn the country into a shining success? Of course we don't think that. We favor withdrawal because we don't believe that indefinite continuation of an open-ended military presence in Iraq is likely to generate success. The country has been doing this for three and a half years now and things aren't improving; they're getting worse. Nobody disputes the desirability of success; we dispute the notion that continuing to do the same things that aren't working now, and weren't working one year ago, and weren't working two years ago, are going to magically start working if we give it another year.
I Read!
Man, this here book meme just keeps going around and round yet nobody ever tags me. I read books! Just saying....
UPDATE: Whining gets results -- woo! Answers coming later.
Who? When? Why?
I'm not going to deny that David Ignatius makes a legitimate point or two here, but what's the deal with "Some extreme war critics are so angry at Bush they seem almost eager for America to lose, to prove a political point." That's a serious charge. Does Ignatius have evidence for it? No. Does he cite any examples? No. Does he name any names? No. I find it extremely frustrating that you're allowed to toss off this kind of liberal-bashing without providing any backing.
This matters not because I doubt Ignatius could find someone or other who "seems" like he's "eager" for America to lose. It matters because "extreme war critic" is such a vague phrase. For years, perfectly mainstream war critics -- Howard Dean, Tony Zinni, Richard Clarke, Dick Durbin, Zbigniew Brzezinski -- were portrayed as "extreme" and they still are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and alternate Saturdays. On the other hand, when I was in college there were these members of the Spartacist Youth League (or something) who would sit on the corner calling for the violent overthrow of the US government ranting and raving about North Korea's inalienable right to nuclear weapons and the need to unify the peninsula under Pyongyang's beneficent rule. No doubt those "extreme war critics" really do want to see America lose. But is Ignatius talking about crazy people who shout on streetcorners -- in which case his observation is silly -- or is he talking about meaningful participants in American politics, in which case it's false? Well, I think, he's talking about the former, but talking as if he's talking about the latter.
Which is just to say that, once again, practitioners of the Higher Broderism can get away with saying just about anything about American liberals without needing to seriously support it. As long, of course, as what they're saying is critical.
France-Bashing
The enduring popularity of France-bashing in the United States is a fascinating phenomenon. Nick Gillespie spies Marty Peretz getting the bug. What's especially fascinating is the particular form of the contemporary France-bashing narrative, as reflected in Peretz' post. According to this story, the USA differs from France in our greater eagerness to go to war and that this disagreement reflects superior wisdom on the part of the United States. Interestingly, neither prong of that narrative is supportable.
Obviously, there was an instance of France being unwilling to fight in a situation where the USA wanted to go in -- Iraq, 2003. But here the French position -- that Saddam's WMD programs were not a serious danger, that a western occupation of an Arab country was likely to go poorly, and that such a war would hinger the fight against al-Qaeda -- has been utterly vindicated. Other recent American wars -- for Kuwaiti independence, against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, agains the Taliban -- were undertaken with French support. Before that, you had Vietnam where France fought Ho Chi Minh's movement first, lost, then let us go make all the same mistakes over again. So French dovishness comes down to one war -- Iraq, part deux -- that France didn't want to fight, and that France was right not to want to fight.
France's "rep" for weakness and appeasement comes, of course, from World War II. But in 1938, France was the non-axis country most eager to fight Germany. Going to war without the support of England, the USSR, or the United States would have been a horrible policy. Once their British ally was on board, they fought. They lost, of course, but the contrast between France, the UK, and the USA in this regard is that France was located adjacent to Germany without a convenient stretch of ocean to block the Nazi advance.
Rogue Superpower
For book research purposes, I've recently been re-reading Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. It's an interesting experience. This passage appears on page 353:
The United States is not a rogue superpower determined to do what it wants regardless of who it threatens or angers. If we behave in this fashion, we will alienate our allies and convince much of the rest of the world to band together against us to try to keep us under control. Rather than increasing our security and prosperity, such a development would drastically undermine it.
I was thinking about that when I wrote my latest and very shrill column for TAP Online. It's a much more polite commentary, but fundamentally I think John Ikenberry's continuing work on the "Security Trap" concept is expressing the same idea.
Polling Iraq
New polls indicate that most Iraqis want US troops to leave Iraq, and generally see the presence of our forces as contributing to the country's instability. One would think this would be considered an important data point in the ongoing forward-looking Iraq debate. On the other hand, this polling is consistent with all the polls I've seen for years now and it seems to have had very little impact on people.
Ch-ch-changes
Mike Tomasky to step down as Executive Editor of The American Prospect. Will swop titles with current Editor-at-Large Harold Meyerson.
Must Ahmadenijad Mean What He Says?
"Why," asks Jeffrey Herf "would Roger Cohen, or the leaders of the Council on Foreign Relations think Ahmadinejad has not meant what he has said in public?"
Of all the alleged lessons of Munich, surely this is the dumbest one. What Herf has in mind here are Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel being wiped off the map. But Herf certainly isn't proposing to extend this "assume foreign leaders are always telling the truth" principle to Ahmadinejad's claims that Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful. And Herf is right not to extend it, but simply because it's a dumb principle. Nothing in the actions -- present or historical -- suggests a desire to wipe Israel off the map that extends to a willingness to commit national suicide while trying. Similarly, Iran's actions suggest a desire to either build a nuclear bomb or to create the capacity to build one very rapidly, primarily in order to deter the more powerful militaries (Israel, US, Pakistan) in Iran's neighborhood.
Paternalism: It's Good for the Kids
If you haven't read Michael Lewis' "Ballad of Big Mike" in The New York Times Magazine you really ought to stop reading this blog and go read the article. It's a longie but a goodie that, like the best feature writing out there, leaves one pregnant with somewhat inchoat thoughts on the matter. I will say that I think concerns voiced by Ezra Klein and Jason Kottke about how the various adults depicted treat Mike are kind of off-base. In essence, they're concerned that Mike's autonomy isn't being respected. And, it's true, it isn't. And I also think the anti-paternalist biases of contemporary liberals exist for some pretty good reasons.
Then again, it's called "paternalism" for a reason -- this is how you're supposed to treat children. Mike's a kid -- 16 years old -- at the start of the saga, and with a level of mental development more like you would expect from someone quite a bit younger. There's a lot more to be said about this article, and I'll have to say it later if ever, but this particular thing isn't really what should trouble us.
Good Guys and Bad Guys
Lorelei Kelley highlights the best statements of Democrats who've taken the right stand in the House of Representatives' obscene torture debate. Notwithstanding their efforts, the administration's pro-torture position prevailed by a depressingly-not-small margin of 253-168. Those Democrats running so scared of GOP attack ads that they're willing to toss the constitution, basic morality, and common sense about effective interrogations overboard in a futile effort to convince the Republicans not to call them soft on terrorism sure do look "tough," don't they?
Book Meme
At long last. See the fun below the fold.
Continue reading "Book Meme" »
Causes and Responsibilities
Tony Blair says, "This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy. It's an attack on our way of life." It's disappointing to see Blair, who I really used to respect a lot, just peddling the same old demagoguery you might see on NRO or wherever else. It goes to show, I think, that there are only so many plays in the political playbook. Initiators of unpopular, doomed wars either need to fall on their swords or else start running the obfuscation end-around and you don't get to become Prime Minister without having the sort of instincts that make you disinclined to fall on your sword.
This notion that in order to preserve the terrorists moral culpability for their atrocities we need to believe that their actions are somehow uncaused is daft. I'll read now and again Rich Lowry or someone else talking about how, yes, we're in a kind of global counterinsurgency situation but then you see the leaders they love so dear don't understand the first thing about it. Their pundits don't, either. David Brooks accuses his adversaries of falling prey to a Grand Delusion "that if we just leave the extremists alone, they will leave us alone." But that is not what I meant, at all. That is not it. At all. To be sure, there are some implacable opponents out there who we'll have to do our best to kill. But there are also lots of other people out there -- placable opponents, young kids with unformed views, fence-sitters, whatever -- and our actions do, indeed, play a role in whether or not they become implacable opponents. This matters. It probably matters more than anything else. And the domination of western politics by people who don't understand that is going, one day, to get an awful lot of Americans killed.
In Which Stereotypes Run Amok
I don't want to get too crudely reductive here, but considering that Mocha Hut on 13th Street where I work appears to have an entirely African-American staff, the music they're playing today bears on odd resemblance to . . . what's on my iPod. I've already heard a Broken Social Scene tune, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, some Built to Spill, and now "Baby Six String" by Dressy Bessy which I regard as a somewhat obscure band even by indie rock standards.
Is it possible that there's some kind of gentrification consultant out there telling the Hut's management team what kind of music will appeal to the neighborhood's newer demographic? If so, can that person tell the owners of the Mercadito Ramos that they should refrigerate their Diet Coke supply?
The Depends Theory of Geopolitcs
I was interested to see GregPStone in comments mounting the argument that assuming the Iranians are, in fact, trying to build a nuclear bomb whose purpose is to mount a suicidal unprovoked nuclear first strike constitutes "erring on the side of caution."
There's something to be said for caution, but that's not what this is at all. Rather, it's erring on the side of panic an approach that, stealing from Atrios, we might term the Depends Theory of International Relations. Running around constantly freaking out about everything, panicking, and fostering an atmosphere of paranoid alarmism isn't cautious at all. It doesn't make you safer. Primarily, it prevents you from focusing and setting priorities. It blinds you to real threats by diffusing resources and effort. It leads to mistakes, and imposes enormous costs. It makes it too easy for adversaries to throw you off your game at very little cost to themselves, while making it hard for friends and potential friends to trust you. It destroys your own credibility leaving you, eventually, alone in the corner covered in your own piss.
Real strength requires the United States to act like its strong, to act with some confidence in our basic capabilities, values, institutions, etc. To be able to use that confidence to calm down, set priorities, focus energies and efforts, and make sure we're not running around wrecking what is, objectively speaking, a very favorable situation by global or historical standards.
Constitutions
Ogged asks: "Isn't the Say Goodbye to America bill about as unconstitutional as can be? I understand that there are 'no judicial review' provisions, but might not those provisions themselves be unconstitutional? Surely some clever lawyer could cook up enough standing to challenge the bill in court?"
There will certainly be challenges, but I wouldn't count on anything. The court-stripping issue hasn't been litigated all that much, but the idea that congress has the power to do this kind of thing has some real support from the text of the constitution. What's more, courts are generally disinclined to interfere in national security questions. And, of course, there's no particular reason to think that the Supreme Court's five conservative justices disagree with America's conservative politicians about this. You never really know what's going to happen, but we have a political system for a reason . . . if people elect politicians who want to give the president the power to indefinitely detain and torture people on the basis of his say-so that they're terrorists then the president is going to end up with the power to indefinitely detain and torture people on the basis of his say-so.
Pen Pals
Why is Mark Foley sending emails from his personal address to a sixteen year-old former page asking the page to "send me an email pic of you as well"? According to Foley's office, it's because "it is their policy to keep pictures of former interns and anyone who may ask for a recommendation on file so they can remember them." And I'm sure most former interns get personal, slang-laden emails from Rep. Foley to make sure that happens.
The ABC News item doesn't mention it, but Foley is one of Washington's "widely-rumored-to-be-gay" politicians, which provides the crucial context. Raw Story has the emails and will post them soon.
On The Road
Going to be a travel day tomorrow, so it's possible that there won't be any posts until late in the day. On the other hand, it's possible that I'll do something early tomorrow.
Seriously?
"Whenever people asked me how I’d know if we’d won in Iraq," writes Tom Friedman, "I said: when Salman Rushdie could give a lecture in Baghdad."
Really? That was his criterion for victory? And he thought the war was a good idea? And he's the country's most-influential foreign affairs columnist? I'd best just stop reading things. Picked up (or, rather, stole from my roommate) White Noise on the advice of commenters -- that's a much more palatable brand of surrealism.
Talk Amongst Yourselves: "The War On Terror"
I'm at Princeton talking about national security with various people smarter and more distinguished than myself. At the moment the topic on the table is John Ikenberry's contention (also made by others) that the whole "war on terrorism" concept ought to be junked. I have genuinely mixed feelings about this; hoping to learn something from the assembled guests, but also would be interested to know what readers think.
Syndromes
Roommate and TNR superstar Spencer Ackerman describes the Other Vietnam Syndrome:
It's true enough that, for more than 30 years, the left has not infrequently suffered from "Vietnam syndrome"--the assumption that any military engagement will be a moral disaster and a potential quagmire. But, though it has been less examined, the lesson the right took from Vietnam--that the true danger to national security is not misguided wars, but overzealous opposition to misguided wars--is, if anything, more dangerous. Call it the Other Vietnam Syndrome.
Read the whole thing, as the kids say. I actually think there's also a third Vietnam Syndrome, but that's a story for another day.
Iran and the Law
 I would have thought this was simply obvious, but a few people at dinner thought it might be useful to make the point plainly. The Bush administration is considering airstrikes against Iran. Some people think the decision has already been made to do it. Most people think this isn't totally clear, but some folks inside the government want strikes and may win the fight. The options being seriously considered all involve, basically, launching a surprise attack. This means, among other things, a war without any serious basis in domestic or international law. No UN resolution, no congressional resolution, just an order from the President to the relevant military assets. There'll be vague gestures in the direction of this or that -- the crew that's argued the 9/11 Resolution repealed FISA and the 4th Amendment will argue that it authorized just about anything -- but basically they'll just be making shit up which isn't at the end of the day, a novel situation for them to be in.
The War Powers Act states that "The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Meaning, in other words, that simply launching an attack on Iran would be illegal. Dick Cheney has, however, argued for decades that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, so this isn't going to stop them. You'll be able to file an after-the-fact lawsuit, if you like, but that's not going to have much practical impact.
Corporal Punishment
The New York Times writes about corporal punishment in American schools, legal in a broad swathe of red America, but in practice overwhelmingly taking place in Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. Obviously, as a good upscale liberal my instincts are overhwelmingly opposed to this. In addition, my ex ante skepticism that Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama have together hit upon a useful public policy experiment ignored by the rest of the nation is extremely high.
That said, on a subject I've given more thought to it seems to me that we actually ought to seriously consider adding a corporal punishment component to our criminal justice system. Sanctioning offenders works better when the punishment is swift and predictable, which means it helps a lot for the sanctions to be cheap, which prison is not. What's more, though caning is cruel, the reality of the American prison system -- as opposed to the hopes of reformers decades ago -- is pretty damn cruel as well. So I think there really might be something to, well, beating people rather than imprisoning them for at least some offenses. Which, I guess, means it should be on the table as something to contemplate for the schools system as well. But my conscience really rebels against the idea of hitting kids and it's not as if the rural southern counties are known world-round for their excellent schools.
Liberty Under Law
It's long and ambitious, so I haven't yet had time to develop and write up any really intelligent remarks, but late last week the Princeton Project on National Security released its final report Forging A World Of Liberty Under Law. Take a look.
What's The Deal With...
... Bob Woodward? His new book:
In Bob Woodward’s highly anticipated new book, “State of Denial,” President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war. It’s a portrait that stands in stark contrast to the laudatory one Mr. Woodward drew in “Bush at War,” his 2002 book, which depicted the president — in terms that the White House press office itself has purveyed — as a judicious, resolute leader, blessed with the “vision thing” his father was accused of lacking and firmly in control of the ship of state.
Why were the earlier books so different? Did he somehow not notice this stuff before? It's a serious problem for the most prominent people in the journalism world to be merely lagging indicators, praising leaders when they're popular and then pointing out that, in fact, they suck only after a whole series of disasters discredit them.
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